The Press., 1914-08-19
BREAKING THE LIMIT An Engineers Ride For Life and Lives
By JARED L. FULLER } Copyright by Frank A. Munsey Co.

gave out his opinion of Lannigan at the M. and s. P. And this was it:
 "That Grandfather Longlegs never I'll get to hold down a passenger lever on this road. whatever he's done back east. It ain't in him."
 Then the old man chalked up the limit on the side of his little smoke dis colored office, spat with emphasis and well, that closed the subject as far as Pug was concerned.
 I reckon if Lannigan hadn't begun by blowing about his eastern record he'd made more of hit with us.
 He was a tall, awkwardly built man. with a shock of sandy hair and smooth, humorous face. His legs and arms were remarkably long and thin. and old Donaldson's sobriquet stuck to him. Daddy Longlegs' seemed to fit.
 Lannigan got freight, and the worst bunch of scrap iron on the road. which. in moments of enthusiasm, Pug called an engine If there was any man hand icapped in the race to break the limit | IL WAS lu0 new Lldu LAS IduA Ol tenderfeet
 The system of advancement follow ed by the M. and s. P. did not include length of service or pull" Just one thing counted-the ability of a driver to get speed out of his machine over the worst track the law ever allowed man to lay.
 l The country was new when the M. and s. P. was surveyed and laid down. It had been a race between the M. and s. P. and another corporation to see which should reach the terminating town where connection could be made with the Pacific road first.
 We won, but at a cost which crip- pied the road financially for years, and the renewing of the first rOadbed was a slow and laborious job.
 We ran one fast passenger-the Linn ited. The through mail cars were at tached to that train too.
 It was a continual fight all through the year to keep that one train alone up to the schedule called for by the contract with the government.
 If any man on any other train show C0 LAC OOAACJ LO 6CS 0PCGO OuI OA l engine he was watched, and if he broke the limit" he stood a good chance of displacing the driver then running the mail train. | The M. and s. P. in those days was a farmers railroad" Most of the way stations were merely huts and wa ter tanks in forest clearings, tapping d certain section of farming country stretching westward of the line.
 Lannigan had been with us since the winter before. He was a good driver, but not brilliant. Anybody but pref udiced old fool like Donaldson would have recognized his good points, but you never could stir the rOundhOuse foreman when he'd once made up his | mind
 Lannigan had learned the road and his engine. If he followed another train he was on its heels all the time and got himself well cursed for it.
 Some of us began to see that there really was more to the eastern man than we had believed
 That fall was dry, the sun and wind all day and every day drying the sap out of the trees and brush and burning the leaves brown before the frost could make them pretty.
 By and by the inevitable happened. Fires began to light up the heavens nightly, and by day streaks of blue smoke hid the tops of the higher hills.
 Reports reached us from all direc- tions of families burned out and set dement's threatened, but for a week the con1agrations kept away from the line of the road.
 Then suddenly one Sunday morning flood of fire swooped down the noun tain side and crossed the tracks some miles south of Yardsley.
 The Limited came through somewhat scorched, and the next day traffic on the road between LattelI and the junc- ton was cut off altogether. This shut of several settlements as The wires were still working, and our operators stuck to their posts like the brave fellows they were. Pretty near every living soul in hundred square miles of territory lit I out for less dangerous ground But Yardsley was caught mapping, and its 300 people were practically hemmed in by the fiercest forest fire the state had ever experienced.
 The entire system of the M. and s. F. was pretty well tied up. We had pull l ed freight as near the fire line as we | dared. and the sidetracks were about full of waiting cars.
 The fire was still burning fiercely be- Side the roadbed in more than one | place, and we weren't asked to try to 1 pull train through to the junction. Naturally there were plenty of loco motives and plenty of drivers at Lat tell that day when the news came from the Yardsley operator. It was his last dispatch. for he had remained until il was too late to escape by any track through the forest, and there wasn't even handcar left at the station.
 "Wind changed. Fire will reach us in one hour. Three hundred people in danger. Can you reach us?"
 That was the message which the yardmaster read to us from the steps of the station at L4attell. He was pale, and his hands shook as he spelled the words out slowly.
 He didn't have any need to tell us the danger. Nor did he call for vOIun- teers. To try to get to Yardsley was like buying through ticket for death and be done with 1t.
 We stood around and discussed the terrible news and did nothing except Lannigan.
 He appeared at Pug DonaldsOn's window and, leaning his arms on the sill, looked in with the same humorous twist to his lean features.
 '"Them three boxes there empty?" he asked, jerking his head backward to- ward the sidetrack.
 Donaldson nodded.
 'I'm going to hitch my engine on to ,, 'em. Jimmy and nell see if we can git down there and beat that barbecue !