As Ralph started forward the engine of the outbound train passed him. He waited for one car only to pass him. How he skimmed its rear platform he never knew. It was a daring, reckless spring, and he landed on the planking beyond the rails on a dizzying slide. The next instant 204 he was at the side of the imperilled railroad official.
“I’m caught!” gasped the master mechanic, with a white but set face, as he recognized Ralph.
“Swing down!” cried the young railroader. “It’s your only chance.”
The master mechanic barely suppressed a groan as he toppled sideways. The twist to his ankle made him wince. Ralph saw that his foot was held as in a vise. No amount of pulling could get him free. The train backing down was less than thirty feet away.
“Hold steady,” breathed Ralph in a shaking tone, and his hand dove for his pocket. He recalled it all afterwards as a remarkable thing that, standing there, a great peril hovering, there seemed to flash through his mind a vivid photograph of Torchy.
The call boy at the roundhouse was a great friend of the young engineer. Ralph had been his model, as was he his friend. He had loaned the little fellow a book on railroading that had delighted Torchy, and observing Ralph sharpening a peg for his bumper with a decidedly blunt-edged knife, he had begged the privilege of getting it sharpened for him.
When he had returned the knife to Ralph the day previous, Torchy declared that it was sharp as a razor and would cut a hair in two. Ralph 205 found this to be no exaggeration. In addition Torchy had oiled the blade hinges. Now the young engineer thought of Torchy and of the knife as he drew it from his pocket, whipped open its big blade and made a dive rather than a swoop beside the body of the master mechanic.
“Pull back your foot!” cried Ralph, and made a swoop. The flanges of the near truck wheels were grinding on the edge of the rails not five feet away. Ralph’s arm described a deft oval movement. In one swift stroke he slit the shoe from vamp to sole. He was conscious that the foot of the master mechanic came free. Then something struck Ralph, and he felt himself tossed aside inert and unconscious by some stunning force.
When he again opened his eyes Ralph caught the vague hum of a lingo of switch pidgin, smut-faced, blear-eyed men near by, himself stretched at full length on sleeping car cushions on the floor of the doghouse. He sat up promptly. There was a momentary blur to his sight, but this quickly passed away.
“Aha—only a bump—I told you so!” cried bluff-hearted Tim Forgan, the foreman, jumping from a bench and approaching Ralph.