"What the hell!" he growled to himself. "I had to lie to him, didn't I?"
And so, on the Monday following, Owsley went up to the new Elk River road work, and—But just a moment, we've over-run our holding orders a bit, and we've got to back for the siding. The 1601 crosses us here.
Superstition is a queer thing, isn't it? Speaking generally, we look on it somewhat from the viewpoint of the old adage that all men are mortal save ourselves; that is, we can accept, with more or less tolerant condescension, the existence of superstition in others, and, with more or less tolerant condescension, put it down to ignorance—in others. But we're not superstitious ourselves, so we've got to have something better to go on than that, as far as the 1601 is concerned. Well, the 1601 was pretty badly shaken up that night in the spill at Elbow Bend, and when they overhauled her in the shops, while they made her look like new, perhaps they missed something down deep in her vitals in the doing of it; perhaps she was weakened and strained where they didn't know she was; perhaps they didn't get clean to the bottom of all her troubles; perhaps they made a bad job of a job that looked all right under the fresh paint and the gold leaf. There's nothing superstitious about that, is there? It's logical and reasonable enough to satisfy even the most hypercritical crank amongst us anti-superstitionists—isn't it?
But that doesn't go in the cabs, and the roundhouses, and the section shanties on the Hill Division. You could talk and reason out there along that line until you were blue in the face from shortness of breath, and they'd listen to you while they wiped their hands on a hunk of waste—they'd listen, but they've got their own notions.
It was the night at Elbow Bend that Owsley and the 1601 together first went wrong; and both went into hospital together and came out together to the day—the 1601 for her old run through the mountains, and Owsley with no other idea in life possessing his sick brain than to make the run with her. Owsley had a relapse that day—and that day, twenty miles west of Big Cloud, the 1601 blew her cylinder head off. And from then on, while Owsley lay in bed again at Mrs. McCann's, the 1601, when she wasn't in the shops from an endless series of mishaps, was turning the hair gray on a despatcher or two, and had got most of Paxley's nerve.
But what's the use of going into all the details—there was enough paper used up in the specification repair-sheets! Going slow up a grade and around a curve that was protected with ninety-pound guard-rails, her pony truck jumped the steel where a baby carriage would have held the right of way; she broke this, she broke that, she was always breaking something; and rare was the night that she didn't limp into division dragging the grumbling occupants of the mahogany sleepers after her with her schedule gone to smash. And then, finally, putting a clincher on it all, she ended up, when she was running fifty miles an hour, by shedding a driving wheel, and nearly killing Paxley as the rod ripped through and through, tearing the right-hand side of the cab into mangled wreckage—and that finished her for the Limited run. Do you recall that Owsley, too, was finished for the Limited run?
Superstition? You can figure it any way you like—they've got their own notions on the Hill Division.
When the 1601 came out of the shops again after that, the marks of authority's disapprobation were heavy upon her—the gold leaf of the passenger flyer was gone; the big figures on the tender were only yellow paint.
Regan scowled at her as they ran her into the yards.
"Damn her!" said Regan fervently; and then, as he thought of Owsley, he scowled deeper, and yanked at his mustache. "Say," said Regan heavily, "it's queer, ain't it? Blamed queer—h'm—when you come to think of it?"