couldn't see the bunting they'd draped the engine with, and the mahogany coaches behind looked like the striped sticks of candy the kids buy on account of more bunting, and then some, and the local band they'd brought along from Big Cloud got the mouthpieces of their trombones and cornets mixed up with the necks of champagne bottles, and the Indian braves squatted gravely at different points along the trackside and thought their white brothers had gone mad, Owsley was at the throttle for the first through run over the division—it was Owsley's due.
Then other years went by, and the steel was shaken down into the permanent right of way that is an engineering marvel to-day, and Owsley still held a throttle on a through run—just kept growing a little older, that was all—but one of the best of them, for all that—steadier than the younger men, wise in experience, and with a love for his engine that was like the love of a man for a woman.
It's a strange thing, perhaps, a love like that; but, strange or not, there was never an engineer worth his salt who hasn't had it—some more than others, of course—as some men's love for a woman is deeper than others. With Owsley it came pretty near being the whole thing, and it was queer enough to see him when they'd change his engine to give him a newer and more improved type for a running mate. He'd refuse point-blank at first to be separated from the obsolete engine, that was either carded for some local jerk-water, mixed-freight run, or for a construction job somewhere.
"Leave her with me," he'd say to Regan, the master mechanic. "Leave me with her. You can give my run to some one else, Regan, d'ye mind? It's little I care for the swell run; me and the old girl sticks. I'll have nothing else."
