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"That would take me to general headquarters at Springfield," demurred Ralph, "and I don't want to leave mother alone-just yet."
"I see. There's nothing at the shops down at Acton, where you could go and come home every day, except a trade, and you're not the boy to stop at master mechanic."
"Oh, come now! Mr. More-"
"You can't look too far ahead," declared the agent sapiently. "Dropping jollying, though, we narrow down to real service. There's your Starting point, my boy, plain, sure and simple, and don't you forget it-and don't you miss it!"
He extended his finger down the rails.
"The roundhouse?" said Ralph, following his indication.
"The roundhouse, Fairbanks, the first step, and I never knew a genuine, all-around railroad man who didn't make his start in the business in the oil bins."
"What is the main qualification to recommend a fellow?" asked Ralph.
"An old suit of clothes, a tough hide, and lots of grit."
"I think, then, I can come well indorsed," laughed Ralph. "Whom do I see?"
"Usually the ambitious father of a future railway president goes through the regular application course at headquarters," explained the agent, "but if you want quick action-"
"I do."
"See the foreman."
"Who is he?"
"Tim Forgan. If he takes you on, and you get to be a fixture, the application route is handy later, when you think you deserve promotion."
"Thank you," said Ralph, and walked away thoughtfully.
He had five dollars in his pocket that Ned Talcott had given him for his uniform, and eighty cents in loose change. This made Ralph feel quite free and easy. He had not a single disturbing thought on his mind at present except the broken window at the old factory, and that was easily fixed up, he told himself.
So, in quite an elevated frame of mind, Ralph walked down the rails. The roundhouse was his objective point. Ralph had been there many a time before, but only as a visitor.
Now he was interested in a practical way, and the oil sheds, dog house, turntable and other adjuncts of this favored center of activity fascinated him more than ever.
He had a nodding acquaintance with some of the firemen and engineers, but was not fortunate enough to meet any of these on the present occasion.
Ralph went along the hard-beaten cinder path, worn by many feet, that circled the one-story structure which sheltered the locomotives, and glancing through the high-up open windows caught the railroad flavor more and more as he viewed the stalls holding this and that puffing, dying or stone-dead "iron horse."
Over the sill of one of these windows there suddenly protruded a black, greasy hand holding a square dinner pail. It came out directly over Ralph's head, and halted him.
Its owner sounded a low whistle and a return whistle quite as low and suspicious echoed behind Ralph.
"Take it, and hustle!" followed from beyond the window, and almost mechanically Ralph Fairbanks put up his hand, the handle of the pail slipped into his fingers, and he uttered an ejaculation.
For the pail was as heavy as if loaded with gold, and bore him quite doubled down before he got his equilibrium. Then it was jerked from his grasp, and a gruff voice said:
"Hands off! What you meddling for?"
"Meddling?" retorted Ralph abruptly, and looked the speaker over with suspicion. He was a ragged, unkempt man of about forty, with a swarthy, vicious face. "I was told to take it, wasn't I?"
"Hullo! what's up? Who are you? Oh! Fairbanks."
The speaker was the person who had passed out the dinner pail, and who, apparently aroused by the colloquy outside, had clambered to a bench, and now thrust his head out of the window. He looked startled at first, then directed a quick, meaning glance at the tramp, who disappeared as if by magic. The boy overhead scowled darkly at Ralph, and then thought better of it, and tried to appear friendly.
"I give the poor beggar what's left of my dinner for carrying my pail home, so I won't be bothered with it," he said.
The speaker's face showed he did not at all believe that keen-witted Ralph Fairbanks accepted this gauzy explanation, after hefting that pail, but Ralph said nothing.
"What's up, Fairbanks?" inquired his shock-headed interlocutor at the window-"sort of inspecting things?"
Ralph, preparing to pass on, nodded silently.
"Trying to break in, eh?"
"Is there any chance?" inquired Ralph, pausing slightly.
Ike Slump laughed boisterously. He was a year or two older than Ralph, but had a face prematurely developed with cunning and tobacco, and looked twenty-five.
"Yes," he said, "if you're anxious to get boiled, blistered, oiled and blinded twenty times a day, be kicked from platform to pit, and paid just about enough to buy arnica and sticking plaster!"
"Bad as that?" interrogated Ralph dubiously.
"For a fact!"
"Oh, well-there's something beyond."
"Beyond what?"
"When you get out of the oil and cinders, and up into the sand and steam."
"Huh! lots of chance. I've been here six months, and I haven't had a smell of firing yet-even second best."
Ralph again nodded, and again started on. He did not care to have anything to do with Ike Slump. The latter belonged to the hoodlum gang of Stanley Junction, and whenever his crowd had met the better juvenile element, there had always been trouble.
Ike's ferret face worked queerly as he noted Ralph's departure. He seemed struggling with uneasy emotions, as if one or two troublesome thoughts bothered him.
"Hold on, Fairbanks!" he called, edging farther over the sill. "I say, that dinner pail-"
"Oh, I'm not interested in your dinner pail," observed Ralph.
"Course not-what is there to be curious about? I say, though, was you in earnest about getting a job here?"
"I must get work somewhere."
"And it will be railroading?"
"If I can make it,"
"You're the kind that wins," acknowledged Ike. "Got any coin, now?"
"Suppose I have?"
Ike's weazel-like eyes glowed.
"Suppose you have? Then I can steer you up against a real investment of the A1 class."
Ralph looked quizzically incredulous.
"I can," persisted Ike Slump. "You want to get in here to work, don't you? Well, you can't make it."
"Why can't I?"
"Without my help-I can give you that help. You give me a dollar, and I'll give you a tip."
"What kind of a tip?"
"About a vacancy."
"Is there going to be one?"
"There is, I can tell you when, and I can give you first chance on the game, and deliver the goods."
Ralph was interested.
"If you are telling the truth," he said finally, "I'd risk half a dollar."
Ralph took out the coin. A sight of it settled the matter for Ike.
He reached for it eagerly.
"All right, I'm the vacancy. You watch around, for soon as I get my pay to-morrow I'm going to bolt. It's confidential, though, Fairbanks-you'll remember that?"
"Oh, sure."
Ike Slump was a notorious liar, but Ralph believed him in the present instance. Anyhow, he felt he was making progress. He planned to be on hand the next day, prepared for the expected vacancy, and incidentally wondered what had made Ike Slump's dinner pail so tremendously heavy, and, also, as to the identity of the trampish individual who had disappeared with it so abruptly.
He wandered about half a mile down the tracks where they widened out from the main line into the freight yards, and selected a pile of ties remote from any present activity in the neighborhood to have a quiet think.
He determined to see the foreman, Tim Forgan, the first thing in the morning, and discover what the outlook was in general. If absolutely turned down, he would await the announced resignation of Mr. Ike Slump.
Ralph understood that a green engine wiper in the roundhouse was paid six dollars a week to commence on if a boy, nine dollars if a man. He picked up a torn freight ticket drifting by in the breeze, and fell to figuring industriously, and the result was pleasant and reassuring.
Ralph looked up, as with prodigious whistlings a single locomotive came tearing down the rails, took the outer main track, and was lost to sight.
Not two minutes later a second described the same maneuver. Ralph arose, wondering somewhat.
Looking down the rails towards the depot, he noticed unusual activity in the vicinity of the roundhouse.
A good many hands were gathered at the turntable, as if some excitement was up. Then a third engine came down the rails rapidly, and Ralph noticed that the main "out" signal was turned to "clear tracks."
As the third locomotive passed him, he noticed that the engineer strained his sight ahead in a tensioned way, and the fireman piled in the coal for the fullest pressure head of steam.
Ralph made a start for home, reached a crossroad, and was turning down it when a new shrill series of whistles directed his attention to locomotive No. 4. It came down the rails in the same remarkable and reckless manner as its recent predecessors.
"Something's up!" decided Ralph, with an uncontrollable thrill of interest and excitement-"I wonder what?"
CHAPTER V-OPPORTUNITY
The boy turned and ran back to the culvert crossing just as the fourth locomotive whizzed past the spot.
He waved his hand and yelled out an inquiry as to what was up, but cab and tender flashed by in a sheet of steam and smoke.
He recognized the engineer, however. It was gruff old John Griscom, and in the momentary glimpse Ralph had of his hard, rugged face he looked grimmer than ever.
Ralph marveled at his presence here, for Griscom had the crack run of the road, the 10.15, driven by the biggest twelve-wheeler on the line, and was something of an industrial aristocrat. The locomotive he now propelled was a third-class freight engine, and had no fireman on the present occasion so far as could be seen.
Ralph knew enough about runs, specials and extras, to at once comprehend that something very unusual had happened, or was happening.
Whatever it was, extreme urgency had driven out this last locomotive, for Griscom wore his off-duty suit, and it was plain to be seen had not had time to change it.
Ralph's eyes blankly followed the locomotive. Then he started after it. Five hundred feet down the rails, a detour of a gravel pit sent the tracks rounding to a stretch, below which, in a clump of greenery, half a dozen of the firemen and engineers of the road had their homes.
With a jangle and a shiver the old heap of junk known as 99 came to a stop. Then its whistle began a series of tootings so shrill and piercing that the effect was fairly ear-splitting.
Ralph recognized that they were telegraphic in their import. Very often, he knew, locomotives would sound a note or two, slow up just here to take hands down to the roundhouse, but old Griscom seemed not only calling some one, but calling fiercely and urgently, and adding a whole volume of alarm warnings.
Ralph kept on down the track and doubled his pace, determined now to overtake the locomotive and learn the cause of all this rush and commotion.
As he neared 99, he discerned that the veteran engineer was hustling tremendously. Usually impassive and exact when in charge of the superb 10.15, he was now a picture of almost irritable activity.
Having thrown off his coat, he fired in some coal, impatiently gave the whistle a further exercise, and leaning from the cab window yelled lustily towards the group of houses beyond the embankment.
Just as Ralph reached the end of the tender, he saw emerging from the shaded path down the embankment a girl of twelve. He recognized her as the daughter of jolly Sam Cooper, the fireman.
She was breathless and pale, and she waved her hand up to the impatient engineer with an agitated:
"Was you calling pa, Mr. Griscom?"
"Was I calling him!" growled the gruff old bear-"did he think I was piping for the birds?"
"Oh, Mr. Griscom, he can't come, he-"
"He's got to come! It's life and death! Couldn't he tell it, when he saw me on this crazy old wreck, and shoving up the gauge to bursting point. Don't wait a second-he's got to come!"
"Oh, Mr. Griscom, he's in bed, crippled. Ran into a scythe in the garden, and his ankle is cut terrible. Mother's worried to death, and he won't be able to take the regular run for days and days."
