The City of Fire | Page 2

bags and marshalling babies. It was important that
Billy should earn something for it was Saturday and the biggest ball
game of the season came off at Monopoly that afternoon. Billy could
manage the getting there, it was only ten miles away, but money to
spend when he arrived was more than a necessity. Saturday was always
a good day at the station.

Billy had slipped into the landscape unseen. His rusty, trusty old
bicycle was parked in a thick huckleberry growth just below the grade
of the tracks, and Billy himself stood in the shelter of several immense
packing boxes piled close to the station. It was a niche just big enough
for his wiry young length with the open station window close at his ear.
From either end of the platform he was hidden, which was as it should
be until he got ready to arrive with the incoming train.
The regular station agent was busy checking a high pile of trunks that
had come down on the early Lake train from the Hotel and had to be
transferred to the New York train. He was on the other side of the
station and some distance down the platform.
Beyond the packing boxes the heavy one worked with brush and paint
marking some barrels. If Billy applied an eye to a crack in his hiding
place he could watch every stroke of the fat black brush, and see the
muscles in the swarthy cheeks move as the man mouthed a big black
cigar. But Billy was not interested in the new freight agent, and
remained in his retreat, watching the brilliant sunshine shimmer over
the blue-green haze of spruce and pine that furred the way down to the
valley. He basked in it like a cat blinking its content. The rails were
beginning to hum softly, and it would not be long till the train arrived.
Suddenly Billy was aware of a shadow looming.
The heavy one had laid down his brush and was stealing swiftly,
furtively to the door of the station with a weather eye to the agent on
his knees beside a big trunk writing something on a check. Billy drew
back like a turtle to his shell and listened. The rail was beginning to
sing decidedly now and the telephone inside the grated window
suddenly sat up a furious ringing. Billy's eye came round the corner of
the window, scanned the empty platform, glimpsed the office desk
inside and the weighty figure holding the receiver, then vanished
enough to be out of sight, leaving only a wide curious ear to listen:
"That you Sam? Yep. Nobody about. Train's coming. Hustle up.
Anything doing? You _don't say_! Some big guy? Say, that's good
news at last! Get on the other wire and hold it. I'll come as quick as the
train's gone. S'long!"
Billy cocked a curious eye like a flash into the window and back again,
ducking behind the boxes just in time to miss the heavy one coming out
with an excited air, and a feverish eye up the track where the train was

coming into view around the curve.
In a moment all was stir and confusion, seven women wanting attention
at once, and imperious men of the world crying out against railroad
regulations. Billy hustled everywhere, transferring bags and suit cases
with incredible rapidity to the other train, which arrived promptly,
securing a double seat for the fat woman with the canary, and the
poodle in a big basket, depositing the baggage of a pretty lady on the
shady side, making himself generally useful to the opulent looking man
with the jewelled rings; and back again for another lot. A whole dollar
and fifteen cents jingled in his grimy pocket as the trains finally moved
off in their separate directions and the peace of Pleasant View settled
down monotonously once more.
Billy gave a hurried glance about him. The station agent was busy with
another batch of trunks, but the heavy one was nowhere to be seen. He
gave a quick glance through the grated window where the telegraph
instrument was clicking away sleepily, but no one was there. Then a
stir among the pines below the track attracted his attention, and
stepping to the edge of the bank he caught a glimpse of a broad dusty
back lumbering hurriedly down among the branches.
With a flirt of his eye back to the absorbed station agent Billy was off
down the mountain after the heavy one, walking stealthily as any cat,
pausing in alert attention, listening, peering out eerily whenever he
came to a break in the undergrowth. Like a young mole burrowing he
wove his way under branches the larger man must have turned aside,
and so his going was as silent