t the C. & S. C. right of way, where red and white
semaphore lights were winking.

"I was offered that job once myself, though, and turned it down," said
Bannon. "I was superintendent of the electric light plant at Yawger.
Yawger's quite a place, on a branch of the G. T. There was another road
ran through the town, called the Bemis, Yawger and Pacific. It went from
Bemis to Stiles Corners, a place about six miles west of Yawger. It
didn't get any nearer the Pacific than that. Nobody in Yawger ever went
to Bemis or Stiles, and there wasn't anybody in Bemis and Stiles to come
to Yawger, or if they did come they never went back, so the road didn't
do a great deal of business. They assessed the stock every year to pay
the officers' salaries--and they had a full line of officers, too--but
the rest of the road had to scrub along the best it could.

"When they elected me alderman from the first ward up at Yawger, I found
out that the B. Y. & P. owed the city four hundred and thirty dollars,
so I tried to find out why they wasn't made to pay. It seemed that the
city had had a judgment against them for years, but they couldn't get
hold of anything that was worth seizing. They all laughed at me when I
said I meant to get that money out of 'em.

"The railroad had one train; there was an engine and three box cars and
a couple of flats and a combination--that's baggage and passenger. It
made the round trip from Bemis every day, fifty-two miles over all, and
considering the roadbed and the engine, that was a good day's work.

"Well, that train was worth four hundred and thirty dollars all right
enough, if they could have got their hands on it, but the engineer was
such a peppery chap that nobody ever wanted to bother him. But I just
bided my time, and one hot day after watering up the engine him and the
conductor went off to get a drink. I had a few lengths of log chain
handy, and some laborers with picks and shovels, and we made a neat,
clean little job of it. Then I climbed up into the cab. When the
engineer came back and wanted to know what I was doing there, I told him
we'd attached his train. 'Don't you try to serve no papers on me,' he
sung out, 'or I'll split your head.' 'There's no papers about this job,'
said I. 'We've attached it to the track,' At that he dropped the fire
shovel and pulled open the throttle. The drivers spun around all right,
but the train never moved an inch.

"He calmed right down after that and said