“I say they’re all over-due,” insisted the pump boy.
“Well, what make ye tink so, Tommy?”
“’Cause they bin out all night—ha, ha, ha—yo’le bum; that’s th’ time yo’ tuck th’ pin hook.” And Tommy climbed still higher to be out of reach of the rocks and sticks that the track-walker sent up after him.
This was the day following the “cloud-burst” under the water tank: the morrow of the second night’s watch. Little Jack, thoroughly exhausted, was sleeping like a weary soldier, regardless of mosquitoes, heat, ticks, and red-ants. Tommy had filled the tank long before the sun came up over the tree-tops. The engineers, having heard of the struggles and hardships of the young railroaders, were taking water at Highland and Hagler’s whenever it was possible to do so, in order to save the water at Silver Creek.
The stationary engineer at Highland and the mule at Hagler’s kicked, but it did no good. The sympathy of the whole division was with the agent’s protégé at the tank, and the sad-faced little watchman in the red shanty down by the river.
Tommy and Mary waited dinner for nearly an hour under the old elm that day.
They waited until Tommy declared that he could eat his whiskers, if he had any to eat, and Jack was still asleep. At two o’clock the watchman came out, bathed his mosquito-bitten face in the river, had dinner—what was left of it—and declared himself ready to relieve his companion. But Tommy would not go to sleep. He flagged a work-train and went up to St. Jacobs.
“I want yo’ to write a request to the roadmaster,” said Tommy.
“Ah! Tommy,” said the agent, “a requisition for supplies so soon?”
“Well, things got t’ be fixed up a little down there ’f we stay on d’ job.”