A CREW FOR EVERY ENGINE…
Part Five
The fruits of Henry's pondering were put to the test only a few days later. A mass of hot, exceptionally humid air began pushing in over the entire region late one afternoon and the day's temperatures actually began to rise as night came on instead of cooling down. The sun set that evening beneath a mackerel sky, the heavens partly obscured by advancing patches of the sort of mid-level cloud which usually preceded rain. By dawn, a few patches were still drifting through, but each scale-like individual cloudlet was swelling upward as if convectively pregnant and birthing its own little fracturing tower. Denise and Pierre spotted the unusual clouds as soon as the predawn light got strong enough for them to read the sky while they were still collecting The Flying Kipper at the Brendam Docks. The sight of them, coupled with the abnormal heat so early in the new day, got the two humans all worked up.
"Check out the ACC," Denise exclaimed to her husband outside. "We'll have weather by this afternoon, I'll bet."
"Earlier dan dat," Pierre opined. "Showers dis morning already, I t'ink, den dey explode into CBs wid de noon sun on dem."
"You may be right… Gosh, it's hot! This must be the hottest day we've had since coming here and it's not even sunrise yet. Feels like Southern Ontario. Hot and sticky."
"Ontario wid a severe t'understorm watch on," the man added as he swung himself back aboard, sounding gleeful, and Henry, who'd been listening in on their chat, felt his heart sink. The engine had only understood part of what his crew had been talking about, but the expectation that there'd be storms later had come through loud and clear. What he couldn't figure out was how they could possibly know such a thing. It looked like it was going to be a mostly sunny morning. And what in the world was an a-cee-cee and cee-bees? Henry chuffed off to begin his Kipper run, still somewhat apprehensive and sorely confused. The only thing he really agreed with was that it was uncommonly warm, even for the middle of summer.
The trip up to Vicarstown went off without a hitch. Henry kept looking around for storms, yet never saw a thing, and he began to wonder if his crew was mistaken. But then, while resting at his platform in the station, he overheard some passers-by talking about the same thing, that there might be thunderstorms later, and then the station guard keeping an eye on him mentioned it to another station guard and this time he used the word 'forecast', as if it were a given. Henry began to fret. Rain was bad enough and storms were worse; he was afraid of thunder and lightning, although he tried to hide it. He was in quite the worried tizzy by the time his crew came back for him and moved him over to the yard to pick up a new train of empties and some new trucks intended for Brendam that had come in from the Mainland.
They'd no sooner gotten underway on the return leg of their job than Henry saw, to his horror, that there were clouds forming, even though it was only mid-morning, and that they already looked a lot like the big fat clouds that made rain showers. Most of the clouds were off to his right, over where the narrow-gauge rail line ran in from Glennock. Henry eyed them warily even so, remembering Mister Pierre's talk of 'exploding' showers all the while he ran up on and then past Crovan's Gate, and was still so unnerved afterwards that he actually pulled a bit when they ran through the old cutting en route to Kellsthorpe. Denise, grinning, let the loco go. She knew perfectly well that Henry routinely eavesdropped on the conversations she had with her husband, for which reason they most often spoke in English when around the engine, and she had a pretty good idea of what was sparking his sudden need to hurry.
And when they later came out of the stretch of rail that ran through the Whispering Woods—disaster! The southwestern portions of the Island spread out before them were also full of sudden clouds, and what's more, they were already so huge and towering that their tops could be seen from miles away. Nasty, menacing, classic, summertime rainstorm clouds… Or the promising start of some exciting severe thunderstorms and squalls to thrill the weather weenies…it all depended on one's point of view. Henry's crew, of course, fit the latter category, and it was lucky for their engine that they appreciated that Henry himself most assuredly did not share their enthusiasm and were feeling kind enough to cater to his trepidation.
"I…think we've got time to take the scenic route today," Denise remarked as they approached the turnoff to the eastern end of the Loop line and steered Henry onto the slower alternative to the mainline tracks. She'd already seen that the biggest, best developed rainclouds were only shooting up well inland and that they shouldn't be troubled by any convective activity right next to the coastline itself. Henry seemed to agree with her assessment and quit leaning on the throttle as soon as they'd gotten onto the Loop and settled down to a slower pace.
Their coastal route kept them successfully away from the developing showers and Henry grew more cheerful as they completed their task of delivering their rearranged train to Brendam. After that it was back to Knapford and one memorable moment when they first hooked back up with the mainlines and finally had to skirt one of the giant rainclouds parading by just north of Wellsworth. Henry got a smattering of raindrops in his face off that one and was so hyped up by then that he actually yelped and briefly surged ahead. His good-natured crew again let it go. They thought his response so overwrought and silly that they'd had to bite their tongues so as not to laugh aloud and embarrass him, but it was a near thing…a very near thing.
Sir Topham Hatt came out of his office at Knapford as soon as they'd pulled into their platform at the station.
"Ah, good. There you are," he said. "I suppose you've been watching what's been going on with the weather."
"We sure have, sir," Denise replied, leaning out of her window. "Nothing too severe yet, I hope."
"Not yet, but we've already had reports of heavy rain and strong winds. We deal with this sort of problem every five or six years here on Sodor. The danger will be if these showers move into the valley between Ulfstead and the branch line up to Peel Godred. We could get some persistent thunderstorms if that happens and that whole area is prone to localized flooding and worse. The river always does a good job of clearing the flooding, but still…lightning strikes, landslides…we've had our share. What I'd like you to do is stand by until later this afternoon in case the towns along the branch line take some damage and need assistance. And check the tracks too, of course, and the stations, if you do go up."
"We'll be ready, Sir Topham Hatt, sir. Oh! Sir! We actually have some emergency kit on hand especially for this sort of situation, but it's back in our car at Tidmouth. Could we have permission to run over quickly and pick it up? We could get Henry turned around on the turntable, too, and then come back and wait in the yard if you like. It'd free up the platforms for the other engines."
The Fat Controller regarded the woman quite fondly. He liked his new crew's enthusiasm and was intrigued by the thought of them having their own emergency equipment. Sir Topham had it in his head that Canada was still a very wild and rather uncivilized country and that the railroaders there were likely quite used to dealing with disasters, natural and otherwise.
"Ah yes, you go right ahead and take your time," he replied. "If we send you up to the valley, it won't be until latter anyway, not until the storms are over. Make sure you get a good lunch too and pack something for later. Oh, and if we do need you to work this evening, don't worry about taking out the Kipper tomorrow morning. Report in by one tomorrow afternoon and that'll be fine."
"Thanks, sir!" said Denise, with real appreciation. "We'll go get that kit and get set up in the yard and be ready either way."
"Very good," said Sir Topham, and favoured her with another approving smile.
Henry found himself hustled back to his shed after that, but not to rest. All the humans did was toss a bunch more stuff in his cab before turning him about and returning to Knapford. This time they stayed in the yard, parking him in a siding close enough to the station platforms to keep an eye on all the people and activity there, yet also offer them a good view of what was happening inland. Henry knew that they were meant to wait for possible work later on the Peel Godred branch line and wasn't sure what to think. He'd be glad for the opportunity to do something exceptionally useful, of course, as would any engine, but the thought of having to go anywhere close to the storms alarmed him. He hoped that the Fat Controller meant what he'd said about not sending them until the bad weather was over.
The big green Stanier was left on his own for a while then, though not alone. Percy and Thomas both came by and chatted with him in turn and even Gordon exchanged a few words when he went by to pick up his coaches for his noontime express run. None of the other locos seemed at all concerned about the heavy downpours which were intermittently drenching parts of the Island. Most of the showers were still developing well north of the mainline and thus of little consequence to Henry's friends; it was only Henry himself who remained glued to the weather story unfolding in the skies.
By the time Henry's crew returned and tossed yet another bag into his cabin, he was fretting and apprehensive again. Something was rearing up far off to the northeast above all the other clouds, right about where he thought Whiff's waste depot might be. It looked almost like long streamers of fog, reaching up like skeletal fingers from a thick brilliant white mass of a hand. The more Henry stared at it, the worse he felt. He couldn't understand why something that looked like fog was stretching itself so high up into the air or why it inspired such dread.
Henry's driver, by contrast, was about as upbeat and energetic as ever he'd seen her. She stayed aboard with him to fire in a fresh feed of coal and get his boiler pressures back up while Mister Pierre went over to the station to get an update, then she rifled through and picked out some of the stuff both humans had loaded into Henry's cab over at Tidmouth and hopped out and set up a folding chair right by the siding out where her engine could look down and see it. For herself, though, she'd pulled out something new, a little folding camp stool made of canvas lashed to a wooden framework. Which she opened up and put down on Henry's running board right next to the left side of his face after hitching herself up on him over his buffers.
"Ha, fits perfectly," she exclaimed, seating herself and shifting about. She lifted a hand to pat Henry's cheek. "Just you and me, right, big guy? There are some advantages to being kinda small."
Henry goggled down at her, completely bemused. "Uh, right," he said.
"You don't mind me sitting here, do you?"
"No! Of course not."
"Well, good! Cause it took some doing to find a comfy portable stool that wouldn't scratch your paintwork. But this'll work. There's plenty of room. I think Pierre might fall off to the side, though, so we'll just leave him on the ground where he belongs."
Henry could just barely see her face and could tell by her expression that she was just kidding around about Pierre, yet was still at something of a loss. He expected humans to have to get up on him to clean him or to work on him for one reason or another. Never, though, had a single one of them ever chosen to just sit next to his face to keep him company. At least he thought that she had climbed up to keep him company. Maybe it was more so she could see better since she was, in her own words, kinda small and short.
Her little hand stroked over his cheek again. Denise had seen how glum her loco was looking as soon as she and her husband had come back from lunch and knew very well what it was that had him so worried; she could even feel that he was worried just by the harder-than-usual texture of the amorphous alloy metal which made up his face. Engines only relaxed their safeguards completely if they felt safe and secure. Poor Henry was likely gearing up in his mind to steam into a tempest.
"Do you know what kind of cloud that is over there, Henry?" she asked him now in an attempt to mollify him. "That very high, fuzzy-looking cloud way up in the sky off towards the Blue Mountain Quarry?"
Relief gusted through the engine. So she HAD noticed! "Nooo."
"That's the top of a great big ol' thunderstorm, way taller than the smaller ones I can see starting to form over towards Ulfstead. It's a special type of what we call cirrus cloud and when a storm is very strong, you can sometimes see a big mass of it spreading up and out like that even though the storm itself is miles away."
"Oh," said Henry, rather faintly. "It's not coming here, is it?"
"Nope. All the weather's moving northeastward today. Just showers mostly so far. Not too much CB activity yet, really."
"Cee…bee?"
"Oh, sorry. CB is a short way of saying cumulonimbus. That's the proper name for a thunderstorm cloud."
"Clouds have names?" Henry exclaimed, startled.
"Sure. All the different types of clouds have their own special names, just like the different types of birds have their own names and even plants and insects."
Henry mouthed the special cloud name his driver had just told him, reciting it to himself. He'd overheard humans in the past saying the odd word he didn't understand when speaking about the weather, but he'd never known that the words were meant to describe clouds. He already knew the names of all his animal friends and could name most of the trees he saw too, and the notion that the clouds he'd seen all around him for all of his life had names too quite excited him.
"Is—that a CB too?" he asked Denise. "That closest one?"
The woman grinned, pleased by how swiftly her engine had dropped his apprehension in favour of learning something new to do with nature. His old crew had commented before leaving on how much Henry appeared to love the natural world, something which had always struck them as odd considering the mechanical essence of Henry's own being. "What? That little puffy thing there?" she replied cheerfully. "No, that's just what we call a cumulus cloud, and as long as they don't get any bigger and there aren't too many of them, they usually mean that you're going to have a nice, mostly sunny day. But today…well, you see how quickly it's already swelling up and getting taller and bigger, that cloud?"
"Yes?" said Henry, his tone now eager.
"That's a sign that it'll grow into a much larger, fatter version of a cumulus cloud called a cumulus congestus, or you can just call it a towering cumulus or TCU…that's what most weather fans call it. You can get good rain showers out of TCUs, like the one that brushed us when we came back from the Brendam Docks earlier."
"Towering cumulus," Henry repeated softly. Rainclouds were towering cumulus clouds. It made them sound wonderful, almost majestic. "And then…they turn into cu—cu…um…thunderstorms?" he ventured.
"Yes! They CAN become thunderstorms, or cumulonimbus clouds. But you need special conditions for that to happen, just like what's happening today." She paused to stroke her engine's face and was gratified to feel that he'd relaxed considerably. "See? You knew all this all along, sweetheart. You just didn't know the words to describe it."
Henry smiled for the first time that morning. He knew full well that he wasn't the smartest engine and felt ashamed sometimes when he naively believed everything the other engines told him and found out afterwards that what they'd said was dead wrong. But the humans—his humans—were different. He believed that they could be trusted and that Miz Denise was being honest with him, that she just wanted to share something which she thought he might like. And he did like it…well, he liked the cloud-naming part of it. Actually watching the weather, watching all the TCUs turning into CBs or maybe not, was something he'd just as soon continue doing from very far away.
"I hope that thunderstorm near the Blue Mountain Quarry turns back into a cumulus cloud before we get there," he finally said in response, which earned him another reassuring pat.
"Oh, I think it'll be mostly over before we ever get there, Henry. We'd still have to go to the docks first to pick up supplies and that'd take up a good hour or two on its own. Besides, even if the worst happened and we got struck by lightning, it wouldn't much matter. You engines are far too sturdy to be much damaged that way."
"We are?"
Now THAT was an eye-opener! Henry had always been horrified by the thought of being struck by lightning. It didn't help that he'd once seen a bolt hit a tall distant tree and knock it down in pieces. One of the pieces had even caught fire; it had frightened him terribly. Yet here was his driver telling him that he wouldn't be much damaged if lightning hit him.
"We are?" Henry said again, trying to prompt her, and Denise, who'd been momentarily distracted by the sight of Pierre returning from the Knapford platforms, turned back to her engine.
"What's that, sweetie? Oh, right, the lightning. Well, it's true, Henry. Haven't you ever been at an open station with one or both of your crew standing out on the platform or maybe they were just outside refueling you, and had a thunderstorm start up close by? I'll bet your crew jumped right back into your cab as quick as they could, didn't they?"
Henry sorted carefully through his long store of memories. "Yes," he said at last. "They did!"
"Well, see? They knew that an engine cab is one of the safest places to be if you're caught out in a thunderstorm. And here's Pierre, my better half. Hon, I had to put your chair down by the tracks right below me. No room up here. Did you get me one of those fruit tarts?"
"I get you two. An' for me, t'ree more. You watch dat monster storm in de valley? I t'ink Sir Topham was right an' we get called out for dat one."
Denise leaned down to snag the pastries he held up to her, settled happily back down on her stool and started unscrewing the thermos full of hot coffee she'd had ready and waiting. "I've been watching. In fact, I was just telling Henry that getting hit by lightning is no big deal if you're an engine. Especially given that we've had some practical experience."
"Ah oui, de Toronto yard." Like Denise, the man relaxed into his folding chair and balanced his own napkinful of fruit tarts on one knee while reaching down to retrieve his own thermos which his wife had thoughtfully left for him in just the right place. "We don' ged 'it ourselves dat time, Henri, but de engine right next to us one siding over ged a bolt right on de top of 'is boiler."
Henry gasped. "Oh no!"
"Oh yes," Denise continued. "That was a real surprise storm too. It formed right over us. We were just expecting rain and we and the other crew were glad that we were already inside our engines where it was nice and dry, and then—kaboom! The very first darn strike, too!"
Pierre laughed. "I scream like a liddle girl!"
"We all did! Us, the other crew, and both engines! My gosh, it was loud! We thought for a few seconds that someone's boiler had exploded, but of course it was just the thunder."
"Dat railway worker furder down de track, he jump too. But he got de shock."
"Oh yeah! I forgot about him. Henry? Would you believe a guy just walking across the other engine's siding tracks a hundred feet ahead got a jolt off that lightning strike? Nothing dangerous—he said afterwards it was about like getting the biggest static shock of your life—but it sure did make that poor guy bounce. And guess where he ran to after that, to be safe?"
Henry regarded both humans with wide eyes.
"A…an engine cab?"
"That's right. There was a freighter parked near him and that's where he bolted to and climbed aboard. We humans are actually pretty safe inside your cabs during a lightning storm as long as we stay away from any openings. When you get hit, the electrical charge off the bolt just sort of runs down over your exterior and down your undercarriage and into the ground. Sometimes the shock travels some on the rails, but usually not too far and it doesn't stay strong enough to be fatal to us…the ground gets most of it."
"Dat engine who ged 'it, 'e was just fine too, Henri. All 'e get was a liddle round mark in de paint where it get blistered right where de lightning 'it him. We talk to 'im after an' 'e said it was like getting 'ot work done by a blowtorch an' a big shower of sparks all down one side, dat's what it feel like to him."
"Yeah, so, like I said, no big deal for you engines," Denise concluded, "and I know you've had hot work done before, haven't you, Henry? It wasn't so bad, was it now?"
"Nooo. It's always…tingly. And hot. Very hot. Like the hottest firebox ever."
"Painful?"
"Not really," he admitted, and both humans, satisfied with his response, turned back to their food and drink after that.
Henry was quite thoughtful all while his crew tended to their own version of refueling. It seemed that he'd been worried for a long time for nothing. He wondered if his previous crews had known what the Doyons knew about lightning and why they'd never said anything to him about it not being all that dangerous to engines. But then, he'd never asked, not once. Even today, it was all Miz Denise and Mister Pierre volunteering to share their information…not so much because he'd asked first.
The next couple of hours passed far more pleasantly for the engine than he could have believed, given the scary weather happening so close at hand. Occasionally, Mister Pierre would return to his cab and build up his fire just enough to keep his boiler simmering and then he'd walk over to the station to check in with the Fat Controller. Miz Denise remained in high good spirits and at one point told Henry that she and Pierre surely had the best job ever that day, to be paid to kick back and relax in the sunshine with such a great engine as himself while they watched a weather event uncommon to the area develop before them. And it was turning into an event. The people in the valley were being hit hard, with lightning strikes and torrential downpours and the occasional damaging gust as the persistent storm, pushed against the higher slopes by the prevailing winds, dwindled and then redeveloped several times. At its worst, the people watching from Knapford could even hear it, the long low rumbling peals of thunder echoing from one side of the valley to the other and sounding like a distant artillery barrage, and that was when Henry was most grateful for his driver's close company and for the kind comfort of her hand on his cheek. He was also glad that there were too many other big clouds in the way for him to see any lightning, not even any flashes. Most of the bolts coming out of the big storm, according to what Mister Pierre gleaned from the reports reaching Sir Topham's office, were dropping straight down to the ground.
By teatime, Henry and his crew were on their way to the docks to pick up three flatbeds full of heavy timbers, lumber and nails, and coils of rope and oil tarps. The closest showers were all subsiding and even the persistent valley storm's big cirrus top was shrinking and starting to dissipate, hinting that its fury was spent at last. When they reached the turnoff to the Peel Godred branch line itself, all the cloud left within eyesight was flattening out and vanishing fast. Their arrival had been well-timed.
Or had it? The very first little dip the tracks took to accommodate a low lying part of the topography was flooded.
Denise eased Henry to a halt just feet away from where the rails disappeared beneath the fast-flowing water. They weren't the only people being inconvenienced, either. The valley's main eastern road paralleled the rail line just a stone's throw away and was likewise underwater, with several cars waiting on either side of the flooded section. The water on the road was clearly subsiding—there was a broad margin of wet pavement on both sides already—and a lot of the drivers had gotten out to watch the last of the floodwaters cascade off the nearby hillside and into the pool which had formed in the depression between the steep slopes and the railway embankment, a pool still deep enough to overtop the tracks themselves. The Doyons wondered whether the two small-bore culverts cored through the base of the embankment were clogged up or whether they'd just been temporarily overwhelmed. They hoped it was the latter, otherwise the drivers would be waiting for a long time for the pool to drain itself and their road to clear.
Denise and Pierre weren't even sure about taking Henry across. Even though the water still running over the rails looked shallow, erosion under the ties was a real concern. But that was why they'd gone back to Tidmouth for their emergency kit. Pierre quickly shed his shoes and socks for a pair of old sneakers, rolled and tied his pant legs up above his knees with shoelaces, and grabbed his coupling rod and a coil of rope before he climbed down out of the cab. One end of the rope he tied off about his own body, the other end he looped over Henry's buffer beam along with most of the coiled remainder, then he waded out onto the tracks before his engine, playing out his rope line as he went. The current was strong and sucked greedily at his legs as he sidled carefully forward, but the water turned out to be only mid-calf-deep at worst and very clear, with little suspended sediment. Easy enough to see through so one could assess the state of the submerged tracks beneath its surface, in other words...
The people waiting on either side of the flooded road watched with interest as Pierre inched his way along the rails, poking through the water with his coupling rod from time to time. "Could you come and test our roadbed next?" one of the men called in jest and Pierre flashed him a big grin.
"Sorry," he called back. "I only 'ave time to do dis for our Henri. We can't 'ave him derail wid such an important load be'ind."
Some of the watching locals nodded agreeably. All of them were big railfans and could be quite judgmental when it came to how the North Western engines were treated by their crews. They approved of the foreign fireman's evident concern for Henry's safety and his mission, which was self-evident from the supplies he carried.
"You look like y've done this a time 'r two," another man said. "Y' get weather like this back in Canada much?"
Pierre grinned again. He'd gotten used to people knowing exactly who he was even if he had no idea of who they might be in turn. The Island's media coverage of Sir Topham Hatt's hiring of a wild colonial couple from abroad to join his railway team had seen to that.
"Oh, we get some terrible big t'understorms dere in de summers. An' wid ' ail sometimes, even a tornado some years. We saw flooding like dis when we drive some of de government engines in Ontario an' Quebec. We always get t'rough, but 'ad to be ver' careful because of who we carry."
More nods. They continued watching as Pierre reached the far side of the flooded section and turned around and began swinging his coupling rod towards himself in a beckoning gesture, his signal that it was safe to come on. Henry whistled in acknowledgement, a few short blasts, before rolling forward as smoothly as he could, trying his best not to splash up any water.
Pierre had stood aside and gathered his rope up in big loops as the engine approached and hopped aboard without Henry's even needing to stop. "Some ballast lost, but no big 'oles," he reported cheerfully, speaking in English so Henry could follow along. "Not'ing under de ties gone, just around de sides."
"So not enough erosion to be dangerous," mused Denise. "Yet."
"Non," Pierre agreed. He sat down in the folding chair he'd set up in the cab, pulled off his sodden sneakers and started toweling his feet dry. "We should look again later, w'en we come back t'rough an' it's dry. But I t'ink it stay okay."
It turned out to be the only real obstacle they found on the branch line. The tracks were clear after that with the first village, Abbey, only a few miles further along. The station there and its small parking lot was packed with waiting people and lorries when they pulled in. Some of the folk even cheered—"It's Henry!", "Yay, Henry's here!" some of them cried, for the big green engine was well familiar to all the residents of Abbey from his frequent trips up to the Blue Mountain Quarry and the organic waste dump. Denise steered Henry into the through siding and Pierre hopped down again to uncouple the last flatbed and leave it. It held everything that the emergency team in the village had requested and they were planning to load the flatbed right back up again over the next few days with storm debris. The people in Abbey had actually been quite lucky. Aside from minor roof damage, shingles lost and the like, and some fences blown over and a few windows springing leaks, their residences had been spared. The wind and lightning had unleashed their combined savagery on the trees in the village instead, and knocked down a number of them.
Henry and his crew ran into several sad victims of the storm's wrath on the very outskirts of Abbey once they began to hurry onward to their next stop. Four stately full-grown oaks had been felled en masse and one had crashed down so hard that two of its largest limbs had rolled onto the tracks. A crew was already hard at work cutting up the fallen trees and rushed to pull the limbs out of Henry's way as soon as they saw him coming. The Doyons leaned out of their cab to greet the men and express their condolences while they waited. The trees had been hundreds of years old, part of Abbey's perennial natural backdrop for as long as anyone could remember. It would take several human generations' worth of time to regrow worthy successors.
With the tracks once more safely cleared, Denise sent her engine on. Henry moved carefully through the men's staging area, mindful of their closeness to his track. He continued to move slowly and carefully even when he was well past everyone and responded with a curious sluggishness when his driver asked for more speed. Surprised, she opened up Henry's throttle a little more and again his response was all but nonexistent.
Denise looked over all of the engine's gauges, pondering the problem. It felt to her as though Henry was napping—balking without coming to an outright stop. An engineer friend had once told her that engines could withhold their steam power somewhat similarly to how humans could hold their breaths and deprive themselves of oxygen, becoming likewise progressively weaker. It was most typically a subconscious response for the engines and meant that they were so worried or absorbed in fretting over something that their ability to move forward at all became compromised. Yet Denise could see nothing on the tracks on ahead, nothing at all, which would spook even the wariest of locomotives. Then Henry seemed to come out of it and surged on ahead again until he'd come up to the speed which his driver had set for him.
Denise glanced over at her husband, who'd likewise noticed Henry's brief reluctance. "What was that?" he remarked in French.
"Dunno, but something bothered him," she murmured back. "I'll try asking him about it later on."
And yet only minutes later, as they came up on the little station opposite Hawin Lake, Henry hesitated again, his speed falling off until he was barely crawling along. Denise knew that there was a viaduct crossing a ravine just past Hawin and she wondered—correctly, as it turned out, although she didn't realize it—whether Henry mightn't have had some past difficulties with debris running over the tracks off the nearby steep hillside or with using the span itself. Whatever the issue was, it resolved itself the instant her engine saw that the suspect way ahead was clear and he picked up speed on his own and resumed steaming ahead willingly enough. Interesting, Denise thought, once more exchanging glances with Pierre, although neither of them said anything aloud this time.
Old Bailey the stationmaster was already outside waiting for them and Henry was brought to a brief stop so his crew could confer with the other man. He'd already walked the track some and had checked the nearby bridge and the exterior of his stationhouse and was glad to report that all appeared to be in order; indeed, apart from a lot of runoff still rushing through the ravine beneath the viaduct, there was little trace of the storm left. He also swore that Hawin Lake itself had risen by several inches. The Doyons told Old Bailey that he'd likely have good luck then if he had time to get a line in the lake that evening before sunset. All the fresh water would no doubt stir the fish up and get them biting and he might be able to catch his own supper before he went home.
They moved on. The Island's organic waste dump site and then the turnoff to the Blue Mountain Quarry lay along their route, but neither destination needed their attention on this day. The folks working at the waste depot had already reported in that they were fine and Sir Topham had warned that checking the line to the quarry was a job best left to a handcar crew for the time being, just on the off chance that all the rain had found some new way to percolate down into the higher ground and cause some instability in the railbed itself. One of the narrow-gauge railway lines crossed their own tracks too, but again, the soundness of the other railway's lines was not their responsibility. The most important part of their job, seeing to the needs of the good people of the small village of Kirk Machan, was coming up only a few miles further along.
Henry's arrival at Kirk Machan's single station was greeted with the same sort of enthusiasm and relief that he'd received at Abbey. The small village had been pummeled, with several houses and their community center taking the worst of it; in fact, the center had been struck by lightning twice, which had shattered its roof and part of one wall. Luckily, the power had been off while the storm had done all its damage and it had rained hard enough throughout to suppress any incipient fires. The foreman supervising the emergency crews who began unloading and lining up their supplies on one of the platforms took stock of what they'd been brought, compared it to some notes he'd taken, and informed Henry's crew that they'd need more and that he'd already called up to the goods yard in Peel Godred to see what was readily available. He quickly wrote up a list for Denise to pass on while the other men finished emptying the flatbeds and thanked the two railway workers for their quick response. Better they be kept busy rebuilding for the next week than having to help tend to a single serious injury, the foreman concluded, for that was the good news—no one had gotten hurt. Lots of jangled nerves maybe, considering how crazy the thunder and lightning had been, but nothing worse.
Kirk Machan had been prudently built on a slight slope and the only hints left of all the rain that must have come down were the giant puddles that still filled every slight depression. But the Doyons also spotted stretches of flattened vegetation and muddied soil on either side of the tracks and between some of the houses as they guided Henry slowly along, mute testimony to the streams of runoff that must've rushed down and through the village for a time. Mother Nature had not been kind to Kirk Machan on this day, that was for sure. Still…no injuries. That alone made everything else tolerable.
Peel Godred was a much larger community than Kirk Machan and only five miles further north. And yet, as often happened given the vagaries of nature, they'd received nothing but heavy rain and the occasional strong gust all while the real lightshow and its thunderous soundtrack had raged away for hours only a short distance away. The goods yard and the branch line's terminal station lay on the town's northern side and had gotten the least rain of all. There were barely even any puddles to be seen anymore. The yardmaster there was expecting Henry and took charge of fulfilling Kirk Machan's request for more supplies as soon as Denise turned over the notebook list. It gave Henry and his crew a little time to get themselves turned around, after which they waited at a service platform while their flatbeds were being reloaded.
Denise herself disembarked for a while to stretch her legs and check on how her engine was doing. Henry eyed her alertly as soon as she entered his field of view and smiled back when she gave him a pat and praised him. But then, he deserved it. The woman was well pleased with how nicely he'd been working.
The engine seemed so calm that she thought it an auspicious time to broach something she'd tucked away into the back of her mind. "Oh, Henry. I meant to ask you… When we were leaving Abbey and had to wait a few minutes while they finished clearing away that big tree that fell near the tracks…well, you seemed reluctant to move on for a bit there. Was there some specific reason for that?"
Henry's smile vanished, replaced with guilt. "I'm sorry…" he began.
"Oh, no no, there's nothing to be sorry about, sweetheart!" the woman hastened to add. "I'm just curious as to why you hesitated. Did you see something that concerned you? Something that might have scared you?"
Her engine took a few deep breaths, relieved. He'd assumed the worst, of course, but she really didn't seem at all upset about his brief earlier lapse in paying attention; she just seemed interested in what had distracted him.
"I—I saw the tree they were cutting up," he tried again, "and I thought—I thought about the trees in my forest." His expression turned pleading, his voice almost plaintive. "Do you think they're all right? The trees? That the storm didn't knock them all down?"
"The trees in your…oh! Of course. Henry's Forest up past Crovan's Gate." His driver went silent for a moment to think. "Henry, honestly, I don't know right now. I don't remember seeing any thunderstorm tops over that way, but that doesn't mean they didn't get some weather. It's a fair distance away, after all. Did your forest get damaged before during a storm? Is that why you're worried?"
"Yes! Overnight once. There was a terrible storm, all over the Island, and a lot of trees got blown down. It was awful."
"That sounds like it was a pretty major event," Denise said. "The sort of damage the bad weather caused today was a lot more localized, Henry. It's quite possible that your forest only got showers or even nothing at all. But again, I'm just guessing. I do know that if a lot of trees came down up there on the tracks that we'll get a safety warning about it. If Gordon's last express run went off as per usual earlier, it should be fine. And the Flying Kipper's still scheduled to go out tomorrow morning as far as I know, so maybe we can get a personal report off whoever takes it once they're back from the job." She paused to reach up and pat Henry's buffer beam reassuringly. "That sound like a good plan to you for now, sweetie? We should know for sure what happened elsewhere by the time we report for work tomorrow at Knapford."
The human's matter-of-fact acceptance of the possibilities had already succeeded in easing a lot of Henry's fears. He was able to smile again when he replied that he did indeed think her suggestions a good plan and assured her that he'd be able to wait now for an official report. And even if the worst had happened, the humans had replanted his favourite forest once before…they could do it again. And there was work at hand to be done in the valley right now and he and his crew were needed. That final thought was all it took to finish restoring the engine's good spirits and his own confidence.
Henry's two flatbeds were shunted back at that point, piled high once more and safely lashed down for travel, and the big green Stanier soon set off again with his replenished train. He was feeling much better for having shared his concerns for his forest and could better concentrate on his current job too. A great many people were awaiting his arrival again at the station at Kirk Machan when he pulled in just a short time later, and the foreman from before even gave him a pat on the edge of his running board and a thank you before turning his attention back to the other workmen and the important business of again unloading what he'd brought them, especially the additional big waterproof tarps to finish covering up the ruined roof of the community center. The last thing anyone wanted was to risk more water damage beyond what some of the buildings had already suffered, especially given that the next day's forecast was for more showers. Henry and his crew watched the locals as they quickly redistributed the supplies to a number of waiting lorries, then zoomed off to continue working on the priority repairs while they still had a little daylight left. Fortunately for everybody, the current, almost clear conditions, with barely a remnant of cloud to be seen anywhere, were expected to last throughout the night and there was going a full moon too.
As with the folks living in the village further south, the residents of Kirk Machan had requested that the flatbeds Henry had brought them be left to double as waste repositories, and as soon as he could, he shifted them over into the south-bound through siding. A friendly-looking older woman came over from the station just as Pierre finished uncoupling his engine, walking partway across the tracks.
"Hello, dearies!" she exclaimed. "Wouldn't you like a lovely hot supper before you go? Compliments of our Auxiliary, of course!"
The Doyons looked gleefully at each other. They'd been making do since the late afternoon by nibbling on biscuits and hard cheese off and on and hadn't been expecting to eat much else until they got home. Now, here was this angel of mercy offering a proper free meal. They accepted, of course.
The ladies—three of them, as it turned out, and each more cheerful the next—had come to feed the stationmaster too, and Denise helped him bring a folding table and chairs out onto the platform while Pierre readied Henry for a short rest. The women's idea of a proper supper went far beyond what the Canadians could have hoped for. Each tray was heaped high with helpings of the local variant of shepherd's pie, savory beef stew, scoops of mashed potatoes and broad beans, and that was just the start of it. There were also platefuls of sausage and cheese slices, hot, fresh-made sticky buns, and even bowlfuls of the repulsively named yet delicious blood-and-matter pudding. And tea of course, what seemed like a whole gallon of it in a giant pot to pass around and share. The ladies hurried back to their car as soon as they were satisfied with the way the three railway workers had been provisioned and drove off to find more hungry people to fatten up. They promised to come back later to pick up the trays and cutlery and warned that they expected to find not a single scrap of food gone to waste.
Dusk was already coming on as the Doyons and the stationmaster ate. It was a well-nigh perfect evening by now, warm and summery with a light breeze and not a hint of the early morning's oppressive humidity left behind. The day's violent storms had wrung it right out of the air and sent it dashing back down to the ground as downpours. While the three of them dawdled over a last cup of tea and dessert, the stationmaster provided a vivid blow by blow—or should that have been a bolt by bolt?—description of what it had been like to experience the storm while manning his stationhouse. The only good that had come of it, he concluded, was that he could say with certainty that the building and platforms were still weatherproof and that the station itself was well sited to withstand localized flooding.
Henry had watched for a while when the humans first tucked into their supper. He felt safe on the siding and his crew was only a shout away, a crew which he knew would come running to aid him if he needed help. Reassured, he'd closed his eyes, just for a moment, and had fallen fast asleep right around the time everyone started reaching for the sausage.
The engine didn't wake up again until he felt movement within his cab and his fire being stoked back to full life. Darkness had fallen while he'd slept and his lamp had been turned on. Henry yawned. He felt refreshed, but fatigue was still nipping at his wheels, ready to steal upward and drag him down if he carried on for too much longer, and he was very much looking forward to getting home.
Henry's crew checked in one last time, then off the lot of them went, heading for Tidmouth at last. The rail lines coming and going were still free and clear and the two stations further south had gone into unmanned mode for the night. When they went through the outskirts of Abbey, Henry sadly eyed the remains of the trees which had been felled by the lightning. He knew that the humans valued the hardwoods in particular and would try to salvage as much as they could off them and turn them into beautiful furniture, yet it was still distressing to him to see such magnificent old trees reduced to piles of cut-up scrap and logs for lumber.
They stopped only once, just before crossing the section of the branch line which had been flooded earlier, and Pierre hopped out to do a quick second inspection of the embankment beneath the rails in front of them. He even climbed down to check the two culverts and was able to shine his flashlight beam through them from end to end. If they'd been obstructed by debris earlier, it was gone now. It was likelier that they'd just been completely overwhelmed when the low spot had first been inundated, mute testimony to the fantastic amounts of water which must have poured down out of the storm above, all at once.
Hawin Ab, the river which ran down the length of the valley they'd just been working in, was swollen and running hard when they passed over its mainline viaduct. High though it was, the river's banks were in no danger of being overtopped and the dark roiling floodwaters were rushing past on their way out to sea without impediment beyond the viaduct's supports themselves. Even Henry seemed unconcerned and continued to steam on with confidence. Denise thought that the engine must've been too focused on getting to Tidmouth to fret anymore—all three of them were by then—and let him chuff on as quickly as was safe for him to do so.
Or at least she tried to let him go fast. They'd no sooner crossed Hawin Ab and reached a more open area with fields on either side than Henry started to balk, then sped up, then balked again. He appeared trapped by some indecision, unable to choose between avoiding or outrunning whatever new demon had seized him.
Denise had had enough. She didn't want Henry either bolting or screeching to a standstill again, nor did she want him getting it into his machine mind that there was something new and scary and unknown lurking near this particular part of the mainline, forever set to leap out and spook him whenever he ran by. "Watch out! We're halting," she warned her husband, and pulled Henry back through a rapid, though not quite emergency stop.
Halting right on the mainlines, for whatever reason, was always dangerous and Pierre hastened forward to again tend to the frightened engine. And he was scared, his wide eyes glued on something off across the field to their left. "W'ad is it, Henri?" he asked. "W'at you see dis time, eh?" All while trying to sound curious and excited and not a bit scared himself.
Henry wasn't as startled by his fireman's appearance as he'd been the first time the human had quit his cab and come forward to help him, and merely glanced at the man before resuming his fixated stare. "I don't know! Something white."
"Anoder ghost, you t'ink?"
"No! It's-it's high up. In those trees over there."
The only trees Pierre could see were those comprising a dense hedgerow sited along one edge of the field, angling away from the rails. The rising moon was already casting enough of a bright silvery wash that the man could tell that he was looking at a recently shorn hayfield, but he could see nothing unusual at its periphery. "You see that white t'ing right now?" he asked more doubtfully and Henry again insisted that he could.
Pierre stepped down off the railway embankment and aimed his torch at the drainage ditch next to the tracks. It was a deep one and still full of water. He again studied the hedgerow way off across the field and then looked at Henry. The engine was still staring in the same direction and still looked scared and anxious, although he was managing to keep it together better than he had during the spider incident. Pierre drew a deep breath and made his decision.
"Henri! Can I trust you to stay still if I climb up?"
"What?" His fireman's unexpected query shattered his focus so much that he didn't know how to reply. What did the man mean, climbing up? He was on the mainline! "What?" he asked again, helplessly.
"I get up 'igh wid you so I can see w'at you see. So you stay ver', ver' still for me 'til I am up dere, okay?"
"Yes, sir!" Henry exclaimed. Of course he would hold still! He couldn't even imagine how terrible it would be if he hurt Mister Pierre. But terrible or not, it nonetheless cost him to set his fear aside and he shivered and shook in waves all the while Mister Pierre scrambled up over his buffer beam. As soon as he'd gotten onto the engine's running board, Pierre stepped briefly back to take hold of the handrail behind Henry's smokebox. The loco continued to stand fast, breathing hard and fast, waiting for further instructions. Pierre, reassured, sidled forward again.
Henry was still staring off across the field. Pierre took careful note of the direction of his gaze, looked off himself and—
"Ah!"
"You see something, hon?" called Denise, who'd been leaning out from her window and following along.
"Oui! Just like Henri said. Somet'ing white. I couldn't see it from de ground at all, but I see it from up 'ere wid Henri."
In truth, Pierre was a little astonished that his engine had spotted the tiny little patch of white that appeared to be shining through the branches of a big mature evergreen at all. It was probably just that the bright moonlight had made it flash which had caught Henry's always hyperactive attention and made him imagine the worst.
"Bon…ver' good, Henri," he told his loco now, patting him fondly on the cheek as he did so. "You 'ave some wonnerful sharp eyes, to see dat. Now, 'ow to get o'er dere to find out w'ad it is…"
"You're not going to wade through that ditch, are you?" Denise said. "You're sure to get soaked. I bet it's waist-deep."
"Maybe. But we 'ave to find out, right?"
"We should go on a little first. So you don't have to cross too much of the field."
"There's a road ahead!" Henry blurted. "It crosses the lines."
Denise began fishing one of her notebooks out of a uniform pocket. "Ohhh, he's absolutely right," she said, flipping through to one of her hand-drawn maps. "Would that be Samson Road, Henry? A dirt farming road?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
His driver smiled. She hadn't been too crazy about her husband's decision to climb up on Henry running board, especially from standing directly in front of him, but she also knew that Pierre was very astute when it came to assessing an engine's state of mind and his gesture of trust seemed to be paying off. Henry was no longer trembling and sounded far more excited than frightened now.
"Good!" she called. "Then it's up to the road we'll go. You hanging on, Pierre? Don't want you to go flying."
"Already 'olding on tight," the man yelled back, and Denise, smiling again, eased Henry's throttle forward. The engine rolled forward, nice and easy and without hesitation.
The intersection was only a few hundred meters further on. Once stopped again, it became obvious to the humans that the hedgerow was there to provide a natural buffer and windbreak between the hayfield and the road, and this time there'd be no ditch to contend with. Pierre clambered down and Henry overheard Denise tell him that on the off chance that they had to move, that he should stay put and they'd be back for him. Then, off the man went, vanishing into the deep moonshadow cast by the hedgerow, with only the beam of his flashlight left visible as it swung from side to side before him. Denise next addressed her locomotive.
"Henry! When you're stopped like this, you can feel the vibrations in the lines if another engine is running up behind you, even when it's still far away, right?"
"Y-yes," the green Stanier confirmed, a little surprised that she knew such a thing. "If it's a big one or has a train. It's harder when it's just a little engine by itself."
"Great! So I guess you know what I'm going to say next, that I need for you to stay alert and let me know at once if you sense anyone else coming along on our line, even if it's just a little tank engine."
"Yes! Of course, ma'am."
"Good boy. And don't be surprised if I blow your whistle if a car comes along on the road, too. The last thing anyone's going to expect is seeing an engine halted on the tracks right before the crossing and it'd be best if we gave them a little warning, don't you think?"
Again, Henry agreed. He hadn't even thought about a vehicle coming along and she was right. It wouldn't do to inadvertently startle some poor driver into running off the road.
And so the two of them, human and engine, fell silent and waited. Henry, who was almost holding his breath, was very nervous, worried about whether he'd be able to do as asked and detect any additional traffic on the lines in time, yet he felt excited too at the prospect of solving the mystery of what it was that he'd seen. He could feel his driver hanging over the edge of one of his cab doors, the position of her arm telling him that she was facing backwards, no doubt to better look past his tender and watch their back track. She was rubbing him absently, stroking her hand over the polished metal over and over. Henry wondered if she was doing it to calm him, or herself; humans did always tend to get the worst of it whenever trains collided. But there'd be no collisions tonight, Henry decided. He was sure that he could leap ahead and speed up fast enough to avoid being hit by any engine running up behind him, even if it were Gordon, as long as he had fair warning.
It was very still. Several marsh frogs, still excited by all the earlier rain, were trading yelping croaks in a distant wetland towards the north and a couple of early bush-crickets soon joined in from the field just past the road, otherwise silence prevailed. There was not a single human-made sound to be heard, nor the faintest wail or peep of a faraway whistle. Henry couldn't help but think that he must be the only engine still out on the lines that night and that all his watching was for naught.
Pierre suddenly returned, all in a rush. Denise clapped her engine's throttle open before the man was even fully aboard and Henry lunged ahead, as relieved as his crew to be underway again. The two humans didn't even talk until he'd built up a decent amount of speed and was no longer in any danger of being rear-ended.
"So?" Henry heard his driver ask. "What was it?"
"Anoder tarp. A big white one dis time."
"Holy cow! How the heck did it get all tangled up in a hedgerow?"
"I t'ink de storm winds drive it in. It's all wrap around dat one big evergreen."
"So it must've got lofted? Up over the fences from wherever it came from? That's pretty impressive. They must've gotten some heavy duty gusting hereabouts earlier on."
Pierre paused to shovel a fresh thin layer of coal into Henry's firebox.
"It came from a farm, I t'ink," the man mused. "It look like wad de farmers use for dere haystacks. Maybe one of de storms blow it off."
"That's exactly what I bet happened. The question now is, who's upwind who's missing a tarp?"
In the end, the two of them decided to simply pass on what they'd discovered and where it was to Sir Topham Hatt once they returned to Knapford the next day. Their boss knew where all the farms were which were serviced by his railway and might well be the one to field a call about a missing hay tarp once all the farmers had taken stock of their damages and losses. Denise also made a point of asking Henry if he'd been listening in and understood what it was that his fireman had found, a query which her engine was happy to answer in the affirmative. The last of his misgivings had vanished the instant he'd overheard Mister Pierre report that he'd found nothing but a tarp in the trees and the thought that they might be able to return it to its rightful owner pleased him. It was the perfect capper to Henry's exciting day, a day which had been filled with the satisfaction of performing well for the humans and earning their praise, interspersed with intervals of fear and doubt which—again, thanks to two humans in particular—had turned out to be not so fearsome in the end after all.
The three of them were so tired by the time they reached and quietly backed into the Tidmouth sheds that they for once were all fine with foregoing their usual end of the workday routines in favour of heading straight to bed. Henry was the lucky one that night, he thought as he sleepily watched his crew leave him and walk over to their car. He even felt a little sorry for them, that they still had a short drive ahead of them before they reached their own personal shed and could finally rest, but not so sorry that he didn't nod off before they even got out of the parking lot.
Henry managed to sleep right through the early morning departure of most of the other engines the next day and was well rested and wide awake by the time the Doyons returned to tidy him up before noon. He was glad his crew had shown up early. He'd been thinking a lot about the events of the day before and was eager to get back to work, even if it meant putting up with more showers from all the towering cumulus clouds he could already see forming again off in the distance. (Henry was quite proud of himself for remembering the proper name for rainclouds.) Actually, he was sure he could even tolerate a thunderstorm or two, as long as Miz Denise and Mister Pierre were with him to provide reassurance.
As it turned out, special reassurance was not required for Henry that day for all their work that afternoon had to do with moving freight between stations near the Island's western coastline. That part of Sodor hadn't even been touched by yesterday's violent weather and it remained dry again as the hours wore pleasantly on. By the time Henry and his crew finished up with a last stop at Knapford to confirm that the next day's routine would be as per normal and that they were slated to take out The Flying Kipper first thing in the morning, any shower activity which had developed was already past and the skies were once again clearing fast. All was back to being typically sunny and summery and another great evening appeared to be taking shape. With one welcome bonus…
Sir Topham Hatt popped out of his office as soon as Henry pulled in and beckoned to the big green engine's crew to come and join him. He had a surprise waiting for them, cooling on his office desk.
"Ah yes, perfect timing," he said to the couple. "So! I'm happy to pass on that we located the owner of that tarp you found last night, one Farmer Cooper and family, just as I suspected, and two of his sons have already retrieved it and came by to express their thanks. They got quite the nasty squall yesterday by the sounds of it. It wasn't the only hay tarp they lost, although the others luckily only got blown as far as the nearest fence line. They wanted me to pass on their appreciation for your thoughtfulness and a bit of a practical reward, thanks to Missus Cooper. I hope you like cherry pie."
The Fat Controller paused to stare longingly down at what Farmer Cooper's two big strapping eldest boys had dropped off along with their message. The pie was still warm and had been tantalizing him with its enticing odours for the past half hour, something which was not lost on the watching Doyons.
"Wow, what a nice thing to do!" Denise enthused. "It would have been enough to know that you'd found that tarp's owner, sir, but this is great. We love cherry pie."
"Yes, well, we all do what we can to help each other out in times of need," Sir Topham said, his eyes still cast downward. "You did good work yesterday, more than you needed to, and good work deserves to be rewarded."
"Gosh, you know, that's an awful big pie. I don't know if we could even do it justice, sir." She turned to confer with her husband, gave him a brief secret smirk. "What do you think, hon? Maybe just a slice apiece? We've got empty containers in our kit from lunch."
"Yes. Pie like dis, fresh an' warm, should be eaten right away. Why don' we take just enough for our supper an' you can take de rest 'ome to share wid your family, eh, Sir Topham Hatt? A part for you an' Henri's part too, since you own 'im?"
"Oh, that's kind of you." Another longing stare. "Perhaps…if you're sure…"
"Of course we're sure, sir," Denise insisted, grinning openly now. "The only thing we'd ask of you in return is that you thank Henry yourself for spotting that darn tarp in the first place. If it hadn't been for his keen eyesight and attentiveness, we never would have found it, sir, and we wouldn't have this lovely pie to eat."
"Quite right, quite right," Sir Topham replied, shaking himself out of his happy anticipation. "I'll go do that right now."
Pierre briefly left to retrieve one of the aforementioned containers and a knife while the Fat Controller went out to speak with his engine. "Bet he eats it all himself," he murmured to Denise in French while he was cutting off their share, and Denise whacked him and hissed at him to behave and be nice, although she couldn't help laughing too.
Whatever Sir Topham said to Henry, it was enough to leave the loco beaming and flushed with happiness by the time the Doyons finished securing their prize and then came forward to join their boss. Sir Topham was still so pleased that he insisted on shaking hands with his two foreign employees and thanking them again before hurrying back to his office. He even closed his door, his hint that he was not to be disturbed. Denise and Pierre cracked up again.
Henry still looked delighted as he regarded his crew. They gazed right back at him once over their amusement, just as fondly.
"Well, Henry?" his driver remarked. "It pays off sometimes to hang around and solve the scary stuff, doesn't it?"
"Yes," Henry said back. "Yes it does!" And never in his life had he ever been so glad to agree with a human.
to be continued…