Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
“Seventy-five miles an hour these five miles. Baths, I’ve heard;
barber’s shop; ticker; and a library and the rest to match. Yes, sir;
seventy-five an hour! But he’ll talk to you in the round-house just as
democratic as I would. And I—cuss my wheel-base!—I’d kick clean off the
track at half his gait. He’s the Master of our Lodge. Cleans up at our
house. I’ll introdooce you some day. He’s worth knowin’! There ain’t
many can sing that song, either.”
・007 was too full of emotions to answer. He did not hear a raging of
telephone-bells in the switch-tower, nor the man, as he leaned out and
called to ・007’s engineer: “Got any steam?”
“’Nough to run her a hundred mile out o’ this, if I could,” said the
engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated switching.
“Then get. The Flying Freight’s ditched forty mile out, with fifty rod
o’ track ploughed up. No; no one’s hurt, but both tracks are blocked.
Lucky the wreckin’-car an’ derrick are this end of the yard. Crew ’ll
be along in a minute. Hurry! You’ve the track.”
“Well, I could jest kick my little sawed-off self,” said Poney, as ・007
was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but
full of tools—a flatcar and a derrick behind it. “Some folks are one
thing, and some are another; but _you_’re in luck, kid. They push a
wrecking-car. Now, don’t get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on
the track, and there ain’t any curves worth mentionin’. Oh, say!
Comanche told me there’s one section o’ sawedged track that’s liable to
jounce ye a little. Fifteen an’ a half out, _after_ the grade at
Jackson’s crossin’. You’ll know it by a farmhouse an’ a windmill an’
five maples in the dooryard. Windmill’s west o’ the maples. An’ there’s
an eighty-foot iron bridge in the middle o’ that section with no
guard-rails. See you later. Luck!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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