The young engineer took a good look at his fireman. The latter was muddled, it was plain to see that, but he went about his duties with a mechanical routine born from long experience. Only once did he lurch towards Ralph and speak to him, or rather hiss out the words.
“You’ll settle with me for your impudence yet, young fellow. You’re a high and mighty, you 18 are, breaking the rules giving your friends a free ride.”
Ralph did not reply. One anxiety kept him devoted to his work—to lose no time. A glance at the clock and schedule showed a ten minutes’ loss, but defective or experimental firing on a new locomotive had been responsible for that, and he counted on making a spurt, once beyond Plympton.
Marvin Clark knew his place, and Ralph liked him for keeping it. The young fellow watched everything going on in the cab in a shrewd, interested fashion, but he neither got in the way of the cross-grained Fogg, nor pestered Ralph with questions.
Plympton was less than five miles ahead just as dusk began to fall. Ralph noticed that his fireman rustled about with a good deal of unnecessary activity. He would fire up to the limit, as if working off some of his vengefulness and malice. Then he went out on the running board, for no earthly reason that Ralph could see, and he made himself generally so conspicuous that young Clark leaned over and said to Ralph.
“What’s the matter with your fireman, anyhow—that is, besides that load he’s got aboard?”
“Oh, he has his cross moods, like all of us, I 19 suppose,” explained Ralph, with affected indifference.
“I wouldn’t take him for a very pleasant comrade at any time,” observed Clark. “It’s a wonder he don’t take a tumble. There he is, hitching around to the pilot. What for, I wonder?”
Ralph was not paying much attention to what the cab passenger was saying. He had made up five minutes, and his quick mind was now planning how he would gain five more, and then double that, to Plympton and beyond it.
He gave the whistle for Plympton, as, shooting a curve, No. 999 drove a clattering pace down the grade with the lights of the station not a quarter-of-a-mile away. They were set for clear tracks, as they should be. Ralph gave the lever a hitch for a rattling dash on ten miles of clear running. Then fairly up to the first station semaphore, he broke out with a cry so sharp and dismayed that young Clark echoed it in questioning excitement.