went over to the shops with an express wagon and got a thousand
feet of rope--had it in two coils so I could handle it--and just made the
train. It was a mean night. There was some rain when I started, but you
ought to have seen it when I got to Stillwater--it was coming down in
layers, and mud that sucked your feet down halfway to your knees. There
wasn't a wagon anywhere around the station, and the agent wouldn't lift a
finger. It was blind dark. I walked off the end of the platform, and went
plump into a mudhole. I waded up as far as the street crossing, where
there was an electric light, and ran across a big lumber yard, and hung
around until I found the night watchman. He was pretty near as mean as the
station agent, but he finally let me have a wheelbarrow for half a dollar,
and told me how to get to the job.

"He called it fifty rods, but it was a clean mile if it was a step, and
most of the way down the track, I wheeled her back to the station, got the
rope, and started out. Did you ever try to shove two five hundred foot
coils over a mile of crossties? Well, that's what I did. I scraped off as
much mud as I could, so I could lift my feet, and bumped over those ties
till I thought the teeth were going to be jarred clean out of me. After I
got off the track there was a stretch of mud that left the road by the
station up on dry land.

"There was a fool of a night watchman at the power plant--I reckon he
thought I was going to steal the turbines, but he finally let me in, and I
set him to starting up the power while I cleaned up Murphy's job and put
in the new rope."

"All by yourself?" asked Peterson.

"Sure thing. Then I got her going and she worked smooth as grease. When we
shut down and I came up to wash my hands, it was five minutes of three. I
said, 'Is there a train back to Minneapolis before very long?' 'Yes,' says
the watchman, 'the fast freight goes through a little after three.' 'How
much after?' I said. 'Oh,' he says, 'I couldn't say exactly. Five or eight
minutes, I guess.' I asked when the next train went, and he said there
wasn't a regular passenger till six-fifty-five. Well, sir, maybe you think
I was going to wait four hours in that hole! I went out of that building
to beat the limited--never thought of the wheelbarrow till I was halfway
to the station. And there was some of the liveliest stepping you ever saw.
Couldn't see a thing except the light on the rails from the arc lamp up by
the stati