“’T weren’t even a hog,” he repeated dolefully; “’t were a shote; and you—you of all of ’em—had to help me on.”
“But how in the whole long road did it happen?” asked 007, sizzling with curiosity.
“Happen! It didn’t happen! It just come! I sailed right on top of him around that last curve—thought he was a skunk. Yes; he was all as little as that. He hadn’t more ’n squealed once ’fore I felt my bogies lift (he’d rolled right under the pilot), and I couldn’t catch the track again to save me. Swivelled clean off, I was. Then I felt him sling himself along, all greasy, under my left leadin’ driver, and, oh, Boilers! that mounted the rail. I heard my flanges zippin’ along the ties, an’ the next I knew I was playin’ ’Sally, Sally Waters’ in the corn, my tender shuckin’ coal through my cab, an’ old man Evans lyin’ still an’ bleedin’ in front o’ me. Shook? There ain’t a stay or a bolt or a rivet in me that ain’t sprung to glory somewhere.”
“Umm!” said 007. “What d’ you reckon you weigh?”
“Without these lumps o’ dirt I’m all of a hundred thousand pound.”
“And the shote?”
“Eighty. Call him a hundred pound at the outside. He’s worth about four ’n a half dollars. Ain’t it awful? Ain’t it enough to give you nervous prostration? Ain’t it paralysin’? Why, I come just around that curve—” and the Mogul told the tale again, for he was very badly shaken.
“Well, it’s all in the day’s run, I guess,” said 007, soothingly; “an’—an’ a corn-field’s pretty soft fallin’.”
“If it had bin a sixty-foot bridge, an’ I could ha’ slid off into deep water an’ blown up an’ killed both men, same as others have done, I wouldn’t ha’ cared; but to be ditched by a shote—an’ you to help me out—in a corn-field—an’ an old hayseed in his nightgown cussin’ me like as if I was a sick truck-horse!... Oh, it’s awful! Don’t call me Mogul! I’m a sewin’-machine, they’ll guy my sand-box off in the yard.”
And 007, his hot-box cooled and his experience vastly enlarged, hauled the Mogul freight slowly to the roundhouse.