They had to send 127 to
help him through. Made it out a hotbox, did he? Time before that
he said he was ditched! Looked me square in the headlight and told
me that as cool as - as a water-tank in a cold wave. Hot-box! You
ask 127 about Comanche's hot-box. Why, Comanche he was side-tracked,
and 127 (he was just about as mad as they make 'em on account o'
being called out at ten o'clock at night) took hold and snapped her
into Boston in seventeen minutes. Hot-box! Hot fraud! that's what
Comanche is."
Then .007 put both drivers and his pilot into it, as the saying is,
for he asked what sort of thing a hot-box might be?
"Paint my bell sky-blue!" said Poney, the switcher. "Make me a
surface-railroad loco with a hard-wood skirtin'-board round my wheels.
Break me up and cast me into five-cent sidewalk-fakirs' mechanical
toys! Here's an eight-wheel coupled 'American' don't know what a
hot-box is! Never heard of an emergency-stop either, did ye? Don't
know what ye carry jack-screws for? You're too innocent to be left
alone with your own tender. Oh, you - you flatcar!"
There was a roar of escaping steam before any one could answer, and
.
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