“Of course, if you order it, I have nothing more to say,” he yielded. Then, stepping to the door, he asked a question of the two boys. “Where is Goldrick? Have either of you seen him since dinner-time?”
Dick answered for both.
“No, sir; I don’t think he has been here since the special came in.”
“No matter; you two will do as well. Find Brannigan, and tell him to take the 717 and go out ahead of the special as a pilot. You go along and flag him past the danger spots. I don’t need to tell you to be careful. If you see anything at all to make you think it won’t be safe for the special to follow, one of you must run back and flag us at once.”
Having their orders thus detailed for them, Larry and Dick hastened to find Brannigan, the wizened little Irishman who handled the 717 on the material trains. The engine itself was standing, steamed up, on a short spur track at the lower end of the little yard, and the engineer and fireman were in the cab.
Dick climbed to the footboard to pass the chief’s verbal order along, while Larry set the switch for the engine—which was headed up-canyon—to back out on the main track. As they were making the shift they saw Bart Johnson, on his huge passenger-puller, preparing to cut the dining-car out of the special train; and as the 717, with the two boys in the cab, passed on up the line to begin the piloting, the special, reduced now to the big engine and the Pullman, was ready to follow.
For a few miles nothing exciting happened. Now and again, Larry and Dick, hanging out of the cab window on the danger side, could hear above the racket of the engine the niggling chatter of the air-drills on the Overland Central grade above and opposite; but this was a signal of safety. So long as the drills were going there would be no blasting.
“I’ve been wondering if that girl and the women are back there in that Pullman,” Larry said, in one of the safe stretches.
“You can bet to win that Bess Holcombe is there, at least,” Dick replied. “I knocked around a good bit with her last summer up at Lake Topaz, and she doesn’t know what it means to be scared of anything. Right nice girl, most of the time, though she can be awfully mean and nippy when she wants to.”
“Well, neither she nor the other women have any business in the place where we’re going,” Larry put in.