CHAPTER VI--THE MASTER MECHANIC
A man appearing to be a railway official shouted up an order to thehaggard engineer as he rushed by.
"Get out of this--there's twenty tons of powder in that car!"
Griscom dashed his hand across his eyes. He seemed to clear thempartially, and strained his gaze ahead and took in the meaning of thescene, if not all its vivid outlines, and muttered:
"If that stuff goes off, the whole yards are doomed."
Ralph hung on the engineer's words and hovered at his elbow.
"We had better get out of this, Mr. Griscom," he suggested.
The engineer made a rough, impatient gesture with his arm, and thenpulled his young helper to the window.
"Look sharp!" he ordered,
"Yes, Mr. Griscom."
"My--my eyes are pretty bad. When the smoke lifts--what's beyond thecar yonder?"
"I can't make out exactly, but I think a clear track."
"How's the furnace?"
"Rushing."
"All right. Now then, you jump off. I'm going to let her go."
Ralph stared hard at the grim old veteran. He could see he was on theverge of physical collapse, and he wondered if his mind was nottottering too; his pertinacity had something weird and astonishing init.
"Jump!" ordered Griscom, giving the lever a pull.
Ralph did not budge. As he clearly read his companion's purpose, hemade up his mind to stick.
The prospect was something awful, and yet, after the previousexperiences of that exciting half-hour, he had somehow become inured todanger, and reckless of its risks. The excitement and wild, hustlingactivity bore a certain stimulating fascination.
With a leap 99 bounded forward at the magic touch of the old king of thelever. It plunged headlong into a whirling vortex of smoke.
A groaning yell went up from the fugitive crowds in the distance, as theintrepid occupants, of the cab disappeared like lost spirits.
Only for the shelter of the cab roof, they would have been deluged withburning sparks.
A tongue of flame took Griscom across the side of his face, and heuttered an angry yell--it seemed to madden him that he could not seeclearly. Then as they struck the car they were making for with a heavythump, the shock and a spasm of weakness drove Griscom from the cushion,and he slipped to the floor of the cab.
Ralph's mind grasped the situation in all its details. He knew theengineer's purpose, and he felt that it was incumbent on him to carry itout if he could do so. He stepped over his recumbent companion, andplaced his hand on the lever.
He could not now see ten feet ahead. They were in the very vortex ofthe fire. Suddenly they shot into the clear, cool air, bracing as ashower bath.
The cab roof was smoking, the cab floor was paved with burning cinders,and some oil waste was blazing back among the coal at the edge of thetender.
Ahead, the top and sides of the powder car were sheeted with flames,which the swift forward movement drove back in shroud-like form.
On the end of the car facing, the grim, black warning: "Powder! Danger!"stared squarely and menacingly into the eye of the pilot front.
Griscom struggled to his feet. He fell against Ralph. The latterthought he was delirious, for his lips were moving, and his torturedface working spasmodically. Finally he said weakly: "Put my hands onthe gearing. We're out of it?"
"Yes, but the car is blazing."
"What's ahead?"
"Dead tracks for nearly a thousand feet."
"And the dump pit beyond?"
"It looks so," said Ralph, leaning from the window and glancing aheadanxiously. "Yes, it's rusted rails clear up to what looks like a sloughhole, and no buildings beyond."
He held his breath as Griscom pulled the momentum up another notch. Thislast effort palsied the engineer, his fingers relaxed, and he slippedagain to the floor, nerveless but writhing.
"Keep her going--full speed for five hundred feet," he panted. "Thenstop her."
"Yes," breathed Ralph quickly. "Stop her--how," he projected, knowingin a way, but wanting to be sure, for the sense of crisis was strong onhim, and the present was no time to make mistakes. Griscom's directionscame quick and clear, and Ralph obeyed every indication with promptness.
Ninety-nine with its deadly pilot of destruction plunged ahead. Ralphestimated distance. He threw himself upon the lever, and reversed.
The wheels shivered to a sliding halt. He ran back rapidly five hundredfeet, slowed down, and half hung out of the window, white as a sheet andlimp as a rag.
A glance towards the burning shops had shown the firemen back at theirwork; the powder-car menace removed. Ralph, too, saw little crowdsrounding the shops, and making towards them.
Then he fixed his eyes on the lone-speeding powder car.
It had been thrown at full-tilt impetus, and drove away and ahead, aliving firebrand, reached the end of the rusted rails, ran off theroadbed, tilted, careened, took a sliding header, and disappeared fromview.
Even at the distance of a thousand feet Ralph could hear a prodigioussplash. A cascade of water shot up, and then a steamy smoke, and thenthere lifted, torrent-like, house-high above the pit, a Vesuvius ofwater, dirt, splinters and twisted pieces of iron. A reverberatingcrash and the end had come!
Griscom struggled to his feet. On his face there was a grimace meantfor a smile, and he chuckled:
"We made it!"
He managed with Ralph's help to get into the engineer's seat.
"Mr. Griscom," said Ralph, "you're in bad shape. We can't get back theway we came, but if you could walk as far as the offices we might find adoctor."
"That's so, kid," nodded the old engineer, a little wearily. "I've gotto get this junk and glassware out of my eyes if I run the 10.15to-morrow."
Soon the advance stragglers of the curious crowd from the shops drewnear. One little group was headed by a man of rather more imposingappearance than the section men in his train.
He was a big-faced individual who looked of uncertain temper, yet therewere force and power in his bearing.
"Hello, there--that you, Griscom?" he sang out.
The engineer blinked his troubled eyes, and nodded curtly.
"It's what's left of me, Mr. Blake," he observed grimly.
Ralph caught the name and recognized the speaker--he was the mastermechanic of the road.
"They're going to get the fire under control, I guess," continued Blake."They wouldn't, though, if you hadn't got that car out of the way. Why,you're hurt, man!" exclaimed the official, really concerned as he caughta closer glimpse of the face of the engineer.
"Oh, a little scratch."
Ralph broke in. He hurriedly explained what had happened to theengineer's eyes, while the nervy Griscom tried to make little of it.
"Bring a truck out here," cried the master mechanic. "Why, man! youcan't stand up! This is serious."
In about five minutes they had rolled a freight truck to the locomotive,and in ten more Griscom was under charge of one of the road surgeons,hastily summoned to a room in the yard office, where the sufferer wastaken.
It took an hour to mend up the old veteran. It was lucky, the surgeontold him, that soot and putty had mixed with the glass in the explosiondose, or the patient would have been blinded for life.
Griscom could see quite comfortably when he was turned over to themaster mechanic again, although his forehead was bandaged, and hischeeks dotted here and there with little criss-cross patches ofsticking-plaster.
Ralph, waiting outside, had been forced to tell the story of the daringdash through the flames more than once to inquisitive railroad men. Hequite obliterated himself in the recital.
The firemen had gained control of the flames, the exigency locomotiveshad all been sent back to the city. The master mechanic stoodconversing with Griscom for a few moments after the latter left thesurgeon's hands, and then approached Ralph with him. It was dusk now.
"We'll catch the 8.12, kid,
" announced Griscom. "That's him, Mr.Blake," he added, pointing Ralph out to his companion. "He did it, andI only helped him, and he's an all-around corker, I can tell you!"
Griscom slapped Ralph on the shoulder emphatically. The master mechaniclooked at the youth grimly, yet with a glance not lacking real interest.
"From the Junction?" he said.
"Yes, sir."
"What's the name?"
"Fairbanks--Ralph Fairbanks."
"Oh," said the master mechanic quickly, as if he recognized the name."We'll remember you, Fairbanks. If I can do anything for you----"
"You can, sir." The words were out of Ralph's mouth before he intendedit. "I want to learn railroading."
"Learn!" chuckled Griscom--"why! the way you worked that lever----"
"Which you needn't dwell on," interrupted the master mechanic, a harshdisciplinarian on principle. "He had no right in your locomotive, Isuppose you know, and rules say you are liable for a lay off."
Griscom kept on chuckling.
"We'll forget that, though. Where do you want to start, Fairbanks?"
"Right at the bottom, sir," answered Ralph modestly.
"In the roundhouse?"
"Yes, sir."
The master mechanic drew a card from his pocket, wrote a few lines, andhanded it to Ralph.
"Give that to Tim Forgan," he said simply.
To Ralph, just then, he was the greatest man in the world--he who couldin ten words command the position that seemed to mean for him theentrance into the grandest realm of industry, ambition and opulence.