Harry Sowerby was only sixteen years old. He had been at Hammonds one year, and he was heartily tired of it. The nearest house to the station was a quarter of a mile away. He was anxious to be promoted to the train-despatcher's staff at "X" office, that mysterious place whence the orders came that governed all the trains on the road. But Mr. Gannon had put him off, telling him that he was too young.
"When you've had more experience, bub," said the big, good-natured superintendent, "maybe the dispatcher will need you. You're young yet, you know."
This was a tender point with Harry. He knew he really looked as old as most fellows of eighteen, and he felt that he had more experience at railroading than many fellows of twenty-five. Besides, if he were sent to "X," his pay would be increased to sixty-five dollars a month, and he could send his sisters to a better school.
Suddenly steam was shut off. Harry knew it by the silence with which the light train plunged forward, without a sound from the exhaust or the cylinders. Then came the sharp hissing of the air-brakes, but the train ran on unchecked. One blast of the whistle called the brakeman to the platform, where he whirled the brake-wheel swiftly, and set it up as hard as if his life depended on that one act. A grinding noise forward and a snarling from the driving-wheels told Harry's experienced ears that the engineer had "thrown her over and given her sand"--that is, he had reversed the lever and opened the sand-box, so that the driving-wheels, now turning backward, might grip the wet rails firmly.
Mr. Gannon, in his hip boots and mackintosh, was out in the snow and mud and up ahead in less than half a minute. The front of the locomotive was within thirty feet of the beginning of Williston cut. Tom Jackson had not stopped her a moment too soon. The heavy rain had washed down tons of earth and bowlders from the banks on to the track. The cut was blocked for fully thirty yards. What it was that whispered danger to the engineer he himself could not tell, but he had felt a sudden premonition that it was not safe to run through the cut.
Harry Sowerby saw the brakeman go back with a red lantern to protect the superintendent's special train from No. 576, the way freight that was due thirty minutes later. Suddenly the light flickered out. The wind and rain were too much for it. Harry knew that the same thing might happen just as the heavy freight train came along. It sickened him to think of what would follow. He thought of the train crew scattered on the snowy ground, bruised, perhaps killed.