Part 1 (2/2)

But the hostler was a still more wonderful man. I tried to figure if he'd ever speak to me, and what I should do if he did. Every time I got the ch.o.r.es done early, I skipped it over to the railroad, till finally the hostler he sees a long-legged boy eating him with his eyes, and he says:

”h.e.l.lo, bub!”

I scuffed my feet and said, ”Good morning.”

The hostler spit careful over the top of the switch and says, with one eye shut, ”Like a ride?”

Well!!

Howsomever, it seemed manners to me to refuse all pleasant propositions, so I said ”no” and prepared to slide away. But he was a wise man.

”Better come down to the shed,” he says. So I climbed aboard with no more talk.

”This is the throttle,” says he. ”You pull that and she goes: try it.”

Notwithstanding I expected that engine to explode and scatter us the minute a strange hand was laid on her, I wrastled my nerve together and moved the lever a tiny bit. ”Chow!” says the old engine, ”Chow-chow-chow!” and I near had a fit with pride and scaredness. It _is_ a great sensation to hold them big critters under your hand. I never knew an engineer yet that got rid of it entirely.

So there was me, white in the face with grandeur, hogging the engine into the shed. I couldn't sleep much that night. When I did doze off, it was to travel a great many miles a minute on a road-bed laid flat against the side of a mountain, with an engine that had wash-tubs for drivers, and was run by winding up by a crank, like the old clock in the hall. Lord! how I whizzed around the turns! Grinding away like a lunatic, until the road ended--just ended, that's all, and off we went into the air. From that on I had business at the railroad every evening I could get off.

I went over to my engine one night. There wasn't a soul around. My friend was as ingenious a Yank as ever helped make this world a factory.

He'd got up a scheme for a brake, almost the identical thing with the air-brake they use to-day, except Jerry took pressure into his brake-pistons straight from the boiler. He spent every cent he had to get one made and put on his pusher. How he used to explain it to me, and tell me what we'd do when he sold his patent! For he was a great friend of mine, Jerry was, and I knew the workings of that brake as well as he did himself. The reason he wasn't around was that he'd taken the pusher down the line to show his scheme to some railroad people. So there stood an engine all alone--the one I was used to, I thought--and it occurred to me there'd be no particular harm if I got aboard and moved her up and down the track a foot or two--you see, I'd never had her single-handed.

So I started easy, and reversed her, and played around that way for a while, till naturally I got venturesome. One stunt that Jerry and I loved to try was to check her up short with his patent brake. The poor old pusher never got put to bed without being stood on end a half-dozen times; that suggested to me that I'd slam her down on the shed doors and see how near I could come to them without hitting. I backed 'way off, set her on the corner, yanked the throttle, and we boiled for the shed, me as satisfied with myself as could be. I didn't leave much margin for stopping, so there wasn't a lot of track left when I reached down for the brake-lever, and found--it wasn't there! If some day you reach for something and find your right arm's missing, you'll know how I felt. In the little bit of time before the smash, there wasn't a sc.r.a.p of my brain working--and then, Holy Jeeroosalum! How we rammed that shed! The door fell over, cleaning that engine to the boiler; stack, bell, sand-box, and whistle lay in the dust, and all of the cab but where I sat. Quicker'n lightning we bulled through the other end, and the rest of the cab left there. How it come I didn't get killed, I don't know--all that remained of the shed was a ruin, and that had a list to port that would have scart a Cape-Horner. I woke up then and threw her over kerbang, but she went into the bunker squirting fire from her drivers. I shut her down, took one despairing look, and says out loud, ”I guess I'll go home.”

I felt about as bad as falls to the lot of man at any age. Jerry was sure to get into trouble over it; he'd make a shrewd guess at who did it, whether I told or not, and his confidence in me would be a thing of the past--nothing but black clouds on the sky-line, whilst inside of me some kind of little devil was hollering all the time, ”But wasn't it a gorgeous smas.h.!.+”

I went home and to bed that night without speaking, resolved to let my misfortunes leak out when they got ready. That's the kind of resolution I've never been able to keep--I've got to face a thing, got to get it done with, swallow my medicine, and clean the table for a new deal.

Next morning I told father. You can imagine how easy it was--me stumbling and stuttering while he sat there, still as if he'd been painted for the occasion.

”Have you entirely finished?” says he, when the sound of my words. .h.i.t my ears with such a lonesome feeling that I quit talking.

”Yes, sir,” I says, ”that's about all of it.”

”Well, William, I see you're determined to make our name a disgrace through the community,” he begins again. That was out of whooping range from the truth. I hadn't determined to do anything to our name, nor nothing else, when I got aboard that engine. Far from me had it been to determine anything, so I filed a protest.

”Why, father,” I says, ”it was an accident--it was just as if you'd hopped into a neighbor's wagon, not noticing the head-stall wasn't on the horse, and the critter'd run away, and things--” Here again I run down with a buzz. He wasn't paying the least heed to the sense of what I said. It only interrupted him. He sailed right on, explaining how I was the most undiluted scoundrel of his acquaintance, an all-wool villain of the closest weave, built to hold sin like a Navajo blanket does water.

Now I understand that the old gentleman did think a lot of me, and, of course, wanted me to be as near like him as possible, as representing the highest style of man--it was his disappointment he poured on me, not his judgment. But then, I was sixteen by the clock, and I thought, of all the fool laying-outs I'd heard, that crossed the rope an easy first.

I wanted to respect my father; you can't guess how much I wanted to, but when he insisted on talking like Eli Perkins's mule, it simply wasn't possible. He stood there, black and sullen, and I stood there, red and sullen.

”Get yourself ready to go with me,” he says, turns on his heel, and walks to the house, his hands clasped behind his back, and his big head leant forrard,--a fine, powerful chunk of a man, all right. Oh, Lord!

What he could have been if he'd listened to mother instead of Anker!

There wasn't a man in this county more respected, nor whose word was better thought of on any subject outside of his own family, and that hydrophobia of a doctrine of his. Honest? Why, he was the savings-bank of the place. All the old hayseeds around there turned their surplus in to him to take care of, instead of putting it in a sock,--and I want you to understand that the real old Yankee farmer, with tobacco juice on his whiskers, was a man you'd fool just once in a lifetime, and you'd sit up more'n one night to figure how you got the best of it, then.

Well, down him and me goes to the railroad office, and I have to tell my tale. I begged hard to be allowed to leave Jerry out of it, but no--that wouldn't do: it would be a lie. I always stood ready to lie to any extent to help a friend. I think that hurt me worse than the rest of it.

After some parleying around the offices, we were shown up into a private room. There sat three men, officers of the company, and Jerry.

My father made few words of his part, simply saying he stood prepared to pay all damages, although he could ill afford it, and that I would tell the story.

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