"All right, Joe," he said soothingly, putting on his overcoat to shield his tunic from grease and coal. "Just you do the best you can, and don't worry. I guess you'll feel well enough once you're started. There goes your signal!"
With a loud clang of the engine bell the train moved out of the station, slowly at first, but gathering speed as it left the little town with its flour mills and grain elevators behind.
Silk seated himself on the box and continued smoking his cigar. He was not long in discovering that his judgment of the locomotive had been accurate. She was certainly cranky. Her rods moved jerkily, and there was a constant rattling of loose bolts. The wheel tyres were so badly ground down in parts by the use of brakes that you might almost have believed that she had square wheels. With every revolution as the flat spots hit the metals, she dropped with a noisy thud, and then when she went over them she would raise herself bodily again, while the tender rammed her so spitefully that the worn coupling bolts were strained almost to breaking-point.
"Say, Joe," said the sergeant, "this is about as comfortable as riding a bucking broncho. How long have your wheels been like this?"
Joe Halkett looked round at him blankly, stupidly, and answered in a mazed way—
"Ever since last winter. They was ground down wrestlin' with the snow-plough in Crow's Nest Pass."
Silk glanced at the gauge.
"You're not getting much speed out of her," he said, "considering the amount of steam you're using."
"She's just obstinate," said Joe. "Obstinate an' wilful. You can't coax her nohow. I'm sick and tired of tinkerin' with her."
"She's wuss to-night than usual," declared Dick. "Reckon it's that heavy private car as takes it out of her. We've got all we c'n do ter fetch Three Moose siding 'fore the limited hustles along."