l the details--there was enough
paper used up in the specification repair-sheets! Going slow up a
grade and around a curve that was protected with ninety-pound
guard-rails, her pony truck jumped the steel where a baby carriage
would have held the right of way; she broke this, she broke that, she
was always breaking something; and rare was the night that she didn't
limp into division dragging the grumbling occupants of the mahogany
sleepers after her with her schedule gone to smash. And then, finally,
putting a clincher on it all, she ended up, when she was running fifty
miles an hour, by shedding a driving wheel, and nearly killing Paxley
as the rod ripped through and through, tearing the right-hand side of
the cab into mangled wreckage--and that finished her for the Limited
run. Do you recall that Owsley, too, was finished for the Limited run?

Superstition? You can figure it any way you like--they've got their
own notions on the Hill Division.

When the 1601 came out of the shops again after that, the marks of
authority's disapprobation were heavy upon her--the gold leaf of the
passenger flyer was gone; the big figures on the tender were only
yellow paint.

Regan scowled at her as they ran her into the yards.

"Damn her!" said Regan fervently; and then, as he thought of Owsley, he
scowled deeper, and yanked at his mustache. "Say," said Regan heavily,
"it's queer, ain't it? Blamed queer--h'm--when you come to think of
it?"

And so, while the 1601, disfranchised, went to hauling extra freights,
kind of a misfit doing spare jobs, anything that turned up, no regular
run any more, Owsley, kind of a misfit, too, without any very definite
duties, because there wasn't anything very definite they dared trust
him with, went up on the Elk River work with Bill McCann, the husband
of Mrs. McCann, who kept the short-order house.

Owsley told McCann, as he had told Regan, that he was only up there
getting strong again for the 1601--and he went around on the
construction work whistling and laughing like a schoolboy, and happy as
a child--getting strong again for the 1601!

McCann couldn't see anything very much the matter with Owsley--except
that Owsley was happy. He studied the letter Regan had sent him, and
watched the engineer, and scratched at his bullet head, and blinked
fast with his gray Irish eyes.

"Faith," said McCann, "it's them that's off their chumps--not Owsley.
Hark to him singin' out there like a lark