A shout from Dad brought the dripping fireman up standing, and looking ahead he saw in the blaze of their own headlight the string of coalers standing still ahead of them. So it seemed to him, their own speed was so great, and the runaways were almost equalling it. They were making forty miles an hour when they dashed past the paralyzed freight crew.
Without waiting for orders—what orders did such a man need?—without a word, Burns crawled out of his window with a pin, and ran forward on the foot-board, clinging the best he could, as the engine dipped and lurched, climbed down on the cow-catcher, and lifted the pilot-bar to couple. It was a crazy thing to attempt; he was much likelier to get under the pilot than to succeed; yet he tried it.
Then it was that the fine hand of Dad Sinclair came into play. To temper the speed enough, and just enough; to push her nose just enough, and far enough for Burns to make the draw-bar of the runaway—that was the nicety of the big seamed hands on the throttle and on the air; the very magic of touch which, on a slender bar of steel, could push a hundred tons of flying metal up, and hold it steady in a play of six inches on the teeth of the gale that tore down behind him.
Again and again Burns tried to couple and failed. Sinclair, straining anxiously ahead, caught sight of the headlight of No. 1 rounding O'Fallon's bluffs.
He cried to Burns, and, incredible though it seems, the fireman heard. Above all the infernal din, the tearing of the flanges and the roaring of the wind, Burns heard the cry; it nerved him to a supreme effort. He slipped the eye once more into the draw, and managed to drop his pin. Up went his hand in signal.
Choking the steam, Sinclair threw the brake-shoes flaming against the big drivers. The sand poured on the rails, and with Burns up on the coalers setting brakes, the three great runaways were brought to with a jerk that would have astounded the most reckless scapegraces in the world.
While the plucky fireman crept along the top of the freight-cars to keep from being blown bodily through the air, Sinclair, with every resource that brain and nerve and power could exert, was struggling to overcome the terrible headway of pursuer and pursued, driving now frightfully into the beaming head of No. 1.
With the Johnson bar over and the drivers dancing a gallop backward; with the sand striking fire, and the rails burning under it; with the old Sky-Scraper shivering again in a terrific struggle, and Burns twisting the heads off the brake-rods; with every trick of old Sinclair's cunning, and his boy duplicating every one of them in the cab of No. 1—still they came together. It was too fearful a momentum to overcome, when minutes mean miles and tons are reckoned by thousands.
They came together; but instead of an appalling wreck—destruction and death—it was only a bump. No. 1 had the speed when they met; and it was a car of coal dumped a bit sudden and a nose on Georgie's engine like a full-back's after a centre rush. The pilot doubled back into the ponies, and the headlight was scoured with nut, pea, and slack; but the stack was hardly bruised.
The minute they struck, Georgie Sinclair, making fast, and, leaping from his cab, ran forward in the dark, panting with rage and excitement. Burns, torch in hand, was himself just jumping down to get forward. His face wore its usual grin, even when Georgie assailed him with a torrent of abuse.