The Donovan Chance

The Donovan Chance by Francis Lynde

Larry Donovan, a redheaded, freckle-faced teenager wiping locomotives in the Nevada Short Line's Brewster roundhouse, chafes at a dead-end future even though the job helps support his family after his father John, a former engineer, lost an arm and was demoted to crossing watchman. One evening Larry and Dick Maxwell, son of General Manager Richard Maxwell, watch saboteurs set locomotive 331 rolling unmanned toward an oncoming freight train. The boys commandeer roadmaster Browder's gasoline inspection car, chase down the runaway, and Larry leaps aboard to stop it just before a collision. Rather than face the crowd's praise, Larry flees home, but Maxwell summons him and, impressed by his courage and ambition, gives him a summer job on the railroad's new construction crew racing to build a line up Tourmaline Canyon to the Little Ophir gold field before the rival Overland Central (O.C.) can seize the route. Paired again with Dick, now working under chief engineer Ackerman, Larry proves his engineering instincts repeatedly. Scouting ahead of the survey crew, the two boys discover secretly planted O.C. stakes proving the rival company is stealing their canyon right-of-way, then infiltrate an O.C. construction camp disguised as a water boy to learn the company's plans, and are briefly captured before escaping at night to warn Ackerman in time to seize the contested ground first. The rivalry escalates into open sabotage. When the O.C. dynamites a cliff to dam the Tourmaline and flood the Short Line's camp, Larry and Dick discover a natural cavern beneath a rock formation ("the Old Man of the Mountain") that offers a safer drainage route than the company's planned dynamite blast, which would have destroyed the O.C.'s trestle and possibly killed workers; despite an impulse to let the rival company suffer for its treachery, the boys report the cave, and Ackerman lectures them that vindictiveness is bad business. Later, when a tunnel collapses and traps a work crew—including Goldrick—after O.C. blasting undermines the roof, Larry engineers a makeshift rescue, ramming pipe through the debris and improvising an air-brake mechanism to force it forward, delivering air to the trapped men until diggers break through, earning a congratulatory telegram from Maxwell. The construction battle continues through a treacherous shale slide that swallows grading equipment nightly; investigating its cause, Larry and Dick climb Bull Peak, discover the slide is being deliberately dynamited by O.C. agents posing as miners, and stake out the site until they identify the saboteurs, who are then arrested. Larry also proposes cementing the unstable shale face to stop its natural crumbling, impressing Ackerman further. A visiting inspection party led by Vice-President Holcombe and director Oliver Hazzard disrupts the work; Larry and Dick reluctantly serve as pilots and flagmen, and Larry clashes with Holcombe's spirited daughter Bess, resenting the intrusion of "Big Money" into the working camp. When a coupling failure sends the passengers' Pullman car rolling away unmanned down the grade with Bess and other women aboard, Larry commandeers a construction engine and, with Dick's help, chases and recouples the runaway car just before disaster, saving the passengers. True to his prickly pride, Larry avoids the party's gratitude and refuses a reward, prompting Ackerman to gently rebuke his class resentment and urge him to overcome the chip on his shoulder if he wants to become a well-rounded professional. As the two railroads near Little Ophir, with a lucrative bond issue and merchants' contracts promised to whichever line arrives first, Larry and Dick are sent to find a missing surveyor, Blaisdell, reported injured. A suspiciously evasive rancher's son named Billy Jones leads them on a long, roundabout hike through Yellow Dog Park, claiming Blaisdell is resting in a remote line-shack—only for the boys to find the shack empty upon arrival, leaving the narrative poised on the suspicion that Jones has deliberately led them astray, possibly as part of a further O.C. scheme, at the point where the excerpted text ends.

By Francis Lynde · First published 1920 · Genre: Coming-of-Age Fiction, Adventure Fiction, Industrial/Technical Fiction · 10 chapters · 72,469 words

First lines

Engine 331, the biggest mountain passenger-train puller on the Nevada Short Line, was a Pacific-type compound, with a bewildering clutter of machinery underneath that made a wiper's job a sort of puzzle problem; the problem being to get the various gadgets clean without knocking one's head off too many times against the down-hanging machinery. Larry Donovan, mopping the last of the gadgets as the shop quitting-time whistle blew, called it a day's work, flung down his handful of oily waste and crawled out of the concrete pit.

Grigg Dunham, fireman of the 246, which was standing next door to the 331, leaned out of his cab window.

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The Donovan Chance is listed on Textopian as a novel by Francis Lynde, dated 1920 CE.

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Genres

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fiction · adventure · romance · mystery · western · railroad · early twentieth century · American literature · suspense · crime · investigation · mountain setting

Contents

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