Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1907-01-16

dues: he made his passes; he sat In his
place. What more could be required?
Ii they put him in a post of honor, he
filed it with silent dignity. If they set
him to guard the outer portal he guard
ed well. 1t was perilous, rather, for
visiting frater or even local brother
to try getting past Delaroo If he was
rusty In the ritual. Not Maize Sampson
himself could work the outer guard
without the countersign. If he forgot it
In the hurry of getting to lodge he had
to cool his heels in the outer air till it
came back. Delaroo was pitiless.
In the cab he was as taciturn as he
was in the lodge or under the kerosene
lamp at SIMPSONS; he just listened.
But his firing was above any mans
who ever stocked the 264. Delaroo made
more steam on less coal than any man
in the roundhouse. Neighbor began to
hold him up as model for the division,
and the boys found that the way to
jolly Neighbor was to say nice things
about Delaroo. The head of the mo-
tive power would brighten out of a sulk
at the mention of Delaroo's name, and
he finally fixed up a surprise for the
Indian man. One night after Delaroo
came in Neighbor, in the bluff way he
liked to use in promoting a man, told
Delaroo he could have an engine;
good one, one of the K class, as much
finer a machine than the old 264 as
Duffy's chronometer was than prize
package watch. Delaroo never said
aye, yes or no; he merely listened.
Neighbor never had a promotion re-
ceived in just that way; it nearly gave
him the apoplexy.
But if Delaroo treated the proposal
eoolly, not so Maize Sampson. When
the news of the offer reached him,
Maize went into an unaccountable f1ut-
ter. He acted at first exactly as If he
wanted to hold his man back, which
was dead against cab ethics. Finally
he assented, but his cheeks went flabby
and his eyes hollow, and he showed
more worry than his creditors. Nobody
understood 1t, yet there was evidently
something on, and the majors anxiety
increased until Delaroo, the Indian fire.
cient Order of Druids and Fluids, COM
pletely took Neighbor's breath by de-
clining the new engine. That was a
West End wonder. He said If it made
no odds he would stay on the 264.
The men all wondered. Then some
thing new came up, and the thing was
forgotten. Maze SIMPSONS cheeks fill
ed out again, he regained his usual
nerve and swore on the money question
harder than ever.
After that it was pretty generally
understood that Delaroo and Maize
Sampson and the 264 were fixtures.
Neighbor never gave any one chance
to decline an engine more than once.
The boys all knew, if Delaroo didn't,
that he would be firing long time aft
er throwing that chance by, and he
was.
The combination came to be regard
ed as eternal When the sloppy 264
hove in sight little Delaroo and Big
Maize Sampson were known to be be-
hind the boiler pounding up and down
the nssnntains. up and down year in
and year out. Big engines came into
the division and bigger. All the time
the division was crowding on the mo-
tive power and putting in the man.
moth types until when the 2G4 was
stalled alongside a consolidated or
mogul skyscraper she looked like an
ancient beer glass set next an import
ed stein.
With the 2G4 when the 800 or the
100 class were concerned it was sim
ply q case of keep out of our way or
get smashed. Maize Sampson or no
MAZE Sampson, money question or no
money question. Benevolent benefits
fraternally proposed or anteroom sig
nails confidentially put forth by the
baldheaded 264 were of no sort of con-
sequence with the modern giants that
pulled thousand tons in a string up
1900 foot grade at better than twenty
miles an hour. 1t was clear yet cold,
"You old tug, get out of our way, will
you?" And the fast runners, like
Moore and Hawksworth and Mullen
and the Crowleys, Tim and Syme, had
about as much consideration for Maize
and his financial theories as their ma
chimes had for his machine. His jim
crow freight outfit didn't cut much of
a figure in their track schedules.
So the Maize Sampson combination,
but quite as brassy as though it had
rights of the first class, lodged the big
fellows up and down the line pretty
successfully until the government be-
gan pushing troops into the Philippines
and there came days when a Rocky
mountain sheep could hardly have kept
out of the way of the extras that tore,
kissing and booming, over the noun
tains for Frisco. For time the traffic
came hot-so hot we were pressed to
handle it. There was a good bit of
skirmishing on the part of the passen-
ger department to get the business and
then tremendous slIirmishing in the
operating department to deliver the