One of the men climbed into the engine.  The sentinel paid no heed to him.  Another slipped in between two cars, and pulled out a coupling-pin.  The sentinel failed to observe him.  A group of others climbed quickly into an open box-car.  The sentinel looked at them, and walked serenely on.  The last man of the party now strode rapidly up the platform, nodded to the one in the locomotive, and swung himself lightly into the cab.  The sentinel turned at the end of his beat and walked back, just beginning to wonder what all this meant.  Meanwhile famine was being rapidly appeased at the lunch-counter within, and the not very luxurious display of food was vanishing like a field of wheat before an army of locusts.

Suddenly the sharp report of a rifle rung with warning sound through the air.  The drowsy tenants of the camp sprang to their feet.  The conductor hurried, out to the platform.  He had heard something besides the rifle-shot,—­the grind of wheels on the track,—­and his eyes opened widely in alarm and astonishment as he saw that the train was broken in two, and half of it running away.  The passenger-cars stood where he had left them.  The locomotive, with three box-cars, was flying rapidly up the track.  The sentinel, roused to a sense of the situation only when he saw the train in actual flight, had somewhat late given the alarm.

The conductor’s eyes opened very wide.  The engine, under a full head of steam, was driving up the road.  The locomotive had been stolen!  Out from the refreshment-room poured passengers and trainmen, filled with surprise and chagrin.  What did it mean?  What was to be done?  There was no other engine within miles.  How should these daring thieves ever be overtaken?  Their capture seemed a forlorn hope.

The conductor, wild with alarm and dreading reprimand, started up the track on foot, running as fast as his legs could carry him.  A railroad mechanic named Murphy kept him company.  To one with a love of humor it would have been an amusing sight to see two men on foot chasing a locomotive, but just then Conductor Fuller was not troubled about the opinion of men of humor; his one thought was to overtake his runaway locomotive, and he would have crawled after it if no better way appeared.

Fortune comes to him who pursues her, not to him who waits her coming.  The brace of locomotive chasers had not run down their strength before they were lucky enough to spy a hand-car, standing beside the track.  Here was a gleam of hope.  In a minute or two they had lifted it upon the rails.  Springing within it, they applied themselves to the levers, and away they went at a more promising rate of speed.