“Better luck next time,” he shouted encouragingly.
Tim took a fresh grip on the scoop and in less than five minutes had an even bed of coal scattered over the firebox.
There was something strange and mysterious about the woods being on fire and it troubled Tim, who sought some solution as he swayed from tender to firebox and back to tender. Here it was, the spring of the year, and that patch of woods afire. A campfire started by tramps might have spread, but Tim doubted that thought. Sparks from a passing train might have been the cause but for some reason, perhaps just a newspaperman’s intuition, he felt that there was something sinister behind the cause of the fire.
“Take it easy, we’re almost in,” shouted Henshaw as he pointed to the lights of Vinton as they swung around a curve.
Tim stuck his scoop into the coal pile and straightened up for the first time since he had taken the fireman’s place.
The muscles in his back ached and his arms were sore, but he felt that he had earned his ride. His thoughts still on the fire, he stepped over to the engineer’s side of the cab.
“Anything of special value on tonight?” he asked.
“Don’t know for sure,” replied Henshaw as he eased up on the throttle. “There were rumors back at Atkinson that there was a lot of specie aboard for some coast bank. Never can tell but the mail usually has a pouch or two of valuable mail.”
Tim was silent as Henshaw guided the mail through the maze of tracks that marked the east entrance of the yards at Vinton. Green and red lights blinked out of the night at them.
There was the hollow roar as they rumbled past long lines of freight cars on the sidings, the sharp exhaust of a laboring switch engine, the multiple lights of the roundhouse and finally the station itself loomed in the rays of their headlight.