Within two miles
the road turned to the West, and here we found the water in the ditches
running through dry soil, carrying dead grass and twigs of sage upon its
surface; we passed the head of the flood, tumbling along through the dry
ditches as dirty as it well could be, and fast soaking into the soil;
and then we passed beyond the line of the storm entirely.
Billy put up his seat and filled his pipe, and I sat down and absorbed a
sandwich as I urged my engine ahead to make up for lost time; we took up
our routine of work just where we had left it, and--life was the same
old song. It was past midnight now, and as I never did a great deal of
talking on an engine, I settled down to watching the rails ahead, and
wondering if the knuckle-joints would pound the rods off the pins before
we got to the end of the division.
[Illustration: "'Mexican,' said I."]
Billy, with his eyes on the track ahead, was smoking his second pipe and
humming a tune, and the "Mary Ann" was making about forty miles an hour,
but doing more rolling and pitching and jumping up and down than an
eight-wheeler would at sixty.
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