"I should certainly want to say good-by to your sister," muttered
Glover. But in saying even so little his naturally unsteady voice
broke one extra tone, and when this happened it angered him.
"You are not timid, are you?" continued Gertrude.
"I think I am something of a coward."
"Then you shouldn't venture," she laughed, "Marie has a scolding for
you."
Morris Blood had been telling Doctor Lanning that he and Glover were to
go over to Sleepy Cat on the train the doctor and Gertrude were to take
back to Glen Tarn. The two railroad men were just starting across the
yard to inspect an engine, the 1018, which was to pull the limited
train that day for the first time. It was a new monster, planned by
the modest little Manxman, Robert Crosby, for the first district run.
"Help her over the pass," Crosby had whispered--the superintendent of
motive power hardly ever spoke aloud--"and she'll buck a headwind like
a canvas-back. Give her decent weather, and on the Sleepy Cat trail
she'll run away with six, yes, eight Pullmans."
Doctor Lanning was curious to look over the new machine, the first to
signalize the new ownership of the line, and Gertrude was quite ready
to accept Blood's invitation to go also.
With the doctor under the superintendent's wing, Gertrude, piloted by
Glover, crossed the network of tracks, asking railroad questions at
every step.
Reaching the engine, she wanted to get up into the cab, to say that,
before leaving the mountains forever, she had been once inside an
engine. Glover, after some delay, procured a stepladder from the "rip"
track, and with this the daughter of the magnate made an unusual but
easy ascent to the cab. More than that, she made herself a heroine to
every yardman in sight, and strengthened the new administration
incalculably.
She ignored a conventional offer of waste from the man in charge of the
cab, who she was surprised to learn, after some sympathetic remarks on
her part, was not the engineman at all. He was a man that had
something to do with horses. And when she suggested it would be quite
an event for so big an engine to go over the mountains for the first
time, the hostler told her it had already been over a good many times.
But Mr. Blood had an easy explanation for every confusing statement,
and did not falter even when Miss Brock wanted to start the 1018
herself. He objected that she would soil her gloves, but she held them
up in derision; plainly, they had already suffered. Some difficulty
then arose because she could not begin to reach the throttle. Again,
with much chaffing, the stepladder was brought into play, and steadied
on it by Morris Blood, and coached by the hostler, the heiress to many
millions grasped the throttle, unlatched it and pulled at the lever
vigorously with both hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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