The fireman leaned wearily upon his shovel and scraped the sweat from his forehead with bent forefinger.
“Hot work, isn’t it?” said Allan, smiling.
“’Tain’t near so bad as ’twill be,” returned the fireman, whose name was Pinckney Jones, and who was known by his intimates as Pink, or Pinkey, a nickname which he had tried in vain to live down. “It’ll be a reg’lar wrastle t’ keep ’er goin’. Something’s got int’ th’ cantankerous old beast, an’ she won’t steam t’ save ye.”
He bent again to his task, raking and shaking up the fire, and throwing two or three more shovelfuls of coal into the blazing fire-box. Then the engineer clambered up, followed by the front brakeman, and took his seat on the other side of the cab. He stuck his head out the window, to watch for the conductor’s signal. Presently it came, he opened the throttle gently, and the train, slowly gathering headway, rattled over the switches, out of the yards, and straightened out for the journey westward.
“You want to be mighty careful this trip, Bill,” remarked the brakeman. “We’ve got two car-loads of wild animals back there. If we have a smash-up, there’ll be lions and tigers and Lord knows what all runnin’ loose about the country.”
“That would create considerable disturbance,” agreed Bill. “Well, I’ll try to keep her on the track. Where’re they billed to?”
“They’re goin’ to the Zoological Garden at Cincinnati. There’s a whackin’ big elephant in the first car and a miscellaneous lot of lions, tigers, snakes, and other vermin in the second. Yes, sir, there would be lively times if they got loose.”
“Ain’t there nobody with ’em?”
“Oh, yes; there’s a couple of fellers to feed ’em; but these ain’t the broken-to-harness, drawing-room kind of wild animals. They’re right from the jungle, and are totally unacquainted with the amenities of civilization.”