ROD AS A BRAKEMAN.

In the meantime Rod, who was happily ignorant of this conversation, had been warmly welcomed in caboose number 18. There Conductor Tobin and the two brakemen listened with intense interest to all he had to tell them of his recent experiences. They in turn informed him of Brakeman Joe’s condition, and of how the torpedoes had saved him from being run over by the night express.

He found his M. I. P. bag in the caboose where Conductor Tobin had been keeping it until he should hear from him. The conductor also handed Rod a ten dollar bill, that had been left for him by the brother of Juniper’s owner, as a reward for his gallant struggle with the terrified horse in the closed car, and the subsequent care of him.

Feeling very rich and independent with this amount of money, of his own earning, at his disposal, Rod at once bought for himself a blue checkered shirt and pair of overalls, a cap, a pair of buckskin gloves with which to handle brake wheels, one of the great tin lunch-pails such as railroad men carry, and a blanket. Thus equipped he felt he was ready for any emergency. To these purchases he added a supply of provisions, and a basket of fruit that he intended to leave for Brakeman Joe when they should pass the station at which he was.

The train that they were ordered to take came along shortly before sunset. When it again pulled out, drawing caboose number 18, and with Rod Blake, brake-stick in hand, standing on the “deck” of one of its rear cars, there was no happier nor prouder lad than he in the country. How he did enjoy the novelty of that first ride on top of a freight train, and what a fine thing it seemed, to be really a railroad man. The night was clear and cold; but the exercise of setting up brakes on down grades, and throwing them off for up grades or level stretches, kept him in a glow of warmth. Then how bright and cosy the interior of the caboose, that was now his home, seemed during the occasional visits that he paid it.

Before the night grew dark, Conductor Tobin showed him how to place the two red lanterns on its rear platform, and the lights that showed red behind, green in front, and green at the side, on its upper rear corners. Then he was asked to make a fire in the little round stove, and prepare a huge pot of coffee for the train crew to drink during the night. When there was nothing else to do he might sit up in the cupola, on the side opposite to that occupied by Conductor Tobin; but on this first night he preferred taking his own lantern, and going out on “deck,” as the top of the cars is called. Here he was too far from the locomotive to be annoyed by its smoke or cinders, and he loved to feel the cool night air rushing past him. He enjoyed rumbling through the depths of dark forests, and rattling over bridges or long trestles. It was strange to roll heavily through sleeping towns, where the only signs of life were the bright lights of the stations, and the twinkling red, green or white semaphore lights at the switches.

Some of the time he amused himself by holding his watch in hand, and counting the clicks of the car wheels over the rail joints; for he remembered having read that the number of rails passed in twenty seconds is almost exactly the number of miles run by a train in an hour. If it had been day time he might also have noted the number of telegraph poles passed in a minute, and calculated the speed of the train, by allowing thirty-five poles to the mile.

All this time, however, he was under orders to keep a watch on the movements of the brakemen ahead of him, and to set up, or throw off, brakes on at least two of the six cars under his charge, whenever he noticed them doing so. He was surprised to learn that it was by no means necessary to put on all the brakes of a train to check its speed, or even to stop it, and that the application of those on a third, or even a quarter of its cars answered every purpose. He also soon learned to jump quickly whenever brakes were called for by a single short whistle blast from the locomotive, and to throw them off at the order of the two short blasts that called for brakes to be loosened. At first he thought it curious that the other brakemen should run along the tops of the cars, and wondered why they were always in such a hurry. He soon discovered though that it was much easier to keep his footing running than walking, and safer to jump from car to car than to step deliberately across the open spaces between them.

Once, during the night, when he and Conductor Tobin were seated in the caboose eating their midnight lunch, the latter began to sniff the air suspiciously, and even to Rod’s unaccustomed nostrils, there came a most unpleasant smell. “Hot box!” said Conductor Tobin, and the next time they stopped, they found the packing in an iron box at the end of an axle, under one of the cars, blazing at a furious rate. The journals, or bearings, in which the axle turned, had become dry and so heated by friction as to set the oil-soaked cotton waste, or packing, with which the box was filled, on fire. The job of cooling the box with buckets of water, and repacking it with waste, and thick, black, evil-smelling oil was a dirty and disagreeable one, as Rod quickly learned from experience. He also realized from what he saw, that if it were not done in time, the car itself might be set on fire, or the axle broken off.

These, and many other valuable lessons in railroading, did Rod Blake learn that night; and when in the gray dawn, the train pulled into the home yard, with its run completed, he was wiser, more sleepy and tired, than he had ever been before in all his life.