“Oh, yes,” Cooley said. “Damn, I completely forgot that.”
It took another five minutes for the engine to back up the switch track to find a couple more cars. Not until then was it ready to go.
As Kyle and Boomer started to board, Kyle walked up toward the engine.
“Where you goin’?” Boomer called.
“I’m going to ride up here,” Kyle said.
“All right, I will, too.”
“No,” Kyle replied. “There won’t be room for both of us. And I really think you should be back with the others to sort of keep them calm.”
“Yes, sir, I reckon you’re right about that.”
The fireman, seeing Kyle starting to climb up in the engine, reached down to give him a hand.
“You ever been in the cab of an engine before?” he asked.
“No,” Kyle said. “Just tell me where the best place is to stay out your way, and I’ll go there.”
“If you want to look ahead, you can stand there on the left side of the cab,” the fireman said. “I’ll be busy keeping the steam up, and the engineer looks out the other side.”
Taking in the engine cab, Kyle saw a bar running horizontally across the cab from the left to the right.
Seeing him look at it, the engineer spoke up.
“Maybe I’d better explain some of this to you,” he said. “If you know what is what, it’ll help you to stay out of the way.”
“Good idea,” Kyle replied.
The engineer pointed to the bar that had caught Kyle’s immediate attention.
“That’s the throttle,” he said. “You make it go by pulling it back. And this sturdy-looking ratcheted lever with a hand release—this vertical bar on the right is the Johnson bar. It controls which way the steam goes into the cylinders. Helps you to decide whether you want to go frontwards or backwards. And right next to it here, this chunky-looking brass handle sticking out to the left is the air brakes.”
“Thanks for the lesson,” Kyle said. “It will help me keep out of your way, I’m sure.”
“All right, boys, here we go,” the engineer said; then, after three long whistles, the engineer positioned the Johnson bar and opened the throttle. The train pulled out of the station. At first it was moving rather slowly, but the speed kept building and building until soon the engine was going so fast that the ground below was whizzing by in a blur.
Looking ahead, Kyle saw the track unfold out of the black void, come into the light of the gas headlamp, then slip behind them as the train hurtled through the darkness.
“How fast are we going?” Kyle shouted above the noise of the engine.
“I’d say we’re doing at least forty miles per hour,” the engineer replied.
“Don’t you think we ought to slow down a little?”
“Why?”
“If there has been a train wreck, we may not see it in time to stop,” Kyle suggested.
“Oh, damn, you’re right!” the engineer said, easing off on the throttle. The train slowed gradually until they were doing no more than fifteen miles per hour.
Then, ahead in the darkness, Kyle saw the golden glow of several fires.
“There ahead!” Kyle shouted. “The fires! Do you see them?”
“Yes,” the engineer said. “They were smart to light some fires.”
“I hope they are fires that were lit, and not a burning train,” Kyle said.
The engineer reached up to the pull cord, and the whistle let out a long, melodic, wail.
Back at the site of the train wreck, Matt worked with Dr. Presnell and the others pulling out the injured, freeing the trapped, and removing the dead. He wanted, with everything that was in him, to run away now that he had the chance. But when the train caught on fire, he knew there was no way he could leave all the people who had been so badly injured trapped in the burning wreckage.
Working with the others, he managed to get everyone out of the train, including those who had been killed on impact, so that even as the train burned down to the truck and wheel assemblies, there was no smell of burning bodies to add to the horror of the occasion.
In the distance, Matt heard the two-toned sound of a train whistle. He wasn’t sure he heard it the first time, but when it sounded again, he knew exactly what it was.
“Listen, do you hear that? That’s a train! They are coming for us!” someone shouted, though by now everyone had heard it and several cheered.
“We’d better get up to the track and wave it down!” someone shouted.
“Yes, get one of the lanterns and wave it,” another suggested.
“They don’t need to wave the train down,” Matt said to Dr. Presnell, who even then was doing the best he could do toward cleaning a wound. “I’m sure the train was sent here just for us.”
“I am sure as well,” Dr. Presnell said. “But right now, they need to feel like they have some input into their own
