A train was backing on the one track between them. Another train was moving out on the rails still nearer to Ralph.
It was a scene of noise, commotion and confusion. If the master mechanic had been a novice in railroad routine, Ralph could not have repressed a warning shout, for with his usual coolness that official, timing all train movements about him with his practiced eye, made a quick run to clear the train backing in to the depot. He calculated then, Ralph foresaw, to cross the tracks along which the outgoing train was coming.
“He’s taking a risk—it’s a graze,” murmured the young engineer in some trepidation.
The master mechanic was alert and nimble, though past middle age. He took the chances of a spry jump across the rails, his eye fixed on the outgoing train, aiming to get across to Ralph before it passed. In landing, however, he miscalculated. The run and jump brought him to a dead halt against a split switch. His foot drove into the jaws of the frog as if wedged there by the blow of a sledge-hammer.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE NEW RUN
The young engineer stood shocked and motionless—only, however, for the minutest fraction of a moment. A railroad man’s life is full of sudden surprises and situations calling for prompt, decisive and effective action. Ralph had learned this from experience.
The master mechanic was in the direct path of the train backing into the depot. The one he had just left and the one proceeding in the same direction shut him in where there was no flagman or switches. The train bearing down upon him was on a rounding bend of rails, the locomotive not in view, and there was no possible chance of signalling the engineer.