Argosy All-Story Weekly — "The Purple Limited" — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ARGOSY-ALLSTORY CHAPTER L THIRTY MINUTES LATE. T began with lights — green lights, red | lights, white lights where the sputtering carbons arced behind the snow on the locos’ headlamps. Grotesque and camel-backed, the locos formed a half-moon by the roundhouse, where ashes, glowed and lanterns moved back and forth, up and down. One lantern separated from the others and came through the night mist and snow. It disappeared between two rows of gon- dola cars. It reappeared. It stopped, and went on a car’s length. Again it stopped, while the checker placed a number on a long slip of damp paper. © The checker’s cap was drawn over his eyes. His shoulders were hunched. He carried the lantern hooked on his left arm. He was one of seven thousand men on the pay-roll of the C. M. and Western. The local boss of the C. M. and W. was J. J. Darrah, known as “J.J.D.” He was the checker’s friend in more ways than one. The last gondola car in the line was even with a street crossing at the lower end of 1A | Is x Digitized by Go gle Henry Leverage the yard. The checker stepped from behind this car, folded the slip of paper, swung the lantern at his knees, and slushed through the snow to an all-night lunch-wagon. He stamped his feet on a glistening triangle of slate, pushed open the lunch- wagon’s door, and perched on a stool be- fore a counter heaped high with egg-sand- wiches, heavy mugs, and a “ sand-box ” filled with sugar. | ‘“Cup 0’ coffee and piece o’ apple pie,” he said to a white-aproned clerk. The clerk turned and opened the spigot of a tarnished cylinder out of which a liquid flowed. Deftly he sliced the pie— slid a mug and 3 plate across the counter, following them with a spoon and a fork. The checker started eating the pie. A passing freight shook the lunch-wagon. The door opened to a crack, and then wide. A freckled-faced girl came in.. There was no single regularity to her features. She asked: ‘““Where’s the Purple Limited? Ain’t it on time?” The lunch-wagon clerk smirked and 2 motioned toward the car-checker. ‘ Ask him. He works fer th’ road.” 577 F Original from(GO) nn (C ) ©) 0) KS (CO) nn) THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY