The Purple Pennant/Chapter 8
THEY were putting down a two-block stretch of new macadam on the Lafayette Street extension. A bed of cracked stone, freshly sprinkled, was receiving the weighty attention of the town's biggest steam roller as Lanny White strolled around the corner. Chug-chug-chug! Scrunch-scrunch-scrunch! Lanny paused, hands in pockets, and looked on. Back and forth went the roller, the engineer skillfully edging it toward the center of the road at the end of each trip. Further down the street, where the workmen were tearing up the old dirt surface, a second and much smaller roller stood idle, its boiler simmering and purring. Lanny smiled.
"Me for the little one," he muttered, as he walked toward the smaller roller. The engineer was a huge, good-natured looking Irishman with a bristling red mustache, so large that he quite dwarfed the machine. He had a bunch of dirty cotton waste in his hand and, apparently for the want of something better to do, was rubbing it here and there about the engine. He looked up as Lanny came to a stop alongside, met Lanny's smile and smiled back. Then he absent-mindedly mopped his face with the bunch of waste, without, however, appreciable effect, and leaned against the roller.
"Gettin' warm," he volunteered.
Lanny nodded, casting his eyes interestedly over the engine.
"I should think that would be a pretty warm job in hot weather," he observed conversationally.
"'Tis so. Put eighty or ninety pounds o' shtame in her an' she throws out the hate somethin' fierce."
"She's smaller than the other one, isn't she?"
"Yep. We use this one for the sidewalk work gin'rally. But she's good for tearin' up when she's the spikes in her."
"Spikes?" asked Lanny.
"Thim things." The man picked up a steel spike some eight inches long from the floor and showed Lanny how it was fixed in one of the numerous holes bored in the surface of the roller. After that Lanny's curiosity led to all sorts of questions. At the engineer's invitation he mounted the platform and, under instruction, moved the roller backwards and forwards and altered its course by the steering wheel and peered into the glowing furnace under the boiler and listened to an exposition on the subject of getting up steam and the purposes of the steam and water gauges. The engineer was a willing teacher and Lanny an apt pupil, and they both enjoyed themselves.
"And what do you do with it at night?" asked Lanny innocently. "Do you leave it here and put the fire out?"
"Lave it here, yes, but I don't put the fire out, lad. I just bank it down, d'you see, an' thin in the mornin' I just rake her out a bit and throw some more coal in and there she is."
"Oh, I see. And how much steam does she have to have to work on?"
"Depends. Sixty pounds'll carry her along on a level strate, but you have to give her more on a grade."
"It's quite interesting," said Lanny. "And thanks for explaining it to me."
"Sure, that's all right," replied the other good-naturedly. "Maybe, though, you'll be afther my job first thing I know." He winked humorously.
Lanny smiled and shook his head. "I guess I'd be afraid to try to run one of those alone," he said. "It looks pretty difficult. How was it, now, I started it before?"
"Wid this." The engineer tugged gently at the lever. "Try it again if you like."
So Lanny stepped back on the platform and rolled the machine a few yards up the road and back again and seemed quite pleased and proud. Nevertheless he still denied that he would have the courage to try to do it alone. "I guess I'd better start in and work up," he said smilingly. "Maybe I could get the job of night watchman for a beginning. I suppose there is a watchman, isn't there?"
"There's two or three of thim."
Lanny tried not to let his disappointment show. "That's what I'll do then," he laughed. "And if I get cold I'll sit here by your boiler."
"Oh, there's no watchman on this job," said the other carelessly. "We just put the lanterns up. That's enough. It's only where there's a good dale of travelin' that they do be havin' the watchman on the job. Well, here's where we get busy. Come along, you ould teakettle. The boss wants you. So long, lad."
The little roller rumbled off up the road and Lanny, whistling softly, wandered back the way he had come, stopping here and there to watch operations. But once around the corner he no longer dawdled. He set out at his best pace instead, went a block westward and one northward and presently reached his destination, a house at the corner of Troutman and B Streets. Dick Lovering's blue runabout was in front of the gate and Dick himself was sitting on the porch with Gordon Merrick. Gordon was a clean-cut, live-looking boy of sixteen, a clever first-baseman and an equally clever left end. He and Dick were close friends. They had evidently been awaiting Lanny's appearance, for they spied him the moment he came into sight and before he had reached the gate Gordon called eagerly: "All right, Lanny?"
"Fine! I'm the best little chauffeur in the Street Department!"
"Better not talk so loudly," cautioned Dick. "Do you have to have a license to run it?"
Lanny chuckled. "I guess so, but I've lost mine. Say, fellows, it's dead easy!" He seated himself on the top step and fanned himself with his cap. April was surprising Clearfield with a week of abnormally warm weather and this Saturday morning was the warmest of all. "The chap was awfully decent to me. It seems rather a shame to take him in the way I did. He let me get on it and run it and showed me all about it. Why, all you have to do" And thereupon Lanny went into technical details with enthusiasm and explained until Gordon shut him off. "That'll be about all, Lanny," said Gordon. "As you're going to attend to the chauffeuring we don't need to know all the secrets. All we want to know is, can it be done?"
"Of course! I'm telling you"
"You're spouting a lot of rot about steam pressure and gauges," interrupted Gordon firmly. "That's your business, not ours. We're only passengers and"
"Leave me out," laughed Dick. "I refuse to ride on anything that Lanny's running, even a street roller."
"There won't any of you ride," said Lanny. "You'll walk. And one of you had better go ahead and carry a lantern in case we meet anything on the way."
"Oh, shucks, it's got a whistle, hasn't it?"
"Maybe, but I'm not going to blow it if it has, you silly idiot!"
"Much obliged! Well, do we do it to-night or do we not?"
"We do. The journey will start at nine sharp."
"Hadn't we better wait until later?" asked Dick. "We don't want to run into the Superintendent of Streets or the fellow you were talking to."
"There's no one out that way at night. There are only four or five houses around there, anyway. We can take it to that first new cross street, whatever its name is, and then back by Common Street to the field. We won't meet a soul. Besides, it's going to take some time to go all over that ground with the thing. It's slower than Dick's runabout!"
"Cast no aspersions on Eli," warned Dick. "We might have a race, you and I, eh? You in your—what make is it, by the way?"
Lanny chuckled. "Well, it's not very big," he said, "and so I guess maybe it's a Ford!"
"Who's going along with us?" Gordon asked.
"Just Way. Seeing that he's manager"
"Yes, and we may need someone along whose dad has a little money in case we get caught! Will you fellows come here, then, about nine?"
"You'd better leave me out of it," said Dick. "I'm willing to share the responsibility but I wouldn't be any use to you. I'm an awful blunderer when I try to stump around in the dark."
"You could go in Eli," said Gordon, "and take me along."
"Nothing doing! You'll walk ahead and lug the lantern," declared Lanny. "There's no reason why Dick should bother to come. Besides, if there did happen to be any trouble about it afterwards, he'd be much better out of it. A football coach isn't much use if he's serving a year or two in prison."
"What do you suppose they would do to us if they found out?" asked Gordon thoughtfully.
"Oh, who cares?" Lanny laughed gaily. "After all, we aren't stealing the thing; we're just borrowing it."
"I guess Ned Burns would intercede with his stern uncle if we were found out," said Dick. "It might be a good idea to take Ned along!" he added with a laugh.
"Ned nothing!" Gordon's tone was contemptuous. "Ned would get in front of the old thing and get flattened out, like as not. Something would happen to him surely. He can't walk around the corner without breaking a leg!"
"What's the matter with him now?" asked Lanny interestedly. "Some fellow told me he was laid up again."
"Didn't you hear? Why, he was standing on a crossing on Common Street one day last week and an automobile came along and ran over his foot! Everyone around declared that the chap in the auto blew his horn loud enough to wake the dead. But it didn't wake Ned!"
"Hurt him much?" asked Lanny, laughing.
"Broke a bone in one toe, they say. Honest, I saw Ned walk along G Street one day last winter and run into exactly three hydrants! He's a wonder!"
"He certainly is! And I guess we'd better leave Ned at home. Three of us are enough, anyway. What time does the moon show up to-night?"
"It hasn't told me," replied Gordon gravely.
"Well, we'll need it to see what we're doing. About ten, though, I think. Is that twelve o'clock striking? Gee, I must run along. I promised my mother I'd dig up a flower bed this morning. See you later, fellows."
"Wait a second and I'll drop you around there," said Dick, reaching for his crutches. "By the way, Gordie, if you see Way tell him not to forget to stop and get half a dozen new balls. I told him yesterday, but he's likely to forget it. And don't you forget that practice is at two-thirty to-day!"
"Ay, ay, sir! Can we have a game to-day, Dick?"
"Yes, but I want a good hour's work beforehand. Turn her over, will you, Lanny? I'm going to have a self-starter put on her some day if I can find the money."
Eli Yale, that being the full name of the blue runabout, rolled out of sight up B Street toward Lanny's home and Gordon, reminded by Lanny's remark of his own duties in the way of gardening, descended the porch and passed around the side of the house toward the shed in search of a spade. As he came in sight of the apple tree in the next yard he glanced inquiringly toward the platform. It was, however, empty.
"I wonder," muttered Gordon, "where Fudge is keeping himself. I haven't seen him around for almost a week."
Could he have caught sight of his neighbor at that moment he would probably have been somewhat surprised.