Having finished oiling, Hosselkus leaned against the cylinder-head and gazed abstractedly down the track. A brakeman was seated on the head-block of the switch, throwing stones at an adjacent telegraph-pole, and moodily speculating upon the probabilities of “getting in” in time for supper, while an occasional breath of wind from the valley brought with it, from far down the grade, the puffing of the engines on Number Three.
He had succeeded. The record would be broken beyond a doubt; but as the cool breeze of sunset blew in his face, he suddenly became aware of the fact that he was tired, and he remembered then that he had been on the road for over forty-eight hours.
The smell of heated tallow struck him, for the first time, as being a singularly unappetizing odor, and he looked over the huge machine with something akin to dissatisfaction in the expression of his face. He sighed, and the brakeman asked if she was coming—meaning the train.
“No,” replied Hard Luck; “she ain’t showed up ’round the bend yet—I’uz just thinkin’.”
“Well, here she’s a-comin’.”
Hosselkus clambered to his seat, and as soon as the express-train had cleared the switch it was opened by the brakeman, and the special was once more under way.
Leaning uncomfortably now to this side, now to that, and with angry grinding of flange on rail, it swept around the curves with ever-increasing speed. A crashing roar, a flare of yellow sunset light reflected from rocky walls, told of a cutting safely passed, while bridge, and culvert, and trestle bellowed again as the engine cleared them at a bound.
The Three-Sevens devoured the way. Again and again Hosselkus proved the correctness of his theory by the terrific bursts of speed with which the mighty engine responded to his every impulse; but his nerves were no longer responsive to the exultant thrill of triumph. A sickening foreboding griped his heart; yet, whenever he would have shut off steam and slackened speed, an unconquerable impulse restrained him; for, in the exhaust of the engine and the roar of wheels, he fancied he heard one word repeated over and over again, with maddening persistency: “Hurry! hurry! hurry! hurry!” And the fireman, as he shoveled in coal and struggled to maintain his difficult footing, noted with wonder, not unmixed with uneasiness, that Hosselkus was working steam on grades where it was usual to “let them down” under the restraining pressure of the air-brakes.
The lagging summer twilight gradually deepened until the illuminated faces of clock and steam-gauge stood out with pallid distinctness in the gloom of the cab. Lights in lonely section-houses shot past, and occasionally a great flare of red rushed upward from the momentarily opened door of the fire-box. The dazzling light of the furnace revealed old Hard Luck crouching forward on his seat, one hand on the throttle, the other grasping the reversing lever. His features were set and sharpened, and so pale that through its grimy enameling his face looked positively blue. An occasional swift, comprehensive glance took in clock, steam-gauge, and water-glass, and then his eyes were again fixed upon the arrowy torrent of ties that streamed into the glare of the headlight and disappeared beneath the pilot with unbroken, dizzying swiftness. At last a white post flitted by and Hosselkus relaxed. He glanced at the clock, and the next moment a long, wailing blast of the whistle warned the yardmen at the division’s end.
The record was broken; the passenger run was his at last; old Hard Luck had actually got over the division without a mishap and in time never before equaled; but instead of exulting over it, as he shut off steam, he found himself marveling how faint and far away the whistle had sounded; had he not felt the vibration of the escaping steam, he would hardly have believed it was the Three-Seven’s stentorian voice. Undoubtedly there was something wrong; he would have to fix it the first thing in the morning. The engine lurched over the switches, and Hosselkus cursed the sudden fog that had dimmed the switch-lamps so he could hardly tell red from white, but at length he pulled up before the Railway Hotel—fortune favored him to the last, he made a splendid stop.