was pounding it into me.
Even the shock and scare of leaving the track and tearing up the yard
had not driven from Bartholomew's noddle the most important feature of
our situation, which was, above everything, to _keep out of the way of
the silk-train_.

I felt every moment more mortified at my attempt to shut him off. I had
done the trick of the woman who grabs the reins. It was even better to
tear up the yard than to stop for Foley to smash into and scatter the
silk over the coal-chutes. Bartholomew's decision was one of the traits
which make the runner: instant perception coupled to instant resolve.
The ordinary dub thinks what he should have done to avoid disaster after
it is all over; Bartholomew thought before.

On we bumped, across frogs, through switches, over splits, and into
target rods, when--and this is the miracle of it all--the 109 got her
fore-feet on a split switch, made a contact, and, after a slew or two
like a bogged horse, she swung up sweet on the rails again, tender and
all. Bartholomew shut off with an under cut that brought us up double
and nailed her feet, with the air, right where she stood.

We had left the track, ploughed a hundred feet across the yards, and
jumped on to another track. It is the only time I ever heard of its
happening anywhere, but I was on the engine with Bartholomew Mullen when
it was done.

Foley choked his train the instant he saw our hind lights bobbing. We
climbed down and ran back. He had stopped just where we should have
stood if I had shut off. Bartholomew ran to the switch to examine it.
The contact light, green, still burned like a false beacon; and lucky it
did, for it showed the switch had been tampered with and exonerated
Bartholomew Mullen completely. The attempt of the strikers to spill the
silk right in the yards had only made the reputation of a new engineer.
Thirty minutes later the million-dollar train was turned over to the
eastern division to wrestle with, and we breathed, all of us, a good
bit easier.

Bartholomew Mullen, now a passenger runner, who ranks with Kennedy and
Jack Moore and Foley and George Sinclair himself, got a personal letter
from the general manager complimenting him on his pretty wit; and he was
good enough to say nothing whatever about mine.

We registered that night and went to supper together--Foley, Jackson,
Bartholomew, and I. Afterwards we dropped into the dispatcher's office.
Something was coming from McCloud, but the op