.007
to Buffalo. Maybe I 'll fetch up at Haverstraw. I 've only bin out ten months, but I 'm homesick—I 'm just achin' homesick."
"Try Chicago, Katie," said the switching-loco; and the battered old car lumbered down the track, jolting: "I want to be in Kansas when the sunflowers bloom."
"'Yard 's full o' Homeless Kates an' Wanderin' Willies," he explained to .007. "I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out seventeen months; an' one of ours was gone fifteen 'fore ever we got track of her. Dunno quite how our men fix it. 'Swap around, I guess. Anyway, I've done my duty. She 's on her way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I'll lay my next boilerful she 'll be held there to wait consignee's convenience, and sent back to us with wheat in the fall."
Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the head of a dozen cars.
"I 'm goin' home," he said proudly.
"Can't get all them twelve on to the flat. Break 'em in half, Dutchy!" cried Poney. But it was .007 who was backed down to the last six cars, and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing them on to a huge ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and shivered as the flat drew away and left his bogies within six inches of the black, shiny tide.
After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where he saw the yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and slippers, looking down upon a sea of trucks, a mob of bawling truckmen, and squadrons of backing, turning, sweating, spark-striking horses.
"That 's shippers' carts loadin' on to the receivin'
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