ter her.

The head car stopped on the brink. Running across the track, I looked
for Bartholomew. He wasn't there; I knew he must have gone down with his
engine.

Throwing off my gloves, I dove just as I stood, close to the tender,
which hung half submerged. I am a good bit of a fish under water, but no
self-respecting fish would be caught in that yellow mud. I realized,
too, the instant I struck the water that I should have dived on the
up-stream side. The current took me away whirling; when I came up for
air I was fifty feet below the pier. I felt it was all up with
Bartholomew as I scrambled out; but to my amazement, as I shook my eyes
open, the train crew were running forward, and there stood Bartholomew
on the track above me looking at the refrigerators. When I got to him he
explained to me how he was dragged in and had to tear the sleeves out of
his blouse under water to get free.

The surprise is, how little fuss men make about such things when they
are busy. It took only five minutes for the conductor to hunt up a coil
of wire and a sounder for me, and by the time he got forward with it
Bartholomew was half-way up a telegraph-pole to help me cut in on a live
wire. Fast as I could I rigged a pony, and began calling the McCloud
dispatcher. It was a rocky send, but after no end of pounding I got him,
and gave orders for the wrecking-gang and for one more of Neighbor's
rapidly decreasing supply of locomotives.

Bartholomew, sitting on a strip of fence which still rose above water,
looked forlorn. To lose the first engine he ever handled, in the
Beaver, was tough, and he was evidently speculating on his chances of
ever getting another. If there weren't tears in his eyes, there was
storm water certainly. But after the relief-engine had pulled what was
left of us back six miles to a siding, I made it my first business to
explain to Neighbor, nearly beside himself, that Bartholomew was not
only not at fault, but that he had actually saved the train by his
nerve.

"I'll tell you, Neighbor," I suggested, when we got straightened around,
"give us the 109 to go ahead as pilot, and run the stuff around the
river division with Foley and the 216."

"What'll you do with No. 6?" growled Neighbor. Six was the local
passenger, west.

"Annul it west of McCloud," said I, instantly. "We've got this silk on
our hands now, and I'd move it if it tied up every passenger-train on
the division. If we can get the infernal stuff thro