Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 | Page 7

sharply, vexed
at this second interruption.
"He does not like me, and he would never give me a situation. I--"
"Well, that is no fault of mine. But I haven't any more time to lose with
you."
Seeing it was useless to say more, the boy made his departure, trying to
feel hopeful, but fearing the worst.
CHAPTER II.
Scarcely had the youth left the railroad company's headquarters, when a
tall, spare man, with faultless dress and cleanly-shaven face, entered the
apartment, going straight to the superintendent's desk, smiling and
nodding to the clerks as he passed them.
He was Donald Minturn, the assistant superintendent, who had a smile
for every one, but as treacherous as the charm of the serpent.
"Hilloa Minturn!" greeted his chief; "you are back sooner than I
expected. By-the-way, you must have met a boy as you came in. He
was after a situation, and I was careless enough not to ask him his name.
Call him back if it is not too late. I think we might do worse than--"
"What!" exclaimed Mr. Minturn, "has that fellow had the audacity to
come here for another job? He has been discharged from his section
this very week."
"Then you know him, Minturn? Come to think of it, he told me so.
How stupid I am to-day! What is his name?"

"That he couldn't have told you himself, if you had asked him, general.
He is a sort of waif of the switch-yard. Jack Ingleside--you knew
Jack--he was engineer on the old Greyhound, afterwards took to drink
and went to the bad--well, as I started to say, Jack found this boy in the
caboose one morning as he was starting from Wood's Hollow. He
wasn't more than three years old, and how he got there is yet a mystery.
Jack took a fancy to him and gave him a home while he lived. I think
the young scamp still lives with the widow at Runaway Tavern."
"He seems like a more than commonly smart boy."
"Oh, he can appear well enough when he is a mind to. But Mr.
Gammon had to turn him off of his section for downright disobedience
of orders. Why, only yesterday he and a man named Baxter jumped on
to the hand-car in the very teeth of the northern-bound mail, and came
very near wrecking the train, to say nothing of ending their own
worthless lives."
"Oh, well, if you know the boy, of course you are more competent to
judge of him than I. But I must confess he impressed me very favorably.
What news from Draco?"
So the august officials of the great Pen Yan gave no employment to the
poor boy who had come so far for a situation, whether he deserved a
better fate or not.
Meanwhile, the boy, unconscious that his fate had already been decided
upon, hastened to the Fairfax Station, to take the homeward-bound train,
which would be due in a few minutes.
The Pen Yan railway system forms upon the map of that part of the
country a stupendous letter Y. The Fairfax Fork running
north-northwest makes one branch of the arm meeting at the Big Y, as
the junction is called--the line of the upper arm, where the two tracks
unite in one to reach across a mountainous, often sparsely-settled,
country for over three hundred miles. At the time we write it was a
single-track road from the Big Y to its terminus.

The boy had to wait but a little while for the accommodation, which
was on time, and stepping aboard, he was soon homeward bound. He
was absorbed in meditations when he was roused from his rather
unpleasant reverie by the voice of the conductor, who had taken a seat
near by him to chat a few minutes with a friend.
"It is a strange coincidence, Sam, and it puts me in mind of an
adventure I had several years ago, and which came near punching my
through ticket."
"An adventure, Henry? Give us the story."
"As soon as we have passed Greenburn. I shall have plenty of leisure
then."
Without dreaming how soon he should recall it with startling vividness,
our hero, with a boy's interest, listened to the conductor's story:
"Ten years ago I was engineer on the Tehicipa and Los Angeles Road,
a branch of the Southern Pacific. Those were troublesome times. What
with the guerillas and Indians that infested the country, to say nothing
of other dangers, we never knew when we were safe, if we ever were.
[Illustration {map}]
"One evening--just about such an evening as this, too--we had barely
stopped at a way station when some one rushed up to the train and said
Gray Gerardo's band was coming to attack us.
"Gerardo was considered the