It's a strange thing, perhaps, a love like that; but, strange or not, there was never an engineer worth his salt who hasn't had it--some more than others, of course--as some men's love for a woman is deeper than others. With Owsley it came pretty near being the whole thing, and it was queer enough to see him when they'd change his engine to give him a newer and more improved type for a running mate. He'd refuse point-blank at first to be separated from the obsolete engine, that was either carded for some local jerk-water, mixed-freight run, or for a construction job somewhere. "Leave her with me," he'd say to Regan, the master mechanic. "Leave me with her. You can give my run to some one else, Regan, d'ye mind? It's little I care for the swell run; me and the old girl sticks. I'll have nothing else." But the bluff, fat, big-hearted, good-natured, little master mechanic, knew his man--and he knew an engineer when he saw one. Regan would no more have thought of letting Owsley get away from the Imperial's throttle than he would have thought of putting call boys in the cabs to run his engines. "H'm!" he would say, blinking fast at Owsley. "Feel that way, do you? Well, then, mabbe it's about time you quit altogether. I didn't offer you your choice, did I? You take the Imperial with what I give you to take her with--or take nothing. Think it over!" And Owsley, perforce, had to "think it over"--and, perforce, he stayed on the limited run. Came then the day when changes in engine types were not so frequent, and a fair maximum in machine-design efficiency had been obtained--and Owsley came to love, more than he had ever loved any engine before, his big, powerful, 1600-class racer, with its four pairs of massive drivers, that took the curves with the grace of a circling bird, that laughed in glee at anything lower than a three per cent grade, and tackled the "fives" with no more than a grunt of disdain--Owsley and the 1601, right from the start, clipped fifty-five minutes off the running time of the Imperial Limited through the Rockies, where before it had been nip and tuck to make the old schedule anywhere near the dot. For three years it was Owsley and the 1601; for three years east and west through the mountains--and a smile in the roundhouse at him as he nursed and cuddled and groomed his big flyer, in from a run. Not now--they don't smile now about it. It was Owsley and the 1601 for three years--and at the end it was still Owsley and the 1601. The two are coupled together--they never speak of one on the Hill Division without the other--Owsley and the 1601.