Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad LifeSpearman, Frank H. (Frank Hamilton)
General
Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad Life
Spearman, Frank H. (Frank Hamilton)
Fiction; Railroad stories; Short stories, American
"Iss no vater hier," cried the second-class man. Bullhead sat half way
back in the car, still studying the rules. He looked up surprised but
turning around pointed with confidence to the firepail at the hind end
of the smoker.
"Try the other bucket, Johnnie," he said, calmly. At that every man in
the car began to choke; and the German, thinking the new brakeman was
making funny of him, wanted to fight. Now Bullhead would rather fight
than go to Sunday-school any day, and without parley he engaged the
insulted homesteader. Pat Francis parted them after some hard words on
his part; and Kenyon, the trainmaster, gave Bullhead three months to
study up where the water cooler was located in Standard, A pattern,
smoking cars. Bullhead's own mother, who did Callahan's washing, refused
to believe her son was so stupid as not to know; but Bullhead, who now
tells the story himself, claims he did not know.
When he got back to work he tried the freight trains. They put him on
the Number Twenty-nine, local, and one day they were drifting into the
yard at Goose River Junction when there came from the cab a sharp call
for brakes. Instead of climbing out and grabbing a brakewheel for dear
life, Bullhead looked out the window to see what the excitement was. By
the time he had decided what rule covered the emergency his train had
driven a stray flat half way through the eating house east of the depot.
Kenyon, after hearing Bullhead's own candid statement of fact, coughed
apologetically and said three years; whereupon Bullhead resigned
permanently from the train service and applied for a job in the
roundhouse.
But the roundhouse--for a boy like Bullhead. It would hardly do. He was
put at helping Pete Beezer, the boiler washer. One night Pete was
snatching his customary nap in the pit when the hose got away from
Bullhead and struck his boss. In the confusion, Peter, who was nearly
drowned, lost a set of teeth; that was sufficient in that department of
the motive power; Bullhead moved on, suddenly. Neighbor thought he might
do for a wiper. After the boy had learned something about wiping he
tried one day to back an engine out on the turn-table just to see
whether it was easy. It was; dead easy; but the turn-table happened to
be arranged wrong for the experiment; and Neighbor, before calling in
the wrecking gang, took occasion to kick Bullhead out of the roundhouse
bodily.
Nevertheless, Bullhead, like every Medicine Bend boy, wanted to
railroad. Some fellows can't be shut off. He was offered the presidency
of a Cincinnati bank by a private detective agency which had just sent
up the active head of the institution for ten years; but as Bullhead
could not arrange transportation east of the river he was obliged to let
the opportunity pass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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