If ever a man combined determination with luck it was Fuller. He had
started on foot from Big Shanty in complete ignorance of what was happening
to his stolen train. Undoubtedly, if he had known that a party of Northern
raiders had taken it, he would have waited until a locomotive came from
Atlanta. The idea of running after a locomotive would have seemed too
ridiculous. But, expecting to find it abandoned around each curve, he raced
on and on until they came to the hand car; then the _Yonah_. When the
_Yonah_ had run out of fuel, the _New York_ was there to carry him to the
Rome engine. When the Rome engine had been stopped by the break in the
track, they had come to the _Texas_. They had shunted and outraced the
train, jumped the broken track, and avoided wrecking on obstructions so
many times that they had lost count. And still they pressed on. The force
of Fuller's determination seemed greater than the force of the steam which
flashed against the pistons of the _Texas_.
Fuller and Murphy, still sitting on the edge of the tender, saw the
abandoned box-car as they swerved around the bend. Fuller waved his arms up
and down slowly to the engineer as a signal to come to a gradual stop. They
coasted down upon the box-car, picked it up and carried it on with them.
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