Mystery Rides the Rails. Gilbert A. Lathrop
changed the subject.
“I expect you had better dig down to the ground so we can get some traction for the wheels. I think that by setting frogs and backing her up on the ties, she’ll go right back on the rails,” explained Joe.
The men fell to work with a will. In a short time the black cinder covered ground was laid bare. He showed the men how to place the “frogs,” which are heavy, steel, turtle-backed objects that serve to lift the wheels of cars or engines back on the rails.
Everything being done to his satisfaction, Joe climbed into the cab. He knew he faced the most hazardous part of the entire undertaking. The least slip was liable to turn the locomotive down the hillside. Once she started rolling, only the frozen river at the bottom would stop her.
“Are you all in the clear?” called Joe, his freckled face shoved out of the cab window.
He received an affirmative shout from the shovel men.
He pulled the reverse still farther into the back motion and grasped his throttle. He pulled it wide open. For a space the little engine acted as though she were not going to respond. Then she quivered into life. Her drivers spun on the ice beneath them, burning it away to the ground. Then they found traction where the snow had been shoveled away. Roughly, and with violent rocking and swaying, she jolted along for several feet. Her drivers found the frogs, climbed up on them, and dropped jokingly down on the rails again. The pony truck wheels and the ungainly wedge plow followed.
She was back on the rails!
Joe moved her slowly away from the balance of the slide. He halted, then clambered down to the snow and went ahead to instruct the men on their next move. He had them dig down to the rails, where the engine had left them. The track was undamaged. Ice had lifted the engine from the track. A couple of men with picks soon removed this. Joe waved the men out of the track and returned to his engine.
“We’ll hit her again, Tubby!” he called as he climbed back into the cab.
“Thath all right with me,” called Tubby. “Hit her hard, tho we’ll go clear through thith time!”
Joe pulled two blasts on his whistle. He opened the throttle, and they were on their way into the slide. This time the little engine stayed on the rails. She came nosing from the other side, shaking herself free of the clinging snow, and rolled to a halt.
Animas Canyon was cleared of its snowslides! The Silver Town Northern Railroad was free to resume operations again!
5
THE BANKER’S ULTIMATUM
SHORTLY after two o’clock that day, the lads came into the office of Mr. Orest. Their faces were both wreathed in broad grins, and Mr. Orest did not have to ask them how they had done. He could tell by looking at them that they had been successful.
“We got her open!” announced Joe.
“Now I suppose you want to know what to do next,” said Mr. Orest with a smile.
Joe nodded.
“Well, the next thing to do is to take a train load of concentrates down to Milltown, so they can be worked over. Then you will bring back a train of empties, as well as any remaining supplies which might be left there after Frank Porter leaves with his train. Frank,” Mr. Orest hastened to explain, “is my other engineer. He’s the best engineer I ever had until you came along.”
Joe flushed.
“I’ll get my train crew together so you can pull out those loads of concentrates and get started with them. I must caution you that the grade, after you tip out of Animas Canyon, is very heavy. Don’t let the cars get to rolling too rapidly on you!”
“The Continental Divide Railroad had grades as high as four and a half per cent, and I was able to hold trains down on them,” said Joe, with a confident smile.
A grade of four and a half per cent is four feet and six inches of drop to each hundred feet of main line.
“I keep forgetting that you have worked in mountainous territory before,” smiled Mr. Orest.
“Then we’ll be going after a bite of dinner,” said Joe, turning toward the door.
“Just a minute,” said Mr. Orest, detaining him. “I had a visitor after you were gone this morning.”
Joe faced him interestedly. “Who was it?” he asked.
“Mr. Flint, president of the bank.”
Joe became serious. “What did he want?” he asked.
“He delivered his ultimatum. Either I put his son-in-law back to work—this morning I notified Anson Weird and his fireman that their services would no longer be required—or I could look for no more financial help from him, and the note would be payable when it fell due!”
“And you told him——” intimated Joe, with glistening eyes.
“That Anson Weird was working for me no longer!” said Mr. Orest emphatically.
Tubby slapped his fat thigh resoundingly. “That wath the only thing to do!” he exclaimed.
“Perhaps it was, and perhaps it wasn’t. It meant that I put the entire future of the Silver Town Northern Railroad directly into the hands of you two lads.”
Joe nodded. “I know,” he said softly, “and we won’t fail you, Mr Orest; not as long as there is a chance of us helping you in any way possible!”
“That’s all that anyone could ask. If Anson and his fireman had offered to try to buck out those slides as you lads did, I would have felt kindlier toward them. But as soon as the slides ran, the two men washed their hands of everything, and refused to make any kind of an effort. Frank Porter couldn’t make an effort because he did not have a wedge plow on his engine. But he has kept on the job, coming toward Silver Town as far as he could each day, and returning to Milltown. In that manner what little supplies we have received have been made possible by him and men on snowshoes.” Mr. Orest spoke bitterly.
“Well, we’ll be going to work again,” said Joe, as he opened the door.
“All right,” said Mr. Orest, “and remember the heavy grade after you leave Animas Canyon,” he cautioned them again, as they went outside.
With twenty loaded cars of concentrated ore behind, Joe pulled slowly out of Silver Town about three-thirty that afternoon.
On the extreme end of the train was a combination coach, well loaded with passengers who had been held there from the time the track had been blocked. The head brakeman, a pleasant-faced young fellow, stood in the cab behind Joe so he could tell the engineer about the curves and the grades ahead.
“You can make pretty good time through the canyon,” explained the brakeman, “but when you come out of there, stop ’em before tipping down the hill. We’ll look over the air brakes, and turn up the retainers while you’re stopped. Going down the grade, don’t let ’em make over ten miles an hour anywhere, because if they get a start on you, nothing can halt you.”
Joe knew that the brakeman was right. Each of the cars weighed better than twenty-five tons. Twelve tons for the car, and the balance in soggy, heavy, powdery concentrates piled in each end over the wheels.
“You can tell when we hit the bottom of the hill by the high bridge,” continued the brakeman.
“Seems to me that I noticed that bridge when we were coming in here the other day,” agreed Joe.
“If you came over the S. T. N. you must have noticed it, unless you were asleep.”
By this time they were rolling around the sharp curves