firing for
'Boney' Cassin, the brother of Denny. It was in winter, a bitter cold
day, and the Hudson was so gorged with ice that part of the jam had
squeezed over the bank and torn away our tracks. So pretty soon, when we
came along with twenty-three cars of a train of merchandise, why in we
went, and the old engine 'Troy' just skated ahead on her side into the
river, smash through the ice, down to the bottom, and pulled thirteen
cars after her.

"You couldn't see a piece of that engine above water as big as your
hand, and how I got out alive is more than I know. Guess I must have
jumped. Anyhow, there I was on the broken floe, and I could hear the old
Troy grinding away in the river, churning up water and ice like a crazy
sea-serpent. She struggled for nearly a minute before her steam was cold
and her strength gone. Then she lay still, dead.

"I looked around for Boney; and at first I didn't see him. I thought
he'd gone down sure, and so he had; but just as I was looking I saw a
big black thing heave up through the ice, and I heard a queer cry. Well,
that was Providence, sure! It seems the engine had ripped her cab clean
off as she tore through the ice, and here was the cab coming up bottom
side first, with Boney inside hanging on to a brace and almost dead. I
hauled him out, and then we scrambled ashore over the wrecked cars. They
were full of flour, and the barrels were all busted open, so by the
time we reached the bank we looked like a twin Santa Claus made of
paste, and three quarters drowned at that."

"But Boney stuck to his throttle," I remarked.

"Yes," said the other, "he stuck to his throttle. The boys generally
do."

After this I asked Big Arthur for a story, but he assured me he couldn't
think of anything special.

"Tell about that woman on Eleventh Avenue," said his friend.

"Yes," said I, "tell about her."

"Oh," said Big Arthur, "that wasn't much. I was pulling a freight train
down Eleventh Avenue one day, going slow through the city, and at
Thirty-fifth Street a woman turned down the track ahead of me. I
whistled, but she never heard me. She was going marketing, and couldn't
think of anything else. I saw I'd strike her sure--there wasn't time to
stop--so I ran along the boiler-side to the pilot, and got there just as
we were on her. Another second and she'd have been under the wheels. I
braced myself and made a jump at the woman, and struck her back of the
neck with a shove that sent her spr