Never had that particular fireman been so scared as he was then. He swore roundly as he dragged Chub to the cab and jammed him back through the window.
Chub fell in a heap on the heaving floor.
"You young fool!" roared Jack Moody, beside himself on account of the boy's narrow escape, "next time I take you in the cab with me you'll know it. I'd look nice facin' your father and your sister and tellin' them you'd dropped off my engine and been ground up under the drivers, wouldn't I?" And the exasperated Jack Moody said things to himself as he kept one hand on the throttle and the other on the air, and peered ahead.
Chub, half-lifting himself, caught Moody about the knees.
"Stop!" he begged: "there was an accident back there! Matt has been killed! Let me off! Moody——"
"Of course there's been an accident!" cried Moody, without looking around. "Why shouldn't there have been? With two reckless daredevils playin' tag between a motor-cycle and a limited, it's a wonder there wasn't a worse accident than there was."
"Let me get off!" screamed Chub. "If you don't stop, I'll jump!"
"Sit down on him, Jerry," said Moody to the fireman. "If he won't act reasonable, lash his hands and feet. We're going to take him to Phœnix. I'm an old fool to have such a rattle-headed kid around. We're ten minutes to the good," he added, "and we'll drop into Phœnix not more'n five minutes behind the time-card. That's going some, eh?"
Meantime there were two amazed freighters, far back on the road, pulling a white-faced, unconscious boy out of a tangled wreck.
"Jumpin' gee-mimy!" muttered one of them, in consternation. "That two-wheeled buzz-cart butted into the wagon like a thunderbolt! Did ye see it, Nick?"