Ralph of the Roundhouse Part 5

"Bad as that?" interrogated Ralph dubiously.

"For a fact!"

"Oh, well--there's something beyond."

"Beyond what?"

"When you get out of the oil and cinders, and up into the sand and steam."

"Huh! lots of chance. I've been here six months, and I haven't had a smell of firing yet--even second best."

Ralph again nodded, and again started on. He did not care to have anything to do with Ike Slump. The latter belonged to the hoodlum gang of Stanley Junction, and whenever his crowd had met the better juvenile element, there had always been trouble.

Ike's ferret face worked queerly as he noted Ralph's departure. He seemed struggling with uneasy emotions, as if one or two troublesome thoughts bothered him.

"Hold on, Fairbanks!" he called, edging farther over the sill. "I say, that dinner pail----"

"Oh, I'm not interested in your dinner pail," observed Ralph.

"Course not--what is there to be curious about? I say, though, was you in earnest about getting a job here?"

"I must get work somewhere."

"And it will be railroading?"

"If I can make it,"

"You're the kind that wins," acknowledged Ike. "Got any coin, now?"

"Suppose I have?"

Ike's weazel-like eyes glowed.

"Suppose you have? Then I can steer you up against a real investment of the A1 cla.s.s."

Ralph looked quizzically incredulous.

"I can," persisted Ike Slump. "You want to get in here to work, don't you? Well, you can't make it."

"Why can't I?"

"Without my help--I can give you that help. You give me a dollar, and I'll give you a tip."

"What kind of a tip?"

"About a vacancy."

"Is there going to be one?"

"There is, I can tell you when, and I can give you first chance on the game, and deliver the goods."

Ralph was interested.

"If you are telling the truth," he said finally, "I'd risk half a dollar."

Ralph took out the coin. A sight of it settled the matter for Ike.

He reached for it eagerly.

"All right, I'm the vacancy. You watch around, for soon as I get my pay to-morrow I'm going to bolt. It's confidential, though, Fairbanks--you'll remember that?"

"Oh, sure."

Ike Slump was a notorious liar, but Ralph believed him in the present instance. Anyhow, he felt he was making progress. He planned to be on hand the next day, prepared for the expected vacancy, and incidentally wondered what had made Ike Slump's dinner pail so tremendously heavy, and, also, as to the ident.i.ty of the trampish individual who had disappeared with it so abruptly.

He wandered about half a mile down the tracks where they widened out from the main line into the freight yards, and selected a pile of ties remote from any present activity in the neighborhood to have a quiet think.

He determined to see the foreman, Tim Forgan, the first thing in the morning, and discover what the outlook was in general. If absolutely turned down, he would await the announced resignation of Mr. Ike Slump.

Ralph understood that a green engine wiper in the roundhouse was paid six dollars a week to commence on if a boy, nine dollars if a man. He picked up a torn freight ticket drifting by in the breeze, and fell to figuring industriously, and the result was pleasant and rea.s.suring.

Ralph looked up, as with prodigious whistlings a single locomotive came tearing down the rails, took the outer main track, and was lost to sight.

Not two minutes later a second described the same maneuver. Ralph arose, wondering somewhat.

Looking down the rails towards the depot, he noticed unusual activity in the vicinity of the roundhouse.

A good many hands were gathered at the turntable, as if some excitement was up. Then a third engine came down the rails rapidly, and Ralph noticed that the main "out" signal was turned to "clear tracks."

As the third locomotive pa.s.sed him, he noticed that the engineer strained his sight ahead in a tensioned way, and the fireman piled in the coal for the fullest pressure head of steam.

Ralph made a start for home, reached a crossroad, and was turning down it when a new shrill series of whistles directed his attention to locomotive No. 4. It came down the rails in the same remarkable and reckless manner as its recent predecessors.

"Something's up!" decided Ralph, with an uncontrollable thrill of interest and excitement--"I wonder what?"

CHAPTER V--OPPORTUNITY

The boy turned and ran back to the culvert crossing just as the fourth locomotive whizzed past the spot.

He waved his hand and yelled out an inquiry as to what was up, but cab and tender flashed by in a sheet of steam and smoke.

He recognized the engineer, however. It was gruff old John Griscom, and in the momentary glimpse Ralph had of his hard, rugged face he looked grimmer than ever.

Ralph marveled at his presence here, for Griscom had the crack run of the road, the 10.15, driven by the biggest twelve-wheeler on the line, and was something of an industrial aristocrat. The locomotive he now propelled was a third-cla.s.s freight engine, and had no fireman on the present occasion so far as could be seen.