“He can’t see me. Hey!” he called to a group of men on the back platform of the last car, “give him the whistle signal, will you?”
“What?” asked a man.
“Give him the whistle. Blow it three times, so he’ll back up. Hurry! I can’t leave this switch.”
The men did not seem to know what to do. Some of them began looking inside the car for the old-fashioned bell cord, that used to run through the train to the engineer’s cab. This is now displaced by a small red cord at one side of the car, and it operated a whistle connected with the air-brake system.
“Pull the cord. Give him three whistles, can’t you?” cried the man at the switch. “We can’t lay here all day.”
“I don’t see any whistle,” murmured the man who had told the boys about the switch. “Let him come and pull it himself. This is a queer road, where they expect the passengers to help run it.”
“Can’t some of you pull that whistle cord?” demanded the man. “Hurry up.”
Jack heard and understood. He had often seen the brakemen or conductor at the Denton station start the trains by pulling on something under the hood of the car, as they stood on the platform.
“I guess I can do it,” he said as he worked his way through the crowd of passengers about the door.