Ten minutes later, screeching and groaning as though in protest, the runaways came to a final stop.
Another ten minutes, and the engineer of the Accommodation suddenly threw on his air as he rounded a curve to discover a lantern swinging across the rails ahead of him.
“Hello there, Jerry! Say, you’re not good enough for a passenger run,” said the section foreman humorously as he approached the astonished engineer. “We’re going to put you back pushing ore cars. There’s a string here just ahead of you.”
When he had explained the engineer stepped down from his cab to grasp Alex’s hand. “Oh, it was more the foreman than I,” Alex declared. “I couldn’t have worked it alone.”
A moment later the superintendent appeared. “Why, let me see,” he exclaimed on seeing Alex. “Are you not the lad I helped fix up an emergency battery at Watson Siding last spring? And who has been responsible for two or three other similar clever affairs?
“My boy, young as you are, my name’s not Cameron if I don’t see that you have a try-out at the division office before the month is out,” he announced decisively. “We need men there with a head like yours.”
THE WAIT WAS NOT LONG.