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"And the dump pit beyond?"
"It looks so," said Ralph, leaning from the window and glancing ahead anxiously. "Yes, it's rusted rails clear up to what looks like a slough hole, and no buildings beyond."
He held his breath as Griscom pulled the momentum up another notch. This last effort palsied the engineer, his fingers relaxed, and he slipped again to the floor, nerveless but writhing.
"Keep her going-full speed for five hundred feet," he panted. "Then stop her."
"Yes," breathed Ralph quickly. "Stop her-how," he projected, knowing in a way, but wanting to be sure, for the sense of crisis was strong on him, and the present was no time to make mistakes. Griscom's directions came quick and clear, and Ralph obeyed every indication with promptness.
Ninety-nine with its deadly pilot of destruction plunged ahead. Ralph estimated distance. He threw himself upon the lever, and reversed.
The wheels shivered to a sliding halt. He ran back rapidly five hundred feet, slowed down, and half hung out of the window, white as a sheet and limp as a rag.
A glance towards the burning shops had shown the firemen back at their work; the powder-car menace removed. Ralph, too, saw little crowds rounding 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, a living firebrand, reached the end of the rusted rails, ran off the roadbed, tilted, careened, took a sliding header, and disappeared from view.
Even at the distance of a thousand feet Ralph could hear a prodigious splash. A cascade of water shot up, and then a steamy smoke, and then there lifted, torrent-like, house-high above the pit, a Vesuvius of water, dirt, splinters and twisted pieces of iron. A reverberating crash and the end had come!
Griscom struggled to his feet. On his face there was a grimace meant for 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 the way we came, but if you could walk as far as the offices we might find a doctor."
"That's so, kid," nodded the old engineer, a little wearily. "I've got to get this junk and glassware out of my eyes if I run the 10.15 to-morrow."
Soon the advance stragglers of the curious crowd from the shops drew near. One little group was headed by a man of rather more imposing appearance than the section men in his train.
He was a big-faced individual who looked of uncertain temper, yet there were 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 master mechanic 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 caught a closer glimpse of the face of the engineer.
"Oh, a little scratch."
Ralph broke in. He hurriedly explained what had happened to the engineer's eyes, while the nervy Griscom tried to make little of it.
"Bring a truck out here," cried the master mechanic. "Why, man! you can'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 was taken.
It took an hour to mend up the old veteran. It was lucky, the surgeon told him, that soot and putty had mixed with the glass in the explosion dose, or the patient would have been blinded for life.
Griscom could see quite comfortably when he was turned over to the master mechanic again, although his forehead was bandaged, and his cheeks dotted here and there with little criss-cross patches of sticking-plaster.
Ralph, waiting outside, had been forced to tell the story of the daring dash through the flames more than once to inquisitive railroad men. He quite obliterated himself in the recital.
The firemen had gained control of the flames, the exigency locomotives had all been sent back to the city. The master mechanic stood conversing with Griscom for a few moments after the latter left the surgeon'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, and I only helped him, and he's an all-around corker, I can tell you!"
Griscom slapped Ralph on the shoulder emphatically. The master mechanic looked 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 intended it. "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 harsh disciplinarian on principle. "He had no right in your locomotive, I suppose 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, and handed 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 could in ten words command the position that seemed to mean for him the entrance into the grandest realm of industry, ambition and opulence.
CHAPTER VII-AT THE ROUNDHOUSE
Ralph Fairbanks came out of the little cottage next morning after breakfast feeling bright as a dollar and happy as a lark.
He realized that a new epoch had begun in his young existence, and he stood fairly on the threshold of a fascinating experience.
Yesterday seemed like a variegated dream, and To-Day full of expectation, novelty and promise.
His mother's anxiety the evening previous had given way to pride and subdued affection, when he had appeared about ten o'clock after seeing the engineer home, and had told her in detail the story of the most eventful day of his life.
If Mrs. Fairbanks felt a natural disappointment in seeing Ralph forego the advantages of a finished education, she did not express it, for she knew that the best ambitions of his soul had been aroused, and that his loyal boyish nature had chosen a noble course.
Ralph went down to the depot and bought a Springfield morning paper. It contained a full account of the fire at the yards. It detailed the destruction of the powder car, and Griscom came in for full meed of praise. Ralph was not referred to, except as "the veteran engineer's heroic helper."
It did not take long, however, for Ralph to discover that word of mouth had run ahead of telegraphic haste.
He was hailed by a dozen acquaintances, including the depot master, the watchman, express messenger and others, who made him flush and thrill with pleasure as he guessed that old Griscom had managed to spread the real news wholesale.
"You're booked, sure!" declared More, giving his young favorite a hearty slap on the shoulder.
"Why, I imagine so myself," answered Ralph brightly, but thinking only of the master mechanic's card in his pocket.
"You're due for an interview with the president, you are," declared the enthusiastic More. "Why, you two saved the company half a million. And the pluck of it! Don't you be modest, kid. Hint for a good round reward and a soft-snap life position."
"All right," nodded Ralph gayly. "Only, I'll start at it where you told me yesterday."
"Eh?"
"Yes-at the roundhouse."
"Hold on, Fairbanks-circumstances alter cases-"
"Not in this instance. Good-bye. I expect to be in working togs before night, Mr. More."
Ralph went down the tracks, leaving the agent staring studiously after him.
He had often been inside the roundhouse, but with genuine interest stood looking about him for some minutes after stepping beyond the broad entrance of that dome-like structure.
Not much was doing at that especial hour of the morning. Three "dead" locomotives stood in their stalls, all furbished up for later employment.
A lame helper was going over one, just arrived, with an oiled rag.
In the little apartment known as the "dog house," a dozen men chatted, snoozed, or were playing checkers-firemen, engineers and brakemen, waiting for their run, or off duty and killing time.
Ralph finally made for a box-like compartment built in one section of the place. A man was sweeping it out.
"Can you tell me where I will find the foreman?" he asked.
"Oh, the boss?"
"Yes, sir-Mr. Forgan."
"You mean Tim. He's in the dog house, I guess. Was, last I saw of him."
Ralph went to the dog house. At a rough board nailed to the wall, and answering for a desk, a big-shouldered, gruff-looking man of about fifty was scanning the daily running sheet.
Two of the loungers, firemen, knew Ralph slightly, and nodded to him. He went up to one of them.
"Is that Mr. Forgan?" he inquired in a low tone.
"That's him," nodded the fireman-"and in his precious best temper this morning, too!"
Ralph approached the fierce-visaged master of his fate.
"Mr. Forgan," he said.
The foreman looked around at him, and scowled.
"Well?" he growled out.
"Could I see you for a moment," suggested Ralph, a trifle flustered at the rude reception.
"Take a good look. I'm here, ain't I?"
Some of the idle listeners chuckled at this, and Ralph felt a trifle embarrassed, and flushed up.
"Yes, sir, and so am I," he said quietly-"on business. I wish to apply for a position."
"Oh, you do?" retorted the big foreman, running his eye contemptuously over Ralph's neat dress. "Sort of floor-walker for visitors, or brushing up the engineers' plug hats?"
"I could do that, too," asserted Ralph, good-naturedly.
"Well, you won't do much of anything here," retorted the foreman, "for there's no job open, at present. If there was, we've had quite enough of kids."
Ralph wondered if this included Ike Slump. He had been surprised at not finding that individual on duty.
The foreman now unceremoniously turned his back on him. Ralph hesitated, then torched Forgan on the arm.
"Excuse me, sir," he said courteously, "but I was told to give you this."
Ralph extended the card given to him the evening previous by the master mechanic.
The foreman took it with a jerk, and read it with a frown. Ralph was somewhat astonished as he traced the effect upon him of the simple note, requesting, as he knew, that a place be made for him in the roundhouse.
The innocent little screed put the foreman in a violent ferment. His face grew angry and red, his throat throbbed, and his heavy jaw knotted up in a pugnacious way. He turned and glared with positive dislike and suspicion at Ralph, and the latter, quick to read faces, wondered why.
Then the foreman re-read the card, as if to gain time to get control of himself, and was so long silent that Ralph finally asked:
"Is it all right, sir?"
"Yes, it is!" snapped the foreman, turning on him like a mad bull. "I suppose Blake knows his business; I've been sent all the pikers on the line. Probably know what kind of material I want myself, though. Come again to-morrow."
