Soda-Water Sal
When the great engine which we called the Sky-Scraper came out of the Zanesville shops, she was rebuilt from pilot to tender.
Our master-mechanic, Neighbor, had an idea, after her terrific collision, that she could not stand heavy main-line passenger runs, so he put her on the Acton cut-off. It was what railroad men call a jerk-water run, whatever that may be; a little jaunt of ten miles across the divide connecting the northern division with the Denver stem. It was just about like running a trolley, and the run was given to Dad Sinclair, for after that lift at Oxford his back was never strong enough to shovel coal, and he had to take an engine or quit railroading.
Thus it happened that after many years he took the throttle once more and ran over, twice a day, as he does yet, from Acton to Willow Creek.
His boy, Georgie Sinclair, the kid engineer, took the run on the Flyer opposite Foley, just as soon as he got well.
Georgie, who was never happy unless he had eight or ten Pullmans behind him, and the right of way over everything between Omaha and Denver, made great sport of his father's little smoking-car and day-coach behind the big engine.
Foley made sport of the remodelled engine. He used to stand by while the old engineer was oiling and ask him whether he thought she could catch a jack-rabbit. "I mean," Foley would say, "if the rabbit was feeling well."
Dad Sinclair took it all grimly and quietly; he had railroaded too long to care for anybody's chaff. But one day, after the Sky-Scraper had gotten her flues pretty well chalked up with alkali, Foley insisted that she must be renamed.
"I have the only genuine sky-scraper on the West End now myself," declared Foley. He did have a new class H engine, and she was awe-inspiring, in truth. "I don't propose," he continued, "to have her confused with your old tub any longer, Dad."