passenger trains.
Even when there is such a thing as a freight time-schedule, it is merely
a form. Along the one track dozens of fast and slow trains dash in both
directions, kept from collision only by the brains in the dispatcher's
office. If one passenger train is late, the whole schedule must be
revised in an instant; the trains following must be warned, and those
moving toward the belated train must be assigned new meeting-places.

Between the shifts and modifications of the passenger schedule, the
freight trains play a game of their own. They have no right to the track
at any given time, but are supposed to be on it when it is free, and to
make the best time they can between passenger trains. A freight train,
on a single-track road, gets anywhere at all only by stealing bases.

Ray Kennedy had stuck to the freight service, although he had had
opportunities to go into the passenger service at higher pay. He always
regarded railroading as a temporary makeshift, until he "got into
something," and he disliked the passenger service. No brass buttons for
him, he said; too much like a livery. While he was railroading he would
wear a jumper, thank you!

The wreck that "caught" Ray was a very commonplace one; nothing
thrilling about it, and it got only six lines in the Denver papers. It
happened about daybreak one morning, only thirty-two miles from home.

At four o'clock in the morning Ray's train had stopped to take water at
Saxony, having just rounded the long curve which lies south of that
station. It was Joe Giddy's business to walk back along the curve about
three hundred yards and put out torpedoes to warn any train which might
be coming up from behind--a freight crew is not notified of trains
following, and the brakeman is supposed to protect his train. Ray was so
fussy about the punctilious observance of orders that almost any
brakeman would take a chance once in a while, from natural perversity.

When the train stopped for water that morning, Ray was at the desk in
his caboose, making out his report. Giddy took his torpedoes, swung off
the rear platform, and glanced back at the curve. He decided that he
would not go back to flag this time. If anything was coming up behind,
he could hear it in plenty of time. So he ran forward to look after a
hot journal that had been bothering him. In a general way, Giddy's
reasoning was sound. If a freight train, or even a passenger train, had
been coming up behind them, he