no--no, Wainright; that's
it, Wainright; J. E. Wainright."

"Jim Wainright!" says I, "Jim Wainright! I haven't heard a word of him
for years--thought he was dead; but he's a young fellow compared to me."

"Well, he don't look it," said Jack.

After supper I went up to the hotel and asked for J. E. Wainright.

Maybe you think Jim and I didn't go over the history of the "front."
"Out at the front" is the pioneer's ideal of railroad life. To a man who
has put in a few years there the memory of it is like the memory of
marches, skirmishes, and battles in the mind of the veteran soldier. I
guess we started at the lowest numbered engine on the road, and
gossiped about each and every crew. We had finished the list of
engineers and had fairly started on the firemen when a thought struck
me, and I said:

"Oh, I forgot him, Jim--the 'Kid,' your cheery little cricket of a
firesy, who thought Jim Wainright the only man on the road that could
run an engine right. I remember he wouldn't take a job running
switcher--said a man that didn't know that firing for Jim Wainright was
a better job than running was crazy. What's become of him? Running, I
suppose?"

Jim Wainright put his hand up to his eyes for a minute, and his voice
was a little husky as he said:

"No, John, the Kid went away--"

"Went away?"

"Yes, across the Great Divide--dead."

"That's tough," said I, for I saw Jim felt bad. "The Kid and you were
like two brothers."

"John, I loved the--"

Then Jim broke down. He got his hat and coat, and said:

"John, let's get out into the air--I feel all choked up here; and I'll
tell you a strange, true story--the Kid's story."

As we got out of the crowd and into Boston Common, Jim told his story,
and here it is, just as I remember it--and I'm not bad at remembering.

"I'll commence at the beginning, John, so that you will understand. It's
a strange story, but when I get through you'll recall enough yourself to
prove its truth.

"Before I went beyond the Mississippi and under the shadows of the Rocky
Mountains, I fired, and was promoted, on a prairie road in the Great
Basin well known in the railway world. I was much like the rest of the
boys until I commenced to try to get up a substitute for the link
motion. I read an article in a scientific paper from the pen of a
jackass who showed a Corliss engine card, and then blackguarded the
railroad mechanics of America for being satisfied with the link because
it was h