d be moved at once or the company would be out a good many
dollars. The roundhouse men and a few hostlers were still working, so it
was an easy thing to get a yard engine out. Bennett, myself, Burns, the
second trick man, and Mr. Hebron, the division superintendent, went down
in the yard to do the switching. There were twenty-three cars of Texas
livestock and California fruit waiting for a train out, and the drovers
were becoming impatient, because they wanted to get up to Chicago to
take advantage of a big bulge in the market.

I soon found that standing up in the bay window of an office, watching
the switchmen do the yard work and doing it yourself, were two entirely
different propositions. When I first went in between two cars to make a
coupling, I thought my time had come for sure. I fixed the link and pin
in one car, and then ran down to the next and fixed the pin there. The
engine was backing slowly, but when I turned around, it looked as if it
had the speed of an overland "flyer." I watched carefully, raised and
guided the link in the opposite draw head, and then dropped the pin.
Those two cars came together like the crack of doom, and I shut my eyes
and jumped back, imagining that I had been crushed to death, in fact, I
could feel that my right hand was mashed to a pulp. But it was a false
alarm; it wasn't. I had made the coupling without a scratch to myself,
and it wasn't long before I became bolder, and jumped on and off of the
foot-boards and brake-beams like any other lunatic. That all four of us
were not killed is nothing short of miracle.

By a dint of hard work we succeeded in getting a train made up for
Chaminade, and all that was now needed was an engine and crew. There was
a large and very interested crowd of men standing around watching us,
and many a merry ha-ha we received from them for our crude efforts.
Engine 341 was hooked on, and we were all ready for the start. Burns was
going to play conductor, Bennett was to be the hind man, while I was to
ride ahead. But where were the engineer and fireman? Mr. Hebron had
counted on a non-union engineer to pull the train, and a wiper to do the
firing, but just as we expected them to appear, we found that some of
the strikers had succeeded in talking them over to their side. To make
matters worse the roundhouse men and the hostlers caught the fever, and
out they went. Mr. Hebron was in a great pickle, but he didn't want to
acknowledge that he was beaten so h