Danger Signals | Page 8

Kid sprang into the gangway
and cried 'Jump!'
"I was in the left gangway in a second, but quick as a flash the Kid had
my arm.
"'The other side! Quick! The river!'
"We were almost side by side as she swung me toward the other side of
the engine, and jumped as we crashed into a landslide. I felt Kid's hand
on my shoulder as I left the deck--just in time to save my life, but not

the Kid's.
"She was crushed between the tank and boiler in the very act of
keeping me from jumping to certain death on the rocks in the river
below.
"When the crew came over they found me with the crushed clay of my
poor, loved Kid in my arms, kissing her. They never knew who she was.
I took her back to our Texas home and laid her beside the little one that
had gone before. The Firemen's Brotherhood paid Kid's insurance to
me and passed resolutions saying: 'It has pleased Almighty God to
remove from our midst our beloved brother, George Reynolds,' etc.,
etc.
"George Reynolds's grave cannot be found; but over a mound of
forget-me-nots away in a Southern land, there stands a stone on which
is cut: 'Georgiana, wife of J. E. Wainright, aged thirty-two years.'
"But in my heart there is a golden pyramid of love to the memory of a
fireman and a sweetheart known to you and all the world but me, as
'Jim Wainright's Kid.'"

AN ENGINEER'S CHRISTMAS STORY
In the summer, fall, and early winter of 1863, I was tossing chips into
an old Hinkley insider up in New England, for an engineer by the name
of James Dillon. Dillon was considered as good a man as there was on
the road: careful, yet fearless, kindhearted, yet impulsive, a man whose
friends would fight for him and whose enemies hated him right royally.
Dillon took a great notion to me, and I loved him as a father; the fact of
the matter is, he was more of a father to me than I had at home, for my
father refused to be comforted when I took to railroading, and I could
not see him more than two or three times a year at the most--so when I
wanted advice I went to Jim.
I was a young fellow then, and being without a home at either end of

the run, was likely to drop into pitfalls. Dillon saw this long before I
did. Before I had been with him three months, he told me one day,
coming in, that it was against his principles to teach
locomotive-running to a young man who was likely to turn out a
drunkard or gambler and disgrace the profession, and he added that I
had better pack up my duds and come up to his house and let "mother"
take care of me--and I went.
I was not a guest there: I paid my room-rent and board just as I should
have done anywhere else, but I had all the comforts of a home, and
enjoyed a thousand advantages that money could not buy. I told Mrs.
Dillon all my troubles, and found kindly sympathy and advice; she
encouraged me in all my ambitions, mended my shirts, and went with
me when I bought my clothes. Inside of a month, I felt like one of the
family, called Mrs. Dillon "mother," and blessed my lucky stars that I
had found them.
Dillon had run a good many years, and was heartily tired of it, and he
seldom passed a nice farm that he did not call my attention to it, saying:
"Jack, now there's comfort; you just wait a couple of years--I've got my
eye on the slickest little place, just on the edge of M----, that I am
saving up my pile to buy. I'll give you the 'Roger William' one of these
days, Jack, say good evening to grief, and me and mother will take
comfort. Think of sleeping till eight o'clock,--and no poor steamers,
Jack, no poor steamers!" And he would reach over, and give my head a
gentle duck as I tried to pitch a curve to a front corner with a knot:
those Hinkleys were powerful on cold water.
In Dillon's household there was a "system" of financial management.
He always gave his wife just half of what he earned; kept ten dollars for
his own expenses during the month, out of which he clothed himself;
and put the remainder in the bank. It was before the days of high wages,
however, and even with this frugal management, the bank account did
not grow rapidly. They owned the house in which they lived, and out of
her half "mother" had to pay all the