Throwing off my gloves, I dove just as I stood, close to the tender, which hung half submerged. I am a good bit of a fish under water, but no self-respecting fish would be caught in that yellow mud. I realized, too, the instant I struck the water that I should have dived on the up-stream side. The current took me away whirling; when I came up for air I was fifty feet below the pier. I felt it was all up with Bartholomew as I scrambled out; but to my amazement, as I shook my eyes open, the train crew were running forward, and there stood Bartholomew on the track above me looking at the refrigerators. When I got to him he explained to me how he was dragged in and had to tear the sleeves out of his blouse under water to get free.
The surprise is, how little fuss men make about such things when they are busy. It took only five minutes for the conductor to hunt up a coil of wire and a sounder for me, and by the time he got forward with it Bartholomew was half-way up a telegraph-pole to help me cut in on a live wire. Fast as I could I rigged a pony, and began calling the McCloud dispatcher. It was a rocky send, but after no end of pounding I got him, and gave orders for the wrecking-gang and for one more of Neighbor's rapidly decreasing supply of locomotives.
Bartholomew, sitting on a strip of fence which still rose above water, looked forlorn. To lose the first engine he ever handled, in the Beaver, was tough, and he was evidently speculating on his chances of ever getting another. If there weren't tears in his eyes, there was storm water certainly. But after the relief-engine had pulled what was left of us back six miles to a siding, I made it my first business to explain to Neighbor, nearly beside himself, that Bartholomew was not only not at fault, but that he had actually saved the train by his nerve.
"I'll tell you, Neighbor," I suggested, when we got straightened around, "give us the 109 to go ahead as pilot, and run the stuff around the river division with Foley and the 216."
"What'll you do with No. 6?" growled Neighbor. Six was the local passenger, west.
"Annul it west of McCloud," said I, instantly. "We've got this silk on our hands now, and I'd move it if it tied up every passenger-train on the division. If we can get the infernal stuff through, it will practically beat the strike. If we fail, it will beat the company."
By the time we backed to Newhall Junction, Neighbor had made up his mind my way. Mullen and I climbed into the 109, and Foley with the 216, and none too good a grace, coupled on to the silk, and, flying red signals, we started again for Zanesville over the river division.
Foley was always full of mischief. He had a better engine than ours, anyway, and he took satisfaction the rest of the afternoon in crowding us. Every mile of the way he was on our heels. I was throwing the coal and distinctly remember.
It was after dark when we reached the Beverly Hill, and we took it at a lively pace. The strikers were not on our minds then; it was Foley who bothered.
When the long parallel steel lines of the upper yards spread before us, flashing under the arc-lights, we were away above yard speed. Running a locomotive into one of those big yards is like shooting a rapid in a canoe. There is a bewildering maze of tracks lighted by red and green lamps to be watched the closest. The hazards are multiplied the minute you pass the throat, and a yard wreck is a dreadful tangle: it makes everybody from road-master to flagmen furious, and not even Bartholomew wanted to face an inquiry on a yard wreck. On the other hand, he couldn't afford to be caught by Foley, who was chasing him out of pure caprice.