“You boys are all right,” he said. “You’re evidently not to blame.”
The engineer chuckled.
“You bet we ain’t,” he agreed. “But that’ll be th’ last o’ Mister Dispatcher on this road, I reckon. Who was it?”
“Greggs,” answered the trainmaster, tersely.
“Hum!” said the engineer, after a moment’s reflection. “I’d never have thought Greggs’d make a break like that. If it’d been Jenkins, now.”
“When did you realize that something was wrong?” asked Mr. Schofield, with a little impatient jerk of the head.
“When I saw that signal swung up. I knowed nobody’d handle it so rough as that without mighty good cause. So I jammed on th’ brakes an’ jerked open th’ sand-box an’ reversed her; an’ then in about a second, I see another headlight comin’ at me, an’ I knowed what was up.
“’Git out o’ here!’ I yelled to Joe—he’s my fireman—but he’d seen her comin’, too, an’ didn’t need no warnin’ from me. I see him jump an’ I was jest a-goin’ t’ foller suit, when I see th’ other feller had his train under control. We had slowed up considerable, too—we hadn’t been comin’ very fast, but th’ heavy train behind us shoved us on—so we jest give her a little love-tap, as it were, an’ stopped.”
“A little harder one and we’d have been off the track,” added the conductor. “I can’t understand Greggs makin’ a mistake like that. I always thought he was the best man in the office. I don’t see how he could have overlooked giving you an order for us.”
“Better men than Greggs have made mistakes,” retorted the trainmaster, a little tartly.