The strange phenomenon became so general that officials lost patience. One road issued an order to the effect that any engineer who heard signals when there were no signals should get thirty days for the first and his time for the second offence. Within a week from the appearance of the unusual and unusually offensive bulletin, "Baldy" Hooten heard the stop signal as he neared a little Junction town where his line crossed another on an overhead bridge. When the signal sounded, the fireman glanced over at the driver, who dived through the window up to his hip pockets. When the engine had crashed over the bridge, the driver pulled himself into the cab again, and once more the signal. The fireman, amazed, stared at the engineer. The latter jerked the throttle wide open; seeing which, the stoker dropped to the deck and began feeding the hungry furnace. Ten minutes later the Limited screamed for a regular stop, ten miles down the line. As the driver dropped to the ground and began touching the pins and links with the back of his bare hand, to see if they were all cool, the head brakeman trotted forward whispering hoarsely, "The ol' man's aboard." The driver waved him aside with his flaring torch, and up trotted the blue-and-gold conductor with his little silver white-light with a frosted flue. "Why didn't you stop at Pee-Wee Junction?" he hissed. "Is Pee-Wee a stop station?" "On signal." "I didn't see no sign." "_I_ pulled the bell." "Go on now, you ghost-dancer," said the engineer. "You idiot!" gasped the exasperated conductor. "Don't you know the old man's on, that he wanted to stop at Pee-Wee to meet the G.M. this morning, that a whole engineering outfit will be idle there for half a day, and you'll get the guillotine?" "Whew, you have _shore_ got 'em." "Isn't your bell working?" asked a big man who had joined the group under the cab window. "I think so, sir," said the driver, as he recognized the superintendent. "Johnny, try that cab bell," he shouted, and the fire-boy sounded the big brass gong. "Why didn't you take it at Pee-Wee?" asked the old man, holding his temper beautifully. The driver lifted his torch and stared almost rudely into the face of the official in front of him. "Why, Mr. Skidum," said he slowly, "I didn't hear no signal." The superintendent was blocked. As he turned and followed the conductor into the telegraph office, the driver, gloating in his high tower of a cab, watched him. "He's an old darling," said he to the fire-boy, "and I'm ready to die for him any day; but I can't stop for him in the face of bulletin 13. Thirty days for the first offence, and then fire," he quoted, as he opened the throttle and steamed away, four minutes late. The old man drummed on the counter-top in the telegraph office, and then picked up a pad and wrote a wire to his assistant:-- "Cancel general order No. 13."