"Yes," said I, "tell about her."
"Oh," said Big Arthur, "that wasn't much. I was pulling a freight train down Eleventh Avenue one day, going slow through the city, and at Thirty-fifth Street a woman turned down the track ahead of me. I whistled, but she never heard me. She was going marketing, and couldn't think of anything else. I saw I'd strike her sure—there wasn't time to stop—so I ran along the boiler-side to the pilot, and got there just as we were on her. Another second and she'd have been under the wheels. I braced myself and made a jump at the woman, and struck her back of the neck with a shove that sent her sprawling off the track, with me after her. You see, I had to jump hard or I'd have stayed on the track myself and gone under the engine."
"Did it end in a romance?" I asked.
"Romance nothing!" exclaimed Big Arthur. "That woman got up so mad—why, she called me names and clawed the skin off my face until—well, I couldn't get shaved for three weeks afterward. In about a minute, though, she cooled off, and somebody told her I'd saved her life—which I had—and then, sir, blamed if she didn't go down on her knees and try to kiss my feet, and pray I'd forgive her. Say, that's the only time I ever got prayed to."
Here Big Arthur's fireman whispered something to him, and the engineer nodded. "That's so, that's a good story," and then he told how an old lady of seventy-five saved a New York Central express some years ago at Underhill Cut, about a mile south of Garrisons.
"She's a relative of my fireman, so I know the thing's true; besides that, the company gave her three hundred dollars. You see, it all happened one winter night, and this Mrs. Groves—that's her name—was the only person near enough to do anything. She lived in a little house beside Underhill Cut, and about four o'clock in the morning she heard a frightful crash, and there was a freight train wrecked right in the cut, and cars piled up three or four deep over the tracks! She knew the express might come along any minute, and of course it was a case of everybody killed if they ever struck that smash-up. So what does she do, this little old lady, but grab up a red petticoat and a kerosene lamp, and run out as fast as she could in her bare feet,—yes, sir, and nothing on but her night-gown,—right through the snow. That's the kind of a woman she was.
"Well, she went down the track until she heard the express coming, and then she took her red petticoat and held it up in front of the lamp so as to make a red light. And, what's more, it worked! The engineer saw the danger signal, slammed on his brakes, and stopped the train a few car-lengths from the wreck. Yes, sir, only a few car-lengths!"
Big Arthur nodded thoughtfully, and climbed into the cab. It was time to go.
In ending this chapter now, and with it the present series, I venture the opinion that the men who follow these Careers of Danger and Daring—the divers, steeple-climbers, and the rest—are very little different from their fellow-men, except as they have developed certain faculties by their exercise, and established in themselves the habit of courage. They were not born with any longing to do these daring acts, nor with any particular aptitude for them. They have been guided nearly always by the drift of life and by opportunities that presented. As to fear, they have the same capacity for it that we all have, and are serene in their peril only because they feel themselves, by their patience and skill, well armed against it. The steeple-climber would be afraid to go down in a diving-suit, the lion-tamer would be afraid to go up in a balloon, the pilot would be afraid to swing on the flying-bars, and so on.