The Wreckers

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY ARTHUR E. BECHER
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK 1920
Copyright, 1920, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published March, 1920
To a certain grave and reverend official of the Union Pacific System who, in his younger days, might well have played the part of Jimmie Dodds , this book is affectionately inscribed by
The Author.
As a general proposition, I don't believe much in the things called hunches. They are bad for the digestion, and as often as not are like those patent barometers that are always pointing to Set Fair when it is raining like Noah's flood. But there are exceptions to all rules, and we certainly uncovered the biggest one of the lot—the boss and I—the night we left Portland and the good old Pacific Coast.
It was this way. We had finished the construction work on the Oregon Midland; had quit, cleaned up the offices, drawn our last pay-checks, told everybody good-by, and were on our way to the train, when I had one of those queer little premonitory chills you hear so much about and knew just as well as could be that we were never going to pull through to Chicago without getting a jolt of some sort. The reason—if you'll call it a reason—was that, just before we came to the railroad station, the boss walked calmly under a ladder standing in front of a new building; and besides that, it was the thirteenth day of the month, a Friday, and raining like the very mischief.
Just to sort of toll us along, maybe, the fates didn't begin on us that night. They waited until the next day, and then proceeded to shove us in behind a freight-train wreck at Widner, Idaho, where we lost twelve hours. It looked as if that didn't amount to much, because we weren't due anywhere at any particular time. The boss was on his way home for a little visit with his folks in Illinois, and beyond that he was going to meet a bunch of Englishmen in Montreal, and maybe let them make him General Manager of one of the Canadian railroads.