Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 11, 1925 — page 127: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CALL OF SHINING his mind. They were the people with a good, solid foundation. They owned their jobs, their living depended on basic principles. The soil was the real source of wealth and stability. His job was precarious, fleeting, depending on too many chances. His life was unsettled, casual, a room at either end of the division, a meal wherever the chance afforded. Those men who worked their own land were far better off. He would save his money, buy his piece of earth and if the day came when the railroad cast him off, he would not become one of the pool- room loafers. And here was the answer to his silent questions about Itchy-Witchy. She was oftener in his mind now and always coupled to the idea of a home far from the railroad and what it meant. But she had her own farm; her father’s place was far better than any he could hope to acquire for many years. Yet Zeb felt that when the time came for her to choose between the home she had been reared in and the one he would offer her, there would be no hesitancy on her part—she would choose his. Such is the egotism of youth. CHAPTER XVI. HOGHEAD ON SIXTEEN. T last it had come. Five years of A swinging a scoop, of rocking a shaker bar, of jerking at the fire hook had brought their reward. Zeb was promoted. The ordeal of his examination that he had hoped for and yet dreaded was come and gone and he had passed first on the list of a dozen firemen. He was an engineer. : Now for the right hand side of the cab, for the rattling Johnson bar and the brass brake valve handle! TImpatiently he waited the morning after he had come back from his examination in the master mechanic’s office, impatient for the call boy to batter on the door of his room and send him out on a run. Business was good, better than it had Bee, been for years else his promotion would not have come so soon: He had but five - STEEL, 281 years “age” and he realized that it is seldom a fireman is promoted so young. Zeb was but twenty-three, although his age was down on the company books as twen- ty-six. He sat down and wrote a long letter te | Itchy-Witchy, telling her of his good for- tune. He decided to put the unspoken question that hung between them to the word. He walked out, dropped the letter in the box so it would go out on Sixteen in the morning. Then he went home, turned in to bed, but sleep would not come. The thoughts of that letter and what it. meant to him, banished all sleep, and Zeb tossed and tumbled for hours, wide awake. Finally he fell into a fitful slumber only to be awakened with a start. The telephone bell was calling insistently down the hall- way. 3 Hastily he went to the phone, lifted the - hook, answered the question and heard the welcome news. “ White?” “Yes. Well?” “ You’re marked up for Sixteen.” He hurriedly dressed, went down to Ring’s, ate a hasty breakfast, and crossed the tracks to the roundhouse. The 937 was marked up for the run. Zeb found her under the coal chute, taking on fuel. He clambered aboard, sat down on the engi- neer’s seat box, and mechanically wiped off reverse lever handle and throttle grip with a piece of waste. A great contentment stole over him as he cracked the injector, then opened it wide. The rumble of the coal falling into the tender when the hostler swung on to the gate rope sounded like music to his ears. An old engineer whom Zeb had fired for passed below, looked up, and grinned. “Well, kid, I suppose you'll run the wheels off her to-day.” Zeb laughed back. “No, Jerry. I’m a thinking no one ever broke any speed rec- ords on the West End.” | “ Not till they lengthen out the tracks a bit between stations,” was the other’s re- joinder. The hostler slid down over the coal. “You take her over, Zeb?” he queried. To the nod of assent the hostler added: CS me 8 > ~~, a sa ~~ - ‘ « » z <_< a J > w™ See ee eat og - = oe — a, oe < gt en Pe at ee i tn = te pe ee © ee, ott a E = * — “s 2