"This doubling up is what breaks my heart," said Bullard. "Since they've
put on their new schedule I have to divide 590 with another fellow. John
Kelly takes her on the fast run East while I wait here and rest. And so
I've lost my sweetheart, and I don't feel near as much interest in her
as I did. You see, she ain't mine any more. And, between you and me,"
he added, confidentially, "I don't think 590 likes it much herself; you
see, engines are a good deal like girls, after all."

The next night, in workman's garb again, I made my way to a gloomy
round-house, ready for the run to Omaha. I was to ride the second relay,
as far as Creston, on locomotive 1201, with Jake Myers in the cab, so I
had been informed. Being hours ahead of time, I saw something of
round-house life.

First, I followed a gaunt, black-faced Swede, with stubby beard, through
his duties as locomotive hostler; saw him take the tired engines in
hand, as they came in one after another from hard runs, and care for
them as stable hostlers care for horses. There were fires to be dropped
in the clinker-pit, coal and wood to be loaded in from the chutes,
water-tanks to be filled, sand-boxes looked after, and, finally, there
was the hitching fast of the weary monsters in empty stalls, whither
they were led from the lumbering turn-table with the last head of steam
left over dead fire-boxes. And now spoke the Swede:

"Dem big passenger-engines can werry easy climb over dem blocks and go
through the brick wall," and he pointed to a great semicircle of cold
engine-noses, ranged along not two feet from the round-house wall.

Later on, in the dimly lighted locker-room, I listened to round-house
men swapping yarns about accidents, and to threats of a fireman touching
a certain yardmaster set apart by general consent for a licking.

Finally an Irishman came in, James Byron, and for all his good-natured
face he seemed in ill humor. It turned out that he had just received a
hurry order to take 1201 out in Myers's place.

"Jake is sick," he said, "and they've sent for me. But I'm sick, too.
Was in bed with the grip. Just took ten grains of quinine. Say, I ain't
any more fit to run an engine than I am to run a Sunday-school."

Then he began pulling on his overalls, while the others laughed at him,
told him he was "scared" of the fast run, and said good-by with mock
seriousness.

But Byron showed himself a good soldier, and soon was working over 1201
with a will,