When they came back to Rockton each day, however, Ralph and his two firemen went over the mechanism of the big eight-wheeler with meticulous care. The firemen took example of their chief and watched for small faults and possible breakdowns, like two cats at a mousehole.
Whenever the Midnight Flyer or the return eastbound express halted, down jumped the firemen with their long nosed oilcans and squirted the lubricant into every nook and cranny they could get at. The roundhouse foreman sputtered like a wet firecracker about Ralph’s demands on him for oil.
“Better be oil than brasswork and steel,” said the young engineer. “Don’t forget that, Mike.”
“I don’t forget nothin’,” grumbled Mike. “But the super is watchin’ the out-put of lubricatin’ oil. He has an idee we feed it to the cats and grease the turntables with it. He sees a chance of savin’ the Great Northern two cents’ worth of oil in the course of a year. Huh!”
“Well, I am not going to buy the oil myself,” Ralph rejoined, with conviction. “And we don’t carry a greaser’s slushpot on the Midnight Flyer.”
“Sure, are the wheelboxes heatin’ on you?” asked the foreman.
“I think they need repacking. But, of course, there isn’t time between runs to do all that. Is there another locomotive I could use to pull the Flyer with?”
“You know there isn’t. Not a bull in the stable, anyway, could make the time you are getting out of that mill. Two-o-two would be an hour late at Hammerfest.”
“Don’t tell me that!” gasped Ralph. “I am having a hard enough time as it is. Guess I’ll have to coax this one along until they can send you a Class-A locomotive over from the main.”
“And when will that be, I dunno,” muttered the pessimistic foreman.