The Donovan chance

by Francis Lynde

Now in the case of the temporarily abandoned 331 something did happen; several very shocking somethings, in fact; and they came so closely crowding together that there was scarcely room to catch a breath between them.

First, a long-drawn-out whistle blast announced the approach of the “Flying Pigeon” from the west. Next, the waiting passengers began to bunch themselves along the inbound track. Dickie Maxwell, managerial again, was growling out something about the crying necessity for station gates and a fence to keep people from running wild all over the platform when Larry grabbed him suddenly, exclaiming, “Who is that—on the ’Thirty-one?”

What they saw was a small, roughly dressed man, a stranger, with a bullet-shaped head two-thirds covered by a cap drawn down to his ears, snapping himself up to the driver’s step in the cab of the 331. In a flash he had thrown the reversing lever into the forward motion and was tugging at the throttle-lever. A short car-length away down the platform, fat, round-faced Jerry Atkins and his fireman were coming up to take their engine for the night’s run to Copah. They were not hurrying. The “Flying Pigeon” was just then clanking in over the western switches, and the incoming engine must be cut off and taken out of the way before they could run the 331 out and back it in to a coupling with the train. And since the two enginemen were coming up from behind, the high, coal-filled tender kept them from seeing what was going on in the 331’s cab.

But the two boys could see, and what they saw paralyzed them, just for the moment. The bullet-headed stranger was inching the throttle-valve open, and with a shuddering blast from the short stack the wheels of 331 began to turn. An instant later it was lumbering out around the curving stub-track and as it lurched ahead, somebody, invisible in the darkness, set the switch to connect the spur-track with the main line.

Dick Maxwell gasped.

“Who is that man at the throttle?” he demanded; but before there could be any answer they both saw the man hurl himself out of the right-hand gangway of the moving machine, to alight running, and to vanish in the nearest shadows. Then they knew.

“The anarchists!—they’re going to wreck her!” yelled Larry. “Come on!” and then they both did just what anybody might have done under the stinging slap of the first impulse, and knowing that a horrifying collision of the runaway with the over-due fast freight couldn’t be more than a few short minutes ahead: they started out to chase a full-grown locomotive, under steam and abandoned, afoot!

It was the fact that the 331 was a “compound” that made it seem at first as though they might be able to catch her. Compound engines are the kind designed to take the exhaust steam from one pair of cylinders, using it over again in the second pair. But to get the maximum power for starting a heavy train there is a mechanism which can be set to admit the “live” steam from the boiler into both pairs of cylinders; and the 331 was set that way when the wrecker opened the throttle. As a consequence the big passenger puller was choking itself with too much power, and so was gaining headway rather slowly.

“He’s left her ‘simpled’—we can catch her!” Larry burst out as they raced over the cross-ties in the wake of the runaway. “We—we’ve got to catch her! Sh-she’ll hit the time freight!”