"I'd rather see it pick up anything than that," Connie said.
"Suppose it had hit us at full speed," Pee-wee said.
"It would have been a home run all right," I told him.
Even with that locomotive just creeping along toward us, it scared me. It seemed as if it couldn't touch our car without banging it into splinters. But that engineer knew what he was doing all right. The train came along so slowly you could hardly tell it was moving, and sometimes it stopped and started again. Pee-wee said it was going scout pace. But it was more like a snail's pace, I guess.
Pretty soon it stopped just about ten feet from us and the headlight brightened up the whole car. I could feel the bridge tremble a little, sort of keeping time with that great big locomotive, as it stood there puffing and just kind of throbbing. And I thought how all that engineer would have to do was pull a handle and—g—o—o—d night! He was sitting, looking out of the window, sort of calm and easy, smoking a pipe. Connie called up to him and said, "Hey, Mister, have a heart and don't start anything." The engine just went, "pff, pff, pff," very slow. We could even feel the heat of it.
Somebody called out for us to get inside the car and stay there. A man went through our car with a red lantern and kept swinging it on the other platform. I could see men swinging red lights way in the back of the train, too. Some people on the train tried to get out, but the railroad men made them get on again. I could hear a lady crying that there was going to be a bad collision. Cracky, I never heard of a good one, did you?
The men between the front of the engine and our car had a long iron bar, sort of, and they had one end of it fixed in a sort of coupling just above the cow-catcher. It was pretty hard keeping us off the platform, so we saw everything they did. The other end of that bar they held up so it stuck out like a shaft, and then the engine moved about an inch, then stopped, then moved about another inch, then stopped. Gee whiz, I was glad I wasn't down there with those men. Yum, yum, I like sandwiches, but I don't like being the middle part of one. Then all of a sudden, bunk.
The men climbed up on our car and in a minute, chu chu, along we went ever so slow, the engine pushing us.
When we were off the bridge, the train stopped and the men on the other end of our car went away along the tracks, swinging their lanterns. Gee, it's all right to say a bridge is strong, and I guess that one was, all right, but me for the good solid earth. It feels good underneath you.
Pretty soon the conductor and a lot of passengers came along to take a look at us. What did we care? Everybody said we were wonders to think about using the movie apparatus and they were laughing. I guess it was at the word pots, hey? One man said we were prenominal,[B] or something or other like that—I should worry.