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The Adolescence of Number Eighty-Seven
By Arthur Stringer
TAKEN FROM "METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE," MAY 1906
The prairie drift-snow shrilled and whined under the slowly moving wheels, as the engine and tender for Number Three backed down the ice-hung water-tank. To Web Ross, up in the cab, it sounded loud and ludicrous, like the squealing of a train-load of hungry pigs.
In the thermometer against the wall of the squat little Canadian Pacific stationhouse the mercury was frozen in the bulb. It was at least forty degrees below zero. Just how much colder than that it might be, neither Web nor the thermometer could tell.
But as the high-shouldered young engineer swung down from the cab steps, with his oil-can and his waste in his hand, he noticed that the snow crunched sharp and crisp under his boots, like dry charcoal, and he could feel the sting of the keen air in his nostrils.
"Cold work, eh?" said a voice, almost at his shoulder.
Web looked round, unconcernedly, as any man of solemn responsibilities should. Three months before he had been a wiper in the Moosehead roundhouse. To reach the· throttle after only a quarter of a year of firing was unusual, tending, naturally enough, to give a man an undue sense of his own importance. But three months before, the engineer of the Transcontinental Express been blown from the cab of his huge camelback by the bursting of a steam pipe.· A trackman had found him with a broken hip, and sent the alarm east and west, to keep the road clear for the wildcat train. It was Web who volunteered to pull out of Moosehead on a special engine and take the rail ahead
The Adolescence of Number Eighty-Seven
by Arthur Stringer