“Where’s my orders?” asked the conductor.
“There’s no orders. I order you. Get her off the main line at once.”
“Your orders! Well, for cold cheek——”
Steele lost none of the precious moments in argument, but, turning from the angry conductor, yelled to the engineer: “Whistle for the switch, and kick her back on to the siding. Number Three may be into you any moment.”
No youth in Steele’s position has the right to give a command to an engineer over the head of a conductor, neither should his orders to the conductor be oral—they must be documentary. Steele was shattering fixed rules of the road, and he knew it.
The conductor of a perishable goods train thinks himself nearly as important as if he ran an express, so Flynn was rightly indignant at this sudden assumption of unlawful authority by a no-account youth at a noaccount station. But a conductor is usually in a comparatively safe place, while the driver of an engine must bear the brunt of a head-on collision, so the grimy Morton at the throttle did not stand on etiquette, but blew the whistle for an open switch and backed his train into the siding. Steele watched the switch light turn to safety again, heaved a sigh of relief, then put his stalwart arms to the lever and slowly pulled off the danger signal to the east, and left the main line clear for the through express.
“What’s all this sweat about?” cried Flynn. “Where’s Number Three?”
“I don’t know,” replied John quietly.
“You don’t know? Well, I’m blessed! I’ll tell you one thing, my impetuous youngster. If Number Three has lost more time, and I’m ordered on to the next siding, you’ll lose your job.”
“I know it.”