Danger Signals | Page 7

the year you were there I done most of the heavy firing while the Kid did the running. We remained in the service for something like two years--a strange couple, but happy in each other's company and our work.
"I often talked to my wife about leaving the road and starting in new, where we were not known, as man and wife, she to remain at home; but she wouldn't hear of it, asking if I wanted an Irishman for a side-partner. This came to be a joke with us--'When I get my Irishman I will do so-and-so.'
"One day, as our 'hog' was drifting down the long hill, the Kid said to me, 'Jim, you can get your Irishman; I'm going to quit this trip.'
"'Kind o' sudden, hey, Kid?'
"'No, been hating to give up, but--' and then the Kid came over and whispered something to me.
"John, we both quit and went South. I got a job in Texas, and the Kid was lost sight of, and Mrs. J. E. Wainright appeared on the scene in tea-gown, train, and flounces. We furnished a neat little den, and I was happy. I missed my kid fireman, and did indeed have an Irishman. Kid had a struggle to wear petticoats again, and did not take kindly to dish-washing, but we were happy just the same.
"Our little fellow arrived one spring day, and then our skies were all sunshiny for three long, happy years, until one day Kid and I followed a little white hearse out beyond the cypress grove and saw the earth covered over our darling, over our hopes, over our sunshine, and over our hearts.
"After that the house was like a tomb, so still, so solemn, and at every turn were reminders of the little one who had faded away like the morning mist, gone from everything but our memories--there his sweet little image was graven by the hand of love and seared by the branding-iron of sorrow.
"Men and women of intelligence do not parade their sorrows in the market-place; they bear them as best they can, and try to appear as others, but once the specter of the grim destroyer has crossed the threshold, his shadow forever remains, a dark reminder, like a prison-bar across the daylight of a cell. This shadow is seen and recognized in the heart of a father, but it is larger and darker and more dreadful in the mother heart.
"At every turn poor Kid was mutely reminded of her loss, and her heart was at the breaking point day by day, and she begged for her old life, to seek forgetfulness in toil and get away from herself. So we went back to the old road, as we went away--Jim Wainright and Kid Reynolds--and glad enough they were to get us again for the winter work.
"Three years of indoor life had softened the wiry muscles of the Kid, and our engine was a hard steamer, so I did most of the work on the road. But the work, excitement, and outdoor life brought back the color to pale cheeks, and now and then a smile to sad lips--and I was glad.
"One day the Kid was running while I broke up some big lumps of coal, and while busy in the tank I felt the air go on full and the reverse lever come back, while the wheels ground sand. I stepped quickly toward the cab to see what was the matter, when the 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