“No, haint a boat in McLearson. The conductor, he thought they’d send a seaplane down here for ’em—they’re still up there in the caboose. I reckon that brakeman’s sufferin’ suthin’ too, the way he got that engine on his legs! Wouldn’t be surprised they’d have to amp’tate them legs. Mirac’lous, too; he’d oughtta been drowned, but somehow or other he got out from under that engine!”
Nick looked at his watch. He had consumed an hour and twenty-five minutes of precious time in getting to McLearson; only slightly more than that amount remained before darkness, and at all costs he must be in the air before night: he knew that he would never get out of the field after dusk—if he did then.
“Got a hand-car around here?” he asked the agent.
“Nothin’ but a push-car—you couldn’t do no good with that. The water’d come up over the top of it. We thought o’ that, but we knew we’d drownd them fellers if we tried to bring ’em through on a push-car.”
“Where is it? We’re going after those men. Is a doctor up there with them?”
“Sure, they’s a doctor up there—walked up through the water. But I’m a-tellin’ you, you can’t do no good with a push-car.”
“Get it!” Nick snapped, and the agent moved with alacrity to obey. While he was gone Nick looked around the yards. A pile of ties stood back of one switch, and he estimated their weight.
“Now, Mister,” he told the agent, when the man returned, “we’re going to load this car with ties so the tops of them are out of water, and we’re going after those men! Are you good at pushing?”
In spite of his objections and his insistence that it could not be accomplished, the agent helped Nick pile two layers of ties upon the hand-car, and together they pushed it up the main track toward the wreck. It was, at best, a slow progress that they made; at times the water rose so high that it floated the ties, and when that occurred one of them climbed up upon the stack and weighted it down. They pushed through cuts and over fills, all of them invisible under the murky water, and after forty minutes arrived at the rear of the caboose.
Two of the men who had waved to Nick were standing on the platform of the car waiting for him. One of them wore the cap of a railroad conductor; the other was dressed in business clothes.