"POTS"
"Did you take the cap off?" Westy called up. Thoughtful little Westy!
"G--o--o--d night," I said; "I never took the cap off the lens
cylinder."
"Maybe that was the reason," Pee-wee said, in that innocent way of his.
"It's just possible," I said.
I took off the cap and, oh, _Christopher Columbus_, wasn't I happy!
Sprawling right across that sheet was the word STOP in good big letters.
Believe me, that was my favorite word. STOP. It showed far enough in
both directions for an engineer to see it in time to come to a full
stop.
"Will they see it?" Pee-wee asked me, all excited.
"If the engineer isn't dead, he'll see it," I told him.
"Maybe we ought to have said _please_, hey? A scout is supposed to be
polite," he said. I just had to sit back and laugh, right there on the
roof of that car. Cracky, but that kid is a scream.
One funny thing was that from the train the word would show wrong side
around. It would show the right way from one direction and the wrong way
from the other direction.
"It will read POTS," I said.
"Maybe he won't stop, hey?" the kid asked me.
"Sure he will," I said; "how does he know how big the pots are? It will
knock him silly when he sees that."
Even beyond the screen, away over against a hill, we could see the word
POTS printed very dim and small. Only the P was wrong side around.
But anyway, safety first; so I kept moving the glass so the word danced
around. An engineer who couldn't have seen that must have been blind.
Pretty soon, along she came, and we could see the headlight now, good
and clear, and hear her thundering along as if she should worry about
anything. _Rattle_, _bang_, she went, and roaring and clanking as if
she'd be glad to trample the whole world down and never even stop to
take notice. _Slam_, _bang_, she came along, and we could see the
mountains as plain as day, brightened up by her headlight.
I just held the glass, moving it around, and I have to admit I was a
little kind of nervous, sort of.
_Slam bang, slam bang!_ She came along and we could hear the rattling
and clanking echoing from the mountains, and the racket was all mixed
up. Sparks of light were flying up out of the smokestack and we could
hear the rails clanking, clanking....
Then the sound of the clanking changed. Then it died down, and there was
only the steady rattle, rattle....
She was slowing down.
"We've got her, Kid," I said; "sit still, you'll only fall off. We've
got her eating out of our hands."
"Clank, clank, clank--clank--clank," she went; then "s-s-s-s-s-s...."
She had stopped.
There she stood, puffing and puffing, part on the bridge, and part back
in the dark. The locomotive seemed like a big lion that had just been
going to spring at us.
"Hurrah!" we heard the fellows down in the car calling.
"P-f-f-f-f-f-f," the locomotive went.
"Let _me_ do it! Let _me_ do it!" Pee-wee yelled.
I took the piece of glass out and leaned back against the tank. All of a
sudden I saw something else sprawled all over the sheet. It was the
right way around, too, for the engineer. I guess Pee-wee had been
carrying it in his pocket. Anyway, there were spots on it where the soot
had been wiped off. But it was easy to read it, and this is what it
said:
MUCH OBLIGED, MISTER
Honest, can you beat that kid?