“With dad and Bill running 119? Sure she’ll make it,” declared Terry. “Dad says give old 119 sand enough and she’ll climb a telegraph pole.”
Around the hill roared the heavy train, clouding all the snowy timber with its dense smoke and shaking the air with its bombardment of explosions. It gathered way as it straightened out, for a moment; suddenly began to tilt sideways—engine, tender, first car, second car—the whistle spurted steam, but before the shrieks of the engine and the shouts of the spectators mingled, the track had yielded. Yes, the train, engine and all, car chasing car in a tumbling, plunging hurly-burly while the brakemen sprawled clear, was rolling and sliding down the hill slope, taking rails and ties with it. Its trail left a wide scar in the snow. Only the pusher engine and the caboose remained, above.
General Dodge, General Casement and Superintendent Reed already were running. Terry and George ran. Amid wild shouts the track-gang, some dropping their tools, others carrying crow-bars and picks and spades, ran, slipping and staggering as they pelted down the track, or by a shortcut forged through the deep snow.
“Oh, gosh!” George panted, sprinting.
“I should say!” gasped Terry.
Marvelous to tell, the engine—good old No. 119!—had landed right side up! Engineer Richards and Foreman Bill had stuck to their posts; they were dazedly descending from the cab.
“I’ve always said she was a lucky girl,” announced Terry’s father, through the blood from a gash in his cheek.
But what a mess that was, here in the little gulch! A mixture of rails, ties, cars, extending from roadbed to bottom. But nobody badly hurt.
“A foine dump yez made,” Pat wheezed, arriving. “Aren’t yez satisfied to lave the track where we laid it? Move your feet, men,” he barked, at the staring, laughing track-gang, tearing in out of breath. “Part o’ yez on the grade ag’in; there’s rails an’ ties a-plenty, an’ I want a new track widin the hour. What’s wan train in the ditch, annyhow?”
All was good nature. The men sprang to their tasks. General Casement nodded approvingly. He and General Dodge beckoned Pat aside. Pat listened and nodded also.