“What are you up to?” demanded the conductor in terrifying tones.
“N-nothing, please, sir,” stammered Kid. “I—I didn’t know——”
“He says there’s a slide in the cut, Tom,” interrupted the engineer. “Put him on and we’ll run ahead and have a look.”
“You come along with me.” The conductor seized Kid firmly by the arm and pulled him toward the car steps. “If you’ve stopped us for nothing, kid, you’ll get into trouble. Get in there.”
Kid climbed the steps into the arms of a grinning brakeman. The whistle spoke again and the train crawled forward. The brakeman was asking questions. Kid tried to explain but he was so busy watching for his jacket and ulster along the track that his explanations were fragmentary at best. The conductor, leaning from the car steps, was watching the track ahead. Now they were entering the cut, for the banks began to appear.
“I don’t see anything,” muttered the conductor.
“Sure, he was trying to have a joke on us,” said the brakeman. “Don’t you know any better than to do a thing like that?”
But at that moment the slowly moving train stopped so abruptly that the brakeman stumbled against the platform railing. The conductor leaped to the ground and the brakeman followed him. And then, as there was no one to stop him, Kid slid down, too, and followed the others. When he reached the head of the engine the engineer was looking grimly at the innocent pile of gravel.
“If we’d have struck that, Tom,” he said, with a laugh that somehow didn’t sound real, “we’d been in the ditch now. Get your shovel, Gus.”
Passengers joined the group, exclaiming, questioning. The fireman came back with his coal shovel and set to work. The crowd gathered about him and watched. Kid watched, too. It was all very interesting and exciting. It was the conductor who spied Kid and made a grab for him through the crowd. Kid saw him coming, though, and would have got away if he had not stumbled over the end of a tie and sprawled his length on the ground.