Two loud, shrill whistles broke the midnight stillness.
“The freight!” cried Joe, breaking into a run. “She’s getting ready to leave! I wonder if I can make it.
“She’s leaving ahead of time,” Joe went on. The freight arrived in Bedford at midnight and left an hour later, an event which Joe had counted on in making his calculations to leave by it. But the train was getting ready to pull out now, fully twenty minutes early, the two whistles Joe heard being the signal for “off brakes;” though with the modern air apparatus this was really only a starting signal, the brakemen being no longer required to run along the tops of the cars to loosen the wheels.
“I’ll have to hustle!” Joe told himself, as he increased his pace.
The youth was in fine physical condition, and he knew he could easily reach the freight train before it passed entirely beyond the station, for it was a long one.
“But I counted on having time to pick out a car,” thought Joe, still running toward the railroad. “I wonder what I can do now?”
The matter worried him. It is not easy to “jump” a moving freight train. There are no cars with steps, such as passenger coaches have, with convenient hand rails. Jumping a moving freight train is a risky matter, even for a trained railroad brakeman.
“And how I’m to do it with this valise I don’t know,” thought Joe. “But it’s got to be done!”
He was glad he was in such good physical trim.
“I see what the trouble is,” Joe went on. “There wasn’t any shipment of fireworks to-night, and that’s why the freight pulled out earlier. I didn’t think of that.”