I told the rear man to open the switch so that we could back in, and jumped down on the ground to give the engineer the signal. As I came in sight of the cab, he stuck his head out of the window and shouted to me in a thick, unsteady voice, which explained at once what the trouble was, "Say, did you pull the air on me?" and he called me everything but a decent white man.
There was no time to blarney with him. I went back into the smoker and got the ventilator stick, which I concealed under my coat. I then told the head brakeman to come with me and look out for the engineer when I should get him out of the cab, and I told the baggage-master that I would blow three short whistles when I got control of the engine, in case I found that I was unable to relieve the brakes, and in that case he should crawl under the cars and bleed them off. I saw that neither of them relished the jobs that I had set them, and I knew that by many of the men I was regarded as an interloper from the East, so there was a chance that they might be more than willing to see me stuck. However, this was a time for action, not words; so, calling to the brake-man to come on, I again jumped off, on the left side, and, shouting to the rear man to go back with his flag, I ran quickly ahead to the engine, where I could hear the engineer vainly attempting to release the brake and cursing away to himself and the fireman as I stepped lightly up into the tender.
As I got up on the left side, neither of them saw me at first. The fireman was sitting on his seat, watching the engineer and idly ringing the bell, while the engineer himself was just in the act of pulling the reverse lever over to "take the slack," hoping, no doubt, to be able to start her in spite of the brakes.
I let him get her in the back motion, and then seizing him by both shoulders, I settled back with all my might, dragging him from the foot-board down on top of myself. He was a big, fat fellow, and nearly squelched the breath out of my body as he fell on top of me, the wet coal splashing from under us, as when a barrel is dropped into the water. It cost me a couple of minutes' hard struggle to turn him over, but, having done so, I didn't hesitate to give him a hearty rap with the ventilator stick, which quieted him at once; then I looked for my valuable assistant. He was on the ground, looking on. "Get out ahead there and flag," said I, and away he went. Then, stepping up in the cab, I found, to my great relief, that I was able to let the brakes off from there, the air-pump having had time to get the pressure up while I had been arranging matters with the engineer; so, telling the fireman to get off and close the switch after me, I backed the train in and called my head flag. By this time the engineer showed signs of returning consciousness; so I found a piece of bell-cord in the tank-box, and, calling on the baggage-master and brakeman, we tied him and put him in the baggage car. By that time the opposing train had passed, and I started the train. The fire-man, who was not any too sober, here interfered, saying he wouldn't fire for "no brass-bound conductor!" My blood was pretty well up now, so I jumped down in the tank and argued with him for about three minutes in a manner that convinced him that his easiest way was to do whatever the "brass-bound conductor" told him to.
I stopped at the first telegraph office and sent back for an engineer. They sent me one, so that I only had to run the engine one way; but I was a sight for gods and men when I returned to the train. My coat was split up the back and one sleeve torn entirely out. I was drenched from head to foot in the inky black water into which I had fallen in the tender, and had a bad cut in the back of my head, from which the blood had flowed copiously, contributing a variety to the otherwise somber uniformity of my dirt.
The engineer was, of course, discharged; and the head brakeman, for having failed to assist me in capturing the engine, was jacked up for thirty days. As no one had seen the scrap between the fireman and me, and as he turned out to be a very decent fellow, with a widowed mother to support, I omitted making any report against him.
Editor's Note.—This is the last of Mr. Hamblen's papers depicting the life of the railroad worker as it is in actual daily experience. With this veritable record before them, our readers will now be particularly interested in some short stories soon to begin in the Magazine, which give the story-teller's presentation of the same life. The author of these stories, Mr. John A. Hill, like Mr. Hamblen, has been "all through it" himself. He was a locomotive engineer on the Rio Grande in the early days when every "run" yielded a strange adventure. The stories were published some years ago in a railroad journal, but their extraordinary combination of truth to fact with rare, romantic incident makes them of as much interest to the general public as to railroad people, and justifies their re-publication. A remarkably strong and original story by Mr. Hill, entitled "The Polar Zone," but not strictly a railroad story, will be printed in the May number.
