0 would take water there.

Fifteen minutes' run and Macdonald drew in his head, shut off steam,
opened the sander, threw the brakeshoes against the drivers and brought
everything to a shuddering standstill with the pilot slipping just past
the tank, while his fireman was scrambling back amongst the coal to
haul down the overhanging spout. And all of this was quite within the
prosaics of the night's work.

What immediately followed was not. There was nothing in the locality
to prepare them for it, while the hour was late and the night damp and
disagreeable--nothing to account for the flying figure of a girl
dashing wildly up the headlight's path, straight for the engine, arms
waving frantic signals.

The engineer's wondering profanity scarcely had begun to flow freely
before she was on top of them. Panting, wild-eyed, hair in riotous
disorder, this beautiful young woman climbed up into the cab with the
agility of an overpowering excitement, pouring out upon the astonished
enginemen a wonderful stream of incoherent "explanations."

Evans, who never before had seen a girl on the verge of hysteria, swore
deep and long under his breath, staring as if in a trance. He came to
himself only when the water overflowed the manhole, and he let go of
the spout with a carelessness that earned him a wetting as it lifted,
dripping, back into place.

No sooner had the girl set foot on the deck than she clambered into the
head brakeman's seat, nestling in alongside the boiler-head as far
forward as she could get, her feet on the fireman's lunch-pail, her
knees drawn up in clasped fingers and her eyes looking straight ahead
out of the narrow cab window. That it might be against the rules of
the road for strangers to ride on an engine apparently had not occurred
to her, for she seemed to take it for granted that she was entirely
welcome as long as she did not get in their way.

The fireman stared across at Macdonald and surreptitiously tapped his
forehead; the engineer stared back at Evans and winked knowingly. The
whole thing had taken but a few moments. A light was swinging out from
the top of the cars at the rear and Macdonald opened the throttle.
They were moving ahead before either of the two men could think of
anything but several variations of the word "damn."

In this manner did Miss Cristy Lawson come to take her first ride on an
engine. The night had been crowded with nerve-wracking excitement; but
in the elation w