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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/33634-8.txt b/33634-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fba9ed5 --- /dev/null +++ b/33634-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10697 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night Operator, by Frank L. Packard + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Night Operator + +Author: Frank L. Packard + +Release Date: September 4, 2010 [EBook #33634] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OPERATOR *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + +THE NIGHT OPERATOR + + +BY + +FRANK L. PACKARD + +AUTHOR OF "THE WIRE DEVILS," "THE ADVENTURES + OF JIMMIE DALE," ETC. + + + + +THE COPP, CLARK CO., LIMITED + +TORONTO + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1919. + +GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + + + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +TO + +CHARLES AGNEW MACLEAN + + + + +BY FRANK L. PACKARD + + THE NIGHT OPERATOR + THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE + THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE + THE WIRE DEVILS + THE SIN THAT WAS HIS + THE BELOVED TRAITOR + GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN + THE MIRACLE MAN + + + + +FOREWORD + +Summed up short, the Hill Division is a vicious piece of track; also, +it is a classic in its profound contempt for the stereotyped equations +and formulae of engineering. And it is that way for the very simple +reason that it could not be any other way. The mountains objected, and +objected strenuously, to the process of manhandling. They were there +first, the mountains, that was all, and their surrender was a bitter +matter. + +So, from Big Cloud, the divisional point, at the eastern fringe of the +Rockies, to where the foothills of the Sierras on the western side +merge with the more open, rolling country, the right of way performs +gyrations that would not shame an acrobatic star. It sweeps through +the rifts in the range like a freed bird from the open door of its +cage; clings to caņon edges where a hissing stream bubbles and boils +eighteen hundred feet below; burrows its way into the heart of things +in long tunnels and short ones; circles a projecting spur in a dizzy +whirl, and swoops from the higher to the lower levels in grades whose +percentages the passenger department does not deem it policy to specify +in its advertising literature, but before which the men in the cabs and +the cabooses shut their teeth and try hard to remember the prayers they +learned at their mothers' knees. Some parts of it are worse than +others, naturally; but no part of it, to the last inch of its +single-tracked mileage, is pretty--leaving out the scenery, which is +_grand_. That is the Hill Division. + +And the men who man the shops, who pull the throttles on the big, +ten-wheel mountain racers, who swing the pick and shovels in the +lurching cabs, who do the work about the yards, or from the cupola of a +caboose stare out on a string of wriggling flats, boxes and gondolas, +and, at night-time, watch the high-flung sparks sail heavenward, as the +full, deep-chested notes of the exhaust roar an accompaniment in their +ears, are men with calloused, horny hands, toilers, grimy of face and +dress, rough if you like, not gentle of word, nor, sometimes, of +action--but men whose hearts are big and right, who look you in the +face, and the grip of whose paws, as they are extended after a hasty +cleansing on a hunk of more or less greasy waste, is the grip of men. + +Many of these have lived their lives, done their work, passed on, and +left no record, barely a memory, behind them, as other men in other +places and in other spheres of work have done and always will do; but +others, for this or that, by circumstance, or personality, or +opportunity, have woven around themselves the very legends and +traditions of their environment. + +And so these are the stories of the Hill Division and of the men who +wrought upon it; the stories of those days when it was young and in the +making; the stories of the days when Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, was +superintendent, when gruff, big-hearted, big-paunched Tommy Regan was +master mechanic, when the grizzled, gray-streaked Harvey was division +engineer, and little Doctor McTurk was the Company surgeon, and Riley +was the trainmaster, and Spence was the chief despatcher; the stories +of men who have done brave duty and come to honor and glory and their +reward--and the stories of some who have gone into Division for the +last time on orders from the Great Trainmaster, and who will never +railroad any more. + +F. L. P. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + + I THE NIGHT OPERATOR + II OWSLET AND THE 1601 + III THE APOTHEOSIS OF SAMMY DURGAN + IV THE WRECKING BOSS + V THE MAN WHO SQUEALED + VI THE AGE LIMIT + VII "THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS" + VIII ON THE NIGHT WIRE + IX THE OTHER FELLOW'S JOB + X THE RAT RIVER SPECIAL + + + + +THE NIGHT OPERATOR + + +I + +THE NIGHT OPERATOR + +Toddles, in the beginning, wasn't exactly a railroad man--for several +reasons. First, he wasn't a man at all; second, he wasn't, strictly +speaking, on the company's pay roll; third, which is apparently +irrelevant, everybody said he was a bad one; and fourth--because +Hawkeye nicknamed him Toddles. + +Toddles had another name--Christopher Hyslop Hoogan--but Big Cloud +never lay awake at nights losing any sleep over that. On the first run +that Christopher Hyslop Hoogan ever made, Hawkeye looked him over for a +minute, said, "Toddles," short-like--and, short-like, that settled the +matter so far as the Hill Division was concerned. His name was Toddles. + +Piecemeal, Toddles wouldn't convey anything to you to speak of. You'd +have to see Toddles coming down the aisle of a car to get him at +all--and then the chances are you'd turn around after he'd gone by and +stare at him, and it would be even money that you'd call him back and +fish for a dime to buy something by way of excuse. Toddles got a good +deal of business that way. Toddles had a uniform and a regular run all +right, but he wasn't what he passionately longed to be--a legitimate, +dyed-in-the-wool railroader. His paycheck, plus commissions, came from +the News Company down East that had the railroad concession. Toddles +was a newsboy. In his blue uniform and silver buttons, Toddles used to +stack up about the height of the back of the car seats as he hawked his +wares along the aisles; and the only thing that was big about him was +his head, which looked as though it had got a whopping big lead on his +body--and didn't intend to let the body cut the lead down any. This +meant a big cap, and, as Toddles used to tilt the vizor forward, the +tip of his nose, bar his mouth which was generous, was about all one +got of his face. Cap, buttons, magazines and peanuts, that was +Toddles--all except his voice. Toddles had a voice that would make you +jump if you were nervous the minute he opened the car door, and if you +weren't nervous you would be before he had reached the other end of the +aisle--it began low down somewhere on high G and went through you +shrill as an east wind, and ended like the shriek of a brake-shoe with +everything the Westinghouse equipment had to offer cutting loose on a +quick stop. + +Hawkeye? That was what Toddles called his beady-eyed conductor in +retaliation. Hawkeye used to nag Toddles every chance he got, and, +being Toddles' conductor, Hawkeye got a good many chances. In a word, +Hawkeye, carrying the punch on the local passenger, that happened to be +the run Toddles was given when the News Company sent him out from the +East, used to think he got a good deal of fun out of Toddles--only his +idea of fun and Toddles' idea of fun were as divergent as the poles, +that was all. + +Toddles, however, wasn't anybody's fool, not by several degrees--not +even Hawkeye's. Toddles hated Hawkeye like poison; and his hate, apart +from daily annoyances, was deep-seated. It was Hawkeye who had dubbed +him "Toddles." And Toddles repudiated the name with his heart, his +soul--and his fists. + +Toddles wasn't anybody's fool, whatever the division thought, and he +was right down to the basic root of things from the start. Coupled +with the stunted growth that nature in a miserly mood had doled out to +him, none knew better than himself that the name of "Toddles," keeping +that nature stuff patently before everybody's eyes, damned him in his +aspirations for a bona fide railroad career. Other boys got a job and +got their feet on the ladder as call-boys, or in the roundhouse; +Toddles got--a grin. Toddles pestered everybody for a job. He +pestered Carleton, the super. He pestered Tommy Regan, the master +mechanic. Every time that he saw anybody in authority Toddles spoke up +for a job, he was in deadly earnest--and got a grin. Toddles with a +basket of unripe fruit and stale chocolates and his "best-seller" voice +was one thing; but Toddles as anything else was just--Toddles. + +Toddles repudiated the name, and did it forcefully. Not that he +couldn't take his share of a bit of guying, but because he felt that he +was face to face with a vital factor in the career he longed for--so he +fought. And if nature had been niggardly in one respect, she had been +generous in others; Toddles, for all his size, possessed the heart of a +lion and the strength of a young ox, and he used both, with black and +bloody effect, on the eyes and noses of the call-boys and younger +element who called him Toddles. He fought it all along the line--at +the drop of the hat--at a whisper of "Toddles." There wasn't a day +went by that Toddles wasn't in a row; and the women, the mothers of the +defeated warriors whose eyes were puffed and whose noses trickled +crimson, denounced him in virulent language over their washtubs and the +back fences of Big Cloud. You see, they didn't understand him, so they +called him a "bad one," and, being from the East and not one of +themselves, "a New York gutter snipe." + +But, for all that, the name stuck. Up and down through the Rockies it +was--Toddles. Toddles, with the idea of getting a lay-over on a +siding, even went to the extent of signing himself in full--Christopher +Hyslop Hoogan--every time his signature was in order; but the official +documents in which he was concerned, being of a private nature between +himself and the News Company, did not, in the very nature of things, +have much effect on the Hill Division. Certainly the big fellows never +knew he had any name but Toddles--and cared less. But they knew him as +Toddles, all right! All of them did, every last one of them! Toddles +was everlastingly and eternally bothering them for a job. Any kind of +a job, no matter what, just so it was real railroading, and so a fellow +could line up with everybody else when the paycar came along, and look +forward to being something some day. + +Toddles, with time, of course, grew older, up to about seventeen or so, +but he didn't grow any bigger--not enough to make it noticeable! Even +Toddles' voice wouldn't break--it was his young heart that did all the +breaking there was done. Not that he ever showed it. No one ever saw +a tear in the boy's eyes. It was clenched fists for Toddles, clenched +fists and passionate attack. And therein, while Toddles had grasped +the basic truth that his nickname militated against his ambitions, he +erred in another direction that was equally fundamental, if not more so. + +And here, it was Bob Donkin, the night despatcher, as white a man as +his record after years of train-handling was white, a railroad man from +the ground up if there ever was one, and one of the best, who set +Toddles-- But we'll come to that presently. We've got our "clearance" +now, and we're off with "rights" through. + +No. 83, Hawkeye's train--and Toddles'--scheduled Big Cloud on the +eastbound run at 9.05; and, on the night the story opens, they were +about an hour away from the little mountain town that was the +divisional point, as Toddles, his basket of edibles in the crook of his +arm, halted in the forward end of the second-class smoker to examine +again the fistful of change that he dug out of his pants pocket with +his free hand. + +Toddles was in an unusually bad humor, and he scowled. With exceeding +deftness he separated one of the coins from the others, using his +fingers like the teeth of a rake, and dropped the rest back jingling +into his pocket. The coin that remained he put into his mouth, and bit +on it--hard. His scowl deepened. Somebody had presented Toddles with +a lead quarter. + +It wasn't so much the quarter, though Toddles' salary wasn't so big as +some people's who would have felt worse over it, it was his _amour +propre_ that was touched--deeply. It wasn't often that any one could +put so bald a thing as lead money across on Toddles. Toddles' mind +harked back along the aisles of the cars behind him. He had only made +two sales that round, and he had changed a quarter each time--for the +pretty girl with the big picture hat, who had giggled at him when she +bought a package of chewing gum; and the man with the three-carat +diamond tie-pin in the parlor car, a little more than on the edge of +inebriety, who had got on at the last stop, and who had bought a cigar +from him. + +Toddles thought it over for a bit; decided he wouldn't have a fuss with +a girl anyway, balked at a parlor car fracas with a drunk, dropped the +coin back into his pocket, and went on into the combination baggage and +express car. Here, just inside the door, was Toddles', or, rather, the +News Company's chest. Toddles lifted the lid; and then his eyes +shifted slowly and travelled up the car. Things were certainly going +badly with Toddles that night. + +There were four men in the car: Bob Donkin, coming back from a holiday +trip somewhere up the line; MacNicoll, the baggage-master; Nulty, the +express messenger--and Hawkeye. Toddles' inventory of the contents of +the chest had been hurried--but intimate. A small bunch of six bananas +was gone, and Hawkeye was munching them unconcernedly. It wasn't the +first time the big, hulking, six-foot conductor had pilfered the boy's +chest, not by many--and never paid for the pilfering. That was +Hawkeye's idea of a joke. + +Hawkeye was talking to Nulty, elaborately simulating ignorance of +Toddles' presence--and he was talking about Toddles. + +"Sure," said Hawkeye, his mouth full of banana, "he'll be a great +railroad man some day! He's the stuff they're made of! You can see it +sticking out all over him! He's only selling peanuts now till he grows +up and----" + +Toddles put down his basket and planted himself before the conductor. + +"You pay for those bananas," said Toddles in a low voice--which was +high. + +"When'll he grow up?" continued Hawkeye, peeling more fruit. "I don't +know--you've got me. The first time I saw him two years ago, I'm +hanged if he wasn't bigger than he is now--guess he grows backwards. +Have a banana?" He offered one to Nulty, who refused it. "You pay for +those bananas, you big stiff!" squealed Toddles belligerently. + +Hawkeye turned his head slowly and turned his little beady, black eyes +on Toddles, then he turned with a wink to the others, and for the first +time in two years offered payment. He fished into his pocket and +handed Toddles a twenty-dollar bill--there always was a mean streak in +Hawkeye, more or less of a bully, none too well liked, and whose name +on the payroll, by the way, was Reynolds. + +"Take fifteen cents out of that," he said, with no idea that the boy +could change the bill. + +For a moment Toddles glared at the yellow-back, then a thrill of unholy +glee came to Toddles. He could just about make it, business all around +had been pretty good that day, particularly on the run west in the +morning. + +Hawkeye went on with the exposition of his idea of humor at Toddles' +expense; and Toddles went back to his chest and his reserve funds. +Toddles counted out eighteen dollars in bills, made a neat pile of four +quarters--the lead one on the bottom--another neat pile of the odd +change, and returned to Hawkeye. The lead quarter wouldn't go very far +toward liquidating Hawkeye's long-standing indebtedness--but it would +help some. + +Hawkeye counted the bills carefully, and crammed them into his pocket. +Toddles dropped the neat little pile of quarters into Hawkeye's +hand--they counted themselves--and Hawkeye put those in his pocket. +Toddles counted out the odd change piece by piece, and as Hawkeye put +_that_ in his pocket--Toddles put his fingers to his nose. + +Queer, isn't it--the way things happen? Think of a man's whole life, +aspirations, hopes, ambitions, everything, pivoting on--a lead quarter! +But then they say that opportunity knocks once at the door of every +man; and, if that be true, let it be remarked in passing that Toddles +wasn't deaf! + +Hawkeye, making Toddles a target for a parting gibe, took up his +lantern and started through the train to pick up the fares from the +last stop. In due course he halted before the inebriated one with the +glittering tie-pin in the smoking compartment of the parlor car. + +"Ticket, please," said Hawkeye. + +"Too busy to buysh ticket," the man informed him, with heavy +confidence. "Whash fare Loon Dam to Big Cloud?" + +"One-fifty," said Hawkeye curtly. + +The man produced a roll of bills, and from the roll extracted a +two-dollar note. + +Hawkeye handed him back two quarters, and started to punch a cash-fare +slip. He looked up to find the man holding out one of the quarters +insistently, if somewhat unsteadily. + +"What's the matter?" demanded Hawkeye brusquely. + +"Bad," said the man. + +A drummer grinned; and an elderly gentleman, from his magazine, looked +up inquiringly over his spectacles. + +"Bad!" Hawkeye brought his elbow sharply around to focus his lamp on +the coin; then he leaned over and rang it on the window sill--only it +wouldn't ring. It was indubitably bad. Hawkeye, however, was dealing +with a drunk--and Hawkeye always did have a mean streak in him. + +"It's perfectly good," he asserted gruffly. + +The man rolled an eye at the conductor that mingled a sudden shrewdness +and anger, and appealed to his fellow travellers. The verdict was +against Hawkeye, and Hawkeye ungraciously pocketed the lead piece and +handed over another quarter. + +"Shay," observed the inebriated one insolently, "shay, conductor, I +don't like you. You thought I was--hic!--s'drunk I wouldn't know--eh? +Thash where you fooled yerself!" + +"What do you mean?" Hawkeye bridled virtuously for the benefit of the +drummer and the old gentleman with the spectacles. + +And then the other began to laugh immoderately. + +"Same ol' quarter," said he. "Same--hic!--ol' quarter back again. +Great system--peanut boy--conductor--hic! Pass it off on one--other +passes it off on some one else. Just passed it off on--hic!--peanut +boy for a joke. Goin' to give him a dollar when he comes back." + +"Oh, you did, did you!" snapped Hawkeye ominously. "And you mean to +insinuate that I deliberately tried to----" + +"Sure!" declared the man heartily. + +"You're a liar!" announced Hawkeye, spluttering mad. "And what's more, +since it came from you, you'll take it back!" He dug into his pocket +for the ubiquitous lead piece. + +"Not--hic!--on your life!" said the man earnestly. "You hang onto it, +old top. I didn't pass it off on you." + +"Haw!" exploded the drummer suddenly. "Haw--haw, haw!" + +And the elderly gentleman smiled. + +Hawkeye's face went red, and then purple. + +"Go 'way!" said the man petulantly. "I don't like you. Go 'way! Go +an' tell peanuts I--hic!--got a dollar for him." + +And Hawkeye went--but Toddles never got the dollar. Hawkeye went out +of the smoking compartment of the parlor car with the lead quarter in +his pocket--because he couldn't do anything else--which didn't soothe +his feelings any--and he went out mad enough to bite himself. The +drummer's guffaw followed him, and he thought he even caught a chuckle +from the elderly party with the magazine and spectacles. + +Hawkeye was mad; and he was quite well aware, painfully well aware that +he had looked like a fool, which is about one of the meanest feelings +there is to feel; and, as he made his way forward through the train, he +grew madder still. That change was the change from his twenty-dollar +bill. He had not needed to be told that the lead quarter had come from +Toddles. The only question at all in doubt was whether or not Toddles +had put the counterfeit coin over on him knowingly and with malice +aforethought. Hawkeye, however, had an intuition deep down inside of +him that there wasn't any doubt even about that, and as he opened the +door of the baggage car his intuition was vindicated. There was a grin +on the faces of Nulty, MacNicoll and Bob Donkin that disappeared with +suspicious celerity at sight of him as he came through the door. + +There was no hesitation then on Hawkeye's part. Toddles, equipped for +another excursion through the train with a stack of magazines and books +that almost hid him, received a sudden and vicious clout on the side of +the ear. + +"You'd try your tricks on me, would you?" Hawkeye snarled. "Lead +quarters--eh?" Another clout. "I'll teach you, you blasted little +runt!" + +And with the clouts, the stack of carefully balanced periodicals went +flying over the floor; and with the clouts, the nagging, and the +hectoring, and the bullying, that had rankled for close on two years in +Toddles' turbulent soul, rose in a sudden all-possessing sweep of fury. +Toddles was a fighter--with the heart of a fighter. And Toddles' cause +was just. He couldn't reach the conductor's face--so he went for +Hawkeye's legs. And the screams of rage from his high-pitched voice, +as he shot himself forward, sounded like a cageful of Australian +cockatoos on the rampage. + +Toddles was small, pitifully small for his age; but he wasn't an infant +in arms--not for a minute. And in action Toddles was as near to a wild +cat as anything else that comes handy by way of illustration. Two legs +and one arm he twined and twisted around Hawkeye's legs; and the other +arm, with a hard and knotty fist on the end of it, caught the conductor +a wicked jab in the region of the bottom button of the vest. The brass +button peeled the skin off Toddles' knuckles, but the jab doubled the +conductor forward, and coincident with Hawkeye's winded grunt, the +lantern in his hand sailed ceilingwards, crashed into the center lamps +in the roof of the car, and down in a shower of tinkling glass, +dripping oil and burning wicks, came the wreckage to the floor. + +There was a yell from Nulty; but Toddles hung on like grim death. +Hawkeye was bawling fluent profanity and seeing red. Toddles heard one +and sensed the other--and he clung grimly on. He was all doubled up +around Hawkeye's knees, and in that position Hawkeye couldn't get at +him very well; and, besides, Toddles had his own plan of battle. He +was waiting for an extra heavy lurch of the car. + +It came. Toddles' muscles strained legs and arms and back in concert, +and for an instant across the car they tottered, Hawkeye staggering in +a desperate attempt to maintain his equilibrium--and then +down--speaking generally, on a heterogeneous pile of express parcels; +concretely, with an eloquent squnch, on a crate of eggs, thirty dozen +of them, at forty cents a dozen. + +Toddles, over his rage, experienced a sickening sense of disaster, but +still he clung; he didn't dare let go. Hawkeye's fists, both in an +effort to recover himself and in an endeavor to reach Toddles, were +going like a windmill; and Hawkeye's threats were something terrifying +to listen to. And now they rolled over, and Toddles was underneath; +and then they rolled over again; and then a hand locked on Toddles' +collar, and he was yanked, terrier-fashion, to his feet. + +His face white and determined, his fists doubled, Toddles waited for +Hawkeye to get up--the word "run" wasn't in Toddles' vocabulary. He +hadn't long to wait. + +Hawkeye lunged up, draped in the broken crate--a sight. The road +always prided itself on the natty uniforms of its train crews, but +Hawkeye wasn't dressed in uniform then--mostly egg yolks. He made a +dash for Toddles, but he never reached the boy. Bob Donkin was between +them. + +"Cut it out!" said Donkin coldly, as he pushed Toddles behind him. +"You asked for it, Reynolds, and you got it. Now cut it out!" + +And Hawkeye "cut it out." It was pretty generally understood that Bob +Donkin never talked much for show, and Bob Donkin was bigger than +Toddles, a whole lot bigger, as big as Hawkeye himself. Hawkeye "cut +it out." + +Funny, the egg part of it? Well, perhaps. But the fire wasn't. True, +they got it out with the help of the hand extinguishers before it did +any serious damage, for Nulty had gone at it on the jump; but while it +lasted the burning oil on the car floor looked dangerous. Anyway, it +was bad enough so that they couldn't hide it when they got into Big +Cloud--and Hawkeye and Toddles went on the carpet for it the next +morning in the super's office. + +Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, reached for a match, and, to keep his lips +straight, clamped them firmly on the amber mouthpiece of his brier, and +stumpy, big-paunched Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who was sitting +in a chair by the window, reached hurriedly into his back pocket for +his chewing and looked out of the window to hide a grin, as the two +came in and ranged themselves in front of the super's desk--Hawkeye, +six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds, with Toddles trailing him, +mostly cap and buttons and no weight at all. + +Carleton didn't ask many questions--he'd asked them before--of Bob +Donkin--and the despatcher hadn't gone out of his way to invest the +conductor with any glorified halo. Carleton, always a strict +disciplinarian, said what he had to say and said it quietly; but he +meant to let the conductor have the worst of it, and he did--in a way +that was all Carleton's own. Two years' picking on a youngster didn't +appeal to Carleton, no matter who the youngster was. Before he was +half through he had the big conductor squirming. Hawkeye was looking +for something else--besides a galling and matter-of-fact impartiality +that accepted himself and Toddles as being on exactly the same plane +and level. + +"There's a case of eggs," said Carleton at the end. "You can divide up +the damage between you. And I'm going to change your runs, unless +you've got some good reason to give me why I shouldn't?" + +He waited for an answer. + +Hawkeye, towering, sullen, his eyes resting bitterly on Regan, having +caught the master mechanic's grin, said nothing; Toddles, whose head +barely showed over the top of Carleton's desk, and the whole of him +sizing up about big enough to go into the conductor's pocket, was +equally silent--Toddles was thinking of something else. + +"Very good," said Carleton suavely, as he surveyed the ridiculous +incongruity before him. "I'll change your runs, then. I can't have +you two men brawling and prize-fighting every trip." + +There was a sudden sound from the window, as though Regan had got some +of his blackstrap juice down the wrong way. + +Hawkeye's face went black as thunder. + +Carleton's face was like a sphinx. + +"That'll do, then," he said. "You can go, both of you." + +Hawkeye stamped out of the room and down the stairs. But Toddles +stayed. + +"Please, Mr. Carleton, won't you give me a job on----" Toddles stopped. + +So had Regan's chuckle. Toddles, the irrepressible, was at it +again--and Toddles after a job, any kind of a job, was something that +Regan's experience had taught him to fly from without standing on the +order of his flight. Regan hurried from the room. + +Toddles watched him go--kind of speculatively, kind of reproachfully. +Then he turned to Carleton. + +"Please give me a job, Mr. Carleton," he pleaded. "Give me a job, +won't you?" + +It was only yesterday on the platform that Toddles had waylaid the +super with the same demand--and about, every day before that as far +back as Carleton could remember. It was hopelessly chronic. Anything +convincing or appealing about it had gone long ago--Toddles said it +parrot-fashion now. Carleton took refuge in severity. + +"See here, young man," he said grimly, "you were brought into this +office for a reprimand and not to apply for a job! You can thank your +stars and Bob Donkin you haven't lost the one you've got. Now, get +out!" + +"I'd make good if you gave me one," said Toddles earnestly. "Honest, I +would, Mr. Carleton." + +"Get out!" said the super, not altogether unkindly. "I'm busy." + +Toddles swallowed a lump in his throat--but not until after his head +was turned and he'd started for the door so the super couldn't see it. +Toddles swallowed the lump--and got out. He hadn't expected anything +else, of course. The refusals were just as chronic as the demands. +But that didn't make each new one any easier for Toddles. It made it +worse. + +Toddles' heart was heavy as he stepped out into the hall, and the iron +was in his soul. He was seventeen now, and it looked as though he +never would get a chance--except to be a newsboy all his life. Toddles +swallowed another lump. He loved railroading; it was his one ambition, +his one desire. If he could ever get a chance, he'd show them! He'd +show them that he wasn't a joke, just because he was small! + +Toddles turned at the head of the stairs to go down, when somebody +called his name. + +"Here--Toddles! Come here!" + +Toddles looked over his shoulder, hesitated, then marched in through +the open door of the despatchers' room. Bob Donkin was alone there. + +"What's your name--Toddles?" inquired Donkin, as Toddles halted before +the despatcher's table. + +Toddles froze instantly--hard. His fists doubled; there was a smile on +Donkin's face. Then his fists slowly uncurled; the smile on Donkin's +face had broadened, but there wasn't any malice in the smile. + +"Christopher Hyslop Hoogan," said Toddles, unbending. + +Donkin put his hand quickly to his mouth--and coughed. + +"Um-m!" said he pleasantly. "Super hard on you this morning--Hoogan?" + +And with the words Toddles' heart went out to the big despatcher: +"Hoogan"--and a man-to-man tone. + +"No," said Toddles cordially. "Say, I thought you were on the night +trick." + +"Double-shift--short-handed," replied Donkin. "Come from New York, +don't you?" + +"Yes," said Toddles. + +"Mother and father down there still?" + +It came quick and unexpected, and Toddles stared for a moment. Then he +walked over to the window. + +"I haven't got any," he said. + +There wasn't any sound for an instant, save the clicking of the +instruments; then Donkin spoke again--a little gruffly: + +"When are you going to quit making an ass of yourself?" + +Toddles swung from the window, hurt. Donkin, after all, was like all +the rest of them. + +"Well?" prompted the despatcher. + +"You go to blazes!" said Toddles bitterly, and started for the door. + +Donkin halted him. + +"You're only fooling yourself, Hoogan," he said coolly. "If you wanted +what you call a real railroad job as much as you pretend you do, you'd +get one." + +"Eh?" demanded Toddles defiantly; and went back to the table. + +"A fellow," said Donkin, putting a little sting into his words, "never +got anywhere by going around with a chip on his shoulder fighting +everybody because they called him Toddles, and making a nuisance of +himself with the Big Fellows until they got sick of the sight of him." + +It was a pretty stiff arraignment. Toddles choked over it, and the +angry blood flushed to his cheeks. + +"That's all right for you!" he spluttered out hotly. "You don't look +too small for the train crews or the roundhouse, and they don't call +you Toddles so's nobody 'll forget it. What'd you do?" + +"I'll tell you what I'd do," said Donkin quietly. "I'd make everybody +on the division wish their own name was Toddles before I was through +with them, and I'd _make_ a job for myself." + +Toddles blinked helplessly. + +"Getting right down to a cash fare," continued Donkin, after a moment, +as Toddles did not speak, "they're not so far wrong, either, about you +sizing up pretty small for the train crews or the roundhouse, are they?" + +"No-o," admitted Toddles reluctantly; "but----" + +"Then why not something where there's no handicap hanging over you?" +suggested the despatcher--and his hand reached out and touched the +sender. "The key, for instance?" + +"But I don't know anything about it," said Toddles, still helplessly. + +"That's just it," returned Donkin smoothly. "You never tried to learn." + +Toddles' eyes widened, and into Toddles' heart leaped a sudden joy. A +new world seemed to open out before him in which aspirations, +ambitions, longings all were a reality. A key! That was real +railroading, the top-notch of railroading, too. First an operator, and +then a despatcher, and--and--and then his face fell, and the vision +faded. + +"How'd I get a chance to learn?" he said miserably. "Who'd teach me?" + +The smile was back on Donkin's face as he pushed his chair from the +table, stood up, and held out his hand--man-to-man fashion. + +"I will," he said. "I liked your grit last night, Hoogan. And if you +want to be a railroad man, I'll make you one--before I'm through. I've +some old instruments you can have to practise with, and I've nothing to +do in my spare time. What do you say?" + +Toddles didn't say anything. For the first time since Toddles' advent +to the Hill Division, there were tears in Toddles' eyes for some one +else to see. + +Donkin laughed. + +"All right, old man, you're on. See that you don't throw me down. And +keep your mouth shut; you'll need all your wind. It's work that +counts, and nothing else. Now chase yourself! I'll dig up the things +you'll need, and you can drop in here and get them when you come off +your run to-night." + +Spare time! Bob Donkin didn't have any spare time those days! But +that was Donkin's way. Spence sick, and two men handling the +despatching where three had handled it before, didn't leave Bob Donkin +much spare time--not much. But a boost for the kid was worth a +sacrifice. Donkin went at it as earnestly as Toddles did--and Toddles +was in deadly earnest. + +When Toddles left the despatcher's office that morning with Donkin's +promise to teach him the key, Toddles had a hazy idea that Donkin had +wings concealed somewhere under his coat and was an angel in disguise; +and at the end of two weeks he was sure of it. But at the end of a +month Bob Donkin was a god! Throw Bob Donkin down! Toddles would have +sold his soul for the despatcher. + +It wasn't easy, though; and Bob Donkin wasn't an easy-going taskmaster, +not by long odds. Donkin had a tongue, and on occasions could use it. +Short and quick in his explanations, he expected his pupil to get it +short and quick; either that, or Donkin's opinion of him. But Toddles +stuck. He'd have crawled on his knees for Donkin anywhere, and he +worked like a major--not only for his own advancement, but for what he +came to prize quite as much, if not more, Donkin's approval. + +Toddles, mindful of Donkin's words, didn't fight so much as the days +went by, though he found it difficult to swear off all at once; and on +his runs he studied his Morse code, and he had the "calls" of every +station on the division off by heart right from the start. Toddles +mastered the "sending" by leaps and bounds; but the "taking" came +slower, as it does for everybody--but even at that, at the end of six +weeks, if it wasn't thrown at him too fast and hard, Toddles could get +it after a fashion. + +Take it all around, Toddles felt like whistling most of the time; and, +pleased with his own progress, looked forward to starting in presently +as a full-fledged operator. He mentioned the matter to Bob +Donkin--once. Donkin picked his words and spoke fervently. Toddles +never brought the subject up again. + +And so things went on. Late summer turned to early fall, and early +fall to still sharper weather, until there came the night that the +operator at Blind River muddled his orders and gave No. 73, the +westbound fast freight, her clearance against the second section of the +eastbound Limited that doomed them to meet somewhere head-on in the +Glacier Caņon; the night that Toddles--but there's just a word or two +that comes before. + +When it was all over, it was up to Sam Beale, the Blind River operator, +straight enough. Beale blundered. That's all there was to it; that +covers it all--he blundered. It would have finished Beale's railroad +career forever and a day--only Beale played the man, and the instant he +realized what he had done, even while the tail lights of the freight +were disappearing down the track and he couldn't stop her, he was +stammering the tale of his mistake over the wire, the sweat beads +dripping from his wrist, his face gray with horror, to Bob Donkin under +the green-shaded lamp in the despatchers' room at Big Cloud, miles away. + +Donkin got the miserable story over the chattering wire--got it before +it was half told--cut Beale out and began to pound the Gap call. And +as though it were before him in reality, that stretch of track, fifteen +miles of it, from Blind River to the Gap, unfolded itself like a grisly +panorama before his mind. There wasn't a half mile of tangent at a +single stretch in the whole of it. It swung like the writhings of a +snake, through cuts and tunnels, hugging the caņon walls, twisting this +way and that. Anywhere else there might be a chance, one in a thousand +even, that they would see each other's headlights in time--here it was +disaster quick and absolute. + +Donkin's lips were set in a thin, straight line. The Gap answered him; +and the answer was like the knell of doom. He had not expected +anything else; he had only hoped against hope. The second section of +the Limited had pulled out of the Gap, eastbound, two minutes before. +The two trains were in the open against each other's orders. + +In the next room, Carleton and Regan, over their pipes, were at their +nightly game of pedro. Donkin called them--and his voice sounded +strange to himself. Chairs scraped and crashed to the floor, and an +instant later the super and the master mechanic were in the room. + +"What's wrong, Bob?" Carleton flung the words from him in a single +breath. + +Donkin told them. But his fingers were on the key again as he talked. +There was still one chance, worse than the thousand-to-one shot; but it +was the only one. Between the Gap and Blind River, eight miles from +the Gap, seven miles from Blind River, was Cassil's Siding. But there +was no night man at Cassil's, and the little town lay a mile from the +station. It was ten o'clock--Donkin's watch lay face up on the table +before him--the day man at Cassil's went off at seven--the chance was +that the day man might have come back to the station for something or +other! + +Not much of a chance? No--not much! It was a possibility, that was +all; and Donkin's fingers worked--the seventeen, the life and +death--calling, calling on the night trick to the day man at Cassil's +Siding. + +Carleton came and stood at Donkin's elbow, and Regan stood at the +other; and there was silence now, save only for the key that, under +Donkin's fingers, seemed to echo its stammering appeal about the room +like the sobbing of a human soul. + +"CS--CS--CS," Donkin called; and then, "the seventeen," and then, "hold +second Number Two." And then the same thing over and over again. + +And there was no answer. + +It had turned cold that night and there was a fire in the little +heater. Donkin had opened the draft a little while before, and the +sheet-iron sides now began to pur red-hot. Nobody noticed it. Regan's +kindly, good-humored face had the stamp of horror in it, and he pulled +at his scraggly brown mustache, his eyes seemingly fascinated by +Donkin's fingers. Everybody's eyes, the three of them, were on +Donkin's fingers and the key. Carleton was like a man of stone, +motionless, his face set harder than face was ever carved in marble. + +It grew hot in the room; but Donkin's fingers were like ice on the key, +and, strong man though he was, he faltered. + +"Oh, my God!" he whispered--and never a prayer rose more fervently from +lips than those three broken words. + +Again he called, and again, and again. The minutes slipped away. +Still he called--with the life and death--the "seventeen"--called and +called. And there was no answer save that echo in the room that +brought the perspiration streaming now from Regan's face, a harder +light into Carleton's eyes, and a chill like death into Donkin's heart. + +Suddenly Donkin pushed back his chair; and his fingers, from the key, +touched the crystal of his watch. + +"The second section will have passed Cassil's now," he said in a +curious, unnatural, matter-of-fact tone. "It'll bring them together +about a mile east of there--in another minute." + +And then Carleton spoke--master railroader, "Royal" Carleton, it was up +to him then, all the pity of it, the ruin, the disaster, the lives out, +all the bitterness to cope with as he could. And it was in his eyes, +all of it. But his voice was quiet. It rang quick, peremptory, his +voice--but quiet. + +"Clear the line, Bob," he said. "Plug in the roundhouse for the +wrecker--and tell them to send uptown for the crew." + +Toddles? What did Toddles have to do with this? Well, a good deal, in +one way and another. We're coming to Toddles now. You see, Toddles, +since his fracas with Hawkeye, had been put on the Elk River local run +that left Big Cloud at 9.45 in the morning for the run west, and +scheduled Big Cloud again on the return trip at 10.10 in the evening. + +It had turned cold that night, after a day of rain. Pretty cold--the +thermometer can drop on occasions in the late fall in the +mountains--and by eight o'clock, where there had been rain before, +there was now a thin sheeting of ice over everything--very thin--you +know the kind--rails and telegraph wires glistening like the +decorations on a Christmas tree--very pretty--and also very nasty +running on a mountain grade. Likewise, the rain, in a way rain has, +had dripped from the car roofs to the platforms--the local did not +boast any closed vestibules--and had also been blown upon the car steps +with the sweep of the wind, and, having frozen, it stayed there. Not a +very serious matter; annoying, perhaps, but not serious, demanding a +little extra caution, that was all. + +Toddles was in high fettle that night. He had been getting on famously +of late; even Bob Donkin had admitted it. Toddles, with his stack of +books and magazines, an unusually big one, for a number of the new +periodicals were out that day, was dreaming rosy dreams to himself as +he started from the door of the first-class smoker to the door of the +first-class coach. In another hour now he'd be up in the despatcher's +room at Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with Bob Donkin. He could +see Bob Donkin there now; and he could hear the big despatcher growl at +him in his bluff way: "Use your head--use your head--_Hoogan_!" It was +always "Hoogan," never "Toddles." "Use your head"--Donkin was +everlastingly drumming that into him; for the despatcher used to +confront him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and +demand Toddles' instant solution. Toddles realized that Donkin was +getting to the heart of things, and that some day he, Toddles, would be +a great despatcher--like Donkin. "Use your head, Hoogan"--that's the +way Donkin talked--"anybody can learn a key, but that doesn't make a +railroad man out of him. It's the man when trouble comes who can think +quick and think _right_. Use your----" + +Toddles stepped out on the platform--and walked on ice. But that +wasn't Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles was that he was +walking on air at the same time. It was treacherous running, they were +nosing a curve, and in the cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with +a little jerk at the "air." And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and +with the slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals +shifted, and they bulged ominously from the middle. Toddles grabbed at +them--and his heels went out from under him. He ricochetted down the +steps, snatched desperately at the handrail, missed it, shot out from +the train, and, head, heels, arms and body going every which way at +once, rolled over and over down the embankment. And, starting from the +point of Toddles' departure from the train, the right of way for a +hundred yards was strewn with "the latest magazines" and "new books +just out to-day." + +Toddles lay there, a little, curled, huddled heap, motionless in the +darkness. The tail lights of the local disappeared. No one aboard +would miss Toddles until they got into Big Cloud--and found him gone. +Which is Irish for saying that no one would attempt to keep track of a +newsboy's idiosyncrasies on a train; it would be asking too much of any +train crew; and, besides, there was no mention of it in the rules. + +It was a long while before Toddles stirred; a very long while before +consciousness crept slowly back to him. Then he moved, tried to get +up--and fell back with a quick, sharp cry of pain. He lay still, then, +for a moment. His ankle hurt him frightfully, and his back, and his +shoulder, too. He put his hand to his face where something seemed to +be trickling warm--and brought it away wet. Toddles, grim little +warrior, tried to think. They hadn't been going very fast when he fell +off. If they had, he would have been killed. As it was, he was hurt, +badly hurt, and his head swam, nauseating him. + +Where was he? Was he near any help? He'd have to get help somewhere, +or--or with the cold and--and everything he'd probably die out here +before morning. Toddles shouted out--again and again. Perhaps his +voice was too weak to carry very far; anyway, there was no reply. + +He looked up at the top of the embankment, clamped his teeth, and +started to crawl. If he got up there, perhaps he could tell where he +was. It had taken Toddles a matter of seconds to roll down; it took +him ten minutes of untold agony to get up. Then he dashed his hand +across his eyes where the blood was, and cried a little with the surge +of relief. East, down the track, only a few yards away, the green eye +of a switch lamp winked at him. + +Where there was a switch lamp there was a siding, and where there was a +siding there was promise of a station. Toddles, with the sudden uplift +upon him, got to his feet and started along the track--two steps--and +went down again. He couldn't walk, the pain was more than he could +bear--his right ankle, his left shoulder, and his back--hopping only +made it worse--it was easier to crawl. + +And so Toddles crawled. + +It took him a long time even to pass the switch light. The pain made +him weak, his senses seemed to trail off giddily every now and then, +and he'd find himself lying flat and still beside the track. It was a +white, drawn face that Toddles lifted up each time he started on +again--miserably white, except where the blood kept trickling from his +forehead. + +And then Toddles' heart, stout as it was, seemed to snap. He had +reached the station platform, wondering vaguely why the little building +that loomed ahead was dark--and now it came to him in a flash, as he +recognized the station. It was Cassil's Siding--_and there was no +night man at Cassil's Siding_! The switch lights were lit before the +day man left, of course. Everything swam before Toddles' eyes. +There--there was no help here. And yet--yet perhaps--desperate hope +came again--perhaps there might be. The pain was terrible--all over +him. And--and he'd got so weak now--but it wasn't far to the door. + +Toddles squirmed along the platform, and reached the door finally--only +to find it shut and fastened. And then Toddles fainted on the +threshold. + +When Toddles came to himself again, he thought at first that he was up +in the despatcher's room at Big Cloud with Bob Donkin pounding away on +the battered old key they used to practise with--only there seemed to +be something the matter with the key, and it didn't sound as loud as it +usually did--it seemed to come from a long way off somehow. And then, +besides, Bob was working it faster than he had ever done before when +they were practising. "Hold second"--second something--Toddles +couldn't make it out. Then the "seventeen"--yes, he knew that--that +was the life and death. Bob was going pretty quick, though. Then +"CS--CS--CS"--Toddles' brain fumbled a bit over that--then it came to +him. CS was the call for Cassil's Siding. _Cassil's Siding_! +Toddles' head came up with a jerk. + +A little cry burst from Toddles' lips--and his brain, cleared. He +wasn't at Big Cloud at all--he was at Cassil's Siding--and he was +hurt--and that was the sounder inside calling, calling frantically for +Cassil's Siding---where he was. + +The life and death--_the seventeen_--it sent a thrill through Toddles' +pain-twisted spine. He wriggled to the window. It, too, was closed, +of course, but he could hear better there. The sounder was babbling +madly. + +"Hold second----" + +He missed it again--and as, on top of it, the "seventeen" came +pleading, frantic, urgent, he wrung his hands. + +"Hold second"--he got it this time--"Number Two." + +Toddles' first impulse was to smash in the window and reach the key. +And then, like a dash of cold water over him, Donkin's words seemed to +ring in his ears: "Use your head." + +With the "seventeen" it meant a matter of minutes, perhaps even +seconds. Why smash the window? Why waste the moment required to do it +simply to answer the call? The order stood for itself--"Hold second +Number Two." That was the second section of the Limited, east-bound. +Hold her! How? There was nothing--not a thing to stop her with. "Use +your head," said Donkin in a far-away voice to Toddles' wobbling brain. + +Toddles looked up the track--west--where he had come from--to where the +switch light twinkled green at him--and, with a little sob, he started +to drag himself back along the platform. If he could throw the switch, +it would throw the light from green to red, and--and the Limited would +take the siding. But the switch was a long way off. + +Toddles half fell, half bumped from the end of the platform to the +right of way. He cried to himself with low moans as he went along. He +had the heart of a fighter, and grit to the last tissue; but he needed +it all now--needed it all to stand the pain and fight the weakness that +kept swirling over him in flashes. + +On he went, on his hands and knees, slithering from tie to tie---and +from one tie to the next was a great distance. The life and death, the +despatcher's call--he seemed to hear it yet--throbbing, throbbing on +the wire. + +On he went, up the track; and the green eye of the lamp, winking at +him, drew nearer. And then suddenly, clear and mellow through the +mountains, caught up and echoed far and near, came the notes of a chime +whistle ringing down the gorge. + +Fear came upon Toddles then, and a great sob shook him. That was the +Limited coming now! Toddles' fingers dug into the ballast, and he +hurried--that is, in bitter pain, he tried to crawl a little faster. +And as he crawled, he kept his eyes strained up the track--she wasn't +in sight yet around the curve--not yet, anyway. + +Another foot, only another foot, and he would reach the siding +switch--in time--in plenty of time. Again the sob--but now in a burst +of relief that, for the moment, made him forget his hurts. He was in +time! + +He flung himself at the switch lever, tugged upon it--and then, +trembling, every ounce of remaining strength seeming to ooze from him, +he covered his face with his hands. It was _locked_--padlocked. + +Came a rumble now--a distant roar, growing louder and louder, +reverberating down the caņon walls--louder and louder--nearer and +nearer. "Hold second Number Two. Hold second Number Two"--the +"seventeen," the life and death, pleading with him to hold Number Two. +And she was coming now, coming--and--and--the switch was locked. The +deadly nausea racked Toddles again; there was nothing to do +now--nothing. He couldn't stop her--couldn't stop her. He'd--he'd +tried--very hard--and--and he couldn't stop her now. He took his hands +from his face, and stole a glance up the track, afraid almost, with the +horror that was upon him, to look. She hadn't swung the curve yet, but +she would in a minute--and come pounding down the stretch at fifty +miles an hour, shoot by him like a rocket to where, somewhere ahead, in +some form, he did not know what, only knew that it was there, death and +ruin and---- + +"_Use your head!_" snapped Donkin's voice to his consciousness. + +Toddles' eyes were on the light above his head. It blinked _red_ at +him as he stood on the track facing it; the green rays were shooting up +and down the line. He couldn't swing the switch--but the _lamp_ was +there--and there was the red side to show just by turning it. He +remembered then that the lamp fitted into a socket at the top of the +switch stand, and could be lifted off--if he could reach it! + +It wasn't very high--for an ordinary-sized man--for an ordinary-sized +man had to get at it to trim and fill it daily--only Toddles wasn't an +ordinary-sized man. It was just nine or ten feet above the rails--just +a standard siding switch. + +Toddles gritted his teeth, and climbed upon the base of the switch--and +nearly fainted as his ankle swung against the rod. A foot above the +base was a footrest for a man to stand on and reach up for the lamp, +and Toddles drew himself up and got his foot on it--and then at his +full height the tips of his fingers only just touched the bottom of the +lamp. Toddles cried aloud, and the tears streamed down his face now. +Oh, if he weren't hurt--if he could only shin up another foot--but--but +it was all he could do to hang there where he was. + +_What was that_! He turned his head. Up the track, sweeping in a +great circle as it swung the curve, a headlight's glare cut through the +night--and Toddles "shinned" the foot. He tugged and tore at the lamp, +tugged and tore at it, loosened it, lifted it from its socket, sprawled +and wriggled with it to the ground--and turned the red side of the lamp +against second Number Two. + +The quick, short blasts of a whistle answered, then the crunch and +grind and scream of biting brake-shoes--and the big mountain racer, the +1012, pulling the second section of the Limited that night, stopped +with its pilot nosing a diminutive figure in a torn and silver-buttoned +uniform, whose hair was clotted red, and whose face was covered with +blood and dirt. + +Masters, the engineer, and Pete Leroy, his fireman, swung from the +gangways; Kelly, the conductor, came running up from the forward coach. + +Kelly shoved his lamp into Toddles' face--and whistled low under his +breath. + +"Toddles!" he gasped; and then, quick as a steel trap: "What's wrong?" + +"I don't know," said Toddles weakly. "There's--there's something +wrong. Get into the clear--on the siding." + +"Something wrong," repeated Kelly, "and you don't----" + +But Masters cut the conductor short with a grab at the other's arm that +was like the shutting of a vise--and then bolted for his engine like a +gopher for its hole. From, down the track came the heavy, grumbling +roar of a freight. Everybody flew then, and there was quick work done +in the next half minute--and none too quickly done--the Limited was no +more than on the siding when the fast freight rolled her long string of +flats, boxes and gondolas thundering by. + +And while she passed, Toddles, on the platform, stammered out his story +to Kelly. + +Kelly didn't say anything--then. With the express messenger and a +brakeman carrying Toddles, Kelly kicked in the station door, and set +his lamp down on the operator's table. + +"Hold me up," whispered Toddles--and, while they held him, he made the +despatcher's call. + +Big Cloud answered him on the instant. Haltingly, Toddles reported the +second section "in" and the freight "out"--only he did it very slowly, +and he couldn't think very much more, for things were going black. He +got an order for the Limited to run to Blind River and told Kelly, and +got the "complete"--and then Big Cloud asked who was on the wire, and +Toddles answered that in a mechanical sort of a way without quite +knowing what he was doing--and went limp in Kelly's arms. + +And as Toddles answered, back in Big Cloud, Regan, the sweat still +standing out in great beads on his forehead, fierce now in the +revulsion of relief, glared over Donkin's left shoulder, as Donkin's +left hand scribbled on a pad what was coming over the wire. + +Regan glared fiercely--then he spluttered: + +"Who in hell's Christopher Hyslop Hoogan--h'm?" + +Donkin's lips had a queer smile on them. + +"Toddles," he said. + +Regan sat down heavily in his chair. + +"_What?_" demanded the super. + +"Toddles," said Donkin. "I've been trying to drum a little railroading +into him--on the key." + +Regan wiped his face. He looked helplessly from Donkin to the super, +and then back again at Donkin. + +"But--but what's he doing at Cassil's Siding? How'd he get there--h'm? +H'm? How'd he get there?" + +"I don't know," said Donkin, his fingers rattling the Cassil's Siding +call again. "He doesn't answer any more. We'll have to wait for the +story till they make Blind River, I guess." + +And so they waited. And presently at Blind River, Kelly, dictating to +the operator--not Beale, Beale's day man--told the story. It lost +nothing in the telling--Kelly wasn't that kind of a man--he told them +what Toddles had done, and he left nothing out; and he added that they +had Toddles on a mattress in the baggage car, with a doctor they had +discovered amongst the passengers looking after him. + +At the end, Carleton tamped down the dottle in the bowl of his pipe +thoughtfully with his forefinger--and glanced at Donkin. + +"Got along far enough to take a station key somewhere?" he inquired +casually. "He's made a pretty good job of it as the night operator at +Cassil's." + +Donkin was smiling. + +"Not yet," he said. + +"No?" Carleton's eyebrows went up. "Well, let him come in here with +you, then, till he has; and when you say he's ready, we'll see what we +can do. I guess it's coming to him; and I guess"--he shifted his +glance to the master mechanic--"I guess we'll go down and meet Number +Two when she comes in, Tommy." + +Regan grinned. + +"With our hats in our hands," said the big-hearted master mechanic. + +Donkin shook his head. + +"Don't you do it," he said. "I don't want him to get a swelled head." + +Carleton stared; and Regan's hand, reaching into his back pocket for +his chewing, stopped midway. + +Donkin was still smiling. + +"I'm going to make a railroad man out of Toddles," he said. + + + + +II + +OWSLEY AND THE 1601 + +His name was Owsley--Jake Owsley--and he was a railroad man before ever +he came to Big Cloud and the Hill Division--before ever the Hill +Division was even advanced to the blue-print stage, before steel had +ever spider-webbed the stubborn Rockies, before the Herculean task of +bridging a continent was more than a thought in even the most ambitious +minds. + +Owsley was an engineer, and he came from the East, when they broke +ground at Big Cloud for a start toward the western goal through the +mighty range, a comparatively young man--thirty, or thereabouts. Then, +inch by inch and foot by foot, Owsley, with his ballast cars and his +boxes and his flats bumping material behind him, followed the +construction gangs as they burrowed and blasted and trestled their way +along--day in, day out, month in, month out, until the years went by, +and they were through the Rockies, with the Coast and the blue of the +Pacific in sight. + +First over every bridge and culvert, first through every cut, first +through every tunnel shorn in the bitter gray rock of the mountain +sides, the pilot of Owsley's engine nosed its way; and, when the rough +of the work was over, and in the hysteria of celebration, the toll of +lives, the hardships and the cost were forgotten for the moment, and +the directors and their guests crowded the cab and perched on running +boards and footplates till you couldn't see the bunting they'd draped +the engine with, and the mahogany coaches behind looked like the +striped sticks of candy the kids buy on account of more bunting, and +then some, and the local band they'd brought along from Big Cloud got +the mouthpieces of their trombones and cornets mixed up with the necks +of champagne bottles, and the Indian braves squatted gravely at +different points along the trackside and thought their white brothers +had gone mad, Owsley was at the throttle for the first through run over +the division--it was Owsley's due. + +Then other years went by, and the steel was shaken down into the +permanent right of way that is an engineering marvel to-day, and Owsley +still held a throttle on a through run--just kept growing a little +older, that was all--but one of the best of them, for all +that--steadier than the younger men, wise in experience, and with a +love for his engine that was like the love of a man for a woman. + +It's a strange thing, perhaps, a love like that; but, strange or not, +there was never an engineer worth his salt who hasn't had it--some more +than others, of course--as some men's love for a woman is deeper than +others. With Owsley it came pretty near being the whole thing, and it +was queer enough to see him when they'd change his engine to give him a +newer and more improved type for a running mate. He'd refuse +point-blank at first to be separated from the obsolete engine, that was +either carded for some local jerk-water, mixed-freight run, or for a +construction job somewhere. + +"Leave her with me," he'd say to Regan, the master mechanic. "Leave me +with her. You can give my run to some one else, Regan, d'ye mind? +It's little I care for the swell run; me and the old girl sticks. I'll +have nothing else." + +But the bluff, fat, big-hearted, good-natured, little master mechanic, +knew his man--and he knew an engineer when he saw one. Regan would no +more have thought of letting Owsley get away from the Imperial's +throttle than he would have thought of putting call boys in the cabs to +run his engines. + +"H'm!" he would say, blinking fast at Owsley. "Feel that way, do you? +Well, then, mabbe it's about time you quit altogether. I didn't offer +you your choice, did I? You take the Imperial with what I give you to +take her with--or take nothing. Think it over!" + +And Owsley, perforce, had to "think it over"--and, perforce, he stayed +on the limited run. + +Came then the day when changes in engine types were not so frequent, +and a fair maximum in machine-design efficiency had been obtained--and +Owsley came to love, more than he had ever loved any engine before, his +big, powerful, 1600-class racer, with its four pairs of massive +drivers, that took the curves with the grace of a circling bird, that +laughed in glee at anything lower than a three per cent grade, and +tackled the "fives" with no more than a grunt of disdain--Owsley and +the 1601, right from the start, clipped fifty-five minutes off the +running time of the Imperial Limited through the Rockies, where before +it had been nip and tuck to make the old schedule anywhere near the dot. + +For three years it was Owsley and the 1601; for three years east and +west through the mountains--and a smile in the roundhouse at him as he +nursed and cuddled and groomed his big flyer, in from a run. Not +now--they don't smile now about it. It was Owsley and the 1601 for +three years--and at the end it was still Owsley and the 1601. The two +are coupled together--they never speak of one on the Hill Division +without the other--Owsley and the 1601. + +Owsley! One of the old guard who answered the roll call at the birth +of the Hill Division! Forty years a railroader--call boy at +ten--twenty years of service, counting the construction period, on the +Hill Division! Straight and upright as a young sapling at fifty-odd, +with a swing through the gangway that the younger men tried to imitate; +hair short-cropped, a little grizzled; gray, steady eyes; a beard whose +color, once brown, was nondescript, kind of shading tawny and gray in +streaks; a slim, little man, overalled and jumpered, with greasy, +peaked cap--and, wifeless, without kith or kin save his engine, the +star boarder at Mrs. McCann's short-order house. Liked by everybody, +known by everybody on the division down to the last Polack construction +hand, quiet, no bluster about him, full of good-humored fun, ready to +take his part or do his share in anything going, from a lodge minstrel +show to sitting up all night and playing trained nurse to anybody that +needed one--that was Owsley. + +Oh, you, in your millions, who ride in trains by day and night, do you +ever give a thought to the men into whose keeping you hand your lives? +Does it ever occur to you that they are not just part of the equipment +of iron and wood and steel and rolling things to be accepted callously, +as bought and paid for with the strip of ticket that you hold, animate +only that you may voice your grumblings and your discontent at some +delay that saves you probably from being hurled into eternity while you +chafe impatiently and childishly at something you know nothing +about--that they, like you, are human too, with hopes achieved and +aspirations shattered, and plans and interests in life? Have you ever +thought that there was a human side to railroading, and that--but we +were speaking of Owsley, Jake Owsley, perhaps you'll understand a +little better farther on along the right of way. + +Elbow Bend, were it not for the insurmountable obstacles that Dame +Nature had seen fit to place there--the bed of the Glacier River on one +side and a sheer rock base of mountain on the other--would have been a +black mark against the record of the engineering corps who built the +station. Speaking generally, it's not good railroad practice to put a +station on a curve--when it can be helped. Elbow Bend, the whole of +it, main line and siding, made a curve--that's how it got its name. +And yet, in a way, it wasn't the curve that was to blame; though, too, +in a way, it was--Owsley had a patched eye that night from a bit of +steel that had got into it in the afternoon, nothing much, but a patch +on it to keep the cold and the sweep of the wind out. + +It was the eastbound run, and, to make up for the loss of time a slow +order over new construction work back a dozen miles or so had cost him, +the 1601 was hitting a pretty fast clip as he whistled for Elbow Bend. +Owsley checked just a little as he nosed the curve--the Imperial +Limited made no stop at Elbow Bend--and then, as the 1601 sort of got +her footing, so to speak, on the long bend, he opened her out again, +and the storm of exhausts from her short, stubby stack went echoing +through the mountains like the play of artillery. + +The light of the west-end siding switch flashed by like a scintillating +gem in the darkness. Brannigan, Owsley's fireman, pulled his door, +shooting the cab and the heavens full of leaping, fiery red, and swung +to the tender for a shovelful of coal. Owsley, crouched a little +forward in his seat, his body braced against the cant of the mogul on +the curve, was "feeling" the throttle with careful hand, as he peered +ahead through the cab glass. Came the station lights; the black bulk +of a locomotive, cascading steam from her safety, on the siding; and +then the thundering reverberation as the 1601 began to sweep past a +long, curving line of boxes, flats and gondolas, the end of which +Owsley could not see--for the curve. + +Owsley relaxed a little. That was right--Extra No. 49, west, was to +cross him at Elbow Bend--and she was on the siding as she should be. +His headlight, streaming out at a tangent to the curve, played its ray +kaleidoscopically along the sides of the string of freights, now edging +the roof of a box car, now opening a hole to the gray rock of the cut +when a flat or two intervened--and then, sudden, quick as doom, with a +yell from his fireman ringing in his ears, Owsley, his jaws clamping +like a steel trap, flung his arm forward, jamming the throttle shut, +while with the other hand he grabbed at the "air." + +Owsley had seen it, too--as quick as Brannigan--a figure, arms waving +frantically, for a fleeting second strangely silhouetted in the dancing +headlight's glare on the roof of one of the box cars. A wild shout +from the man, fluttering, indistinguishable, reached them as they +roared by--then the grind and scream of brake-shoes as the "air" went +on--the answering shudder vibrating through the cab of the big +racer--the meeting clash of buffer plates echoing down the length of +the train behind--and a queer obstructing blackness dead ahead ere the +headlight, tardy in its sweep, could point the way--but Owsley knew +now--too late. + +Brannigan screamed in his ear. + +"She ain't in the clear!" he screamed. "It's a swipe! She ain't in +the clear!" he screamed again--and took a flying leap through the +off-side gangway. + +Owsley never turned his head--only held there, grim-faced, +tight-lipped, facing what was to come--facing it with clear head, quick +brain, doing what he could to lessen the disaster, as forty years had +schooled him to face emergency. Owsley--for forty years with his +record, until that moment, as clean and unsmirched as the day he +started as a kid calling train crews back in the little division town +on the Penn in the far East! Strange it should come to Owsley, the one +man of all you'd never think it would! It's hard to understand the +running orders of the Great Trainmaster sometimes--isn't it? And +sometimes it doesn't help much to realize that we never will understand +this side of the Great Divide--does it? + +The headlight caught it now--seemed to gloat upon it in a flood of +blazing, insolent light--the rear cars of the freight crawling +frantically from the main line to the siding--then the pitiful yellow +from the cupola of the caboose, the light from below filtering up +through the windows. It seared into Owsley's brain lightning quick, +but vivid in every detail in a horrible, fascinating way. It was a +second, the fraction of a second since Brannigan had jumped--it might +have been an hour. + +The front of the caboose seemed to leap suddenly at the 1601, seemed to +rise up in the air and hurl itself at the straining engine as though in +impotent fury at unwarranted attack. There was a terrific crash, the +groan and rend of timber, the sickening grind and crunch as the van +went to matchwood--the debris hurtling along the running boards, +shattering the cab glass in flying splinters--and Owsley dropped where +he stood--like a log. And the pony truck caught the tongue of the open +switch, and, with a vicious, nasty lurch, the 1601 wrenched herself +loose from her string of coaches, staggered like a lost and drunken +soul a few yards along the ties--and turned turtle in the ditch. + +It was a bad spill, but it might have been worse, a great deal worse--a +box car and the van for the junk heap, and the 1601 for the shops to +repair fractures--and nobody hurt except Owsley. + +But they couldn't make head or tail of the cause of it. Everybody went +on the carpet for it--and still it was a mystery. The main line was +clear at the west end of the siding, and the switch was right; +everybody was agreed on that, and it showed that way on the face of +it--and that was as it should have been. The operator at Elbow Bend +swore that he had shown his red, and that it was showing when the +Limited swept by. He said he knew it was going to be a close shave +whether the freight, a little late and crowding the Limited's running +time, would be clear of the main line without delaying the express, and +he had shown his red before ever he had heard her whistle--his red was +showing. The engine crew and the train crew of Extra No. 49, west, +backed the operator up--the red was showing. + +Brannigan, the fireman, didn't count as a witness. The only light he'd +seen at all was the west-end switch light, the curve had hidden +anything ahead until after he'd pulled his door and turned to the +tender for coal, and by then they were past the station. And Owsley, +pretty badly smashed up, and in bed down in Mrs. McCann's short-order +house, talked kind of queer when he got around to where he could talk +at all. They asked him what color light the station semaphore was +showing, and Owsley said white--white as the moon. That's what he +said--white as the moon. And they weren't quite sure he understood +what they were driving at. + +For a week that's all they could make out of it, and then, with Regan +scratching his head over it one day in confab with Carleton, the +superintendent, it came more by chance than anything else. + +"Blamed if I know what to make of it!" he growled. "Ordinary, six +men's words would be the end of it, but Owsley's the best man that ever +latched a throttle in our cabs, and for twenty years his record's +cleaner than a baby's. What he says now don't count, because he ain't +right again yet; but what you can't get away from is the fact that +Owsley's not the man to have slipped a signal. Either the six of them +are doing him cold to save their own skins, or there's something queer +about it." + +Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, in his grave, quiet way, shook his head. + +"We've been trying hard enough to get to the bottom of it, Tommy," he +said. "I wish to the Lord we could. I don't think the men are +lying--they tell a pretty straight story. I've been wondering about +that patch Owsley had on his eye, and----" + +"What's that got to do with it?" cut in the blunt little master +mechanic, who made no bones about his fondness for the engineer. "He +isn't blind in the other, is he?" + +Carleton stared at the master mechanic for a moment, pulling +ruminatively at his brier; then--they were in the super's office at the +time--his fist came down with a sudden bang upon the desk. + +"I believe you've got it, Tommy!" he exclaimed. + +"Believe I've got it!" echoed Regan, and his hand half-way to his mouth +with his plug of chewing stopped in mid-air. "Got what? I said he +wasn't blind in the other, and neither he is--you know that as well as +I do." + +"Wait!" said Carleton. "It's very rare, I know, but it seems to me +I've heard of it. Wait a minute, Tommy." He was leaning over from his +chair and twirling the little revolving bookcase beside the desk, as he +spoke--not a large library was Carleton's, just a few technical books, +and his cherished Britannica. He pulled out a volume of the +encyclopedia, laid it upon his desk, and began to turn the leaves. +"Yes, here it is," he said, after a moment. "Listen"--and he commenced +to read rapidly: + +"'The most common form of Daltonism'--that's color-blindness you know, +Tommy--'depends on the absence of the red sense. Great additions to +our knowledge of this subject, if only in confirmation of results +already deduced from theory, have been obtained in the last few years +by Holmgren, who has experimented on two persons, each of whom was +found to have _one color-blind eye_, the other being nearly normal." + +"Color-blind!" spluttered the master mechanic. + +"In one eye," said Carleton, sort of as though he were turning a +problem over in his mind. "That would account for it all, Tommy. As +far as I know, one doesn't go color-blind--one is born that way--and if +this is what's at the bottom of it, Owsley's been color-blind all his +life in one eye, and probably didn't know what was the matter. That +would account for his passing the tests, and would account for what +happened at Elbow Bend. It was the patch that did it--you remember +what he said--the light was white as the moon." + +"And he's out!" stormed Regan. "Out for keeps--after forty years. +Say, d'ye know what this'll mean to Owsley--do you, eh, do you? It'll +be hell for him, Carleton--he thinks more of his engine than a woman +does of her child." + +Carleton closed the volume and replaced it mechanically in the bookcase. + +Regan's teeth met in his plug and jerked savagely at the tobacco. + +"I wish to blazes you hadn't read that!" he muttered fiercely. "What's +to be done now?" + +"I'm afraid there's only one thing to be done," Carleton answered +gravely. "Sentiment doesn't let us out--there's too many lives at +stake every time he takes out an engine. He'll have to try the color +test with a patch over the same eye he had it on that night. Perhaps, +after all, I'm wrong, and----" + +"He's out!" said the master mechanic gruffly. "He's out--I don't need +any test to know that now. That's what's the matter, and no other +thing on earth. It's rough, damn rough, ain't it--after forty +years?"--and Regan, with a short laugh, strode to the window and stood +staring out at the choked railroad yards below him. + +And Regan was right. Three weeks later, when he got out of bed, Owsley +took the color test under the queerest conditions that ever a railroad +man took it--with his right eye bandaged--and failed utterly. + +But Owsley didn't quite seem to understand--and little Doctor McTurk, +the company surgeon, was badly worried, and had been all along. Owsley +was a long way from being the same Owsley he was before the accident. +Not physically--that way he was shaping up pretty well, but his head +seemed to bother him--he seemed to have lost his grip on a whole lot of +things. They gave him the test more to settle the point in their own +minds, but they knew before they gave it to him that it wasn't much use +as far as he was concerned one way or the other. There was more than a +mere matter of color wrong with Owsley now. And maybe that was the +kindest thing that could have happened to him, maybe it made it easier +for him since the colors barred him anyway from ever pulling a throttle +again--not to understand! + +They tried to tell him he hadn't passed the color test--Regan tried to +tell him in a clumsy, big-hearted way, breaking it as easy as he +could--and Owsley laughed as though he were pleased--just laughed, and +with a glance at the clock and a jerky pull at his watch for +comparison, a way he had of doing, walked out of Riley's, the +trainmaster's office, and started across the tracks for the roundhouse. +Owsley's head wasn't working right--it was as though the mechanism was +running down--the memory kind of tapering off. But the 1601, his +engine--stuck. And it was train time when he walked out of Riley's +office that afternoon--the first afternoon he'd been out of bed and +Mrs. McCann's motherly hands since the night at Elbow Bend. + +Perhaps you'll smile a little tolerantly at this, and perhaps you'll +say the story's "cooked." Well, perhaps! If you think that way about +it, you'll probably smile more broadly still, and with the same grounds +for a smile, before we make division and sign the train register at the +end of the run. Anyway, that afternoon, as Owsley, out for the first +time, walked a little shakily across the turntable and through the big +engine doors into the roundhouse, the 1601 was out for the first time +herself from the repair shops, and for the first time since the +accident was standing on the pit, blowing from a full head of steam, +and ready to move out and couple on for the mountain run west, as soon +as the Imperial Limited came in off the Prairie Division from the East. +Is it a coincidence to smile at? Yes? Well, then, there is more of +the same humor to come. They tell the story on the Hill Division this +way, those hard, grimy-handed men of the Rockies, in the cab, in the +caboose, in the smoker, if you get intimate enough with the conductor +or brakeman, in the roundhouse and in the section shanty--but they +never smile themselves when they tell it. + +Paxley, big as two of Owsley, promoted from a local passenger run, had +been given the Imperial--and the 1601. He was standing by the +front-end, chatting with Clarihue, the turner, as Owsley came in. + +Owsley didn't appear to notice either of the men--didn't answer either +of them as they greeted him cheerily. His face, that had grown white +from his illness, was tinged a little red with excitement, and his eyes +seemed trying to take in every single detail of the big mountain racer +all at once. He walked along to the gangway, his shoulders sort of +bracing further back all the time, and then with the old-time swing he +disappeared into the cab. He was out again in a minute with a +long-spouted oil can, and, just as he always did, started in for an oil +around. + +Paxley and Clarihue looked at each other. And Paxley sort of fumbled +aimlessly with the peak of his cap, while Clarihue couldn't seem to get +the straps of his overalls adjusted comfortably. Brannigan, Owsley's +old fireman, joined them from the other side of the engine. None of +them spoke. Owsley went on oiling--making the round slowly, carefully, +head and shoulders hidden completely at times as he leaned in over the +rod, poking at the motion-gear. And Regan, who had followed Owsley, +coming in, got the thing in a glance--and swore fiercely deep down in +his throat. + +Not much to choke strong men up and throw them into the "dead-center"? +Well, perhaps not. Just a railroad man for forty years, just an +engineer, and the best of them all--out! + +Owsley finished his round, and, instead of climbing into the cab +through the opposite gangway, came back to the front-end and halted +before Jim Clarihue. + +"I see you got that injector valve packed at last," said he +approvingly. "She looks cleaner under the guard-plates than I've seen +her for a long time, too. Give me the 'table, Jim." + +Not one of them answered. Regan said afterward that he felt as though +there'd been a head-on smash somewhere inside of him. But Owsley +didn't seem to expect any answer. He went on down the side of the +locomotive, went in through the gangway, and the next instant the steam +came purring into the cylinders, just warming her up for a moment, as +Owsley always did before he moved out of the roundhouse. + +It was Clarihue then who spoke--with a kind of catchy jerk: + +"She's stiff from the shops. He ain't strong enough to hold her on the +'table." + +Regan looked at Paxley--and tugged at his scraggly little brown +mustache. + +"You'll have to get him out of there, Bob," he said gruffly, to hide +his emotion. "Get him out--gently." + +The steam was coming now into the cylinders with a more businesslike +rush--and Paxley jumped for the cab. As he climbed in, Brannigan +followed, and in a sort of helpless way hung in the gangway behind him. +Owsley was standing up, his hand on the throttle, and evidently puzzled +a little at the stiffness of the reversing lever, that refused to budge +on the segment with what strength he had in one hand to give to it. + +Paxley reached over and tried to loosen Owsley's hand on the throttle. + +"Let me take her, Jake," he said. + +Owsley stared at him for a moment in mingled perplexity and irritation. + +"What in blazes would I let you take her for?" he snapped suddenly, and +attempted to shoulder Paxley aside. "Get out of here, and mind your +own business! Get out!" He snatched his wrist away from Paxley's +fingers and gave a jerk at the throttle--and the 1601 began to move. + +The 'table wasn't set, and Paxley had no time for hesitation. More +roughly than he had any wish to do it, he brushed Owsley's hand from +the throttle and latched the throttle shut. + +And then, quick as a cat, Owsley was on him. + +It wasn't much of a fight--hardly a fight at all--Owsley, from three +weeks on his back, was dropping weak. But Owsley snatched up a spanner +that was lying on the seat, and smashed Paxley with it between the +eyes. Paxley was a big man physically--and a bigger man still where it +counts most and doesn't show--with the blood streaming down his face, +and half blinded, regardless of the blows that Owsley still tried to +rain upon him, he picked the engineer up in his arms like a baby, and +with Brannigan, dropping off the gangway and helping, got Owsley to the +ground. + +Owsley hadn't been fit for excitement or exertion of that kind--for +_any_ kind of excitement or exertion. They took him back to his +boarding house, and Doctor McTurk screwed his eyes up over him in the +funny way he had when things looked critical, and Mrs. McCann nursed +him daytimes, and Carleton and Regan and two or three others took turns +sitting up with him nights--for a month. Then Owsley began to mend +again, and began to talk of getting back on the Limited run with the +1601--always the 1601. And most times he talked pretty straight, +too--as straight as any of the rest of them--only his memory seemed to +keep that queer sort of haze over it--up to the time of the accident it +seemed all right, but after that things blurred woefully. + +Regan, Carleton and Doctor McTurk went into committee over it in the +super's office one afternoon just before Owsley was out of bed again. + +"What d'ye say--h'm? What d'ye say, doc?" demanded Regan. + +Doctor McTurk, scientific and professional in every inch of his little +body, lined his eyebrows up into a ferocious black streak across his +forehead, and talked medicine in medical terms into the superintendent +and the master mechanic for a good five minutes. + +When he had finished, Carleton's brows were puckered, too, his face was +a little blank, and he tapped the edge of his desk with the end of his +pencil somewhat helplessly. + +Regan tugged at both ends of his mustache and sputtered. + +"What the blazes!" he growled. "Give it to us in plain railroading! +Has he got rights through--or hasn't he? Does he get better--or does +he not? H'm?" + +"I don't know, I tell you!" retorted Doctor McTurk. "I don't know--and +that's flat. I've told you why a minute ago. I don't know whether +he'll ever be better in his head than he is now--otherwise he'll come +around all right." + +"Well, what's to be done?" inquired Carleton. + +"He's got to work for a living, I suppose--eh?" Doctor McTurk answered. +"And he can't run an engine any more on account of the colors, no +matter what happens. That's the state of affairs, isn't it?" + +Carleton didn't answer; Regan only mumbled under his breath. + +"Well then," submitted Doctor McTurk, "the best thing for him, +temporarily at least, to build him up, is fresh air and plenty of it. +Give him a job somewhere out in the open." + +Carleton's eyebrows went up. He looked across at Regan questioningly. + +"He wouldn't take it," said Regan slowly. "There's nothing to anything +for Owsley but the 1601." + +"Wouldn't take it!" snapped the little doctor. "He's got to take it. +And if you care half what you pretend you do for him, you've got to see +that he does." + +"How about construction work with McCann?" suggested Carleton. "He +likes McCann, and he's lived at their place for years now." + +"Just the thing!" declared Doctor McTurk heartily. "Couldn't be +better." + +Carleton looked at Regan again. + +"You can handle him better than any one else, Tommy. Suppose you see +what you can do? And speaking of the 1601, how would it do to tell him +what's happened in the last month. Maybe he wouldn't think so much of +her as he does now." + +"No!" exclaimed Doctor McTurk quickly. "Don't you do it!" + +"No," said Regan, shaking his head. "It would make him worse. He'd +blame it on Paxley, and we'd have trouble on our hands before you could +bat an eyelash." + +"Yes; perhaps you're right," agreed Carleton. "Well, then, try him on +the construction tack, Tommy." + +And so Regan went that afternoon from the super's office over to Mrs. +McCann's short-order house, and up to Owsley's room. + +"Well, how's Jake to-day?" he inquired, in his bluff, cheery way, +drawing a chair up beside the bed. + +"I'm fine, Regan," said Owsley earnestly. "Fine! What day is this?" + +"Thursday," Regan told him. + +"Yes," said Owsley, "that's right--Thursday. Well, you can put me down +to take the old 1601 out Monday night. I'm figuring to get back on the +run Monday night, Regan." + +Regan ran his hand through his short-cropped hair, twisted a little +uneasily in his chair--and coughed to fill in the gap. + +"I wouldn't be in a hurry about it, if I were you, Jake," he said. "In +fact, that's what I came over to have a little talk with you about. We +don't think you're strong enough yet for the cab." + +"Who don't?" demanded Owsley antagonistically. + +"The doctor and Carleton and myself--we were just speaking about it." + +"Why ain't I?" demanded Owsley again. + +"Why, good Lord, Jake," said Regan patiently, "you've been sick--dashed +near two months. A man can't expect to get out of bed after a lay-off +like that and start right in again before he gets his strength back. +You know that as well as I do." + +"Mabbe I do, and mabbe I don't," said Owsley, a little uncertainly. +"How'm I going to get strong?" + +"Well," replied Regan, "the doc says open-air work to build you up, and +we were thinking you might like to put in a month, say, with Bill +McCann up on the Elk River work--helping him boss Polacks, for +instance." + +Owsley didn't speak for a moment, he seemed to be puzzling something +out; then, still in a puzzled way: + +"And then what about after the month?" + +"Why then," said Regan, "then"--he reached for his hip pocket and his +plug, pulled out the plug, picked the heart-shaped tin tag off with his +thumb nail, decided not to take a bite, and put the blackstrap back in +his pocket again. "Why then," said he, "you'll--you ought to be all +right again." + +Owsley sat up in bed. + +"You playing straight with me, Regan?" he asked slowly. + +"Sure," said Regan gruffly. "Sure, I am." + +Owsley passed his hand two or three times across his eyes. + +"I don't quite seem to get the signals right on what's happened," he +said. "I guess I've been pretty sick. I kind of had a feeling a +minute ago that you were trying to side-track me, but if you say you +ain't, I believe you. I ain't going to be side-tracked. When I quit +for keeps, I quit in the cab with my boots on--no way else. I'll tell +you something, Regan. When I go out, I'm going out with my hand on the +throttle, same as it's been for more'n twenty years. And me and the +old 1601, we're going out together--that's the way I want to go when +the time comes--and that's the way I'm going. I've known it for a long +time." + +"How do you mean you've known it for a long time?" Regan swallowed a +lump in his throat, as he asked the question--Owsley's mind seemed to +be wandering a little. + +"I dunno," said Owsley, and his hand crept to his head again. "I +dunno--I just know." Then abruptly: "I got to get strong for the old +1601, ain't I? That's right. I'll go up there--only you give me your +word I get the 1601 back after the month." + +Regan's eyes, from the floor, lifted and met Owsley's steadily. + +"You bet, Jake!" he said. + +"Give me your hand on it," said Owsley happily. + +And Regan gripped the engineer's hand. + +Regan left the room a moment or two after that, and on his way +downstairs he brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. + +"What the hell!" he growled to himself. "I had to lie to him, didn't +I?" + +And so, on the Monday following, Owsley went up to the new Elk River +road work, and--But just a moment, we've over-run our holding orders a +bit, and we've got to back for the siding. The 1601 crosses us here. + +Superstition is a queer thing, isn't it? Speaking generally, we look +on it somewhat from the viewpoint of the old adage that all men are +mortal save ourselves; that is, we can accept, with more or less +tolerant condescension, the existence of superstition in others, and, +with more or less tolerant condescension, put it down to ignorance--in +others. But we're not superstitious ourselves, so we've got to have +something better to go on than that, as far as the 1601 is concerned. +Well, the 1601 was pretty badly shaken up that night in the spill at +Elbow Bend, and when they overhauled her in the shops, while they made +her look like new, perhaps they missed something down deep in her +vitals in the doing of it; perhaps she was weakened and strained where +they didn't know she was; perhaps they didn't get clean to the bottom +of all her troubles; perhaps they made a bad job of a job that looked +all right under the fresh paint and the gold leaf. There's nothing +superstitious about that, is there? It's logical and reasonable enough +to satisfy even the most hypercritical crank amongst us +anti-superstitionists--isn't it? + +But that doesn't go in the cabs, and the roundhouses, and the section +shanties on the Hill Division. You could talk and reason out there +along that line until you were blue in the face from shortness of +breath, and they'd listen to you while they wiped their hands on a hunk +of waste--they'd listen, but they've got their own notions. + +It was the night at Elbow Bend that Owsley and the 1601 together first +went wrong; and both went into hospital together and came out together +to the day--the 1601 for her old run through the mountains, and Owsley +with no other idea in life possessing his sick brain than to make the +run with her. Owsley had a relapse that day--and that day, twenty +miles west of Big Cloud, the 1601 blew her cylinder head off. And from +then on, while Owsley lay in bed again at Mrs. McCann's, the 1601, when +she wasn't in the shops from an endless series of mishaps, was turning +the hair gray on a despatcher or two, and had got most of Paxley's +nerve. + +But what's the use of going into all the details--there was enough +paper used up in the specification repair-sheets! Going slow up a +grade and around a curve that was protected with ninety-pound +guard-rails, her pony truck jumped the steel where a baby carriage +would have held the right of way; she broke this, she broke that, she +was always breaking something; and rare was the night that she didn't +limp into division dragging the grumbling occupants of the mahogany +sleepers after her with her schedule gone to smash. And then, finally, +putting a clincher on it all, she ended up, when she was running fifty +miles an hour, by shedding a driving wheel, and nearly killing Paxley +as the rod ripped through and through, tearing the right-hand side of +the cab into mangled wreckage--and that finished her for the Limited +run. Do you recall that Owsley, too, was finished for the Limited run? + +Superstition? You can figure it any way you like--they've got their +own notions on the Hill Division. + +When the 1601 came out of the shops again after that, the marks of +authority's disapprobation were heavy upon her--the gold leaf of the +passenger flyer was gone; the big figures on the tender were only +yellow paint. + +Regan scowled at her as they ran her into the yards. + +"Damn her!" said Regan fervently; and then, as he thought of Owsley, he +scowled deeper, and yanked at his mustache. "Say," said Regan heavily, +"it's queer, ain't it? Blamed queer--h'm--when you come to think of +it?" + +And so, while the 1601, disfranchised, went to hauling extra freights, +kind of a misfit doing spare jobs, anything that turned up, no regular +run any more, Owsley, kind of a misfit, too, without any very definite +duties, because there wasn't anything very definite they dared trust +him with, went up on the Elk River work with Bill McCann, the husband +of Mrs. McCann, who kept the short-order house. + +Owsley told McCann, as he had told Regan, that he was only up there +getting strong again for the 1601--and he went around on the +construction work whistling and laughing like a schoolboy, and happy as +a child--getting strong again for the 1601! + +McCann couldn't see anything very much the matter with Owsley--except +that Owsley was happy. He studied the letter Regan had sent him, and +watched the engineer, and scratched at his bullet head, and blinked +fast with his gray Irish eyes. + +"Faith," said McCann, "it's them that's off their chumps--not Owsley. +Hark to him singin' out there like a lark! An', bedad, ut's mesilf'll +tell 'em so!'" + +And he did. He wrote his opinion in concise, forceful, misspelled +English on the back of a requisition slip, and sent it to Regan. Regan +didn't say much--just choked up a little when he read it. McCann +wasn't strong on diagnosis. + +It was still early spring when Owsley went to the new loop they were +building around the main line to tap a bit of the country south, and +the chinook, blowing warm, had melted most of the snow, and the creeks, +rivers and sluices were running full--the busiest time in all the year +for the trackmen and section hands. It was a summer's job, the +loop--if luck was with them--and the orders were to push the work, the +steel was to be down before the snow flew again. That was the way it +was put up to McCann when he first moved into construction camp, a +short while before Owsley joined him. + +"Then give me the stuff," said McCann. "Shoot the material along, an' +don't lave me bitin' me finger nails for the want av ut--d'ye moind?" + +So the Big Cloud yards, too, had orders--standing orders to rush out +all material for the Elk River loop as fast as it came in from the East. + +In a way, of course, that was how it happened--from the standing +orders. It was just the kind of work the 1601 was hanging around +waiting to do--the odd jobs--pulling the extras. Ordinarily, perhaps, +somebody would have thought of it, and maybe they wouldn't have sent +her out--maybe they would. You can't operate a railroad wholly on +sentiment--and there were ten cars of steel and as many more of ties +and conglomerate supplies helping to choke up the Big Cloud yards when +they should have been where they were needed a whole lot more--in +McCann's construction camp. + +But there had been two days of bad weather in the mountains, two days +of solid rain, track troubles, and troubles generally, and what with +one thing and another, the motive-power department had been taxed to +its limit. The first chance they got in a lull of pressure, not the +storm, they sent the material west with the only spare engine that +happened to be in the roundhouse at the time--the 1601--and never +thought of Owsley. Regan might have, would have, if he had known it; +but Regan didn't know it--then. Regan wasn't handling the operating. + +Perhaps, after all, they needn't have been in a belated hurry that +day--McCann and his foreigners had done nothing but hug their shanties +and listen to the rain washing the ballast away for two days and a +half, until, as it got dark on that particular day, barely a week after +Owsley had come to the work, they listened, by way of variation, to the +chime whistle of an engine that came ringing down with the wind. + +McCann and Owsley shared a little shanty by themselves, and McCann was +trying to initiate Owsley into the mysteries of that grand old game so +dear to the hearts of Irishmen--the game of forty-five. But at the +first sound of the whistle, the cards dropped from Owsley's hands, and +he jumped to his feet. + +"D'ye hear that! D'ye hear that!" he cried. + +"An' fwhat av ut?" inquired McCann. "Ut'll be the material we'd be +hung up for, if 'twere not for the storm." + +Owsley leaned across the table, his head turned a little sideways in a +curious listening attitude--leaned across the table and gripped +McCann's shoulders. + +"It's the 1601!" he whispered. He put his finger to his lips to +caution silence, and with the other hand patted McCann's shoulder +confidentially. "It's the 1601!" he whispered--and jumped for the +door--out into the storm. + +"For the love av Mike!" gasped McCann, staggering to his feet as the +lamp flared up and out with the draft. "Now, fwhat the divil--from +this, an' the misfortunate way he picks up forty-foive, mabbe, mabbe I +was wrong, an' mabbe ut's queer after all, he is, an'----" McCann was +still muttering to himself as he stumbled to the door. + +There was no sign of Owsley--only a string of boxes and flats, backed +down, and rattling and bumping to a halt on the temporary track a +hundred yards away--then the joggling light of a trainman running +through the murk and, evidently, hopping the engine pilot, for the +light disappeared suddenly and McCann heard the locomotive moving off +again. + +McCann couldn't see the main line, or the little station they had +erected there since the work began for the purpose of operating the +construction trains, but he knew well enough what was going on. Off +the main line, in lieu of a turntable and to facilitate matters +generally, they had built a Y into the construction camp; and the work +train, in from the East, had dropped its caboose on the main line +between the arms of the Y, gone ahead, backed the flats and boxes down +the west-end arm of the Y into the camp, left them there in front of +him, and the engine, shooting off on the main line again, via the +east-end arm of the Y, would be heading east, and had only to back up +the main line and couple on the caboose for the return trip to Big +Cloud--there were no empties to go back, he knew. + +It was raining in torrents, pitilessly, and, over the gusts of wind, +the thunder went racketing through the mountains like the discharge of +heavy guns. McCann swore with sincerity as he gazed from the doorway, +didn't like the look of it, and was minded to let Owsley go to the +devil; but, instead, after getting into rubber boots, a rubber coat, +and lighting a lantern, he put his head down to butt the storm, goat +fashion, and started out. + +"Me conscience 'ud not be clear av anything happened the man," communed +McCann, as he battered and sloshed his way along. "'Tis wan hell av a +night!" + +McCann lost some time. He could have made a short cut over to the main +line and the station; but, instead, thinking Owsley might have run up +the track beside the camp toward the front-end of the construction +train and the engine, he kept along past the string of cars. There was +no Owsley; and the only result he obtained from shouting at the top of +his lungs was to have the wind slap his voice back in his teeth. +McCann headed then for the station. He took the west-end arm of the Y, +that being the nearer to his destination. Halfway across, he heard the +engine backing up on the main line, and, a moment later, saw her +headlight and the red tail lights of the caboose as she coupled on. + +Of course, it was against the rules--but rules are broken sometimes, +aren't they? It was a wicked night, and the station, diminutive and +makeshift as it was, looked mighty hospitable and inviting by +comparison. The engine crew, Matt Duggan and Greene, his fireman, +thought it sized up better while they were waiting for orders than the +cab of the 1601 did, and they didn't see why the train crew, +MacGonigle, the conductor, and his two brakemen, should have any the +better of it--so they left their engine and crowded into the station, +too. + +There wasn't much room left for McCann when he came in like an animated +shower bath. He heard Merle, the young operator--they'd probably been +guying him--snap at MacGonigle: + +"I ain't got any orders for you yet, but you'd better get into the +clear on the Y--the Limited, east, is due in four minutes." + +"Say!" panted McCann. "Say----" and that was as far as he got. Matt +Duggan, making a wild dash for the door, knocked the rest of his breath +out of him. + +And after Duggan, in a mad and concerted rush, sweeping McCann along +with it, the others burst through the door and out on the platform, as, +volleying through the storm, came suddenly the quick, staccato bark of +engine exhaust. + +For a moment, huddled there, trying to get the rights of it, no one +spoke--then it came in a yell from Matt Duggan. + +"She's _gone_!" he screamed--and gulped for his breath. "She's gone!" + +McCann looked, and blinked, and shook the rain out of his face. Two +hundred yards east down the track, and disappearing fast, were the +twinkling red tail lights of the caboose. + +"By the tokens av all the saints," stammered McCann. + +"Ut's--ut's----" He grabbed at Matt Duggan. "Fwhat engine is ut?" + +It was MacGonigle who answered, as they crowded back inside again for +shelter--and answered quick, getting McCann's dropped jaw. + +"The 1601. What's wrong with you, McCann?" + +"Holy Mither!" stuttered McCann miserably. "That settles ut! Ut's +Owsley! 'Twas the whistle, d'ye moind--the whistle!" + +Merle, young and hysterical, was up in the air. + +"The Limited! The Limited!" he burst out, white-faced. "There ain't +three minutes between them! She's coming now!" + +MacGonigle, grizzled old veteran, cool in any emergency, whirled on the +younger man. + +"Then stop her!" he drawled. "Don't make a fool of yourself! Show +your red and hold her here until you get Big Cloud on the wire--they're +both running the _same_ way, aren't they, you blamed idiot! +Everything's out of the road far enough east of here on account of the +Limited to give 'em time at headquarters to take care of things. Let +'em have it at Big Cloud." + +And Big Cloud got it. Spence, the despatcher, on the early night +trick, got it--and Carleton and Regan, at their homes, got it in a +hurried call from Spence over their private keys, that brought them +running to headquarters. + +"I've cleared the line," said Spence. "The Limited is holding at Elk +River till Brook's Cut reports Owsley through--then she's to trail +along." + +Carleton nodded, and took a chair beside the despatcher's table. +Regan, as ever with him in times of stress, tugged at his mustache, and +paced up and down the room. + +He stepped once in front of Carleton and laughed shortly--and there was +more in his words, a whole lot more, than he realized then. + +"The Lord knows where he'll stop now with the bit in his teeth, but +suppose he'd been heading the other way _into_ the Limited--h'm! +Head-on--instead of just tying up all the blamed traffic between here +and the Elk--what? We can thank God for that!" + +Carleton didn't answer, except by another nod. He was listening to +Spence at the key, asking Brook's Cut why they didn't report Owsley +through. + +The rain rattled at the window panes, and the sashes shook under the +gusts of wind; out in the yards below the switch lights showed blurred +and indistinct. Regan paced the room more and more impatiently. +Carleton's face began to go hard. Spence hung tensely over the table, +his fingers on the key, waiting for the sounder to break, waiting for +the Brook's Cut call. + +It was only seven miles from Elk River, where the stalled passengers of +the Limited--will you remember this?--grumbled and complained, pettish +in their discontent at the delay, only seven miles from there to +Brook's Cut, the first station east--only seven miles, but the minutes +passed, and still Brook's Cut answered: "No." And Carleton's face grew +harder still, and Regan swore deep down under his breath from a full +heart, and Spence grew white and rigid in his chair. And so they +waited there, waited with the sense of disaster growing cold upon +them--waited--but Brook's Cut never reported Owsley "in" or "out" that +night. + +Owsley? Who knows what was in the poor, warped brain that night? He +had heard her call to him, and they had brought him back the 1601, and +she was standing there, alone, deserted--and she had called to him. +Who knows what was in his mind, as, together, he and the 1601 went +tearing through that black, storm-rent night, when the rivers, and the +creeks, and the sluices were running full, and the Elk River, that +paralleled the right of way for a mile or two to the crossing, was a +raging torrent? Who knows if he ever heard the thundering crash with +which the Elk River bridge went out? Who knows, as he swung the curve +that opened the bridge approach, without time for any man, Owsley or +another, to have stopped, if the headlight playing on the surge of +maddened waters meant anything to him? Who knows? That was where they +found them, beneath the waters, Owsley and the 1601--and Owsley was +smiling, his hand tight-gripped upon the throttle that he loved. + +"I dunno," says Regan, when he speaks of Owsley, "if the mountains out +here have anything to do with making a man think harder. I +dunno--sometimes I think they do. You get to figuring that the Grand +Master mabbe goes a long way back, years and years, to work things +out--if it hadn't been for Owsley the Limited would have gone into the +Elk that night with every soul on board. Owsley? That's the way he +wanted to go out, wasn't it?--with the 1601. Mabbe the Grand Master +thought of him, too." + + + + +III + +THE APOTHEOSIS OF SAMMY DURGAN + +The only point the Hill Division, from Carleton, the super, to the last +car tink, would admit it was at all hazy on as far as Sammy Durgan was +concerned, was why in the everlasting name of everything the man stuck +to railroading. When the Hill Division got up against that point it +was floored and took the count. + +Sammy Durgan wore the belt. He held a record never equalled before or +since. Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who had a warped gift for +metaphor, said the man was as migratory on jobs as a flock of crows in +a poor year for corn, only a blamed sight harder to get rid of. + +As far back as anybody could remember they remembered Sammy Durgan. +Somewhere on the division you were bound to bump up against him--but +rarely twice in the same place. There wasn't any one in authority, +even so mild an authority as a section boss, who hadn't fired Sammy +Durgan so often that it had grown on them like a habit. Not that it +made much difference, however; for, ejected from the roundhouse, Sammy +Durgan's name would be found decorating the pay roll next month in the +capacity of baggage master, possibly, at some obscure spot up the line; +and here, for example, a slight mix-up of checks in the baggage of a +tourist family, that divided the family against itself and its baggage +as far as the East is from the West--and Sammy Durgan moved on again. +What the Hill Division said about him would have been complimentary if +it hadn't been for the grin; they said he was an _all-round_ railroad +man. Shops, roundhouse, train crews, station work and construction +gangs, Sammy Durgan knew them all; and they knew Sammy Durgan. +Eternally and everlastingly in trouble--that was Sammy Durgan. + +Nothing much else the matter with him--just trouble. Brains all right; +only, as far as the Hill Division could make out, the last thing Sammy +Durgan ever thought of doing was to give his brains a little exercise +to keep them in condition. But, if appalling in his irresponsibility, +Sammy Durgan nevertheless had a saving grace--no cork ever bobbed more +buoyantly on troubled waters than Sammy Durgan did on his sea of +adversity. Sammy Durgan always came up smiling. He had a perennial +sort of cheerfulness on his leathery face that infected his guileless +blue eyes, while a mop of fiery red hair like a flaming halo kind of +guaranteed the effect to be genuine. One half of you felt like kicking +the man violently, and the other half was obsessed with an insane +desire to hobnob with him just as violently. Sammy Durgan, to say the +least of it, was a contradictory proposition. He had an ambition--he +wanted a steady job. + +He mentioned the matter to Regan one day immediately following that +period in his career when, doing odd jobs over at the station, he had, +in filling up the fire buckets upstairs, inadvertently left the tap +running. The sink being small and the flooring none too good, a +cherished collection of Regan's blue-prints in the room below were +reduced to a woebegone mass of sticky pulp. Sammy Durgan mentioned his +ambition as a sort of corollary, as it were, to the bitter and concise +remarks in which the fat little master mechanic had just couched Sammy +Durgan's ubiquitous discharge. + +Regan didn't stop breathing--he had dealt with Sammy Durgan before. +Regan smiled as though it hurt him. + +"A _steady_ job, is it?" said Regan softly. "I've been thinking so +hard daytimes trying to place you in a railroad job and still keep +railroading safe out in this part of the world that I've got to +dreaming about it at nights. Last night I dreamt I was in a foundry +and there was an enormous vat of red, bubbling, liquid iron they'd just +drawn off the furnace, and you came down from the ceiling on a spider +web and hung over it. And then I woke up, and I was covered with cold +sweat--for fear the web wouldn't break." + +"Regan," said Sammy Durgan, blinking fast, "you don't know a man when +you see one. You're where you are because you've had the chance to get +there. Mind that! I've never had a chance. But it'll come, Regan. +And the day'll come, Regan, when you'll be down on your knees begging +me to take what I'm asking for now, a steady job on your blessed +railroad." + +"Mabbe," said Regan, chewing absently on his blackstrap; and then, as a +sort of afterthought: "What kind of a job?" + +"A steady one," said Sammy Durgan doggedly. "I dunno just what, +but----" + +"H'm!" said Regan solicitously. "Well, don't make up your mind in a +hurry, Durgan--I don't want to press you. When you've had a chance to +look around a little more, mabbe you'll be able to decide better--what? +Get out!" + +Sammy Durgan backed to the door. There he paused, blinking fast again: + +"Some day I'll show you, Regan, you and all the rest of 'em, and----" + +"Get out!" said the little master mechanic peremptorily. + +And Sammy Durgan got out. He was always getting out. That was his +forte. When he got in, it was only to get out. + +"Some day," said Sammy Durgan--and the Hill Division stuck its tongue +in its cheek. But Sammy Durgan had his answer to the blunt refusal +that invariably greeted his modest request for a fresh job. + +"Listen here," said Sammy Durgan, with a firm hold on the overalls' +strap of, it might be, the bridge foreman he was trying to wheedle a +time check out of. "'Twas Regan fired me first, but he was in a bad +humor at the time; 'twas the steam hose I was washing out boiler tubes +with in the roundhouse got away from me, and it was accidental, though +mabbe for the moment it was painful for him. It just shows that if you +get fired once it sticks to you. And as for them baggage checks out to +Moose Peak, they weren't no family, they was a tribe, about eighteen +kids besides the pa and ma, and fourteen baggage cars full of trunks. +_He_ was a little bow-legged fellow with a scared look, and he whispers +where he wants the checks for about three minutes before train time, +then _she_ comes in, bigger'n two elephants, scorches him through a +pair of glasses she carries on a handle, and orders 'em checked +somewhere else. Say, was I to blame if some of them checks in the +hurry didn't get the first name I'd written on 'em scratched out? And +over there to the station the time Regan's office got flooded 'twasn't +my fault. If you get fired once, you keep on getting fired no matter +what you do. I turned the tap off. It was one of them little devils +of call boys turned it on again. But do you think any one would +believe that? They would not--or I'd have mentioned it at the time. +If there's any trouble anywhere and I'm around it's put onto me. And +there's Mrs. Durgan back there to Big Cloud. She ain't very well. +Cough's troubling her more'n usual lately, and worrying about the rent +not being paid ain't helping her any. Say, you'll give me a job, won't +you?" + +Sammy Durgan got the job. + +Now, as may be inferred, Sammy Durgan did not always adhere strictly to +the truth--not that he swerved from it with vicious intent, but that, +like some other things, trouble for instance, the swerving had grown, +as it were, to be a habit. Mrs. Durgan did not have a cough, neither +was she worrying about the unpaid rent. Mrs. Durgan, speaking strictly +in a physical sense, was mightiest among women in Big Cloud, and on the +night the story proper opens--a very black night for Sammy +Durgan--Sammy Durgan was sitting on Mrs. Durgan's front door step, and +the door was locked upon him. Sammy Durgan, paradoxical as it may +sound, though temporarily out of a job again and with no job to be +fired from, was being fired at that moment harder than he had ever been +fired before in his life--and the firing was being done by Mrs. Durgan. +It had been threatening for quite a while, quite a long while, two or +three years, but it none the less came to Sammy Durgan with something +of a shock, and he gasped. + +Mrs. Durgan was intensely Irish, from purer stock than Sammy Durgan, +and through the window Mrs. Durgan spoke barbed words: + +"'Tis shame yez should take to yersilf, Sammy Durgan, if yez had the +sinse to take annything--the loikes av yez, a big strong man! 'Tis +years I've put up wid yez, whin another woman would not, but I'll put +up wid yez no more! 'Tis the ind this night, Sammy Durgan, an' the +Holy Mither be praised there's no children to blush fer the disgrace +yez are!" + +"Maria," said Sammy Durgan craftily, for this had worked before, "do I +drink?" + +Mrs. Durgan choked in her rage. + +"I do not," said Sammy Durgan soothingly. "And who but me lays the pay +envelopes on your lap without so much as tearing 'em to count the +insides of 'em? Listen here, Maria, listen----" + +"Is ut mocking me, yez are!" shrieked Mrs. Durgan. "'Tis little good +the opening av 'em would do! Listen, is ut, to the smooth tongue av +yez! I've listened till me fingers are bare to the bone wid the +washtubs to kape a roof over me head. I'll listen no more, Sammy +Durgan, moind thot!" + +"Maria," said Sammy Durgan, with a softness that was meant to turn away +wrath, "Maria, open the door." + +"I will not," said Mrs. Durgan, with a truculent gasp. "Niver! Not +while yez live, Sammy Durgan--fer yez funeral mabbe, but fer no less +than thot, an' thin only fer the joy av bein' a widdy!" + +It sounded inevitable. There was a sort of cold uncompromise even in +the fire of Mrs. Durgan's voice. Sammy Durgan rose heavily from the +doorstep. + +"Some day," said Sammy Durgan sadly, "some day, Maria, you'll be sorry +for this. You'll break your heart for it, Maria! You wait! 'Tis no +fault of mine, the trouble. Everybody's against me--and now my wife. +But you wait. Once in the life of every man he gets his chance. Mine +ain't come yet. But you wait! It's the man who rises to an emergency +that counts, and----" + +There was a gurgling sound from Mrs. Durgan's throat. Then the window +slammed down--hard. + +Sammy Durgan stared, stared a little blankly as the lamp retreated from +the window and the front of the house grew black. + +"I guess," said Sammy Durgan a little wistfully to himself, "I guess +I'm fired all around for fair." He turned and walked slowly out to the +street and headed downtown toward the railroad yards. And as he walked +he communed with himself somewhat bitterly: "Any blamed little thing +that comes up, that, if 'twere anybody else, nobody'd pay any attention +to it, and everybody yells 'fire Sammy Durgan.' That's me----'fire +Sammy Durgan.' And why? Because I never get a chance--that's why!" +Sammy Durgan grew earnest in his soliloquy. "Some day," said he, as he +reached the station platform, "I'll show 'em--I'll show Maria! It'll +come, every man gets his chance. Give me the chance to rise to an +emergency, that's all I ask--just give me that and I'll show 'em!" + +Sammy Durgan walked up the deserted platform with no very definite +destination in view, and stopped abruptly in front of the freight shed +as he suddenly remembered that it was very late. He sat down on the +edge of the platform, and kicked at the main-line rail with the toe of +his boot. Sammy Durgan was bedless, penniless, wifeless and jobless. +It was a very black night indeed for Sammy Durgan. + +Sammy Durgan's mind catalogued those in authority in Big Cloud in whose +gift a job was, and he went over the list--but it did not take him +long, as he had need to hesitate over no single name. Big Cloud and a +job for Sammy Durgan were separated by a great gulf. Sammy Durgan, +however, his perennial optimism gaining the ascendancy again, found +solace even in that fact. In view of his present marital difficulties +a job in Big Cloud would be an awkward thing anyhow. In fact, for the +first time in his life, he would have refused a job in Big Cloud. +Sammy Durgan had a certain pride about him. Given the opportunity, the +roundhouse, the shops, the yards, and the train crews, once they +discovered the little impasse that had arisen in the Durgan family, +might be safely trusted to make capital out of it--at his expense. + +Sammy Durgan's mind in search of a job went further afield. This was +quite a different proposition, for the mileage of the Hill Division was +big. For an hour Sammy Durgan sat there, scratching at his red hair, +puckering his leathery face, and kicking at the rail to the detriment +of the toe-cap of his boot. He knew the division well, very well--too +well. At the moment, he could not place any spot upon it that he did +not know, or, perhaps what was more to the point, that was not +intimately acquainted with him. Road work, bridge work, yard work, +station work passed in review before him, but always and with each one +arose a certain well-remembered face whose expression, Biblically +speaking, was not like unto a father's on the prodigal's return. + +And then at last Sammy Durgan sighed in relief. There was Pat Donovan! +True, he and Pat Donovan had had a little misunderstanding incident to +the premature explosion of a keg of blasting powder that had wrecked +the construction shanty, but that was two years ago and under quite +different conditions. Pat Donovan now was a section boss on a desolate +stretch of track about five stations up the line, and his only +companions were a few Polacks who spoke English like parrots--voluble +enough as far as it went, but not entirely soul-filling to an Irishman +of the sociable tendencies of Pat Donovan. He could certainly get a +job out of Pat Donovan. + +The matter ultimately settled, Sammy Durgan stood up. Across the yards +they were making up the early morning freight. That solved the +transportation question. A railroad man, whether he was out of a job +or not, could always get a lift in any caboose that carried the markers +or the tail lights of old Bill Wallis' train. Sammy Durgan got a lift +that morning up to Dam River; and there, a little further along the +line, he ran Pat Donovan and his Polacks to earth where they were +putting in some new ties. + +Donovan, a squat, wizened, red eye-lidded little man, with a short, +bristling crop of sandy whiskers circling his jaws like an ill-trimmed +hedge, hurriedly drew back the hand he had extended as he caught the +tail end of Sammy Durgan's greeting. + +"Oh, a job is ut?" he inquired without enthusiasm, from his seat on a +pile of ties beside the track. + +"Listen, here, Pat," said Sammy Durgan brightly. "Listen to----" + +"Yez have yer nerve wid yez!" observed the section boss caustically. +"Yez put me in moind av a felley I had workin' fer me wance, for yez +are the dead spit av him, Sammy Durgan, that blew the roof off av the +construction shanty, an'----" + +"That was two years ago, Donovan," interposed Sammy Durgan hurriedly, +"and you've no blasting powder on this job, and it was no fault of +mine. I would have explained it at the time, but you were a bit hot +under the collar, Pat, and you would not listen. I was but testing the +detonator box, and 'twas yourself told me the connections were not +made." + +"Did I?"--the section boss was watching his chattering gang of +foreigners with gradually narrowing eyes. + +"You did," asserted Sammy Durgan earnestly, "and----" + +Sammy Durgan stopped. Donovan had leaped from his seat, and was +gesticulating fiercely at his gold-earringed, greasy-haired laboring +crew. + +"Yez are apes!" he yelled, dancing frantically up and down. "Yez are +oorang-ootangs! An' yez talk like a cageful av monkeys! Yez look +loike men, but yez are not! Yez are annything that has no brains! +Have I not told yez till me throat's cracked doin' ut thot yez are not +rayquired to lift the whole dombed right av way to put in a single +measly tie? Is ut a hump loike a camel's back yez are try in' to make +in the rail? Here! Dig--_here_!"--the little section boss, with +wrathful precision, indicated the exact spot with the toe of his boot. + +He returned to his seat, and regarded Sammy Durgan helplessly. + +"'Tis a new lot," said he sadly, "an' the worst, bar none, that iver I +had." + +"But an Irishman, and one that can talk your own tongue, you won't hire +when he's out of a job," insinuated Sammy Durgan reproachfully. + +The section boss scrubbed reflectively at his chin whiskers. + +"An' how's Mrs. Durgan?" he asked, with some cordiality. + +"She's bad," said Sammy Durgan, suddenly mournful and shaking his head. +"She's worse than ever she's been, Donovan. I felt bad at leaving her +last night, Donovan--I did that. But what could I do? 'Twas a job I +had to get, Donovan, bad as I felt at leaving her, Donovan." + +"Sure now, is thot so?" said the little section boss sympathetically. +"'Tis cruel harrd luck yez have, Durgan. But yez'll moind I've not +much in the way av jobs--'tis a desolate bit av country, an' mostly +track-walkin' at a dollar-tin a day." + +"Donovan," said Sammy Durgan from a full heart, "the day'll come, +Donovan, when I'll keep the grass green on your grave for this. I knew +you'd not throw an old friend down." + +"'Tis glad I am to do ut," said Donovan, waving his hand royally. "An' +yez can start in at wance." + +And Sammy Durgan started. And for a week Sammy Durgan assiduously +tramped his allotted mileage out and back to the section shanty each +day--and for a week Sammy Durgan and trouble were asunder. + +Trouble? Where, from what possible source, could there be any trouble? +Not a soul for miles around the section shanty, just mountains and +track and cuts and fills, and nothing on earth for Sammy Durgan to do +but keep a paternal eye generally on the roadbed. Trouble? It even +got monotonous for Sammy Durgan himself. + +"'Tis not," confided Sammy Durgan to himself one morning, after a week +of this, that found him plodding along the track some two miles east of +the section shanty, "'tis not precisely the job I'd like, for it's a +chance I'm looking for to show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of +'em, and there'll be no chance here--but temporarily it'll do. 'Tis +not much of a job, and beneath me at that, but have I not heard that +them as are faithful in little will some day be handed much? There'll +be no one to say"--he glanced carefully around him in all +directions--"that Sammy Durgan was not a good track-walker." + +Sammy Durgan sat down on the edge of the embankment, extracted a black +cutty from his pocket, charged it with very black tobacco, lit it, +tamped the top of the bowl with a calloused forefinger, and from +another pocket extracted a newspaper--one of a bundle that the train +crew of No. 7 thoughtfully heaved at the section shanty door each +morning on their way up the line. + +It was a warm, bright morning; one of those comfortable summer mornings +with just enough heat to lift a little simmering haze from the rails, +and just enough sun to make a man feel leisurely, so to speak. Sammy +Durgan, the cutty drawing well, wormed a comfortable and inviting +hollow in the gravel of the embankment, propped his back against an +obliging tie, and opened his paper. + +"Track-walking," said Sammy Durgan, "is not much of a job, and 'tis not +what I'm looking for, but there are worse jobs." + +Somebody had read the paper before Sammy Durgan, hence the sheet that +first presented itself to his view was a page of classified +advertisements. His eye roved down the column of "Situations +Vacant"--and held on one of them. + + +MEN WANTED for grading work at The Gap. Apply at Engineers' Office, +Big Cloud, or to T. H. MacMurtrey, foreman, at The Gap. + + +Sammy Durgan pursed his lips. + +"There's no telling," said Sammy Durgan thoughtfully, "when I'll be +looking for a new job, so I'll bear it in mind. Not that they'd give +me a job at the office, for they would not; but by the name of him this +T. H. MacMurtrey 'll be a new man and unknown to me, which is quite +another matter--and I'll keep it in mind." + +Sammy Durgan turned the sheet absently--and then, forgetful of the +obliging tie that propped his back, he sat bolt upright with a jerk. + +"For the love of Mike!" observed Sammy Durgan breathlessly, with his +eyes glued to the paper. + +It leaped right out at him in the biggest type the Big Cloud _Daily +Sentinel_ had to offer, which, if it had its limitations, was not to be +despised, since it had acquired a second-hand font or two from a +metropolitan daily east that made no pretense at being modest in such +matters. + +Sammy Durgan's eyes began to pop, and his leathery face to screw up. + + + GHASTLY RAILROAD TRAGEDY + + UNKNOWN MAN MURDERED IN STATEROOM + OF EASTBOUND FLYER + + _No Clue to Assassin_ + + +Sammy Durgan's eyes bored into the fine print of the "story." If the +style was a trifle provincial and harrowing, Sammy Durgan was not +fastidious enough to be disturbed thereby--it was intensely vivid. +Sammy Durgan's mouth was half open, as he read. + + +One of the most atrocious, daring and bloody murders in the annals of +the country's crime was perpetrated last night in a compartment of the +sleeping car on No. 12, the eastbound through express. It is a +baffling mystery, though suspicion is directed against a passenger who +gave his name as Samuel Starke of New York. The details, gathered by +the _Sentinel_ staff from Conductor Hurley, and Clements, the porter, +on the arrival of the train at Big Cloud, are as follows: + +The car was a new-type compartment car, with the compartment doors +opening off the corridor that runs along one side of the length of the +car. As the train was passing Dam River, Clements, the porter, at the +forward end of the car, thought he heard two revolver shots from +somewhere in the rear. Clements says he thought at first he had been +mistaken, for the train was travelling fast and making a great uproar, +and he did not at once make any effort to investigate. Then he heard a +compartment door open, and he started down the corridor. Starke was +standing in the doorway of B compartment where the murdered man was, +and Starke yelled at Clements. "Here, porter, quick!" is what Clements +says Starke said to him: "There's a man been shot in here! My +compartment's next to this, you know, and I heard two shots and rushed +in." + +It was a horrible and unnerving sight that greeted the porter's eyes. +Mr. Clements was still visibly affected by it as he talked to the +_Sentinel_ reporter in Big Cloud. The unknown murdered man lay +pitifully huddled on the floor, lifeless and dead, a great bullet wound +in one temple and another along the side of his neck that must have +severed the jugular vein. It was as though blood had rained upon the +victim. He was literally covered with it. He was already past aid, +being quite dead. Conductor Hurley was quickly summoned. But +investigation only deepened the mystery. Suicide was out of the +question because there was no weapon to be found. Mr. Starke, at his +own request, was searched, but had no revolver. Mr. Starke, however, +has been held by the police. + +The _Sentinel_, without wishing to infringe upon the sphere of the +authorities or cast aspersions upon their acumen, but in the simple +furtherance of justice, offers the suggestion that, as the compartment +window was open, the assassin, whoever he was, hurled the revolver out +of the window after committing his dastardly and unspeakable crime; and +the _Sentinel_ hereby offers _Twenty-five Dollars Reward_ for the +recovery of the revolver. Lawlessness and crime, we had fondly +believed, was stamped out of the West, and we raise our voice in +protest against the return of desperadoes, bandits, and train robbers, +and we solemnly warn all those of that caliber that they will not be +tolerated in the new West, and we call upon all public-spirited +citizens in whose veins red blood flows to rise up and put them down +with an iron and merciless---- + + +There were still three columns. Sammy Durgan read them voraciously. +At the end, he sucked hard on the black cutty. The black cutty was out. + +"To think of the likes of that!" muttered Sammy Durgan heavily, as he +dug for a match. "The fellow that wrote the piece--'twill be that +little squint-eyed runt Labatt--is not the fool I thought him. It's +right, he is; what with murders and desperadoes no man's life's +safe--it is not! And to think of it right on this same railroad! And +who knows"--Sammy Durgan rose with sudden haste--"but 'twas right on +this same spot where I am this blessed minute, for the paper says it +was close to Dam River, that the poor devil was shot dead and foully +killed! And--" The match flamed over the bowl of the cutty, but Sammy +Durgan's attention was not on it. + +Sammy Durgan, in a sort of strained way, descended the embankment. The +match burned his fingers, and Sammy Durgan dropped it. Sammy Durgan +rubbed his eyes--yes, it was still glistening away there in the +sunlight. He stooped, and from the grass, trembling a little with +excitement, picked up a heavy-calibered, nickel-trimmed revolver. + +"Holy Christmas!" whispered Sammy Durgan, blinking fast. "'Tis the +same! There's no doubt of it--'tis the same that done the bloody deed! +And 'tis the first bit of luck I've had since I was born! Twenty-five +dollars reward!" He said it over very softly again: "Twenty-five +dollars reward!" + +Sammy Durgan returned to the track, and resumed his way along it; +though, as far as his services to the road were concerned, he might +just as well have remained where he was. Sammy Durgan's thoughts were +not of loosened spikes and erring fishplates, and neither were his eyes +intent on their discovery--his mind, thanks to Labatt, of the Big Cloud +_Daily Sentinel_, teemed with scenes of violence vividly portrayed, +midnight murders, corpses in grotesque attitudes on gore-bespattered +compartment floors, desperadoes of all descriptions, train bandits and +train robbers in masks holding up trains. + +"'Tis true," said Sammy Durgan to himself. "'Tis a lawless country, +these same Rockies. I mind 'twas only a year ago that Black Dempsey +and his gang tried to wreck Number Two in the Cut near Coyote Bend--I +mind it well." + +Sammy Durgan walked on down the track. At intervals he took the +revolver from his pocket and put it back again, as though to assure +himself beyond peradventure of doubt that it was in his possession. + +"Twenty-five dollars reward!" communed Sammy Durgan, grown arrogant +with wealth. "'Tis near a month's pay at a dollar-ten--and all for the +picking of it up. I called it luck--but it is not luck. An ordinary +track-walker would have walked it by and not seen it. 'Tis what you +get for keeping your eyes about you, and besides the twenty-five 'tis +promotion, too, mabbe I'll get. 'Twill show 'em that there's +track-walkers _and_ track-walkers. I'll say to Regan: 'Regan,' I'll +say, 'you've said hard words to me, Regan, but I ask you, Regan, how +many track-walkers would have brought a bloody murderer to justice by +keeping their eyes about them in the faithful performance of their +duty, Regan? 'Tis but the chance I ask. 'Tis the man in an emergency +that counts, and if ever I get a chance at an emergency I'll show you.' +And Regan'll say: 'Sammy,' he'll say, 'you----'" + +Sammy Durgan paused in his engrossing soliloquy as the roar of an +approaching train fell on his ears, and he scrambled quickly down from +the right of way to the bottom of the embankment. Just ahead of him +was a short, narrow, high-walled rock cut, and at the farther end the +track swerved sharply to the right, side-stepping, as it were, the +twist of the Dam River that swung in, steep-banked, to the right of way. + +"I'll wait here," said Sammy Durgan, "'till she's through the cut." + +Sammy Durgan waited. The train came nearer and nearer--and then Sammy +Durgan cocked his head in a puzzled way and stared through the cut. He +couldn't see anything, of course, for the curve, but from the sound she +had stopped just beyond the cut. + +"Now, what the devil is she stopping there for?" inquired Sammy Durgan +of the universe in an injured tone. + +He started along through the cut. And then Sammy Durgan stopped +himself--as though he were rooted to the earth--and a sort of grayish +white began to creep over his face. Came echoing through the cut a +shout, a yell, another, a chorus of them--then a shot, another shot, a +fusilade of them--and then a din mingling the oaths, the yells, and the +shots into a hideous babel that rang terror in Sammy Durgan's ears. + +Sammy Durgan promptly sidled in and hugged up against the rock wall +that towered above him. Here he hesitated an instant, then he crept +cautiously forward. Where he could not see, it was axiomatic that he +could not be seen; and where he could not be seen, it was equally +logical that he would be safe. + +Sammy Durgan's face, quite white now, was puckered as it had never been +puckered before, and his lips moved in a kind of twitching, jerky way +as he crept along. Then suddenly, a voice, that seemed nearer than the +others, but which from the acoustic properties of the cut he could not +quite locate, bawled out fiercely over the confusion, prefaced with an +oath: + +"Get that express car door open, and be damned quick about it! Go on, +shoot along the side of the train every time you see a head in a +window!" + +Sammy Durgan's mouth went dry, and his heart lost a beat, then went to +pounding like a trip-hammer. Labatt and the Big Cloud _Daily Sentinel_ +hadn't drawn any exaggerated picture. A hold-up--in broad daylight! + +"Holy Mither!" whispered Sammy Durgan. + +He crept farther forward, very cautiously--still farther--and then he +lay full length, crouched against the rock wall at the end of the cut. +He could see now, and the red hair of Sammy Durgan kind of straggled +down damp over his forehead, and his little black eyes lost their +pupils. + +It was a passenger train; one side of it quite hidden by the sharp +curve of the track, the other side presented almost full on to Sammy +Durgan's view--the whole length of it. And Sammy Durgan, gasping, +stared. Not ten yards away from the mouth of the cut a huge pile of +ties were laid across the rails, with the pilot of the stalled engine +almost nosing them. Down the embankment, a very steep embankment where +the Dam River swirled along, marched there evidently at the revolver's +point, the engine crew stood with their hands up in the air--at the +revolver's point with a masked man behind it. Along the length of the +train, two or three more masked men were shooting past the windows in +curt intimation to the passengers that the safest thing they could do +was to stay where they were; and farther down, by the rear coach, the +conductor and two brakemen, like their mates of the engine crew, held +their hands steadfastly above their heads as another bandit covered +them with his weapon. And through the open door of the express car +Sammy Durgan could see bobbing heads and straining backs, and the +express company's safe being worked across the floor preparatory to +heaving it out on the ground. + +It takes long to tell it--Sammy Durgan got it all as a second flies. +And something, a bitter something, seemed to be gnawing at Sammy +Durgan's vitals. + +"Holy Mither!" he mumbled miserably. "'Tis an emergency, all +right--but 'tis not the right kind of an emergency. What could any one +man do against a lot of bloodthirsty, desperate devils like that, +that'd sooner cut your throat than look at you!" + +Sammy Durgan's hand inadvertently rubbed against his right-hand coat +pocket--and his revolver. He drew it out mechanically, and it seemed +to put new life into Sammy Durgan, for, as he stared again at the scene +before him, Sammy Durgan quivered with a sudden, fierce elation. + +"I was wrong," said Sammy Durgan grimly. "'Tis the right kind of an +emergency, after all--and 'tis the man that uses his head and rises to +one that counts. I'll show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em! +Begorra, it can be done! 'Tis no one 'll notice me while I'm getting +to the engine and climbing in on the other side, and, by glory, if I +back her out quick enough them thieving hellions in the express car can +either jump for it or ride back to the arms of authority at the next +station--but the safe 'll be there, and 'twill be Sammy Durgan that +kept it there!" + +But Sammy Durgan still lay on the ground and stared--while the safe was +being pushed to the express car door, and one edge of it already +protruded out from the car. + +"Go on, Sammy Durgan!" urged Sammy Durgan anxiously to himself. "Don't +you be skeered, Sammy, you got a revolver. 'Tis yourself, and not +Maria, that'll do the locking of the doors hereafter, and 'tis Regan +you can pass with fine contempt. Think of that, Sammy Durgan! And all +for a bit of a run that'll not take the time of a batting of an +eyelash, and with no one to notice you doing it. 'Tis a clever plan +you've devised, Sammy Durgan--it is that. Go on, Sammy; go on!" + +Sammy Durgan wriggled a little on the ground, cocked his revolver--and +wriggled a little more. + +"I will!" said Sammy Durgan with a sudden pinnacling of +determination--and he sprang to his feet. + +Some loosened shale rattled down behind him. Sammy Durgan dashed +through the mouth of the cut--and then for a moment all was a sort of +chaos to Sammy Durgan. From the narrow edge of the embankment, just +clear of the cut, a man stepped suddenly out. Sammy Durgan collided +with him, his cocked revolver went off, and, jerked from his grasp by +the shock, sailed riverwards through the air, while, echoing its report +from the express car door, a man screamed wildly and grabbed at a +bullet-shattered wrist; and the man with whom Sammy Durgan had +collided, having but precarious footing at best, reeled back from the +impact, smashed into another man behind him, and with a crash both +rolled down the almost perpendicular embankment. Followed a splash and +a spout of water as they struck the river--and from every side a +tornado of yells and curses. + +"'Tis my finish!" moaned Sammy Durgan--but his feet were flying. +"I--I've done it now! If I ran back up the cut they'd chase me and +finish me--'tis my finish, anyway, but the engine 'll be the only +chance I got." + +Sammy Durgan streaked across the track, hurdled, tumbled, fell, and +sprawled over the pile of ties, recovered himself, regained his feet, +and made a frantic spring through the gangway and into the cab. + +With a sweep Sammy Durgan shot the reversing lever over into the back +notch, and with a single yank he wrenched the throttle wide. There was +nothing of the craftsman in engine-handling about Sammy Durgan at that +instant--only hurry. The engine, from a passive, indolent and +inanimate thing, seemed to rise straight up in the air like an aroused +and infuriated beast that had been stung. With one mad plunge it +backed crashing into the buffer plates of the express car behind it, +backed again, and once again, and the tinkle of breaking glass sort of +ricochetted along the train as one car after another added its quota of +shattered window panes, while the drivers, slipping on the rails, +roared around like gigantic and insensate pinwheels. + +Sammy Durgan snatched at the cab frame for support--and then with a +yell he snatched at a shovel. A masked face showed in the gangway. +Sammy Durgan brought the flat of the shovel down on the top of the +man's head. + +The gangway was clear again. There was life for it yet! The train was +backing quickly now under the urgent, prodding bucks of the engine. +Sammy Durgan mopped at his face, his eyes warily on the gangways. +Another man made a running jump for it--again Sammy Durgan's shovel +swung--and again the gangway was clear. + +Shovel poised, lurching with the lurch of the cab, red hair flaming, +half terrified and half defiant, eyes shooting first to one gangway and +then the other, Sammy Durgan held the cab. A minute passed with no +renewal of attack. Sammy Durgan stole a quick glance over his shoulder +through the cab glass up the track--and, with a triumphant shout, he +flung the shovel clanging to the iron floor-plates, and, leaning far +out of the gangway, shook his fist. Strewn out along the right of way +masked men yelled and shouted and cursed, but Sammy Durgan was beyond +their reach--and so was the express company's safe. + +"Yah!" screamed Sammy Durgan, wildly derisive and also belligerent in +the knowledge of his own safety. "Yah! Yah! Yah! 'Twas me, ye +bloody hellions, that turned the trick on ye! 'Twas me, Sammy Durgan, +and I'll have you know it! 'Twas----" + +Sammy Durgan turned, as the express car opened, and Macy, the +conductor, hatless and wild-eyed, appeared on the platform. + +"'S'all right, Macy!" Sammy Durgan screeched reassuringly. "'S'all +right--it's me, Sammy Durgan." + +Macy jumped from the platform to the tender, jumped over the water +tank, and came down into the cab with an avalanche of coal. His mouth +was twitching and jerking, but for a moment he could not speak--and +then the words came like an explosion, and he shook his fist under +Sammy Durgan's nose. + +"You--you damned fathead!" he roared. "What in the double-blanked, +blankety-blanked son of blazes are you doing!" + +"Fathead, yourself!" retorted Sammy Durgan promptly--and there was +spice in the way Sammy Durgan said it. "I'm doing what you hadn't the +nerve or the head to do, Macy--unless mabbe you're in the gang +yourself! I'm saving that safe back there in the express car, that's +what I'm doing." + +"Saving nothing!" bellowed Macy crazily, as he slammed the throttle +shut. "There! Look there!" He reached for Sammy Durgan's head, and +with both hands twisted it around, and fairly flattened Sammy Durgan's +nose against the cab glass. + +"What--what is it?" faltered Sammy Durgan, a little less assertively. + +Macy was excitable. He danced upon the cab floor as though it were a +hornets' nest. + +"What is it!" he echoed in a scream. "What is it! It's moving +pictures, you tangle-brained, rusty-headed idiot! That's what it is!" + +A sort of dull gray film seemed to spread itself over Sammy Durgan's +face. Sammy Durgan stared through the cab glass. The track ahead was +just disappearing from view as the engine backed around a curve, but +what Sammy Durgan saw was enough--two dripping figures were salvaging a +wrecked and bedragged photographic outfit on the river bank, close to +the entrance of the cut where he had been in collision with them; an +excited group of train bandits, without any masks now, were +gesticulating around the marooned engineer and fireman; and in the +middle distance, squatting on a rail, a man, coatless, his shirt sleeve +rolled up, was making horrible grimaces as a companion bandaged his +wrist. + +Macy's laugh rang hollow--it wasn't exactly a laugh. + +"I don't know how much it costs," stuttered the conductor demoniacally, +"but there's about four million dollars' worth of film they're fishing +out of the river there, and they paid a thousand dollars for the train +and thirty-five minutes between stations to clear Number Forty, and +there's about eight thousand car windows gone, and one vestibule and +two platforms in splinters, and a man shot through the wrist, and if +that crowd up there ever get their hands on you they'll----" + +"I think," said Sammy Durgan hurriedly, "that I'll get off." + +He edged back to the gangway and peered out. The friendly bend of the +road hid the "outlaws." The train was almost at a standstill--and +Sammy Durgan jumped. Not on the river side--on the other side. Sammy +Durgan's destination was somewhere deep in the wooded growth that +clothed the towering mountain before him. + +There is an official record for cross-country mileage registered in the +name of some one whose name is not Sammy Durgan--but it is not +accurate. Sammy Durgan holds it. And it was far up on the mountain +side that he finally crossed the tape and collapsed, breathless and +gasping, on a tree stump. He sat there for quite a while, jabbing at +his streaming face with the sleeve of his jumper; and there was trouble +in Sammy Durgan's eyes, and plaint in his voice when at last he spoke. + +"Twenty-five dollars reward," said Sammy Durgan wistfully. "And 'twas +as good as in my pocket, and now 'tis gone. 'Tis hard luck, cruel hard +luck. It is that!" + +Sammy Durgan's eyes roved around the woods about him and grew +thoughtful. + +"I was minded at the time," said Sammy Durgan, "that 'twas not the +right kind of an emergency, and when he hears of it Regan will be +displeased. And now what'll I do? 'Twill do no good to return to the +section shanty, for they'll be telegraphing Donovan to fire Sammy +Durgan. That's me--fire Sammy Durgan. 'Tis trouble dogs me and cruel +hard luck--and all I'm asking for is a steady job and a chance." + +Sammy Durgan relapsed into mournful silence and contemplation for a +spell--and then his face began to clear. Sammy Durgan's optimism was +like the bobbing cork. + +"'Tis another streak of cruel hard luck, of bitter, cruel hard luck +I've had this day, but am I down and out for the likes of that?" +inquired Sammy Durgan defiantly of himself. + +"I am not!" replied Sammy Durgan buoyantly to Sammy Durgan. "'Tis not +the first time I've been fired, and did I not read that there's +MacMurtrey begging for men up at The Gap? And him being a new man and +unknown to me, 'tis a job sure. 'Tis only my name might stand in the +way, for 'tis likely 'twill be mentioned in his hearing on account of +the bit of trouble down yonder. But 'tis the job I care for and not +the name. I'll be working for MacMurtrey to-morrow morning--I will +that! And what's more," added Sammy Durgan, beginning to blink fast, +"I'll show 'em yet, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em. Once in +every man's life he gets his chance. Mine ain't come yet. I thought +it had to-day, but I was wrong. But it'll come. You wait! I'll show +'em some day!" + +Sammy Durgan lost himself in meditation. After a little, he spoke +again. + +"I'm not sure about the law," said Sammy Durgan, "but on account of the +fellow that the bullet hit, apart from MacMurtrey taking note of it, +'twould be as well, anyway, if I changed my name temporarily till the +temper of all concerned is cooled down a bit." Sammy Durgan rose from +the stump. "I'll start West," said Sammy Durgan, "and get a lift on +the first way-freight before the word is out. I'm thinking they'll be +asking for Sammy Durgan down at Big Cloud." + +And they were. It was quite true. Down at headquarters they were +earnestly concerned about Sammy Durgan. Sammy Durgan had made no +mistake in that respect. + +"Fire Sammy Durgan," wired the roadmaster to the nearest station for +transmission by first train to Pat Donovan, the section boss--and he +got this answer back the next morning: + +I. P. SPEARS, Roadmaster, Big Cloud: + Sammy Durgan missing. + P. DONOVAN." + + +Missing--that was it. Just that, nothing more--as though the earth had +opened and swallowed him up, Sammy Durgan had disappeared. And while +Carleton grew red and apoplectic over the claim sheet for damages +presented by the moving-picture company, and Regan fumed and tugged at +his scraggly brown mustache at thought of the damage to his rolling +stock--Sammy Durgan was just missing, that was all--just missing. +Nobody knew where Sammy Durgan had gone. Nobody had seen him. Station +agents, operators, road bosses, section bosses, construction bosses and +everybody else were instructed to report--and they did. They +reported--nothing. Regan even went so far as to ask Mrs. Durgan. + +"Is ut here to taunt me, yez are!" screamed Mrs. Durgan bitterly--and +slammed the door in the little master mechanic's face. + +"I guess," observed Regan to himself, as he gazed at the +uncommunicative door panels, "I guess mabbe the neighbors have been +neighborly--h'm? But I guess, too, we're rid of Sammy Durgan at last; +and I dunno but what that comes pretty near squaring accounts for +window glass and about a million other incidentals. Only," added the +little master mechanic, screwing up his eyes, as he walked back to the +station, "only it would have been more to my liking to have got my +hands on him first--and got rid of him after!" + +But Regan, and Carleton, and Mrs. Durgan, and the Hill Division +generally were not rid of Sammy Durgan--far from it. For a week he was +missing, and then one afternoon young Hinton, of the division +engineer's staff, strolled into the office, nodded at Carleton, and +grinned at the master mechanic, who was tilted back in a chair with his +feet on the window sill. + +"I dropped off this morning to look over the new grading work at The +Gap," said Hinton casually. "And I thought you might be interested to +know that MacMurtrey's got a man working for him up there by the name +of Timmy O'Toole." + +"Doesn't interest me," said Regan blandly, chewing steadily on his +blackstrap. "Try and spring it on the super, Hinton. He always bites." + +"Who's Timmy O'Toole?" smiled Carleton. + +Hinton squinted at the ceiling. + +"Sammy Durgan," said Hinton--casually. + +There wasn't a word spoken for a minute. Regan lifted his feet from +the window sill and lowered his chair legs softly down to the floor as +though he were afraid of making a noise, and the smile on Carleton's +face sort of faded away as though a blight had withered it. + +"What was the name?" said Carleton presently, in a velvet voice. + +"Timmy O'Toole," said Hinton. + +Carleton's hand reached out, kind of as though of its own initiative, +kind of as though it were just habit, for a telegraph blank--but Regan +stopped him. It wasn't often that the fat, good-natured little master +mechanic was vindictive, but there were times when even Regan's soul +was overburdened. + +"Wait!" said Regan, with ferocious grimness. "Wait! I'll make a +better job of it than that, Carleton. I'm going up the line myself +to-morrow morning on Number Three--and _I'll_ drop off at The Gap. +Timmy O'Toole now, is it? I'll make him sick!" Regan clenched his +pudgy fist. "When I'm through with him he'll never have to be fired +again--not on this division. Still looking for an emergency to rise +to, eh? Well, I'll accommodate him! He'll run up against the hottest +emergency to-morrow morning he ever heard of!" + +And Regan was right--that was exactly what Sammy Durgan did. Only it +wasn't quite the sort of emergency that Regan----But just a moment till +the line's clear, there go the cautionaries against us. + +If it had been any other kind of a switch it would never have +happened--let that be understood from the start. And how it ever came +to be left on the main line when modern equipment was installed is a +mystery, except perhaps that as it was never used it was therefore +never remembered by anybody. Nevertheless, there it stood, an old +weather-beaten, two-throw, stub switch of the vintage of the ark. +Two-throw, mind you, when a one-throw switch, even in the days of its +usefulness, would have answered the purpose just as well, better for +that matter. No modern drop-handle, interlocking safety device about +it. Not at all! A handle sticking straight out like a sore thumb that +could creak around on a semi-circular guide, with a rusty pin dangling +from a rusty chain to lock it--if some itinerant section hand didn't +forget to jab the pin back into the hole it had the habit of worming +its way out of! It stood about a quarter of the way down the grade of +The Gap, which is to say about half a mile from the summit, a deserted +sentinel on guard over a deserted spur that, in the old construction +days, had been built in a few hundred yards through a soft spot in the +mountain side for camp and material stores. + +As for The Gap itself, it was not exactly what might be called a nice +piece of track. Officially, the grade is an average of 4.2; +practically, it is likened to a balloon descension by means of a +parachute. It begins at the east end and climbs up in a wriggling, +twisting way, hugging gray rock walls on one side, and opening a caņon +on the other that, as you near the summit, would make you catch your +breath even to look at over the edge--it is a sheer drop. And also the +right of way is narrow, very narrow; just clearance on one side against +the rock walls, and a whole caņon full of nothingness at the edge of +the other rail, and----But there's our "clearance" now. + +MacMurtrey's camp was at the summit; and MacMurtrey's work, once the +camp was fairly established and stores in, was to shave the pate of the +summit, looking to an amelioration in The Gap's grade average--that is, +its official grade average. But on the morning that Regan left Big +Cloud on No. 3, the work was not very far along--only the preliminaries +accomplished, so to speak, which were a siding at the top of the grade, +with storehouse and camp shanties flanking it. + +And on the siding, that morning, just opposite the storehouse which, it +might be remarked in passing, had already received its first +requisition of blasting materials for the barbering of the grade that +was to come, a hybrid collection of Polacks, Swedes, and Hungarians +were emptying an oil-tank car and discharging supplies from some flats +and box cars; while on the main line track a red-haired man, with +leathery face, was loading some grade stakes on a handcar. + +MacMurtrey, tall, lanky and irascible, shouted at the red-haired man +from a little distance up the line. + +"Hey, O'Toole!" + +The red-haired man paid no attention. + +"_O'Toole!_" It came in a bellow from the road boss. "You, there, +O'Toole, you wooden-headed mud-picker, are you deaf!" + +Sammy Durgan looked up to get a line on the disturbance--and caught his +breath. + +"By glory!" whispered Sammy Durgan to himself. "I was near +forgetting--'tis me he's yelling at." + +"O'Too----" + +"Yes, sir!" shouted Sammy Durgan hurriedly. + +"Oh, you woke up, have you?" shrilled MacMurtrey. "Well, when you've +got those stakes loaded, take 'em down the grade and leave 'em by the +old spur. And take it easy on the grade, and mind your brakes going +down--understand?" + +"Yes, sir," said Sammy Durgan. + +Sammy Durgan finished loading his handcar, and, hopping aboard, started +to pump it along. At the brow of the grade he passed the oil-tank car, +and nodded sympathetically at a round-faced, tow-headed Swede who was +snatching a surreptitious drag at his pipe in the lee of the car. + +Like one other memorable morning in Sammy Durgan's career, it was +sultry and warm with that same leisurely feeling in the air. Sammy +Durgan and his handcar slid down the grade--for about an eighth of a +mile--rounded a curve that hid Sammy Durgan and the construction camp +one from the other, continued on for another hundred yards--and came to +a stop. + +Sammy Durgan got off. On the caņon side there was perhaps room for an +agile mountain goat to stretch its legs without falling off; but on the +other side, if a man squeezed in tight enough and curled his legs Turk +fashion, the rock wall made a fairly comfortable backrest. + +"'Twas easy, he said, to take it on the grade," said Sammy Durgan +reminiscently. "And why not?" + +Sammy Durgan composed himself against the rock wall, and produced his +black cutty. + +"'Tis a better job than track-walking," said Sammy Durgan judicially, +"though more arduous." + +Sammy Durgan smoked on. + +"But some day," said Sammy Durgan momentously, "I'll have a better one. +I will that! It's a long time in coming mabbe, but it'll come. Once +in every man's life a chance comes to him. 'Tis patience that counts, +that and rising to the emergency that proves the kind of a man you are, +as some day I'll prove to Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em." + +Sammy Durgan smoked on. It was a warm summer morning, sultry even, as +has been said, but it was cool and shady against the rock ledge. Peace +fell upon Sammy Durgan--drowsily. Also, presently, the black cutty +fell, or, rather, slipped down into Sammy Durgan's lap--without +disturbing Sammy Durgan. + +A half hour, three-quarters of an hour passed--and MacMurtrey, far up +at the extreme end of the construction camp, let a sudden yell out of +him and started on a mad run toward the tank-car and the summit of the +grade, as a series of screeches in seven different varieties of +language smote his ears, and a great burst of black smoke rolling +skyward met his startled gaze. But fast as he ran, the Polacks, Swedes +and Hungarians were faster--pipe smoking under discharging oil-tank +cars and in the shadow of a dynamite storage shed they were accustomed +to, but to the result, a blazing oil-tank car shooting a flame against +the walls of the dynamite shed, they were not--they were only aroused +to action with their lives in peril, and they acted promptly and +earnestly--too earnestly. Some one threw the main line open, and the +others crowbarred the blazing car like mad along the few feet of siding +to get it away from the storage shed, bumped it on the main line, and +then their bars began to lose their purchase under the wheels--the +grade accommodatingly took a hand. + +MacMurtrey, tearing along toward the scene, yelled like a crazy man: + +"Block her! Block the wheels! You--you----" His voice died in a +gasp. "D'ye hear!" he screamed, as he got his breath again. "Block +the wheels!" + +And the Polacks, the Swedes, the Hungarians and the What-Nots, scared +stiff, screeched and jabbered, as they watched the tank-car, gaining +speed with every foot it travelled, sail down the grade. And +MacMurtrey, too late to do anything, stopped dead in his tracks--his +face ashen. He pulled his watch, licked dry lips, and kind of +whispered to himself. + +"Number Three 'll be on the foot of the grade now," whispered +MacMurtrey, and licked his lips again. "Oh, my God!" + +Meanwhile, down the grade around the bend, Sammy Durgan yawned, sat up, +and cocked his ear summitwards. + +"Now what the devil are them crazy foreigners yelling about!" +complained Sammy Durgan unhappily. "'Tis always the way with them, +like a cageful of screeching cockatoos, they are--but being foreigners +mabbe they can't help it, 'tis their nature to yell without provocation +and----" + +Sammy Durgan's ear caught a very strange sound, that mingled the clack +of fast-revolving wheels as they pounded the fish-plates with a roar +that hissed most curiously--and then Sammy Durgan's knees went loose at +the joints and wobbled under him. + +Trailing a dense black canopy of smoke, wrapped in a sheet of flame +that spurted even from the trucks, the oil-tank car lurched around the +bend and plunged for him--and for once, Sammy Durgan thought very fast. +There was no room to let it pass--on one side was just nothing, barring +a precipice; and on the rock side, no matter how hard he squeezed back +from the right of way, there wasn't any room to escape that spurting +flame that even in its passing would burn him to a crisp. And with one +wild squeak of terror Sammy Durgan flung himself at his handcar, and, +pushing first like a maniac to start it, sprang aboard. Then he began +to pump. + +There were a hundred yards between the bend and the scene of Sammy +Durgan's siesta--only the tank-car had momentum, a whole lot of it, and +Sammy Durgan had not. By the time Sammy Durgan had the handcar started +the hundred yards was twenty-five, and the monster of flame and smoke +behind him was travelling two feet to his one. + +Sammy Durgan pumped--for his life. He got up a little better +speed--but the tank-car still gained on him. Down the grade he went, +the handcar rocking, swaying, lurching, and up and down on the handle, +madly, frantically, desperately, wildly went Sammy Durgan's arms, +shoulders and head--his hat blew off, and his red hair sort of stood +straight up in the wind, and his face was like chalk. + +Down he went, faster and faster, and the handcar, reeling like a +drunken thing, took a curve with a vicious slew, and the off wheels +hung in air for an instant while Sammy Durgan bellowed in panic, then +found their base again and shot along the straight. And faster and +faster behind him, on wings of fire it seemed, spitting flame tongues, +vomiting its black clouds of smoke like an inferno, roaring like a +mighty furnace in blast, came the tank-car. It was initial momentum +and mass against Sammy Durgan's muscles on a handcar pump handle--and +the race was not to Sammy Durgan. + +He cast a wild glance behind, and squeaked again, and his teeth began +to go like castanets, as the hot breath of the thing fanned his back. + +"'Tis my finish," wheezed and stuttered Sammy Durgan through bursting +lungs and chattering teeth. "'Tis a dead man, I am--oh, Holy +Mither--'tis a dead man I am!" + +Ahead and to either side swept Sammy Durgan's eyes like a hunted +rat's--and they held, fascinated, on where the old spur track led off +from the main line. But it was not the spur track that interested +Sammy Durgan--it was that the rock wall, diverging away from his elbow, +as it were, presented a wide and open space. + +"It's killed I am, anyway," moaned Sammy Durgan. "But 'tis a chance. +If--if mabbe I could jump far enough there where there's room to let it +pass, I dunno--but 'tis killed, I'll be, anyway--oh, Holy Mither--but +'tis a chance--oh, Holy Mither!" + +Hissing in its wind-swept flames, belching its cataract of smoke that +lay behind it up the grade like a pall of death, roaring like some +insensate demon, the tank-car leaped at him five yards away. And, +screaming now in a paroxysm of terror that had his soul in clutch, +crazed with it, blind with it, Sammy Durgan jumped--_blindly_--just +before he reached the spur. + +Like a stone from a catapult, Sammy Durgan went through the air, and +with a sickening thud his body crashed full into the old stub +switch-stand and into the switch handle, whirled around, and he +ricochetted, a senseless, bleeding, shattered Sammy Durgan, three yards +away. + +It threw the switch. The handcar, already over it, sailed on down the +main line and around the next bend, climbed up the front end of the 508 +that was hauling No. 3 up the grade, smashed the headlight into +battered ruin, unshipped the stack, and took final lodgment on the +running board, its wheels clinging like tentacles to the 508's bell and +sand-box; but the tank-car, with a screech of wrenching axles, a +frightened, quivering stagger, took the spur, rushed like a Berserker +amuck along its length, plowed up sand and gravel and dirt and rock +where there were no longer any rails, and toppled over, a spent and +buckled thing, on its side. + +It was a flying switch that they talk of yet on the Hill Division. No. +3, suspicious of the handcar, sniffed her way cautiously around the +curve, and there, passengers, train crew, engine crew and Tommy Regan, +made an excited exodus from the train--just as MacMurtrey, near mad +with fear, Swedes, Hungarians and Polacks stringing out along the right +of way behind him, also arrived on the scene. + +Who disclaims circumstantial evidence! Regan stared at the burning +oil-tank up the spur, stared at the bleeding, senseless form of Sammy +Durgan--and then he yelled for a doctor. + +But a medical man amongst the passengers was already jumping for Sammy +Durgan; and MacMurtrey was clawing at the master mechanic's arm, +stuttering out the tale of what had happened. + +"And--and if it hadn't been for Timmy O'Toole there," stuttered +MacMurtrey, flirting away the sweat that stood out in great nervous +beads on his face, "I--it makes me sick to think what would have +happened when the tank struck Number Three. Something would have gone +into the caņon sure. Timmy O'Toole's a----" + +"His name's Sammy Durgan," said Regan, kind of absently. + +"I don't give a blamed hoot what his name is!" declared MacMurtrey +earnestly. "He's a man with grit from the soles up, and a head on him +to use it with. It was three-quarters of an hour ago that I sent him +down, so he must have been near the top on his way back when he saw the +tank-car coming--and he took the one chance there was--to try and beat +it to the spur here to save Number Three; and it was so close on him, +for it's a cinch he hadn't time to stop, that he had to jump for the +switch with about one chance in ten for his own life--see?" + +"A blind man could see it," said Regan heavily, "but--Sammy Durgan!" +He reached uncertainly toward his hip pocket for his chewing--and then, +with sudden emotion, the big-hearted, fat, little master mechanic bent +over Sammy Durgan. + +"God bless the man!" blurted out Regan. And then, to the doctor: "Will +he live?" + +"Oh, yes; I think so," the doctor answered. "He's pretty badly smashed +up, though." + +Sammy Durgan's lips were moving. Regan leaned close to catch the words. + +"A steady job," murmured Sammy Durgan. "Never get a chance. But some +day it'll come. I'll show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em!" + +"You have, Sammy," said Regan, in a low, anxious voice. "It's all +right, Sammy. It's all right, old boy. Just pull around and you can +have any blamed thing you want on the Hill Division." + +The doctor smiled sympathetically at Regan. + +"He's delirious, you know," he explained kindly. "What he says doesn't +mean anything." + +Regan looked up with a kind of a grim smile. + +"Don't it?" inquired Regan softly. Then he cleared his throat, and +tugged at his scraggly brown mustache--both ends of it. "That's what I +used to think myself," said the fat little master mechanic, sort of as +though he were apostrophizing the distant peaks across the caņon, and +not as though he were talking to the doctor at all. "But I guess--I +guess I know Sammy Durgan better than I did. H'm?" + + + + +IV + +THE WRECKING BOSS + +Opinions, right or wrong, on any subject are a matter of +individuality--there have been different opinions about Flannagan on +the Hill Division. But the story is straight enough--from car-tink to +superintendent, there has never been any difference of opinion about +that. + +Flannagan was the wrecking boss. + +Tommy Regan said the job fitted Flannagan, for it took a hard man for +the job, and Flannagan, bar none, was the hardest man on the payroll; +hardest at crooking elbows in MacGuire's Blazing Star Saloon, hardest +with his fists, and hardest of all when it came to getting at the heart +of some scalding, mangled horror of death and ruin that a man wouldn't +be called a coward to turn from--sick. + +Flannagan looked it. He stood six feet one in his stockings, and his +chest and shoulders were like the front-end view you'd get looking at a +sturdy, well-grown ox. He wasn't pretty. His face was scarred with +cuts and burns enough to stall any German duelling student on a siding +till the rails rusted, and the beard he grew to hide these +multitudinous disfigurements just naturally came out in tussocks; he +had black eyes that could go _coal_ black and lose their pupils, and a +shock of black hair that fell into them half the time; also, he had a +tongue that wasn't elegant. That was Flannagan--Flannagan, the +wrecking boss. + +There's no accounting for the way some things come about--and it's +pretty hard to call the turn of the card when Dame Fortune deals the +bank. It's a trite enough saying that it is the unexpected that +happens in life, but the reason it's trite is because it's immeasurably +true. Flannagan growled and swore and cursed one night, coming back +from a bit of a spill up the line, because they stalled him and his +wrecking outfit for an hour about half a mile west of Big Cloud--the +reason being that, like the straw that broke the camel's back, a circus +train in from the East, billed for a three days' lay-off at Big Cloud, +had, seeking siding, temporarily choked the yards, already glutted with +traffic, until the mix-up Gleeson, the yardmaster, had to wrestle with +would have put a problem in differential calculus into the kindergarten +class. + +Flannagan was very dirty, and withal very tired, and when, finally, +they gave him the "clear" and his flat and caboose and his staggering +derrick rumbled sullenly down toward the roundhouse and shops, the +sight of gilded cages, gaudily decorated cars, and converted Pullmans +that were second-class-tourist equipment painted white, did not assuage +his feelings; neither was there enchantment for him in the roars of +multifarious beasts, nor in the hybrid smells that assailed his +nostrils from the general direction of the menagerie. Flannagan, for +an hour's loss of sleep, with heartiness and abandon, consigned that +particular circus, also all others and everything thereunto pertaining, +from fangless serpents to steam calliopes, to regions that are +popularly credited with being somewhat warmer than the torrid zone on +the hottest day in mid-summer. But then--Flannagan did not know. + +Opinions differ. Flannagan was about the last man on earth that any +one on the Hill Division would have picked out for a marrying man; and, +equally true the other way round, about the last man they would have +picked out as one a pretty girl would want to marry. With her, maybe, +it was the strength of the man, since they say that comes first with +women; with him, maybe, it was just the trim little brown-eyed, +brown-haired figure that could ride with the grace of a fairy. Anyway, +the only thing about it that didn't surprise any one was the fact that, +when it came, it came as sudden and quick as a head-on smash around a +ninety-degree curve. That was Flannagan's way, for Flannagan, if he +was nothing else, was impulsive. + +That night Flannagan cursed the circus; the next day he saw Daisy +MacQueen riding in the street parade and--but this isn't the story of +Flannagan's courtship, not but that the courtship of any man like +Flannagan would be worth the telling--only there are other things. + +At first, Big Cloud winked and chuckled slyly to itself; and then, when +the circus left and Flannagan got a week off and left with it, it +guffawed outright--but when, at the end of that week, Flannagan brought +back Mrs. Flannagan, _née_ Daisy MacQueen, Big Cloud stuck its tongue +in its cheek, wagged its head and waited developments. + +This is the story of the developments. + +Maybe that same impulsiveness of Flannagan's, that could be blind and +bullheaded, coupled with a passion that was like a devil's when +aroused, was to blame; maybe the women of Big Cloud, following the lead +of Mrs. MacAloon, the engineer's wife and the leader of society +circles, who shook her fiery red head and turned up her Celtic nose +disdainfully at Daisy MacQueen, had something to do with it; maybe +Daisy herself had a little pride--but what's the use of speculating? +It all goes back to the same beginning--opinions differ. + +Tongues wagged; Flannagan listened--that's the gist of it. But, once +for all, let it be said and understood that Daisy MacQueen was as +straight as they make them. She hadn't been brought up the way Mrs. +MacAloon and her coterie had, and she liked to laugh, liked to play, +liked to live, and not exist in a humdrum way ever over washtubs and a +cook stove--though, all credit to her who hadn't been used to them, she +never shirked one nor the other. The women's ideas about circuses and +circus performers were, putting it mildly, puritanical; but the men +liked Daisy MacQueen--and took no pains to hide it. They clustered +around her, and, before long, she ruled them all imperially with a nod +of her pretty head; and, as a result, the women's ideas from +puritanical became more so--which is human nature, Big Cloud or +anywhere else. + +At first, Flannagan was proud of the little wife he had brought to Big +Cloud--proud of her for the very attitude adopted toward her by his +mates; but, as the months went by, gradually the wagging tongues got in +their work, gradually Flannagan began to listen, and the jealousy that +was his by nature above the jealousy of most men commenced to smolder +into flame. Just a rankling jealousy, directed against no one in +particular--just jealousy. Things up at the little house off Main +Street where the Flannagans lived weren't as harmonious as they had +been. + +In the beginning, Daisy, not treating the matter seriously, answered +Flannagan with a laugh; finally, she answered him not at all. And that +stage, unfortunately far from unique in other homes than Flannagan's +the world over, was reached where only some one act, word or deed was +needed to bring matters to a head. + +Perhaps, after all, there was poetic justice in Flannagan's cursing of +the circus, for it was the circus that supplied that one thing needed. +Not that the circus came back to town--it didn't--but a certain round, +little, ferret-eyed, short, pompadour-haired, waxed-mustached, perfumed +Signor Ferraringi, the ringmaster, did. + +Ferraringi was a scoundrel--what he got he deserved, there was never +any doubt about that; but that night Flannagan, when he walked into the +house, saw only Ferraringi on his knees before Daisy, heard only +impassioned, flowery words, and, in the blind fury that transformed him +from man to beast, the scorn, contempt and horror in Daisy's eyes, the +significance of the rigid little figure with tight-clenched hands, was +lost. Ferraringi had been in love with Daisy. Flannagan knew that, +and his seething brain remembered that. The circus people had told him +so; Daisy had told him so; Ferraringi had told him so with a snarl and +a threat--and he had laughed--_then_. + +One instant Flannagan hung upon the threshold. He was not a pretty +sight. Back from a wreck, he was still in his overalls, and these were +smeared with blood--four carloads of steers had gone into premature +shambles in the ditch. One instant Flannagan hung there, his face +working convulsively--and then he jumped. His left hand locked into +the collar of the ringmaster's coat, his arm straightened like the +tautening chains of his own derrick crane, and, as the other came off +his knees and upright from the yank, Flannagan's right swung a terrific +full-arm smash that, landing a little above the jaw, plastered one side +of that tonsorial work of art, the waxed and curled mustache, flat into +Ferraringi's cheek. + +Ferraringi's answer, as he wriggled free, was a torrent of +malediction--and a blinding flash. Daisy screamed. The shot missed, +but the powder singed Flannagan's face. + +It was the only shot that Ferraringi fired! With a roar, high-pitched +like the maddened trumpeting of an elephant amuck, Flannagan with a +single blow sent the revolver sailing ceiling high--then his arms, like +steel piston rods, worked in and out, and his fists drummed an awful, +merciless tattoo upon the ringmaster. + +The smoke from the shot filled the room with pungent odor. Chairs and +furniture, overturned, broken, crashed to the floor. Daisy, wild-eyed, +with parted lips, dumb with terror, crouched against the wall, her +hands clasped to her breast--but before Flannagan's eyes all was +red--_red_. + +A battered, bruised, reeling, staggering form before him curled up +suddenly and slid in a heap at his feet. Flannagan, with groping hands +and twitching fingers, reached for it--and then, with a rush, other +forms, many of them, came between him and what was on the floor. + +It was very good for Ferraringi, very good, for that was all that saved +him--Flannagan was seeing only red. + +The neighbors lifted the stunned ringmaster, limp as rags, to his feet. +Flannagan brushed his great fist once across his eyes in a half-dazed +way, and glared at the roomful of people. Suddenly, he heaved forward, +pushing those nearest him violently toward the door. + +"Get out of here!" he bellowed hoarsely. "Get out, curse you, d'ye +hear! Get out!" + +There were men in that little crowd, men besides the three or four +women, Mrs. MacAloon amongst them; men not reckoned overfaint of spirit +in Big Cloud by those who knew, but _they_ knew Flannagan, and they +went--went, half carrying, half dragging the ringmaster, oiled and +perfumed now in a fashion grimly different than before. + +"Get out!" roared Flannagan again to hurry them, and, as the last one +disappeared, he whirled on Daisy. "And you, too!" he snarled. "Get +out!" + +Terrified, shaken by the scene as she was, his words, their +implication, their injustice, whipped her into scorn and anger. +White-lipped, she stared at him for an instant. + +"You dare," she burst out, "you dare to----" + +"_Get out!_" Flannagan's voice in his passion was a thick, stumbling, +guttural whisper. "Get out! Go back to your circus--go where you +like! Get out!" His hand dove into his pocket, and its contents, +bills and coins, what there was of them, he flung upon the table. "Get +out--as far as all I've got will take you!" + +Daisy MacQueen was proud--perhaps, though, not above the pride of other +women. The blood was hot in her cheeks; her big, brown eyes had a +light in them near to that light with which she had faced Ferraringi +but a short time before; her breath came in short, hard, little gasps. +For a full minute she did not speak--and then the words came cold as +death. + +"Some day--some day, Michael Flannagan, you'll get what you deserve." + +"That's what I'm gettin' now--what I deserve," he flung back; then, +halting in the doorway: "You understand, eh? Get out! I'm lettin' you +down easy. Get out of Big Cloud! Get out before I'm back. Number +Fifteen 'll be in in an hour--you'd better take her." + +Flannagan stepped out on the street. A curious little group had +collected two houses down in front of Mrs. MacAloon's. Flannagan +glanced at them, muttered a curse; and then, head down between his +shoulders, clenched fists rammed in his pockets, he headed in the other +direction toward Main Street. Five minutes later, he pushed the +swinging doors of the Blazing Star open, and walked down the length of +the room to where Pete MacGuire, the proprietor, lounged across the bar. + +"Pete"--he jerked out his words hoarsely--"next Tuesday's pay day--is +my face good till then?" + +MacGuire looked at him curiously. The news of the fracas had not yet +reached the Blazing Star. + +"Why, sure," said he. "Sure it is, Flannagan, if you want it. +What's----" + +"Then let 'em come my way," Flannagan rapped out, with a savage laugh; +"an' let 'em come--_fast_." + +Flannagan was the wrecking boss. A hard man, Regan had called him, and +he was--a product of the wild, rough, pioneering life, one of those men +who had followed the grim-faced, bearded corps of engineers as they +pitted their strength against the sullen gray of the mighty Rockies +from the eastern foothills to the plains of the Sierras, fighting every +inch of their way with indomitable perseverance and daring over chasms +and gorges, through tunnels and cuts, in curves and levels and grades, +against obstacles that tried their souls, against death itself, taping +the thin steel lines they left behind them with their own blood. Hard? +Yes, Flannagan was hard. Un-cultured, rough, primal, he undoubtedly +was. A brute man, perhaps, full of the elemental--fiery, hot-headed, +his passions alone swayed him. That side of Flannagan, the years, in +the very environment in which he had lived them, had developed to the +full--the other side had been untouched. What Flannagan did that night +another might not have done--or he might. The judging of men is a +grave business best let alone. + +Flannagan let go his hold then; not at once, but gradually. That night +spent in the Blazing Star was the first of others, others that followed +insidiously, each closer upon the former's heels. Daisy had gone--had +gone that night--where, he did not know, and told himself he did not +care. He grew moody, sullen, uncompanionable. Big Cloud took +sides--the women for Flannagan; the men for the wife. Flannagan hated +the women, avoided the men--and went to the Blazing Star. + +There was only one result--the inevitable one. Regan, kindly for all +his gruffness, understanding in a way, stood between Flannagan and the +super and warned Flannagan oftener than most men were warned on the +Hill Division. Nor were his warnings altogether without effect. +Flannagan would steady up--temporarily--maybe for a week--than off +again. Steady up just long enough to keep putting off and postponing +the final reckoning. And then one day, some six months after Daisy +Flannagan had gone away, the master mechanic warned him for the last +time. + +"I'm through with you, Flannagan," he said. "Understand that? I'm out +from under, and next time you'll talk to Carleton--and what he'll have +to say won't take long--about two seconds. You know Carleton, don't +you? Well, then--what?" + +It was just a week to a day after that that Flannagan cut loose and +wild again. He made a night and a day of it, and then another. After +that, though by that time Flannagan was quite unaware of the fact, some +of the boys got him home, dumped him on his bed and left him to his +reflections--which were a blank. + +Flannagan slept it off, and it took about eighteen hours to do it. +When he came to himself he was in a humor that, far from being happy, +was atrocious; likewise, there were bodily ailments--Flannagan's head +was bad, and felt as though a gang of boiler-makers, working against +time, were driving rivets in it. He procured himself a bracer and went +back to bed. This resulted in a decidedly improved physical condition, +but when he arose late in the afternoon any improvement there might +have been in his mental state was speedily dissipated--Flannagan found +a letter shoved under his door, postmarked the day before, and with it +an official manila envelope from the super's office. + +He opened the letter and read it--read it again while his jaws worked +and the red surged in a passion into his face; then, with an oath, he +tore it savagely into shreds, flung the bits on the floor and stamped +upon them viciously with his heavy nail-heeled boot. + +The official manila he did not open at all. A guess was enough for +that--a curt request to present himself in the super's office, +probably. Flannagan glared at it, then grabbed his hat, and started +down for the station. There was no idea of shirking it; Flannagan +wasn't that kind at any time, and just now his mood, if anything, +spurred him on rather than held him back. Flannagan welcomed the +prospect of a row about anything with anybody at that moment--if only a +war of words. + +Carleton's office was upstairs over the ticket office and next to the +despatchers' room then, for the station did duty for headquarters and +everything else--not now, it's changed now, and there's a rather +imposing gray-stone structure where the old wooden shack used to be; +but, no matter, that's the way it was then, for those were the early +days when the road was young and in the making. + +Flannagan reached the station, climbed the stairs, and pushed +Carleton's door open with little ceremony. + +"You want to see me?" he demanded gruffly, as he stepped inside. + +Carleton, sitting at his desk, looked up and eyed the wrecking boss +coolly for a minute. + +"No, Flannagan," he said curtly. "I don't." + +"Then what in blazes d'ye send for me for?" Flannagan flung out in a +growl. + +"See here, Flannagan," snapped Carleton, "I've no time to talk to you. +You can read, can't you? You're out!" + +Flannagan blinked. + +"Was that what was in the letter?" + +"It was--just that," said Carleton grimly. + +"Hell!" Flannagan's short laugh held a jeering note of contempt. "I +didn't open it--or mabbe I'd have known, eh?" + +Carleton's eyes narrowed. + +"Well, you know now, don't you?" + +"Sure!" Flannagan scowled and licked his lips. "I'm out, thrown out, +and----" + +"Then, get out!" Carleton cut in sharply. "You've had more chances +than any man ever got before from me, thanks to Regan; but you've had +your last, and talking won't do you any good now." + +Flannagan stepped nearer to the desk. + +"Talkin'! Who's talkin'?" he flared in sudden bravado. "Didn't I tell +you I didn't read your damned letter? Didn't I, eh, didn't I? D'ye +think I'd crawl to you or any man for a job? I'm out, am I? D'ye +think I came down to ask you to take me back? I'd see you rot first! +T'hell with the job--see!" + +Few men on the Hill Division ever saw Carleton lose his temper--it +wasn't Carleton's way of doing things. He didn't lose it now, but his +words were like trickling drops of ice water. + +"Sometimes, Flannagan," he said, "to make a man like you understand one +has to use your language. You say you'd see me rot before you asked me +for the job back again--very well. I'd rot before I gave it to you +after this. Now, will you get out--or be thrown out?" + +For a moment it looked as though Flannagan was going to mix it there +and then. His eyes went ugly, and his fists, horny and gnarled, +doubled into knots, as he glared viciously at the super. + +Carleton, who was afraid of no man, or any aggregation of men, his face +stern-set and hard, leaned back in his swivel chair and waited. + +A tense minute passed. Then Flannagan's better sense weighed down the +balance, and, without so much as a word, he turned, went out of the +room, and stamped heavily down the stairs. + +Goaded into it, or through unbridled, ill-advised impulse, men say rash +things sometimes--afterward, both Flannagan and Carleton were to +remember their own and the other's words--and the futility of them. +Nor was it to be long afterward--without warning, without so much as a +premonition, quick and sudden as doom, things happen in railroading. + +It was half past five when Flannagan went out of the super's office; it +was but ten minutes later when, before he had decanted a drop from the +bottle he had just lifted to fill his glass, he slapped the bottle back +on the bar of the Blazing Star with a sudden jerk. From down the +street in the direction of the yards boomed three long blasts from the +shop whistle--the wrecking signal. It came again and again. Men +around him began to move. Chairs from the little tables were pushed +hurriedly back. The bell in the English chapel took up the alarm. It +stirred the blood in Flannagan's veins, and whipped it to his cheeks in +fierce excitement--it was the call to arms! + +He turned from the bar--and stopped like a man stunned. There had been +times in the last six months when he had not responded to that call, +because, deaf to everything, he had not _heard_ it. Then, it had been +his call--the call for the wrecking crew, and, first of all, for the +wrecking boss; now--there was a dazed look on his face, and his lips +worked queerly. It was not for him, he was barred--_out_. + +Slowly he turned back to the bar, rested his foot on the rail, and, +with a mirthless laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, reached for the +bottle again. He poured the whisky glass full to the brim--and laughed +once more and shrugged his shoulders as his fingers curled around it. +He raised the glass--and held it poised halfway to his lips. + +Quick-running steps came up the street, the swinging doors of the +Blazing Star burst open and a call boy shoved in his head. + +"Wreckers out! Wreckers out!" he bawled. "Number Eighty's gone to +glory in Spider Cut. Everybody's killed"--and he was gone, a +grimy-faced harbinger of death and disaster; gone, speeding with his +summons to wherever men were gathered throughout the little town. + +An instant Flannagan stood motionless as one transformed from flesh to +sculptured clay--then the glass slid from his fingers and crashed into +tinkling splinters on the floor. The liquor splashed his boots. +Number Eighty was the eastbound Coast Express! Like one who moves in +unknown places through the dark, so, then, Flannagan moved toward the +door. Men looked at him in amazement, and stood aside to let him pass. +Something was tugging at his heart, beating at his brain, impelling him +forward; a force irresistible, that, in its first, sudden, overwhelming +surge he could not understand, could not grasp, could not focus into +concrete form--could only obey. + +He passed out through the doors, and then for the first time a cry rang +from his lips. There were no halting, stumbling, uncertain steps now. +Men running down the street called to Flannagan as he sped past them. +Flannagan made no answer, did not look their way; his face, strained +and full of dumb anguish, was set toward the station. + +He gained the platform and raced along it. Shouts came from across the +yards. Up and down the spurs fluttered the fore-shortened little yard +engine, coughing sparks and wheezing from her exhaust as she bustled +the wrecking train together; lamps swung and twinkled like fireflies, +for it was just opening spring and the dark fell early; and in front of +the roundhouse, the 1014, blowing hard from her safety under a full +head of steam, like a thoroughbred that scents the race, was already on +the table. + +With a heave of his great shoulders and a sweep of his arms, Flannagan +won through the group of trainmen, shop hands, and loungers clustered +around the door, and took the stairs four at a leap. + +A light burned in the super's office, but the voices came from the +despatchers' room. And there in the doorway Flannagan halted--halted +just for a second's pause while his eyes swept the scene before him. + +Regan, the master mechanic, by the window, was mouthing curses under +his breath as men do in times of stress; Spence, the despatcher, +white-faced, the hair straggling into his eyes, was leaning over the +key under the green-shaded lamp, over the key clearing the line while +the sounder clicked in his ears of ruin and of lives gone out. Harvey, +the division engineer, was there, pulling savagely at a brier with +empty bowl. And at the despatcher's elbow stood Carleton, a grim +commander, facing tidings of disaster, his shoulders braced and bent a +little forward as though to take the blow, his jaws clamped tight till +the lips, compressed, were bloodless, and the chiselled lines on his +face told of the bitterness in his heart. + +Then Flannagan stepped forward. + +"Carleton," he cried, and his words came like panting sobs, "Carleton, +give me back my job." + +It was no place for Flannagan. + +Carleton's cup was already full to overflowing, and he swung on +Flannagan like a flash. His hand lifted and pointed to the door. + +"Get out of here!" he said between his teeth. + +"Carleton," cried Flannagan again, and his arms went out in +supplication toward the super, "Carleton, give me back my job--give it +back to me for to-night--just for to-night." + +"No!" the single word came from Carleton's lips like a thunder clap. + +Flannagan shivered a little and shrank back. + +"Just for to-night," he mumbled hoarsely. "Just for----" + +"No!" Carleton's voice rang hard as flint. "I tell you, no! Get out +of here!" + +Harvey moved suddenly, threateningly, toward Flannagan--and, as +suddenly, Flannagan, roused by the act, brushed the division engineer +aside like a plaything, sprang forward, and, with a quick, fierce grip, +caught Carleton's arms and pinioned them, vise-like, to his sides. + +"And I tell you, yes!" his voice rose dominant with the power, the will +that shook him now to the depths of his turbulent soul. As a man who +knows no law, no obstacle, no restraint, as a man who would batter down +the gates of hell itself to gain his end, so then was Flannagan. "I +tell you, yes! I tell you, yes! _My wife and baby's in that wreck +to-night?_" + +Turmoil, shouts, the short, quick intermittent hiss of steam as the +1014, her cylinder cocks open, backed down to the platform, the clash +of coupling cars, a jumbled medley of sounds, floated up from the yard +without--but within the little room, the chattering sounder for the +moment stilled, there fell a silence as of death, and no man among them +moved or spoke. + +Flannagan, gray-faced, gasping, his mighty grip still on Carleton, his +head thrown forward close to the other's, stared into the super's +face--and, for a long minute, in the twitching muscles of the big +wrecker's face, in the look that man reads seldom in his fellows' eyes, +Carleton drew the fearful picture, lived the awful story that the +babbling wire had told. "Royal" Carleton, square man and big of heart, +his voice broke. + +"God help you, Flannagan--go." + +No word came from Flannagan's lips--only a queer choking sound, as his +hands dropped to his sides--only a queer choking sound, as he turned +suddenly and jumped for the door. + +On the stairs, Dorsay, the driver of the 1014, coming up for his +orders, passed Flannagan. + +"Bad spill, I hear," growled the engineer, as he went by. "The five +hundred and five's pony truck jumped the rails on the lower curve and +everything's in the ditch. Old Burke's gone out and a heap of the +passengers with him. I----" + +Flannagan heard no more--he was on the platform now. Coupled behind +the derrick crane and the tool car were two coaches, improvised +ambulances, and into these latter, instead of the tool car, the men of +the wrecking gang were piling--a bad smash brought luxury for them. +Shouts, cries, hubbub, a babel of voices were around him, but in his +brain, repeated and repeated over and over again, lived only a phrase +from the letter he had torn to pieces, stamped under heel that +afternoon--the words were swimming before his eyes: "Michael, dear, +we've both been wrong; I'm bringing _baby_ back on the Coast Express +Friday night." + +Men with little black bags brushed by him and tumbled into the rear +coach--the doctors of Big Cloud to the last one of them. Dorsay came +running from the station, a bit of tissue, his orders, fluttering in +his hand, and sprang for the cab. 1014's exhaust burst suddenly into +quick, deafening explosions, the sparks shot volleying heavenward from +her short stack, the big, whirling drivers were beginning to bite--and +then, through the gangway, after the engineer, into the cab swung +Flannagan--Flannagan, the wrecking boss. + +Spider Cut is the Eastern gateway of the Rockies, and it lies, as the +crows fly, sixteen miles west of Big Cloud; but the right of way, as it +twists and turns, circling and dodging the buttes that grow from mounds +to foothills, makes it on the blue-prints twenty-one decimal seven. +The running time of the fast fliers on this stretch is--but what of +that? Dorsay that night smashed all records, and the medical men in +the rear coach tell to this day how they clung for life and limb to +their seats and to each other, and most of them will admit--which is +admitting much--that they were frightened, white-lipped men with broken +nerves. + +As the wreck special, with a clash and clatter, shattered over the +switches in the upper yard and nosed the main line, Stan Willard, who +had the shovel end of it, with a snatch at the chain swung open the +furnace door and a red glow lighted up the heavens. Dorsay turned in +his seat and looked at the giant form of the wrecking boss behind +him--they had told him the story in the office. + +The eyes of the two men met. Flannagan's lips moved dumbly; and, with +a curious, pleading motion, he gestured toward the throttle. + +Dorsay opened another notch. He laughed a grim, hard laugh. + +"I _know_," he shouted over the roar. "I know. Leave it to me, +Flannagan." + +The bark of the exhaust came quicker and quicker, swelled and rose into +the full, deep-toned thunder of a single note. Notch by notch, Dorsay +opened out the 1014, notch by notch, and the big mountain racer, +answering like a mettlesome steed to the touch of the whip, leapt +forward, ever faster, into the night. + +Now the headlight played on shining steel ahead; now suddenly threw a +path of light across the short, yellow stubble of a rising butte, and +Dorsay checked grudgingly for an instant as they swung the curve--just +for an instant--then into the straight again, with wide-flung throttle. + +It was mad work, and in that reeling, dizzy cab no man spoke. The +sweep of the singing wind, the wild tattoo of beating trucks, the +sullen whir of flying drivers was in their ears; while behind, the +derrick crane, the tool car and the coaches writhed and wriggled, +swayed and lurched, tearing at their couplings, bouncing on their +trucks, jerking viciously as each slue took up the axle play, rolling, +pitching crazily like cockleshells tossed on an angry sea. + +Now they tore through a cut, and the walls took up the deafening roar +and echoed and reëchoed it back in volume a thousandfold; now into the +open, and the sudden contrast was like the gasping breath of an +imprisoned thing escaped; now over culverts, trestles, spans, hollow, +reverberating--the speed was terrific. + +Over his levers, bounding on his seat, Dorsay, tense and strained, +leaned far forward following the leaping headlight's glare; while +staggering like a drunken man to keep his balance, the sweat standing +out in glistening beads upon his grimy face, Stan Willard watched the +flickering needle on the gauge, and his shovel clanged and swung; and +in the corner, back of Dorsay, bent low to brace himself, thrown +backward and forward with every lurch, in the fantastic, dancing light +like some tigerish, outraged animal crouched to spring, Flannagan, with +head drawn into his shoulders, jaws outthrust, stared over the +engineer's back, stared with never a look to right or left, stared +through the cab glass to the right of way ahead--stared toward Spider +Cut. + +Again and again, with sickening, giddy shock, wheel-base lifted from +the swing, the 1014 struck the tangents, hung a breathless space, and, +with a screech of crunching flanges, found the rails once more. + +Again and again--but the story of that ride is the doctors' story--they +tell it best. Dorsay made the run that night from Big Cloud to Spider +Cut, twenty-one point seven miles, in _nineteen_ minutes. + +There have been bad spills on the Hill Division, bad spills--but there +have never been worse than on that Friday night when the 505 jumped the +rails at the foot of the curve coming down the grade just east of +Spider Cut, shot over the embankment and piled the Coast Express, +mahogany sleepers and all, into splintered wreckage forty feet below +the right of way. + +As Dorsay checked and with screaming brake-shoes the 1014 slowed, +Flannagan, with a wild cry, leaped from the cab and dashed up the track +ahead of the still-moving pilot. It was light enough--the cars of the +wreck nearest him, the mail and baggage cars, had caught, and, fanned +by the wind into yellow flames, were blazing like a huge bonfire. +Shouts arose from below; cries, anguished, piercing, from those +imprisoned in the wreck; figures, those of the crew and passengers who +had made their escape, were moving hither and thither, working as best +they might, pulling others through shattered windows and up-canted +doors, laying those who were past all knowing beside the long row of +silent forms already tenderly stretched upon the edge of the embankment. + +A man, with face cut and bleeding, came running toward Flannagan. It +was Kingsley, conductor of Number Eighty. Flannagan jumped for him, +grasped him by the shoulders and stared without a word into his face. + +But Kingsley shook his head. + +"I don't know, Flannagan," he choked. "She was in the first-class just +ahead of the Pullmans. There's--there's no one come out of that car +yet"--he turned away his head--"we couldn't get to it." + +"Couldn't get to it"--Flannagan's lips repeated the phrase +mechanically. Then he looked--and understood the grim significance of +the words. He laughed suddenly, jarring hoarse, as it is not good to +hear men laugh--and with that laugh Flannagan went into the fight. + +The details of that night no one man knows. There in the shadow of the +gray-walled Rockies, men, flint-hearted, calloused, rough and ready +though they were, sobbed as they toiled; and while the derrick tackles +creaked and moaned, axe and pick and bar swung and crashed and tore +through splintering glass and ripping timber. + +What men could do they did--and through the hours Flannagan led them. +Tough, grizzled men, more than one dropped from sheer weariness; but +ever Flannagan's great arms rose and fell, ever his mighty shoulders +heaved, ever he led them on. What men could do they did--but it was +graying dawn before they opened a way to the heart of the wreck--the +first-class coach that once ahead of the Pullmans was _under_ them now. + +Flannagan, gaunt, burned and bleeding, a madman with reeling brain, +staggered toward the jagged hole that they had torn in the flooring of +the car. They tried to hold him back, the man who had spurred them +through the night alternately with lashing curse and piteous prayer, +the man who had worked with demon strength as no three men among them +had worked, the man who was tottering now at the end in mind and body, +they tried to hold him back--_for mercy's sake_. But Flannagan shook +them off and went--went laughing again the same fearful laugh with +which he had begun the fight. + +He found her there--found her with a little bundle lying in the crook +of her outstretched arm. She moaned and held it toward him--but +Flannagan had gone his limit, his work was done, the tension broke. + +And when they worked their way to the far end of the car after him, +those hard, grim-visaged followers of Flannagan, they found a man +squatted on an up-ended seat, a woman beside him, death and desolation +and huddled shapes around him, dandling a tiny infant in his arms, +crooning a lullaby through cracked lips, crooning a lullaby--to a +little one long hushed already in its last sleep. + +Opinions differ. But Big Cloud to-day sides about solid with Regan. + +"Flannagan?" says the master mechanic. "Flannagan's a pretty good +wrecking boss, pretty good, I don't know of any better--since the +Almighty had him on the carpet. He's got a plot up on the butte behind +the town, he and Daisy, with a little mound on it. They go up there +together every Sunday--never've known 'em to miss. A man ain't likely +to fall off the right of way again as long as he does that, is he? +Well, then, forget it, he's been doing that for a year now--what?" + + + + +V + +THE MAN WHO SQUEALED + +Back in the early days the payroll of the Hill Division was full of J. +Smiths, T. Browns and H. Something-or-others--just as it is to-day. +But to-day there is a difference. The years have brought a certain +amount of inevitable pedigree, as it were--a certain amount of gossip, +so to speak, over the back fences of Big Cloud. It's natural enough. +There's a possibility, as a precedent, that one or two of the +passengers on the _Mayflower_ didn't have as much blue blood when they +started on the voyage as their descendants have got now--it's possible. +The old hooker, from all accounts, had a pretty full passenger list, +and there may have been some who secured accommodations with few +questions asked, and a subsequent coat of glorified whitewash that they +couldn't have got if they'd stayed at home where they were intimately +known--that is, they couldn't have got the coat of glorified whitewash. + +It's true that there's a few years between the landing of the +_Mayflower_ and the inception of Big Cloud, but the interval doesn't +count--the principle is the same. Out in the mountains on the Hill +Division, "Who's Who" begins with the founding of Big Cloud--it is +verbose, unprofitable and extremely bad taste to go back any farther +than that--even if it were possible. There's quite a bit known about +the J. Smiths, the T. Browns and the H. Something-or-others now, with +the enlightenment of years upon them--but there wasn't then. There +were a good many men who immigrated West to help build the road through +the Rockies, and run it afterwards--for reasons of their own. There +weren't any questions asked. Plain J. Smith, T. Brown or H. +Something-or-other went--that was all there was to it. + +He said his name was Walton--P. Walton. He was tall, hollow-cheeked, +with skin of an unhealthy, colorless white, and black eyes under thin, +black brows that were unnaturally bright. He dropped off at Big Cloud +one afternoon--in the early days--from No. 1, the Limited from the +East, climbed upstairs in the station to the super's room, and coughed +out a request to Carleton for a job. + +Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, the squarest man that ever held down a +divisional swivel chair, looked P. Walton over for a moment before he +spoke. P. Walton didn't size up much like a day's work anyway you +looked at him. + +"What can you do?" inquired Carleton. + +"Anything," said P. Walton--and coughed. + +Carleton reached for his pipe and struck a match. + +"If you could," said he, sucking at the amber mouthpiece between words, +"there wouldn't be any trouble about it. For instance, the +construction gangs want men to----" + +"I'll go--I'll do anything," cut in P. Walton eagerly. "Just give me a +chance." + +"Nope!" said Carleton with a grin. "I'm not hankering to break the +Sixth Commandment--know what that is?" + +P. Walton licked dry lips with the tip of his tongue. + +"Murder," said he. "But you might as well let it come that way as any +other. I'm pretty bad here"--he jerked his thumb toward his +lungs--"and I'm broke here"--he turned an empty trouser's pocket inside +out. + +"H'm!" observed Carleton reflectively. There was something in the +other that touched his sympathy, and something apart from that that +appealed to him--a sort of grim, philosophical grit in the man with the +infected lungs. + +"I came out," said P. Walton, looking through the window, and kind of +talking to himself, "because I thought it would be healthier for me out +here than back East." + +"I dare say," said Carleton kindly; "but not if you start in by +swinging a pick. Maybe we can find something else for you to do. Ever +done any railroading?" + +Walton shook his head. + +"No," he answered. "I've always worked on books. I'm called pretty +good at figures, if you've got anything in that line." + +"Clerk, eh? Well, I don't know," said Carleton slowly. "I guess, +perhaps, we can give you a chance. My own clerk's doing double shift +just at present; you might help him out temporarily. And if you're +what you say you are, we'll find something better for you before the +summer's over. Thirty dollars a month--it's not much of a stake--what +do you say?" + +"It's a pretty big stake for me," said P. Walton, and his face lighted +up as he turned it upon Carleton. + +"All right," said Carleton. "You'd better spend the rest of the +afternoon then in hunting up some place to stay. And here"--he dug +into his pocket and handed P. Walton two five-dollar gold pieces--"this +may come in handy till you're on your feet." + +"Say," said P. Walton huskily, "I----" he stopped suddenly, as the door +opened and Regan, the master mechanic, came in. + +"Never mind," smiled Carleton. "Report to Halstead in the next room +to-morrow morning at seven o'clock." + +P. Walton hesitated, as though to complete his interrupted sentence, +and then, with an uncertain look at Regan, turned and walked quietly +from the room. + +Regan wheeled around and stared after the retreating figure. When the +door had closed he looked inquiringly at Carleton. + +"Touched you for a loan, eh?" he volunteered quizzically. + +"No," said Carleton, still smiling; "a job. I gave him the money as an +advance." + +"More fool you!" said the blunt little master mechanic. "Your +security's bad--he'll never live long enough to earn it. What sort of +a job?" + +"Helping Halstead out to begin with," replied Carleton. + +"H'm!" remarked Regan. "Poor devil." + +"Yes, Tommy," said Carleton. "Quite so--poor devil." + +Regan, big-hearted, good-natured for all his bluntness, walked to the +front window and watched P. Walton's figure disappear slowly, and a +little haltingly, down the platform. The fat little master mechanic's +face puckered. + +"We get some queer cards out here," he said. "He looks as though he'd +had a pretty hard time of it--kind of a discard in the game, I guess. +Out here to die--pleasant, what? I wonder where he came from?" + +"He didn't say," said Carleton dryly. + +"No," said Regan; "I dare say he didn't--none of 'em do. I wonder, +though, where he came from?" + +And in this the division generally were in accord with Regan. They +didn't ask--which was outside the ethics; and P. Walton didn't +say--which was quite within his rights. But for all that, the +division, with Regan, wondered. Ordinarily, they wouldn't have paid +much attention to a new man one way or the other, but P. Walton was a +little more than just a new man--he was a man they couldn't size up. +That was the trouble. It didn't matter who any one was, or where he +came from, if they could form an opinion of him--which wasn't hard to +form in most instances--that would at all satisfactorily fill the bill. +But P. Walton didn't bear the earmarks of a hard case "wanted" East, or +show any tendency toward deep theological thought; therefore opinions +were conflicting--which wasn't satisfying. + +Not that P. Walton refused to mix, or held himself aloof, or anything +of that kind; on the contrary, all hands came to know him pretty +well--as P. Walton. As a matter of cold fact, they had more chances of +knowing him than they had of knowing most new-comers; and that bothered +them a little, because, somehow, they didn't seem to make anything out +of their opportunities. As assistant clerk to the super, P. Walton was +soon a familiar enough figure in the yards, the roundhouse and the +shops, and genial enough, and pleasant enough, too; but they never got +past the pure, soft-spoken, perfect English, and the kind of firm, +determined swing to the jaw that no amount of emaciation could +eliminate. They agreed only on one thing--on the question of +therapeutics--they were unanimous on that point with Regan--P. Walton, +whatever else he was, or wasn't, was out there to die. And it kind of +looked to them as though P. Walton had through rights to the Terminal, +and not much of any limit to speak of on his permit. + +Regan put the matter up to Carleton one day in the super's office, +about a month after P. Walton's advent to Big Cloud. + +"I said he was a queer card the first minute I clapped eyes on him," +observed the master mechanic. "And I think so now--only more so. What +in blazes does a white man want to go and live in a two-room pigsty, +with a family of Polacks and about eighteen kids, for?" + +Carleton tamped down the dottle in his pipe with his forefinger +musingly. + +"How much a week, Tommy," he inquired, "is thirty dollars a month, with +about a third of the time out for sick spells?" + +"I'm not a mathematician," growled the little master mechanic. "About +five dollars, I guess." + +"It's a good guess," said Carleton quietly. "He bought new clothes you +remember with the ten I gave him--and he needed them badly enough." +Carleton reached into a drawer of his desk, and handed Regan an +envelope that was torn open across the end. "I found this here this +afternoon after the paycar left," he said. + +Regan peered into the envelope, then extracted two five-dollar gold +pieces and a note. He unfolded the note, and read the two lines +written in a hand that looked like steel-plate engraving. + + +With thanks and grateful appreciation. + +P. WALTON. + + +Regan blinked, handed the money, note, and envelope back to Carleton, +and fumbled a little awkwardly with his watch chain. + +"He's the best hand with figures and his pen it's ever been my luck to +meet," said Carleton, kind of speculatively. "Better than Halstead; a +whole lot better. Halstead's going back East in a couple of weeks into +the general office--got the offer, and I couldn't stand in his way. I +was thinking of giving P. Walton the job, and breaking some young +fellow in to relay him when he's sick. What do you think about it, +Tommy?" + +"I think," said Regan softly, "he's been getting blamed few eggs and +less fresh air than he ought to have had, trying to make good on that +loan. And I think he's a better man than I thought he was. A fellow +that would do that is white enough not to fall very far off the right +of way. I guess you won't make any mistake as far as trusting him +goes." + +"No," said Carleton, "I don't think I will." + +And therein Carleton and Regan were both right and wrong. P. Walton +wasn't--but just a minute, we're over-running our holding orders--P. +Walton is in the block ahead. + +The month hadn't helped P. Walton much physically, even if it had +helped him more than he, perhaps, realized in Carleton's estimation. +And the afternoon following Regan's and Carleton's conversation, alone +in the room, for Halstead was out, he was hanging over his desk a +pretty sick man, though his pen moved steadily with the work before +him, when the connecting door from the super's office opened, and Bob +Donkin, the despatcher, came hurriedly in. + +"Where's the super?" he asked quickly. + +"I don't know," said P. Walton. "He went out in the yards with Regan +half an hour ago. I guess he'll be back shortly." + +"Well, you'd better try and find him, and give him this. Forty-two'll +be along in twenty minutes." Donkin slapped a tissue on the desk, and +hurried back to his key in the despatchers' room. + +P. Walton picked up the tissue and read it. It was from the first +station west on the line. + + +Gopher Butte, 3.16 P. M. + +J. H. CARLETON, Supt. Hill Division: + +No. 42 held up by two train robbers three miles west of here Express +messenger Nulty in game fight killed one and captured the other in the +express car. Arrange for removal of body, and have sheriff on hand to +take prisoner into custody on arrival in Big Cloud. Everything O.K. + +McCURDY, Conductor. + + +P. Walton, with the telegram in his hand, rose from his chair and made +for the hall through the super's room, reading it a second time as he +went along. There had been some pretty valuable express stuff on the +train, as he knew from the correspondence that had passed through his +hands--and he smiled a little grimly. + +"Well, they certainly missed a good one," he muttered to himself. "I +think I'd rather be the dead one than the other. It'll go hard with +him. Twenty years, I guess." + +He stepped out into the hall to the head of the stairs--and met +Carleton coming up. + +Carleton, quick as a steel trap, getting the gist of the message in a +glance, brushed by P. Walton, hurried along the hall to the +despatchers' room--and the next moment a wide-eyed call boy was +streaking uptown for the sheriff, and breathlessly imparting the tale +of the hold-up, embellished with gory imagination, to every one he met. + +By the time Forty-two's whistle sounded down the gorge, there was a +crowd on the platform bigger than a political convention, and P. +Walton, by virtue of his official position, rather than from physical +qualifications, together with his chief, Regan, the ticket agent, the +baggage master and Carruthers, the sheriff, were having a hard time of +it to keep themselves from being shoved off on the tracks, let alone +trying to keep a modest breadth of the platform clear. And when the +train came to a stop with screeching brake-shoes, and the side door of +the express car was shot back with a dramatic bang by some one inside, +the crowd seemed to get altogether beyond P. Walton's control, and +surged past him. As they handed out a hard-visaged, bullet-headed +customer, whose arms were tightly lashed behind him, P. Walton was +pretty well back by the ticket-office window with the crowd between him +and the center of attraction--and P. Walton was holding his +handkerchief to his lips, flecking the handkerchief with a spot or two +of red, and coughing rather badly. Carleton found him there when the +crowd, trailing Carruthers and his prisoner uptown, thinned out--and +Carleton sent him home. + +P. Walton, however, did not go home, though he started in that +direction. He followed in the rear of the crowd up to Carruthers' +place, saw steel bracelets replace the cords around the captive's +wrists, saw the captive's legs securely bound together, and the captive +chucked into Carruthers' back shed--this was in the early days, and Big +Cloud hadn't yet risen to the dignity of a jail--with about as much +formality as would be used in handling a sack of meal. After that, +Carruthers barred the door by slamming the long, two-inch-thick piece +of timber, that worked on a pivot in the center, home into its iron +rests with a flourish of finality, as though to indicate that the show +was over--and the crowd dispersed--the men heading for the swinging +doors of the Blazing Star; and the women for their own back fences. + +P. Walton, with a kind of grim smile on his lips, retraced his steps to +the station, climbed the stairs, and started through the super's room +to reach his own desk. + +Carleton removed his pipe from his mouth, and stared angrily as the +other came in. + +"You blamed idiot!" he exploded. "I thought I told you to go home!" + +"I'm feeling better," said P. Walton. "I haven't got those night +orders out yet for the roundhouse. There's three specials from the +East to-night." + +"Well, Halstead can attend to them," said Carleton, a kindliness +creeping into the tones that he tried to make gruff. "What are you +trying to do--commit suicide?" + +"No," said P. Walton, with a steady smile, "just my work. It was a +little too violent exercise trying to hold the crowd, that was all. +But I'm all right now." + +"You blamed idiot!" grunted Carleton again. "Why didn't you say so? I +never thought of it, or I wouldn't have let----" + +"It doesn't matter," said P. Walton brightly. "I'm all right now"--and +he passed on into his own room. + +When he left his desk again it was ten minutes of six, and Carleton had +already gone. P. Walton, with his neatly written order sheets, walked +across the tracks to the roundhouse, handed them over to Clarihue, the +night turner, who had just come in, and then hung around, toying in an +apparently aimless fashion with the various tools on the workbenches +till the whistle blew, while the fitters, wipers and day gang generally +washed up. After that he plodded across the fields to the Polack +quarters on the other side of the tracks from the town proper, stumbled +into the filthy, garlic smelling interior of one of the shacks, and +flung himself down on the bunk that was his bedroom. + +"Lord!" he muttered. "I'm pretty bad to-night. Guess I'll have to +postpone it. Might be as well, anyway." + +He lay there for an hour, his bright eyes fastened now on the dirty, +squalling brood of children upon the floor, now on the heavy, +slatternly figure of their mother, and now on the tin bowl of boiled +sheep's head that awaited the arrival of Ivan Peloff, the master of the +house--and then, with abhorrent disgust, he turned his eyes to the wall. + +"Thank God, I get into a decent place soon!" he mumbled once. "It's +the roughest month I ever spent. I'd rather be back where"--he smiled +sort of cryptically to himself--"where I came from." A moment later he +spoke again in a queer, kind of argumentative, kind of self-extenuating +way--in broken sentences. "Maybe I put it on a little too thick +boarding here so's to stand in with Carleton and pay that ten back +quick--but, my God, I was scared--I've got to stand in with somebody, +or go to the wall." + +It was after seven when Ivan Peloff came--smelling strong of drink, and +excitement heightening the flush upon his cheek. + +"Hello, Meester Walton!" he bubbled out with earnest inebriety. "We +rise hell to-night--by an' by. Get him goods by midnight." Ivan +Peloff drew his fingers around his throat, and, in lieu of English that +came hard to him at any time, jerked his thumb dramatically up and down +in the air. + +"Who?" inquired P. Walton, without much enthusiasm. + +"Dam' robber--him by train come in," explained Ivan Peloff laboriously. + +"Oh," said P. Walton, "talking of stringing him up--is that it?" + +Ivan Peloff nodded his head delightedly. + +P. Walton swung himself lazily from his bunk. + +"Eat?" invited Ivan Peloff, moving toward the table. + +"No," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "I'm not hungry; I'm +going out for some air." + +Ivan Peloff pulled two bottles of a deadly brand from under his coat, +and set them on the table. + +"Me eat," he grinned. "By an' by have drinks all 'round"--he waved his +hands as though to embrace the whole Polack quarter--"den we +comes--rise hell--do him goods by midnight." + +P. Walton halted in the doorway. + +"Who put you up to this, Peloff?" he inquired casually. + +"Cowboys," grinned Peloff, lunging at the sheep's head. "Plenty drink. +Say have fun." + +"The cowboys, eh?" observed P. Walton. "So they're in town, are +they--and looking for fun?" + +"We fix him goods by midnight," repeated Ivan Peloff, wagging his head; +then, with a sudden scowl: "You not tell--eh, Meester Walton?" + +P. Walton smiled disinterestedly--but there wasn't any doubt in P. +Walton's mind that devilment was in the wind--Big Cloud, in the early +days, knew its full share of that. + +"I?" said P. Walton quietly, as he went out. "No; I won't tell. It's +no business of mine, is it?" + +It was fall, and already dark. P. Walton made his way out of the +Polack quarters, reached the tracks, crossed them--and then headed out +through the fields to circle around the town to the upper end again, +where it dwindled away from cross streets to the houses flanking on +Main Street alone. + +"I guess," he coughed--and smiled, "I won't postpone it till to-morrow +night, after all." + +It was a long walk for a man in P. Walton's condition, and it was a +good half hour before he finally stopped in the rear of Sheriff +Carruthers' back shed and listened--there were no fences here, just a +procession of buttes and knolls merging the prairie country into the +foothills proper of the Rockies--neither was there any sound. P. +Walton stifled a cough, and slipped like a shadow through the darkness +around to the front of the shed, shifted the wooden bar noiselessly on +its pivot, opened the door, and, as he stepped inside, closed it softly +behind him. + +"Butch!" he whispered. + +A startled ejaculation, and a quick movement as of a man suddenly +shifting his position on the floor, answered him. + +"Keep quiet, Butcher--it's all right," said P. Walton calmly--and, +stooping, guiding his knife blade by the sense of touch, cut away the +rope from the other's ankles. He caught at the steel-linked wrists and +helped the man to his feet. "Come on," he said. "Slip around to the +back of the shed--talk later." + +P. Walton pushed the door open, and the man he called the Butcher, +lurching a little unsteadily from cramped ankles, passed out. P. +Walton carefully closed the door, coolly replaced the bar in position, +and joined the other. + +"Now, run for it!" he said--and led the way straight out from the town. + +For two hundred yards, perhaps a little more, they raced--and then P. +Walton stumbled and went down. + +"I'm--I'm not very well to-night," he gasped. "This will do--it's far +enough." + +The Butcher, halted, gazed at the prostrate form. + +"Say, cull, what's yer name?" he demanded. "I owe you something for +this, an' don't you forget it." + +P. Walton made no answer. His head was swimming, lights were dancing +before his eyes, and there was a premonitory weakness upon him whose +issue he knew too well--unless he could fight it off. + +The Butcher bent down until his face was within an inch of P. Walton's. + +"So help me!" he informed the universe in unbounded amazement. "It's +de Dook!" + +"Sit down there opposite me, and hold out your hands," directed P. +Walton, with an effort. "We haven't got any time to waste." + +The Butcher, heavy with wonderment, obeyed mechanically--and P. Walton +drew a rat-tail file from his pocket. + +"I saw you in the express car this afternoon, and I went to the +roundhouse for this when I left the office," P. Walton said, as he set +to work on the steel links. "But I was feeling kind of down and out, +and was going to leave you till to-morrow night--only I heard they were +going to lynch you at midnight." + +"Lynch me!" growled the Butcher. "What fer? They don't lynch a fellow +'cause he's nipped in a hold-up--we didn't kill no one." + +"Some of the cowboys are looking for amusement," said P. Walton +monotonously. "They've distributed red-eye among the Polacks, for the +purpose, I imagine, of putting the blame--on the Polacks." + +"I get you!" snarled the Butcher, with an oath. "It's de Bar K +Ranch--we took their payroll away from 'em two weeks ago. Lynchin', +eh? Well, some of 'em 'll dance on air fer this themselves, blast 'em! +Dook, yer white--an' you always was. I thought me luck was out fer +keeps to-day when Spud--you saw Spud, didn't you?" + +"Yes," said P. Walton, filing steadily. + +"Spud always had a soft spot in his heart," said the Butcher. "Instead +of drilling that devil, Nulty, when he had the chance, Nulty filled +Spud full of holes, an' we fluked up--yer gettin' a bit of my wrist, +Dook, with that damned file. Well, as I said, I thought me luck was +out fer keeps--an' _you_ show up. Gee! Who'd have thought of seein' +de Angel Dook, de prize penman, de gem of forgers! How'd you make yer +getaway--you was in fer twenty spaces, wasn't you?" + +"I think they wanted to save the expense of burying me," said P. +Walton. "The other wrist, Butch. I got a pardon." + +"What's de matter with you, Dook?" inquired the Butcher solicitously. + +"Lungs," said P. Walton tersely. "Bad." + +"Hell!" said the Butcher earnestly. + +There was silence for a moment, save only for the rasping of the file, +and then the Butcher spoke again. + +"What's yer lay out here, Dook?" he asked. + +"Working for the railroad in the super's office--and keeping my mouth +shut," said P. Walton. + +"There's nothin' in that," said the Butcher profoundly. "Nothin' to +it!" + +"Not much," agreed P. Walton. "Forty a month, and--oh, well, forty a +month." + +"I'll fix that fer you, Dook," said the Butcher cheerily. "You join de +gang. There's de old crowd from Joliet up here in de mountains. We +got a swell layout. There's Larry, an' Big Tom, an' Dago Pete--Spud's +cashed in--an' they'll stand on their heads an' yell Salvation Army +songs when they hear that de slickest of 'em all--that's you, Dook--is +buyin' a stack an' settin' in." + +"No," said P. Walton. "No, Butch, I guess not--it's me for the forty +per." + +"Eh!" ejaculated the Butcher heavily. "You don't mean to say you've +turned parson, Dook? You wouldn't be lettin' me loose if you had." + +"No; nothing like that," replied P. Walton. "I'm sitting tight because +I have to--until some one turns up and gives my record away--if I'm not +dead first. I'm too sick, Butch, to be any use to you--I couldn't +stand the pace." + +"Sure, you could," said the Butcher reassuringly. "Anyway, I'm not fer +leavin' a pal out in de cold, an'----" He stopped suddenly, and leaned +toward P. Walton. "What was it you said you was doin' in de office?" +he demanded excitedly. + +"Assistant clerk to the superintendent," said P. Walton--and his file +bit through the second link. "You'll have to get the bracelets off +your wrists when you get back to the boys--your hands are free." + +"Say," said the Butcher breathlessly, "it's a cinch! You see de +letters, an' know what's goin' on pretty familiar-like, don't you?" + +"Yes," said P. Walton. + +"Well, say, can you beat it!" Once more the Butcher invoked the +universe. "You're de inside man, see? Gee--it's a cinch! We only +knew there was mazuma on de train to-day by a fluke, just Spud an' me +heard of it, too late to plan anything fancy an' get de rest of de +gang. You see what happened? After this we don't have to take no +chances. You passes out de word when there's a good juicy lot of swag +comin' along, we does de rest, and you gets your share--equal. An' +that ain't all. They'll be sendin' down East fer de Pinkertons, if +they ain't done it already, an' we gives 'em de laugh--you tippin' us +off on de trains de 'dicks' are ridin' on, an' puttin' us wise to 'em +generally. An' say"--the Butcher's voice dropped suddenly to a low, +sullen, ugly growl--"you give us de lay de first crack we make when +that low-lived, snook-nosed Nulty's aboard. He goes out fer Spud--an' +he goes out quick. He's fired a gun de last time he'll ever fire +one--see?" + +P. Walton felt around on the ground, picked up the bit of chain he had +filed from the handcuffs, and handed it, with the file, to the Butcher. + +"Put these in your pocket, Butch," he said, "and throw them in the +river where it's deep when you get a chance--especially the file. I +guess from the way you put it I could earn my stake with the gang." + +"Didn't I tell you, you could!" The Butcher, with swift change of +mood, grinned delightedly. "Sure, you can! Larry's an +innocent-lookin' kid, an' he's not known in de town. He'll float +around an' get de bulletins from you--you'll know ahead when there's +anything good comin' along, won't you?" + +"When it leaves the coast," said P. Walton. "Thirty-six +hours--sometimes more." + +"An' I thought me luck was out fer keeps!" observed the Butcher, in an +almost awe-struck voice. + +"Well, don't play it too hard by hanging around here until they get you +again," cautioned P. Walton dryly. "The further you get away from Big +Cloud in the next few hours, the better you'll like it to-morrow." + +"I'm off now," announced the Butcher, rising to his feet. "Dook, +you're white--all de way through. Don't forget about Nulty, blast +him!" He wrung P. Walton's hand with emotion. "So long, Dook!" + +"So long, Butch!" said P. Walton. + +P. Walton watched the Butcher disappear in the darkness, then he began +to retrace his steps toward the Polack quarters. His one thought now +was to reach his bunk. He was sick, good and sick, and those +premonitory symptoms, if they had been arrested, were still with him. +The day had been too much for him--the jostling on the platform, mostly +when he had fought his way through the rear of the crowd for fear of an +unguarded recognition on the part of the Butcher; then the walking he +had done; and, lastly, that run from the sheriff's shed. + +P. Walton, with swimming head and choking lungs, reeled a little as he +went along. It was farther, quite a lot farther, to go by the fields, +and he was far enough down from Carruthers' now so that it would not +make any difference anyhow, even if the Butcher's escape had been +discovered--which it hadn't, the town was too quiet for that. P. +Walton headed into a cross street, staggered along it, reached the +corner of Main Street--and, fainting, went suddenly down in a heap, as +the hemorrhage caught him, and the bright, crimson "ruby" stained his +lips. + +Coming up the street from a conference in the super's office, Nulty, +the express messenger, big, brawny, hard-faced, thin-lipped, swung +along, dragging fiercely at his pipe, scowling grimly as he reviewed +the day's happenings. He passed a little knot of Polacks, quite +obviously far gone in liquor--and almost fell over P. Walton's body. + +"Hullo!" said Nulty. "What the deuce is this!" He bent down for a +look into the unconscious man's face. "The super's clerk!" he +exclaimed--and stared around for help. + +There was no one in sight, save the approaching Polacks--but one of +these hurriedly, if unsteadily, lurched forward. + +"Meester Walton!" announced Ivan Peloff genially. "Him be sick--yes?" + +"Where's he live?" demanded Nulty, without waste of words. + +"Him by me live," said Ivan Peloff, tapping his chest proudly as he +swayed upon his feet. He called to his companions, and reached for P. +Walton's legs. "We take him by us home." + +"Let him alone!" said Nulty gruffly, as the interior of a Polack shanty +pictured itself before his eyes. + +"Him by me live," repeated Ivan Peloff, still reaching doggedly, if +uncertainly, for P. Walton's legs. + +"Let him alone, I tell you, you drunken Guinea!" roared Nulty suddenly, +and his arm went out with a sweep that brushed Ivan Peloff back to an +ultimate seat in the road three yards away. Without so much as a +glance in the direction taken by the other, Nulty stepped up to the +rest of the Polacks, stared into their faces, and selecting the one +that appeared less drunk than the others, unceremoniously jerked the +man by the collar into the foreground. "You know me!" he snapped. +"I'm Nulty--Nulty. Say it!" + +"Nultee," said the bewildered foreigner. + +"Yes," said Nulty. "Now you run for the doctor--and you run like hell. +If he ain't at home--find him. Tell him to come to Nulty--_quick_. +Understand?" + +The Polack nodded his head excitedly. + +"Doctor--Nultee," he ejaculated brightly. + +"Yes," said Nulty. "Go on, now--run!" And he gave the Polack an +initial start with a vigorous push that nearly toppled the man forward +on his nose. + +Nulty stooped down, picked up P. Walton in his arms as though the +latter were a baby, and started toward his own home a block away. + +"My God," he muttered, "a railroad man down there in a state like +this--he'd have a long chance, he would! Poor devil, guess he won't +last out many more of these. Blast it all, now if the wife was home +she'd know what to do--blamed if I know!" + +For all that, however, Nulty did pretty well. He put P. Walton to bed, +and started feeding him cracked ice even before the doctor came--after +that Nulty went on feeding cracked ice. + +Along toward midnight, Gleason, the yard-master, burst hurriedly into +the house. + +"Say, Nulty, you there!" he bawled. "That blasted train robber's got +away, and--oh!" He had stepped from the hall over the threshold of the +bedroom door, only to halt abruptly as his eyes fell upon the bed. +"Anything I can do--Nulty?" he asked in a booming whisper, that he +tried to make soft. + +Nulty, sitting in a chair by the bed, shook his head--and Gleason +tiptoed in squeaky boots out of the house. + +P. Walton, who had been lying with closed eyes, opened them, and looked +at Nulty. + +"What did he say?" he inquired. + +"Says the fellow we got to-day has got away," said Nulty shortly. +"Shut up--the doctor says you're not to talk." + +P. Walton's bright eyes made a circuit of the room, came back, and +rested again on Nulty. + +"Would you know him again if you saw him?" he demanded. + +"Would I know him!" exclaimed Nulty. "It's not likely I wouldn't, is +it? I was dead-heading him down from Gopher Butte, wasn't I?" + +"I think," said P. Walton slowly, "if it were me I'd be scared stiff +that he got away--afraid he'd be trying to revenge that other fellow, +you know. You want to look out for him." + +"I'd ask nothing better than to meet him again," said Nulty grimly. +"Now, shut up--you're not to talk." + +P. Walton was pretty sick. Nulty sat up all that night with him, laid +off from his run the next day, and sat up with P. Walton again the next +night. Then, having sent for Mrs. Nulty, who was visiting relatives +down the line, Mrs. Nulty took a hand in the nursing. Mrs. Nulty was a +little, sweet-faced woman, with gray Irish eyes and no style about +her--Nulty's pay-check didn't reach that far--but she knew how to +nurse; and if her hands were red and the knuckles a little swollen from +the washtub, she could use them with a touch that was full enough of +tender sympathy to discount anything a manicure might have reason to +find fault with on professional grounds. She didn't rate Nulty for +turning her home into a hospital, and crowding her train-sheet of work, +already pretty full, past all endurance--Mrs. Nulty, God bless her, +wasn't that kind of a woman! She looked at her husband with a sort of +happy pride in her eyes; looked at P. Walton, and said, "Poor man," as +her eyes filled--and went to work. But for all that, it was touch and +go with P. Walton--P. Walton was a pretty sick man. + +It's queer the way trouble of that sort acts--down and out one day with +every signal in every block set dead against you; and the next day a +clear track, with rights through buttoned in your reefer, a wide-flung +throttle, and the sweep of the wind through the cab glass whipping your +face till you could yell with the mad joy of living. It's queer! + +Five days saw P. Walton back at the office, as good, apparently, as +ever he was--but Mrs. Nulty didn't stop nursing. Nulty came down sick +in place of P. Walton and took to bed--"to give her a chance to keep +her hand in," Nulty said. Nulty came down, not from overdoing it on P. +Walton's account--a few nights sitting up wasn't enough to lay a man +like Nulty low--Nulty came down with a touch of just plain mountain +fever. + +It wasn't serious, or anything like that; but it put a stop order, +temporarily at least, on the arrangements Nulty had cussed P. Walton +into agreeing to. P. Walton was to come and board with the Nultys at +the same figure he was paying Ivan Peloff until he got a raise and +could pay more. And so, while Nulty was running hot and cold with +mountain fever, P. Walton, with Mrs. Nulty in mind, kept his +reservations on down in the Polack quarters, until such time as Nulty +should get better--and went back to work at the office. + +On the first night of his convalescence, P. Walton had a visitor--in +the person of Larry, the brains and leader of the gang. Larry did not +come inside the shack--he waited outside in the dark until P. Walton +went out to him. + +"Hullo, Dook!" said Larry. "Tough luck, eh? Been sick? Gee, I'm glad +to see you! All to the mustard again? Couldn't get into town before, +but a fellow uptown said you'd been bad." + +"Hello, Larry," returned P. Walton, and he shook the other's hand +cordially. "Glad to see you, too. Yes; I guess I'm all right--till +next time." + +"Sure, you are!" said Larry heartily. "Anything good doing?" + +"Well," said P. Walton, "I don't know whether you'd call it good or +not, but there was a new order went into effect yesterday to remain in +force until further notice--owing to the heavy passenger traffic. They +are taking the mail and express cars off the regular afternoon +east-bound trains, and running them as a through extra on fast time. +They figure to land the mails East quicker, and ease up on the +equipment of the regular trains so as to keep them a little nearer +schedule. So now the express stuff comes along on Extra No. 34, due +Spider Cut at eight-seventeen p. m., which is her last stop before Big +Cloud." + +"Say," said Larry dubiously, "'taint going to be possible to board a +train like that casual-like, is it?" Then, brightening suddenly: "But +say, when you get to thinking about it, it don't size up so bad, +neither. I got the lay, Dook--I got it for fair--listen! Instead of a +train-load of passengers to handle there won't be no one after the +ditching but what's left of the train crew and the mail clerks; a +couple of us can stand the stamp lickers up easy, while the two others +pinches the swag. We'll stop her, all right! We ditch the train--see? +There's a peach of a place for it about seven miles up the line from +here. We tap the wires, Big Tom's some cheese at that, and then cuts +them as soon as we know the train has passed Spider Cut, and is wafting +its way toward us. Say, it's good, Dook, it's like a Christmas +present--I was near forgetting the registered mail." + +P. Walton laughed--and coughed. + +"I guess it's all right, Larry," he said. "According to a letter I saw +in the office this afternoon, there's a big shipment of banknotes that +some bank is remitting, and that will be on board night after next." + +"Say that again," said Larry, sucking in his breath quickly. "I ain't +deaf, but I'd like to hear it just once more." + +"I was thinking," said P. Walton, more to himself than to his +companion, "that I'd like to get down to Northern Australia--up +Queensland way. They say it's good for what ails me--bakes it out of +one." + +"Dook," said Larry, shoving out his hand, "you can buy your ticket the +day after the night after next--you'll get yours, and don't you forget +it, I'll see to that. We'll move camp to-morrow down handy to the +place I told you about, and get things ready. And say, Dook, is that +cuss Nulty on the new run?" + +"I don't know anything about Nulty," said P. Walton. + +"Well, I hope he is," said Larry, with a fervent oath. "We're going to +cut the heart out of him for what he did to Spud. The Butcher was for +coming into town and putting a bullet through him anyway, but I'm not +for throwing the game. It won't hurt Spud's memory any to wait a bit, +and we won't lose any enthusiasm by the delay, you can bet your life on +that! And now I guess I'll mosey along. The less I'm seen around here +the better. Well, so long, Dook--I got it straight, eh? Night after +to-morrow, train passes Spider Cut eight-seventeen--that right?" + +"Eight-seventeen--night after to-morrow--yes," said P. Walton. "Good +luck to you, Larry." + +"Same to you, Dook," said Larry--and slipped away in the shadows. + +P. Walton went uptown to sit for an hour or two with Nulty--turn about +being no more than fair play. Also on the following night he did the +same--and on this latter occasion he took the opportunity, when Mrs. +Nulty wasn't around to hear and worry about it, to turn the +conversation on the hold-up, after leading up to it casually. + +"When you get out and back on your run again, Nulty, I'd keep a sharp +look-out for that fellow whose pal you shot," he said. + +"You can trust me for that," said Nulty anxiously. "I'll bet he +wouldn't get away a second time!" + +"Unless he saw you first," amended P. Walton evenly. "There's probably +more where those two came from--a gang of them, I dare say. They'll +have it in for you, Nulty." + +"Don't you worry none about me," said Nulty, and his jaw shot out. +"I'm able to take care of myself." + +"Oh, well," said P. Walton, "I'm just warning you, that's all. Anyway, +there isn't any immediate need for worry. I guess you're safe +enough--so long as you stay in bed." + +The next day P. Walton worked assiduously at the office. If excitement +or nervousness in regard to the events of the night that was to come +was in any wise his portion, he did not show it. There was not a +quiver in the steel-plate hand in which he wrote the super's letters, +not even an inadvertent blur on the tissue pages of the book in which +he copied them. Only, perhaps, he worked a little more slowly--his +work wasn't done when the shop whistle blew and he came back to the +office after supper. It was close on ten minutes after eight when he +finally finished, and went into the despatcher's room with the sheaf of +official telegrams to go East during the night at odd moments when the +wires were light. + +"Here's the super's stuff," he said, laying the papers on the +despatcher's desk. + +"All right," said Spence, who was sitting in on the early trick. +"How's P. Walton to-night?" + +"Pretty fair," said P. Walton, with a smile. "How's everything moving?" + +"Slick as clockwork," Spence answered. "Everything on the dot. I'll +get some of that stuff off for you now." + +"Good," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "Good-night, Spence." + +"'Night, old man," rejoined Spence, and picking up the first of the +super's telegrams began to rattle a call on his key like the tattoo of +a snare drum. + +P. Walton, in possession of the information he sought--that Extra No. +34 was on time--descended the stairs to the platform, and started +uptown. + +"I think," he mused, as he went along, "that about as good a place as +any for me when this thing breaks will be sitting with Nulty." + +P. Walton noticed the light burning in Nulty's bedroom window as he +reached the house; and, it being a warm night, found the front door +wide open. He stepped into the hall, and from there into the bedroom. +Mrs. Nulty was sitting in a rocking-chair beside the lamp, mending away +busily at a pair of Nulty's overalls--but there wasn't anybody else in +the room. + +"Hello!" said P. Walton cheerily. "Where's the sick man?" + +"Why, didn't you know?" said Mrs. Nulty a little anxiously, as she laid +aside her work and rose from her chair. "The express company sent word +this morning that if he was able they particularly wanted to have him +make the run through the mountains to-night on Extra Number +Thirty-four--I think there was some special shipment of money. He +wasn't at all fit to go, and I tried to keep him home, but he wouldn't +listen to me. He went up to Elk River this morning to meet Thirty-four +and come back on it. I've been worrying all day about him." + +P. Walton's eyes rested on the anxious face of the little woman before +him, dropped to the red, hard-working hands that played nervously with +the corner of her apron then travelled to Nulty's alarm clock that +ticked raucously upon the table--it was 8.17. P. Walton smiled. + +"Now, don't you worry, Mrs. Nulty," he said reassuringly. "A touch of +mountain fever isn't anything one way or the other--don't you worry, +it'll be all right. I didn't know he was out, and I was going to sit +with him for a little while, but what I really came for was to get him +to lend me a revolver--there's a coyote haunting my end of the town +that's kept me awake for the last two nights, and I'd like to even up +the score. If Nulty hasn't taken the whole of his armament with him, +perhaps you'll let me have one. + +"Why, yes, of course," said Mrs. Nulty readily. "There's two there in +the top bureau drawer. Take whichever one you want." + +"Thanks," said P. Walton--and stepped to the bureau. He took out a +revolver, slipped it into his pocket, and turned toward the door. +"Now, don't you worry, Mrs. Nulty," he said encouragingly, "because +there's nothing to worry about. Tell him I dropped in, will you?--and +thank you again for the revolver. Good-night, Mrs. Nulty."' + +P. Walton's eyes strayed to the clock as he left the room--it was 8.19. +On the sidewalk he broke into a run, dashed around the corner and sped, +with instantly protesting lungs, down Main Street, making for the +railroad yards. And as he ran P. Walton did a sum in mental +arithmetic, while his breath came in gasps. + +If you remember Flannagan, you will remember that the distance from +Spider Cut to Big Cloud was twenty-one decimal seven miles. P. Walton +figured it roughly twenty-two. No. 34, on time, had already left +Spider Cut at 8.17--and the wires were cut. Her running time for the +twenty-two miles was twenty-nine minutes--she made Big Cloud at 8.46. +Counting Larry's estimate of seven miles to be accurate, No. 34 had +fifteen miles to go from Spider Cut before they piled her in the ditch, +and it would take her a little over nineteen minutes to do it. With +two minutes already elapsed--_three_ now--and allowing, by shaving it +close, another five before he started, P. Walton found that he was left +with eleven minutes in which to cover seven miles. + +It took P. Walton four of his five-minute allowance to reach the +station platform; and here, for just an instant, he paused while his +eyes swept the twinkling switch lights in the yards. Then he raced +along the length of the platform, jumped from the upper end to the +ground, and lurching a little, up the main line track to where +fore-shortened, unclassed little switching engine--the 229--was +grunting heavily, and stealing a momentary rest after having sent a +string of flats flying down a spur under the tender guidance of a +brakeman or two. And as P. Walton ran, he reached into his pocket and +drew out Nulty's revolver. + +There wasn't much light inside the cab--there was only the lamp over +the gauges--but it was light enough to show P. Walton's glittering +eyes, fever bright, the deadly white of his face, the deadly smile on +his lips, and the deadly weapon in his hand, as he sprang through the +gangway. + +"Get out!" panted P. Walton coldly. + +Neither Dalheen, the fireman, nor Mulligan, fat as a porpoise, on the +right-hand side, stood upon the order of their going. Dalheen ducked, +and took a flying leap through the left-hand gangway; and Mulligan, +with a sort of anxious gasp that seemed as though he wished to convey +to P. Walton the fact that he was hurrying all he could, squeezed +himself through the right-hand gangway and sat down on the ground. + +P. Walton pulled the throttle open with an unscientific jerk. + +With a kind of startled scream from the hissing steam, the sparks +flying from madly racing drivers as the wheel tires bit into the rails, +the old 229, like a frightened thoroughbred at the vicious lash of a +yokel driver, reared and plunged wildly forward. The sudden, violent +start from inertia pitched P. Walton off his feet across the driver's +seat, and smashed his head against the reversing lever that stood +notched forward in the segment. He gained his feet again, and, his +head swimming a little from the blow, looked behind him. + +Yells were coming from half a dozen different directions; forms, racing +along with lanterns bobbing up and down, were tearing madly for the +upper end of the yard toward him; there was a blur of switch lights, +red, white, purple and green--then with a wicked lurch around a curve +darkness hid them, and the sweep of the wind, the roar of the pounding +drivers deadened all other sounds. + +P. Walton smiled--a strange, curious, wistful smile--and sat down in +Mulligan's seat. His qualifications for a Brotherhood card had been +exhausted when he had pulled the throttle--engine driving was not in P. +Walton's line. P. Walton smiled at the air latch, the water glass, the +gauges and injectors, whose inner workings were mysteries to him--and +clung to the window sill of the cab to keep his seat. He understood +the throttle--in a measure--he had ridden up and down the yards in the +switchers once or twice during the month that was past--that was all. + +Quicker came the bark of the exhaust; quicker the speed. P. Walton's +eyes were fixed through the cab glass ahead, following the headlight's +glare, that silvered now the rails, and now flung its beams athwart the +stubble of a butte as the 229 swung a curve. Around him, about him, +was dizzy, lurching chaos, as, like some mad thing, the little switcher +reeled drunkenly through the night--now losing her wheel-base with a +sickening slew on the circling track, now finding it again with a +staggering quiver as she struck the tangent once more. + +It was not scientific running--P. Walton never eased her, never helped +her--P. Walton was not an engineer. He only knew that he must go fast +to make the seven miles in eleven minutes--and he was going fast. And, +mocking every formula of dynamics, the little switcher, with no single +trailing coach to steady it, swinging, swaying, rocking, held the rails. + +P. Walton's lips were still half parted in their strange, curious +smile. A deafening roar was in his ears--the pound of beating trucks +on the fish-plates; the creak and groan of axle play; the screech of +crunching flanges; the whistling wind; the full-toned thunder now of +the exhaust--and reverberating back and forth, flinging it from butte +to butte, for miles around in the foothills the still night woke into a +thousand answering echoes. + +Meanwhile, back in Big Cloud, things were happening in the super's +office. Spence, the despatcher, interrupting Carleton and Regan at +their nightly pedro, came hastily into the room. + +"Something's wrong," he said tersely. "I can't get anything west of +here, and----" He stopped suddenly, as Mulligan, flabby white, came +tumbling into the room. + +"He's gone off his chump!" screamed Mulligan. "Gone delirious, or mad, +or----" + +"What's the matter?" Carleton was on his feet, his words cold as ice. + +"Here!" gasped the engineer. "Look!" He dragged Carleton to the side +window, and pointed up the track--the 229, sparks volleying skyward +from her stack, was just disappearing around the first bend. +"That's--that's the two-twenty-nine!" he panted. "P. Walton's in +her--drove me and Dalheen out of the cab with a revolver." + +For an instant, no more than a breathing space, no one spoke; then +Spence's voice, with a queer sag in it, broke the silence: + +"Extra Thirty-four left Spider Cut eight minutes ago." + +Carleton, master always of himself, and master always of the situation, +spoke before the words were hardly out of the despatcher's mouth: + +"Order the wrecker out, Spence--jump! Mulligan, go down and help get +the crew together." And then, as Spence and Mulligan hurried from the +room, Carleton looked at the master mechanic. "Well, Tommy, what do +you make of this?" he demanded grimly. + +Regan, with thinned lips, was pulling viciously at his mustache. + +"What do I make of it!" he growled. "A mail train in the ditch, and +nothing worth speaking of left of the two-twenty-nine--that's what I +make of it!" + +Carleton shook his head. + +"Doesn't it strike you as a rather remarkable coincidence that our +wires should go out, and P. Walton should go off his head with delirium +at the same moment?" + +"Eh!" snapped Regan sharply. "Eh!--what do you mean?" + +"I don't mean anything," Carleton answered, clipping off his words. +"It's strange, that's all--I think we'll go up with the wrecker, Tommy." + +"Yes," said Regan slowly, puzzled; then, with a scowl and a tug at his +mustache: "It does look queer, queerer every minute--blamed queer! I +wonder who P. Walton is, and where he came from anyhow?" + +"You asked me that once before," Carleton threw back over his shoulder, +moving toward the door. "P. Walton never said." + +And while Regan, still tugging at his mustache, followed Carleton down +the stairs to the platform, and ill-omened call boys flew about the +town for the wrecking crew, and the 1018, big and capable, snorting +from a full head of steam, backed the tool car, a flat, and the +rumbling derrick from a spur to the main line, P. Walton still sat, +smiling strangely, clinging to the window sill of the laboring 229, +staring out into the night through the cab glass ahead. + +"You see," said P. Walton to himself, as though summing up an argument +dispassionately, "ditching a train travelling pretty near a mile a +minute is apt to result in a few casualties, and Nulty might get hurt, +and if he didn't, the first thing they'd do would be to pass him out +for keeps, anyway, on Spud's account. They're not a very gentle lot--I +remember the night back at Joliet that Larry and the Butcher walked out +with the guards' clothes on, after cracking the guards' skulls. +They're not a very gentle lot, and I guess they've been to some little +trouble fixing up for to-night--enough so's they won't feel pleasant at +having it spoiled. I guess"--P. Walton coughed--"I won't need that +ticket for the _heat_ of Northern Queensland. I guess"--he ended +gravely--"I guess I'm going to hell." + +P. Walton put his head out through the window and listened--and nodded +his head. + +"Sound carries a long way out here in the foothills," he observed. +"They ought to hear it on the mail train as soon as we get close--and I +guess we're close enough now to start it." + +P. Walton got down, and, clutching at the cab-frame for support, lifted +up the cover of the engineer's seat--there was sure to be something +there among the tools that would do. P. Walton's hand came out with a +heavy piece of cord. He turned then, pulled the whistle lever down, +tied it down--and, screaming now like a lost soul, the 229 reeled on +through the night. + +The minutes passed--and then the pace began to slacken. Dalheen was +always rated a good fireman, and a wizard with the shovel, but even +Dalheen had his limitations--and P. Walton hadn't helped him out any. +The steam was dropping pretty fast as the 229 started to climb a grade. + +P. Walton stared anxiously about him. It must be eleven minutes now +since he had started from the Big Cloud yards, but how far had he come? +Was he going to stop too soon after all? What was the matter? P. +Walton's eyes on the track ahead dilated suddenly, and, as suddenly, he +reached for the throttle and slammed it shut--he was not going to stop +too soon--perhaps not soon enough. + +Larry, the Butcher, Big Tom, and Dago Pete had chosen their position +well. A hundred yards ahead, the headlight played on a dismantled +roadbed and torn-up rails, then shot off into nothingness over the +embankment as the right of way swerved sharply to the right they had +left no single loophole for Extra No. 34, not even a fighting +chance--the mail train would swing the curve and be into the muck +before the men in her cab would be able to touch a lever. + +Screaming hoarsely, the 229 slowed, bumped her pony truck on the ties +where there were no longer any rails jarred, bounced, and thumped along +another half dozen yards--and brought up with a shock that sent P. +Walton reeling back on the coal in the tender. + +A dark form, springing forward, bulked in the left-hand gangway--and P. +Walton recognized the Butcher. + +"Keep out, Butch!" he coughed over the scream of the whistle--and the +Butcher in his surprise sort of sagged mechanically back to the ground. + +"It's de Dook!" he yelled, with a gasp; and then, as other forms joined +him, he burst into a torrent of oaths. "What de blazes are you doin'!" +he bawled. "De train 'll be along in a minute, if you ain't queered it +already--cut out that cursed whistle! Cut it out, d'ye hear, or we'll +come in there an' do it for you in a way you won't like--have you gone +nutty?" + +"Try it," invited P. Walton--and coughed again. "You won't have far to +come, but I'll drop you if you do. I've changed my mind--there isn't +going to be any wreck to-night. You'd better use what time is left in +making your getaway." + +"So that's it, is it!" roared another voice. "You dirty pup, you'd +squeal on your pals, would you, you white-livered snitch, you! Well, +take that!" + +There was a flash, a lane of light cut streaming through the darkness, +and a bullet lodged with an angry spat on the coal behind P. Walton's +head. Another and another followed. P. Walton smiled, and flattened +himself down on the coal. A form leaped for the gangway--and P. Walton +fired. There was a yell of pain and the man dropped back. Then P. +Walton heard some of them running around behind the tender, and they +came at him from both sides, firing at an angle through both gangways. +Yells, oaths, revolver shots and the screech of the whistle filled the +air--and again P. Walton smiled--he was hit now, quite badly, somewhere +in his side. + +His brain grew sick and giddy. He fired once, twice more +unsteadily--then the revolver slipped from his fingers. From somewhere +came another whistle--they weren't firing at him any more, they were +running away, and--P. Walton tried to rise--and pitched back +unconscious. + +Nulty, the first man out from the mail train, found him there, and, +wondering, his face set and grim, carried P. Walton to the express car. +They made a mattress for him out of chair cushions, and laid him on the +floor--and there, a few minutes later, Regan and Carleton, from the +wrecker, after a look at the 229 and the wrecked track that spoke +eloquently for itself, joined the group. + +Carleton knelt and looked at P. Walton--then looked into Nulty's face. + +Nulty, bending over P. Walton on the other side, shook his head. + +"He's past all hope," he said gruffly. + +P. Walton stirred, and his lips moved--he was talking to himself. + +"If I were you, Nulty," he murmured, and they stooped to catch the +words, "I'd look out for--for--that----" + +The words trailed off into incoherency. + +Regan, tugging at his mustache, swallowed a lump in his throat, and +turned away his head. + +"It's queer!" he muttered. "How'd he know--what? I wonder where he +came from, and who he was?" + +But P. Walton never said. P. Walton was dead. + + + + +VI + +THE AGE LIMIT + +As its scarred and battle-torn colors are the glory of a regiment, +brave testimony of hard-fought fields where men were men, so to the +Hill Division is its tradition. And there are names there, too, on the +honor roll--not famous, not world-wide, not on every tongue, but names +that in railroading will never die. The years have gone since men +fought and conquered the sullen gray-walled Rockies and shackled them +with steel and iron, and laid their lives on the altar of one of the +mightiest engineering triumphs the world has ever known; but the years +have dimmed no memory, have only brought achievement into clearer +focus, and honor to its fullness where honor is due. They tell the +stories of those days yet, as they always will tell them--at night in +the round-house over the soft pur of steam, with the yellow flicker of +the oil lamps on the group clustered around the pilot of a 1600-class +mountain greyhound--and the telling is as though men stood erect, +bareheaded, at "salute" to the passing of the Old Guard. + +Heroes? They never called themselves that--never thought of themselves +in that way, those old fellows who have left their stories. Their +uniform was a suit of overalls, their "decorations" the grime that came +with the day's work--just railroad men, hard-tongued, hard-fisted, +hard-faced, rough, without much polish, perhaps, as some rank polish, +with hearts that were right and big as a woman's--that was all. + +MacCaffery, Dan MacCaffery, was one of these. This is old Dan +MacCaffery's story. + +MacCaffery? Dan was an engineer, one of the old-timers, blue-eyed, +thin--but you'd never get old Dan that way, he wouldn't look natural! +You've got to put him in the cab of the 304, leaning out of the window, +way out, thin as a bent toothpick, and pounding down the gorge and +around into the straight making for the Big Cloud yards, with a string +of buff-colored coaches jouncing after him, and himself bouncing up and +down in his seat like an animated piece of rubber. Nobody ever saw old +Dan inside the cab, that is, all in--he always had his head out of the +window--said he could see better, though the wind used to send the +water trickling down from the old blue eyes, and generally there were +two little white streaks on his cheeks where no grime or coal dust ever +got a chance at a strangle hold on the skin crevices. For the rest, +what you could see sticking out of the cab over the whirling rod as he +came down the straight, was just a black, greasy peaked cap surmounting +a scanty fringe of gray hair, and a wizened face, with a round little +knob in the center of it for a nose. + +But that isn't altogether old Dan MacCaffery, either--there was Mrs. +MacCaffery. Everybody liked Dan, with his smile, and the cheery way he +had of puckering up his lips sympathetically and pushing back his cap +and scratching near his ear where the hair was, as he listened maybe to +a hard-luck story; everybody liked Dan--but they swore by Mrs. +MacCaffery. Leaving out the railroaders who worshipped her anyway, +even the worst characters in Big Cloud, and there were some pretty bad +ones in those early days, hangers-on and touts for the gambling hells +and dives, used to speak of the little old lady in the lace cap with a +sort of veneration. + +Lace cap? Yes. Sounds queer, doesn't it? An engineer's wife, keeping +his shanty in a rough and ready, half baked bit of an uncivilized town +in the shadow of the Rockies, and a lace cap don't go together very +often, that's a fact. But it is equally a fact that Mrs. MacCaffery +wore a lace cap--and somehow none of the other women ever had a word to +say about her being "stuck up" either. There was something patrician +about Mrs. MacCaffery--not the cold, stand-offish effect that's only +make-believe, but the real thing. The Lord knows, she had to work hard +enough, but you never saw her rinsing the washtub suds from her hands +and coming to the door with her sleeves rolled up--not at all. The +last thing you'd ever think there was in the house was a washtub. +Little lace cap over smoothly-parted gray hair, little black dress with +a little white frill around the throat, and just a glad look on her +face whether she'd ever seen you before or not--that was Mrs. +MacCaffery. + +As far back as any one could remember she had always looked like that, +always a little old lady--never a young woman, although she and Dan had +come there years before, even before the operating department had got +the steel shaken down into anything that might with justice be called a +permanent right of way. Perhaps it was the gray hair--Mrs. +MacCaffery's hair had been gray then, when it ought to have been the +glossy, luxuriant brown that the old-fashioned daguerreotype, hanging +in the shanty's combination dining and silting room, proclaimed that it +once was. + +Big Cloud, of course, didn't call her patrician--because they didn't +talk that way out there. They said there was "some class" to Mrs. +MacCaffery--and if their expression was inelegant, what they meant by +it wasn't. Not that they ranked her any finer than Dan, for the last +one of them ranked Dan as one of God's own noblemen, and there's +nothing finer than that, only they figured, at least the women did, +that back in the Old Country she'd been brought up to things that Dan +MacCaffery hadn't. + +Maybe that accounted for their sending young Dan East, and pinching +themselves pretty near down to bed rock to give the boy an education +and a start. Not that Mrs. MacCaffery had any notions that railroading +and overalls and dirt was plebeian and beneath her--far from it! She +was proud of old Dan, proud of his work, proud of his record; she'd +talk about Dan's engine to you by the hour just as though it were +alive, just as Dan would, and she would have hung chintz curtains on +the cab windows and put flower pots on the running boards if they had +let her. It wasn't that--Mrs. MacCaffery wasn't that kind. Only there +were limitations to a cab, and she didn't want the boy, he was the only +one they had, to start out with limitations of any kind that would put +a slow order on his reaching the goal her mother's heart dreamed of. +What goal? Who knows? Mothers always dream of their boy's future in +that gentle, loving, all-conquering, up-in-the-clouds kind of a way, +don't they? She wanted young Dan to do something, make a name for +himself some day. + +And young Dan did. He handed a jolt to the theory of heredity that +should, if it didn't, have sent the disciples of that creed to the mat +for the full count. When he got through his education, he got into a +bank and backed the brain development, the old couple had scrimped to +the bone to give him, against the market--with five thousand dollars of +the bank's money. Old Dan and Mrs. MacCaffery got him off--Mrs. +MacCaffery with her sweet old face, and Dan with his grim old honesty. +The bank didn't prosecute. The boy was drowned in a ferryboat accident +the year after. And old Dan had been paying up ever since. + +He was always paying up. Five thousand dollars, even in instalments +for a whole lot of years, didn't leave much to come and go on from his +monthly pay check. He talked some of dropping the benefit orders he +belonged to, and he belonged to most of them, but Mrs. MacCaffery +talked him out of that on account of the insurance, she said, but +really because she knew that Dan and his lodge rooms and his regalias +and his worshipful titles were just part and parcel of each other, and +that he either was, or was just going to be, Supreme High Chief +Illustrious Something-or-other of every Order in town. Besides, after +all, it didn't cost much compared with the other, just meant pinching a +tiny bit harder--and so they pinched. + +Old Dan and Mrs. MacCaffery didn't talk about their troubles. You'd +never get the blues on their account, no matter how intimate you got +with them. But everybody knew the story, of course, for everybody +knows a thing like that; and everybody knew that dollars were scarce up +at the MacCafferys' shanty for, though they didn't know how much old +Dan sent East each year, they knew it had to be a pretty big slice of +what was coming to him to make much impression on that five thousand +dollars at the other end--and they wondered, naturally enough, how the +MacCafferys got along at all. But the MacCafferys got along somehow, +outwardly without a sign of the hurt that was deeper than a mere matter +of dollars and cents, got along through the years--and Mrs. MacCaffery +got a little grayer, a little more gentle and patient and sweet-faced, +and old Dan's hair narrowed to a fringe like a broken tonsure above his +ears, and--but there's our "clearance" now, and we're off with a +clean-swept track and "rights through" into division. + +Dan was handling the cab end of one of the local passenger runs when +things broke loose in the East--a flurry in Wall Street. But Wall +Street was a long, long way from the Rockies, and, though the papers +were full of it, there didn't seem to be anything intimate enough in a +battle of brokers and magnates, bitter, prolonged, and to the death +though it might be, to stir up any excitement or enthusiasm on the Hill +Division. The Hill Division, generally speaking, had about all it +could do to mind its own affairs without bothering about those of +others', for the Rockies, if conquered, took their subjection with bad +grace and were always in an incipient state of insurrection that kept +the operating, the motive power and the maintenance-of-way departments +close to the verge of nervous prostration without much let-up to speak +of. But when the smoke cleared away down East, the Hill Division and +Big Cloud forgot their bridge troubles and their washouts and their +slides long enough to stick their tongues in their cheeks and look +askance at each other; and Carleton, in his swivel chair, pulled on the +amber mouthpiece of his brier and looked at Regan, who, in turn, pulled +on his scraggly brown mustache and reached for his hip pocket and his +plug. The system was under new control. + +"Who's H. Herrington Campbell when he's at home?" spluttered Regan. + +"Our new general manager, Tommy," Carleton told him for the second time. + +Regan grunted. + +"I ain't blind! I've read that much. Who is he--h'm? Know him?" + +Carleton took the pipe from his mouth--a little seriously. + +"It's the P. M. & K. crowd, Tommy. Makes quite an amalgamation, +doesn't it--direct eastern tidewater connection--what? They're a +younger lot, pretty progressive, too, and sharp as they make them." + +"I don't care a hoot who owns the stock," observed Regan, biting deeply +at his blackstrap. "It's the bucko with the overgrown name in the +center that interests me--who's he? Do you know him?" + +"Yes," said Carleton slowly. "I know him." He got up suddenly and +walked over to the window, looked out into the yards for a moment, then +turned to face the master mechanic. "I know him, and I know most of +the others; and I'll say, between you and me, Tommy, that I'm blamed +sorry they've got their fingers on the old road. They're a cold, +money-grabbing crew, and Campbell's about as human as a snow man, only +not so warm-blooded. I fancy you'll see some changes out here." + +"I turned down an offer from the Penn last week," said the fat little +master mechanic reminiscently, "mabbe I----" + +Carleton laughed--he could afford to. There was hardly a road in the +country but had made covetous offers for the services of the cool-eyed +master of the Hill Division, who was the idol of his men down to the +last car tink. + +"No; I guess not, Tommy. Our heads are safe enough, I think. When I +go, you go--and as the P. M. & K. have been after me before, I guess +they'll let me alone now I'm on their pay roll." + +"What kind of changes, then?" inquired Regan gruffly. + +"I don't know," said Carleton. "I don't know, Tommy--new crowd, new +ways. We'll see." + +And, in time, Regan saw. Perhaps Regan himself, together with Riley, +the trainmaster, were unwittingly the means of bringing it about a +little sooner than it might otherwise have come--perhaps not. +Ultimately it would have been all the same. Sentiment and H. +Herrington Campbell were not on speaking terms. However, one way or +the other, in results, it makes little difference. + +It was natural enough that about the first official act of the new +directors should be a trip to look over the new property they had +acquired; and if there was any resentment on the Hill Division at the +change in ownership, there was no sign of it in Big Cloud when the word +went out of what was coming. On the contrary, everybody sort of +figured to make a kind of holiday affair of it, for the special was to +lay off there until afternoon to give the Big Fellows a chance to see +the shops. Anyway, it was more or less mutually understood that they +were to be given the best the Hill Division had to offer. + +Regan kept his pet flyer, the 1608, in the roundhouse, and tinkered +over her for two days, and sent for Dan MacCaffery--there'd been a good +deal of speculation amongst the engine crews as to who would get the +run, and the men were hot for the honor. + +Regan squinted at old Dan--and squinted at the 1608 on the pit beside +him. + +"How'd you think she looks, Dan?" he inquired casually. + +The old engineer ran his eyes wistfully over the big racer, groomed to +the minute, like the thoroughbred it was. + +"She'll do you proud, Regan," he said simply. + +And then Regan's fat little hand came down with a bang on the other's +overalled shoulder--that was Regan's way. + +"And you, too, Dan," he grinned. "I got you slated for the run." + +"Me!" said MacCaffery, his wizened face lighting up. + +"You--sure!" Regan's grin expanded. "It's coming to you, ain't it? +You're the senior engineer on the division, ain't you? Well, then, +what's the matter with you? Riley's doing the same for Pete +Chartrand--he's putting Pete in the aisles. What?" + +Old Dan looked at Regan, then at the 1608, and back at Regan again. + +"Say," he said a little huskily, "the missus 'll be pleased when I tell +her. We was talking it over last night, and hoping--just hoping, mind +you, that mabbe----" + +"Go tell her, then," said the little master mechanic, who didn't need +any word picture to make him see Mrs. MacCaffery's face when she heard +the news--and he gave the engineer a friendly push doorwards. + +Not a very big thing--to pull the latch of the Directors' Special? +Nothing to make a fuss over? Well no, perhaps not--not unless you were +a railroad man. It meant quite a bit to Dan MacCaffery, though, and +quite a bit to Mrs. MacCaffery because it was an honor coming to Dan; +and it meant something to Regan, too. Call it a little thing--but +little things count a whole lot, too, sometimes in this old world of +ours, don't they? + +There had been a sort of little programme mapped out. Regan, as +naturally fell to his lot, being master mechanic, was to do the honors +of the shops, and Carleton was to make the run up through the Rockies +and over the division with the new directors: but at the last moment a +telegram sent the superintendent flying East to a brother's sick bed, +and the whole kit and caboodle of the honors, to his inward +consternation and dismay, fell to Regan. + +Regan, however, did the best he could. He fished out the black Sunday +suit he wore on the rare occasions when he had time to know one day of +the week from the other, wriggled into a boiled shirt and a stiff +collar that was yellow for want of daylight, and, nervous as a galvanic +battery, was down on the platform an hour before the train was due. +Also, by the time the train rolled in, Regan's handkerchief was +wringing wet from the sweat he mopped off his forehead--but five +minutes after that the earnest little master mechanic, as he afterwards +confided to Carleton, "wouldn't have given a whoop for two trainloads +of 'em, let alone the measly lot you could crowd into one private car." +Somehow, Regan had got it into his head that he was going on his mettle +before a crowd of up-to-the-minute, way-up railroaders; but when he +found there wasn't a practical railroad man amongst them, bar H. +Herrington Campbell, to whom he promptly and whole-heartedly took a +dislike, Regan experienced a sort of pitying contempt, which, if it +passed over the nabobs' heads without doing them any harm, had at least +the effect of putting the fat little master mechanic almost +superciliously at his ease. + +Inspect the shops? Not at all. They were out for a joy ride across +the continent and the fun there was in it. + +"How long we got here? Three hours? Wow!" boomed a big fellow, +stretching his arms lazily as he gazed about him. + +"Let's paint the town, boys," wheezed an asthmatic, bowlegged little +man of fifty, who sported an enormous gold watch chain. "Come on and +look the natives over!" + +Regan, who had been a little hazy on the etiquette of chewing in select +company, reached openly for his plug--and kind of squinted over it +non-committingly, as he bit in, at H. Herrington Campbell, who stood +beside him. Carleton had sized the new general manager up pretty +well--cold as a snow man--and he looked it. H. Herrington Campbell was +a spare-built man, with sharp, quick, black eyes, a face like a hawk, +and lips so thin you wouldn't know he had any if one corner of his +mouth hadn't been pried kind of open, so to speak, with the stub of a +cigar. + +"Go ahead and amuse yourselves, boys." H. Herrington Campbell talked +out of the corner of his mouth where the cigar was. "We pull out at +twelve-thirty sharp." Then to Regan, curtly: "We'll look the equipment +and shops over, Mr. Regan." + +"Yes--sure," agreed Regan, without much enthusiasm, and led the way +across the tracks toward the roundhouse as a starting point for the +inspection tour. + +The whole blamed thing was different from the way Regan had figured it +out in his mind beforehand; but Regan set out to make himself +agreeable--and H. Herrington Campbell listened. H. Herrington Campbell +was the greatest listener Regan had ever met, and Regan froze--and then +Regan thawed out again, but not on account of H. Herrington Campbell. +Regan might have an unresponsive audience, but then Regan didn't +require an audience at all to warm him up when it came to his +roundhouse, and his big mountain racers, and the shops he lay awake at +night planning and thinking about. Here and there, H. Herrington +Campbell shot out a question, crisp, incisive, unexpected, and lapsed +into silence again--that was all. + +They inspected everything, everything there was to inspect; but when +they got through Regan had about as good an idea of what impression it +had made on H. Herrington Campbell as he had when he started out, which +is to say none at all. The new general manager just listened. Regan +had done all the talking. + +Not that H. Herrington Campbell sized up as a misfit, not by any means, +far from it! Regan didn't make that mistake for a minute. He didn't +need to be told that the other knew railroading from the ground up, he +could feel it; but he didn't need to be told, either, that the other +was more a high-geared efficiency machine than he was a man, he could +feel that, too. + +One word of praise Regan wanted, not for himself, but for the things he +loved and worked over and into which he put his soul. And the one +word, where a thousand were due, Regan did not get. The new general +manager had the emotional instincts of a wooden Indian. Regan, toward +the end of the morning, got to talking a little less himself, that is, +aloud--inwardly he grew more eloquent than ever, cholerically so. + +It was train time when they had finished, and the 1608, with old Dan +MacCaffery, half out of the cab window as usual, had just backed down +and coupled on the special, as Regan and the new general manager came +along the platform from the upper freight sheds. And Regan, for all +his inward spleen, couldn't help it, as they reached the big, powerful +racer, spick and span from the guard-plates up. + +"I dunno where you'll beat that, East or West," said Regan proudly, +with a wave of his hand at the 1608. "Wish we had more of that type +out here--we could use 'em. What do you think of her, Mr. +Campbell--h'm?" + +H. Herrington Campbell didn't appear to take any notice of the +masterpiece of machine design to speak of. His eyes travelled over the +engine, and fixed on Dan MacCaffery in the cab window. Dan had an old, +but spotless, suit of overalls on, spotless because Mrs. MacCaffery, +who was even then modestly sharing her husband's honors from the back +of the crowd by the ticket-office window, had made them spotless with a +good many hours' work the day before, for grease sticks hard even in a +washtub; and on old Dan's wizened face was a genial smile that would +have got an instant response from anybody--except H. Herrington +Campbell. H. Herrington Campbell didn't smile, neither did he answer +Regan's question. + +"How old are you?" said he bluntly to Dan MacCaffery. + +"Me?" said old Dan, taken aback for a moment. Then he laughed: "Blest +if I know, sir, it's so long since I've kept track of birthdays. +Sixty-one, I guess--no, sixty-two." + +H. Herrington Campbell didn't appear to hear the old engineer's answer, +any more than he had appeared to take any notice of the 1608. He had +barely paused in his walk, and he was pulling out his watch now and +looking at it as he continued along the platform--only to glance up +again as Pete Chartrand, the senior conductor, gray-haired, +gray-bearded, but dapper as you please in his blue uniform and brass +buttons, hurried by toward the cab with the green tissue copy of the +engineer's orders in his hand. + +Regan opened his mouth to say something--and, instead, snapped his jaws +shut like a steel trap. The last little bit of enthusiasm had oozed +out of the usually good-natured little master mechanic. Two days' +tinkering with the 1608, the division all keyed up to a smile, +everybody trying to do his best to please, a dozen little intimate +plans and arrangements talked over and worked out, were all now a +matter of earnest and savage regret to Regan. + +"By Christmas," growled Regan to himself, as he elbowed his way through +the crowd on the platform--for the town, to the last squaw with a +papoose strapped on her back, had turned out to see the Directors' +Special off--"by Christmas, if 'twere not for Carleton's sake, I'd tell +him, the little tin god that he thinks he is, what _I_ think of him! +And mabbe," added Regan viciously, as he swung aboard the observation +car behind H. Herrington Campbell, "and mabbe I will yet!" + +But Regan's cup, brimming as he held it to be, was not yet full. It +was a pretty swell train, the Directors' Special, that the crowd sent +off with a burst of cheering that lasted until the markers were lost to +view around a butte; a pretty swell train, about the swellest that had +ever decorated the train sheet of the Hill Division--two sleepers, a +diner and observation, mostly mahogany, and the baggage car a good +enough imitation to fit into the color scheme without outraging even +the most esthetic taste, and the 1608 on the front end, gold-leafed, +and shining like a mirror from polished steel and brass. As far as +looks went there wasn't a thing the matter with it, not a thing; it +would have pulled a grin of pride out of a Polack section hand--which +is pulling some. And there wasn't anything the matter with the +send-off, either, that was propitious enough to satisfy anybody; but, +for all that, barring the first hour or so out of Big Cloud, trouble +and the Directors' Special that afternoon were as near akin as twin +brothers. Nothing went right; everything went wrong--except the 1608, +that ran as smooth as a full-jewelled watch, when old Dan, for the +mix-up behind him, could run her at all. The coupling on the diner +broke--that started it. When they got that fixed, something else +happened; and then the forward truck of the baggage car developed a +virulent attack of hot box. + +The special had the track swept for her clean to the Western foothills, +and rights through. But she didn't need them. Her progress was a +crawl. The directors, in spite of their dollar-ante and the roof of +the observation car for the limit, began to lose interest in their game. + +"What is this new toy we've bought?" inquired one of them plaintively. +"A funeral procession?" + +Even H. Herrington Campbell began to show emotion--he shifted his cigar +stub at intervals from one corner of his mouth to the other. Regan was +hot--both ways--inside and out; hotter a whole lot than the hot box he +took his coat off to, and helped old Pete Chartrand and the train crew +slosh buckets of water over every time the Directors' Special stopped, +which was frequently. + +It wasn't old Pete's fault. It wasn't anybody's fault. It was just +blamed hard luck, and it lasted through the whole blamed afternoon. +And by the time they pulled into Elk River, where Regan had wired for +another car, and had transferred the baggage, the Directors' Special, +as far as temper went, was as touchy as a man with a bad case of gout. +As they coupled on the new car, Regan spoke to old Dan in the +cab--spoke from his heart. + +"We're two hours late, Dan--h'm? For the love of Mike, let her out and +do something. That bunch back there's getting so damned polite to me +you'd think the words would melt in their mouths--what?" + +Old Dan puckered his face into a reassuring smile under the peak of his +greasy cap. + +"I guess we're all right now we've got rid of that car," he said. "You +leave it to me. You leave it to me, Regan." + +Pete Chartrand, savage as though the whole matter were a personal and +direct affront, reached up with a new tissue to the cab window. + +"Two hours and ten minutes late!" he snapped out. "Nice, ain't it! +Directors' Special, all the swells, we're doing ourselves proud! Oh, +hell!" + +"Keep your shirt on, Pete," said Regan, somewhat inconsistently. +"Losing your hair over it won't do any good. You're not to blame, are +you? Well then, forget it!" + +Two hours and ten minutes late! Bad enough; but, in itself, nothing +disastrous. It wasn't the first time in railroading that schedules had +gone aglimmering. Only there was more to it than that. There were not +a few other trains, fast freights, passengers, locals and work trains, +whose movements and the movements of the Directors' Special were +intimately connected one with the other. Two hours and ten minutes was +sufficient, a whole lot more than sufficient, to play havoc with a +despatcher's carefully planned meeting points over a hundred miles of +right of way, and all afternoon Donkin had been chewing his lips over +his train sheet back in the despatcher's office at Big Cloud, until the +Directors' Special, officially Special 117, had become a nightmare to +him. Orders, counter orders, cancellations, new orders had followed +each other all afternoon--and now a new batch went out, as the +rehabilitated Special went out of Elk River, and Bob Donkin, with a +sigh of relief at the prospect of clear sailing ahead, pushed the hair +out of his eyes and relaxed a little as he began to give back the +"completes." + +It wasn't Donkin's fault; there was never so much as a hint that it +was. The day man at Mitre Peak--forgot. That's all--but it's a hard +word, the hardest there is in railroading. There was a lot of traffic +moving that afternoon, and with sections, regulars, and extras all +trying to dodge Special 117, they were crowding each other pretty +hard--and the day man at Mitre Peak forgot. + +It was edging dusk as old Pete Chartrand, from the Elk River platform, +lifted a finger to old Dan MacCaffery in the cab, and old Dan, with a +sort of grim smile at the knowledge that the honor of the Hill +Division, what there was left of it as far as Special 117 was +concerned, was up to him, opened out the 1608 to take the "rights" +they'd given him afresh for all there was in it. + +From Elk River to Mitre Peak, where the right of way crosses the +Divide, it is a fairly stiff climb--from Mitre Peak to Eagle Pass, at +the caņon bed, it is an equally emphatic drop; and the track in its +gyrations around the base of the towering, jutting peaks, where it +clings as a fly clings to a wall, is an endless succession of short +tangents and shorter curves. The Rockies, as has been said, had been +harnessed, but they had never been tamed--nor never will be. Silent, +brooding always, there seems a sullen patience about them, as though +they were waiting warily--to strike. There are stretches, many of +them, where no more than a hundred yards will blot utterly one train +from the sight of another; where the thundering reverberations of the +one, flung echoing back and forth from peak to peak, drown utterly the +sounds of the other. And west of Mitre Peak it is like this--and the +operator at Mitre Peak forgot the holding order for Extra Freight No. +69. + +It came quick, quick as the winking of an eye, sudden as the crack of +doom. Extra Freight No. 69 was running west, too, in the same +direction as the Directors' Special; only Extra No. 69 was a heavy +train and she was feeling her way down the grade like a snail, while +the Directors' Special, with the spur and prod of her own delinquency +and misbehavior, was hitting up the fastest clip that old Dan, who knew +every inch of the road with his eyes shut, dared to give within the +limits of safety on that particular piece of track. + +It came quick. Ten yards clear on the right of way, then a gray wall +of rock, a short, right-angled dive of the track around it--and, as the +pilot of the 1608 swung the curve, old Dan's heart for an instant +stopped its beat--three red lights focussed themselves before his eyes, +the tail lights on the caboose of Extra No. 69. There was a yell from +little Billy Dawes, his fireman. + +"My God, Dan, we're into her!" Dawes yelled. "We're into her!" + +Cool old veteran, one of the best that ever pulled a throttle in any +cab, there was a queer smile on old Dan MacCaffery's lips. He needed +no telling that disaster he could not avert, could only in a measure +mitigate, perhaps, was upon them; but even as he checked, checked hard, +and checked again, the thought of others was uppermost in his mind--the +train crew of the freight, some of them, anyway, in the caboose. Dawes +was beside him now, almost at his elbow, as nervy and as full of grit +as the engineer he'd shovelled for for five years and thought more of +than he did of any other man on earth--and for the fraction of a second +old Dan MacCaffery looked into the other's eyes. + +"Give the boys in the caboose a chance for their lives, Billy, in case +they ain't seen or heard us," he shouted in his fireman's ear. "Hold +that whistle lever down." + +Twenty yards, fifteen between them--the 1608 in the reverse bucking +like a maddened bronco, old Dan working with all the craft he knew at +his levers--ten yards--and two men, scurrying like rats from a sinking +ship, leaped from the tail of the caboose to the right of way. + +"Jump!" The word came like a half sob from old Dan. There was nothing +more that any man could do. And he followed his fireman through the +gangway. + +It made a mess--a nasty mess. From the standpoint of traffic, as nasty +a mess as the Hill Division had ever faced. The rear of the freight +went to matchwood, the 1608, the baggage and two Pullmans turned +turtle, derailing the remaining cars behind; but, by a miracle, it +seemed, there wasn't any one seriously hurt. + +Scared? Yes--pretty badly. The directors, a shaken, white-lipped +crowd, poured out of the observation car to the track side. There was +no cigar in H. Herrington Campbell's mouth. + +It was dark by then, but the wreckage caught fire and flung a yellow +glow far across the caņon, and in a shadowy way lighted up the +immediate surroundings. Train crews and engine crews of both trains +hurried here and there, torches and lanterns began to splutter and +wink, hoarse shouts began to echo back and forth, adding their quota to +a weird medley of escaping steam and crackling flame. + +Regan, from a hasty consultation with old Dan MacCaffery and old Pete +Chartrand, that sent the two men on the jump to carry out his orders, +turned--to face H. Herrington Campbell. + +"Nobody hurt, sir--thank God!" puffed the fat little master mechanic, +in honest relief. + +H. Herrington Campbell's eyes were on the retreating forms of the +engineer and conductor. + +"Oh, indeed!" he said coldly. "And the whole affair is hardly worth +mentioning, I take it--quite a common occurrence. You've got some +pretty old men handling your trains out here, haven't you?" + +Regan's face went hard. + +"They're pretty good men," he said shortly. "And there's no blame +coming to them for this, Mr. Campbell, if that's what you mean." + +H. Herrington Campbell's fingers went tentatively to his vest pocket +for a cigar, extracted the broken remains of one--the relic of his own +collision with the back of a car seat where the smash had hurled +him--and threw it away with an icy smile. + +"Blame?" expostulated H. Herrington Campbell ironically. "I don't want +to blame any one; I'm looking for some one to congratulate--on the +worst run division and the most pitiful exemplification of +near-railroading I've had any experience with in twenty years--Mr. +Regan." + +For a full minute Regan did not speak. He couldn't. And then the +words came away with a roar from the bluff little master mechanic. + +"By glory!" he exploded. "We don't take that kind of talk out here +even from general managers--we don't have to! That's straight enough, +ain't it? Well, I'll give you some more of it, now I've started. I +don't like you. I don't like that pained look on your face. I've been +filling up on you all morning, and you don't digest well. We don't +stand for anything as raw as that from any man on earth. And you +needn't hunt around for any greased words, as far as I'm concerned, to +do your firing with--you can have my resignation as master mechanic of +the worst run division you've seen in twenty years right now, if you +want it--h'm?" + +H. Herrington Campbell was gallingly preoccupied. + +"How long are we stalled here for--the rest of the night?" he inquired +irrelevantly. + +Regan stared at him a moment--still apoplectic. + +"I've ordered them to run the forward end of the freight to Eagle Pass, +and take you down," he said, choking a little. "There's a couple of +flats left whole that you can pile yourselves and your baggage on, and +down there they'll make up a new train for you." + +"Oh, very good," said H. Herrington Campbell curtly. + +And ten minutes later, the Directors' Special, metamorphosed into a +string of box cars with two flats trailing on the rear, on which the +newly elected board of the Transcontinental sat, some on their baggage, +and some with their legs hanging over the sides, pulled away from the +wreck and headed down the grade for Eagle Pass. Funny, the transition +from the luxurious leather upholstery of the observation to an angry, +chattering mob of magnates, clinging to each others' necks as they +jounced on the flooring of an old flat? Well perhaps--it depends on +how you look at it. Regan looked at it--and Regan grinned for the pure +savagery that was in him. + +"But I guess," said Regan to himself, as he watched them go, "I guess +mabbe I'll be looking for that job on the Penn after all--h'm?" + +Everybody talked about the Directors' Special run--naturally. And, +naturally, everybody wondered what was going to come from it. It was +an open secret that Regan had handed one to the general manager without +any candy coating on the pill, and the Hill Division sort of looked to +see the master mechanic's head fall and Regan go. But Regan did not +go; and, for that matter, nothing else happened--for a while. + +Carleton came back and got the rights of it from Regan--and said +nothing to Regan about his reply to H. Herrington Campbell's letter, in +which he had stated that if they were looking for a new master mechanic +there would be a division superintendency vacant at the same time. The +day man at Mitre Peak quit railroading--without waiting for an +investigation. Old Dan MacCaffery and Billy Dawes went back to their +regular run with the 304. And the division generally settled down +again to its daily routine--and from the perspective of distance, if +the truth be told, got to grinning reminiscently at the run the Big +Bugs had had for their money. + +Only the grin came too soon. + +A week or so passed, pay day came and went--and the day after that a +general order from the East hit the Hill Division like a landslide. + +Carleton slit the innocent-looking official manila open with his paper +knife, chucked the envelope in the wastebasket, read the communication, +read it again with gathering brows--and sent for Regan. He handed the +form to the master mechanic without a word, as the latter entered the +office. + +Regan read it--read it again, as his chief had--and two hectic spots +grew bright on his cheeks. It was brief, curt, cold--for the good of +the service, safety, and operating efficiency, it stated. In a word, +on and after the first of the month the services of employees over the +age of sixty years would no longer be required. Those were early days +in railroading; not a word about pensions, not a word about half-pay; +just sixty years and--out! + +The paper crackled in Regan's clenched fists; Carleton was beating a +tattoo on his teeth with the mouthpiece of his pipe--there wasn't +another sound in the office for a moment. Then Regan spoke--and his +voice broke a little. + +"It's a damned shame!" he said, through his teeth. "It's that skunk +Campbell." + +"How many men does it affect?" asked Carleton, looking through the +window. + +"I don't know," said the little master mechanic bitterly; "but I know +one that it'll hit harder than all the rest put together--and that's +old Dan MacCaffery." + +There was hurt in the super's gray eyes, as he looked at the +big-hearted little master mechanic's working face. + +"I was thinking of old Dan myself," he said, in his low, quiet way. + +"He hasn't a cent!" stormed Regan. "Not a cent--not a thing on earth +to fall back on. Think of it! Him and that little old missus of his, +God bless her sweet old face, that have been scrimping all these years +to pay back what that blasted kid robbed out of the bank. It ain't +right, Carleton--it ain't right--it's hell, that's what it is! Sixty +years! There ain't a better man ever pulled a latch in a cab, there +ain't a better one pulling one anywhere to-day than old Dan MacCaffery. +And--and I kind of feel as though I were to blame for this, in a way." + +"To blame?" repeated Carleton. + +"I put him on that run, and Riley put old Pete Chartrand on. It kind +of stuck them under Campbell's nose. The two of them together, the two +oldest men--and the blamedest luck that ever happened on a run! H'm?" + +Carleton shook his head. + +"I don't think it would have made any difference in the long run, +Tommy. I told you there'd be changes as soon as the new board got +settled in the saddle." + +Regan tugged viciously at his scraggly brown mustache. + +"Mabbe," he growled fiercely; "but Campbell's seen old Dan now, or I'd +put one over on the pup--I would that! There ain't any birth register +that I ever heard of out here in the mountains, and if Dan said he was +fifty I'd take his word for it." + +"Dan wouldn't say that," said Carleton quietly, "not even to hold his +job." + +"No, of course he wouldn't!" spluttered the fat little master mechanic, +belligerently inconsistent. "Who said he would? And, anyway, it +wouldn't do any good. Campbell asked him his age, and Dan told him. +And--and--oh, what's the use! I know it, I know I'm only talking, +Carleton." + +Neither of them said anything for a minute; then Regan, pacing up and +down the room, spoke again: + +"It's a clean sweep, eh? Train crews, engine crews, everything--there +ain't any other job for him. Over sixty is out everywhere. A white +man--one of the whitest"--Regan sort of said it to himself--"old Dan +MacCaffery. Who's to tell him?" + +Carleton drew a match, with a long crackling noise, under the arm of +his chair. + +"Me?" said Regan, and his voice broke again. He stopped before the +desk, and, leaning, over, stretched out his arm impulsively across it. +"I'd rather have that arm cut off than tell him, Carleton," he said +huskily. "I don't know what he'll say, I don't know what he'll do, but +I know it will break his heart, and break Mrs. MacCaffery's +heart--Carleton." He took another turn the length of the room and back +again. "But I guess it had better be me," said the little master +mechanic, more to himself than to Carleton. "I guess it had--I'd hate +to think of his getting it so's it would hurt any more than it had to, +h'm?" + +And so Tommy Regan told old Dan MacCaffery--that afternoon--the day +after pay day. + +Regan didn't mean to exactly, not then--he was kind of putting it off, +as it were--until next day--and fretting himself sick over it. But +that afternoon old Dan, on his way down to the roundhouse--Dan took out +the regular passenger local that left Big Cloud at 6.55 every evening, +and to spend an hour ahead of running time with the 304 was as much a +habit with Dan as breathing was--hunted Regan up in the latter's office +just before the six o'clock whistle blew. For an instant Regan thought +the engineer had somehow or other already heard the news, but a glance +at Dan's face dispelled that idea as quickly as it had come. Dan was +always smiling, but there was a smile on the wizened, puckered, honest +old face now that seemed to bubble out all over it. + +"Regan," said old Dan, bursting with happy excitement, "I just had to +drop in and tell you on the way over to the roundhouse, and the missus, +she says, 'You tell Mr. Regan, Dan; he'll be rightdown glad.'" + +Regan got up out of his chair. There seemed a sense of disaster coming +somehow that set him to breathing heavily. + +"Sure, Dan--sure," he said weakly. "What is it?" + +"Well," said Dan, "you know that--that trouble the boy got into +back--back----' + +"Yes, I know," said Regan hastily. + +"Well," said Dan, "it's taken a long time, a good many years, but +yesterday, you know, was pay day; and to-day, Regan, we, the missus and +me, Regan, sent the last of that money East, interest and all, the last +cent of it, cleaned it all up. Say, Regan, I feel like I was walking +on air, and you'd ought to have seen the missus sitting up there in the +cottage and smiling through the tears. 'Oh, Dan!' she says, and then +she gets up and puts her two hands on my shoulders, and I felt blamed +near like crying myself. 'We can start in now, Dan, to save up for old +age,' she says, smiling. Say, Regan, ain't it--ain't it fine? We're +going to start in now and save up for old age." + +Regan didn't say a word. It came with a rush, choking him up in his +throat, and something misty in front of his eyes so he couldn't +see--and he turned his back, searching for his hat on the peg behind +his desk. He jammed his hat on his head, and jerked it low down over +his forehead. + +"Ain't you--glad?" said old Dan, a sort of puzzled hurt in his eyes. + +"I'll walk over a bit of the way to the roundhouse with you, Dan," said +Regan gruffly. "Come on." + +They stepped out of the shops, and across a spur--old Dan, still +puzzled, striding along beside the master mechanic. + +"What's the matter, Regan?" he asked reproachfully. "I thought you'd +be----" + +And then Regan stopped--and his hand fell in a tight grip on the +other's shoulder. + +"I got to tell you, Dan," he blurted out. "But I don't need to tell +you what I think of it. It's a damned shame! The new crowd that's +running this road don't want anybody helping 'em to do it after the +first of the month that's over sixty years of age. You're--you're out." + +Old Dan didn't seem to get it for a minute; then a whiteness kind of +crept around his lips, and his eyes, from Regan, seemed to circuit in a +queer, wistful way about the yards, and fix finally on the roundhouse +in front of him; and then he lifted his peaked cap, in the way he had +of doing, and scratched near his ear where the hair was. He hit Regan +pretty hard with what he said. + +"Regan," he said, "there's two weeks yet to the end of the month. +Don't tell her, Regan, and don't you let the boys tell her--there's two +weeks she don't need to worry. I'd kind of like to have her have them +two weeks." + +Regan nodded--there weren't any words that would come, and he couldn't +have spoken them if there had. + +"Yes," said old Dan, sort of whispering to himself, "I'd kind of like +to have her have them two weeks." + +Regan cleared his throat, pulled at his mustache, swore under his +breath, and cleared his throat again. + +"What'll you do, Dan--afterwards?" + +Old Dan straightened up, looked at Regan--and smiled. + +"I dunno," he said, shaking his head and smiling. "I dunno; but it'll +be all right. We'll get along somehow." His eyes shifted to the +roundhouse again. "I guess I'd better be getting over to the 304," he +said--and turned abruptly away. + +Regan watched him go, watched the overalled figure with a slight +shoulder stoop cross the turntable, watched until the other disappeared +inside the roundhouse doors; and then he turned and walked slowly +across the tracks and uptown toward his boarding house. "Don't tell +her"--the words kept reiterating themselves insistently--"don't let the +boys tell her." + +"I guess they won't," said Regan, muttering fiercely to himself. "I +guess they won't." + +Nor did they. The division and Big Cloud kept the secret for those two +weeks--and they kept it for long after that. The little old lady in +the lace cap never knew--they ranked her high, those pioneering women +kind of hers in that little mountain town, those rough-and-ready +toilers who had been her husband's mates--she never knew. + +But everybody else knew, and they watched old Dan as the days went by, +watched him somehow with a tight feeling in their throats, and kept +aloof a little--because they didn't know what to say--kept aloof a +little awkwardly, as it were. Not that there seemed much of any +difference in the old engineer; it was more a something that they +sensed. Old Dan came down to the roundhouse in the late afternoon an +hour before train time, just as he always did, puttered and oiled +around and coddled the 304 for an hour, just as he always did, just as +though he was always going to do it, took his train out, came back on +the early morning run, backed the 304 into the roundhouse, and trudged +up Main Street to where it began to straggle into the buttes, to where +his cottage and the little old lady were--just as he always did. And +the little old lady, with the debt paid, went about the town for those +two weeks happier-looking, younger-looking than Big Cloud had ever seen +her before. That was all. + +But Regan, worrying, pulling at his mustache, put it up to little Billy +Dawes, old Dan's fireman, one day in the roundhouse near the end of the +two weeks. + +"How's Dan take it in the cab, Billy?" he asked. + +The little fireman rolled the hunk of greasy waste in his hands, and +swabbed at his fingers with it for a moment before he answered; then he +sent a stream of blackstrap juice viciously into the pit, and with a +savage jerk hurled the hunk of waste after it. + +"By God!" he said fiercely. + +Regan blinked--and waited. + +"Just the same as ever he was," said Billy Dawes huskily, after a +silence. "Just the same--when he thinks you're not looking. I've seen +him sometimes when he didn't know I was looking." + +Regan said: "H'm!"--kind of coughed it out, reached for his plug, as +was usual with him in times of stress, bit into it deeply, sputtered +something hurriedly about new piston rings for the left-hand head, and, +muttering to himself, left the roundhouse. + +And that night old Dan MacCaffery took out the 304 and the local +passenger for the run west and the run back east--just as he always +did. And the next night, and for two nights after that he did the same. + +Came then the night of the 31st. + +It was the fall of the year and the dusk fell early; and by a little +after six, with the oil lamps lighted, that at best only filtered +spasmodic yellow streaks of gloom about the roundhouse, the engines +back on the pits were beginning to loom up through the murk in big, +grotesque, shadowy shapes, as Regan, crossing the turntable, paused for +a moment hesitantly. Why he was there, he didn't know. He hadn't +meant to be there. He was just a little early for his nightly game of +pedro with Carleton over in the super's office--it wasn't much more +than half past six--so he had had some time to put in--that must be +about the size of it. He hadn't meant to come. There wasn't any use +in it, none at all, nothing he could do; better, in fact, if he stayed +away--only he had left the boarding house early--and he was down there +now, standing on the turntable--and it was old Dan's last run. + +"I guess," mumbled Regan, "I'll go back over to the station. Carleton +'ll be along in a few minutes. I guess I will, h'm?"--only Regan +didn't. He started on again slowly over the turntable, and entered the +roundhouse. + +There wasn't anybody in sight around the pit on which the 304 stood, +nobody puttering over the links and motion-gear, poking here and there +solicitously with a long-spouted oil can, as he had half, more than +half, expected to find old Dan doing; but he heard some one moving +about in the cab, and caught the flare of a torch. Regan walked down +the length of the engine, and peered into the cab. It was Billy Dawes. + +"Where's Dan, Billy? Ain't he about?" inquired Regan. + +The fireman came out into the gangway. + +"Yes," he answered; "he's down there back of the tender by the fitters' +benches. He's looking for some washers he said he wanted for a loose +stud nut. I'll get him for you." + +"No; never mind," said Regan. "I'll find him." + +It was pretty dark at the rear of the roundhouse in the narrow space +between the engine tenders on the various pits and the row of +workbenches that flanked the wall, and for a moment, as Regan reached +the end of the 304's tender, he could not see any one--and then he +stopped short, as he made out old Dan's form down on the floor by the +end bench as though he were groping for something underneath it. + +For a minute, two perhaps, Regan stood there motionless, watching old +Dan MacCaffery. Then he drew back, tiptoed softly away, went out +through the engine doors, and, as he crossed the tracks to the station +platform, brushed his hand hurriedly across his eyes. + +Regan didn't play much of a game of pedro that night--his heart wasn't +in it. Carleton had barely dealt the first hand when Regan heard the +304 backing down and coupling on the local, and he got up from his +chair and walked to the window, and stood there watching until the +local pulled out. + +Carleton didn't say anything--just dealt the cards over again, and +began once more as Regan resumed his seat. + +An hour passed. Regan, fidgety and nervous, played in a desultory +fashion; Carleton, disturbed, patiently correcting the master +mechanic's mistakes. The game was a farce. + +"What's the matter, Tommy?" asked Carleton gravely, as Regan made a +misdeal twice in succession. + +"Nothing," said Regan shortly. "Go on, play; it's your bid." + +Carleton shook his head. + +"You're taking it too much to heart, Tommy," he said. "It won't do you +any good--either of you--you or Dan. He'll pull out of it somehow. +You'll see." + +There was a queer look on Regan's face as he stared for an instant at +Carleton across the table, and he opened his lips as though to say +something--and closed them again in a hard line instead. + +Carleton bid. + +"It's yours," said Regan. + +Carleton led--and then Regan, with a sweep of his hand, shot his cards +into the center of the table. + +"It's no good," he said gruffly, getting up. "I can't play the blamed +game to-night, I----" He stopped suddenly and turned his head, as a +chair scraped sharply in the despatchers' room next door. + +A step sounded in the hall, the super's door was flung open, and Spence +put in his head. + +One glance at the despatcher, and Carleton was on his feet. + +"What's the matter, Spence?" he asked, quick and hard. + +Regan hadn't moved--but Regan spoke now, answering the question that +was addressed to the despatcher, and answering it in a strangely +assertive, absolute, irrefutable way. + +"The local," he said. "Number Forty-seven. Dan MacCaffery's dead." + +Both men stared at him in amazement--and Spence, sort of unconsciously, +nodded his head. + +"Yes," said Spence, still staring at Regan. "There was some sort of +engine trouble just west of Big Eddy in the Beaver Caņon. I haven't +got the rights of it yet, only that somehow MacCaffery got his engine +stopped just in time to keep the train from going over the bridge +embankment--and went out doing it. There's no one else hurt. Dawes, +the fireman, and Conductor Neale walked back to Big Eddy. I've got +them on the wire now. Come into the other room." + +Regan stepped to the door mechanically, and, with Carleton behind him, +followed Spence into the despatchers' room. There, Carleton, +tight-lipped, leaned against the table; Regan, his face like stone, +took his place at Spence's elbow, as the despatcher dropped into his +chair. + +There wasn't a sound in the room for a moment save the clicking of the +sender in a quick tattoo under Spence's fingers. Then Spence picked up +a pencil and began scribbling the message on a pad, as the sounder +spoke--Billy Dawes was dictating his story to the Big Eddy operator. + +"It was just west of Big Eddy, just before you get to the curve at the +approach to the Beaver Bridge," came Dawes' story, "and we were hitting +up a fast clip, but no more than usual, when we got a jolt in the cab +that spilled me into the coal and knocked Dan off his seat. It all +came so quick there wasn't time to think, but I knew we'd shed a driver +on Dan's side, and the rod was cutting the side of the cab like a knife +through cheese. I heard Dan shout something about the train going over +the embankment and into the river if we ever hit the Beaver curve, and +then he jumped for the throttle and the air. There wasn't a chance in +a million for him, but it was the only chance for every last one of the +rest of us. He made it somehow, I don't know how; it's all a blur to +me. He checked her, and then the rod caught him, and----" The sounder +broke, almost with a human sob in it, it seemed, and then went on +again: "We stopped just as the 304 turned turtle. None of the coaches +left the rails. That's all." + +Regan spoke through dry lips. + +"Ask him what Dan was like in the cab to-night," he said hoarsely. + +Spence looked up and around at the master mechanic, as though he had +not heard aright. + +"Ask him what I say," repeated Regan shortly. "What was Dan like in +the cab to-night?" + +Spence bent over his key again. There was a pause before the answer +came. + +"He says he hadn't seen Dan so cheerful for months," said Spence +presently. + +Regan nodded, kind of curiously, kind of as though it were the answer +he expected--and then he nodded at Carleton, and the two went back to +the super's room. + +Regan closed the door behind him. + +Carleton dropped into his chair, his gray eyes hard and full of pain. + +"I don't understand, Tommy," he said heavily. "It's almost as though +you knew it was going to happen." + +Regan came across the floor and stood in front of the desk. + +"I did," he said in a low way. "I think I was almost certain of it." + +Carleton pulled himself forward with a jerk in his chair. + +"Do you know what you are saying, Tommy?" he asked sharply. + +"I'll tell you," Regan said, in the same low way. "I went over to the +roundhouse to-night before Dan took the 304 out. I didn't see Dan +anywhere about, and I asked Dawes where he was. Dawes said he had gone +back to the fitters' benches to look for some washers. I walked on +past the tender and I found him there down on the floor on his knees by +one of the benches--but he wasn't looking for any washers. He was +praying." + +With a sharp exclamation, Carleton pushed back his chair, and, +standing, leaned over the desk toward Regan. + +Regan swallowed a lump in his throat--and shook his head. + +"He didn't see me," he said brokenly, "he didn't know I was there. He +was praying aloud. I heard what he said. It's been ringing in my head +all night, word for word, while I was trying to play with those"--he +jerked his hand toward the scattered cards on the desk between them. +"I can hear him saying it now. It's the queerest prayer I ever heard; +and I guess he prayed the way he lived--as though he was kind of +intimate with God." + +"Yes?" prompted Carleton softly, as Regan paused. + +Regan turned his head away as his eyes filled suddenly--and his voice +was choked. + +"What he said was this, just as though he was talking to you or me: +'You know how it is, God. I wouldn't take that way myself unless You +fixed it up for me, because it wouldn't be right unless You did it. +But I hope, God, You'll think that's the best way out of it. You see, +there ain't nothing left as it is, but if we fixed it that way there'd +be the fraternal insurance to take care of the missus, and she wouldn't +never know. And then, You see, God, I guess my work is all done, +and--and I'd kind of like to quit while I was still on the pay +roll--I'd kind of like to finish that way, and to-night's the last +chance. You understand, God, don't You?'" + +Regan's lips were quivering as he stopped. + +There was silence for a moment, then Carleton looked up from the +blotter on his desk. + +"Tommy," he said in his big, quiet way, as his hand touched Regan's +sleeve, "tell me why you didn't stop him, then, from going out +to-night?" + +Regan didn't answer at once. He went over to the window and stared out +at the twinkling switch lights in the yards below--he was still staring +out of the window as he spoke. + +"He didn't put it up to me," said Regan. "He put it up to God." + + + + +VII + +"THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS" + +Maguire was a little, washed-out, kind of toil-bent hostler in the +roundhouse--and he married old. How old? Nobody knew--not even old +Bill himself--fifty something. Mrs. Maguire presented him with a son +in due course, and the son's name was Patrick Burke Maguire--but the +Hill Division, being both terse and graphic by nature and education, +called him "Noodles." + +Noodles wasn't even a pretty baby. Tommy Regan, who was roped in to +line up at the baptismal font and act as godfather because old Bill was +a boiler-washer in the roundhouse, which was reason enough for the +big-hearted master mechanic, said that Noodles was the ugliest and most +forbidding looking specimen of progeny he had ever seen outside a +zoological garden. Of course, be it understood, Regan wasn't a family +man, and god-fathering wasn't a job in Regan's line, so when he got +outside the church and the perspiration had stopped trickling nervously +down the small of his back and he'd got a piece of blackstrap clamped +firmly home between his teeth, he told old Bill, by way of a grim sort +of revenge for the unhappy position his good nature had led him into, +that the offspring was the dead spit of its father--and he +congratulated Noodles. + +The irony, of course, was lost. The boiler-washer walked on air for a +week. He told the roundhouse what Regan had said--and the roundhouse +laughed. Bill thought the roundhouse thought he was lying, but that +didn't dampen his spirits any. It wasn't everybody could get the +master mechanic of the division to stand up with _their_ kids! +Everybody was happy--except Noodles. Noodles, just about then, +developed colic. + +Noodles got over the colic, got over the measles, the mumps, the +whooping cough, and the scarlet fever--that may not have been the order +of their coming or their going, but he got over them all. And when he +was twelve he got over the smallpox; but he never got over his +ugliness--the smallpox kind of put a stop-order on any lurking tendency +there might have been in that direction. Also, when he was twelve, he +got over all the schooling the boiler-washer's limited means would +span, which wasn't a university course; and he started in railroading +as a call boy. + +There was nothing organically bad about Noodles, except his +exterior--which wasn't his fault. One can't be blamed for hair of a +motley red, ubiquitous freckles wherever the smallpox had left room for +them, no particular colored eyes, a little round knob of uptilted nose, +and a mouth that made even the calloused Dutchy at the lunch counter +feel a little mean inwardly when he compared it with the mathematically +cut slab of contract pie, eight slabs to the pie plate, and so much so +that he went to the extent of--no, he never gave Noodles an extra +piece--but he went to the extent of surreptitiously pocketing Noodles' +nickel as though he were obtaining money under false pretenses--which +was a good deal for Dutchy to do--and just shows. + +There was nothing _organically_ bad about Noodles--not a thing. +Noodles' troubles, and they came thick and fast with the inauguration +of his railroad career, lay in quite another direction--his +irrepressible tendency to practical jokes, coupled with a lack of the +sense of the general fitness of things, consequences and results, and +an absence of even a bowing acquaintance with responsibility that was +appalling. + +The first night Noodles went on duty as call boy, armed with a nickel +thriller--that being only half the price of a regular dime novel--and +visions of the presidency of the road being offered him before he was +much older, Spence was sitting in on the early night trick. There was +a lot of stuff moving through the mountains that night, and the train +sheet was heavy. And even Spence, counted one of the best despatchers +that ever held down a key on the Hill Division, was hard put to it, +both to keep his crowding sections from treading on each other's heels, +and to jockey the east and westbounds past each other without letting +their pilots get tangled up head-on. It was no night or no place for +foolishness--a despatcher's office never is, for that matter. + +Noodles curled himself up in a chair behind the despatcher--and started +in on the thriller. His first call was for the crews of No. 72, the +local freight east, at 8.35, and there was nothing to do until then +unless Spence should happen to want him for something. The thriller +was quite up to the mark, even "thriller" than usual, but Noodles left +the hero at the end of the first chapter securely bound to the +mill-wheel with the villain rushing to open the gate in the dam--and +his eyes strayed around the room. + +It wasn't altogether the novelty of his surroundings--no phase of +railroading was altogether a novelty to any Big Cloud youngster--there +was just a sort of newness in his own position that interfered with any +protracted or serious effort along literary lines. From a circuit of +the room, his eyes went to the fly-specked, green-shaded lamp on the +despatcher's table, then from the lamp to the despatcher's back--and +fixed on the despatcher's back. + +His eyes held there quite a long time--then his fingers went stealthily +to the lapel of his coat. Spence had a habit when hurried or anxious +of half rising from his chair, as though to give emphasis to his orders +every time he touched the key. Spence was both hurried and anxious +that night and the key was busy. In the somewhat dim light, Spence, to +Noodles' fancy, assumed the aspect of an animated jumping jack. + +Deftly, through long experience, Noodles coiled his pin with a wicked +upshoot to the center of attack, cautiously lowered his own chair, +which had been tilted back against the wall, to the more stable +position of four legs on the floor, leaned forward, and laid the pin at +a strategic point on the seat of Spence's chair. Two minutes later, +kicked bodily down the stairs, Noodles was surveying the Big Cloud +yards by moonlight from the perspective of the station platform. + +Noodles' career as a call boy had been brief--and it was ended. Old +Bill, the boiler-washer, came to the rescue. He explained to Regan who +the godfather of the boy was and what bearing that had on the case, and +how he'd larruped the boy for what he'd done, and how the boy hadn't +meant anything by it--and could the boy have another chance? + +Regan said, "Yes," and said it shortly, more because he was busy at the +time and wanted to get rid of Old Bill than from any predisposition +toward Noodles. Noodles wasn't predisposing any way you looked at him, +and Regan had a good look at his godson now for about the first time +since he'd sponsored him, and he didn't like Noodles' +looks--particularly. But Regan, not taking too serious a view of the +matter, said yes, and put Noodles at work over in the roundhouse under +the eye of his father. + +Here, for a month, in one way or another, Noodles succeeded in making +things lively, and himself cordially disliked by about everybody in the +shops, the roundhouse, and the Big Cloud yards generally. And there +was a hint or two thrown out, that reached Regan's ears, that old Bill +had known what he was doing when he got one of the "big fellows" as +godfather for as ugly a blasted little nuisance as the Hill Division +had known for many a long day. Regan got to scowling every time he saw +Noodles' unhandsome countenance, and he took pains on more than one +occasion to give a bit of blunt advice to both Noodles and Noodles' +father--which the former received somewhat ungraciously, and the latter +with trepidation. + +And then one night as it grew dark, just before six o'clock, while Bill +and the turner and the wipers were washing up and trying to put in the +time before the whistle blew, Noodles dropped into the turntable pit +and wedged the turntable bearings with iron wedgings. Half an hour +later, when the night crew came to swing it for the 1016, blowing hard +from a full head of steam and ready to go out and couple on to No. 1 +for the westbound run, they couldn't move it. It took them a few +minutes before they could find out what the matter was, and another few +to undo the matter when they did find out--and No. 1 went out five +minutes late. + +Nobody asked who did it--it wasn't necessary. They just said +"Noodles," and waited to see what Noodles' godfather would do about it. + +They did not have long to wait. The Limited five minutes late out of +division and the delay up to the motive-power department, which was +Regan's department, would have been enough to bring the offender, +whoever he might be, on the carpet with scant ceremony even if it had +been an _accident_. Regan was boiling mad. + +Noodles didn't show up the next day. Deep in Noodles' consciousness +was a feeling that his nickel thriller and a certain spot he knew up +behind the butte, where many a pleasant afternoon had been passed when +he should have been at school, was more conducive to peace and +quietness than the center of railroad activities--also Noodles ached +bodily from his father's attentions. + +Old Bill, too, kept conveniently out of sight down in a pit somewhere +every time the master mechanic showed his nose inside the roundhouse +during the morning--but by afternoon, counting the edge of Regan's +wrath to have worn smooth, he followed Regan out over the turntable +after one of the master mechanic's visits. + +"Regan," he blurted out anxiously, "about the bhoy, now." + +"Well?" snapped Regan, whirling about. + +The monosyllable was cold enough in its uncompromise to stagger the +little hostler, and drive all thoughts of the carefully rehearsed +oration he had prepared from his head. He scratched aimlessly at the +half circle of gray billy-goat beard under his chin, and blinked +helplessly at the master mechanic. Noodles lacked much, and in Noodles +was much to be desired perhaps--but Noodles, for all that, had his +place in the Irish heart that beat under the greasy jumper. + +"He's the only wan we've got, Regan," stammered the harassed roundhouse +man appealingly. + +"It's a wonder, then, you've not holes in the knees of your overalls +giving thanks for it," declared Regan grimly. "That's enough, +Bill--and we've had enough of Noodles. Keep him away from here." + +"Ah, sure now, Regan," begged the little hostler piteously, "yez don't +mean ut. The bhoy's all right, Regan--'tis but spirit he has. Regan, +listen here now, I've larruped him good for fwhat he's done--an' 'twas +no more than a joke." + +"A joke!" Regan choked; then brusquely: "That'll do, Bill. I've said +my last word, and I'm busy this afternoon. Noodles is out--for keeps." + +"Ah, Regan, listen here"--Noodles' father caught the master mechanic's +arm, as the latter turned away. "Regan, sure, ut's the bhoy's +godfather yez are." + +The fat little master mechanic's face went suddenly red--this was the +last straw--_Noodles' godfather_! Regan had been catching more +whispers than he had liked lately anent godfathers and godfathering. +His eyes puckered up and he wheeled on the boiler-washer--but the hot +words on the tip of his tongue died unborn. There was something in the +dejected droop of the other's figure, something in the blue eyes +growing watery with age that made him change his mind--old Bill wasn't +a young man. As far back as the big-hearted, good-natured master +mechanic could remember, he remembered old Bill--in the roundhouse. +Always the same job, day after day, year after year--boiler-washing, +tinkering around at odd jobs--not much good at anything else--church +every Sunday in shiny black coat, and peaked-faced Mrs. Maguire in the +same threadbare, shiny black dress--not that Regan ever went to church, +but he used to see them going there--church every Sunday, Maguire was +long on church, and week days just boiler-washing and tinkering around +at odd jobs--a dollar-sixty a day. Regan's pucker subsided, and he +reached out his hand to the boiler-washer's shoulder--and he grinned to +kind of take the sting out of his words. + +"Well, Bill," he said, "as far as that goes, I renounce the honor." + +"Raynownce ut!" The boiler-washer's eyes opened wide, and his face was +strained as though he had not heard aright. "Raynownce ut! Ut's an +Irish Protystant yez are, Regan, the same as me an' the missus, an' did +yez not say the words in the church!" + +"I did," admitted Regan; "though I've forgotten what they were. It was +well enough, no doubt, for a kid in swaddling clothes--but it's some +time since then." Then, with finality: "Go back to your work, Bill--I +can't talk to you any more this afternoon." + +"Raynownce ut!" The words reached Regan as he turned away and started +across the tracks toward the platform, and in their tones was something +akin to stunned awe that caused him to chuckle. "Raynownce ut!--an' +yez said the words forninst the priest!" + +Regan's chuckle, however, was not of long duration, either literally or +metaphorically. During the rest of the afternoon the boiler-washer's +words got to swinging through Regan's brain until they became an +obsession, and somewhere down inside of him began to grow an +uncomfortable foreboding that there might be something more to the +godfathering business than he had imagined. He tackled Carleton about +it before the whistle blew. + +"Carleton," said he, walking into the super's office, and picking up a +ruler from the other's desk, "don't laugh, or I'll jam this ruler down +your throat. If you can answer a straight question, answer +it--otherwise, let it go. What's a godfather, anyhow?" + +Carleton grinned. + +"You ought to know, Tommy," he said. + +"I was running without a permit and off schedule at the time, and I was +nervous," said Regan. "What happened, or what the goings-on were, I +don't know. What is it?" + +Carleton shook his head gravely. + +"I'm afraid not, Tommy," he said. "You're in the wrong shop. +Information bureau's downstairs to the right of the ticket office." + +"Thanks!" said Regan. + +And that was all the help he got from Carleton--then. But that night +over their usual game of pedro in the super's office, it was a little +different. Carleton, as he pulled the cards out of the desk drawer and +tossed them on the table, pulled a small book from his pocket and +tossed it to Regan. + +"What's this?" inquired the master mechanic. + +"It's not to your credit to ask--it's a prayer book," Carleton informed +him. "Be careful of it--I borrowed it." + +"You didn't need to say so," said Regan softly. + +"Page two hundred and eight," suggested Carleton. "See if that's what +you were looking for, Tommy." + +Regan thumbed the leaves, found the place and began to read--and a +sickly sort of pallor began to spread over his face. + +"'You are his sureties that he will renounce the devil and all his +works,'" he mumbled weakly. + +"Yes," said Carleton cheerfully. "There's some _little_ responsibility +there, you see. But don't skip the parenthesis; get it all, +Tommy--'_until he come of age to take it upon himself_.'" + +Regan didn't say a word--nor was the smile he essayed an enthusiastic +success. He read the "articles" over again word by word, pointing the +lines with his pudgy forefinger. + +"Well," inquired Carleton, "what do you make of the running orders, +Tommy?" + +"The devil and all his works!"--it came away from Regan now with a rush +from his overburdened soul. "D'ye mean to say that--that"--Regan +choked a little--"that I'm responsible for that brick-topped, +monkey-faced kid?" + +"'Until he come of age,'" Carleton amplified pleasantly. + +Regan's Celtic temper rose. + +"I'll see him hung first!" he roared suddenly. "'Twas no more than to +please Maguire that I stood up with the ugly imp! And mabbe I said +what's here and mabbe I didn't, but in any event 'tis no more than a +matter of form to be repeated parrot-fashion--and it means nothing." + +"Oh, well," said the super slyly, "if you feel that way about it, don't +let it bother you." + +"It will not bother _me_!" said Regan defiantly, with a scowl. + +But it did. + +Regan slept that night with an army corps of red-headed, pocked, and +freckled-faced little devils to plague his rest--and their name was +Noodles. His thoughts were unpleasantly more on Noodles than his razor +when he shaved the next morning, and the result was an unsightly gash +across his chin--and when he made his first inspection of the +roundhouse an hour later he was in a temper to be envied by no man. +His irritability was not soothed by the sight of Maguire, who rose +suddenly in front of him from an engine pit as he came in. + +"Regan," said the old fellow, "about the bhoy----" + +"Maguire," said Regan, in a low, fervent voice, "you bother me about +that again and I'll fire you, too!" + +"Wait, Regan." There was a quaver in the little hostler's voice, and +he appeared to stand his ground only by the aid of some previously +arrived at, painful resolution that rose superior to his nervousness. +"Wait, Regan--mabbe yez'll not have to. I talked ut over wid the +missus last night. I've worked well for yez, Regan, all these +years--all these years, Regan, I've worked for yez here in the +roun'house--an' I've worked well, though ut's mesilf that ses ut." + +"That's nothing to do with it," snapped the master mechanic. + +"Mabbe ut has, an' mabbe ut hasn't." The watery-blue eyes sought the +toes of their owner's grease-smeared, thickly-patched brogans. "I +talked ut over wid the missus. Sure now, Regan, yez weren't thinkin' +fwhat yez said, an' yez didn't mean fwhat yez said yisterday about +raynowncin' the word ye'd passed. Yez'll take ut back, Regan?" + +"Take it back? I'll be damned if I do!" said Regan earnestly. + +The little hostler's body stiffened, the watery-blue eyes lifted and +held steadily on the master mechanic, and for the first time in his +lowly life he raised a hand to his superior--Maguire pointed a +forefinger, that shook a little, at Regan. + +"'Tis blasphymus yez are, Regan!" he said in a thin voice. "An' 'tis +no blasphymay I mean, God forbid, fwhen I say yez'll be damned if yez +don't. Before a priest, Regan, an' in the church av God, Regan, yez +swore fwhat yez swore--an' 'tis the wrath av God, Regan, yez'll bring +down on your head. Mind that, Regan! Fire me, is ut?" The little +hostler's voice rose suddenly. "All these years I've worked well for +yez, Regan, but I'll work no more for a man as 'ud do a thing loike +thot--an' the missus ses the same. Poor we may be, but rayspect for +oursilves we have. Yez'll niver fire me, Regan--I fire mesilf. I'm +through this minute!" + +Regan glared disdainfully. + +"Have you been drinking, Maguire?" he inquired caustically. + +Noodles' father did not answer. He brushed past the master mechanic, +walked through the big engine doors, and halted just outside on the +cinders. + +"'Tis forsworn yez are, Regan," he said heavily. "Yez may make light +av ut now, but the day'll come, Regan, fwhen yez'll find out 'tis no +light matter. 'Tis the wrath av God, Regan, 'll pay yez for ut, yez +can mark my words." + +Regan stared after the old man, his eyes puckered, his face a little +red; stared after the bent form in the old worn overalls as it picked +its way across the tracks--and gave vent to his feelings by +expectorating a goodly stream of blackstrap juice savagely into the +engine pit at his side. This did not help very much, and for the rest +of the morning, while he inwardly anathematized Noodles, Noodles' +father and the whole Noodles family collectively, he made things both +uncomfortable and lively for those who were unfortunate enough to be +within reach of his displeasure. + +"The wrath of God!" communed Regan angrily. "I always said Noodles +took after his father, both by disposition and looks! It'll be a long +time before the old man gets another job--a long time." + +And therein Regan was right. It _was_ a long time--quite a long +time--measured by the elasticity of the boiler-washer's purse, which +wasn't very elastic on the savings from a dollar-sixty a day. + +Old Bill Maguire, perhaps, was the only one who hadn't got quite the +proper angle on the "rights" he carried--which were worse than those of +a mixed local when the rails were humming under a stress of through +traffic and the despatchers were biting their nails to the quick trying +to take care of it. Not, possibly, that it would have made any +difference to the little worn-out hostler if he had; for, whether from +principle, having deep-seated awe for the church and its tenets that +forbade even a tacit endorsement of what he considered Regan's +sacrilege, or because of the public slight put upon his family--the +roundhouse hadn't failed to hear his first conversation with Regan, and +hadn't failed to let him know that they had--or maybe from a mixture of +the two, Maguire was beyond question in deadly earnest. But if old +Bill hadn't got his signals right, and was reading green and white when +it should have been red, the rest of the Hill Division wasn't by any +means color blind; it was pretty generally understood that for several +years back all that stood between Maguire and the scrap heap--was +Regan. Not on account of any jolly business about godfather or +godfathering, but because that was Regan's way--old Bill puttered +around the roundhouse on suffrance, thanks to Regan, and didn't know +it, though everybody else did, barring patient little Mrs. Maguire and +Noodles, who didn't count anyhow. + +Nor did the little hostler even now pass the color test. +Short-tongued, a hard, grimy lot, just what their rough and ready life +made them, they might have been, those railroaders of the Rockies, but +their hearts were always right. In the yards, in the trainmaster's +office, in the roadmaster's office they pointed Maguire to the quiet +times, to the extra crews laid off, to the spare men back to their old +ratings, to the section gangs pared down to a minimum, and advised him +to ask Regan for his job back again--they never told him he couldn't do +a man's work any more. + +"Ask Regan!" stuttered the old boiler-washer, and the gray billy-goat +beard under his chin, as he threw his head up, stuck out straight like +a belligerent _chevaux de frise_. "Niver! Mind thot, now! +Niver--till he takes back fwhat he said--not av I starrve for ut!" + +Regan, during the first few days, the brunt of his temper worn off, +experienced a certain relief, that was no little relief--he was rid, +and well rid, of the Noodles combination. But at the end of about a +week, the bluff, big-hearted master mechanic began to suck in his under +lip at moments when he was alone, as the stories of old Bill's futile +efforts after a job, and old Bill's rather pitiful defiance began to +sift in to him. Regan began to have visions of the little three-room +shack way up in the waste fields at the end of Main Street. A +dollar-sixty a day wasn't much to come and go on, even when the +dollar-sixty was coming regularly every pay day--and when it wasn't, +the cost of food and rent didn't go down any. + +Regan got to thinking a good deal about the faded little old drudge of +a woman that was Mrs. Maguire, and the bare floors as he remembered +them even in the palmy days of Noodles' birth when he had attended the +celebration, bare, but scrubbed to a spotless white. She hadn't been +very young then, and not any too strong, and that was twelve years ago. +And he got to thinking a good deal about old Bill himself--not much +good any more, but good enough for a dollar-sixty a day from a company +he'd served for many a long year--in the roundhouse. There had never +been over much of what even an optimistic imagination could call luxury +in the Maguire's home, and the realization got kind of deep under the +worried master mechanic's skin that things were down now to pretty near +a case of bread to fill their mouths. + +And Regan was right. Even a week had been long enough for that--a man +out of a job can't expect credit on the strength of the pay car coming +along next month. Things were in pretty straitened circumstances up at +the Maguires. + +And the more Regan thought, the hotter he got under the collar--at +Noodles. Where he had formerly disliked and submitted to Noodles' +existence in a passive sort of way, he now hated Noodles in a most +earnest and whole-hearted way--and with an unholy desire in his soul to +murder Noodles on sight. For, even if Noodles was directly responsible +and at the bottom of the pass things had come to, Regan's uncomfortable +feeling grew stronger each day that indirectly he had his share in the +distress and want that had moved into headquarters up at the top of +Main Street. It wasn't a nice feeling or a nice position to be in, and +Regan writhed under it--but primarily he cursed Noodles. + +There was nothing small about Regan--there never was. He wasn't small +enough not to do something. He couldn't very well ask the yardmaster +or the section boss to give Maguire a job when he wouldn't give the old +man one himself, so he sent word up to Maguire to come back to work--in +the roundhouse. + +Maguire's answer differed in no whit from the answer he had made to +Gleason, the yardmaster, and every one else to whom he had applied for +a job--Maguire was in deadly earnest. + +"Niver!" said he, to the messenger who bore the olive branch. "Mind +thot, now! Niver--till he takes back fwhat he said--not av I starrve +for ut!" + +Regan swore--and here Regan stuck. _Noodles_! His gorge rose until he +choked. Kill the brat? Yes--murder was in Regan's soul. But to +proclaim Noodles as a godson--_Noodles as a godson_! He had done it +once not knowing what he was doing, and to do it now with the years of +enlightenment upon him--Regan choked, that was all, and grew +apoplectically red in the face. It wasn't the grins and laughs of the +Hill Division that he knew were waiting for him if he did--it was just +_Noodles_. + +When Regan had calmed down from this explosion, he inevitably, of +course, got back to the old perspective--and for another week the +Maguire family up Main Street occupied a reserved seat in his mind. + +Carleton only spoke to him once about it, and that was along toward the +end of the second week, as they were walking uptown together at the +dinner hour. + +"By the way, Tommy," said the super, "how's Maguire getting along?" + +Regan's thoughts having been on the same subject at that moment, he +came back a little crossly. + +"Blamed if I know!" he growled. + +Carleton smiled. Moved by the same motive perhaps, he had gone into +the Cash Grocery Store on the corner the day before and found that +Maguire's credit was re-established--thanks to Regan--though Timmons, +the proprietor, had been sworn to secrecy. + +"One of you two will have to capitulate before very long," he said, +with a side glance at Regan. "And I don't think it will be Maguire." + +"Don't you!" Regan flung out. "You think it will be me?" + +"Yes," laughed Carleton. + +"When I'm dead," said Regan shortly. "Had any word from those +Westinghouse fittings yet? I'm waiting for them now." + +"I'll see about them," said Carleton. "I'm going East this afternoon." + +And there wasn't any more said about Maguire. + +Meanwhile, if Regan's rancor against Noodles had reached a stage that +was acute, Noodles had reached a stage of reciprocative hatred that was +positively deadly. So far as elemental passion and savagery had +developed in twelve years, and Noodles was not a backward boy, just so +far had he developed his malevolence against Regan. Things were in a +pretty strained condition in the environment of the Maguire shack; +Noodles was unhappy all the time, and hungry most of the time. He +heard a good deal about Regan and the depths a man could sink to, and +enough about the immutable inviolability of church tenets and +ordinances to satisfy the most fanatic disciple of orthodoxy--to say +nothing of the deep-seated conviction of the wrath of God that must +inevitably fall upon one who had the sacrilegious temerity to profane +those tenets. + +Mostly, Noodles imbibed this at twilight over the sparsely set table, +and when the twilight faded and it grew dark--they weren't using +kerosene any more at the Maguires--he could still sense the look on his +mother's face that mingled anxiety and gentle reproof; and he edged +back his chair out of reach of his father's cuffs, which he could dodge +in the daylight and couldn't in the dark--for on one point Regan and +the old hostler were in perfect accord. + +"An' yez are the cause av ut!" old Bill would shout, swinging the flat +of his hand in the direction of Noodles' ear every time his violent +oratory reached a climacteric height where a period became a physical +necessity. + +Take it all round, what with the atmosphere of gloom, dodging his +father's attentions, his mother's tears when he had caught her crying +once or twice, and an unsatisfied stomach, black vengeance oozed from +every pore of Noodles' body. His warty little fists clenched, and his +unlovely face contorted into a scowl such as Noodles, and only Noodles, +thanks to the background that nature had already furnished him to work +upon, could scowl. + +Noodles set his brains to work. What he must do to Regan must be +something awful and bloodcurdling; and, realizing, perhaps, that, being +but twelve, he would be handicapped in coping with the master mechanic +single-handed, he sought the means of assistance that most logically +presented itself to him. Noodles lay awake nights trying to dovetail +himself and Regan into the situations of his nickel thrillers. There +wasn't any money with which to buy new nickel thrillers, but by then +Noodles had accumulated quite a stock, and he knew them all off pretty +well by heart, the essentials of them, anyhow. + +Noodles racked his brain for a week of nights--and was in despair. Not +that the nickel thrillers did not offer situations harrowing enough to +glut even his blood-thirsty little soul--they did--they were +peaches--he could see Regan's blood all over the bank vault that the +master mechanic had been trying to rob--he could see Regan walking the +plank of a pirate ship, while the pirates cheered hoarsely--and he +fairly revelled in every one of them--until cold despair would clutch +again at his raging heart. They were peaches all right, but somehow +they wouldn't fit into Big Cloud--he couldn't figure out how to get +Regan to rob a bank vault, and there weren't any pirates in the +immediate vicinity that he had ever heard of. + +Then inspiration came to Noodles one night--and he sat bolt upright in +bed. He would _shadow_ Regan! A fierce, unhallowed joy took hold of +Noodles. Noodles had grasped the constructive technique of the +thriller! Every hero in every nickel thriller shadowed every villain +to his doom. Regan's doom at the end was sure to take care of itself +once he had found Regan out--but the shadowing came first. + +Noodles slept feverishly for the rest of the night, and the following +evening he snooped down Main Street and took up his position in a +doorway on the opposite side of the street from Regan's boarding house. +In just what dire deed of criminal rascality he expected to trap the +master mechanic he did not know, but that Regan was capable of +anything, and that he would catch him in something, Noodles now had no +doubt--that was what the shadowing was for--he grimly determined that +he would be unmoved by appeals for mercy--and his heart beat high with +optimistic excitement. + +Regan came out of the boarding house; and, bare-footed in lieu of +gum-shoes, and hugging the shadows a block behind--Noodles had +refreshed his memory on the most improved methods--Noodles trailed the +master mechanic down the street. Two blocks down, Regan halted on the +corner and began to peer around him. Noodles' lips thinned +suddenly--it began to look promising already--what was Regan up to? A +man came down the cross street, joined Regan, and the two started on +again toward the station. A little disappointed, Noodles, still +hugging the shadows, resumed the chase--it was only Carleton, the +superintendent. + +From the platform, Noodles watched the two men disappear through the +far door of the station. Free from observation now, he hurried along +the platform past the station, and was in time to see a lamp lighted +upstairs in the side window of the super's office. Noodles waited a +moment, then he tiptoed back along the platform, and cautiously pushed +open the door through which the others had disappeared. The door of +the super's room on the upper story opened on the head of the stairs +and, still on tiptoe, Noodles reached the top. Here, on his knees, his +eyes glued to the keyhole, he peered into the room--Regan and the super +were engaged in their nightly game of cards. There was nothing to +raise Noodles' hopes in that, so he descended the stairs and took up +his position behind the rain barrel at the corner of the building, +where he could watch both the window and the entrance. + +At half past ten the light went out, Regan and Carleton came down the +stairs and headed uptown. Noodles, not forgetting the shadows, trailed +them. At the corner where Carleton had joined Regan, Carleton left +Regan, and Regan went on two blocks further and disappeared inside his +boarding house. Noodles, being a philosopher of a sort, told himself +that none of the heroes ever succeeded the first night--and went home. + +The next night, and the three following night, Noodles shadowed Regan +with the same results. By the fifth night, with no single differing +detail to enliven this somewhat monotonous and unproductive programme, +it had become dispiriting; and though Noodles' thirst for vengeance had +not weakened, his faith in the nickel thrillers had. + +But on the sixth night--at the end of the second week since Noodles and +Noodles' father had turned their backs upon the roundhouse--things were +a little different. Noodles, in common with every one else in Big +Cloud, was quite well aware that the super's private car had been +coupled on No. 12 that afternoon, and that Carleton had gone East. + +Regan came out of his boarding house at the same hour as usual, and +Noodles dodged along after him down the street--Noodles by this time, +for finesse, could have put a combination of Nick Carter and Old Sleuth +on the siding until the grass sprouted between the ties. Noodles +dodged along--in the shadows. Regan didn't stop at the corner this +time, but he kept right along heading down for the station. Regan +passed two or three people going in the opposite direction up the +street of the sleepy little mountain town, but this did not confuse +Noodles--Noodles kept right along after Regan. There was no Carleton +to-night, and Regan's criminal propensities would have full +scope--Noodles' hopes ran high. + +Regan reached the station, went down the platform, and disappeared as +usual through the same door. A little perplexed, Noodles followed along +the platform; but, a moment later, from his coign of vantage behind the +rain barrel, he saw the light flash out from the super's window--and +his heart almost stood still. What was Regan doing in the super's +office--_alone_! Noodles' face grew very white--_Carleton had a safe +there_--he had got Regan at last! It had taken a lot of time, but none +of the heroes ever got the villain until after pages and pages of +trying to get him. He had got Regan at last! + +Noodles crept from the shelter of the rain barrel stealthily as a cat, +and, with far more caution than he had ever exercised before, pushed +the outside door open and went up the stairs. There wasn't any hurry; +he would give Regan time to drill through the safe, and perhaps even +let the master mechanic get the money before giving the alarm--Noodles +bitterly bemoaned the fact that he would have to give the alarm at all +and let anybody else in on it, but, owing to the fact that he had been +unable to finance a revolver with which to hold up the master mechanic +red-handed and cover himself with glory at the same time, there +appeared to be nothing else to do. + +It was just a step from the head of the stairs to the door of the +super's room across the hall. Noodles negotiated it with infinite +circumspection, and, on his knees as usual, his heart pounding like a +trip hammer, got his eye to the keyhole. He held it there a very long +time, until he couldn't see any more through hot, scalding, impotent +tears; then he edged back across the hall, and sat down on the top +step--_Regan was playing solitaire_. + +Hands dug disconsolately in his pockets, playing mechanically with a +bit of cord that was about their sole contents, Noodles sat there--and +his faith in nickel thrillers was shaken to the core. Noodles' +thoughts were too complex for coherency--that is, for coherency in any +but one of his thoughts--he hated Regan worse than ever, for he +couldn't altogether expurgate the nickel thrillers from his mind on +such a short notice, and he could hear Regan gloat and hiss "Foiled!" +in his ear. + +Noodles' hands came out of his pocket--with the cord. He wound one end +around the bannisters, and began to see-saw it back and forth aimlessly +in the darkness. There wasn't any good of shadowing Regan any +more--but he wasn't through with Regan. Noodles had a soul above +discouragement. Only what was he to do? If the nickel thrillers had +failed him in his hour of need, he would have to depend on +himself--only what was he to do? Noodles stopped see-sawing the cord +suddenly--and stared at it through the darkness, though he couldn't see +it. Then he edged down another step, turned around on his knees, and +knotted one end of the cord--it was a good stout one--to one side of +the bannisters, about six inches from the level of the hall floor. +There was a bannister railing on each side, and he stretched the cord +tightly across to the other bannister, and knotted it there. That +would do for a beginning! It didn't promise as gory a dénouement as he +thirsted for, and he was a little ashamed of the colorlessness of his +expedient compared with those he'd read about, but there wasn't anybody +else likely to use those stairs before Regan did, and it would do for a +beginning--Regan would get a jolt or two before he reached the bottom! + +Noodles retreated down the stairs and retired to the rain barrel. +Waits had been long there before, but to-night the time dragged +hopelessly--he didn't expect to see very much, but he would be able to +hear Regan coming down the stairs, so he waited, curbing his impatience +by biting anxiously on the ends of his finger nails. + +Suddenly Noodles leaned head and shoulders far out from behind the rain +barrel to miss no single detail of this, the initial act of his +revenge, that he could drink in, his eyes fastened on the station +door--the light in the window above had gone out. Very grim was +Noodles' face, and his teeth were hard set together--there was no +foolishness about this. The super's door upstairs opened and +shut--Noodles leaned a little farther forward out from the rain barrel. + +Meanwhile, Regan, upstairs, was not in a good humor. Regan, when +alone, played a complicated and somewhat intricate species of +solitaire, a matter of some pride to the master mechanic, and that +evening he had had no luck--his combinations wouldn't work out. So, +after something like fifteen abortive attempts that consumed the better +part of an hour and a half, and victory still remaining an elusive +thing, Regan chucked the cards back into Carleton's drawer in disgust, +knocked the ashes out of his pipe, refilled the pipe for company +homeward, and, growling a little to himself, blew out the super's lamp. +He walked across to the door, opened and shut it, and stepped out into +the hall. Here, he halted and produced a match, both because his pipe +was as yet unlighted, and because the stairs were dark. He struck the +match, applied it to the tamped tobacco, puffed once--and his eyes, +from the bowl of his pipe, focused suddenly downward on the head of the +stairs. Regan's round, fat little face went a color that put the +glowing end of the match, still held mechanically over the pipe bowl, +to shame, and the fist that wasn't occupied with the match clenched +with the wrath that engulfed him--_Noodles_! + +For a moment, breathing heavily with rage, Regan glared at the +cord--then the match, burning his fingers, did not soothe him any, and +he dropped it hastily, swearing earnestly to himself. Then he bent +down, cut away the cord with his knife, and in grim, laborious +silence--Regan was a heavy man, and the stairs had a tendency to creak +that was hard to suppress--descended step by step. Regan was consumed +with but one desire for the present or the hereafter--to get his hands +on Noodles. + +Where Noodles had been stealthy, Regan was now positively devilish in +his caution and cunning. Step by step he went down, testing each +foothold much after the fashion of a cat that stretches out its paw, +and, finding something not quite to its liking, draws it back, and, +shaking it vigorously, tries again more warily--and the while a fire +unquenchable burned within him. + +He reached the door at the bottom, found the knob, waited an +instant--then suddenly flung the door wide open and sprang out on the +platform. Noodles' form, projecting eagerly far out from the rain +barrel not five yards away, was the first thing his eyes lighted upon. +Regan had no time to waste in words. He made a dash for the rain +barrel--and Noodles, with a sort of surprised squeak of terror, turned +and ran. + +A fat man, ordinarily, cannot run very fast, and neither can a +twelve-year-old boy; but, with vengeance supplying wings to the one, +and terror imparting haste to the other, the time they made from the +rain barrel along the platform past the baggage room and freight shed, +off the platform to the ground, and up the track to the construction +department's storehouse, a matter of a hundred and fifty yards, stands +good to-day as a record in Big Cloud. + +It was pretty near a dead heat. Noodles had five yards' start when he +left the rain barrel; and when he reached the end of the storehouse he +had five yards' lead--no more. A premonition of disaster began to +twine itself around Noodles' heart in a sickly, dispiriting way. He +dashed along beside the wall of the building--and after him lunged +Regan, grunting like a grampus, a threat in every grunt. + +It was a long, low, windowless building, and halfway up its length was +the door--Noodles had known the door to be unlocked at nights for the +purpose of loading rush material for the bridge gangs in the mountains +to go out by the early morning freight west at 4.10--and his hope lay +in the door being open now. The place was full to the ceiling with +boxes, bales, casks, barrels and kegs, and amongst them in the +darkness, being of small dimensions himself, he could soon lose Regan. +He reached the door, snatched at the latch--the door was unlocked--and +with an uplift immeasurable upon his young soul, that gave vent to +itself in a hoot of derision, Noodles flung himself inside. + +Regan, still panting earnestly, the beads on his brow now embryonic +fountain-heads that sent trickling streams down his face, lurched, +pretty well winded, through the door five yards behind Noodles--and +then Regan stopped--and the thought of Noodles was swept from Regan's +mind in a flash. + +The smell of smoke was in his nostrils, and like a white, misty cloud +in the darkness it hung around him--and through it, up toward the far +end of the shed, a fire showed yellow and ugly, that with a curious, +hissing, sibilant sound flared suddenly bright, then died to yellow +ugliness again. + +Grim-faced now, his jaws clamped hard, Regan sprang forward toward the +upper end of the shed. What was afire, he did not know, nor what had +caused it--though the latter, probably, by a match dropped maybe hours +ago by a careless Polack, that had caught and set something smoldering, +and that was now breaking into flame. All Regan knew, all Regan +thought of then, was the--_powder_. There were fifty kegs of giant +blasting powder massed together there somewhere ahead, and just beyond +where the fire was flinging out its challenge to him--enough to wreck +not only the shed, but half the railroad property in Big Cloud as well. + +Up the little handcar tracks between the high-piled stores Regan +ran--and halted where a spurt of flame, ending in a vicious puff of +smoke, shot out beside him, low down on the ground. It was light +enough now, and in a glance the master mechanic caught the black grains +of powder strewing the floor where a broken keg had been rolled along. +A little alleyway had been left here running to the wall, and the fire +itself was bursting from a case in the rear and bottom tier of stores +on one side of this; on the other side were piled the powder kegs--and +the space between, the width of the alleyway, was no more than a bare +five or six feet. + +There was no time to wait for help, the powder grains crunched under +his feet, and ran little zigzag, fizzy lines of fire like a miniature +inferno as the sparks caught them; at any moment it might reach the +kegs, and then--Regan flung himself along the alleyway to the rear tier +of cases, they were small ones here, though piled twice the height of +his head--if he could wrench them away, he could get at the burning +case below! Regan bent, strained at the cases--they were light and +moved--he heaved again to topple them over--and then, as a rasping, +ripping sound reached him from above, he let go his hold to jump +back--too late. A heavy casting, that had been placed on top of the +cases, evidently for economy of space, came hurtling downward, struck +Regan on the head, glanced to his shoulder and arm, slid with a thump +to the ground--and Regan dropped like a log. + +A minute, perhaps two, it had all taken--no more. Noodles, crouched +down against a case just inside the door, had seen the master mechanic +rush by him; and Noodles, too, had seen the flame and smelt the smoke. +Noodles' first impulse was to make his escape, his next to see if he +could not turn this unexpected intervention of fate to his own account +anent the master mechanic. Noodles heard Regan moving about, and he +stole silently in that direction; then Noodles heard the heavy thump of +iron, the softer thud of Regan's fall, and something inside him seemed +to stop suddenly, and his face went very white. + +"Mr. Regan! Mr. Regan!" he stammered out. + +There was no answer--no sound--save an ominous crackle of burning wood. + +Noodles stole further forward--and then, as he reached the spot where +Regan lay, he stood stock-still for a second, petrified with fear--but +the next instant, screaming at the top of his voice for help, he threw +himself upon Regan, pounding frantically with the flat of his hands at +the master mechanic's shoulder, where the other's coat was beginning to +blaze. Somehow, Noodles got this out, and then, still screaming for +help, began to drag Regan away from the side of the blazing case. + +But Regan was a heavy man--almost too much for Noodles. Noodles, +choking with the smoke, his eyes fascinated with horror as they fixed, +now on the powder kegs--whose unloading, in company with a dozen other +awe-struck boys, he had watched a few days before--now on the +sparkling, fizzing grains of powder upon the floor, tugged, and +wriggled, and pulled at the master mechanic. + +Inch by inch, Noodles won Regan to safety--and then, on his hands and +knees, he went back to sweep the grains away from the edge of the kegs. +They burnt his hands as he brushed them along the floor, and he moaned +with the pain between his screams for aid. It was hot in the narrow +place, so narrow that the breath of flame swept his face from the +case--but there was still some powder on the floor to brush back out of +the way, little heaps of it. Weak, and swaying on his knees, Noodles +brushed at it desperately. It seemed to spurt into his face, and he +couldn't breathe any more, and he couldn't see, and his head was +swirling around queerly. He staggered to his feet as there came a rush +of men, and Clarihue, the turner, with the night crew of the roundhouse +came racing up the shed. + +"Good God, what's this!" cried Clarihue. + +"It's--it's a fire," said Noodles, with a sob--and fell into Clarihue's +arms. + +They told Regan about it the next day when they had got his head +patched up and his arm set. Regan didn't say very much as he lay in +his bed, but he asked somebody to go to Maguire's and ask old Bill to +come down. + +And an hour later Maguire entered the room--but he halted a good yard +away from the foot of Regan's bed. + +"Yez sint for me, Regan," observed the little hostler, in noncommittal, +far-away tones. + +"I did, Maguire," said Regan diplomatically. "Things haven't been +going as smooth as they might have over in the roundhouse since you +left, and I want you to come back. What do you say?" + +"'Tis not fwhat _I_ say," said Maguire, and he moved no nearer to the +bed. "'Tis whether yez unsay fwhat yez said yersilf. Do yez take ut +back, Regan?" + +"I do," said Regan in grave tones--but his hand reached up to help the +bandages hide his grin. "I take it all back, Maguire--every word of +it." + +"Thot's all right, thin," said the little hostler, not arrogantly, but +as one justified. "I'm sorry to see yez are sick, Regan, an' I'm glad +to see yez are better--but did I not warn yez, Regan? 'Twas the wrath +av God, Regan, thot's the cause av this." + +"Mabbe," said Regan softly. "Mabbe--but to my thinking 'twas the devil +and all his works." + +"Fwhat's thot?" inquired Maguire, bending forward. "I didn't catch +fwhat yez said, Regan." + +"I said," said Regan, choking a little, "that Noodles is a godson any +godfather would be proud to have." + +"Sure he is," said Noodles' father cordially. "He is thot." + + + + +VIII + +ON THE NIGHT WIRE + +Tommy Regan speaks of it yet; so does Carleton; and so, for the matter +of that, does the Hill Division generally--and there's a bit of a smile +goes with it, too, but the smile comes through as a sort of feeble +thing from the grim set of their lips. They remember it--it is one of +the things they have never forgotten--Dan McGrew and the Kid, and the +night the Circus Special pulled out of Big Cloud with Bull Coussirat +and Fatty Hogan in the cab. + +Neither the Kid nor McGrew were what you might call born to the Hill +Division; neither of them had been brought up with it, so to speak. +The Kid came from an Eastern system--and McGrew came from +God-knows-where. To pin McGrew down to anything definite or specific +in that regard was something just a little beyond the ability of the +Hill Division, but it was fairly evident that where railroads were +there McGrew had been--he was old enough, anyway--and he knew his +business. When McGrew was sober he was a wizard on the key--but +McGrew's shame was drink. + +McGrew dropped off at Big Cloud one day, casually, from nowhere, and +asked for a job despatching. A man in those days out in the new West +wasn't expected to carry around his birth certificate in his vest +pocket--he made good or he didn't in the clothes he stood in, that was +all there was to it. They gave him a job assisting the latest new man +on the early morning trick as a sort of test, found that he was better, +a long way better than the latest new man, gave him a regular +despatcher's trick of his own--and thought they had a treasure. + +For a month they were warranted in their belief, for all that McGrew +personally appeared to be a rather rough card--and then McGrew cut +loose. He went into the Blazing Star Saloon one afternoon--and he left +it only when deposited outside on the sidewalk as it closed up at four +o'clock on the following morning. This was the hour McGrew was +supposed to sit in for his trick at the key; but McGrew was quite +oblivious to all such considerations. A freight crew, just in and +coming up from the yards, carried him home to his boarding house. +McGrew got his powers of locomotion back far enough by late afternoon +to reach the Blazing Star again--and the performance was +repeated--McGrew went the limit. He ended up with a week in the hands +of little Doctor McTurk. + +McTurk was scientific from the soles of his feet up, and earnestly +professional all the rest of the way. When McGrew began to get a +glimmering of intelligence again, McTurk went at him red-headed. + +"Your heart's bad," the little doctor flung at McGrew, and there was no +fooling in his voice. "So's your liver--cirrhosis. But mostly your +heart. You'll try this just once too often--and you'll go out like a +collapsed balloon, out like the snuffing of a candle wick." + +McGrew blinked at him. + +"I've heard that before," said he indifferently. + +"Indeed!" snapped the irascible little doctor. + +"Yes," said McGrew, "quite a few times. This ain't my maiden trip. +You fellows make me tired! I'm a pretty good man yet, ain't I? And +I'm likely to be when you're dead. I've got my job to worry about now, +and that's enough to worry about. Got any idea of what Carleton's said +about it?" + +"You keep this up," said McTurk sharply, refusing to sidestep the +point, as, bag in hand, he moved toward the door, "and it won't +interest you much what Carleton or anybody else says--mark my words, my +man." + +It was Tommy Regan, fat-paunched, big-hearted, good-natured, who +stepped into the breach. There was only one place on this wide earth +in Carleton's eyes for a railroad man who drank when he should have +been on duty--and that was a six-foot trench, three feet deep. In +Carleton's mind, from the moment he heard of it, McGrew was out. But +Regan saved McGrew; and the matter was settled, as many a matter had +been settled before, over the nightly game of pedro between the +superintendent and the master mechanic, upstairs in the super's office +over the station. Incidentally, they played pedro because there wasn't +anything else to do nights--Big Cloud in those days wasn't boasting a +grand-opera house, and the "movies" were still things of the future. + +"He's a pretty rough case, I guess; but give him a chance," said Regan. + +"A chance!" exclaimed Carleton, with a hard smile. "Give a despatcher +who drinks a chance--to send a trainload or two of souls into eternity, +and about a hundred thousand dollars' worth of rolling stock to the +junk heap while he's boozing over the key!" + +"No," said Regan. "A chance--to make good." + +Carleton laid down his hand, and stared across the table at the master +mechanic. + +"Go on, Tommy," he prompted grimly. "What's the answer?" + +"Well," said Regan, "he's a past master on the key, we know that--that +counts for something. What's the matter with sending him somewhere up +the line where he can't get a drink if he goes to blazes for it? It +might make a man of him, and save the company a good operator at the +same time--we're not long on operators." + +"H'm!" observed Carleton, with a wry grin, picking up his cards again +one by one. "I suppose you've some such place as Angel Forks, for +instance, in mind, Tommy?" + +"Yes," said Regan. "I was thinking _of_ Angel Forks." + +"I'd rather be fired," submitted Carleton dryly. + +"Well," demanded Regan, "what do you say? Can he have it?" + +"Oh, yes," agreed Carleton, smiling. "He can have _that_--after I've +talked to him. We're pretty short of operators, as you say. Perhaps +it will work out. It will as long as he sticks, I guess--if he'll take +it at all." + +"He'll take it," said Regan, "and be glad to get it. What do you bid?" + +McGrew had been at Angel Forks--night man there--for perhaps the matter +of a month, when the Kid came to Big Cloud fresh from a key on the +Penn. They called him the Kid because he looked it--he wasn't past the +stage of where he had to shave more than once a week. The Kid, they +dubbed him on the spot, but his name was Charlie Keene; a thin, wiry +little chap, with black hair and a bright, snappy, quick look in his +eyes and face. He was pretty good on the key, too; not a master like +McGrew, he hadn't had the experience, but pretty good for all that--he +could "send" with the best of them, and there wasn't much to complain +about in his "taking," either. + +The day man at Angel Forks didn't drink--at least his way-bill didn't +read that way--and they gave him promotion in the shape of a station +farther along the line that sized up a little less tomb-like, a little +less like a buried-alive sepulcher than Angel Forks did. And the Kid, +naturally, being young and new to the system, had to start at the +bottom--they sent him up to Angel Forks on the morning way freight the +day after he arrived in Big Cloud. + +There was something about the Kid that got the train crew of the way +freight right from the start. They liked a man a whole lot and pretty +sudden in their rough-and-ready way, those railroaders of the Rockies +in those days, or they didn't like him well enough to say a good word +for him at his funeral; that's the way it went--and the caboose was +swearing by the Kid by the time they were halfway to Angel Forks, where +he shifted from the caboose to the cab for the rest of the run. + +Against the rules--riding in the cab? Well, perhaps it is--if you're +not a railroad man. It depends. Who was going to say anything about +it? It was Fatty Hogan himself, poking a long-spouted oil can into the +entrails of the 428, while the train crew were throwing out tinned +biscuits and canned meats and contract pie for the lunch counter at Elk +River, who invited him, anyhow. + +That's how the Kid came to get acquainted with Hogan, and Hogan's mate, +Bull Coussirat, who was handling the shovel end of it. Coussirat was +an artist in his way--apart from the shovel--and he started in to guy +the Kid. He drew a shuddering picture of the desolation and the +general lack of what made life worth living at Angel Forks, which +wasn't exaggerated because you couldn't exaggerate Angel Forks much in +that particular respect; and he told the Kid about Dan McGrew and how +headquarters--it wasn't any secret--had turned Angel Forks into what he +called a booze-fighter's sanatorium. But he didn't break through the +Kid's optimism or ambition much of any to speak of. + +By the time the way freight whistled for Angel Forks, the Kid had Bull +Coussirat's seat, and Coussirat was doing the listening, while Hogan +was leaning toward them to catch what he could of what was going on +over the roar and pound of the 428. There was better pay, and, what +counted most, better chances for a man who was willing to work for them +out in the West than there was in the East, the Kid told them with a +quiet, modest sincerity--and that was why he had come out there. He +was looking for a train despatcher's key some day after he had got +through station operating, and after that--well, something better still. + +There wasn't any jolly business or blowhard about the Kid. He meant +what he said--he was going up. And as far as McGrew was concerned, +he'd get along with McGrew. McGrew, or any other man, wouldn't hold +him back from the goal he had his eyes set upon and his mind made up to +work for. There was perhaps a little more of the youthful enthusiasm +in it that looked more buoyantly on the future than hard-headed +experience would; but it was sincere, and they liked him for it--who +wouldn't? Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan in the days to come had +reason to remember that talk in the cab. + +Desolate, perhaps, isn't the word to describe Angel Forks--for Angel +Forks was pretty enough, if rugged grandeur is counted pretty. Across +the track and siding, facing the two-story wooden structure that was +the station, the bare gray rock of a cut through the mountain base +reared upward to meet a pine-covered slope, and then blend with bare, +gray rock once until it became a glaciered peak at the sky line; behind +the station was a sort of plateau, a little valley, green and velvety, +bisected by a tumbling, rushing little stream, with the mountains again +closing in around it, towering to majestic heights, the sun playing in +relief and shadow on the fantastic, irregular, snow-capped summits. It +was pretty enough, no one ever disputed that! The road hung +four-by-five-foot photographs of it with +eight-inch-wide-trimmed-with-gilt frames in the big hotel corridors +East, and no one who ever bought a ticket on the strength of the +photographer's art ever sent in a kick to the advertising department, +or asked for their money back--it looked all right from the car windows. + +But sign of habitation there was not, apart from the little +station--not even a section man's shanty--just the station. Angel +Forks was important to the Transcontinental on one count, and on one +count only--its siding. Neither freight nor passenger receipts were +swelled, twelve months in or twelve months out, by Angel Forks; but, +geographically, the train despatcher's office back in Big Cloud never +lost sight of it--in the heart of the mountains, single-tracked, mixed +trains, locals, way freights, specials, and the Limiteds that knew no +"rights" on earth but a clean-swept track with their crazy fast +schedules, met and crossed each other as expediency demanded. + +So, in a way, after all, perhaps it _was_ desolate--except from the car +windows. Horton, the day man that the Kid was relieving, evidently had +found it so. He was waiting on the platform with his trunk when the +way freight pulled in, and he turned the station over to the Kid +without much formality. + +"God be with you till we meet again," was about the gist of what Horton +said--and he said it with a mixture of sympathy for another's +misfortune and an uplift at his own escape from bondage struggling for +the mastery, while he waved his hand from the tail of the caboose as +the way freight pulled out. + +There was mighty little formality about the transfer, and the Kid found +himself in charge with almost breathtaking celerity. Angel Forks, Dan +McGrew, way freight No. 47, and the man he had relieved, were sort of +hazy, nebulous things for a moment. There wasn't time for them to be +anything else; for, about one minute after he had jumped to the +platform, he was O.S.-ing "out" the train that had brought him in. + +It wasn't quite what he had been used to back in the more sedate East, +and he grinned a little to himself as his fingers tapped the key, and +by the time he had got back his O. K. the tail of the caboose was +swinging a curve and disappearing out of sight. The Kid, then, had a +chance to look around him--and look for Dan McGrew, the man who was to +be his sole companion for the days to come. + +He found McGrew upstairs--after he had explored all there was to +explore of the ground floor of the station, which was a sort of +combination kitchen, living room and dining room that led off from the +office--just the two rooms below, with a ladder-like staircase between +them leading up above. And above there was just the one room under the +eaves with two bunks in it, one on either side. The night man was +asleep in one of these, and the Kid did not disturb him. After a +glance around the rather cheerless sleeping quarters, he returned +downstairs, and started in to pick up the threads of the office. + +Dusk comes early in the fall in the mountains, and at five o'clock the +switch and semaphore lamps were already lighted, and in the office +under a green-shaded lamp the Kid sat listening to some stray time +stuff coming over the wire, when he heard the night man moving overhead +and presently start down the stairs. The Kid pushed back his chair, +rose to his feet, and turned with outstretched hand to make friends +with his new mate--and his outstretched hand drew back and reached +uncertainly to the table edge beside him. + +For a long minute neither man spoke--staring into each other's eyes. +In the opening through the partition at the foot of the stairs, Dan +McGrew seemed to sway a little on his feet, and his face, what could be +seen of it through the tawny beard that Angel Forks had offered him no +incentive to shave, was ashen white. + +It was McGrew who broke the silence. + +"Hello, Charlie!" he said in a sort of cheerful bravado, that rang far +from true. + +"So _you_ are Dan McGrew! The last time I heard of you your name was +Brodie." The Kid's lips, as he spoke, hardly seemed to move. + +"I've had a dozen since then," said McGrew, in a pleading whine, +"more'n a dozen. I've been chased from place to place, Charlie. I've +lived a dog's life, and----" + +The Kid cut him short, in a low, passionate voice: + +"And you expect me to keep my mouth shut about you here--is that it?" + +McGrew's fingers plucked nervously, hesitantly at his beard; his tongue +circled dry lips, and his black eyes fell from the Kid to trace +aimlessly, it seemed, the cracks in the floor. + +The Kid dropped back into his chair, and, elbows on the table, chin in +hands, stared out across the tracks to where the side of the rock cut +was now no more than a black shadow. + +Again it was McGrew who broke the silence. + +"What are you going to do?" he asked miserably. "What are you going to +do? Use the key and put them wise? You wouldn't do that, would +you--Charlie? You wouldn't throw me down--would you? I'm--I'm living +decent here." + +The Kid made no answer--made no movement. + +"Charlie!" McGrew's voice rose in a high-pitched, nervous appeal. +"Charlie--what are you going to do?" + +"Nothing!" The Kid's eyes were still on the black, rock shadow through +the station window, and the words came monotonously. "Nothing! As far +as I am concerned, you are--Dan McGrew." + +McGrew lurched heavily forward, relief in his face and voice as he put +his hands on the Kid's shoulders. + +"You're all right, Charlie, all right; I knew you wouldn't----" + +The Kid sprang to his feet, and flung the other's hands roughly from +his shoulders. + +"Keep your hands off me!" he said tensely. "I don't stand for that! +And let's understand each other. You do your work here, and I do mine. +I don't want to talk to you. I don't want you to talk to me. I don't +want anything to do with you--that's as straight as I know how to put +it. The first chance I get I'll move--they'll never move you, for I +know why they sent you here. That's all, and that's where we +stand--McGrew." + +"D'ye mean that?" said McGrew, in a cowed, helpless way. + +The Kid's answer was only a harsh, bitter laugh--but it was answer +enough. McGrew, after a moment's hesitation, turned and went silently +from the room. + +A week passed, and another week came and went, and neither man spoke to +the other. Each lived his life apart, cooked for himself, and did his +work; and it was good for neither one. McGrew grew morose and ugly; +and the Kid somehow seemed to droop, and there was a pallor in his +cheeks and a listless air about him that was far from the cheery +optimism with which he had come to take the key at Angel Forks. + +Two weeks passed, and then one night, after the Kid had gone to bed, +two men pitched a rough, weather-beaten tent on the plateau below the +station. Hard-looking specimens they were; unkempt, unshaven, each +with a mount and a pack horse. Harvey and Lansing they told McGrew +their names were, when they dropped in for a social call that night, +and they said that they were prospectors--but their geological hammers +were bottles of raw spirit that the Indians loved, and the veins of ore +they tapped were the furs that an Indian will sell for "red-eye" when +he will sell for no other thing on earth. It was against the +law--enough against the law to keep a man's mouth who was engaged in +that business pretty tightly shut--but, perhaps recognizing a kindred +spirit in McGrew, and warmed by the bottle they had hospitably brought, +before that first night was over no secret of that sort lay between +them and McGrew. + +And so drink came to Angel Forks; and in a supply that was not stinted. +It was Harvey and Lansing's stock in trade--and they were well stocked. +McGrew bought it from them with cash and with provisions, and played +poker with them with a kitty for the "red-eye." + +There was nothing riotous about it at first, not bad enough to +incapacitate McGrew; and it was a night or two before the Kid knew what +was going on, for McGrew was cautious. Harvey and Lansing were away in +the mountains during the daytime, and they came late to fraternize with +McGrew, around midnight, long after the Kid was asleep. Then McGrew +began to tipple steadily, and signs of drink came patently enough--too +patently to be ignored one morning when the Kid relieved McGrew and +went on for the day trick. + +The Kid said nothing, no word had passed between them for two weeks; +but that evening, when McGrew in turn went on for his trick, the Kid +went upstairs and found a bottle, nearly full, hidden under McGrew's +mattress. He took it, went outside with it, smashed it against a +rock--and kept on across the plateau to the prospectors' outfit. +Harvey and Lansing, evidently just in from a day's lucrative trading, +were unsaddling and busy over their pack animals. + +"Hello, Keene!" they greeted in chorus; and Lansing added: "Hang 'round +a bit an' join in; we're just goin' TO cook grub." + +The Kid ignored both the salutation and the proffered hospitality. + +"I came down here to tell you two fellows something," he said slowly, +and there was a grim, earnest set to his lips that was not to be +misunderstood. "It's none of my business that you're camping around +here, but up there is railroad property, and that _is_ my business. If +you show your faces inside the station again or pass out any more booze +to McGrew, I'll wire headquarters and have you run in; and somehow, +though I've only met you once or twice, I don't fancy you're anxious to +touch head-on with the authorities." He looked at the two steadily for +an instant, while they stared back half angrily, half sheepishly. +"That's fair warning, isn't it?" he ended, as he turned and began to +retrace his steps to the station. "You'd better take it--you won't get +a second one." + +They cursed him when they found their tongues, and did it heartily, +interwoven with threats and savage jeers that followed him halfway to +the embankment. But their profanity did not cloak the fact that, to a +certain extent, the Kid's words were worthy of consideration. + +The extent was two nights--that night, and the next one. + +On the third night, or rather, far on in the early morning hours, the +Kid, upstairs, awakened from sleep, sat suddenly up in his bunk. A +wild outburst of drunken song, accompanied by fists banging time on the +table, reached him--then an abashed hush, through which the click of +the sounder came to him and he read it mechanically--the despatcher at +Big Cloud was making a meeting point for two trains at the Bend, forty +miles away, nothing to do with Angel Forks. Came then a rough +oath--another--and a loud, brawling altercation. + +The Kid's lips thinned. He sprang out of his bunk, pulled on shirt and +trousers, and went softly down the stairs. They didn't hear him, they +were too drunk for that; and they didn't see him--until he was fairly +inside the room; and then for a moment they leered at him, suddenly +silent, in a silly, owl-like way. + +There was an anger upon the Kid, a seething passion, that showed in his +bloodless face and quivering lips. He stood for an instant motionless, +glancing around the office; the table from the other room had been +dragged in; on either side of it sat Harvey and Lansing; at the end, +within reach of the key, sat Dan McGrew, swaying tipsily back and +forth, cards in hand; under the table was an empty bottle, another had +rolled into a corner against the wall; and on the table itself were two +more bottles amongst greasy, scattered cards, one almost full, the +other still unopened. + +"S'all right, Charlie," hiccoughed McGrew blandly. "S'all right--jus' +havin' little game--good boy, Charlie." + +McGrew's words seemed to break the spell. With a jump the Kid reached +him, flung him roughly from his seat, toppling him to the floor, and +stretched out his hand for the key--but he never reached it. Harvey +and Lansing, remembering the threat, and having more reason to fear the +law than on the simple count of trespassing on railroad property, +lunged for him simultaneously. Quick as a cat on his feet, the Kid +turned, and his fist shot out, driving full into Lansing's face, +sending the man staggering backward--but Harvey closed. Purling oaths, +Lansing snatched the full bottle, and, as the Kid, locked in Harvey's +arms, swung toward him, he brought the bottle down with a crash on the +back of the Kid's head--and the Kid slid limply to the floor. + +White-faced, motionless, unconscious, the Kid lay there, the blood +beginning to trickle from his head, and in a little way it sobered the +two "prospectors"--but not McGrew. + +"See whash done," said McGrew with a maudlin sob, picking himself up +from where the Kid had thrown him. "See whash done! Killed him--thash +whash done." + +It frightened them, McGrew's words--Harvey and Lansing. They looked +again at the Kid and saw no sign of life--and then they looked at each +other. The bottle was still in Lansing's hand, and he set it back now +on the table with a little shudder. + +"We'd better beat it," he croaked hoarsely. "By daylight we want to be +far away from here." + +Harvey's answer was a practical one--he made for the door and +disappeared, Lansing close on his heels. + +McGrew alternately cursed and pleaded with them long after they were +out of earshot; and then, moved by drunken inspiration, started to +clear up the room. He got as far as reaching for the empty bottles on +the floor, and that act seemed to father a second inspiration--there +were other bottles. He reeled to the table, picked up the one from +which they had been drinking, stared at the Kid upon the floor, brushed +the hair out of his eyes, and, throwing back his head, drank deeply. + +"Jus'er steady myself--feel shaky," he mumbled. + +He stared at the Kid again. The Kid was beginning to show signs of +returning consciousness. McGrew, blinking, took another drink. + +"Nosh dead, after all," said McGrew thickly. "Thank God, nosh dead, +after all!" + +Then drunken cunning came into his eyes. He slid the full bottle into +his pocket, and, carrying the ether in his hand, stumbled upstairs, +drank again, and hid them craftily, not beneath the mattress this time, +but under the eaves where the flooring met and there was a loose plank. + +When he stumbled downstairs again, the Kid was sitting in a chair, +holding his swimming head in his hands. + +"S'all right, Charlie," said McGrew inanely. + +The Kid did not look at him; his eyes were fixed upon the table. + +"Where are those bottles?" he demanded suspiciously. + +"Gone," said McGrew plaintively. "Gone witsh fellows--fellows took 'em +an' ran 'way. Whash goin' to do 'bout it, Charlie?" + +"I'll tell you when you're sober," said the Kid curtly. "Get up to +your bunk and sleep it off." + +"S'my trick," said McGrew heavily, waving his hand toward the key. +"Can't let nusher fellow do my work." + +"Your trick!" The words came in a withering, bitter rush from the Kid. +"Your trick! You're in fine shape to hold down a key, aren't you!" + +"Whash reason I ain't? Held it down all right, so far," said McGrew, a +world of injury in his voice--and it was true; so far he had held it +down all right that night, for the very simple reason that Angel Forks +had not been the elected meeting point of trains for a matter of some +three hours, not since the time when Harvey and Lansing had dropped in +and McGrew had been sober. + +"Get up to your bunk!" said the Kid between his teeth--and that was all. + +McGrew swayed hesitantly for a moment on uncertain legs, blinked +soddenly a sort of helpless protest, and, turning, staggered up the +stairs. + +For a little while the Kid sat in his chair, trying to conquer his +dizzy, swimming head; and then the warm blood trickling down his +neck--he had not noticed it before--roused him to action. He took the +lamp and went into the other room, bathed his head in the wash-basin, +sopping at the back of his neck to stop the flow, and finally bandaged +it as best he could with a wet cloth as a compress, and a towel drawn +tightly over it, which he knotted on his forehead. + +He finished McGrew's abortive attempt at housecleaning after that, and +sat in to hold down the rest of the night trick, while McGrew in sleep +should recover his senses. But McGrew did not sleep. McGrew was +fairly started--and McGrew had two bottles at command. + +At five-thirty in the morning, No. 81, the local freight, west, making +a meeting point, rattled her long string of flats and boxes on the +Angel Forks siding; and the Kid, unknotting his bandage, dropped it +into a drawer of his desk. Brannahan, No. 81's conductor, kicked the +door open, and came in for his orders. + +"Hello, Kid!" exclaimed Brannahan. "What you sitting in for? Where's +your mate?" + +"Asleep," the Kid laughed at him. "Where do you suppose he is! We're +swopping tricks for a while for the sake of variety." + +Brannahan stooped and lunged the stub of the cigar in his mouth over +the lamp chimney, and with the up-draft nearly extinguished the flame; +then he pulled up a chair, tilted back and stuck his feet up on the +desk. + +"Guess most anything would be variety in this God-forsaken hole," he +observed between puffs. "What?" + +"Oh, it's not so bad--when you get used to it," said the Kid. + +He edged his own chair around to face Brannahan squarely--the wound in +the back of his head was bleeding again; perhaps it had never stopped +bleeding, he did not know. + +Brannahan made small talk, waiting for the fast freight, east, to +cross; and the Kid smiled, while his fingers clutched desperately now +and then at the arms of his chair to keep himself from pitching over, +as those sickening, giddy waves, like hot and cold flashes, swept him. + +Brannahan went at last, the fast freight roared by, No. 81 pulled out, +and the Kid went back to the wash-basin and put his bandage on again. + +The morning came and went, the afternoon, and the evening; and by +evening the Kid was sick and dropping weak. That smash on his head +must have been more serious than he had thought at first; for, again +and again, and growing more frequent, had come those giddy flashes, and +once, he wasn't sure, but it seemed as though he had fainted for a +moment or two. + +It was getting on to ten o'clock now, and he sat, or, rather, lay +forward with his head in his arms over the desk under the lighted lamp. +The sounder was clicking busily; the Kid raised his head a little, and +listened. There was a Circus Special, west, that night, and No. 2, the +eastbound Limited, was an hour off schedule, and, trying to make it up, +was running with clear rights while everything else on the train sheet +dodged to the sidings to get out of the way. The sounder stopped for +an instant, then came the dispatcher's "complete"--the Circus Special +was to cross the Limited at L'Aramie, the next station west of Angel +Forks. It had nothing to do with the Kid, and it would be another two +hours at least before the Circus Special was along. + +The Kid's head dropped back on his arms again. What was he to do? He +could stick out the night somehow--he _must_ stick it out. If he asked +for a relief it was the sack for the man upstairs--it was throwing +McGrew cold. It wouldn't take them long to find out what was the +matter with McGrew! And surely McGrew would be straight again by +morning--he wasn't any better now, worse if anything, but by morning +surely the worst of the drink would be out of him. McGrew had been +pretty bad all day--as bad as the Kid had ever seen a man. He wondered +a little numbly about it. He had thought once that McGrew might have +had some more drink hidden, and he had searched for it during the +forenoon while McGrew watched him from the bunk; but he had found +nothing. It was strange, too, the way McGrew was acting, strange that +it took so long for the man to get it out of his system, it seemed to +the Kid; but the Kid had not found those last two bottles, neither was +the Kid up in therapeutics, nor was he the diagnostician that Doctor +McTurk was. + +"By morning," said the Kid, with the moan, "if he can't stand a trick +I'll _have_ to wire. I'm afraid to-night 'll be my limit." + +It was still and quiet--not even a breeze to whisper through the cut, +or stir the pine-clad slope into rustling murmurs. Almost heavily the +silence lay over the little station buried deep in the heart of the +mighty range. Only the sounder spoke and chattered--at +intervals--spasmodically. + +An hour passed, an hour and a half, and the Kid scarcely moved--then he +roused himself. It was pretty near time for the Circus Special to be +going through to make its meeting point with the Limited at L'Aramie, +and he looked at his lights. He could see them, up and down, switch +and semaphore, from the bay window of the station where he sat. It was +just a glance to assure himself that all was right. He saw the lights +through red and black flashes before his eyes, saw that the main line +was open as it should be--and dropped his swooning, throbbing head back +on his arms once more. + +And then suddenly he sat erect. From overhead came the dull, ominous +thud of a heavy fall. He rose from his chair--and caught at the table, +as the giddiness surged over him and his head swam around. For an +instant he hung there swaying, then made his way weakly for the stairs +and started up. + +There was a light above--he had kept a lamp burning there--but for a +moment after he reached the top nothing but those ghastly red and black +flashes met his eyes--and then, with a strange, inarticulate cry, he +moved toward the side of the room. + +Sprawled in a huddled heap upon the floor beneath the eaves, collapsed, +out like the snuffing of a candle wick, as Doctor McTurk had said some +day he would go out, dead, lay Dan McGrew--the loose plank up, two +empty bottles beside him, as though the man had snatched first one and +then the other from their hiding place in the wild hope that there +might be something left of the supply drained to the last drop hours +before. + +The Kid stooped over McGrew, straightened up, stared at the lifeless +form before him, and his hands went queerly to his temples and the +sides of his head--the room spun dizzily around and around, the lamp, +the dead man on the floor, the bunks, a red-and-black flashed +whirl--the Kid's hands reached grasping into nothingness for support, +and he slipped inertly to the floor. + +From below came the sharp tattoo of the sounder making the Angel Forks +call, quick, imperative at first--then like a knell of doom, in frantic +appeal, the despatchers' life and death, the _seventeen_--and, "Hold +Circus Special." Over and over again the sounder spoke and cried and +babbled and sobbed like a human soul in agony; over and over again +while the minutes passed, and with heavy, resonant roar the long Circus +Special rumbled by--but the man on the night wire at Angel Forks was +dead; and the Kid was past the hearing--there were to come weeks, while +he raved in the furious delirium and lay in the heavy stupor of brain +fever, before a key meant anything to him again. + +It's queer the way things happen! Call it luck, if you like--maybe it +is--maybe it's something more than luck. It wouldn't be sacrilege, +would it, to say that the hand of God had something to do with keeping +the Circus Special and the Limited from crashing head-on in the +rock-walled, twisting caņon, four miles west of Angel Forks, whatever +might be the direct means, ridiculous, before-unheard-of, funny, or +absurd, that saved a holocaust that night? That wouldn't be sacrilege, +would it? Well, call it luck, if you like--call it anything you like. +Queer things happen in railroading--but this stands alone, queerest of +all in the annals of fifty roads in a history of fifty years. + +The Limited, thanks to a clean-swept track, had been making up time, +making up enough of it to throw meeting point with the Circus Special +at L'Aramie out--and the despatcher had tried to Hold the Circus +Special at Angel Forks and let the Limited pass her there. There was +time enough to do it, plenty of it--and under ordinary circumstances it +would have been all in the night's work. But there was blame, too, and +Saxton, who was on the key at Big Cloud that night, relieving Donkin, +who was sick, went on the carpet for it--he let the Limited tear +through L'Aramie _before_ he sent his order to Angel Forks, with the +Circus Special in the open cutting along for her meeting point with +nothing but Angel Forks between her and L'Aramie. + +That was the despatcher's end of it--the other end is a little +different. Whether some disgruntled employee, seeking to revenge +himself on the circus management, loosened the door of one of the cars +while the Special lay on the siding waiting for a crossing at Mitre +Peak, her last stop, or whether it was purely an accident, no one ever +knew--though the betting was pretty heavy on the disgruntled employee +theory--there had been trouble the day before. However, be that as it +may, one way or the other, one thing was certain, they found the door +open after it was all over, and--but, we're over-running our holding +orders--we'll get to that in a minute. + +Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan, in the 428, were pulling the Special +that night, and as they shot by the Angel Forks station the fireman was +leaning out of the gangway for a breath of air. + +"Wonder how the Kid's making out?" he shouted in Hogan's ear, +retreating into the cab as they bumped over the west-end siding switch +with a shattering racket. "Good kid, that--ain't seen him since the +day he came up with us." + +Hogan nodded, checking a bit for the curve ahead, mindful of his +high-priced, heavily insured live freight. + +"Did ever you hear such a forsaken row!" he ejaculated irrelevantly. +"Listen to it, Bull. About three runs a year like this and I'd be +clawing at iron bars and trying to mimic a menagerie. Listen to it!" + +Coussirat listened. Every conceivable kind of an animal on earth +seemed to be lifting its voice to High Heaven in earnest protest for +some cause or other--the animals, beyond any peradventure of doubt, +were displeased with their accommodations, uncomfortable, and +indignantly uneasy. The rattle of the train was a paltry thing--over +it hyenas laughed, lions roared, elephants trumpeted, and giraffes +emitted whatever noises giraffes emit. It was a medley fit for Bedlam, +from shrill, whistling, piercing shrieks that set the ear-drums +tingling, to hoarse, cavernous bellows like echoing thunder. + +"Must be something wrong with the animals," said Coussirat, with an +appreciative grin. "They weren't yowling like that when we +started--guess they don't like their Pullmans." + +"It's enough to give you the creeps," growled Fatty Hogan. + +Coussirat reached for the chain, and with an expert flip flung wide the +furnace door--and the bright glow lighted up the heavens and shot the +black of the cab into leaping, fiery red. Coussirat swung around, +reaching for his shovel--and grabbed Hogan's arm instead, as a chorus +of unearthly, chattering shrieks rent the air. + +"For the love of Mike, for God's sake, Fatty," he gasped, "look at +that!" + +Perched on the tender, on the top of the water tank, just beyond the +edge of the coal, sat a well-developed and complacent ape--and, as +Coussirat looked, from the roof of the property car, behind the tender, +another swung to join the first. + +"Jiminy Christmas!" yelled Hogan, screwed around in his seat. "The +whole blasted tribe of monkeys is loose! That's what's wrong with the +rest of the animals--the little devils have probably been teasing them +through the barred air-holes at the ends of the cars. Look at 'em! +Look at 'em come!" + +Coussirat was looking--he hadn't stopped looking. Along the roof of +the property car they came, a chattering, jabbering, swaying string of +them--and on the brake wheel two sat upright, lurching and clinging for +dear life, the short hair blown straight back from their foreheads with +the sweep of the wind, while they peered with earnest, strained faces +into the cab. And the rest, two dozen strong now, massed on the roof +of the property car, perilously near the edges for anything but +monkeys, inspected the cab critically, picked at each other's hides, +made gestures, some of which were decidedly uncomplimentary, and +chattered volubly to their leaders already on the tender. The tender +seemed to appeal. Down came another monkey via the brake-rod, and +swung by its tail with a sort of flying-trapeze effect to the +tender--and what one did another did--the accommodation on the water +tank was being crowded--the front rank moved up on the coal. + +"Say!" bawled Coussirat to his mate. "Say, Fatty, get up and give 'em +your seat--there's ladies present. And say, what are we going to do +about it? The little pets ought to be put back to bed." + +"Do nothing!" snapped Hogan, one wary eye on the monkeys, and the other +on the right of way ahead. "If the circus people don't know enough to +shut their damned beasts up properly it's their own lookout--it's not +our funeral, whatever happens." + +The advance guard of the monkeys had approached too close to the crest +of the high-piled coal, and as a result, while they scrambled back for +firmer footing, they sent a small avalanche of it rolling into the cab. +This was touching Coussirat personally--and Coussirat glared. + +Coussirat was no nature faker--he knew nothing about animals, their +habits, peculiarities, or characteristics. He snatched up a piece of +coal, and heaved it at the nearest monkey. + +"Get out, you little devil--_scut_!" he shouted--and missed--and the +effect was disconcerting to Coussirat. + +Monkeys are essentially imitative, earnestly so--and not over-timid +when in force--they imitated Coussirat. Before he could get his +breath, first one and then another began to pick up hunks of coal and +heave them back--and into the cab poured a rain of missiles. For an +instant, a bare instant, Coussirat stood his ground, then he dove for +the shelter of his seat. Soft coal? Yes--but there are some fairish +lumps even in soft coal. + +Crash went the plate-glass face of the steam gauge! It was a good +game, a joyous game--and there was plenty of coal, hunks and hunks of +it--and plenty of monkeys, "the largest and most intelligent collection +on earth," the billboards said. + +Crash went the cab glass behind Fatty Hogan's head--and the monkeys +shrieked delight. They hopped and jumped and performed gyrations over +each other, those in the rear; while those on the firing line, with +stern, screwed up, wizened faces, blinking furiously, swung their hairy +arms--and into the cab still poured the hail of coal. + +With a yell of rage, clasping at his neck where the glass had cut him, +Fatty Hogan bounced forward in his seat. + +"You double-blanked, blankety-blanked, triple-plated ass!" he bellowed +at Coussirat. "You--you _damned_ fool, you!" he screamed. "Didn't you +know any better than that! Drive 'em off with the hose--turn the hose +on them!" + +"Turn it on yourself," said Coussirat sullenly; he was full length on +his seat, and mindful that his own glass might go as Hogan's had. +"D'ye think I'm looking for glory and a wreath of immortelles?" + +Funny? Well, perhaps. Is this sacrilege--to say it wasn't luck? + +Crash! There was a hiss of steam, a scalding stream of water, and in a +moment the cab was in a white cloud. Mechanically, Hogan slammed his +throttle shut, and snatched at the "air." It was the water glass--and +the water glass sometimes is a nasty matter. Coussirat was on his feet +now like a flash, and both men, clamped-jawed, groped for the cock; and +neither got off scathless before they shut it--and by then the train +had stopped, and not a monkey was in sight. + +Jimmie Burke, the conductor, came running up from the rear end, as +Coussirat and Hogan swung out of the gangway to the ground. + +"What's wrong?" demanded Burke--he had his watch in his hand. + +"Monkeys," said Hogan, and he clipped the word off without any undue +cordiality. + +"How?" inquired Burke. + +"Monkeys," said Hogan--a little more brittle than before. + +"Monkeys?" repeated Burke politely. + +"Yes, monkeys!" roared Hogan, dancing up and down with the pain of his +scalded hands. "Monkeys--that's plain enough, ain't it? Monkeys, +blast you!--MONKEYS!" + +To the group came one of the circus men. + +"The door of the monkey car is open!" he announced breathlessly. "The +monkeys have escaped." + +"You don't say!" said Coussirat heavily. + +"Yes," said the circus man. "And, look here, we'll have to find them; +they couldn't have got away from the train until it stopped just now." + +"Are they intelligent," inquired Coussirat in a velvet voice, "same as +the billboards say?" + +"Of course," said the circus man anxiously. + +"Well, then, just write them a letter and let them know when to be on +hand for the next performance," said Coussirat grimly. "There's lots +of time--we can hang around here and stall the line for another hour or +two, anyway!" + +Burke and Hogan were in earnest consultation. + +"We're close on the Limited's time as it is," said Hogan. "And look at +that cab." + +"We'd better back up to the Forks, then, and let her cross us there, +that's the safest thing to do," said Burke--and swung his lamp. + +"Look here," said the circus man, "we've got to find those monkeys." + +Burke looked at him unhappily--monkeys had thrown their meeting point +out--and there was the trainmaster to talk to when they got back to Big +Cloud. + +"Unless you want to spend the night here you'd better climb aboard," he +snapped. "All right, Hogan--back away!" And he swung his lamp again. + +Ten minutes later, as the Circus Special took the Angel Forks siding +and the front-end brakeman was throwing the switch clear again for the +main line, a chime whistle came ringing long, imperiously, from the +curve ahead. Fatty Hogan's face went white; he was standing up in the +cab and close to Coussirat, and he clasped the fireman's arm. "What's +that?" he cried. + +The answer came with a rush--a headlight cut streaming through the +night, there was a tattoo of beating trucks, an eddying roar of wind, a +storm of exhausts, a flash of window lights like scintillating +diamonds, and the Limited, pounding the fish-plates at sixty miles an +hour, was in and out--and _gone_. + +Hogan sank weakly down on his seat, and a bead of sweat spurted from +his forehead. + +"My God, Bull," he whispered, "do you know what that means? +Something's wrong. _She's against our order_." + +They found the Kid and Dan McGrew, and they got the Kid into little +Doctor McTurk's hands at Big Cloud--but it was eight weeks and more, +while the boy raved and lay in stupor, before they got the story. Then +the Kid told it to Carleton in the super's office late one afternoon +when he was convalescent--told him the bald, ugly facts in a sort of +hopeless way. + +Carleton listened gravely; it had come near to being a case of more +lives gone out on the Circus Special and the Limited that night than he +cared to think about. He listened gravely, and when the Kid had +finished, Carleton, in that quiet way of his, put his finger instantly +on the crux of the matter--not sharply, but gently, for the Kid had +played a man's part, and "Royal" Carleton loved a man. + +"Was it worth it, Keene?" he asked. "Why did you try to shield McGrew?" + +The Kid was staring hard at the floor. + +"He was my father," he said. + + + + +IX + +THE OTHER FELLOW'S JOB + +There is a page in Hill Division history that belongs to Jimmy Beezer. +This is Beezer's story, and it goes back to the days of the building of +the long-talked-of, figure-8-canted-over-sideways tunnel on the Devil's +Slide, that worst piece of track on the Hill Division, which is to say, +the worst piece of track, bar none, on the American continent. + +Beezer, speaking generally, was a fitter in the Big Cloud shops; +Beezer, in particular, wore a beard. Not that there is anything +remarkable in the fact that one should wear a beard, though there are +two classes of men who shouldn't--the man who chews tobacco, and the +man who tinkers around a railroad shop and on occasions, when major +repairs are the order of the day, is intimate with the "nigger-head" of +a locomotive. Beezer combined both classes in his person--but with +Beezer there were extenuating circumstances. According to Big Cloud, +Beezer wore a beard because Mrs. Beezer said so; Mrs. Beezer, in point +of size, made about two of Beezer, and Big Cloud said she figured the +beard kind of took the cuss off the discrepancy. + +Anyway, whether that is so or not, Beezer wore a beard, and the reason +it is emphasized here is because you couldn't possibly know Beezer +without it. Its upper extremity was nicotine-dyed, in spots, to a nut +brown, and from thence shaded down to an indeterminate rust color at +its lower edge--when he hadn't been dusting off and doing parlor-maid +work with it in the unspeakable grime of a "front-end." In shape it +never followed the prevailing tonsorial fashions--as far as any one +knew, no barber was ever the richer for Beezer's beard. Beezer used to +trim it himself Sunday mornings--sort of half moon effect he always +gave it. + +He was a spare, short man, all jump and nerves, and active as a cat. +He had shrewd, brown, little eyes, but, owing to the fact that he had a +small head and wore a large-size, black, greasy peaked cap jammed down +as far over his face as it would go, the color of his eyes could hardly +be said to matter much, for when you looked at Beezer, Beezer was +mostly just a round knob of up-tilted nose--and beard. + +Beezer's claims to immortality and fame, such as they are, were vested +in disease. Yes; that's it, you've got it right--disease. Beezer had +a disease that is very common to mankind in general. There's a whole +lot of men like Beezer. Beezer envied the other fellow's job. + +Somebody has said that the scarcest thing on earth is hen's teeth, but +the man who hasn't some time or other gone green-eyed over the other +chap's trick, and confidentially complained to himself that he could +"sit in" and hold it down a hanged sight better himself, has the +scarcity-of-hen's-teeth-oracle nailed to the mast from the start. And +a curious thing about it is that the less one knows of what the men he +envies is up against the more he envies--and the better he thinks he +could swing the other's job himself. There's a whole lot like Beezer. + +Now Beezer was an almighty good fitter. Tommy Regan said so, and Regan +ought to know; that's why he took Beezer out of the shops where the +other had grown up, so to speak, and gave Beezer the roundhouse repair +work to do. And that's where Beezer caught the disease--in the +roundhouse. Beezer contracted a mild attack of it the first day, but +it wasn't bad enough to trouble him much, or see a doctor about, so he +let it go on--and it got chronic. + +Beezer commenced to inhale an entirely different atmosphere, and the +more he inhaled it the more discontented he grew. An engine out in the +roundhouse, warm and full of life, the steam whispering and purring at +her valves, was a very different thing from a cold, rusty, dismantled +boiler-shell jacked up on lumbering blocks in the erecting shop; and +the road talk of specials, holding orders, tissues, running time and +what-not had a much more appealing ring to it than discussing how many +inches of muck No. 414 had accumulated on her guard-plates, the +incidental damning of the species wiper, and whether her boxes wanted +new babbitting or not. Toiling like a slave ten hours a day for six +days a week, and maybe overtime on Sundays, so that the other fellow +could have the fun, and the glory, and the fatter pay check, and the +easy time of it, began to get Beezer's goat. The "other fellow" was +the engineer. + +Beezer got to contrasting up the two jobs, and the more he contrasted +the less he liked the looks of his own, and the more he was satisfied +of his superior ability to hold down the other over any one of the +crowd that signed on or off in the grease-smeared pages of the turner's +book, which recorded the comings and goings of the engine crews. And +his ability, according to Beezer's way of looking at it, wasn't all +swelled head either; for there wasn't a bolt or a split-pin in any type +of engine that had ever nosed its pilot on the Hill Division that he +couldn't have put his finger on with his eyes shut. How much, anyhow, +did an engineer know about an engine? There wasn't a fitter in the +shops that didn't have the best engineer that ever pulled a throttle +pinned down with his shoulders flat on the mat on that count--and there +wasn't an engineer but what would admit it, either. + +But a routine in which one is brought up, gets married in, and comes to +look upon as a sort of fixed quantity for life, isn't to be departed +from offhand, and at a moment's notice. Beezer grew ardent with envy, +it is true; but the idea of actually switching over from the workbench +to the cab didn't strike him for some time. When it did--the first +time--it took his breath away--literally. He was in the pit, and he +stood up suddenly--and the staybolts on the rocker-arm held, and Beezer +promptly sat down from a wallop on the head that would have distracted +the thoughts of any other man than Beezer. + +Engineer Beezer! He had to lift the peak of his cap to dig the tears +out of his eyes, but when he put it back again the peak was just a +trifle farther up his nose. Engineer Beezer--a limited run--the +Imperial Flyer--into division on the dot, hanging like a lord of +creation from the cab window--cutting the miles on the grades and +levels like a swallow--roaring over trestles--diving through +tunnels--there was excitement in that, something that made life worth +living, instead of everlastingly messing around with a hammer and a +cold chisel, and pulling himself thin at the hips on the end of a +long-handled union wrench. Day dreams? Well, everybody day-dreams, +don't they? Why not Beezer? + +It is not on record that any one ever metamorphosed himself into a +drunkard on the spot the first time he ever stepped up to a bar; but as +the Irishman said: "Kape yer foot on the rail, an' yez have the makin's +av a dombed foine bum in yez!" + +Of course, the thing wasn't feasible. It sounded all right, and was +mighty alluring, but it was all dream. Beezer put it from him with an +unctuous, get-thee-behind-me-Satan air, but he purloined a book of +"rules"--road rules--out of Pudgy MacAllister's seat in the cab of the +1016. He read up the rules at odd moments, and moments that weren't +odd--and gradually the peak of his cap crept up as far as the bridge of +his nose. Beezer was keeping his foot on the rail. + +Mrs. Beezer found the book. That's what probably started things along +toward a showdown. She was, as has been said, a very large woman; also +she was a very capable woman of whom Beezer generally stood in some +awe, who washed, and ironed, and cooked for the Beezer brood during the +day, and did overtime at nights on socks and multifarious sewing, +including patches on Beezer's overalls--and other things, which are +unmentionable. The book fell out of the pocket of one of the other +things, one evening. Mrs. Beezer examined it, discovered MacAllister's +name scrawled on it, and leaned across the table under the paper-shaded +lamp in their modest combination sitting and dining room. + +"What are you doing with this, Mr. Beezer?" she inquired peremptorily; +Mrs. Beezer was always peremptory--with Beezer. + +Beezer coughed behind his copy of the Big Cloud _Daily Sentinel_. + +"Well?" prompted Mrs. Beezer. + +"I brought it home for the children to read," said Beezer, who, being +uncomfortable, sought refuge in the facetious. + +"Mr. Beezer," said Mrs. Beezer, with some asperity, "you put down that +paper and look at me." + +Mr. Beezer obeyed a little doubtfully. + +"Now," continued Mrs. Beezer, "what's got into you since you went into +the roundhouse, I don't know; but I've sorter had suspicions, and this +book looks like 'em. You might just as well make a clean breast of +what's on your mind, because I'm going to know." + +Beezer looked at his wife and scowled. He felt what might be imagined +to be somewhat the feelings of a man who is caught sneaking in by the +side entrance after signing the pledge at a Blue Ribbon rally. It was +not a situation conducive to good humor. + +"There ain't anything got into me," said he truculently. "If you want +to know what I'm doing with that book, I'm reading it because I'm +interested in it. And I've come to the conclusion that a fitter's job +alongside of an engineer's ain't any better than a mud-picking +Polack's." + +"You should have found that out before you went into the shops ten +years ago," said Mrs. Beezer, with a sweetness that tasted like vinegar. + +"Ten years ago!" Beezer flared. "How's a fellow to know what he's cut +out for, and what he can do best, when he starts in? How's he to know, +Mrs. Beezer, will you tell me that?" + +Mrs. Beezer was not sympathetic. + +"I don't know how he's to know," she said, "but I know that the trouble +with some men is that they don't know when they're well off, and if +you're thinking of----" + +"I ain't," said Beezer sharply. + +"I said 'if,' Mr. Beezer; and if----" + +"There's no 'if' about it," Beezer lied fiercely. "I'm not----" + +"You are," declared Mrs. Beezer emphatically, but with some wreckage of +English due to exceeding her speed permit--Mrs. Beezer talked fast. +"When you act like that I know you are, and I know you better than you +do yourself, and I'm not going to let you make a fool of yourself, and +come home here dead some night and wake me up same as poor Mrs. Dalheen +got her man back week before last on a box car door. Don't you know +when you're well off? You an engineer! What kind of an engineer do +you think you'd make? Why----" + +"Mrs. Beezer," said Beezer hoarsely, "shut up!" + +Mrs. Beezer caught her breath. + +"What did you say?" she gasped. + +"I said," said Beezer sullenly, picking up his paper again, "that I'd +never have thought of it, if you hadn't put it into my head; and now +the more I think of it, the better it looks." + +"I thought so," sniffed Mrs. Beezer profoundly. "And now, Mr. Beezer, +let this be the last of it. The idea! I never heard of such a thing!" + +Curiously enough, or perhaps naturally enough, Mrs. Beezer's cold-water +attitude had precisely the opposite effect on Jimmy Beezer to that +which she had intended it should have. It was the side-entrance +proposition over again. When you've been caught sneaking in that way, +you might just as well use the front door on Main Street next time, and +have done with it. Beezer began to do a little talking around the +roundhouse. The engine crews, by the time they tumbled to the fact +that it wasn't just the ordinary grumble that any man is entitled to in +his day's work, stuck their tongues in their cheeks, winked +surreptitiously at each other--and encouraged him. + +Now it is not to be implied that Jimmy Beezer was anybody's fool--not +for a minute--a first-class master fitter with his time served is a +long way from being in that class right on the face of it. Beezer +might have been a little blinded to the tongues and winks on account of +his own earnestness; perhaps he was--for a time. Afterwards--but just +a minute, or we'll be running by a meeting point, which is mighty bad +railroading. + +Beezer's cap, when he took the plunge and tackled Regan, had got tilted +pretty far back, so far that the peak stood off his forehead at about +the same rakish angle that his upturned little round knob of a nose +stuck up out of his beard; which is to say that Beezer had got to the +stage where he had decided that the professional swing through the +gangway he had been practising every time, and some others, that he had +occasion to get into a cab, was going to be of some practical use at an +early date. + +He put it up to Regan one morning when the master mechanic came into +the roundhouse. + +Regan leaned his fat little body up against the jamb of one of the big +engine doors, pulled at his scraggly brown mustache, and blinked as he +listened. + +"What's the matter with you, Beezer, h'm?" he inquired perplexedly, +when the other was at an end. + +"Haven't I just told you?" said Beezer. "I want to quit fitting and +get running." + +"Talks as though he meant it," commented Regan sotto voce to himself, +as he peered earnestly into the fitter's face. + +"Of course, I mean it," declared Beezer, a little tartly. "Why +wouldn't I?" + +"No," said Regan; "that ain't the question. The question is, why would +you? H'm?" + +"Because," Beezer answered promptly, "I like a snap as well as the next +man. It's a better job than the one I've got, better money, better +hours, easier all around, and one I can hold down with the best of +them." + +Regan's eyebrows went up. + +"Think so?" he remarked casually. + +"I do," declared Beezer. + +"Well, then," said Regan, "if you've thought it all out and made up +your mind, there's nothing I know of to stop you. Want to begin right +away?" + +"I do," said Beezer again. It was coming easier than he had +expected--there was a jubilant trill in his voice. + +"All right," said Regan. "I'll speak to Clarihue about it. You can +start in wiping in the morning." + +"Wiping?" echoed Beezer faintly. + +"Sure," said Regan. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it? Wiping--a +dollar-ten a day." + +"Look here," said Beezer with a gulp; "I ain't joking about this." + +"Well, then, what are you kicking about?" demanded Regan. + +"About wiping and a dollar-ten," said Beezer. "What would I do with a +dollar-ten, me with a wife and three kids?" + +"I don't know what you'd do with it," returned Regan. "What do you +expect?" + +"I don't expect to start in wiping," said Beezer, beginning to get a +little hot. + +"You've been here long enough to know the way up," said Regan. +"Wiping, firing--you take your turn. And your turn'll come for an +engine according to the way things are shaping up now in, say, about +fifteen years." + +"Fifteen years!" + +"Mabbe," grinned Regan. "I can't promise to kill off anybody to +accommodate you, can I?" + +"And don't the ten years I've put in here count for anything?" queried +Beezer aggressively. "Why don't you start me in sweeping up the +round-house? Wiping! Wiping, my eye! What for? I know all about the +way up. That's all right for a man starting in green; but I ain't +green. Why, there ain't a year-old apprentice over in the shops there +that don't know more about an engine than any blooming engineer on the +division. You know that, Regan--you know it hanged well, don't you?" + +"Well," admitted the master mechanic, "you're not far wrong at that, +Beezer." + +"You bet, I'm not!" Beezer was emphatic. "How about me, then? Do I +know an engine, every last nut and bolt in her, or don't I?" + +"You do," said Regan. "And if it's any satisfaction to you to know it, +I wouldn't ask for a better fitter any time than yourself." + +"Then, what's the use of talking about wiping? If I've put in ten +years learning the last kink there is in an engine, and have forgotten +more than the best man of the engine crews 'll know when he dies, +what's the reason I ain't competent to run one?" + +Regan reached into his back pocket for his chewing, wriggled his head +till his teeth met in the plug, and tucked the tobacco back into his +pocket again. + +"Beezer," said he slowly, spitting out an undesirable piece of stalk, +"did it ever strike you that there's a whole lot of blamed good horse +doctors that'd make damn poor jockeys--h'm?" + +Beezer scowled deeply, and kicked at a piece of waste with the toe of +his boot. + +"All I want is a chance," he growled shortly. "Give me a chance, and +I'll show you." + +"You can have your chance," said Regan. "I've told you that." + +"Yes," said Beezer bitterly. "It's a hell of a chance, ain't it? A +dollar-ten a day--_wiping_! I'd be willing to go on firing for a +spell." + +"Wiping," said Regan with finality, as he turned away and started +toward the shops; "but you'd better chew it over again, Beezer, and +have a talk with your wife before you make up your mind." + +Somebody chuckled behind Beezer--and Beezer whirled like a shot. The +only man in sight was Pudgy MacAllister. Pudgy's back was turned, and +he was leaning over the main-rod poking assiduously into the internals +of the 1016 with a long-spouted oil can; but Beezer caught the +suspicious rise and fall of the overall straps over the shoulders of +the fat man's jumper. + +Beezer was only human. It got Beezer on the raw--which was already +pretty sore. The red flared into his face hard enough to make every +individual hair in his beard incandescent; he walked over to Pudgy, +yanked Pudgy out into the open, and shoved his face into the engineer's. + +"What in the double-blanked, blankety-blanked blazes are you grinning +at?" he inquired earnestly. + +"H'm?" said Pudgy. + +"Yes--_h'm_!" said Beezer eloquently. "That's what I'm asking you." + +Whether Pudgy MacAllister was just plain lion-hearted, or a rotten bad +judge of human nature isn't down on the minutes--all that shows is that +he was one or the other. With some labor and exaggerated patience, he +tugged a paper-covered pamphlet out of his pocket from under his +jumper. It was the book of rules Beezer had "borrowed" some time +before. + +"Mrs. Beezer," said Pudgy blandly, "was over visiting the missus this +morning, and she brought this back. From what she said I dunno as it +would do any good, but I thought, perhaps, if you were going to take +Regan's advice about talking to your wife, you and Mrs. Beezer might +like to look it over again together before you----" + +That was as far as Pudgy MacAllister got. Generally speaking, the more +steam there is to the square inch buckled down under the valve, the +shriller the whistle is when it breaks loose. Beezer let a noise out +of him that sounded like a green parrot complaining of indigestion, and +went at MacAllister head-on. + +The oil can sailed through the air and crashed into the window glass of +Clarihue's cubby-hole in the corner. There was a tangled and revolving +chaos of arms and legs, and lean and fat bodies. Then a thud. There +wasn't any professional ring work about it. They landed on the floor +and began to roll--and a pail of packing and black oil they knocked +over greased the way. + +There was some racket about it, and Regan heard it; so did Clarihue, +and MacAllister's fireman, and another engine crew or two, and a couple +of wipers. The rush reached the combatants when there wasn't more than +a scant thirty-second of an inch between them and the edge of an empty +pit--but a thirty-second is a whole lot sometimes. + +When they stood them up and got them uncoupled, MacAllister's black eye +was modestly toned down with a generous share of what had been in the +packing bucket, but his fist still clutched a handful of hair that he +had separated from Beezer's beard--and Beezer's eyes were running like +hydrants from the barbering. Take it all around, thanks mostly to the +packing bucket, they were a fancy enough looking pair to send a +high-class team of professional comedians streaking for the sidings all +along the right of way to get out of their road. + +It doesn't take very much, after all, to make trouble, not very much; +and, once started, it's worse than the measles--the way it spreads. + +Mostly, they guyed Pudgy MacAllister at first; they liked his make-up +better owing to the black eye. But Pudgy was both generous and modest; +what applause there was coming from the audience he wanted Beezer to +get--he wasn't playing the "lead." + +And Beezer got it. Pudgy opened up a bit, and maybe drew on his +imagination a bit about what Mrs. Beezer had said to Mrs. MacAllister +about Jimmy Beezer, and what Beezer had said to Regan, and Regan to +Beezer, not forgetting Regan's remark about the horse doctor. + +Oh, yes, trouble once started makes the measles look as though it were +out of training, and couldn't stand the first round. To go into +details would take more space than a treatise on the manners and +customs of the early Moabites; but, summed up, it was something like +this: Mrs. Beezer paid another visit to Mrs. MacAllister, magnanimously +ignoring the social obligation Mrs. MacAllister was under to repay the +former call. Mrs. MacAllister received Mrs. Beezer in the kitchen over +the washtubs, which was just as well for the sake of the rest of the +house, for when Mrs. Beezer withdrew, somewhat shattered, but in good +order, by a flank movement through the back yard, an impartial observer +would have said that the kitchen had been wrecked by a gas explosion. +This brought Big Cloud's one lawyer and the Justice of the Peace into +it, and cost Beezer everything but the odd change on his month's pay +check--when it came. + +Meanwhile, what with a disturbed condition of marital bliss at home, +Beezer caught it right and left from the train crews, engine crews and +shop hands during the daytime. They hadn't anything against Beezer, +not for a minute, but give a railroad crowd an opening, and there's no +aggregation on earth quicker on the jump to take it. They dubbed him +"Engineer" Beezer, and "Doctor" Beezer; but mostly "Doctor" Beezer--out +of compliment to Regan. And old Grumpy, the timekeeper in the shop, +got so used to hearing it that he absent-mindedly wrote it down "Doctor +Beezer" when he came to make up the pay roll. That put it up to +Carleton, the super, who got a curt letter from the auditors' office +down East, asking for particulars, and calling his attention to the +fact that all medical services were performed by contract with the +company. Carleton scowled perplexedly at the letter, scrawled Tommy +Regan's initials at the bottom of the sheet, plus an interrogation +mark, and put it in the master mechanic's basket. Regan grinned, and +wrote East, telling them facetiously to scratch out the "Doctor" and +squeeze in a "J" in front of the "Beezer" and it would be all right; +but it didn't go--you can't get by a high-browed set of red-tape-bound +expert accountants of unimpeachable integrity, who are safeguarding the +company's funds like that. Hardly! They held out the money, and by +the time the matter was straightened out the pay car had come and gone, +and Beezer got a chance to find out how good his credit was. +Considering everything, Beezer took it pretty well--he went around as +though he had boils. + +But if Beezer had a grouch, and cause for one, it didn't make the other +fellow's job look any the less good to Beezer. Mrs. Beezer's sharp +tongue, barbed with contemptuous innuendo that quite often developed +into pointed directness as to her opinion of his opinions, and the kind +of an engineer he'd make, which he was obliged to listen to at night, +and the men--who didn't know what an innuendo was--that he was obliged +to listen to by day, didn't alter Beezer's views on that subject any, +whatever else it might have done. Beezer had a streak of stubbornness +running through the boils. + +He never got to blows again. His tormentors took care of that. They +had MacAllister as an example that Beezer was not averse to bringing +matters to an intimate issue at any time, and what they had to say they +said at a safe distance--most of them could run faster than Beezer +could, because nature had made Beezer short. Beezer got to be a pretty +good shot with a two-inch washer or a one-inch nut, and he got to +carrying around a supply of ammunition in the hip pocket of his +overalls. + +As for MacAllister, when the two ran foul of each other, as the +engineer came on for his runs or signed off at the end of one, there +wasn't any talking done. Regan had warned them a little too hard to +take chances. They just looked at each other sour enough to turn a +whole milk dairy. The men told Beezer that MacAllister had rigged a +punching bag up in his back yard, and was taking a correspondence +course in pugilism. + +Beezer said curried words. + +"Driving an engine," said they, "is a dog's life; it's worse than +pick-slinging, there's nothing in it. Why don't you cut it out? +You've had enough experience to get a job in the _shops_. Why don't +you hit Regan up and change over?" + +"By Christmas!" Beezer would roar, while he emptied his pocket and gave +vent to mixed metaphor, "I'd show you a change over if I ever got a +chance; and I'd show you there was something to running an engine +besides bouncing up and down on the seat like balls with nothing but +wind in them, and grinning at the scenery!" + +A chance--that's all Beezer asked for--a chance. And he kept on asking +Regan. That dollar-ten a day looked worse than ever since Mrs. +Beezer's invasion of Mrs. MacAllister's kitchen. But Regan was +obdurate, and likewise was beginning to get his usually complacent +outlook on life--all men with a paunch have a complacent, serene +outlook on life as a compensation for the paunch--disturbed a little. +Beezer and his demands were becoming ubiquitous. Regan was getting +decidedly on edge. + +"Firing," said Beezer. "Let me start in firing--there's as much in +that as in fitting, and I can get along for the little while it'll be +before you'll be down on your knees begging me to take a throttle." + +"Firing, eh!" Regan finally exploded one day. "Look here, Beezer; I've +heard about enough from you. Firing, eh? There'd have been some +firing done before this that would have surprised you if you hadn't +been a family man! Get that? The trouble with you is that you don't +know what you want or what you're talking about." + +"I know what I want, and I know what I'm talking about," Beezer +answered doggedly; "and I'm going to keep on putting it up to you till +you quit saying 'No.'" + +"You'll be doing it a long time, then," said Regan bluntly, laying a +few inches of engine dust with blackstrap juice; "a long time, +Beezer--till I'm dead." + +But it wasn't. Regan was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's +unexplainable the way things work out sometimes! + +That afternoon, after a visit from Harvey, who had been promoted from +division engineer to resident and assistant-chief on the Devil's Slide +tunnel, Carleton sent for Regan. + +"Tommy," said he, as the master mechanic entered his office, "did you +see Harvey?" + +"No," said Regan. "I didn't know he was in town." + +"He said he didn't think he'd have time to see you," said Carleton; "I +guess he's gone back on Number Seven. But I told him I'd put it up to +you, anyway. He says he's along now where he is handling about half a +dozen dump trains, but that what he has been given to pull them with, +as near as he can figure out, is the prehistoric junk of the iron age." + +"I saw the engines when they went through," Regan chuckled. "All the +master mechanics on the system cleaned up on him. I sent him the old +Two-twenty-three myself. Harvey's telling the truth so far. What's +next?" + +"Well," Carleton smiled, "he says the string and tin rivets they're put +together with come off so fast he can't keep more than half of them in +commission at once. He wants a good fitter sent up there on a +permanent job. What do you say?" + +"Say?" Regan fairly shouted. "Why, I say, God bless that man!" + +"H'm?" inquired Carleton. + +"Beezer," said Regan breathlessly. "Tell him he can have Beezer--wire +him I'll send up Beezer. He wants a good fitter, does he? Well, +Beezer's the best fitter on the pay roll, and that's straight. I +always liked Harvey--glad to do him a good turn--Harvey gets the best." + +Carleton crammed the dottle down in the bowl of his pipe with his +forefinger, and looked at Regan quizzically. + +"I've heard something about it," said he. "What's the matter with +Beezer?" + +"Packing loose around his dome cover, and the steam spurts out through +the cracked joint all over you every time you go near him," said Regan. +"He's had me crazy for a month. He's got it into his nut that he could +beat any engineer on the division at his own game, thinks the game's a +cinch and is sour on his own. That's about all--but it's enough. Say, +you wire Harvey that I'll send him Beezer." + +Carleton grinned. + +"Suppose Beezer doesn't want to go?" he suggested. + +"He'll go," said Regan grimly. "According to the neighbors, his home +life at present ain't a perennial dream of delight, and he'll beat it +as joyful as a live fly yanked off the sheet of fly paper it's been +stuck on; besides, he's getting to be a regular spitfire around the +yards. You leave it to me--he'll go." + +And Beezer went. + +You know the Devil's Slide. Everybody knows it; and everybody has seen +it scores of times, even if they've never been within a thousand miles +of the Rockies--the road carried it for years on the back covers of the +magazines printed in colors. The Transcontinental's publicity man was +a live one, he played it up hard, and as a bit of scenic effect it was +worth all he put into it--there was nothing on the continent to touch +it. But what's the use?--you've seen it hundreds of times. Big +letters on top: + + +"INCOMPARABLE GRANDEUR OF THE ROCKIES", and underneath: "A SCENE ON THE +LINE OF THE TRANSCONTINENTAL--THE COAST TO COAST ROUTE." + + +There wasn't anything the matter with the electrotypes, either--nature +backed up those "ads" to the last detail, and threw in a whole lot more +for good measure--even a pessimist didn't hold a good enough hand to +call the raise and had to drop out. Pugsley, the advertising man, was +an awful liar, and what he said may not be strictly true, but he +claimed the road paid their dividends for one quarter through the sale +to a junk and paper-dealer of the letters they got from delighted +tourists telling how far short anything he could say came to being up +to the reality. Anyway, Pugsley and the passenger-agent's department +were the only ones who weren't enthusiastic about the double-loop +tunnel--it spoiled the scenic effect. + +This is Beezer's story. Beezer has "rights" through to the terminal, +and pictures of scenery however interesting, and a description of how +Harvey bored his holes into the mountain sides however instructive, +should naturally be relegated to the sidings; but there's just a word +or two necessary before Beezer pulls out into the clear. + +One thing the electrotypes didn't show was the approach to the Devil's +Slide. It came along the bottoms fairly straight and level, the track +did, for some five miles from the Bend, until about a mile from the +summit where it hit a long, stiff, heavy climb, that took the breath +out of the best-type engine that Regan, representing the motive-power +department, had to offer. And here, the last few hundred yards were +taken with long-interval, snorting roars from the exhaust, that echoed +up and down the valley, and back and forward from the hills like a +thousand thunders, or the play of a park of artillery, and the pace was +a crawl--you could get out and walk if you wanted to. That was the +approach of the Devil's Slide--on a westbound run, you understand? +Then, once over the summit, the Devil's Slide stretched out ahead, and +in its two reeling, drunken, zigzag miles dropped from where it made +you dizzy to lean out of the cab window and see the Glacier River +swirling below, to where the right of way in a friendly, intimate +fashion hugged the Glacier again at its own bed level. How much of a +drop in that two miles? Grade percentages and dry figures don't mean +very much, do they? Take it another way. It dropped so hard and fast +that that's what the directors were spending three million dollars +for--to divide that drop by two! It just _dropped_--not an incline, +not by any means--just a drop. However---- + +When it was all over the cause of it figured out something like +this--we'll get to the effect and Beezer in a second. Engine 1016 with +Number One, the Imperial Limited, westbound, and with MacAllister in +the cab, blew out a staybolt one afternoon about two miles west of the +Bend. And quicker than you could wink, the cab was all live steam and +boiling water. The fireman screamed and jumped. MacAllister, blinded +and scalded, his hands literally torn from the throttle and "air" +before he could latch in, fell back half unconscious to the floor, +wriggled to the gangway and flung himself out. He sobbed like a +broken-hearted child afterwards when he told his story. + +"I left her," he said. "I couldn't help it. The agony wasn't human--I +couldn't stand it. I was already past knowing what I was doing; but +the thought went through my mind that the pressure'd be down, and she'd +stop herself before she got up the mile climb to the summit. That's +the last I remember." + +Dave Kinlock, the conductor, testified that he hadn't noticed anything +wrong until after they were over the summit--they'd come along the +bottoms at a stiff clip, as they always did, to get a start up the long +grade. They had slackened up almost to a standstill, as usual, when +they topped the summit; then they commenced to go down the Slide, and +were speeding up before he realized it. He put on the emergency brakes +then, but they wouldn't work. Why? It was never explained. Whether +the angle-cock had never been properly thrown into its socket and had +worked loose and shut off the "air" from the coaches, or whether--and +queerer things than that have happened in railroading--it just plain +went wrong, no one ever knew. They found the trouble there, that was +all. The emergency wouldn't work; and that was all that Dave Kinlock +knew then. + +Now, Beezer had been out on the construction work about two weeks when +this happened, about two of the busiest weeks Beezer had ever put in in +his life. Harvey hadn't drawn the long bow any in describing what the +master mechanics had put over on him to haul his dump carts with. They +were engines of the vintage of James Watt, and Beezer's task in keeping +them within the semblance of even a very low coefficient of efficiency +was no sinecure. Harvey had six of these monstrosities, and, as he had +started his work at both ends at once, with a cutting at the eastern +base of the Devil's Slide and another at the summit, he divided them up +three to each camp; and it kept Beezer about as busy as a one-handed +paper-hanger with the hives, running up and down answering "first-aid" +hurry calls from first one and then the other. + +The way Beezer negotiated his mileage was simple. He'd swing the cab +or pilot of the first train along in the direction, up or down, that he +wanted to go--and that's how he happened to be standing that afternoon +on the track opposite the upper construction camp about a hundred yards +below the summit, when Number One climbed up the approach, poked her +nose over the top of the grade, crawling like a snail that's worn out +with exertion, and then began to gather speed a little, toboggan-like, +as she started down the Devil's Slide toward him. + +Beezer gave a look at her and rubbed his eyes. There wasn't anything +to be seen back of the oncoming big mountain racer's cab but a +swirling, white, vapory cloud. It was breezing pretty stiff through +the hills that day, and his first thought was that she was blowing from +a full head, and the wind was playing tricks with the escaping steam. +With the next look he gulped hard--the steam was coming from the +cab--not the dome. It was the 1016, MacAllister's engine, and when he +happened to go up or down on her he always chose the pilot instead of +the cab--Beezer never forced his society on any man. But this time he +let the pilot go by him--there was something wrong, and badly wrong at +that. The cab glass showed all misty white inside, and there was no +sign of MacAllister. The drivers were spinning, and the exhaust, +indicating a wide-flung throttle, was quickening into a rattle of +sharp, resonant barks as the cab came abreast of him. + +Beezer jumped for the gangway, caught the rail with one hand, clung +there an instant, and then the tools in his other hand dropped to the +ground, as, with a choking gasp, he covered his face, and fell back to +the ground himself. + +By the time he got his wits about him again the tender had gone by. +Then Beezer started to run, and his face was as white as the steam he +had stuck his head into in the empty cab. He dashed along beside the +track, along past the tender, past the gangway, past the thundering +drivers, and with every foot the 1016 and the Imperial Limited, Number +One, westbound, was hitting up the pace. When he got level with the +cylinder, it was as if he had come to a halt, though his lungs were +bursting, and he was straining with every pound that was in him. He +was barely gaining by the matter of inches, and in about another minute +he was due to lose by feet. But he nosed in over the tape in a dead +heat, flung himself sideways, and, with his fingers clutching at the +drawbar, landed, panting and pretty well all in, on the pilot. A +minute it took him to get his breath and balance, then he crawled to +the footplate, swung to the steam chest and from there to the running +board. + +Here, for the first time, Beezer got a view of things and a somewhat +more comprehensive realization of what he was up against, and his heart +went into his mouth and his mouth went dry. Far down below him in a +sheer drop to the base of the caņon wall wound the Glacier like a +silver thread; in front, a gray, sullen mass of rock loomed up dead +ahead, the right of way swerving sharply to the right as it skirted it +in a breath-taking curve; and with every second the 1016 and her +trailing string of coaches was plunging faster and faster down the +grade. The wind was already singing in his ears. There was a sudden +lurch, a shock, as she struck the curve. Beezer flung his arms around +the handrail and hung on grimly. She righted, found her wheel base +again, and darted like an arrow along the opening tangent. + +Beezer's face was whiter now than death itself. There were curves +without number ahead, curves to which that first was but child's play, +that even at their present speed would hurl them from the track and +send them crashing in splinters through the hideous depths into the +valley below. It was stop her, or death; death, sure, certain, +absolute and quick, for himself and every man, woman and child, from +colonist coach to the solid-mahogany, brass-railed Pullmans and +observation cars that rocked behind him. + +There was no getting into the cab through the gangway; his one glance +had told him that. There was only one other way, little better than a +chance, and he had taken it. Blue-lipped with fear--that glance into +the nothingness almost below his feet had shaken his nerve and turned +him sick and dizzy--Beezer, like a man clinging to a crag, edged along +the running board, gained the rear end, and, holding on tightly with +both hands, lifted his foot, and with a kick shattered the front +cab-glass; another kick and the window frame gave way, and, backing in +feet first, Beezer began to lower himself into the cab. + +Meanwhile, white-faced men stood at Spence's elbow in the despatchers' +office at Big Cloud. Some section hands had followed Number One out of +the Bend in a handcar, and had found MacAllister and his fireman about +two hundred yards apart on opposite sides of the right of way. Both +were unconscious. The section hands had picked them up, pumped madly +back to the Bend, and made their report. + +Carleton, leaning over Spence, never moved, only the muscles of his jaw +twitched; Regan, as he always did in times of stress, swore to himself +in a grumbling undertone. There was no other sound in the room save +the incessant click of the sender, as Spence frantically called the +construction camp at the summit of the Slide; there was a chance, one +in a thousand, that the section hands had got back to the Bend before +Number One had reached the top of the grade. + +Then, suddenly, the sounder broke, and Spence began to spell off the +words. + +"Number One passed here five minutes ago." + +Regan went down into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. + +"Wild," he whispered, and his whisper was like an awe-stricken sob. +"Running wild on the Devil's Slide. _No one in the cab_. Oh, my God!" + +There was a look on Carleton's face no words could describe--it was +gray, gray with a sickness that was a sickness of his soul; but his +words came crisp and clear, cold as steel, and without a tremor. + +"Clear the line, Spence. Get out the wrecking crew, and send the +callers for the doctors--that's all that's left for us to do." + +But while Big Cloud was making grim preparations for disaster, Beezer +in no less grim a way was averting it, and his salvation, together with +that of every soul aboard the train, came, in a measure at least, from +the very source wherein lay their danger--the speed. That, and the +fact that the pressure MacAllister had thought would drop before the +summit was reached, was at last exhausting itself. The cab was less +dense, and the speed whipping the wind through the now open window +helped a whole lot more, but it was still a swirling mass of vapor. + +Beezer lowered himself in, his foot touched the segment, and then found +the floor. The 1016 was rocking like a storm-tossed liner. Again +there came the sickening, deadly slew as she struck a curve, the +nauseating pause as she hung in air with whirring drivers. Beezer shut +his eyes and waited. There was a lurch, another and another, fast and +quick like a dog shaking itself from a cold plunge--she was still on +the right of way. + +Beezer wriggled over on his back now, and, with head hanging out over +the running board, groped with his hands for the levers. Around his +legs something warm and tight seemed to clinch and wrap itself. He +edged forward a little farther--his hand closed on the throttle and +flung it in--a fierce, agonizing pain shot through his arm as something +spurted upon it, withering it, blistering it. The fingers of his other +hand were clasped on the air latch and he began to check--then, unable +to endure it longer, he threw it wide. There was a terrific jolt, a +shock that keeled him over on his side as the brake-shoes locked, the +angry grind and crunch of the wheel tires, and the screech of skidding +drivers. + +He dragged himself out and crouched again on the running board. Behind +him, like a wriggling snake, the coaches swayed and writhed crazily, +swinging from side to side in drunken, reeling arcs. A deafening roar +of beating flanges and pounding trucks was in his ears--and shriller, +more piercing, the screams of the brake-shoes as they bit and held. He +turned his head and looked down the right of way, and his eyes held +there, riveted and fascinated. Two hundred yards ahead was the worst +twist on the Slide, where the jutting cliff of Old Piebald Mountain +stuck out over the precipice, and the track hugged around it in a +circle like a fly crawling around a wall. + +Beezer groaned and shut his eyes again. They say that in the presence +of expected death sometimes one thinks of a whole lot of things. +Engineer Beezer, in charge of Number One, the Imperial Limited, did +then; but mostly he was contrasting up the relative merits of a +workbench and a throttle, and there wasn't any doubt in Beezer's mind +about which he'd take if he ever got the chance to take anything again. + +When he opened his eyes Old Piebald Mountain was still ahead of +him--about ten feet ahead of him--and the pony truck was on the curve. +But they had stopped, and Dave Kinlock and a couple of mail clerks were +trying to tear his hands away from the death grip he'd got on the +handrail. It was a weak and shaken Beezer, a Beezer about as flabby as +a sack of flour, that they finally lifted down off the running board. + +There was nothing small about Regan--there never was. He came down on +the wrecking train, and, when he had had a look at the 1016 and had +heard Kinlock's story, he went back up to the construction camp, where +Beezer had been outfitted with leg and arm bandages. + +"Beezer," said he, "I didn't say all horse doctors wouldn't make +jockeys--what? You can have an engine any time you want one." + +Beezer shook his head slowly. + +"No," said he thoughtfully; "I guess I don't want one." + +Regan's jaw dropped, and his fat little face puckered up as he stared +at Beezer. + +"Don't want one!" he gasped. "Don't want one! After howling for one +for three months, now that you can have it, you don't want it! Say, +Beezer, what's the matter with you--h'm?" + +But there wasn't anything the matter with Beezer. He was just getting +convalescent, that's all. There's a whole lot of men like Beezer. + + + + +X + +THE RAT RIVER SPECIAL + +This is Martin Bradley's story; an excerpt, if you will, from the pages +of railroading where strange and grim things are, where death and +laughter lock arms in the winking of an eye, and are written down as +though akin. There have been better men than Martin Bradley--and +worse. Measure him as you will, that is one matter; in the last +analysis frailty is a human heritage, and that is another. On the Hill +Division they called him a game man. + +Bradley was a fireman, a silent, taciturn chap. Not sullen or +surly--don't get that idea--more quiet than anything else, never much +of anything to say. When a laugh was going around Bradley could +appreciate the fun, and did; only his laugh seemed tempered somehow by +something behind it all. Not a wet blanket, not by any means--they +didn't understand him then, perhaps, didn't pretend to--he never +invited a confidence or gave one--but the boys would crowd up and make +room for Bradley any time, as they dragged at their pipes and swopped +yarns in the murk of the roundhouse at the midnight lunch hour, about +the time Bradley used to stroll in, snapping his fingers together +softly in that curious, absent-minded way he had of doing--for Bradley +was firing for Smithers then on the 582, that took the local freight, +west, out of Big Cloud in the small morning hours. + +Well set-up, jumper tucked in his overalls, the straps over husky +shoulders, thick through the chest, medium height, stocky almost, +steady black eyes, a clean-shaven, serious face, the black hair +grizzled a little and threading gray--that was Martin Bradley. A bit +old to be still firing, perhaps, but he had had to take his turn for +promotion with the rest of the men when he came to the Hill Division. +He'd have gone up in time, way up, to the best on the division, +probably, for Regan had him slated for an engine even then, only----But +we'll come to that in a moment; there's just a word or two to "clear" +the line before we have "rights" through to the terminal. + +Big Cloud in those days, which was shortly after the line was laid +through the Rockies, and the East and West were finally linked after +the stress of toil and hardship and bitter struggle was over, was a +pretty hard burg, pretty hard--a whole lot harder than it is to-day. +There was still a big transient population of about every nationality +on earth, for the road, just because they could operate it, wasn't +finished by a good deal, and construction camps were more numerous than +stations. Bridge gangs were still at work; temporary trestles were +being replaced with ones more permanent; there were cuts through the +gray of the mountain rock to be trimmed and barbered with dynamite; and +there were grades and approaches and endless things to struggle over; +and--well, Big Cloud was still the Mecca of the gamblers, the dive +keepers, and the purveyors of "red-eye," who had flocked there to feed +like vultures on the harvest of pay checks that were circling around. +It was a pretty hard place, Big Cloud--everything wide open--not much +of any law there in the far West in the shadow of the Rockies. It's +different to-day, of course; but that's the way it was then, when +Martin Bradley was firing on the Transcontinental. + +Bradley from the first boarded with the MacQuigans. That's how, +probably, he came to think more of young Reddy MacQuigan, who was a +wiper in the roundhouse, than he did of any of the rest of the railroad +crowd. Perhaps not altogether for young Reddy's sake; perhaps on +account of Mrs. MacQuigan, and particularly on account of old John +MacQuigan--who wasn't any good on earth--a sodden parasite on the +household when he was drunk, and an ugly brute when there wasn't any +money forthcoming from the products of Mrs. MacQuigan's ubiquitous +washtubs to get drunk with. For old John MacQuigan, between whom and +Bradley there existed an armed truce, each regarding the other mutually +as a necessary evil, had no job--for two reasons: first, because he +didn't want one; and, second, because no one would have given him one +if he had. Mrs. MacQuigan, a patient, faded-out little woman, tireless +because she had to be tireless, shouldered the burden, and hid her +shame as best she could from her neighbors. Reddy? No; he didn't help +out much--then. Reddy used to stray a little from the straight and +narrow himself--far enough so that it was pretty generally conceded +that Reddy held his job in the roundhouse on account of his mother, who +did Regan's washing; and, as a matter of cold fact, that was about the +truth of it; and, as a matter of cold fact, too, that was why the +big-hearted master mechanic liked Martin Bradley. + +"I dunno," Regan used to say, twiddling his thumbs over his fat paunch, +"I dunno; it's about the last place _I'd_ want to board, with that +drunken pickings from the scrap heap around. The only decent thing old +John 'll ever do will be to die--h'm? About a week of it would finish +me. Bradley? Yes; he's hung on there quite a spell. Pretty good man, +Martin. I dunno what Mrs. MacQuigan would do without him. Guess +that's why he stays. I'm going to give Martin an engine one of these +days. That'll help out some. When? When his turn comes. First +chance I get. I can't poison anybody off to make room for him--can I?" + +And now just a single word more, while we're getting back the +"complete," to say that this had been going on for two or three years; +Martin Bradley boarding at the MacQuigans' and firing the 582; young +Reddy wiping in the roundhouse, and on the ragged edge of dismissal +every time the pay car came along; Mrs. MacQuigan at her washtubs; old +John leading his disreputable, gin-soaked life; Tommy Regan between the +devil of discipline and the deep blue sea of soft-heartedness anent the +MacQuigans' son and heir--and we're off, the tissue buttoned in our +reefer--off with a clean-swept track. + +It was pay day, an afternoon in the late fall, and, growing dusk, the +switch lights in the Big Cloud yards were already beginning to twinkle +red and white and green, as Martin Bradley, from the pay car platform, +his pay check in his pocket, swung himself to the ground and pushed his +way through a group of men clustered beside the car. He had caught +sight of Regan across the spur going into the roundhouse a moment +before, and he wanted a word with the master mechanic--nothing very +important--a requisition for an extra allowance of waste. And then, +amongst the crowd, he caught sight of some one else, and smiled a +little grimly. Old John MacQuigan, as he always did on pay days, was +hovering about first one, and then another, playing good fellow and +trying to ring himself in on the invitations that would be going around +presently when the whistle blew. + +Bradley, his smile thinning a little as old John, catching sight of him +in turn, sidled off, passed through the group, crossed the +turntable--and halted abruptly, just outside the big engine doors, as +Regan's voice came to him in an angry growl. + +"Now mind what I say, Reddy! Once more, and you're through--for keeps. +And that's my last word. Understand?" + +"Well, you needn't jump a fellow before he's done anything!" It was +Reddy MacQuigan, answering sullenly. + +There was silence for a moment; then Regan's voice again, pretty cold +and even now. + +"I dunno," he said. "I figure you must have been brought into the +world for something, but I dunno what it is. You're not to blame for +your father; but if I let a mother of mine, and nearing sixty years, +slave out the little time she's got left, I'd want to crawl out +somewhere amongst the buttes and make coyote meat of myself. Jump you +before you've done anything--eh!" The little master mechanic's voice +rose suddenly. "I saw you sneak uptown an hour ago when you left the +pay car--one drink for a start--h'm! Well, you put another on top of +it, and it'll be for a--finish! I'd do a lot for that fine old lady of +a mother of yours, and that's why I've taken the trouble to come over +here and warn you what'll happen if you put in the night you're heading +for. 'Tisn't because I can't run the roundhouse without you, my +bucko--mind that!" + +Bradley was snapping his fingers in his queer, nervous way. Reddy +MacQuigan made no answer; at least, Bradley did not hear any, but he +heard Regan moving toward the door. He had no wish to talk to the +master mechanic any more, not just at that moment anyhow, so he +crunched through the engine cinders to another door, entering the +roundhouse as Regan went out on the turntable and headed across the +tracks for the station. + +Two pits away, Reddy MacQuigan, with a black scowl on his face, leaned +against the steam chest of the 1004. Bradley, pretending not to see +him, swung through the gangway and into the cab of the 582. There, for +half an hour, he busied himself in an aimless fashion; but with an eye +out for the young wiper, as the latter moved about the roundhouse. + +The whistle was blowing and Reddy was pulling off his overalls, as +Bradley swung out of his cab again; and he was shading a match from the +wind over the bowl of his pipe just across the turntable, as Reddy came +out. He tossed away the match, puffed, and nodded at MacQuigan. + +"Hello, Reddy," he said in his quiet way, and fell into step with the +boy. + +MacQuigan didn't answer. Bradley never spoke much, anyhow. They +crossed the tracks and started up Main Street in silence. Here, the +railroaders, in groups and twos and threes, filled the street; some +hurrying homeward; others dropping in through the swinging doors, not +infrequently located along the right of way, where gasoline lamps +flared out over the gambling hells, and the crash of tin-pan pianos, +mingled with laughter and shouting, came rolling out from the +dance-hall entrances. + +Bradley, with his eyes in front of him, walked along silently. Upon +MacQuigan's young face had settled the black scowl again; and it grew +blacker as he glanced, now and then, at the man beside him. Behind +them came a knot of his cronies--and some one called his name. + +MacQuigan halted suddenly. + +"Well, so long, Martin," he said gruffly. "I'll be up a little later." + +Bradley's hand went out and linked in the other's arm. + +"Better come on home, Reddy," he said, with one of his rare smiles. + +"Later," Reddy flung out. + +"Better make it now," said Bradley quietly. + +The group behind had come up with them now, and, crowding into Faro +Dave's place, paused a moment in the entrance to absorb the situation. + +"Be a good boy, Reddy, and do as you're told," one of them sang out. + +Reddy whirled on Bradley, the hot blood flushing his face. + +"I wish you'd mind your own blasted business!" he flared. "I'm blamed +good and sick of you tagging me. This isn't the first time. You make +me weary! The trouble with you is that you don't know anything but the +everlasting grouch you carry around. You're a funeral! You're a +tight-wad. Everybody says so. Nobody ever heard of you spending a +cent. Go on--beat it--leave me alone!" + +Bradley's face whitened a little, but the smile was still on his lips. + +"Better draw your fire, Reddy; there's no need of getting hot," he +said. "Come on home; you know what'll happen if you don't; and you +know what Regan told you back there in the roundhouse." + +"So you heard that, eh?" Reddy shot at him. "I thought you did; and +you thought you'd fool me by hanging around there, playing innocent, to +walk home with me, eh?" + +"I wasn't trying to fool you," Bradley answered; and his hand went now +to the wiper's shoulder. + +"Let go!" snarled Reddy. "I'll go home when I feel like it!" + +Bradley's hand closed a little tighter. + +"Don't make a fool of yourself, Reddy," he said gravely. "You'll----" + +And that was all. MacQuigan wasn't much more than a boy, not much more +than that, and hot-headed--and his chums were looking on. He freed +himself from Bradley's hold--with a smash of his fist in Bradley's face. + +Fight? No; there wasn't any fight. There was a laugh--from old John +MacQuigan, who had been trailing the young bloods up the street. And +as Bradley, after staggering back from the unexpected blow, recovered +himself, Reddy MacQuigan, followed by old John, was disappearing into +Faro Dave's "El Dorado" in front of him. + +Bradley went home alone. + +Supper was ready--it was always ready, as everything else was where +little old Mrs. MacQuigan was concerned; and there were four plates on +the red-checkered tablecloth--as there always were--even on pay day! +Bradley sat down, with Mrs. MacQuigan opposite him. + +Not much to look at--Mrs. MacQuigan. A thin, sparse little woman in a +home-made black alpaca dress; the gray hair, thinning, brushed smooth +across her forehead; wrinkles in the patient face, a good many of them; +a hint of wistfulness in the black eyes, that weren't as bright as they +used to be; not very pretty hands, they were red and lumpy around the +knuckles. Not much to look at--just a little old woman, brave as God +Almighty makes them--just Mrs. MacQuigan. + +Bradley, uneasy, glancing at her furtively now and again, ate savagely, +without relish. There wasn't much said; nothing at all about old John +and young Reddy. Mrs. MacQuigan never asked a question--it was pay day. + +There wasn't much said until after the meal was over, and Bradley had +lighted his pipe and pushed back his chair; with Mrs. MacQuigan +lingering at the table, kind of wistfully it seemed, kind of listening, +kind of hanging back from putting away the dishes and taking the two +empty plates off the table--and then she smiled over at Bradley as +though there wasn't anything on her mind at all. + +"Faith, Martin," she said, "sure I don't know at all, at all, what I'd +be doing not seeing you around the house; but it's wondered I have +often enough you've not picked out some nice girl and made a home of +your own." + +The words in their suddenness came to Bradley with a shock; and, his +face strained, he stared queerly at Mrs. MacQuigan. + +A little startled, Mrs. MacQuigan half rose from her chair. + +"What is it, Martin?" she asked tremulously. + +For a moment more, Bradley stared at her. Strange that she should have +spoken like that to-night when there seemed more than ever a sort of +grim analogy between her life and his, that seemed like a bond to-night +drawing them closer--that seemed, somehow, to urge him to pour out his +heart to her--there was motherliness in the sweet old face that seemed +to draw him out of himself as no one else had for more years than he +cared to remember--as even she never had before. + +"What is it, Martin?" she asked again. + +And then Bradley smiled. + +"I've picked her out," he said, in a low voice. "I'm waiting for a +little girl that's promised some day to keep house for me." + +"Oh, Martin!" cried Mrs. MacQuigan excitedly. "And--and you never said +a word!" + +Bradley's hand dove into his inside pocket and came out with a +photograph--and the smile on his face now was full of pride. + +"Here's her picture," he said. + +"Wait, Martin--wait till I get my spectacles!" exclaimed Mrs. +MacQuigan, all in a flutter; and, rising, she hurried over to the +little shelf in the corner. Then, adjusting the steel bows over her +ears, with little pats to smooth down her hair, she picked up the +photograph and stared at it--at the picture of a little tot of eight or +nine, at a merry, happy little face that smiled at her roguishly. + +"She's ten now, God bless her!" said Bradley simply. "That was taken +two years ago--so I haven't so long to wait, you see." + +"Why--why, Martin," stammered Mrs. MacQuigan, "sure you never said you +was married. And the wife, Martin, poor boy, she's--she's dead?" + +Bradley picked up the photograph and replaced it in his pocket--but the +smile now was gone. + +"No--I don't know--I never heard," he said. He walked over to the +window, pulled the shade and stared out, his back to Mrs. MacQuigan. +"She ditched me. I was on the Penn then--doing well. I had my engine +at twenty-five. I went bad for a bit. I'd have gone all the way if it +hadn't been for the kiddie. I'd have had more to answer for than I'd +want to have, blood, perhaps, if I'd stayed, so I pulled up stakes and +came out here." He turned again and came back from the window. "I +couldn't bring the kiddie, of course; it was no place for her. And I +couldn't leave her where she was to grow up with that in her life, for +she was too young then, thank God, to understand; so I'm giving her the +best my money'll buy in a girl's school back East, and"--his voice +broke a little--"and that's the little girl I'm waiting for, to make a +home for me--some time." + +Mrs. MacQuigan's hands fumbled a little as she took off her spectacles +and laid them down--fumbled a little as she laid them on Bradley's +sleeve. + +"God be good to you, Martin," she whispered, and, picking up some +dishes, went hurriedly from the room. + +Bradley went back again and stood by the window, looking out, snapping +his fingers softly with that trick of his when any emotion was upon +him. Strange that he should have told his story to Mrs. MacQuigan +to-night! And yet he was glad he had told her; she probably would +never refer to it again--just understand. Yes; he was glad he had told +her. He hadn't intended to, of course. It had come almost +spontaneously, almost as though for some reason it was _meant_ that he +should tell her, and---- + +Bradley's eyes fixed on a small boy's figure that came suddenly +streaking across the road and flung itself at the MacQuigans' little +front gate; then the gate swung, and the boy came rushing up the yard. +Bradley thought he recognized the figure as one of the call boys, and a +call boy running like that was always and ever a harbinger of trouble. +Instinctively he glanced back into the room. Mrs. MacQuigan was out in +the kitchen. Bradley stepped quickly into the hall, and reached the +front door as the boy began to pound a tattoo with his fists on the +panels. + +Bradley jerked the door open. + +"What's wrong?" he demanded tersely. + +The light from the hall was on the boy now--and his eyes were popping. + +"Say," he panted, in a scared way, "say, one of Reddy's friends sent +me. There's a wild row on at Faro Dave's. Reddy's raisin' the roof, +an'----" + +Bradley's hand closed over the youngster's mouth. In answer to the +knock, Mrs. MacQuigan was hurrying down the hall. + +"What's the matter, Martin?" she questioned nervously, looking from +Bradley to the boy and back again to Bradley. + +"Nothing," said Bradley reassuringly. "I'm wanted down at the +roundhouse to go out with a special." He gave the boy a significant +push gatewards. "Go on, bub," he said. "I'll be right along." + +Bradley went back into the house, picked up his cap, and, with a cheery +good-night to Mrs. MacQuigan, started out again. He walked briskly to +the gate and along past the picket fence--Mrs. MacQuigan had the shade +drawn back, and was watching him from the window--and then, hidden by +the Coussirats' cottage next door, he broke into a run. + +It wasn't far--distances weren't great in Big Cloud in those days, +aren't now, for that matter--and in less than two minutes Bradley had +Faro Dave's "El Dorado" in sight down Main Street--and his face set +hard. He wasn't the only one that was running; men were racing from +every direction; some coming up the street; others, he passed, who +shouted at him, and to whom he paid no attention. In a subconscious +way he counted a dozen figures dart in through the swinging doors of +the "El Dorado" from the street--news of a row travels fast. + +Bradley burst through the doors, still on the run--and brought up at a +dead halt against a solidly packed mass of humanity; Polacks and Swedes +and Hungarians from the construction gangs; a scattering of railroad +men in the rear; and more than a sprinkling of the harder element +gathered from all over town, the hangers-on, the sharpers, and the card +men, the leeches, the ilk of Faro Dave who ran the place, and who +seemed to be intent on maintaining a blockade at the far end of the +barroom. + +The place was jammed, everybody craning their necks toward the door of +the back room, where Faro Dave ran his stud, faro and roulette layouts; +and from there, over the shuffling feet of the crowding men in the bar, +came a snarl of voices--amongst them, Reddy's, screaming out in drunken +fury, incoherently. + +Bradley, without ceremony, pushed into the crowd, and the foreigners +made way for him the best they could. Then he commenced to shoulder +through the sort of self-constituted guard of sympathizers with the +house. One of these tried to block his way more effectually. + +"You'd better keep your hands off, whoever you are," the man threw at +him. "The young fool's been putting the place on the rough ever since +he came in here. All Dave wants to do is put him out of the back door, +and----" + +"Thash the boy, Reddy! Don't lesh him bluff you--saw him change cards +m'self. Damn thief--damn cheat--thash the boy, Reddy!" It was old +John MacQuigan's voice, from the other room, high-pitched, +clutter-tongued, drunken. + +Then a voice, cold, with a sneer, and a ring in the sneer that there +was no mistaking--Faro Dave's voice: + +"You make a move, and I'll drop you quicker'n----" + +Bradley's arms swept out with a quick, fierce movement, hurling the man +who tried to block him out of the way; and, fighting now, ramming with +body and shoulders, throwing those in front of him to right and left, +he half fell, half flung himself finally through the doorway into the +room beyond--too late. + +"Thash the boy, Reddy!"--it was old John's maudlin voice again. "Thash +the----" + +The picture seared itself into Bradley's brain, lightning-quick, +instantaneous, but vivid in every detail, as he ran: The little group +of men, three or four, who had been sitting at the game probably, +seeking cover in the far corner; Reddy MacQuigan, swaying a little, +standing before a somewhat flimsy green-baized card table; old John, +too far gone to stand upright alone, leaning against the wall behind +Reddy; Faro Dave, an ugly white in his face, an uglier revolver in his +hand, standing, facing Reddy across the table; the quick forward lunge +from Reddy, the crash of the table as the boy hurled it to the floor +and flung himself toward the gambler; the roar of a revolver shot, the +flash of the short-tongued flame; a choking scream; another shot, the +tinkle of glass as the bullet shattered the ceiling lamp; then +blackness--all but a dull glow filtering in through the barroom door, +that for the first instant in the sudden contrast gave no light at all. + +Bradley, before he could recover himself, pitched over a tangled mass +of wrecked tables--over that and a man's body. Somebody ran through +the room, and the back door slammed. There were shouts now, and +yells--a chorus of them from the barroom. Some one bawled for a light. + +Bradley got to his knees, and, reaching to raise the boy, wounded or +killed as he believed, found his throat suddenly caught in a vicious +grasp--and Reddy's snarling laugh was in his ears. + +"Let go!" Bradley choked. "Let go, Reddy. It's me--Martin." + +Reddy's hands fell. + +"Martin, eh?" he said thickly. "Thought it was--hic--that----" + +Reddy's voice sort of trailed off. They were bringing lamps into the +room now, holding them up high to get a comprehensive view of +things--and the light fell on the farther wall. Reddy was staring at +it, his eyes slowly dilating, his jaw beginning to hang weakly. + +Bradley glanced over his shoulder. Old John, as though he had slid +down the wall, as though his feet had slipped out from under him, sat +on the floor, legs straight out in front of him, shoulders against the +wall and sagged a little to one side, a sort of ironic jeer on the +blotched features, a little red stream trickling down from his right +temple--dead. + +Not a pretty sight? No--perhaps not. But old John never was a pretty +sight. He'd gone out the way he'd lived--that's all. + +It was Martin Bradley who reached him first, and the crowd hung back +while he bent over the other, hung back and made way for Reddy, who +came unsteadily across the room--not from drink now, the boy's +gait--the drink was out of him--he was weak. There was horror in the +young wiper's eyes, and a white, awful misery in his face. + +A silence fell. Not a man spoke. They looked from father to son. The +room was filling up now--but they came on tiptoe. Gamblers, most of +them, and pretty rough, pretty hard cases, and life held light--but in +that room that night they only looked from father to son, the oaths +gone from their lips, sobered, their faces sort of gray and stunned. + +Bradley, from bending over the dead man, straightened up. + +Reddy MacQuigan, with little jabs of his tongue, wet his lips. + +"The old man's gone, ain't he?" he said in a queer, lifeless way. + +"Yes," said Bradley simply. + +MacQuigan looked around the circle sort of mechanically, sort of +unseeingly--then at the form on the floor. Then he spoke again, almost +as though he were talking to himself. + +"Might just as well have been me that fired the shot," he whispered, +nodding his head. "I'm to blame--ain't I? An' I guess--I guess I've +finished the old lady, too." He looked around the circle again, then +his hands kind of wriggled up to his temples--and before Bradley could +spring to catch him, he went down in a heap on the floor. + +MacQuigan wasn't much more than a boy, not much more than that--but old +enough in another way. What he went through that night and in the days +that followed was between MacQuigan and his God. Life makes strange +meeting points sometimes, and sometimes the running orders are hard to +understand, and sometimes it looks like disaster quick and absolute, +with everything in the ditch, and the right of way a tangled ruin--and +yet when morning breaks there is no call for the wrecking crew, and it +comes to you deep down inside somewhere that it's the Great Despatcher +who's been sitting in on the night trick. + +Reddy MacQuigan went back to the roundhouse a different MacQuigan than +he had left it--sort of older, quieter, more serious--and the days went +by, a month or two of them. + +Regan, with a sort of inward satisfaction and some complacency, tugged +at his scraggly brown mustache, and summed it up pretty well. + +"Did I not say," said Regan, "that the only decent thing old John would +ever do would be to die? H'm? Well, then, I was right, wasn't I? +Look at young Reddy! Straight as a string--and taking care of the old +lady now. No; I ain't getting my shirts starched the way Mrs. +MacQuigan used to starch them--but no matter. Mrs. MacQuigan isn't +taking in washing any more, God bless her! I guess Reddy got it handed +to him pretty straight on the carpet that night. I'll have him pulling +a throttle one of these days--what?" + +Bradley? Yes; this is Martin Bradley's story--not Reddy MacQuigan's. +But Reddy had his part in it--had running orders to make one more of +those strange meeting points fixed by the Great Despatcher that we were +speaking about a minute ago. + +It was three months to the day from old John MacQuigan's death that +Bradley, in from a run, found a letter waiting for him up at Mrs. +MacQuigan's--and went down under it like a felled ox! Not the big +thing to do? Well, perhaps not--all that he cared for in life, +everything that he lived for, everything that had kept him straight +since his trouble years ago, snatched from him without a moment's +warning--that was all. Another man might not have lost his grip--or he +might. Bradley lost his--for a little while--but they call him to-day +a game man on the Hill Division. + +White-faced, not quite understanding himself, in a queer sort of +groping way, Bradley, in his flood of bitter misery, told Mrs. +MacQuigan, who had watched him open the letter--told her that his +little housekeeper, as he had come to call the kiddie, was dead. Not +even a chance to see her--an accident--the letter from the lawyers who +did his business, transmitting the news received from the school +authorities who knew only the lawyers as the principals--a letter, +trying to break the news in a softer way than a telegram would have +done, since Bradley was too far away to get back East in time, anyhow. + +And Mrs. MacQuigan put her arms around him, and, understanding as only +her mother's heart could understand, tried to comfort him, while the +tears rained down the sweet old face. But Bradley's eyes were dry. +With his elbows on the table, holding his chin in his hands, his face +like stone, he stared at the letter he had spread out on the red +checkered cloth--stared for a long time at that, and at the little +photograph he had taken from his pocket. + +"Martin, boy," pleaded Mrs. MacQuigan, and her hand brushed back the +hair from his forehead, "Martin, boy, don't take it like that." + +And then Bradley turned and looked at her--not a word--only a bitter +laugh--and picked up his letter and the picture and went out. + +Bradley went up on the 582 with the local freight, west, that night, +and there was a dare-devil laugh in his heart and a mechanical sense of +existence in his soul. And in the cab that night, deep in the +mountains, Bradley lost his grip. It seemed to sweep him in a sudden, +overwhelming surge; and, with the door swung wide, the cab leaping into +fiery red, the sweat beads trickling down his face that was white in a +curious way where the skin showed through for all the grime and +perspiration, he lurched and snatched at his engineer's arm. + +"Life's a hell of a thing, ain't it, Smithers?" he bawled over the roar +of the train and the swirl of the wind, wagging his head and shaking +imperatively at Smithers' arm. + +Smithers, a fussy little man, with more nerves than are good for an +engineer, turned, stared, caught a something in the fireman's face--and +tried to edge a little farther over on his seat. In the red, +flickering glare, Bradley's eyes had a look in them that wasn't sane, +and his figure, swaying with the heave of the cab, seemed to shoot back +and forth uncannily, grotesquely, in and out of the shadows. + +"Martin, for God's sake, Martin," gasped the engineer, "what's wrong +with you?" + +"You heard what I said," shouted Bradley, a sullen note in his voice, +gripping the engineer's arm still harder. "That's what it is, ain't +it? Why don't you answer?" + +Smithers, frightened now, stared mutely. The headlight shot suddenly +from the glittering ribbons of steel far out into nothingness, flinging +a filmy ray across a caņon's valley, and mechanically Smithers checked +a little as they swung the curve. Then, with a deafening roar of +thunder racketing through the mountains, they swept into a cut, the +rock walls towering high on either side--and over the din Bradley's +voice screamed again--and again he shook Smithers' arm. + +"Ain't it? D'ye hear--ain't it? Say--ain't it?" + +"Y-yes," stammered Smithers weakly, with a gulp. + +And then Bradley laughed--queerly. + +"You're a damn fool, Smithers!" he flung out, with a savage jeer. +"What do you know about it!" And throwing the engineer's arm from him, +his shovel clanged and clanged again, as into the red maw before him he +shot the coal. + +Smithers was scared. Bradley never said another word after that--just +kept to his own side of the cab, hugging his seat, staring through the +cab glass ahead, chin down on his breast, pulling the door at +intervals, firing at intervals like an automaton, then back to his seat +again. Smithers was scared. + +At Elk River, the end of the local run, Smithers told the train crew +about it, and they laughed at him, and looked around to find out what +Martin Bradley had to say about it--but Bradley wasn't in sight. + +Not much of a place, Elk River, not big enough for one to go anywhere +without the whole population knowing it; and it wasn't long before they +knew where Bradley was. The local made a two hours' lay-over there +before starting back for Big Cloud; and Martin Bradley spent most of it +in Kelly's place, a stone's throw from, the station. Not drinking +much, a glass or two all told, sitting most of the time staring out of +the window--not drinking much--getting the _taste_ of it that he hadn't +known for a matter of many years. Two glasses, perhaps three, that was +all--but he left Kelly's for the run back with a flask in his pocket. + +It was the flask that did it, not Smithers. Smithers was frightened at +his silent fireman tippling over his shovel, good and frightened before +he got to Big Cloud, and Smithers did not understand; but Smithers, for +all that, wasn't the man to throw a mate down cold. Neither was +Bradley himself bad enough to have aroused any suspicion. It was the +flask that did it. + +They made Big Cloud on the dot that morning--11.26. And in the +roundhouse, as Bradley stepped out through the gangway, his overalls +caught on the hasp of the tool-box on the tender, and the jerk sent the +flask flying into splinters on the floor--at Regan's feet. + +The fat little master mechanic, on his morning round of inspection, +halted, stared in amazement at the broken glass and trickling beverage, +got a whiff of the raw spirit, and blinked at Bradley, who, by this +time, had reached the ground. + +"What's the meaning of this?" demanded Regan, nonplussed. "Not you, +Bradley--on the run?" + +Bradley did not answer. He was regarding the master mechanic with a +half smile--not a pleasant one--more a defiant curl of his lips. + +Smithers, discreetly attempting to make his escape through the opposite +gangway, caught Regan's attention. + +"Here, you, Smithers," Regan called peremptorily, "come----" + +Then Bradley spoke, cutting in roughly. + +"Leave Smithers out of it," he said. + +Regan stared for another moment; then took a quick step forward, close +up to Bradley--and got the fireman's breath. + +Bradley shoved him away insolently. + +It was a minute before Regan spoke. He liked Bradley and always had; +but from the soles of his feet up to the crown of his head, Regan, +first and last, was a railroad man. And Regan knew but one creed. +Other men might drink and play the fool and be forgiven and trusted +again, a wiper, a shop hand, a brakeman, perhaps, or any one of the +train crew, but a man in the cab of an engine--_never_. Reasons, +excuses, contributory causes, counted not at all--they were not asked +for--they did not exist. The fact alone stood--as the fact. It was a +minute before Regan spoke, and then he didn't say much, just a word or +two without raising his voice, before he turned on his heel and walked +out of the roundhouse. + +"I'm sorry for this, Bradley," he said. "You're the last man I +expected it from. You know the rules. You've fired your last run on +this road. You're out." + +But Regan might have been making some comment on the weather for all +the concern it appeared to give Bradley. He stood leaning against the +tender, snapping his fingers in his queer way, silent, hard-faced, his +eyes far away from his immediate surroundings. Smithers, a wiper or +two, Reddy MacQuigan amongst them, clustered around him after Regan had +gone; but Bradley paid no attention to them, answered none of their +questions or comments; and after a little while pushed himself through +them and went out of the roundhouse. + +Bradley didn't go home that day; but Reddy MacQuigan did--at the noon +hour. That's how Mrs. MacQuigan got it. Mrs. MacQuigan did not wait +to wash up the dishes. She put on the little old-fashioned poke bonnet +that she had worn for as many seasons as Big Cloud could remember, and +started out to find Regan. She ran the master mechanic to earth on the +station platform, and opened up on him, fluttering, anxious, and +distressed. + +"Sure, Regan," she faltered, "you did not mean it when you fired Martin +this morning--not for good." + +Regan pulled at his mustache and looked at her--and shook his head at +her reprovingly. + +"I meant it, Mrs. MacQuigan," he said kindly. "You must know that. It +will do neither of us any good to talk about it. I wouldn't have let +him out if I could have helped it." + +"Then listen here, Regan," she pleaded. "Listen to the why of it, that +'tis only me who knows." + +And Regan listened--and the story lost nothing in the telling because +the faded eyes were wet, and the wrinkled lips quivered sometimes, and +would not form the words. + +At the end, big-hearted Regan reached into his back pocket for his +plug, met his teeth in it, wrenched a piece away without looking at +her, and cleared his throat--but he still shook his head. + +"It's no use you talking, Mrs. MacQuigan," he said gruffly, to hide his +emotion. "I'd fire any man on earth, 'tis no matter the who or why, +for drinking in the cab on a run." + +"But, Regan," she begged, catching at his arm, "he'll be leaving Big +Cloud with his job gone." + +"And what then?" said Regan. "Mabbe 'twould be the best thing--h'm?" + +"Ah, Regan," she said, and her voice caught a little, "sure, 'twould be +the end of Martin, don't you see? 'Tis me that knows him, and 'twill +not last long, the spell, only till the worst of it is over--Martin is +too fine for that, Regan. If I can keep him by me, Regan, d'ye mind? +If he goes away where there's nobody to give him a thought +he'll--he'll--ah, Regan, faith, Regan, 'tis a lot you've thought of +Martin Bradley the same as me." + +Regan examined a crack in the planking of the station platform +minutely, while Mrs. MacQuigan held tenaciously to his coat sleeve. + +"I dunno," said Regan heavily. "I dunno. Mabbe I'll----" + +"Ah, Regan!" she cried happily. "I knew 'twas----" + +"Not in a cab!" interposed Regan hastily. "Not if he was the president +of the road. But I'll see, Mrs. MacQuigan, I'll see." + +And Regan saw--Thornley, the trainmaster. And after Thornley, he saw +Reddy MacQuigan in the roundhouse. + +"Reddy," said he, with a growl that wasn't real, "there's a vacancy in +the engine crews--h'm?" + +"Martin's?" said Reddy quickly. + +"Yes," said Regan. "Do you want it?" + +"No," said Reddy MacQuigan shortly. + +"Good boy," said the fat little master mechanic. "Then I'll give it to +you just the same. Martin's through in here; but he'll get a chance +braking for Thornley. You'll run spare to begin with, and"--as Reddy +stared a little numbly--"don't break your neck thanking me. Thank +yourself for turning into a man. Your mother's a fine woman, Reddy. I +guess you're beginning to find that out too--h'm?" + +So Reddy MacQuigan went to firing where Martin Bradley had fired +before, and his pay went up; and Bradley--no, don't get that +idea--whatever else he may have done, Martin Bradley didn't make a +beast of himself. Bradley took the job they offered him, neither +gratefully nor ungratefully, took it with that spirit of utter +indifference for anything and everything that seemed to have laid hold +of him and got him in its grip--and off duty he spent most of his time +in the emporiums along Main Street. He drank some, but never enough to +snow him under; it was excitement that he seemed to crave, +forgetfulness in anything that would absorb him for the moment. It was +not drink so much; it was the faro tables and the roulette and the stud +poker that, crooked from the drop of the hat, claimed him and cleaned +him out night after night--all except Mrs. MacQuigan's board money, +that they never got away from, him. Mrs. MacQuigan got that as +regularly now that she didn't need it with Reddy to look after her as +she had when she was practically dependent upon Bradley for it all. + +Silent, grim, taciturn always, more so now than ever, Bradley went his +way; indifferent to Regan when Regan buttonholed him; indifferent to +Thornley and his threats of dismissal, meant to jerk Bradley into the +straight; indifferent to every mortal thing on earth. And the Hill +Division, with Regan leading, shook its head. There wasn't a man but +knew the story, and, big under the greasy jumpers and the oil-soaked +shirts, they never judged him; but Bradley's eyes held no invitation +for companionship, so they left him pretty much alone. + +"I dunno," said Regan, tugging at his mustache, twiddling with his +thumbs over his paunch, "I dunno--looks like the scrap heap at the end +of the run--h'm? I dunno." + +But Mrs. MacQuigan said no. + +"Wait," said she, with her patient smile. "It's me that knows Martin. +It's a sore, hurt heart the boy has now; but you wait and see--I'll win +him through. It's proud yet you'll be to take your hats off to Martin +Bradley!" + +Martin Bradley--a game man--that's what they call him now. Mrs. +MacQuigan was right--wasn't she? Not perhaps just in the way she +thought she was--but right for all that. Call it luck or chance if you +like, something more than that if it strikes you that way--but an +accident in the yards one night, a month after Bradley had lost his +engine, put one of the train crew of the Rat River Special out of +commission with a torn hand, and sent a call boy streaking uptown for a +substitute. Call it luck if you like, that the work train with a +hybrid gang of a hundred-odd Polacks, Armenians, and Swedes, cooped up +in a string of box cars converted into bunk houses, mess houses and +commissariat, a window or two in them to take the curse off, and end +doors connecting them for the sake of sociability, pulled out for the +new Rat River trestle work with Reddy MacQuigan handling the shovel end +of it for Bull Coussirat, who had been promoted in the cab--and Bradley +as the substitute brakeman on the front end. Well, maybe it was +luck--but that's not what they call it on the Hill Division. + +Perhaps no one quite understood Bradley, even at the end, except Mrs. +MacQuigan; and possibly even she didn't get it all. Inconsistent, to +put it mildly, that a man like Bradley would have let go at all? Well, +it's an easy matter and a very human one, to judge another from the +safe vantage ground of distance--isn't it? Some men take a thing one +way, and some another; and in some the feelings take deeper root than +in others--and find their expression in a different way. Ditched from +the start, Bradley hadn't much to cling to, had he--only the baby girl +he had dreamed about on the runs at night; only the little tot he had +slaved for, who some day was to make a home for him? But about the Rat +River Special---- + +It was midnight when they pulled out of Big Cloud; and Bradley, in the +caboose, glanced at Heney's tissue, which, as a matter of form, the +conductor gave him to read. The Special was to run twenty minutes +behind No. 17, the westbound mail train, and make a meeting point with +the through freight, No. 84, eastbound, at The Forks. The despatchers +had seized the propitious moment to send the rolling camp through in +the quiet hours of traffic, with an eye out to getting the foreigners +promptly on the job in the morning for fear they might draw an extra +hour or two of time--without working for it! The Special was due to +make Rat River at four o'clock. + +Bradley handed back the order without comment, picked up his lantern, +and started for the door. + +"No need of going forward to-night," said Heney, laying his arm on +Bradley's arm. "We've only a short train, a dozen cars, and we can +watch it well enough from the cupola. It's damn cold out there." + +"Oh, I guess it's all right, Heney," Bradley answered--and went out +through the door. + +There weren't any platforms to the box cars, just small end doors. +Once in camp, and stationary on a siding, the cars would be connected +up with little wooden gangways, you understand? Bradley, from the +platform of the caboose, stepped across the buffer, and made his way +through several cars. One was pretty much like another; a stove going, +and stuffy hot; the foreigners stretched out in their bunks, some of +them; some of them playing cards on the floor; some asleep; some +quarrelling, chattering, jabbering; a hard looking lot for the most +part, black-visaged, scowling, unshaven, gold circlets dangling in +their ears--bar the Swedes. + +Bradley worked along with scarcely more than a glance at the occupants, +until, in the fourth car, he halted suddenly and shoved his lamp into +the face of a giant of a man, who squatted in the corner, sullen and +apart, with muttering lips. + +"What's wrong with you?" he demanded brusquely. + +The man drew back with a growl that was like a beast's, lips curling +back over the teeth. Bradley stared at him coolly, then turned +inquiringly to the crowd in the car. He was greeted with a burst of +unintelligible, polyglot words, and spontaneous, excitable +gesticulations. Bradley shrugged his shoulders, and slammed the door +behind him. + +Outside on the buffer, he reached for the ladder, swung himself up the +iron rungs to the top of the car, and, with his lantern hooked in his +arm, sat down on the footboard, bracing himself against the brake +wheel, and buttoned his reefer--there was another night--to +think--ahead of him. + +To think--if he could only forget! It was that fearful sense of +impotency--impotency--impotency. It seemed to laugh and jeer and mock +at him. It seemed to make a plaything of this father love of his. +There was nothing--nothing he could do to bring her back--that was +it--nothing! Soul, life, mind and body, he would have given them all +to have saved her--would give them now to bring her back--and there was +only this ghastly impotency. It seemed at times that it would drive +him mad--and he could not forget. And then the bitter, crushing grief; +the rebellion, fierce, ungovernable, that his _all_ should have been +taken from him, that the years he had planned should be turned to +nothing but grinning mockery; and then that raging sense of impotency +again, that rocked his turbulent soul as in an angry, storm-tossed sea. + +Time passed, and he sat there motionless, save for the jolting of the +train that bumped him this way and that against the brake wheel. They +were into the mountains now; and the snowy summits, moon-touched, +reared themselves in white, grotesque, fanciful shapes, and seemed, +cold in their beauty, to bring an added chill to the frosty night. +Ahead, far ahead, the headlight's ray swept now the track, now the gray +rock side, now, softly green, a clump of pines, as the right of way +curved and twisted and turned; now, slowing up a grade, the heavy, +growling bark of the exhaust came with long intervals between, and now, +on the level, it was quick as the tattoo of a snare drum, with the +short stack belching a myriad fiery sparks insolently skyward in a +steady stream; around him was the sweep of the wind, the roar of the +train, the pound of the trucks beating the fish-plates, the sway, the +jerk, the recovery of the slewing cars, and, curiously, the deep, +brooding silence of the mountains, frowning, it seemed, at this +sacrilege of noise; behind, showed the yellow glimmer from the caboose, +the dark, indistinct outline of a watching figure in the cupola. + +Suddenly, snatching at the brake wheel to help him up, Bradley sprang +erect. From directly underneath his feet came a strange, confused, +muffled sound, like a rush of men from one end of the car to the other. +Then there broke a perfect bedlam of cries, yells, shouts and +screams--and then a revolver shot. + +In an instant Bradley was scrambling down the ladder to +investigate--they could not hear the row, whatever it was, in the +caboose--and in another he had kicked the car door open and plunged +inside. A faint, bluish haze of smoke undulated in the air, creeping +to the roof of the car; and there was the acrid smell of powder--but +there was no sign of a fight, no man, killed or wounded, sprawling on +the floor. But the twenty men who filled the car were crouched in +groups and singly against the car sides; or sat upright in their bunks, +their faces white, frightened--only their volubility unchecked, for all +screamed and talked and waved their arms at once. + +They made a rush for Bradley, explaining in half a dozen languages what +had happened. Bradley pushed them roughly away from him. + +"Speak English!" he snapped. "What's wrong here? Can't any of you +speak English?" + +An Italian grabbed his arm and pointed through the door Bradley had +left open behind him to the next car forward. "Pietro!" he shouted out +wildly. "Gotta da craze--mad--gotta da gun!" + +"Well, go on!" prodded Bradley. "He's run into the next car. I +understand that--but what happened here? Who's Pietro?" + +But the man's knowledge, like his English, was limited. He did not +know much--Pietro was not one of them--Pietro had come only that +morning to Big Cloud from the East--Pietro had gone suddenly mad--no +man had done anything to make Pietro mad. + +And then suddenly into Bradley's mind leaped the story that he had read +in the papers a few days before of an Italian, a homicidal maniac, who +had escaped from an asylum somewhere East, and had disappeared. The +description of the man, as he remembered it, particularly the great +size of the man, tallied, now that he thought of it, with the fellow +who had been in the car when he had first passed through. He glanced +quickly around--the man was gone. So that was Pietro! + +Bradley started on the run for the next car ahead; and, subconsciously, +as he ran, he felt the speed of the train quicken. But that was +natural enough--they had been crawling to the summit of Mitre Peak, +and, over that now, before them lay a four-percent grade to the level +below, one of the nastiest bits of track on the division, curves all +the way--only Bull Coussirat was hitting it up pretty hard for a +starter. + +In the next car the same scene was repeated--the smell of powder smoke, +the blue haze hanging listless near the roof out of the air currents; +the crouched, terrified foreigners, one with a broken wrist, dangling, +where a bullet had shattered it. Pietro, Berserker fashion, was +shooting his way through the train. + +Bradley went forward more cautiously now, more warily. Strange the way +the speed was quickening! The cars were rocking now with short, +vicious slews. He thought he heard a shout from the track-side +without, but he could not be sure of that. + +Through the next car and the next he went, trailing the maniac; and +then he started to run again. Stumbling feet, trying to hold their +footing, came to him from the top of the car. With every instant now +the speed of the train was increasing--past the limit of safety--past +the point where he would have hesitated to use the emergency brakes, if +there had been any to use--a luxury as yet extended only to the +passenger equipment in those days. The Polacks, the Armenians, and the +Swedes were beginning to yell with another terror, at the frantic +pitching of the cars, making a wild, unearthly chorus that echoed up +and down the length of the train. + +Bradley's brain was working quickly now. It wasn't only this madman +that he was chasing fruitlessly. There must be something wrong, more +serious still, in the engine cab--that was Heney, and Carrol, the other +brakeman, who had run along the top. + +Bradley dashed through the door, and, between the cars, jumped for the +ladder and swarmed up--the globe of his lamp in a sudden slew shivered +against the car roof, and the flame went out in a puff. He flung the +thing from him; and, with arms wide outspread for balance on his +reeling foothold, ran, staggered, stumbled, recovered himself, and sped +on again, springing from car to car, up the string of them, to where +the red flare, leaping from the open fire box in the cab ahead, +silhouetted two figures snatching for their hold at the brake-wheel on +the front end of the forward car--Heney and Carrol. And as Bradley +ran, a thin stream of flame spurted upward from the cab, and there came +faintly, almost lost in the thunder of the train, the bark of a +revolver shot--and the two figures, ducking instantly, crouched lower. + +And then Bradley stood beside the others; and Heney, that no man ever +called a coward, clutched at Martin Bradley and shouted in his ear: + +"For God's sake, Martin, what'll we do? The throttle was wide at the +top of the grade when he threw Bull Coussirat off. We saw it from the +cupola. It's certain death to make a move for him!" + +But Bradley made no answer. Tight-lipped, he was staring down into the +cab; and a livid face stared back at him--the face of the man that he +had stopped to look at as they had pulled out of Big Cloud--Pietro--the +face, hideously contorted, of a maniac. And on the floor of the cab, +stretched out, wriggling spasmodically, Reddy MacQuigan lay upon his +back; and Pietro half knelt upon him, clutching with one hand at the +boy's throat, pointing a revolver with the other at the roof of the car. + +Wild, crazy fast now, the speed was; the engine dancing ahead; the cars +wriggling behind; the yellow glimmer of the caboose shooting this way +and that like a pursuing phantom will-o'-the-wisp; and from beneath the +roofs of the cars rose that muffled, never-ending scream of terror from +the Polacks, the Armenians and the Swedes--rose, too, from the roofs of +the cars themselves, for some were climbing there. It was disaster +absolute and certain not a mile ahead where the track in a short, +murderous curve hugged Bald Eagle Peak, with the caņon dropping a +thousand feet sheer down from the right of way, disaster there--if they +ever got that far! + +But Bradley, though he knew it well enough from a hundred runs, was not +thinking of that. In a calm, strange way there seemed to come one more +analogy between Mrs. MacQuigan's life and his--this human thing that +looked like a gorilla was choking her son to death, the son that was +making a home for her as she had dreamed he would do some day, the son +that was all she had to depend upon. Mrs. MacQuigan's son--his little +girl. Both out! + +There seemed to flash before him the picture of the gray head bowed +upon the red-checkered tablecloth in the little dining room, the frail +shoulders shaking with the same grief that he was drinking now to the +dregs, the same grief that he would have sold his soul to avert--only +he had been impotent--impotent. But he was not impotent here--to keep +those dregs from Mrs. MacQuigan, the only soul on earth he cared for +now. And suddenly Bradley laughed--loud--high above the roar of the +train, the shouts and screams of the maddened creatures it was sweeping +to eternity, and the human gorilla in the cab shot its head forward and +covered Bradley with its revolver, teeth showing in a snarl. + +And so Bradley laughed, and with the laugh poised himself--and sprang +far out from the car roof in a downward plunge for the tender, reached +the coal and rolled, choking with the hot blood in his throat from the +shot that had caught him in mid-air, rolled down with an avalanche of +coal, grappled with the frothing creature that leaped to meet him, +staggered to his feet, struggled for a moment, fast-locked with the +madman, until a lurch of the engine hurled them with a crash against +the cab frame, and the other, stunned, slid inertly from his grasp. +And then for an instant Bradley stood swaying, clutching at his +throat--then he took a step forward--both hands went out pawing for the +throttle, found it, closed it--and he went down across Bull Coussirat's +empty seat--dead. + +Only a humble figure, Bradley, just a toiler like millions of others, +not of much account, not a great man in the world's eyes--only a humble +figure. Measure him as it seems best to you to measure him for his +frailty or his strength. They call him a game man on the Hill +Division. His story is told. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night Operator, by Frank L. Packard + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OPERATOR *** + +***** This file should be named 33634-8.txt or 33634-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/6/3/33634/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Packard + +Release Date: September 4, 2010 [EBook #33634] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OPERATOR *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +THE NIGHT OPERATOR +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +BY +</H4> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +FRANK L. PACKARD +</H3> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +AUTHOR OF "THE WIRE DEVILS," "THE ADVENTURES +OF JIMMIE DALE," ETC.<BR> +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE COPP, CLARK CO., LIMITED +<BR> +TORONTO +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +COPYRIGHT, 1919. +<BR> +GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY +<BR><BR><BR> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +TO +<BR> +CHARLES AGNEW MACLEAN +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4 STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +BY FRANK L. PACKARD +</H4> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +THE NIGHT OPERATOR<BR> +THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE<BR> +THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE<BR> +THE WIRE DEVILS<BR> +THE SIN THAT WAS HIS<BR> +THE BELOVED TRAITOR<BR> +GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN<BR> +THE MIRACLE MAN<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +FOREWORD +</H3> + +<P> +Summed up short, the Hill Division is a vicious piece of track; also, +it is a classic in its profound contempt for the stereotyped equations +and formulae of engineering. And it is that way for the very simple +reason that it could not be any other way. The mountains objected, and +objected strenuously, to the process of manhandling. They were there +first, the mountains, that was all, and their surrender was a bitter +matter. +</P> + +<P> +So, from Big Cloud, the divisional point, at the eastern fringe of the +Rockies, to where the foothills of the Sierras on the western side +merge with the more open, rolling country, the right of way performs +gyrations that would not shame an acrobatic star. It sweeps through +the rifts in the range like a freed bird from the open door of its +cage; clings to caņon edges where a hissing stream bubbles and boils +eighteen hundred feet below; burrows its way into the heart of things +in long tunnels and short ones; circles a projecting spur in a dizzy +whirl, and swoops from the higher to the lower levels in grades whose +percentages the passenger department does not deem it policy to specify +in its advertising literature, but before which the men in the cabs and +the cabooses shut their teeth and try hard to remember the prayers they +learned at their mothers' knees. Some parts of it are worse than +others, naturally; but no part of it, to the last inch of its +single-tracked mileage, is pretty—leaving out the scenery, which is +<I>grand</I>. That is the Hill Division. +</P> + +<P> +And the men who man the shops, who pull the throttles on the big, +ten-wheel mountain racers, who swing the pick and shovels in the +lurching cabs, who do the work about the yards, or from the cupola of a +caboose stare out on a string of wriggling flats, boxes and gondolas, +and, at night-time, watch the high-flung sparks sail heavenward, as the +full, deep-chested notes of the exhaust roar an accompaniment in their +ears, are men with calloused, horny hands, toilers, grimy of face and +dress, rough if you like, not gentle of word, nor, sometimes, of +action—but men whose hearts are big and right, who look you in the +face, and the grip of whose paws, as they are extended after a hasty +cleansing on a hunk of more or less greasy waste, is the grip of men. +</P> + +<P> +Many of these have lived their lives, done their work, passed on, and +left no record, barely a memory, behind them, as other men in other +places and in other spheres of work have done and always will do; but +others, for this or that, by circumstance, or personality, or +opportunity, have woven around themselves the very legends and +traditions of their environment. +</P> + +<P> +And so these are the stories of the Hill Division and of the men who +wrought upon it; the stories of those days when it was young and in the +making; the stories of the days when Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, was +superintendent, when gruff, big-hearted, big-paunched Tommy Regan was +master mechanic, when the grizzled, gray-streaked Harvey was division +engineer, and little Doctor McTurk was the Company surgeon, and Riley +was the trainmaster, and Spence was the chief despatcher; the stories +of men who have done brave duty and come to honor and glory and their +reward—and the stories of some who have gone into Division for the +last time on orders from the Great Trainmaster, and who will never +railroad any more. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +F. L. P. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H2> + +<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%"> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">CHAPTER</TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> </TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap01">THE NIGHT OPERATOR</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap02">OWSLET AND THE 1601</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap03">THE APOTHEOSIS OF SAMMY DURGAN</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap04">THE WRECKING BOSS</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap05">THE MAN WHO SQUEALED</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap06">THE AGE LIMIT</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap07">"THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS"</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap08">ON THE NIGHT WIRE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap09">THE OTHER FELLOW'S JOB</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap10">THE RAT RIVER SPECIAL</A></TD> +</TR> + +</TABLE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE NIGHT OPERATOR +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +I +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE NIGHT OPERATOR +</H4> + +<P> +Toddles, in the beginning, wasn't exactly a railroad man—for several +reasons. First, he wasn't a man at all; second, he wasn't, strictly +speaking, on the company's pay roll; third, which is apparently +irrelevant, everybody said he was a bad one; and fourth—because +Hawkeye nicknamed him Toddles. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles had another name—Christopher Hyslop Hoogan—but Big Cloud +never lay awake at nights losing any sleep over that. On the first run +that Christopher Hyslop Hoogan ever made, Hawkeye looked him over for a +minute, said, "Toddles," short-like—and, short-like, that settled the +matter so far as the Hill Division was concerned. His name was Toddles. +</P> + +<P> +Piecemeal, Toddles wouldn't convey anything to you to speak of. You'd +have to see Toddles coming down the aisle of a car to get him at +all—and then the chances are you'd turn around after he'd gone by and +stare at him, and it would be even money that you'd call him back and +fish for a dime to buy something by way of excuse. Toddles got a good +deal of business that way. Toddles had a uniform and a regular run all +right, but he wasn't what he passionately longed to be—a legitimate, +dyed-in-the-wool railroader. His paycheck, plus commissions, came from +the News Company down East that had the railroad concession. Toddles +was a newsboy. In his blue uniform and silver buttons, Toddles used to +stack up about the height of the back of the car seats as he hawked his +wares along the aisles; and the only thing that was big about him was +his head, which looked as though it had got a whopping big lead on his +body—and didn't intend to let the body cut the lead down any. This +meant a big cap, and, as Toddles used to tilt the vizor forward, the +tip of his nose, bar his mouth which was generous, was about all one +got of his face. Cap, buttons, magazines and peanuts, that was +Toddles—all except his voice. Toddles had a voice that would make you +jump if you were nervous the minute he opened the car door, and if you +weren't nervous you would be before he had reached the other end of the +aisle—it began low down somewhere on high G and went through you +shrill as an east wind, and ended like the shriek of a brake-shoe with +everything the Westinghouse equipment had to offer cutting loose on a +quick stop. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye? That was what Toddles called his beady-eyed conductor in +retaliation. Hawkeye used to nag Toddles every chance he got, and, +being Toddles' conductor, Hawkeye got a good many chances. In a word, +Hawkeye, carrying the punch on the local passenger, that happened to be +the run Toddles was given when the News Company sent him out from the +East, used to think he got a good deal of fun out of Toddles—only his +idea of fun and Toddles' idea of fun were as divergent as the poles, +that was all. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles, however, wasn't anybody's fool, not by several degrees—not +even Hawkeye's. Toddles hated Hawkeye like poison; and his hate, apart +from daily annoyances, was deep-seated. It was Hawkeye who had dubbed +him "Toddles." And Toddles repudiated the name with his heart, his +soul—and his fists. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles wasn't anybody's fool, whatever the division thought, and he +was right down to the basic root of things from the start. Coupled +with the stunted growth that nature in a miserly mood had doled out to +him, none knew better than himself that the name of "Toddles," keeping +that nature stuff patently before everybody's eyes, damned him in his +aspirations for a bona fide railroad career. Other boys got a job and +got their feet on the ladder as call-boys, or in the roundhouse; +Toddles got—a grin. Toddles pestered everybody for a job. He +pestered Carleton, the super. He pestered Tommy Regan, the master +mechanic. Every time that he saw anybody in authority Toddles spoke up +for a job, he was in deadly earnest—and got a grin. Toddles with a +basket of unripe fruit and stale chocolates and his "best-seller" voice +was one thing; but Toddles as anything else was just—Toddles. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles repudiated the name, and did it forcefully. Not that he +couldn't take his share of a bit of guying, but because he felt that he +was face to face with a vital factor in the career he longed for—so he +fought. And if nature had been niggardly in one respect, she had been +generous in others; Toddles, for all his size, possessed the heart of a +lion and the strength of a young ox, and he used both, with black and +bloody effect, on the eyes and noses of the call-boys and younger +element who called him Toddles. He fought it all along the line—at +the drop of the hat—at a whisper of "Toddles." There wasn't a day +went by that Toddles wasn't in a row; and the women, the mothers of the +defeated warriors whose eyes were puffed and whose noses trickled +crimson, denounced him in virulent language over their washtubs and the +back fences of Big Cloud. You see, they didn't understand him, so they +called him a "bad one," and, being from the East and not one of +themselves, "a New York gutter snipe." +</P> + +<P> +But, for all that, the name stuck. Up and down through the Rockies it +was—Toddles. Toddles, with the idea of getting a lay-over on a +siding, even went to the extent of signing himself in full—Christopher +Hyslop Hoogan—every time his signature was in order; but the official +documents in which he was concerned, being of a private nature between +himself and the News Company, did not, in the very nature of things, +have much effect on the Hill Division. Certainly the big fellows never +knew he had any name but Toddles—and cared less. But they knew him as +Toddles, all right! All of them did, every last one of them! Toddles +was everlastingly and eternally bothering them for a job. Any kind of +a job, no matter what, just so it was real railroading, and so a fellow +could line up with everybody else when the paycar came along, and look +forward to being something some day. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles, with time, of course, grew older, up to about seventeen or so, +but he didn't grow any bigger—not enough to make it noticeable! Even +Toddles' voice wouldn't break—it was his young heart that did all the +breaking there was done. Not that he ever showed it. No one ever saw +a tear in the boy's eyes. It was clenched fists for Toddles, clenched +fists and passionate attack. And therein, while Toddles had grasped +the basic truth that his nickname militated against his ambitions, he +erred in another direction that was equally fundamental, if not more so. +</P> + +<P> +And here, it was Bob Donkin, the night despatcher, as white a man as +his record after years of train-handling was white, a railroad man from +the ground up if there ever was one, and one of the best, who set +Toddles— But we'll come to that presently. We've got our "clearance" +now, and we're off with "rights" through. +</P> + +<P> +No. 83, Hawkeye's train—and Toddles'—scheduled Big Cloud on the +eastbound run at 9.05; and, on the night the story opens, they were +about an hour away from the little mountain town that was the +divisional point, as Toddles, his basket of edibles in the crook of his +arm, halted in the forward end of the second-class smoker to examine +again the fistful of change that he dug out of his pants pocket with +his free hand. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles was in an unusually bad humor, and he scowled. With exceeding +deftness he separated one of the coins from the others, using his +fingers like the teeth of a rake, and dropped the rest back jingling +into his pocket. The coin that remained he put into his mouth, and bit +on it—hard. His scowl deepened. Somebody had presented Toddles with +a lead quarter. +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't so much the quarter, though Toddles' salary wasn't so big as +some people's who would have felt worse over it, it was his <I>amour +propre</I> that was touched—deeply. It wasn't often that any one could +put so bald a thing as lead money across on Toddles. Toddles' mind +harked back along the aisles of the cars behind him. He had only made +two sales that round, and he had changed a quarter each time—for the +pretty girl with the big picture hat, who had giggled at him when she +bought a package of chewing gum; and the man with the three-carat +diamond tie-pin in the parlor car, a little more than on the edge of +inebriety, who had got on at the last stop, and who had bought a cigar +from him. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles thought it over for a bit; decided he wouldn't have a fuss with +a girl anyway, balked at a parlor car fracas with a drunk, dropped the +coin back into his pocket, and went on into the combination baggage and +express car. Here, just inside the door, was Toddles', or, rather, the +News Company's chest. Toddles lifted the lid; and then his eyes +shifted slowly and travelled up the car. Things were certainly going +badly with Toddles that night. +</P> + +<P> +There were four men in the car: Bob Donkin, coming back from a holiday +trip somewhere up the line; MacNicoll, the baggage-master; Nulty, the +express messenger—and Hawkeye. Toddles' inventory of the contents of +the chest had been hurried—but intimate. A small bunch of six bananas +was gone, and Hawkeye was munching them unconcernedly. It wasn't the +first time the big, hulking, six-foot conductor had pilfered the boy's +chest, not by many—and never paid for the pilfering. That was +Hawkeye's idea of a joke. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye was talking to Nulty, elaborately simulating ignorance of +Toddles' presence—and he was talking about Toddles. +</P> + +<P> +"Sure," said Hawkeye, his mouth full of banana, "he'll be a great +railroad man some day! He's the stuff they're made of! You can see it +sticking out all over him! He's only selling peanuts now till he grows +up and——" +</P> + +<P> +Toddles put down his basket and planted himself before the conductor. +</P> + +<P> +"You pay for those bananas," said Toddles in a low voice—which was +high. +</P> + +<P> +"When'll he grow up?" continued Hawkeye, peeling more fruit. "I don't +know—you've got me. The first time I saw him two years ago, I'm +hanged if he wasn't bigger than he is now—guess he grows backwards. +Have a banana?" He offered one to Nulty, who refused it. "You pay for +those bananas, you big stiff!" squealed Toddles belligerently. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye turned his head slowly and turned his little beady, black eyes +on Toddles, then he turned with a wink to the others, and for the first +time in two years offered payment. He fished into his pocket and +handed Toddles a twenty-dollar bill—there always was a mean streak in +Hawkeye, more or less of a bully, none too well liked, and whose name +on the payroll, by the way, was Reynolds. +</P> + +<P> +"Take fifteen cents out of that," he said, with no idea that the boy +could change the bill. +</P> + +<P> +For a moment Toddles glared at the yellow-back, then a thrill of unholy +glee came to Toddles. He could just about make it, business all around +had been pretty good that day, particularly on the run west in the +morning. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye went on with the exposition of his idea of humor at Toddles' +expense; and Toddles went back to his chest and his reserve funds. +Toddles counted out eighteen dollars in bills, made a neat pile of four +quarters—the lead one on the bottom—another neat pile of the odd +change, and returned to Hawkeye. The lead quarter wouldn't go very far +toward liquidating Hawkeye's long-standing indebtedness—but it would +help some. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye counted the bills carefully, and crammed them into his pocket. +Toddles dropped the neat little pile of quarters into Hawkeye's +hand—they counted themselves—and Hawkeye put those in his pocket. +Toddles counted out the odd change piece by piece, and as Hawkeye put +<I>that</I> in his pocket—Toddles put his fingers to his nose. +</P> + +<P> +Queer, isn't it—the way things happen? Think of a man's whole life, +aspirations, hopes, ambitions, everything, pivoting on—a lead quarter! +But then they say that opportunity knocks once at the door of every +man; and, if that be true, let it be remarked in passing that Toddles +wasn't deaf! +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye, making Toddles a target for a parting gibe, took up his +lantern and started through the train to pick up the fares from the +last stop. In due course he halted before the inebriated one with the +glittering tie-pin in the smoking compartment of the parlor car. +</P> + +<P> +"Ticket, please," said Hawkeye. +</P> + +<P> +"Too busy to buysh ticket," the man informed him, with heavy +confidence. "Whash fare Loon Dam to Big Cloud?" +</P> + +<P> +"One-fifty," said Hawkeye curtly. +</P> + +<P> +The man produced a roll of bills, and from the roll extracted a +two-dollar note. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye handed him back two quarters, and started to punch a cash-fare +slip. He looked up to find the man holding out one of the quarters +insistently, if somewhat unsteadily. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter?" demanded Hawkeye brusquely. +</P> + +<P> +"Bad," said the man. +</P> + +<P> +A drummer grinned; and an elderly gentleman, from his magazine, looked +up inquiringly over his spectacles. +</P> + +<P> +"Bad!" Hawkeye brought his elbow sharply around to focus his lamp on +the coin; then he leaned over and rang it on the window sill—only it +wouldn't ring. It was indubitably bad. Hawkeye, however, was dealing +with a drunk—and Hawkeye always did have a mean streak in him. +</P> + +<P> +"It's perfectly good," he asserted gruffly. +</P> + +<P> +The man rolled an eye at the conductor that mingled a sudden shrewdness +and anger, and appealed to his fellow travellers. The verdict was +against Hawkeye, and Hawkeye ungraciously pocketed the lead piece and +handed over another quarter. +</P> + +<P> +"Shay," observed the inebriated one insolently, "shay, conductor, I +don't like you. You thought I was—hic!—s'drunk I wouldn't know—eh? +Thash where you fooled yerself!" +</P> + +<P> +"What do you mean?" Hawkeye bridled virtuously for the benefit of the +drummer and the old gentleman with the spectacles. +</P> + +<P> +And then the other began to laugh immoderately. +</P> + +<P> +"Same ol' quarter," said he. "Same—hic!—ol' quarter back again. +Great system—peanut boy—conductor—hic! Pass it off on one—other +passes it off on some one else. Just passed it off on—hic!—peanut +boy for a joke. Goin' to give him a dollar when he comes back." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you did, did you!" snapped Hawkeye ominously. "And you mean to +insinuate that I deliberately tried to——" +</P> + +<P> +"Sure!" declared the man heartily. +</P> + +<P> +"You're a liar!" announced Hawkeye, spluttering mad. "And what's more, +since it came from you, you'll take it back!" He dug into his pocket +for the ubiquitous lead piece. +</P> + +<P> +"Not—hic!—on your life!" said the man earnestly. "You hang onto it, +old top. I didn't pass it off on you." +</P> + +<P> +"Haw!" exploded the drummer suddenly. "Haw—haw, haw!" +</P> + +<P> +And the elderly gentleman smiled. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye's face went red, and then purple. +</P> + +<P> +"Go 'way!" said the man petulantly. "I don't like you. Go 'way! Go +an' tell peanuts I—hic!—got a dollar for him." +</P> + +<P> +And Hawkeye went—but Toddles never got the dollar. Hawkeye went out +of the smoking compartment of the parlor car with the lead quarter in +his pocket—because he couldn't do anything else—which didn't soothe +his feelings any—and he went out mad enough to bite himself. The +drummer's guffaw followed him, and he thought he even caught a chuckle +from the elderly party with the magazine and spectacles. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye was mad; and he was quite well aware, painfully well aware that +he had looked like a fool, which is about one of the meanest feelings +there is to feel; and, as he made his way forward through the train, he +grew madder still. That change was the change from his twenty-dollar +bill. He had not needed to be told that the lead quarter had come from +Toddles. The only question at all in doubt was whether or not Toddles +had put the counterfeit coin over on him knowingly and with malice +aforethought. Hawkeye, however, had an intuition deep down inside of +him that there wasn't any doubt even about that, and as he opened the +door of the baggage car his intuition was vindicated. There was a grin +on the faces of Nulty, MacNicoll and Bob Donkin that disappeared with +suspicious celerity at sight of him as he came through the door. +</P> + +<P> +There was no hesitation then on Hawkeye's part. Toddles, equipped for +another excursion through the train with a stack of magazines and books +that almost hid him, received a sudden and vicious clout on the side of +the ear. +</P> + +<P> +"You'd try your tricks on me, would you?" Hawkeye snarled. "Lead +quarters—eh?" Another clout. "I'll teach you, you blasted little +runt!" +</P> + +<P> +And with the clouts, the stack of carefully balanced periodicals went +flying over the floor; and with the clouts, the nagging, and the +hectoring, and the bullying, that had rankled for close on two years in +Toddles' turbulent soul, rose in a sudden all-possessing sweep of fury. +Toddles was a fighter—with the heart of a fighter. And Toddles' cause +was just. He couldn't reach the conductor's face—so he went for +Hawkeye's legs. And the screams of rage from his high-pitched voice, +as he shot himself forward, sounded like a cageful of Australian +cockatoos on the rampage. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles was small, pitifully small for his age; but he wasn't an infant +in arms—not for a minute. And in action Toddles was as near to a wild +cat as anything else that comes handy by way of illustration. Two legs +and one arm he twined and twisted around Hawkeye's legs; and the other +arm, with a hard and knotty fist on the end of it, caught the conductor +a wicked jab in the region of the bottom button of the vest. The brass +button peeled the skin off Toddles' knuckles, but the jab doubled the +conductor forward, and coincident with Hawkeye's winded grunt, the +lantern in his hand sailed ceilingwards, crashed into the center lamps +in the roof of the car, and down in a shower of tinkling glass, +dripping oil and burning wicks, came the wreckage to the floor. +</P> + +<P> +There was a yell from Nulty; but Toddles hung on like grim death. +Hawkeye was bawling fluent profanity and seeing red. Toddles heard one +and sensed the other—and he clung grimly on. He was all doubled up +around Hawkeye's knees, and in that position Hawkeye couldn't get at +him very well; and, besides, Toddles had his own plan of battle. He +was waiting for an extra heavy lurch of the car. +</P> + +<P> +It came. Toddles' muscles strained legs and arms and back in concert, +and for an instant across the car they tottered, Hawkeye staggering in +a desperate attempt to maintain his equilibrium—and then +down—speaking generally, on a heterogeneous pile of express parcels; +concretely, with an eloquent squnch, on a crate of eggs, thirty dozen +of them, at forty cents a dozen. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles, over his rage, experienced a sickening sense of disaster, but +still he clung; he didn't dare let go. Hawkeye's fists, both in an +effort to recover himself and in an endeavor to reach Toddles, were +going like a windmill; and Hawkeye's threats were something terrifying +to listen to. And now they rolled over, and Toddles was underneath; +and then they rolled over again; and then a hand locked on Toddles' +collar, and he was yanked, terrier-fashion, to his feet. +</P> + +<P> +His face white and determined, his fists doubled, Toddles waited for +Hawkeye to get up—the word "run" wasn't in Toddles' vocabulary. He +hadn't long to wait. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye lunged up, draped in the broken crate—a sight. The road +always prided itself on the natty uniforms of its train crews, but +Hawkeye wasn't dressed in uniform then—mostly egg yolks. He made a +dash for Toddles, but he never reached the boy. Bob Donkin was between +them. +</P> + +<P> +"Cut it out!" said Donkin coldly, as he pushed Toddles behind him. +"You asked for it, Reynolds, and you got it. Now cut it out!" +</P> + +<P> +And Hawkeye "cut it out." It was pretty generally understood that Bob +Donkin never talked much for show, and Bob Donkin was bigger than +Toddles, a whole lot bigger, as big as Hawkeye himself. Hawkeye "cut +it out." +</P> + +<P> +Funny, the egg part of it? Well, perhaps. But the fire wasn't. True, +they got it out with the help of the hand extinguishers before it did +any serious damage, for Nulty had gone at it on the jump; but while it +lasted the burning oil on the car floor looked dangerous. Anyway, it +was bad enough so that they couldn't hide it when they got into Big +Cloud—and Hawkeye and Toddles went on the carpet for it the next +morning in the super's office. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, reached for a match, and, to keep his lips +straight, clamped them firmly on the amber mouthpiece of his brier, and +stumpy, big-paunched Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who was sitting +in a chair by the window, reached hurriedly into his back pocket for +his chewing and looked out of the window to hide a grin, as the two +came in and ranged themselves in front of the super's desk—Hawkeye, +six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds, with Toddles trailing him, +mostly cap and buttons and no weight at all. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton didn't ask many questions—he'd asked them before—of Bob +Donkin—and the despatcher hadn't gone out of his way to invest the +conductor with any glorified halo. Carleton, always a strict +disciplinarian, said what he had to say and said it quietly; but he +meant to let the conductor have the worst of it, and he did—in a way +that was all Carleton's own. Two years' picking on a youngster didn't +appeal to Carleton, no matter who the youngster was. Before he was +half through he had the big conductor squirming. Hawkeye was looking +for something else—besides a galling and matter-of-fact impartiality +that accepted himself and Toddles as being on exactly the same plane +and level. +</P> + +<P> +"There's a case of eggs," said Carleton at the end. "You can divide up +the damage between you. And I'm going to change your runs, unless +you've got some good reason to give me why I shouldn't?" +</P> + +<P> +He waited for an answer. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye, towering, sullen, his eyes resting bitterly on Regan, having +caught the master mechanic's grin, said nothing; Toddles, whose head +barely showed over the top of Carleton's desk, and the whole of him +sizing up about big enough to go into the conductor's pocket, was +equally silent—Toddles was thinking of something else. +</P> + +<P> +"Very good," said Carleton suavely, as he surveyed the ridiculous +incongruity before him. "I'll change your runs, then. I can't have +you two men brawling and prize-fighting every trip." +</P> + +<P> +There was a sudden sound from the window, as though Regan had got some +of his blackstrap juice down the wrong way. +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye's face went black as thunder. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton's face was like a sphinx. +</P> + +<P> +"That'll do, then," he said. "You can go, both of you." +</P> + +<P> +Hawkeye stamped out of the room and down the stairs. But Toddles +stayed. +</P> + +<P> +"Please, Mr. Carleton, won't you give me a job on——" Toddles stopped. +</P> + +<P> +So had Regan's chuckle. Toddles, the irrepressible, was at it +again—and Toddles after a job, any kind of a job, was something that +Regan's experience had taught him to fly from without standing on the +order of his flight. Regan hurried from the room. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles watched him go—kind of speculatively, kind of reproachfully. +Then he turned to Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +"Please give me a job, Mr. Carleton," he pleaded. "Give me a job, +won't you?" +</P> + +<P> +It was only yesterday on the platform that Toddles had waylaid the +super with the same demand—and about, every day before that as far +back as Carleton could remember. It was hopelessly chronic. Anything +convincing or appealing about it had gone long ago—Toddles said it +parrot-fashion now. Carleton took refuge in severity. +</P> + +<P> +"See here, young man," he said grimly, "you were brought into this +office for a reprimand and not to apply for a job! You can thank your +stars and Bob Donkin you haven't lost the one you've got. Now, get +out!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'd make good if you gave me one," said Toddles earnestly. "Honest, I +would, Mr. Carleton." +</P> + +<P> +"Get out!" said the super, not altogether unkindly. "I'm busy." +</P> + +<P> +Toddles swallowed a lump in his throat—but not until after his head +was turned and he'd started for the door so the super couldn't see it. +Toddles swallowed the lump—and got out. He hadn't expected anything +else, of course. The refusals were just as chronic as the demands. +But that didn't make each new one any easier for Toddles. It made it +worse. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles' heart was heavy as he stepped out into the hall, and the iron +was in his soul. He was seventeen now, and it looked as though he +never would get a chance—except to be a newsboy all his life. Toddles +swallowed another lump. He loved railroading; it was his one ambition, +his one desire. If he could ever get a chance, he'd show them! He'd +show them that he wasn't a joke, just because he was small! +</P> + +<P> +Toddles turned at the head of the stairs to go down, when somebody +called his name. +</P> + +<P> +"Here—Toddles! Come here!" +</P> + +<P> +Toddles looked over his shoulder, hesitated, then marched in through +the open door of the despatchers' room. Bob Donkin was alone there. +</P> + +<P> +"What's your name—Toddles?" inquired Donkin, as Toddles halted before +the despatcher's table. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles froze instantly—hard. His fists doubled; there was a smile on +Donkin's face. Then his fists slowly uncurled; the smile on Donkin's +face had broadened, but there wasn't any malice in the smile. +</P> + +<P> +"Christopher Hyslop Hoogan," said Toddles, unbending. +</P> + +<P> +Donkin put his hand quickly to his mouth—and coughed. +</P> + +<P> +"Um-m!" said he pleasantly. "Super hard on you this morning—Hoogan?" +</P> + +<P> +And with the words Toddles' heart went out to the big despatcher: +"Hoogan"—and a man-to-man tone. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Toddles cordially. "Say, I thought you were on the night +trick." +</P> + +<P> +"Double-shift—short-handed," replied Donkin. "Come from New York, +don't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Toddles. +</P> + +<P> +"Mother and father down there still?" +</P> + +<P> +It came quick and unexpected, and Toddles stared for a moment. Then he +walked over to the window. +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't got any," he said. +</P> + +<P> +There wasn't any sound for an instant, save the clicking of the +instruments; then Donkin spoke again—a little gruffly: +</P> + +<P> +"When are you going to quit making an ass of yourself?" +</P> + +<P> +Toddles swung from the window, hurt. Donkin, after all, was like all +the rest of them. +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" prompted the despatcher. +</P> + +<P> +"You go to blazes!" said Toddles bitterly, and started for the door. +</P> + +<P> +Donkin halted him. +</P> + +<P> +"You're only fooling yourself, Hoogan," he said coolly. "If you wanted +what you call a real railroad job as much as you pretend you do, you'd +get one." +</P> + +<P> +"Eh?" demanded Toddles defiantly; and went back to the table. +</P> + +<P> +"A fellow," said Donkin, putting a little sting into his words, "never +got anywhere by going around with a chip on his shoulder fighting +everybody because they called him Toddles, and making a nuisance of +himself with the Big Fellows until they got sick of the sight of him." +</P> + +<P> +It was a pretty stiff arraignment. Toddles choked over it, and the +angry blood flushed to his cheeks. +</P> + +<P> +"That's all right for you!" he spluttered out hotly. "You don't look +too small for the train crews or the roundhouse, and they don't call +you Toddles so's nobody 'll forget it. What'd you do?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll tell you what I'd do," said Donkin quietly. "I'd make everybody +on the division wish their own name was Toddles before I was through +with them, and I'd <I>make</I> a job for myself." +</P> + +<P> +Toddles blinked helplessly. +</P> + +<P> +"Getting right down to a cash fare," continued Donkin, after a moment, +as Toddles did not speak, "they're not so far wrong, either, about you +sizing up pretty small for the train crews or the roundhouse, are they?" +</P> + +<P> +"No-o," admitted Toddles reluctantly; "but——" +</P> + +<P> +"Then why not something where there's no handicap hanging over you?" +suggested the despatcher—and his hand reached out and touched the +sender. "The key, for instance?" +</P> + +<P> +"But I don't know anything about it," said Toddles, still helplessly. +</P> + +<P> +"That's just it," returned Donkin smoothly. "You never tried to learn." +</P> + +<P> +Toddles' eyes widened, and into Toddles' heart leaped a sudden joy. A +new world seemed to open out before him in which aspirations, +ambitions, longings all were a reality. A key! That was real +railroading, the top-notch of railroading, too. First an operator, and +then a despatcher, and—and—and then his face fell, and the vision +faded. +</P> + +<P> +"How'd I get a chance to learn?" he said miserably. "Who'd teach me?" +</P> + +<P> +The smile was back on Donkin's face as he pushed his chair from the +table, stood up, and held out his hand—man-to-man fashion. +</P> + +<P> +"I will," he said. "I liked your grit last night, Hoogan. And if you +want to be a railroad man, I'll make you one—before I'm through. I've +some old instruments you can have to practise with, and I've nothing to +do in my spare time. What do you say?" +</P> + +<P> +Toddles didn't say anything. For the first time since Toddles' advent +to the Hill Division, there were tears in Toddles' eyes for some one +else to see. +</P> + +<P> +Donkin laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"All right, old man, you're on. See that you don't throw me down. And +keep your mouth shut; you'll need all your wind. It's work that +counts, and nothing else. Now chase yourself! I'll dig up the things +you'll need, and you can drop in here and get them when you come off +your run to-night." +</P> + +<P> +Spare time! Bob Donkin didn't have any spare time those days! But +that was Donkin's way. Spence sick, and two men handling the +despatching where three had handled it before, didn't leave Bob Donkin +much spare time—not much. But a boost for the kid was worth a +sacrifice. Donkin went at it as earnestly as Toddles did—and Toddles +was in deadly earnest. +</P> + +<P> +When Toddles left the despatcher's office that morning with Donkin's +promise to teach him the key, Toddles had a hazy idea that Donkin had +wings concealed somewhere under his coat and was an angel in disguise; +and at the end of two weeks he was sure of it. But at the end of a +month Bob Donkin was a god! Throw Bob Donkin down! Toddles would have +sold his soul for the despatcher. +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't easy, though; and Bob Donkin wasn't an easy-going taskmaster, +not by long odds. Donkin had a tongue, and on occasions could use it. +Short and quick in his explanations, he expected his pupil to get it +short and quick; either that, or Donkin's opinion of him. But Toddles +stuck. He'd have crawled on his knees for Donkin anywhere, and he +worked like a major—not only for his own advancement, but for what he +came to prize quite as much, if not more, Donkin's approval. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles, mindful of Donkin's words, didn't fight so much as the days +went by, though he found it difficult to swear off all at once; and on +his runs he studied his Morse code, and he had the "calls" of every +station on the division off by heart right from the start. Toddles +mastered the "sending" by leaps and bounds; but the "taking" came +slower, as it does for everybody—but even at that, at the end of six +weeks, if it wasn't thrown at him too fast and hard, Toddles could get +it after a fashion. +</P> + +<P> +Take it all around, Toddles felt like whistling most of the time; and, +pleased with his own progress, looked forward to starting in presently +as a full-fledged operator. He mentioned the matter to Bob +Donkin—once. Donkin picked his words and spoke fervently. Toddles +never brought the subject up again. +</P> + +<P> +And so things went on. Late summer turned to early fall, and early +fall to still sharper weather, until there came the night that the +operator at Blind River muddled his orders and gave No. 73, the +westbound fast freight, her clearance against the second section of the +eastbound Limited that doomed them to meet somewhere head-on in the +Glacier Caņon; the night that Toddles—but there's just a word or two +that comes before. +</P> + +<P> +When it was all over, it was up to Sam Beale, the Blind River operator, +straight enough. Beale blundered. That's all there was to it; that +covers it all—he blundered. It would have finished Beale's railroad +career forever and a day—only Beale played the man, and the instant he +realized what he had done, even while the tail lights of the freight +were disappearing down the track and he couldn't stop her, he was +stammering the tale of his mistake over the wire, the sweat beads +dripping from his wrist, his face gray with horror, to Bob Donkin under +the green-shaded lamp in the despatchers' room at Big Cloud, miles away. +</P> + +<P> +Donkin got the miserable story over the chattering wire—got it before +it was half told—cut Beale out and began to pound the Gap call. And +as though it were before him in reality, that stretch of track, fifteen +miles of it, from Blind River to the Gap, unfolded itself like a grisly +panorama before his mind. There wasn't a half mile of tangent at a +single stretch in the whole of it. It swung like the writhings of a +snake, through cuts and tunnels, hugging the caņon walls, twisting this +way and that. Anywhere else there might be a chance, one in a thousand +even, that they would see each other's headlights in time—here it was +disaster quick and absolute. +</P> + +<P> +Donkin's lips were set in a thin, straight line. The Gap answered him; +and the answer was like the knell of doom. He had not expected +anything else; he had only hoped against hope. The second section of +the Limited had pulled out of the Gap, eastbound, two minutes before. +The two trains were in the open against each other's orders. +</P> + +<P> +In the next room, Carleton and Regan, over their pipes, were at their +nightly game of pedro. Donkin called them—and his voice sounded +strange to himself. Chairs scraped and crashed to the floor, and an +instant later the super and the master mechanic were in the room. +</P> + +<P> +"What's wrong, Bob?" Carleton flung the words from him in a single +breath. +</P> + +<P> +Donkin told them. But his fingers were on the key again as he talked. +There was still one chance, worse than the thousand-to-one shot; but it +was the only one. Between the Gap and Blind River, eight miles from +the Gap, seven miles from Blind River, was Cassil's Siding. But there +was no night man at Cassil's, and the little town lay a mile from the +station. It was ten o'clock—Donkin's watch lay face up on the table +before him—the day man at Cassil's went off at seven—the chance was +that the day man might have come back to the station for something or +other! +</P> + +<P> +Not much of a chance? No—not much! It was a possibility, that was +all; and Donkin's fingers worked—the seventeen, the life and +death—calling, calling on the night trick to the day man at Cassil's +Siding. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton came and stood at Donkin's elbow, and Regan stood at the +other; and there was silence now, save only for the key that, under +Donkin's fingers, seemed to echo its stammering appeal about the room +like the sobbing of a human soul. +</P> + +<P> +"CS—CS—CS," Donkin called; and then, "the seventeen," and then, "hold +second Number Two." And then the same thing over and over again. +</P> + +<P> +And there was no answer. +</P> + +<P> +It had turned cold that night and there was a fire in the little +heater. Donkin had opened the draft a little while before, and the +sheet-iron sides now began to pur red-hot. Nobody noticed it. Regan's +kindly, good-humored face had the stamp of horror in it, and he pulled +at his scraggly brown mustache, his eyes seemingly fascinated by +Donkin's fingers. Everybody's eyes, the three of them, were on +Donkin's fingers and the key. Carleton was like a man of stone, +motionless, his face set harder than face was ever carved in marble. +</P> + +<P> +It grew hot in the room; but Donkin's fingers were like ice on the key, +and, strong man though he was, he faltered. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, my God!" he whispered—and never a prayer rose more fervently from +lips than those three broken words. +</P> + +<P> +Again he called, and again, and again. The minutes slipped away. +Still he called—with the life and death—the "seventeen"—called and +called. And there was no answer save that echo in the room that +brought the perspiration streaming now from Regan's face, a harder +light into Carleton's eyes, and a chill like death into Donkin's heart. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly Donkin pushed back his chair; and his fingers, from the key, +touched the crystal of his watch. +</P> + +<P> +"The second section will have passed Cassil's now," he said in a +curious, unnatural, matter-of-fact tone. "It'll bring them together +about a mile east of there—in another minute." +</P> + +<P> +And then Carleton spoke—master railroader, "Royal" Carleton, it was up +to him then, all the pity of it, the ruin, the disaster, the lives out, +all the bitterness to cope with as he could. And it was in his eyes, +all of it. But his voice was quiet. It rang quick, peremptory, his +voice—but quiet. +</P> + +<P> +"Clear the line, Bob," he said. "Plug in the roundhouse for the +wrecker—and tell them to send uptown for the crew." +</P> + +<P> +Toddles? What did Toddles have to do with this? Well, a good deal, in +one way and another. We're coming to Toddles now. You see, Toddles, +since his fracas with Hawkeye, had been put on the Elk River local run +that left Big Cloud at 9.45 in the morning for the run west, and +scheduled Big Cloud again on the return trip at 10.10 in the evening. +</P> + +<P> +It had turned cold that night, after a day of rain. Pretty cold—the +thermometer can drop on occasions in the late fall in the +mountains—and by eight o'clock, where there had been rain before, +there was now a thin sheeting of ice over everything—very thin—you +know the kind—rails and telegraph wires glistening like the +decorations on a Christmas tree—very pretty—and also very nasty +running on a mountain grade. Likewise, the rain, in a way rain has, +had dripped from the car roofs to the platforms—the local did not +boast any closed vestibules—and had also been blown upon the car steps +with the sweep of the wind, and, having frozen, it stayed there. Not a +very serious matter; annoying, perhaps, but not serious, demanding a +little extra caution, that was all. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles was in high fettle that night. He had been getting on famously +of late; even Bob Donkin had admitted it. Toddles, with his stack of +books and magazines, an unusually big one, for a number of the new +periodicals were out that day, was dreaming rosy dreams to himself as +he started from the door of the first-class smoker to the door of the +first-class coach. In another hour now he'd be up in the despatcher's +room at Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with Bob Donkin. He could +see Bob Donkin there now; and he could hear the big despatcher growl at +him in his bluff way: "Use your head—use your head—<I>Hoogan</I>!" It was +always "Hoogan," never "Toddles." "Use your head"—Donkin was +everlastingly drumming that into him; for the despatcher used to +confront him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and +demand Toddles' instant solution. Toddles realized that Donkin was +getting to the heart of things, and that some day he, Toddles, would be +a great despatcher—like Donkin. "Use your head, Hoogan"—that's the +way Donkin talked—"anybody can learn a key, but that doesn't make a +railroad man out of him. It's the man when trouble comes who can think +quick and think <I>right</I>. Use your——" +</P> + +<P> +Toddles stepped out on the platform—and walked on ice. But that +wasn't Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles was that he was +walking on air at the same time. It was treacherous running, they were +nosing a curve, and in the cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with +a little jerk at the "air." And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and +with the slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals +shifted, and they bulged ominously from the middle. Toddles grabbed at +them—and his heels went out from under him. He ricochetted down the +steps, snatched desperately at the handrail, missed it, shot out from +the train, and, head, heels, arms and body going every which way at +once, rolled over and over down the embankment. And, starting from the +point of Toddles' departure from the train, the right of way for a +hundred yards was strewn with "the latest magazines" and "new books +just out to-day." +</P> + +<P> +Toddles lay there, a little, curled, huddled heap, motionless in the +darkness. The tail lights of the local disappeared. No one aboard +would miss Toddles until they got into Big Cloud—and found him gone. +Which is Irish for saying that no one would attempt to keep track of a +newsboy's idiosyncrasies on a train; it would be asking too much of any +train crew; and, besides, there was no mention of it in the rules. +</P> + +<P> +It was a long while before Toddles stirred; a very long while before +consciousness crept slowly back to him. Then he moved, tried to get +up—and fell back with a quick, sharp cry of pain. He lay still, then, +for a moment. His ankle hurt him frightfully, and his back, and his +shoulder, too. He put his hand to his face where something seemed to +be trickling warm—and brought it away wet. Toddles, grim little +warrior, tried to think. They hadn't been going very fast when he fell +off. If they had, he would have been killed. As it was, he was hurt, +badly hurt, and his head swam, nauseating him. +</P> + +<P> +Where was he? Was he near any help? He'd have to get help somewhere, +or—or with the cold and—and everything he'd probably die out here +before morning. Toddles shouted out—again and again. Perhaps his +voice was too weak to carry very far; anyway, there was no reply. +</P> + +<P> +He looked up at the top of the embankment, clamped his teeth, and +started to crawl. If he got up there, perhaps he could tell where he +was. It had taken Toddles a matter of seconds to roll down; it took +him ten minutes of untold agony to get up. Then he dashed his hand +across his eyes where the blood was, and cried a little with the surge +of relief. East, down the track, only a few yards away, the green eye +of a switch lamp winked at him. +</P> + +<P> +Where there was a switch lamp there was a siding, and where there was a +siding there was promise of a station. Toddles, with the sudden uplift +upon him, got to his feet and started along the track—two steps—and +went down again. He couldn't walk, the pain was more than he could +bear—his right ankle, his left shoulder, and his back—hopping only +made it worse—it was easier to crawl. +</P> + +<P> +And so Toddles crawled. +</P> + +<P> +It took him a long time even to pass the switch light. The pain made +him weak, his senses seemed to trail off giddily every now and then, +and he'd find himself lying flat and still beside the track. It was a +white, drawn face that Toddles lifted up each time he started on +again—miserably white, except where the blood kept trickling from his +forehead. +</P> + +<P> +And then Toddles' heart, stout as it was, seemed to snap. He had +reached the station platform, wondering vaguely why the little building +that loomed ahead was dark—and now it came to him in a flash, as he +recognized the station. It was Cassil's Siding—<I>and there was no +night man at Cassil's Siding</I>! The switch lights were lit before the +day man left, of course. Everything swam before Toddles' eyes. +There—there was no help here. And yet—yet perhaps—desperate hope +came again—perhaps there might be. The pain was terrible—all over +him. And—and he'd got so weak now—but it wasn't far to the door. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles squirmed along the platform, and reached the door finally—only +to find it shut and fastened. And then Toddles fainted on the +threshold. +</P> + +<P> +When Toddles came to himself again, he thought at first that he was up +in the despatcher's room at Big Cloud with Bob Donkin pounding away on +the battered old key they used to practise with—only there seemed to +be something the matter with the key, and it didn't sound as loud as it +usually did—it seemed to come from a long way off somehow. And then, +besides, Bob was working it faster than he had ever done before when +they were practising. "Hold second"—second something—Toddles +couldn't make it out. Then the "seventeen"—yes, he knew that—that +was the life and death. Bob was going pretty quick, though. Then +"CS—CS—CS"—Toddles' brain fumbled a bit over that—then it came to +him. CS was the call for Cassil's Siding. <I>Cassil's Siding</I>! +Toddles' head came up with a jerk. +</P> + +<P> +A little cry burst from Toddles' lips—and his brain, cleared. He +wasn't at Big Cloud at all—he was at Cassil's Siding—and he was +hurt—and that was the sounder inside calling, calling frantically for +Cassil's Siding—-where he was. +</P> + +<P> +The life and death—<I>the seventeen</I>—it sent a thrill through Toddles' +pain-twisted spine. He wriggled to the window. It, too, was closed, +of course, but he could hear better there. The sounder was babbling +madly. +</P> + +<P> +"Hold second——" +</P> + +<P> +He missed it again—and as, on top of it, the "seventeen" came +pleading, frantic, urgent, he wrung his hands. +</P> + +<P> +"Hold second"—he got it this time—"Number Two." +</P> + +<P> +Toddles' first impulse was to smash in the window and reach the key. +And then, like a dash of cold water over him, Donkin's words seemed to +ring in his ears: "Use your head." +</P> + +<P> +With the "seventeen" it meant a matter of minutes, perhaps even +seconds. Why smash the window? Why waste the moment required to do it +simply to answer the call? The order stood for itself—"Hold second +Number Two." That was the second section of the Limited, east-bound. +Hold her! How? There was nothing—not a thing to stop her with. "Use +your head," said Donkin in a far-away voice to Toddles' wobbling brain. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles looked up the track—west—where he had come from—to where the +switch light twinkled green at him—and, with a little sob, he started +to drag himself back along the platform. If he could throw the switch, +it would throw the light from green to red, and—and the Limited would +take the siding. But the switch was a long way off. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles half fell, half bumped from the end of the platform to the +right of way. He cried to himself with low moans as he went along. He +had the heart of a fighter, and grit to the last tissue; but he needed +it all now—needed it all to stand the pain and fight the weakness that +kept swirling over him in flashes. +</P> + +<P> +On he went, on his hands and knees, slithering from tie to tie—-and +from one tie to the next was a great distance. The life and death, the +despatcher's call—he seemed to hear it yet—throbbing, throbbing on +the wire. +</P> + +<P> +On he went, up the track; and the green eye of the lamp, winking at +him, drew nearer. And then suddenly, clear and mellow through the +mountains, caught up and echoed far and near, came the notes of a chime +whistle ringing down the gorge. +</P> + +<P> +Fear came upon Toddles then, and a great sob shook him. That was the +Limited coming now! Toddles' fingers dug into the ballast, and he +hurried—that is, in bitter pain, he tried to crawl a little faster. +And as he crawled, he kept his eyes strained up the track—she wasn't +in sight yet around the curve—not yet, anyway. +</P> + +<P> +Another foot, only another foot, and he would reach the siding +switch—in time—in plenty of time. Again the sob—but now in a burst +of relief that, for the moment, made him forget his hurts. He was in +time! +</P> + +<P> +He flung himself at the switch lever, tugged upon it—and then, +trembling, every ounce of remaining strength seeming to ooze from him, +he covered his face with his hands. It was <I>locked</I>—padlocked. +</P> + +<P> +Came a rumble now—a distant roar, growing louder and louder, +reverberating down the caņon walls—louder and louder—nearer and +nearer. "Hold second Number Two. Hold second Number Two"—the +"seventeen," the life and death, pleading with him to hold Number Two. +And she was coming now, coming—and—and—the switch was locked. The +deadly nausea racked Toddles again; there was nothing to do +now—nothing. He couldn't stop her—couldn't stop her. He'd—he'd +tried—very hard—and—and he couldn't stop her now. He took his hands +from his face, and stole a glance up the track, afraid almost, with the +horror that was upon him, to look. She hadn't swung the curve yet, but +she would in a minute—and come pounding down the stretch at fifty +miles an hour, shoot by him like a rocket to where, somewhere ahead, in +some form, he did not know what, only knew that it was there, death and +ruin and—— +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Use your head!</I>" snapped Donkin's voice to his consciousness. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles' eyes were on the light above his head. It blinked <I>red</I> at +him as he stood on the track facing it; the green rays were shooting up +and down the line. He couldn't swing the switch—but the <I>lamp</I> was +there—and there was the red side to show just by turning it. He +remembered then that the lamp fitted into a socket at the top of the +switch stand, and could be lifted off—if he could reach it! +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't very high—for an ordinary-sized man—for an ordinary-sized +man had to get at it to trim and fill it daily—only Toddles wasn't an +ordinary-sized man. It was just nine or ten feet above the rails—just +a standard siding switch. +</P> + +<P> +Toddles gritted his teeth, and climbed upon the base of the switch—and +nearly fainted as his ankle swung against the rod. A foot above the +base was a footrest for a man to stand on and reach up for the lamp, +and Toddles drew himself up and got his foot on it—and then at his +full height the tips of his fingers only just touched the bottom of the +lamp. Toddles cried aloud, and the tears streamed down his face now. +Oh, if he weren't hurt—if he could only shin up another foot—but—but +it was all he could do to hang there where he was. +</P> + +<P> +<I>What was that</I>! He turned his head. Up the track, sweeping in a +great circle as it swung the curve, a headlight's glare cut through the +night—and Toddles "shinned" the foot. He tugged and tore at the lamp, +tugged and tore at it, loosened it, lifted it from its socket, sprawled +and wriggled with it to the ground—and turned the red side of the lamp +against second Number Two. +</P> + +<P> +The quick, short blasts of a whistle answered, then the crunch and +grind and scream of biting brake-shoes—and the big mountain racer, the +1012, pulling the second section of the Limited that night, stopped +with its pilot nosing a diminutive figure in a torn and silver-buttoned +uniform, whose hair was clotted red, and whose face was covered with +blood and dirt. +</P> + +<P> +Masters, the engineer, and Pete Leroy, his fireman, swung from the +gangways; Kelly, the conductor, came running up from the forward coach. +</P> + +<P> +Kelly shoved his lamp into Toddles' face—and whistled low under his +breath. +</P> + +<P> +"Toddles!" he gasped; and then, quick as a steel trap: "What's wrong?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said Toddles weakly. "There's—there's something +wrong. Get into the clear—on the siding." +</P> + +<P> +"Something wrong," repeated Kelly, "and you don't——" +</P> + +<P> +But Masters cut the conductor short with a grab at the other's arm that +was like the shutting of a vise—and then bolted for his engine like a +gopher for its hole. From, down the track came the heavy, grumbling +roar of a freight. Everybody flew then, and there was quick work done +in the next half minute—and none too quickly done—the Limited was no +more than on the siding when the fast freight rolled her long string of +flats, boxes and gondolas thundering by. +</P> + +<P> +And while she passed, Toddles, on the platform, stammered out his story +to Kelly. +</P> + +<P> +Kelly didn't say anything—then. With the express messenger and a +brakeman carrying Toddles, Kelly kicked in the station door, and set +his lamp down on the operator's table. +</P> + +<P> +"Hold me up," whispered Toddles—and, while they held him, he made the +despatcher's call. +</P> + +<P> +Big Cloud answered him on the instant. Haltingly, Toddles reported the +second section "in" and the freight "out"—only he did it very slowly, +and he couldn't think very much more, for things were going black. He +got an order for the Limited to run to Blind River and told Kelly, and +got the "complete"—and then Big Cloud asked who was on the wire, and +Toddles answered that in a mechanical sort of a way without quite +knowing what he was doing—and went limp in Kelly's arms. +</P> + +<P> +And as Toddles answered, back in Big Cloud, Regan, the sweat still +standing out in great beads on his forehead, fierce now in the +revulsion of relief, glared over Donkin's left shoulder, as Donkin's +left hand scribbled on a pad what was coming over the wire. +</P> + +<P> +Regan glared fiercely—then he spluttered: +</P> + +<P> +"Who in hell's Christopher Hyslop Hoogan—h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +Donkin's lips had a queer smile on them. +</P> + +<P> +"Toddles," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Regan sat down heavily in his chair. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>What?</I>" demanded the super. +</P> + +<P> +"Toddles," said Donkin. "I've been trying to drum a little railroading +into him—on the key." +</P> + +<P> +Regan wiped his face. He looked helplessly from Donkin to the super, +and then back again at Donkin. +</P> + +<P> +"But—but what's he doing at Cassil's Siding? How'd he get there—h'm? +H'm? How'd he get there?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said Donkin, his fingers rattling the Cassil's Siding +call again. "He doesn't answer any more. We'll have to wait for the +story till they make Blind River, I guess." +</P> + +<P> +And so they waited. And presently at Blind River, Kelly, dictating to +the operator—not Beale, Beale's day man—told the story. It lost +nothing in the telling—Kelly wasn't that kind of a man—he told them +what Toddles had done, and he left nothing out; and he added that they +had Toddles on a mattress in the baggage car, with a doctor they had +discovered amongst the passengers looking after him. +</P> + +<P> +At the end, Carleton tamped down the dottle in the bowl of his pipe +thoughtfully with his forefinger—and glanced at Donkin. +</P> + +<P> +"Got along far enough to take a station key somewhere?" he inquired +casually. "He's made a pretty good job of it as the night operator at +Cassil's." +</P> + +<P> +Donkin was smiling. +</P> + +<P> +"Not yet," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"No?" Carleton's eyebrows went up. "Well, let him come in here with +you, then, till he has; and when you say he's ready, we'll see what we +can do. I guess it's coming to him; and I guess"—he shifted his +glance to the master mechanic—"I guess we'll go down and meet Number +Two when she comes in, Tommy." +</P> + +<P> +Regan grinned. +</P> + +<P> +"With our hats in our hands," said the big-hearted master mechanic. +</P> + +<P> +Donkin shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you do it," he said. "I don't want him to get a swelled head." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton stared; and Regan's hand, reaching into his back pocket for +his chewing, stopped midway. +</P> + +<P> +Donkin was still smiling. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to make a railroad man out of Toddles," he said. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +II +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +OWSLEY AND THE 1601 +</H4> + +<P> +His name was Owsley—Jake Owsley—and he was a railroad man before ever +he came to Big Cloud and the Hill Division—before ever the Hill +Division was even advanced to the blue-print stage, before steel had +ever spider-webbed the stubborn Rockies, before the Herculean task of +bridging a continent was more than a thought in even the most ambitious +minds. +</P> + +<P> +Owsley was an engineer, and he came from the East, when they broke +ground at Big Cloud for a start toward the western goal through the +mighty range, a comparatively young man—thirty, or thereabouts. Then, +inch by inch and foot by foot, Owsley, with his ballast cars and his +boxes and his flats bumping material behind him, followed the +construction gangs as they burrowed and blasted and trestled their way +along—day in, day out, month in, month out, until the years went by, +and they were through the Rockies, with the Coast and the blue of the +Pacific in sight. +</P> + +<P> +First over every bridge and culvert, first through every cut, first +through every tunnel shorn in the bitter gray rock of the mountain +sides, the pilot of Owsley's engine nosed its way; and, when the rough +of the work was over, and in the hysteria of celebration, the toll of +lives, the hardships and the cost were forgotten for the moment, and +the directors and their guests crowded the cab and perched on running +boards and footplates till you couldn't see the bunting they'd draped +the engine with, and the mahogany coaches behind looked like the +striped sticks of candy the kids buy on account of more bunting, and +then some, and the local band they'd brought along from Big Cloud got +the mouthpieces of their trombones and cornets mixed up with the necks +of champagne bottles, and the Indian braves squatted gravely at +different points along the trackside and thought their white brothers +had gone mad, Owsley was at the throttle for the first through run over +the division—it was Owsley's due. +</P> + +<P> +Then other years went by, and the steel was shaken down into the +permanent right of way that is an engineering marvel to-day, and Owsley +still held a throttle on a through run—just kept growing a little +older, that was all—but one of the best of them, for all +that—steadier than the younger men, wise in experience, and with a +love for his engine that was like the love of a man for a woman. +</P> + +<P> +It's a strange thing, perhaps, a love like that; but, strange or not, +there was never an engineer worth his salt who hasn't had it—some more +than others, of course—as some men's love for a woman is deeper than +others. With Owsley it came pretty near being the whole thing, and it +was queer enough to see him when they'd change his engine to give him a +newer and more improved type for a running mate. He'd refuse +point-blank at first to be separated from the obsolete engine, that was +either carded for some local jerk-water, mixed-freight run, or for a +construction job somewhere. +</P> + +<P> +"Leave her with me," he'd say to Regan, the master mechanic. "Leave me +with her. You can give my run to some one else, Regan, d'ye mind? +It's little I care for the swell run; me and the old girl sticks. I'll +have nothing else." +</P> + +<P> +But the bluff, fat, big-hearted, good-natured, little master mechanic, +knew his man—and he knew an engineer when he saw one. Regan would no +more have thought of letting Owsley get away from the Imperial's +throttle than he would have thought of putting call boys in the cabs to +run his engines. +</P> + +<P> +"H'm!" he would say, blinking fast at Owsley. "Feel that way, do you? +Well, then, mabbe it's about time you quit altogether. I didn't offer +you your choice, did I? You take the Imperial with what I give you to +take her with—or take nothing. Think it over!" +</P> + +<P> +And Owsley, perforce, had to "think it over"—and, perforce, he stayed +on the limited run. +</P> + +<P> +Came then the day when changes in engine types were not so frequent, +and a fair maximum in machine-design efficiency had been obtained—and +Owsley came to love, more than he had ever loved any engine before, his +big, powerful, 1600-class racer, with its four pairs of massive +drivers, that took the curves with the grace of a circling bird, that +laughed in glee at anything lower than a three per cent grade, and +tackled the "fives" with no more than a grunt of disdain—Owsley and +the 1601, right from the start, clipped fifty-five minutes off the +running time of the Imperial Limited through the Rockies, where before +it had been nip and tuck to make the old schedule anywhere near the dot. +</P> + +<P> +For three years it was Owsley and the 1601; for three years east and +west through the mountains—and a smile in the roundhouse at him as he +nursed and cuddled and groomed his big flyer, in from a run. Not +now—they don't smile now about it. It was Owsley and the 1601 for +three years—and at the end it was still Owsley and the 1601. The two +are coupled together—they never speak of one on the Hill Division +without the other—Owsley and the 1601. +</P> + +<P> +Owsley! One of the old guard who answered the roll call at the birth +of the Hill Division! Forty years a railroader—call boy at +ten—twenty years of service, counting the construction period, on the +Hill Division! Straight and upright as a young sapling at fifty-odd, +with a swing through the gangway that the younger men tried to imitate; +hair short-cropped, a little grizzled; gray, steady eyes; a beard whose +color, once brown, was nondescript, kind of shading tawny and gray in +streaks; a slim, little man, overalled and jumpered, with greasy, +peaked cap—and, wifeless, without kith or kin save his engine, the +star boarder at Mrs. McCann's short-order house. Liked by everybody, +known by everybody on the division down to the last Polack construction +hand, quiet, no bluster about him, full of good-humored fun, ready to +take his part or do his share in anything going, from a lodge minstrel +show to sitting up all night and playing trained nurse to anybody that +needed one—that was Owsley. +</P> + +<P> +Oh, you, in your millions, who ride in trains by day and night, do you +ever give a thought to the men into whose keeping you hand your lives? +Does it ever occur to you that they are not just part of the equipment +of iron and wood and steel and rolling things to be accepted callously, +as bought and paid for with the strip of ticket that you hold, animate +only that you may voice your grumblings and your discontent at some +delay that saves you probably from being hurled into eternity while you +chafe impatiently and childishly at something you know nothing +about—that they, like you, are human too, with hopes achieved and +aspirations shattered, and plans and interests in life? Have you ever +thought that there was a human side to railroading, and that—but we +were speaking of Owsley, Jake Owsley, perhaps you'll understand a +little better farther on along the right of way. +</P> + +<P> +Elbow Bend, were it not for the insurmountable obstacles that Dame +Nature had seen fit to place there—the bed of the Glacier River on one +side and a sheer rock base of mountain on the other—would have been a +black mark against the record of the engineering corps who built the +station. Speaking generally, it's not good railroad practice to put a +station on a curve—when it can be helped. Elbow Bend, the whole of +it, main line and siding, made a curve—that's how it got its name. +And yet, in a way, it wasn't the curve that was to blame; though, too, +in a way, it was—Owsley had a patched eye that night from a bit of +steel that had got into it in the afternoon, nothing much, but a patch +on it to keep the cold and the sweep of the wind out. +</P> + +<P> +It was the eastbound run, and, to make up for the loss of time a slow +order over new construction work back a dozen miles or so had cost him, +the 1601 was hitting a pretty fast clip as he whistled for Elbow Bend. +Owsley checked just a little as he nosed the curve—the Imperial +Limited made no stop at Elbow Bend—and then, as the 1601 sort of got +her footing, so to speak, on the long bend, he opened her out again, +and the storm of exhausts from her short, stubby stack went echoing +through the mountains like the play of artillery. +</P> + +<P> +The light of the west-end siding switch flashed by like a scintillating +gem in the darkness. Brannigan, Owsley's fireman, pulled his door, +shooting the cab and the heavens full of leaping, fiery red, and swung +to the tender for a shovelful of coal. Owsley, crouched a little +forward in his seat, his body braced against the cant of the mogul on +the curve, was "feeling" the throttle with careful hand, as he peered +ahead through the cab glass. Came the station lights; the black bulk +of a locomotive, cascading steam from her safety, on the siding; and +then the thundering reverberation as the 1601 began to sweep past a +long, curving line of boxes, flats and gondolas, the end of which +Owsley could not see—for the curve. +</P> + +<P> +Owsley relaxed a little. That was right—Extra No. 49, west, was to +cross him at Elbow Bend—and she was on the siding as she should be. +His headlight, streaming out at a tangent to the curve, played its ray +kaleidoscopically along the sides of the string of freights, now edging +the roof of a box car, now opening a hole to the gray rock of the cut +when a flat or two intervened—and then, sudden, quick as doom, with a +yell from his fireman ringing in his ears, Owsley, his jaws clamping +like a steel trap, flung his arm forward, jamming the throttle shut, +while with the other hand he grabbed at the "air." +</P> + +<P> +Owsley had seen it, too—as quick as Brannigan—a figure, arms waving +frantically, for a fleeting second strangely silhouetted in the dancing +headlight's glare on the roof of one of the box cars. A wild shout +from the man, fluttering, indistinguishable, reached them as they +roared by—then the grind and scream of brake-shoes as the "air" went +on—the answering shudder vibrating through the cab of the big +racer—the meeting clash of buffer plates echoing down the length of +the train behind—and a queer obstructing blackness dead ahead ere the +headlight, tardy in its sweep, could point the way—but Owsley knew +now—too late. +</P> + +<P> +Brannigan screamed in his ear. +</P> + +<P> +"She ain't in the clear!" he screamed. "It's a swipe! She ain't in +the clear!" he screamed again—and took a flying leap through the +off-side gangway. +</P> + +<P> +Owsley never turned his head—only held there, grim-faced, +tight-lipped, facing what was to come—facing it with clear head, quick +brain, doing what he could to lessen the disaster, as forty years had +schooled him to face emergency. Owsley—for forty years with his +record, until that moment, as clean and unsmirched as the day he +started as a kid calling train crews back in the little division town +on the Penn in the far East! Strange it should come to Owsley, the one +man of all you'd never think it would! It's hard to understand the +running orders of the Great Trainmaster sometimes—isn't it? And +sometimes it doesn't help much to realize that we never will understand +this side of the Great Divide—does it? +</P> + +<P> +The headlight caught it now—seemed to gloat upon it in a flood of +blazing, insolent light—the rear cars of the freight crawling +frantically from the main line to the siding—then the pitiful yellow +from the cupola of the caboose, the light from below filtering up +through the windows. It seared into Owsley's brain lightning quick, +but vivid in every detail in a horrible, fascinating way. It was a +second, the fraction of a second since Brannigan had jumped—it might +have been an hour. +</P> + +<P> +The front of the caboose seemed to leap suddenly at the 1601, seemed to +rise up in the air and hurl itself at the straining engine as though in +impotent fury at unwarranted attack. There was a terrific crash, the +groan and rend of timber, the sickening grind and crunch as the van +went to matchwood—the debris hurtling along the running boards, +shattering the cab glass in flying splinters—and Owsley dropped where +he stood—like a log. And the pony truck caught the tongue of the open +switch, and, with a vicious, nasty lurch, the 1601 wrenched herself +loose from her string of coaches, staggered like a lost and drunken +soul a few yards along the ties—and turned turtle in the ditch. +</P> + +<P> +It was a bad spill, but it might have been worse, a great deal worse—a +box car and the van for the junk heap, and the 1601 for the shops to +repair fractures—and nobody hurt except Owsley. +</P> + +<P> +But they couldn't make head or tail of the cause of it. Everybody went +on the carpet for it—and still it was a mystery. The main line was +clear at the west end of the siding, and the switch was right; +everybody was agreed on that, and it showed that way on the face of +it—and that was as it should have been. The operator at Elbow Bend +swore that he had shown his red, and that it was showing when the +Limited swept by. He said he knew it was going to be a close shave +whether the freight, a little late and crowding the Limited's running +time, would be clear of the main line without delaying the express, and +he had shown his red before ever he had heard her whistle—his red was +showing. The engine crew and the train crew of Extra No. 49, west, +backed the operator up—the red was showing. +</P> + +<P> +Brannigan, the fireman, didn't count as a witness. The only light he'd +seen at all was the west-end switch light, the curve had hidden +anything ahead until after he'd pulled his door and turned to the +tender for coal, and by then they were past the station. And Owsley, +pretty badly smashed up, and in bed down in Mrs. McCann's short-order +house, talked kind of queer when he got around to where he could talk +at all. They asked him what color light the station semaphore was +showing, and Owsley said white—white as the moon. That's what he +said—white as the moon. And they weren't quite sure he understood +what they were driving at. +</P> + +<P> +For a week that's all they could make out of it, and then, with Regan +scratching his head over it one day in confab with Carleton, the +superintendent, it came more by chance than anything else. +</P> + +<P> +"Blamed if I know what to make of it!" he growled. "Ordinary, six +men's words would be the end of it, but Owsley's the best man that ever +latched a throttle in our cabs, and for twenty years his record's +cleaner than a baby's. What he says now don't count, because he ain't +right again yet; but what you can't get away from is the fact that +Owsley's not the man to have slipped a signal. Either the six of them +are doing him cold to save their own skins, or there's something queer +about it." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, in his grave, quiet way, shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"We've been trying hard enough to get to the bottom of it, Tommy," he +said. "I wish to the Lord we could. I don't think the men are +lying—they tell a pretty straight story. I've been wondering about +that patch Owsley had on his eye, and——" +</P> + +<P> +"What's that got to do with it?" cut in the blunt little master +mechanic, who made no bones about his fondness for the engineer. "He +isn't blind in the other, is he?" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton stared at the master mechanic for a moment, pulling +ruminatively at his brier; then—they were in the super's office at the +time—his fist came down with a sudden bang upon the desk. +</P> + +<P> +"I believe you've got it, Tommy!" he exclaimed. +</P> + +<P> +"Believe I've got it!" echoed Regan, and his hand half-way to his mouth +with his plug of chewing stopped in mid-air. "Got what? I said he +wasn't blind in the other, and neither he is—you know that as well as +I do." +</P> + +<P> +"Wait!" said Carleton. "It's very rare, I know, but it seems to me +I've heard of it. Wait a minute, Tommy." He was leaning over from his +chair and twirling the little revolving bookcase beside the desk, as he +spoke—not a large library was Carleton's, just a few technical books, +and his cherished Britannica. He pulled out a volume of the +encyclopedia, laid it upon his desk, and began to turn the leaves. +"Yes, here it is," he said, after a moment. "Listen"—and he commenced +to read rapidly: +</P> + +<P> +"'The most common form of Daltonism'—that's color-blindness you know, +Tommy—'depends on the absence of the red sense. Great additions to +our knowledge of this subject, if only in confirmation of results +already deduced from theory, have been obtained in the last few years +by Holmgren, who has experimented on two persons, each of whom was +found to have <I>one color-blind eye</I>, the other being nearly normal." +</P> + +<P> +"Color-blind!" spluttered the master mechanic. +</P> + +<P> +"In one eye," said Carleton, sort of as though he were turning a +problem over in his mind. "That would account for it all, Tommy. As +far as I know, one doesn't go color-blind—one is born that way—and if +this is what's at the bottom of it, Owsley's been color-blind all his +life in one eye, and probably didn't know what was the matter. That +would account for his passing the tests, and would account for what +happened at Elbow Bend. It was the patch that did it—you remember +what he said—the light was white as the moon." +</P> + +<P> +"And he's out!" stormed Regan. "Out for keeps—after forty years. +Say, d'ye know what this'll mean to Owsley—do you, eh, do you? It'll +be hell for him, Carleton—he thinks more of his engine than a woman +does of her child." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton closed the volume and replaced it mechanically in the bookcase. +</P> + +<P> +Regan's teeth met in his plug and jerked savagely at the tobacco. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish to blazes you hadn't read that!" he muttered fiercely. "What's +to be done now?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid there's only one thing to be done," Carleton answered +gravely. "Sentiment doesn't let us out—there's too many lives at +stake every time he takes out an engine. He'll have to try the color +test with a patch over the same eye he had it on that night. Perhaps, +after all, I'm wrong, and——" +</P> + +<P> +"He's out!" said the master mechanic gruffly. "He's out—I don't need +any test to know that now. That's what's the matter, and no other +thing on earth. It's rough, damn rough, ain't it—after forty +years?"—and Regan, with a short laugh, strode to the window and stood +staring out at the choked railroad yards below him. +</P> + +<P> +And Regan was right. Three weeks later, when he got out of bed, Owsley +took the color test under the queerest conditions that ever a railroad +man took it—with his right eye bandaged—and failed utterly. +</P> + +<P> +But Owsley didn't quite seem to understand—and little Doctor McTurk, +the company surgeon, was badly worried, and had been all along. Owsley +was a long way from being the same Owsley he was before the accident. +Not physically—that way he was shaping up pretty well, but his head +seemed to bother him—he seemed to have lost his grip on a whole lot of +things. They gave him the test more to settle the point in their own +minds, but they knew before they gave it to him that it wasn't much use +as far as he was concerned one way or the other. There was more than a +mere matter of color wrong with Owsley now. And maybe that was the +kindest thing that could have happened to him, maybe it made it easier +for him since the colors barred him anyway from ever pulling a throttle +again—not to understand! +</P> + +<P> +They tried to tell him he hadn't passed the color test—Regan tried to +tell him in a clumsy, big-hearted way, breaking it as easy as he +could—and Owsley laughed as though he were pleased—just laughed, and +with a glance at the clock and a jerky pull at his watch for +comparison, a way he had of doing, walked out of Riley's, the +trainmaster's office, and started across the tracks for the roundhouse. +Owsley's head wasn't working right—it was as though the mechanism was +running down—the memory kind of tapering off. But the 1601, his +engine—stuck. And it was train time when he walked out of Riley's +office that afternoon—the first afternoon he'd been out of bed and +Mrs. McCann's motherly hands since the night at Elbow Bend. +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps you'll smile a little tolerantly at this, and perhaps you'll +say the story's "cooked." Well, perhaps! If you think that way about +it, you'll probably smile more broadly still, and with the same grounds +for a smile, before we make division and sign the train register at the +end of the run. Anyway, that afternoon, as Owsley, out for the first +time, walked a little shakily across the turntable and through the big +engine doors into the roundhouse, the 1601 was out for the first time +herself from the repair shops, and for the first time since the +accident was standing on the pit, blowing from a full head of steam, +and ready to move out and couple on for the mountain run west, as soon +as the Imperial Limited came in off the Prairie Division from the East. +Is it a coincidence to smile at? Yes? Well, then, there is more of +the same humor to come. They tell the story on the Hill Division this +way, those hard, grimy-handed men of the Rockies, in the cab, in the +caboose, in the smoker, if you get intimate enough with the conductor +or brakeman, in the roundhouse and in the section shanty—but they +never smile themselves when they tell it. +</P> + +<P> +Paxley, big as two of Owsley, promoted from a local passenger run, had +been given the Imperial—and the 1601. He was standing by the +front-end, chatting with Clarihue, the turner, as Owsley came in. +</P> + +<P> +Owsley didn't appear to notice either of the men—didn't answer either +of them as they greeted him cheerily. His face, that had grown white +from his illness, was tinged a little red with excitement, and his eyes +seemed trying to take in every single detail of the big mountain racer +all at once. He walked along to the gangway, his shoulders sort of +bracing further back all the time, and then with the old-time swing he +disappeared into the cab. He was out again in a minute with a +long-spouted oil can, and, just as he always did, started in for an oil +around. +</P> + +<P> +Paxley and Clarihue looked at each other. And Paxley sort of fumbled +aimlessly with the peak of his cap, while Clarihue couldn't seem to get +the straps of his overalls adjusted comfortably. Brannigan, Owsley's +old fireman, joined them from the other side of the engine. None of +them spoke. Owsley went on oiling—making the round slowly, carefully, +head and shoulders hidden completely at times as he leaned in over the +rod, poking at the motion-gear. And Regan, who had followed Owsley, +coming in, got the thing in a glance—and swore fiercely deep down in +his throat. +</P> + +<P> +Not much to choke strong men up and throw them into the "dead-center"? +Well, perhaps not. Just a railroad man for forty years, just an +engineer, and the best of them all—out! +</P> + +<P> +Owsley finished his round, and, instead of climbing into the cab +through the opposite gangway, came back to the front-end and halted +before Jim Clarihue. +</P> + +<P> +"I see you got that injector valve packed at last," said he +approvingly. "She looks cleaner under the guard-plates than I've seen +her for a long time, too. Give me the 'table, Jim." +</P> + +<P> +Not one of them answered. Regan said afterward that he felt as though +there'd been a head-on smash somewhere inside of him. But Owsley +didn't seem to expect any answer. He went on down the side of the +locomotive, went in through the gangway, and the next instant the steam +came purring into the cylinders, just warming her up for a moment, as +Owsley always did before he moved out of the roundhouse. +</P> + +<P> +It was Clarihue then who spoke—with a kind of catchy jerk: +</P> + +<P> +"She's stiff from the shops. He ain't strong enough to hold her on the +'table." +</P> + +<P> +Regan looked at Paxley—and tugged at his scraggly little brown +mustache. +</P> + +<P> +"You'll have to get him out of there, Bob," he said gruffly, to hide +his emotion. "Get him out—gently." +</P> + +<P> +The steam was coming now into the cylinders with a more businesslike +rush—and Paxley jumped for the cab. As he climbed in, Brannigan +followed, and in a sort of helpless way hung in the gangway behind him. +Owsley was standing up, his hand on the throttle, and evidently puzzled +a little at the stiffness of the reversing lever, that refused to budge +on the segment with what strength he had in one hand to give to it. +</P> + +<P> +Paxley reached over and tried to loosen Owsley's hand on the throttle. +</P> + +<P> +"Let me take her, Jake," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Owsley stared at him for a moment in mingled perplexity and irritation. +</P> + +<P> +"What in blazes would I let you take her for?" he snapped suddenly, and +attempted to shoulder Paxley aside. "Get out of here, and mind your +own business! Get out!" He snatched his wrist away from Paxley's +fingers and gave a jerk at the throttle—and the 1601 began to move. +</P> + +<P> +The 'table wasn't set, and Paxley had no time for hesitation. More +roughly than he had any wish to do it, he brushed Owsley's hand from +the throttle and latched the throttle shut. +</P> + +<P> +And then, quick as a cat, Owsley was on him. +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't much of a fight—hardly a fight at all—Owsley, from three +weeks on his back, was dropping weak. But Owsley snatched up a spanner +that was lying on the seat, and smashed Paxley with it between the +eyes. Paxley was a big man physically—and a bigger man still where it +counts most and doesn't show—with the blood streaming down his face, +and half blinded, regardless of the blows that Owsley still tried to +rain upon him, he picked the engineer up in his arms like a baby, and +with Brannigan, dropping off the gangway and helping, got Owsley to the +ground. +</P> + +<P> +Owsley hadn't been fit for excitement or exertion of that kind—for +<I>any</I> kind of excitement or exertion. They took him back to his +boarding house, and Doctor McTurk screwed his eyes up over him in the +funny way he had when things looked critical, and Mrs. McCann nursed +him daytimes, and Carleton and Regan and two or three others took turns +sitting up with him nights—for a month. Then Owsley began to mend +again, and began to talk of getting back on the Limited run with the +1601—always the 1601. And most times he talked pretty straight, +too—as straight as any of the rest of them—only his memory seemed to +keep that queer sort of haze over it—up to the time of the accident it +seemed all right, but after that things blurred woefully. +</P> + +<P> +Regan, Carleton and Doctor McTurk went into committee over it in the +super's office one afternoon just before Owsley was out of bed again. +</P> + +<P> +"What d'ye say—h'm? What d'ye say, doc?" demanded Regan. +</P> + +<P> +Doctor McTurk, scientific and professional in every inch of his little +body, lined his eyebrows up into a ferocious black streak across his +forehead, and talked medicine in medical terms into the superintendent +and the master mechanic for a good five minutes. +</P> + +<P> +When he had finished, Carleton's brows were puckered, too, his face was +a little blank, and he tapped the edge of his desk with the end of his +pencil somewhat helplessly. +</P> + +<P> +Regan tugged at both ends of his mustache and sputtered. +</P> + +<P> +"What the blazes!" he growled. "Give it to us in plain railroading! +Has he got rights through—or hasn't he? Does he get better—or does +he not? H'm?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know, I tell you!" retorted Doctor McTurk. "I don't know—and +that's flat. I've told you why a minute ago. I don't know whether +he'll ever be better in his head than he is now—otherwise he'll come +around all right." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, what's to be done?" inquired Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +"He's got to work for a living, I suppose—eh?" Doctor McTurk answered. +"And he can't run an engine any more on account of the colors, no +matter what happens. That's the state of affairs, isn't it?" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton didn't answer; Regan only mumbled under his breath. +</P> + +<P> +"Well then," submitted Doctor McTurk, "the best thing for him, +temporarily at least, to build him up, is fresh air and plenty of it. +Give him a job somewhere out in the open." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton's eyebrows went up. He looked across at Regan questioningly. +</P> + +<P> +"He wouldn't take it," said Regan slowly. "There's nothing to anything +for Owsley but the 1601." +</P> + +<P> +"Wouldn't take it!" snapped the little doctor. "He's got to take it. +And if you care half what you pretend you do for him, you've got to see +that he does." +</P> + +<P> +"How about construction work with McCann?" suggested Carleton. "He +likes McCann, and he's lived at their place for years now." +</P> + +<P> +"Just the thing!" declared Doctor McTurk heartily. "Couldn't be +better." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton looked at Regan again. +</P> + +<P> +"You can handle him better than any one else, Tommy. Suppose you see +what you can do? And speaking of the 1601, how would it do to tell him +what's happened in the last month. Maybe he wouldn't think so much of +her as he does now." +</P> + +<P> +"No!" exclaimed Doctor McTurk quickly. "Don't you do it!" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Regan, shaking his head. "It would make him worse. He'd +blame it on Paxley, and we'd have trouble on our hands before you could +bat an eyelash." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; perhaps you're right," agreed Carleton. "Well, then, try him on +the construction tack, Tommy." +</P> + +<P> +And so Regan went that afternoon from the super's office over to Mrs. +McCann's short-order house, and up to Owsley's room. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, how's Jake to-day?" he inquired, in his bluff, cheery way, +drawing a chair up beside the bed. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm fine, Regan," said Owsley earnestly. "Fine! What day is this?" +</P> + +<P> +"Thursday," Regan told him. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Owsley, "that's right—Thursday. Well, you can put me down +to take the old 1601 out Monday night. I'm figuring to get back on the +run Monday night, Regan." +</P> + +<P> +Regan ran his hand through his short-cropped hair, twisted a little +uneasily in his chair—and coughed to fill in the gap. +</P> + +<P> +"I wouldn't be in a hurry about it, if I were you, Jake," he said. "In +fact, that's what I came over to have a little talk with you about. We +don't think you're strong enough yet for the cab." +</P> + +<P> +"Who don't?" demanded Owsley antagonistically. +</P> + +<P> +"The doctor and Carleton and myself—we were just speaking about it." +</P> + +<P> +"Why ain't I?" demanded Owsley again. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, good Lord, Jake," said Regan patiently, "you've been sick—dashed +near two months. A man can't expect to get out of bed after a lay-off +like that and start right in again before he gets his strength back. +You know that as well as I do." +</P> + +<P> +"Mabbe I do, and mabbe I don't," said Owsley, a little uncertainly. +"How'm I going to get strong?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," replied Regan, "the doc says open-air work to build you up, and +we were thinking you might like to put in a month, say, with Bill +McCann up on the Elk River work—helping him boss Polacks, for +instance." +</P> + +<P> +Owsley didn't speak for a moment, he seemed to be puzzling something +out; then, still in a puzzled way: +</P> + +<P> +"And then what about after the month?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why then," said Regan, "then"—he reached for his hip pocket and his +plug, pulled out the plug, picked the heart-shaped tin tag off with his +thumb nail, decided not to take a bite, and put the blackstrap back in +his pocket again. "Why then," said he, "you'll—you ought to be all +right again." +</P> + +<P> +Owsley sat up in bed. +</P> + +<P> +"You playing straight with me, Regan?" he asked slowly. +</P> + +<P> +"Sure," said Regan gruffly. "Sure, I am." +</P> + +<P> +Owsley passed his hand two or three times across his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't quite seem to get the signals right on what's happened," he +said. "I guess I've been pretty sick. I kind of had a feeling a +minute ago that you were trying to side-track me, but if you say you +ain't, I believe you. I ain't going to be side-tracked. When I quit +for keeps, I quit in the cab with my boots on—no way else. I'll tell +you something, Regan. When I go out, I'm going out with my hand on the +throttle, same as it's been for more'n twenty years. And me and the +old 1601, we're going out together—that's the way I want to go when +the time comes—and that's the way I'm going. I've known it for a long +time." +</P> + +<P> +"How do you mean you've known it for a long time?" Regan swallowed a +lump in his throat, as he asked the question—Owsley's mind seemed to +be wandering a little. +</P> + +<P> +"I dunno," said Owsley, and his hand crept to his head again. "I +dunno—I just know." Then abruptly: "I got to get strong for the old +1601, ain't I? That's right. I'll go up there—only you give me your +word I get the 1601 back after the month." +</P> + +<P> +Regan's eyes, from the floor, lifted and met Owsley's steadily. +</P> + +<P> +"You bet, Jake!" he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Give me your hand on it," said Owsley happily. +</P> + +<P> +And Regan gripped the engineer's hand. +</P> + +<P> +Regan left the room a moment or two after that, and on his way +downstairs he brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"What the hell!" he growled to himself. "I had to lie to him, didn't +I?" +</P> + +<P> +And so, on the Monday following, Owsley went up to the new Elk River +road work, and—But just a moment, we've over-run our holding orders a +bit, and we've got to back for the siding. The 1601 crosses us here. +</P> + +<P> +Superstition is a queer thing, isn't it? Speaking generally, we look +on it somewhat from the viewpoint of the old adage that all men are +mortal save ourselves; that is, we can accept, with more or less +tolerant condescension, the existence of superstition in others, and, +with more or less tolerant condescension, put it down to ignorance—in +others. But we're not superstitious ourselves, so we've got to have +something better to go on than that, as far as the 1601 is concerned. +Well, the 1601 was pretty badly shaken up that night in the spill at +Elbow Bend, and when they overhauled her in the shops, while they made +her look like new, perhaps they missed something down deep in her +vitals in the doing of it; perhaps she was weakened and strained where +they didn't know she was; perhaps they didn't get clean to the bottom +of all her troubles; perhaps they made a bad job of a job that looked +all right under the fresh paint and the gold leaf. There's nothing +superstitious about that, is there? It's logical and reasonable enough +to satisfy even the most hypercritical crank amongst us +anti-superstitionists—isn't it? +</P> + +<P> +But that doesn't go in the cabs, and the roundhouses, and the section +shanties on the Hill Division. You could talk and reason out there +along that line until you were blue in the face from shortness of +breath, and they'd listen to you while they wiped their hands on a hunk +of waste—they'd listen, but they've got their own notions. +</P> + +<P> +It was the night at Elbow Bend that Owsley and the 1601 together first +went wrong; and both went into hospital together and came out together +to the day—the 1601 for her old run through the mountains, and Owsley +with no other idea in life possessing his sick brain than to make the +run with her. Owsley had a relapse that day—and that day, twenty +miles west of Big Cloud, the 1601 blew her cylinder head off. And from +then on, while Owsley lay in bed again at Mrs. McCann's, the 1601, when +she wasn't in the shops from an endless series of mishaps, was turning +the hair gray on a despatcher or two, and had got most of Paxley's +nerve. +</P> + +<P> +But what's the use of going into all the details—there was enough +paper used up in the specification repair-sheets! Going slow up a +grade and around a curve that was protected with ninety-pound +guard-rails, her pony truck jumped the steel where a baby carriage +would have held the right of way; she broke this, she broke that, she +was always breaking something; and rare was the night that she didn't +limp into division dragging the grumbling occupants of the mahogany +sleepers after her with her schedule gone to smash. And then, finally, +putting a clincher on it all, she ended up, when she was running fifty +miles an hour, by shedding a driving wheel, and nearly killing Paxley +as the rod ripped through and through, tearing the right-hand side of +the cab into mangled wreckage—and that finished her for the Limited +run. Do you recall that Owsley, too, was finished for the Limited run? +</P> + +<P> +Superstition? You can figure it any way you like—they've got their +own notions on the Hill Division. +</P> + +<P> +When the 1601 came out of the shops again after that, the marks of +authority's disapprobation were heavy upon her—the gold leaf of the +passenger flyer was gone; the big figures on the tender were only +yellow paint. +</P> + +<P> +Regan scowled at her as they ran her into the yards. +</P> + +<P> +"Damn her!" said Regan fervently; and then, as he thought of Owsley, he +scowled deeper, and yanked at his mustache. "Say," said Regan heavily, +"it's queer, ain't it? Blamed queer—h'm—when you come to think of +it?" +</P> + +<P> +And so, while the 1601, disfranchised, went to hauling extra freights, +kind of a misfit doing spare jobs, anything that turned up, no regular +run any more, Owsley, kind of a misfit, too, without any very definite +duties, because there wasn't anything very definite they dared trust +him with, went up on the Elk River work with Bill McCann, the husband +of Mrs. McCann, who kept the short-order house. +</P> + +<P> +Owsley told McCann, as he had told Regan, that he was only up there +getting strong again for the 1601—and he went around on the +construction work whistling and laughing like a schoolboy, and happy as +a child—getting strong again for the 1601! +</P> + +<P> +McCann couldn't see anything very much the matter with Owsley—except +that Owsley was happy. He studied the letter Regan had sent him, and +watched the engineer, and scratched at his bullet head, and blinked +fast with his gray Irish eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Faith," said McCann, "it's them that's off their chumps—not Owsley. +Hark to him singin' out there like a lark! An', bedad, ut's mesilf'll +tell 'em so!'" +</P> + +<P> +And he did. He wrote his opinion in concise, forceful, misspelled +English on the back of a requisition slip, and sent it to Regan. Regan +didn't say much—just choked up a little when he read it. McCann +wasn't strong on diagnosis. +</P> + +<P> +It was still early spring when Owsley went to the new loop they were +building around the main line to tap a bit of the country south, and +the chinook, blowing warm, had melted most of the snow, and the creeks, +rivers and sluices were running full—the busiest time in all the year +for the trackmen and section hands. It was a summer's job, the +loop—if luck was with them—and the orders were to push the work, the +steel was to be down before the snow flew again. That was the way it +was put up to McCann when he first moved into construction camp, a +short while before Owsley joined him. +</P> + +<P> +"Then give me the stuff," said McCann. "Shoot the material along, an' +don't lave me bitin' me finger nails for the want av ut—d'ye moind?" +</P> + +<P> +So the Big Cloud yards, too, had orders—standing orders to rush out +all material for the Elk River loop as fast as it came in from the East. +</P> + +<P> +In a way, of course, that was how it happened—from the standing +orders. It was just the kind of work the 1601 was hanging around +waiting to do—the odd jobs—pulling the extras. Ordinarily, perhaps, +somebody would have thought of it, and maybe they wouldn't have sent +her out—maybe they would. You can't operate a railroad wholly on +sentiment—and there were ten cars of steel and as many more of ties +and conglomerate supplies helping to choke up the Big Cloud yards when +they should have been where they were needed a whole lot more—in +McCann's construction camp. +</P> + +<P> +But there had been two days of bad weather in the mountains, two days +of solid rain, track troubles, and troubles generally, and what with +one thing and another, the motive-power department had been taxed to +its limit. The first chance they got in a lull of pressure, not the +storm, they sent the material west with the only spare engine that +happened to be in the roundhouse at the time—the 1601—and never +thought of Owsley. Regan might have, would have, if he had known it; +but Regan didn't know it—then. Regan wasn't handling the operating. +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps, after all, they needn't have been in a belated hurry that +day—McCann and his foreigners had done nothing but hug their shanties +and listen to the rain washing the ballast away for two days and a +half, until, as it got dark on that particular day, barely a week after +Owsley had come to the work, they listened, by way of variation, to the +chime whistle of an engine that came ringing down with the wind. +</P> + +<P> +McCann and Owsley shared a little shanty by themselves, and McCann was +trying to initiate Owsley into the mysteries of that grand old game so +dear to the hearts of Irishmen—the game of forty-five. But at the +first sound of the whistle, the cards dropped from Owsley's hands, and +he jumped to his feet. +</P> + +<P> +"D'ye hear that! D'ye hear that!" he cried. +</P> + +<P> +"An' fwhat av ut?" inquired McCann. "Ut'll be the material we'd be +hung up for, if 'twere not for the storm." +</P> + +<P> +Owsley leaned across the table, his head turned a little sideways in a +curious listening attitude—leaned across the table and gripped +McCann's shoulders. +</P> + +<P> +"It's the 1601!" he whispered. He put his finger to his lips to +caution silence, and with the other hand patted McCann's shoulder +confidentially. "It's the 1601!" he whispered—and jumped for the +door—out into the storm. +</P> + +<P> +"For the love av Mike!" gasped McCann, staggering to his feet as the +lamp flared up and out with the draft. "Now, fwhat the divil—from +this, an' the misfortunate way he picks up forty-foive, mabbe, mabbe I +was wrong, an' mabbe ut's queer after all, he is, an'——" McCann was +still muttering to himself as he stumbled to the door. +</P> + +<P> +There was no sign of Owsley—only a string of boxes and flats, backed +down, and rattling and bumping to a halt on the temporary track a +hundred yards away—then the joggling light of a trainman running +through the murk and, evidently, hopping the engine pilot, for the +light disappeared suddenly and McCann heard the locomotive moving off +again. +</P> + +<P> +McCann couldn't see the main line, or the little station they had +erected there since the work began for the purpose of operating the +construction trains, but he knew well enough what was going on. Off +the main line, in lieu of a turntable and to facilitate matters +generally, they had built a Y into the construction camp; and the work +train, in from the East, had dropped its caboose on the main line +between the arms of the Y, gone ahead, backed the flats and boxes down +the west-end arm of the Y into the camp, left them there in front of +him, and the engine, shooting off on the main line again, via the +east-end arm of the Y, would be heading east, and had only to back up +the main line and couple on the caboose for the return trip to Big +Cloud—there were no empties to go back, he knew. +</P> + +<P> +It was raining in torrents, pitilessly, and, over the gusts of wind, +the thunder went racketing through the mountains like the discharge of +heavy guns. McCann swore with sincerity as he gazed from the doorway, +didn't like the look of it, and was minded to let Owsley go to the +devil; but, instead, after getting into rubber boots, a rubber coat, +and lighting a lantern, he put his head down to butt the storm, goat +fashion, and started out. +</P> + +<P> +"Me conscience 'ud not be clear av anything happened the man," communed +McCann, as he battered and sloshed his way along. "'Tis wan hell av a +night!" +</P> + +<P> +McCann lost some time. He could have made a short cut over to the main +line and the station; but, instead, thinking Owsley might have run up +the track beside the camp toward the front-end of the construction +train and the engine, he kept along past the string of cars. There was +no Owsley; and the only result he obtained from shouting at the top of +his lungs was to have the wind slap his voice back in his teeth. +McCann headed then for the station. He took the west-end arm of the Y, +that being the nearer to his destination. Halfway across, he heard the +engine backing up on the main line, and, a moment later, saw her +headlight and the red tail lights of the caboose as she coupled on. +</P> + +<P> +Of course, it was against the rules—but rules are broken sometimes, +aren't they? It was a wicked night, and the station, diminutive and +makeshift as it was, looked mighty hospitable and inviting by +comparison. The engine crew, Matt Duggan and Greene, his fireman, +thought it sized up better while they were waiting for orders than the +cab of the 1601 did, and they didn't see why the train crew, +MacGonigle, the conductor, and his two brakemen, should have any the +better of it—so they left their engine and crowded into the station, +too. +</P> + +<P> +There wasn't much room left for McCann when he came in like an animated +shower bath. He heard Merle, the young operator—they'd probably been +guying him—snap at MacGonigle: +</P> + +<P> +"I ain't got any orders for you yet, but you'd better get into the +clear on the Y—the Limited, east, is due in four minutes." +</P> + +<P> +"Say!" panted McCann. "Say——" and that was as far as he got. Matt +Duggan, making a wild dash for the door, knocked the rest of his breath +out of him. +</P> + +<P> +And after Duggan, in a mad and concerted rush, sweeping McCann along +with it, the others burst through the door and out on the platform, as, +volleying through the storm, came suddenly the quick, staccato bark of +engine exhaust. +</P> + +<P> +For a moment, huddled there, trying to get the rights of it, no one +spoke—then it came in a yell from Matt Duggan. +</P> + +<P> +"She's <I>gone</I>!" he screamed—and gulped for his breath. "She's gone!" +</P> + +<P> +McCann looked, and blinked, and shook the rain out of his face. Two +hundred yards east down the track, and disappearing fast, were the +twinkling red tail lights of the caboose. +</P> + +<P> +"By the tokens av all the saints," stammered McCann. +</P> + +<P> +"Ut's—ut's——" He grabbed at Matt Duggan. "Fwhat engine is ut?" +</P> + +<P> +It was MacGonigle who answered, as they crowded back inside again for +shelter—and answered quick, getting McCann's dropped jaw. +</P> + +<P> +"The 1601. What's wrong with you, McCann?" +</P> + +<P> +"Holy Mither!" stuttered McCann miserably. "That settles ut! Ut's +Owsley! 'Twas the whistle, d'ye moind—the whistle!" +</P> + +<P> +Merle, young and hysterical, was up in the air. +</P> + +<P> +"The Limited! The Limited!" he burst out, white-faced. "There ain't +three minutes between them! She's coming now!" +</P> + +<P> +MacGonigle, grizzled old veteran, cool in any emergency, whirled on the +younger man. +</P> + +<P> +"Then stop her!" he drawled. "Don't make a fool of yourself! Show +your red and hold her here until you get Big Cloud on the wire—they're +both running the <I>same</I> way, aren't they, you blamed idiot! +Everything's out of the road far enough east of here on account of the +Limited to give 'em time at headquarters to take care of things. Let +'em have it at Big Cloud." +</P> + +<P> +And Big Cloud got it. Spence, the despatcher, on the early night +trick, got it—and Carleton and Regan, at their homes, got it in a +hurried call from Spence over their private keys, that brought them +running to headquarters. +</P> + +<P> +"I've cleared the line," said Spence. "The Limited is holding at Elk +River till Brook's Cut reports Owsley through—then she's to trail +along." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton nodded, and took a chair beside the despatcher's table. +Regan, as ever with him in times of stress, tugged at his mustache, and +paced up and down the room. +</P> + +<P> +He stepped once in front of Carleton and laughed shortly—and there was +more in his words, a whole lot more, than he realized then. +</P> + +<P> +"The Lord knows where he'll stop now with the bit in his teeth, but +suppose he'd been heading the other way <I>into</I> the Limited—h'm! +Head-on—instead of just tying up all the blamed traffic between here +and the Elk—what? We can thank God for that!" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton didn't answer, except by another nod. He was listening to +Spence at the key, asking Brook's Cut why they didn't report Owsley +through. +</P> + +<P> +The rain rattled at the window panes, and the sashes shook under the +gusts of wind; out in the yards below the switch lights showed blurred +and indistinct. Regan paced the room more and more impatiently. +Carleton's face began to go hard. Spence hung tensely over the table, +his fingers on the key, waiting for the sounder to break, waiting for +the Brook's Cut call. +</P> + +<P> +It was only seven miles from Elk River, where the stalled passengers of +the Limited—will you remember this?—grumbled and complained, pettish +in their discontent at the delay, only seven miles from there to +Brook's Cut, the first station east—only seven miles, but the minutes +passed, and still Brook's Cut answered: "No." And Carleton's face grew +harder still, and Regan swore deep down under his breath from a full +heart, and Spence grew white and rigid in his chair. And so they +waited there, waited with the sense of disaster growing cold upon +them—waited—but Brook's Cut never reported Owsley "in" or "out" that +night. +</P> + +<P> +Owsley? Who knows what was in the poor, warped brain that night? He +had heard her call to him, and they had brought him back the 1601, and +she was standing there, alone, deserted—and she had called to him. +Who knows what was in his mind, as, together, he and the 1601 went +tearing through that black, storm-rent night, when the rivers, and the +creeks, and the sluices were running full, and the Elk River, that +paralleled the right of way for a mile or two to the crossing, was a +raging torrent? Who knows if he ever heard the thundering crash with +which the Elk River bridge went out? Who knows, as he swung the curve +that opened the bridge approach, without time for any man, Owsley or +another, to have stopped, if the headlight playing on the surge of +maddened waters meant anything to him? Who knows? That was where they +found them, beneath the waters, Owsley and the 1601—and Owsley was +smiling, his hand tight-gripped upon the throttle that he loved. +</P> + +<P> +"I dunno," says Regan, when he speaks of Owsley, "if the mountains out +here have anything to do with making a man think harder. I +dunno—sometimes I think they do. You get to figuring that the Grand +Master mabbe goes a long way back, years and years, to work things +out—if it hadn't been for Owsley the Limited would have gone into the +Elk that night with every soul on board. Owsley? That's the way he +wanted to go out, wasn't it?—with the 1601. Mabbe the Grand Master +thought of him, too." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +III +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE APOTHEOSIS OF SAMMY DURGAN +</H4> + +<P> +The only point the Hill Division, from Carleton, the super, to the last +car tink, would admit it was at all hazy on as far as Sammy Durgan was +concerned, was why in the everlasting name of everything the man stuck +to railroading. When the Hill Division got up against that point it +was floored and took the count. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan wore the belt. He held a record never equalled before or +since. Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who had a warped gift for +metaphor, said the man was as migratory on jobs as a flock of crows in +a poor year for corn, only a blamed sight harder to get rid of. +</P> + +<P> +As far back as anybody could remember they remembered Sammy Durgan. +Somewhere on the division you were bound to bump up against him—but +rarely twice in the same place. There wasn't any one in authority, +even so mild an authority as a section boss, who hadn't fired Sammy +Durgan so often that it had grown on them like a habit. Not that it +made much difference, however; for, ejected from the roundhouse, Sammy +Durgan's name would be found decorating the pay roll next month in the +capacity of baggage master, possibly, at some obscure spot up the line; +and here, for example, a slight mix-up of checks in the baggage of a +tourist family, that divided the family against itself and its baggage +as far as the East is from the West—and Sammy Durgan moved on again. +What the Hill Division said about him would have been complimentary if +it hadn't been for the grin; they said he was an <I>all-round</I> railroad +man. Shops, roundhouse, train crews, station work and construction +gangs, Sammy Durgan knew them all; and they knew Sammy Durgan. +Eternally and everlastingly in trouble—that was Sammy Durgan. +</P> + +<P> +Nothing much else the matter with him—just trouble. Brains all right; +only, as far as the Hill Division could make out, the last thing Sammy +Durgan ever thought of doing was to give his brains a little exercise +to keep them in condition. But, if appalling in his irresponsibility, +Sammy Durgan nevertheless had a saving grace—no cork ever bobbed more +buoyantly on troubled waters than Sammy Durgan did on his sea of +adversity. Sammy Durgan always came up smiling. He had a perennial +sort of cheerfulness on his leathery face that infected his guileless +blue eyes, while a mop of fiery red hair like a flaming halo kind of +guaranteed the effect to be genuine. One half of you felt like kicking +the man violently, and the other half was obsessed with an insane +desire to hobnob with him just as violently. Sammy Durgan, to say the +least of it, was a contradictory proposition. He had an ambition—he +wanted a steady job. +</P> + +<P> +He mentioned the matter to Regan one day immediately following that +period in his career when, doing odd jobs over at the station, he had, +in filling up the fire buckets upstairs, inadvertently left the tap +running. The sink being small and the flooring none too good, a +cherished collection of Regan's blue-prints in the room below were +reduced to a woebegone mass of sticky pulp. Sammy Durgan mentioned his +ambition as a sort of corollary, as it were, to the bitter and concise +remarks in which the fat little master mechanic had just couched Sammy +Durgan's ubiquitous discharge. +</P> + +<P> +Regan didn't stop breathing—he had dealt with Sammy Durgan before. +Regan smiled as though it hurt him. +</P> + +<P> +"A <I>steady</I> job, is it?" said Regan softly. "I've been thinking so +hard daytimes trying to place you in a railroad job and still keep +railroading safe out in this part of the world that I've got to +dreaming about it at nights. Last night I dreamt I was in a foundry +and there was an enormous vat of red, bubbling, liquid iron they'd just +drawn off the furnace, and you came down from the ceiling on a spider +web and hung over it. And then I woke up, and I was covered with cold +sweat—for fear the web wouldn't break." +</P> + +<P> +"Regan," said Sammy Durgan, blinking fast, "you don't know a man when +you see one. You're where you are because you've had the chance to get +there. Mind that! I've never had a chance. But it'll come, Regan. +And the day'll come, Regan, when you'll be down on your knees begging +me to take what I'm asking for now, a steady job on your blessed +railroad." +</P> + +<P> +"Mabbe," said Regan, chewing absently on his blackstrap; and then, as a +sort of afterthought: "What kind of a job?" +</P> + +<P> +"A steady one," said Sammy Durgan doggedly. "I dunno just what, +but——" +</P> + +<P> +"H'm!" said Regan solicitously. "Well, don't make up your mind in a +hurry, Durgan—I don't want to press you. When you've had a chance to +look around a little more, mabbe you'll be able to decide better—what? +Get out!" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan backed to the door. There he paused, blinking fast again: +</P> + +<P> +"Some day I'll show you, Regan, you and all the rest of 'em, and——" +</P> + +<P> +"Get out!" said the little master mechanic peremptorily. +</P> + +<P> +And Sammy Durgan got out. He was always getting out. That was his +forte. When he got in, it was only to get out. +</P> + +<P> +"Some day," said Sammy Durgan—and the Hill Division stuck its tongue +in its cheek. But Sammy Durgan had his answer to the blunt refusal +that invariably greeted his modest request for a fresh job. +</P> + +<P> +"Listen here," said Sammy Durgan, with a firm hold on the overalls' +strap of, it might be, the bridge foreman he was trying to wheedle a +time check out of. "'Twas Regan fired me first, but he was in a bad +humor at the time; 'twas the steam hose I was washing out boiler tubes +with in the roundhouse got away from me, and it was accidental, though +mabbe for the moment it was painful for him. It just shows that if you +get fired once it sticks to you. And as for them baggage checks out to +Moose Peak, they weren't no family, they was a tribe, about eighteen +kids besides the pa and ma, and fourteen baggage cars full of trunks. +<I>He</I> was a little bow-legged fellow with a scared look, and he whispers +where he wants the checks for about three minutes before train time, +then <I>she</I> comes in, bigger'n two elephants, scorches him through a pair +of glasses she carries on a handle, and orders 'em checked somewhere +else. Say, was I to blame if some of them checks in the hurry didn't +get the first name I'd written on 'em scratched out? And over there to +the station the time Regan's office got flooded 'twasn't my fault. If +you get fired once, you keep on getting fired no matter what you do. I +turned the tap off. It was one of them little devils of call boys +turned it on again. But do you think any one would believe that? They +would not—or I'd have mentioned it at the time. If there's any +trouble anywhere and I'm around it's put onto me. And there's Mrs. +Durgan back there to Big Cloud. She ain't very well. Cough's +troubling her more'n usual lately, and worrying about the rent not +being paid ain't helping her any. Say, you'll give me a job, won't +you?" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan got the job. +</P> + +<P> +Now, as may be inferred, Sammy Durgan did not always adhere strictly to +the truth—not that he swerved from it with vicious intent, but that, +like some other things, trouble for instance, the swerving had grown, +as it were, to be a habit. Mrs. Durgan did not have a cough, neither +was she worrying about the unpaid rent. Mrs. Durgan, speaking strictly +in a physical sense, was mightiest among women in Big Cloud, and on the +night the story proper opens—a very black night for Sammy +Durgan—Sammy Durgan was sitting on Mrs. Durgan's front door step, and +the door was locked upon him. Sammy Durgan, paradoxical as it may +sound, though temporarily out of a job again and with no job to be +fired from, was being fired at that moment harder than he had ever been +fired before in his life—and the firing was being done by Mrs. Durgan. +It had been threatening for quite a while, quite a long while, two or +three years, but it none the less came to Sammy Durgan with something +of a shock, and he gasped. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Durgan was intensely Irish, from purer stock than Sammy Durgan, +and through the window Mrs. Durgan spoke barbed words: +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis shame yez should take to yersilf, Sammy Durgan, if yez had the +sinse to take annything—the loikes av yez, a big strong man! 'Tis +years I've put up wid yez, whin another woman would not, but I'll put +up wid yez no more! 'Tis the ind this night, Sammy Durgan, an' the +Holy Mither be praised there's no children to blush fer the disgrace +yez are!" +</P> + +<P> +"Maria," said Sammy Durgan craftily, for this had worked before, "do I +drink?" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Durgan choked in her rage. +</P> + +<P> +"I do not," said Sammy Durgan soothingly. "And who but me lays the pay +envelopes on your lap without so much as tearing 'em to count the +insides of 'em? Listen here, Maria, listen——" +</P> + +<P> +"Is ut mocking me, yez are!" shrieked Mrs. Durgan. "'Tis little good +the opening av 'em would do! Listen, is ut, to the smooth tongue av +yez! I've listened till me fingers are bare to the bone wid the +washtubs to kape a roof over me head. I'll listen no more, Sammy +Durgan, moind thot!" +</P> + +<P> +"Maria," said Sammy Durgan, with a softness that was meant to turn away +wrath, "Maria, open the door." +</P> + +<P> +"I will not," said Mrs. Durgan, with a truculent gasp. "Niver! Not +while yez live, Sammy Durgan—fer yez funeral mabbe, but fer no less +than thot, an' thin only fer the joy av bein' a widdy!" +</P> + +<P> +It sounded inevitable. There was a sort of cold uncompromise even in +the fire of Mrs. Durgan's voice. Sammy Durgan rose heavily from the +doorstep. +</P> + +<P> +"Some day," said Sammy Durgan sadly, "some day, Maria, you'll be sorry +for this. You'll break your heart for it, Maria! You wait! 'Tis no +fault of mine, the trouble. Everybody's against me—and now my wife. +But you wait. Once in the life of every man he gets his chance. Mine +ain't come yet. But you wait! It's the man who rises to an emergency +that counts, and——" +</P> + +<P> +There was a gurgling sound from Mrs. Durgan's throat. Then the window +slammed down—hard. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan stared, stared a little blankly as the lamp retreated from +the window and the front of the house grew black. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess," said Sammy Durgan a little wistfully to himself, "I guess +I'm fired all around for fair." He turned and walked slowly out to the +street and headed downtown toward the railroad yards. And as he walked +he communed with himself somewhat bitterly: "Any blamed little thing +that comes up, that, if 'twere anybody else, nobody'd pay any attention +to it, and everybody yells 'fire Sammy Durgan.' That's me——'fire +Sammy Durgan.' And why? Because I never get a chance—that's why!" +Sammy Durgan grew earnest in his soliloquy. "Some day," said he, as he +reached the station platform, "I'll show 'em—I'll show Maria! It'll +come, every man gets his chance. Give me the chance to rise to an +emergency, that's all I ask—just give me that and I'll show 'em!" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan walked up the deserted platform with no very definite +destination in view, and stopped abruptly in front of the freight shed +as he suddenly remembered that it was very late. He sat down on the +edge of the platform, and kicked at the main-line rail with the toe of +his boot. Sammy Durgan was bedless, penniless, wifeless and jobless. +It was a very black night indeed for Sammy Durgan. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's mind catalogued those in authority in Big Cloud in whose +gift a job was, and he went over the list—but it did not take him +long, as he had need to hesitate over no single name. Big Cloud and a +job for Sammy Durgan were separated by a great gulf. Sammy Durgan, +however, his perennial optimism gaining the ascendancy again, found +solace even in that fact. In view of his present marital difficulties +a job in Big Cloud would be an awkward thing anyhow. In fact, for the +first time in his life, he would have refused a job in Big Cloud. +Sammy Durgan had a certain pride about him. Given the opportunity, the +roundhouse, the shops, the yards, and the train crews, once they +discovered the little impasse that had arisen in the Durgan family, +might be safely trusted to make capital out of it—at his expense. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's mind in search of a job went further afield. This was +quite a different proposition, for the mileage of the Hill Division was +big. For an hour Sammy Durgan sat there, scratching at his red hair, +puckering his leathery face, and kicking at the rail to the detriment +of the toe-cap of his boot. He knew the division well, very well—too +well. At the moment, he could not place any spot upon it that he did +not know, or, perhaps what was more to the point, that was not +intimately acquainted with him. Road work, bridge work, yard work, +station work passed in review before him, but always and with each one +arose a certain well-remembered face whose expression, Biblically +speaking, was not like unto a father's on the prodigal's return. +</P> + +<P> +And then at last Sammy Durgan sighed in relief. There was Pat Donovan! +True, he and Pat Donovan had had a little misunderstanding incident to +the premature explosion of a keg of blasting powder that had wrecked +the construction shanty, but that was two years ago and under quite +different conditions. Pat Donovan now was a section boss on a desolate +stretch of track about five stations up the line, and his only +companions were a few Polacks who spoke English like parrots—voluble +enough as far as it went, but not entirely soul-filling to an Irishman +of the sociable tendencies of Pat Donovan. He could certainly get a +job out of Pat Donovan. +</P> + +<P> +The matter ultimately settled, Sammy Durgan stood up. Across the yards +they were making up the early morning freight. That solved the +transportation question. A railroad man, whether he was out of a job +or not, could always get a lift in any caboose that carried the markers +or the tail lights of old Bill Wallis' train. Sammy Durgan got a lift +that morning up to Dam River; and there, a little further along the +line, he ran Pat Donovan and his Polacks to earth where they were +putting in some new ties. +</P> + +<P> +Donovan, a squat, wizened, red eye-lidded little man, with a short, +bristling crop of sandy whiskers circling his jaws like an ill-trimmed +hedge, hurriedly drew back the hand he had extended as he caught the +tail end of Sammy Durgan's greeting. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, a job is ut?" he inquired without enthusiasm, from his seat on a +pile of ties beside the track. +</P> + +<P> +"Listen, here, Pat," said Sammy Durgan brightly. "Listen to——" +</P> + +<P> +"Yez have yer nerve wid yez!" observed the section boss caustically. +"Yez put me in moind av a felley I had workin' fer me wance, for yez +are the dead spit av him, Sammy Durgan, that blew the roof off av the +construction shanty, an'——" +</P> + +<P> +"That was two years ago, Donovan," interposed Sammy Durgan hurriedly, +"and you've no blasting powder on this job, and it was no fault of +mine. I would have explained it at the time, but you were a bit hot +under the collar, Pat, and you would not listen. I was but testing the +detonator box, and 'twas yourself told me the connections were not +made." +</P> + +<P> +"Did I?"—the section boss was watching his chattering gang of +foreigners with gradually narrowing eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"You did," asserted Sammy Durgan earnestly, "and——" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan stopped. Donovan had leaped from his seat, and was +gesticulating fiercely at his gold-earringed, greasy-haired laboring +crew. +</P> + +<P> +"Yez are apes!" he yelled, dancing frantically up and down. "Yez are +oorang-ootangs! An' yez talk like a cageful av monkeys! Yez look +loike men, but yez are not! Yez are annything that has no brains! +Have I not told yez till me throat's cracked doin' ut thot yez are not +rayquired to lift the whole dombed right av way to put in a single +measly tie? Is ut a hump loike a camel's back yez are try in' to make +in the rail? Here! Dig—<I>here</I>!"—the little section boss, with +wrathful precision, indicated the exact spot with the toe of his boot. +</P> + +<P> +He returned to his seat, and regarded Sammy Durgan helplessly. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis a new lot," said he sadly, "an' the worst, bar none, that iver I +had." +</P> + +<P> +"But an Irishman, and one that can talk your own tongue, you won't hire +when he's out of a job," insinuated Sammy Durgan reproachfully. +</P> + +<P> +The section boss scrubbed reflectively at his chin whiskers. +</P> + +<P> +"An' how's Mrs. Durgan?" he asked, with some cordiality. +</P> + +<P> +"She's bad," said Sammy Durgan, suddenly mournful and shaking his head. +"She's worse than ever she's been, Donovan. I felt bad at leaving her +last night, Donovan—I did that. But what could I do? 'Twas a job I +had to get, Donovan, bad as I felt at leaving her, Donovan." +</P> + +<P> +"Sure now, is thot so?" said the little section boss sympathetically. +"'Tis cruel harrd luck yez have, Durgan. But yez'll moind I've not +much in the way av jobs—'tis a desolate bit av country, an' mostly +track-walkin' at a dollar-tin a day." +</P> + +<P> +"Donovan," said Sammy Durgan from a full heart, "the day'll come, +Donovan, when I'll keep the grass green on your grave for this. I knew +you'd not throw an old friend down." +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis glad I am to do ut," said Donovan, waving his hand royally. "An' +yez can start in at wance." +</P> + +<P> +And Sammy Durgan started. And for a week Sammy Durgan assiduously +tramped his allotted mileage out and back to the section shanty each +day—and for a week Sammy Durgan and trouble were asunder. +</P> + +<P> +Trouble? Where, from what possible source, could there be any trouble? +Not a soul for miles around the section shanty, just mountains and +track and cuts and fills, and nothing on earth for Sammy Durgan to do +but keep a paternal eye generally on the roadbed. Trouble? It even +got monotonous for Sammy Durgan himself. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis not," confided Sammy Durgan to himself one morning, after a week +of this, that found him plodding along the track some two miles east of +the section shanty, "'tis not precisely the job I'd like, for it's a +chance I'm looking for to show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of +'em, and there'll be no chance here—but temporarily it'll do. 'Tis +not much of a job, and beneath me at that, but have I not heard that +them as are faithful in little will some day be handed much? There'll +be no one to say"—he glanced carefully around him in all +directions—"that Sammy Durgan was not a good track-walker." +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan sat down on the edge of the embankment, extracted a black +cutty from his pocket, charged it with very black tobacco, lit it, +tamped the top of the bowl with a calloused forefinger, and from +another pocket extracted a newspaper—one of a bundle that the train +crew of No. 7 thoughtfully heaved at the section shanty door each +morning on their way up the line. +</P> + +<P> +It was a warm, bright morning; one of those comfortable summer mornings +with just enough heat to lift a little simmering haze from the rails, +and just enough sun to make a man feel leisurely, so to speak. Sammy +Durgan, the cutty drawing well, wormed a comfortable and inviting +hollow in the gravel of the embankment, propped his back against an +obliging tie, and opened his paper. +</P> + +<P> +"Track-walking," said Sammy Durgan, "is not much of a job, and 'tis not +what I'm looking for, but there are worse jobs." +</P> + +<P> +Somebody had read the paper before Sammy Durgan, hence the sheet that +first presented itself to his view was a page of classified +advertisements. His eye roved down the column of "Situations +Vacant"—and held on one of them. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +MEN WANTED for grading work at The Gap. Apply at Engineers' Office, +Big Cloud, or to T. H. MacMurtrey, foreman, at The Gap. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan pursed his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"There's no telling," said Sammy Durgan thoughtfully, "when I'll be +looking for a new job, so I'll bear it in mind. Not that they'd give +me a job at the office, for they would not; but by the name of him this +T. H. MacMurtrey 'll be a new man and unknown to me, which is quite +another matter—and I'll keep it in mind." +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan turned the sheet absently—and then, forgetful of the +obliging tie that propped his back, he sat bolt upright with a jerk. +</P> + +<P> +"For the love of Mike!" observed Sammy Durgan breathlessly, with his +eyes glued to the paper. +</P> + +<P> +It leaped right out at him in the biggest type the Big Cloud <I>Daily +Sentinel</I> had to offer, which, if it had its limitations, was not to be +despised, since it had acquired a second-hand font or two from a +metropolitan daily east that made no pretense at being modest in such +matters. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's eyes began to pop, and his leathery face to screw up. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" ALIGN="center"> +GHASTLY RAILROAD TRAGEDY<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" ALIGN="center"> +UNKNOWN MAN MURDERED IN STATEROOM<BR> +OF EASTBOUND FLYER<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" ALIGN="center"> +<I>No Clue to Assassin</I><BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's eyes bored into the fine print of the "story." If the +style was a trifle provincial and harrowing, Sammy Durgan was not +fastidious enough to be disturbed thereby—it was intensely vivid. +Sammy Durgan's mouth was half open, as he read. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +One of the most atrocious, daring and bloody murders in the annals of +the country's crime was perpetrated last night in a compartment of the +sleeping car on No. 12, the eastbound through express. It is a +baffling mystery, though suspicion is directed against a passenger who +gave his name as Samuel Starke of New York. The details, gathered by +the <I>Sentinel</I> staff from Conductor Hurley, and Clements, the porter, +on the arrival of the train at Big Cloud, are as follows: +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +The car was a new-type compartment car, with the compartment doors +opening off the corridor that runs along one side of the length of the +car. As the train was passing Dam River, Clements, the porter, at the +forward end of the car, thought he heard two revolver shots from +somewhere in the rear. Clements says he thought at first he had been +mistaken, for the train was travelling fast and making a great uproar, +and he did not at once make any effort to investigate. Then he heard a +compartment door open, and he started down the corridor. Starke was +standing in the doorway of B compartment where the murdered man was, +and Starke yelled at Clements. "Here, porter, quick!" is what Clements +says Starke said to him: "There's a man been shot in here! My +compartment's next to this, you know, and I heard two shots and rushed +in." +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +It was a horrible and unnerving sight that greeted the porter's eyes. +Mr. Clements was still visibly affected by it as he talked to the +<I>Sentinel</I> reporter in Big Cloud. The unknown murdered man lay +pitifully huddled on the floor, lifeless and dead, a great bullet wound +in one temple and another along the side of his neck that must have +severed the jugular vein. It was as though blood had rained upon the +victim. He was literally covered with it. He was already past aid, +being quite dead. Conductor Hurley was quickly summoned. But +investigation only deepened the mystery. Suicide was out of the +question because there was no weapon to be found. Mr. Starke, at his +own request, was searched, but had no revolver. Mr. Starke, however, +has been held by the police. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +The <I>Sentinel</I>, without wishing to infringe upon the sphere of the +authorities or cast aspersions upon their acumen, but in the simple +furtherance of justice, offers the suggestion that, as the compartment +window was open, the assassin, whoever he was, hurled the revolver out +of the window after committing his dastardly and unspeakable crime; and +the <I>Sentinel</I> hereby offers <I>Twenty-five Dollars Reward</I> for the +recovery of the revolver. Lawlessness and crime, we had fondly +believed, was stamped out of the West, and we raise our voice in +protest against the return of desperadoes, bandits, and train robbers, +and we solemnly warn all those of that caliber that they will not be +tolerated in the new West, and we call upon all public-spirited +citizens in whose veins red blood flows to rise up and put them down +with an iron and merciless—— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +There were still three columns. Sammy Durgan read them voraciously. +At the end, he sucked hard on the black cutty. The black cutty was out. +</P> + +<P> +"To think of the likes of that!" muttered Sammy Durgan heavily, as he +dug for a match. "The fellow that wrote the piece—'twill be that +little squint-eyed runt Labatt—is not the fool I thought him. It's +right, he is; what with murders and desperadoes no man's life's +safe—it is not! And to think of it right on this same railroad! And +who knows"—Sammy Durgan rose with sudden haste—"but 'twas right on +this same spot where I am this blessed minute, for the paper says it +was close to Dam River, that the poor devil was shot dead and foully +killed! And—" The match flamed over the bowl of the cutty, but Sammy +Durgan's attention was not on it. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan, in a sort of strained way, descended the embankment. The +match burned his fingers, and Sammy Durgan dropped it. Sammy Durgan +rubbed his eyes—yes, it was still glistening away there in the +sunlight. He stooped, and from the grass, trembling a little with +excitement, picked up a heavy-calibered, nickel-trimmed revolver. +</P> + +<P> +"Holy Christmas!" whispered Sammy Durgan, blinking fast. "'Tis the +same! There's no doubt of it—'tis the same that done the bloody deed! +And 'tis the first bit of luck I've had since I was born! Twenty-five +dollars reward!" He said it over very softly again: "Twenty-five +dollars reward!" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan returned to the track, and resumed his way along it; +though, as far as his services to the road were concerned, he might +just as well have remained where he was. Sammy Durgan's thoughts were +not of loosened spikes and erring fishplates, and neither were his eyes +intent on their discovery—his mind, thanks to Labatt, of the Big Cloud +<I>Daily Sentinel</I>, teemed with scenes of violence vividly portrayed, +midnight murders, corpses in grotesque attitudes on gore-bespattered +compartment floors, desperadoes of all descriptions, train bandits and +train robbers in masks holding up trains. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis true," said Sammy Durgan to himself. "'Tis a lawless country, +these same Rockies. I mind 'twas only a year ago that Black Dempsey +and his gang tried to wreck Number Two in the Cut near Coyote Bend—I +mind it well." +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan walked on down the track. At intervals he took the +revolver from his pocket and put it back again, as though to assure +himself beyond peradventure of doubt that it was in his possession. +</P> + +<P> +"Twenty-five dollars reward!" communed Sammy Durgan, grown arrogant +with wealth. "'Tis near a month's pay at a dollar-ten—and all for the +picking of it up. I called it luck—but it is not luck. An ordinary +track-walker would have walked it by and not seen it. 'Tis what you +get for keeping your eyes about you, and besides the twenty-five 'tis +promotion, too, mabbe I'll get. 'Twill show 'em that there's +track-walkers <I>and</I> track-walkers. I'll say to Regan: 'Regan,' I'll +say, 'you've said hard words to me, Regan, but I ask you, Regan, how +many track-walkers would have brought a bloody murderer to justice by +keeping their eyes about them in the faithful performance of their +duty, Regan? 'Tis but the chance I ask. 'Tis the man in an emergency +that counts, and if ever I get a chance at an emergency I'll show you.' +And Regan'll say: 'Sammy,' he'll say, 'you——'" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan paused in his engrossing soliloquy as the roar of an +approaching train fell on his ears, and he scrambled quickly down from +the right of way to the bottom of the embankment. Just ahead of him +was a short, narrow, high-walled rock cut, and at the farther end the +track swerved sharply to the right, side-stepping, as it were, the +twist of the Dam River that swung in, steep-banked, to the right of way. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll wait here," said Sammy Durgan, "'till she's through the cut." +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan waited. The train came nearer and nearer—and then Sammy +Durgan cocked his head in a puzzled way and stared through the cut. He +couldn't see anything, of course, for the curve, but from the sound she +had stopped just beyond the cut. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, what the devil is she stopping there for?" inquired Sammy Durgan +of the universe in an injured tone. +</P> + +<P> +He started along through the cut. And then Sammy Durgan stopped +himself—as though he were rooted to the earth—and a sort of grayish +white began to creep over his face. Came echoing through the cut a +shout, a yell, another, a chorus of them—then a shot, another shot, a +fusilade of them—and then a din mingling the oaths, the yells, and the +shots into a hideous babel that rang terror in Sammy Durgan's ears. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan promptly sidled in and hugged up against the rock wall +that towered above him. Here he hesitated an instant, then he crept +cautiously forward. Where he could not see, it was axiomatic that he +could not be seen; and where he could not be seen, it was equally +logical that he would be safe. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's face, quite white now, was puckered as it had never been +puckered before, and his lips moved in a kind of twitching, jerky way +as he crept along. Then suddenly, a voice, that seemed nearer than the +others, but which from the acoustic properties of the cut he could not +quite locate, bawled out fiercely over the confusion, prefaced with an +oath: +</P> + +<P> +"Get that express car door open, and be damned quick about it! Go on, +shoot along the side of the train every time you see a head in a +window!" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's mouth went dry, and his heart lost a beat, then went to +pounding like a trip-hammer. Labatt and the Big Cloud <I>Daily Sentinel</I> +hadn't drawn any exaggerated picture. A hold-up—in broad daylight! +</P> + +<P> +"Holy Mither!" whispered Sammy Durgan. +</P> + +<P> +He crept farther forward, very cautiously—still farther—and then he +lay full length, crouched against the rock wall at the end of the cut. +He could see now, and the red hair of Sammy Durgan kind of straggled +down damp over his forehead, and his little black eyes lost their +pupils. +</P> + +<P> +It was a passenger train; one side of it quite hidden by the sharp +curve of the track, the other side presented almost full on to Sammy +Durgan's view—the whole length of it. And Sammy Durgan, gasping, +stared. Not ten yards away from the mouth of the cut a huge pile of +ties were laid across the rails, with the pilot of the stalled engine +almost nosing them. Down the embankment, a very steep embankment where +the Dam River swirled along, marched there evidently at the revolver's +point, the engine crew stood with their hands up in the air—at the +revolver's point with a masked man behind it. Along the length of the +train, two or three more masked men were shooting past the windows in +curt intimation to the passengers that the safest thing they could do +was to stay where they were; and farther down, by the rear coach, the +conductor and two brakemen, like their mates of the engine crew, held +their hands steadfastly above their heads as another bandit covered +them with his weapon. And through the open door of the express car +Sammy Durgan could see bobbing heads and straining backs, and the +express company's safe being worked across the floor preparatory to +heaving it out on the ground. +</P> + +<P> +It takes long to tell it—Sammy Durgan got it all as a second flies. +And something, a bitter something, seemed to be gnawing at Sammy +Durgan's vitals. +</P> + +<P> +"Holy Mither!" he mumbled miserably. "'Tis an emergency, all +right—but 'tis not the right kind of an emergency. What could any one +man do against a lot of bloodthirsty, desperate devils like that, +that'd sooner cut your throat than look at you!" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's hand inadvertently rubbed against his right-hand coat +pocket—and his revolver. He drew it out mechanically, and it seemed +to put new life into Sammy Durgan, for, as he stared again at the scene +before him, Sammy Durgan quivered with a sudden, fierce elation. +</P> + +<P> +"I was wrong," said Sammy Durgan grimly. "'Tis the right kind of an +emergency, after all—and 'tis the man that uses his head and rises to +one that counts. I'll show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em! +Begorra, it can be done! 'Tis no one 'll notice me while I'm getting +to the engine and climbing in on the other side, and, by glory, if I +back her out quick enough them thieving hellions in the express car can +either jump for it or ride back to the arms of authority at the next +station—but the safe 'll be there, and 'twill be Sammy Durgan that +kept it there!" +</P> + +<P> +But Sammy Durgan still lay on the ground and stared—while the safe was +being pushed to the express car door, and one edge of it already +protruded out from the car. +</P> + +<P> +"Go on, Sammy Durgan!" urged Sammy Durgan anxiously to himself. "Don't +you be skeered, Sammy, you got a revolver. 'Tis yourself, and not +Maria, that'll do the locking of the doors hereafter, and 'tis Regan +you can pass with fine contempt. Think of that, Sammy Durgan! And all +for a bit of a run that'll not take the time of a batting of an +eyelash, and with no one to notice you doing it. 'Tis a clever plan +you've devised, Sammy Durgan—it is that. Go on, Sammy; go on!" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan wriggled a little on the ground, cocked his revolver—and +wriggled a little more. +</P> + +<P> +"I will!" said Sammy Durgan with a sudden pinnacling of +determination—and he sprang to his feet. +</P> + +<P> +Some loosened shale rattled down behind him. Sammy Durgan dashed +through the mouth of the cut—and then for a moment all was a sort of +chaos to Sammy Durgan. From the narrow edge of the embankment, just +clear of the cut, a man stepped suddenly out. Sammy Durgan collided +with him, his cocked revolver went off, and, jerked from his grasp by +the shock, sailed riverwards through the air, while, echoing its report +from the express car door, a man screamed wildly and grabbed at a +bullet-shattered wrist; and the man with whom Sammy Durgan had +collided, having but precarious footing at best, reeled back from the +impact, smashed into another man behind him, and with a crash both +rolled down the almost perpendicular embankment. Followed a splash and +a spout of water as they struck the river—and from every side a +tornado of yells and curses. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis my finish!" moaned Sammy Durgan—but his feet were flying. +"I—I've done it now! If I ran back up the cut they'd chase me and +finish me—'tis my finish, anyway, but the engine 'll be the only +chance I got." +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan streaked across the track, hurdled, tumbled, fell, and +sprawled over the pile of ties, recovered himself, regained his feet, +and made a frantic spring through the gangway and into the cab. +</P> + +<P> +With a sweep Sammy Durgan shot the reversing lever over into the back +notch, and with a single yank he wrenched the throttle wide. There was +nothing of the craftsman in engine-handling about Sammy Durgan at that +instant—only hurry. The engine, from a passive, indolent and +inanimate thing, seemed to rise straight up in the air like an aroused +and infuriated beast that had been stung. With one mad plunge it +backed crashing into the buffer plates of the express car behind it, +backed again, and once again, and the tinkle of breaking glass sort of +ricochetted along the train as one car after another added its quota of +shattered window panes, while the drivers, slipping on the rails, +roared around like gigantic and insensate pinwheels. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan snatched at the cab frame for support—and then with a +yell he snatched at a shovel. A masked face showed in the gangway. +Sammy Durgan brought the flat of the shovel down on the top of the +man's head. +</P> + +<P> +The gangway was clear again. There was life for it yet! The train was +backing quickly now under the urgent, prodding bucks of the engine. +Sammy Durgan mopped at his face, his eyes warily on the gangways. +Another man made a running jump for it—again Sammy Durgan's shovel +swung—and again the gangway was clear. +</P> + +<P> +Shovel poised, lurching with the lurch of the cab, red hair flaming, +half terrified and half defiant, eyes shooting first to one gangway and +then the other, Sammy Durgan held the cab. A minute passed with no +renewal of attack. Sammy Durgan stole a quick glance over his shoulder +through the cab glass up the track—and, with a triumphant shout, he +flung the shovel clanging to the iron floor-plates, and, leaning far +out of the gangway, shook his fist. Strewn out along the right of way +masked men yelled and shouted and cursed, but Sammy Durgan was beyond +their reach—and so was the express company's safe. +</P> + +<P> +"Yah!" screamed Sammy Durgan, wildly derisive and also belligerent in +the knowledge of his own safety. "Yah! Yah! Yah! 'Twas me, ye +bloody hellions, that turned the trick on ye! 'Twas me, Sammy Durgan, +and I'll have you know it! 'Twas——" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan turned, as the express car opened, and Macy, the +conductor, hatless and wild-eyed, appeared on the platform. +</P> + +<P> +"'S'all right, Macy!" Sammy Durgan screeched reassuringly. "'S'all +right—it's me, Sammy Durgan." +</P> + +<P> +Macy jumped from the platform to the tender, jumped over the water +tank, and came down into the cab with an avalanche of coal. His mouth +was twitching and jerking, but for a moment he could not speak—and +then the words came like an explosion, and he shook his fist under +Sammy Durgan's nose. +</P> + +<P> +"You—you damned fathead!" he roared. "What in the double-blanked, +blankety-blanked son of blazes are you doing!" +</P> + +<P> +"Fathead, yourself!" retorted Sammy Durgan promptly—and there was +spice in the way Sammy Durgan said it. "I'm doing what you hadn't the +nerve or the head to do, Macy—unless mabbe you're in the gang +yourself! I'm saving that safe back there in the express car, that's +what I'm doing." +</P> + +<P> +"Saving nothing!" bellowed Macy crazily, as he slammed the throttle +shut. "There! Look there!" He reached for Sammy Durgan's head, and +with both hands twisted it around, and fairly flattened Sammy Durgan's +nose against the cab glass. +</P> + +<P> +"What—what is it?" faltered Sammy Durgan, a little less assertively. +</P> + +<P> +Macy was excitable. He danced upon the cab floor as though it were a +hornets' nest. +</P> + +<P> +"What is it!" he echoed in a scream. "What is it! It's moving +pictures, you tangle-brained, rusty-headed idiot! That's what it is!" +</P> + +<P> +A sort of dull gray film seemed to spread itself over Sammy Durgan's +face. Sammy Durgan stared through the cab glass. The track ahead was +just disappearing from view as the engine backed around a curve, but +what Sammy Durgan saw was enough—two dripping figures were salvaging a +wrecked and bedragged photographic outfit on the river bank, close to +the entrance of the cut where he had been in collision with them; an +excited group of train bandits, without any masks now, were +gesticulating around the marooned engineer and fireman; and in the +middle distance, squatting on a rail, a man, coatless, his shirt sleeve +rolled up, was making horrible grimaces as a companion bandaged his +wrist. +</P> + +<P> +Macy's laugh rang hollow—it wasn't exactly a laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know how much it costs," stuttered the conductor demoniacally, +"but there's about four million dollars' worth of film they're fishing +out of the river there, and they paid a thousand dollars for the train +and thirty-five minutes between stations to clear Number Forty, and +there's about eight thousand car windows gone, and one vestibule and +two platforms in splinters, and a man shot through the wrist, and if +that crowd up there ever get their hands on you they'll——" +</P> + +<P> +"I think," said Sammy Durgan hurriedly, "that I'll get off." +</P> + +<P> +He edged back to the gangway and peered out. The friendly bend of the +road hid the "outlaws." The train was almost at a standstill—and +Sammy Durgan jumped. Not on the river side—on the other side. Sammy +Durgan's destination was somewhere deep in the wooded growth that +clothed the towering mountain before him. +</P> + +<P> +There is an official record for cross-country mileage registered in the +name of some one whose name is not Sammy Durgan—but it is not +accurate. Sammy Durgan holds it. And it was far up on the mountain +side that he finally crossed the tape and collapsed, breathless and +gasping, on a tree stump. He sat there for quite a while, jabbing at +his streaming face with the sleeve of his jumper; and there was trouble +in Sammy Durgan's eyes, and plaint in his voice when at last he spoke. +</P> + +<P> +"Twenty-five dollars reward," said Sammy Durgan wistfully. "And 'twas +as good as in my pocket, and now 'tis gone. 'Tis hard luck, cruel hard +luck. It is that!" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's eyes roved around the woods about him and grew +thoughtful. +</P> + +<P> +"I was minded at the time," said Sammy Durgan, "that 'twas not the +right kind of an emergency, and when he hears of it Regan will be +displeased. And now what'll I do? 'Twill do no good to return to the +section shanty, for they'll be telegraphing Donovan to fire Sammy +Durgan. That's me—fire Sammy Durgan. 'Tis trouble dogs me and cruel +hard luck—and all I'm asking for is a steady job and a chance." +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan relapsed into mournful silence and contemplation for a +spell—and then his face began to clear. Sammy Durgan's optimism was +like the bobbing cork. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis another streak of cruel hard luck, of bitter, cruel hard luck +I've had this day, but am I down and out for the likes of that?" +inquired Sammy Durgan defiantly of himself. +</P> + +<P> +"I am not!" replied Sammy Durgan buoyantly to Sammy Durgan. "'Tis not +the first time I've been fired, and did I not read that there's +MacMurtrey begging for men up at The Gap? And him being a new man and +unknown to me, 'tis a job sure. 'Tis only my name might stand in the +way, for 'tis likely 'twill be mentioned in his hearing on account of +the bit of trouble down yonder. But 'tis the job I care for and not +the name. I'll be working for MacMurtrey to-morrow morning—I will +that! And what's more," added Sammy Durgan, beginning to blink fast, +"I'll show 'em yet, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em. Once in +every man's life he gets his chance. Mine ain't come yet. I thought +it had to-day, but I was wrong. But it'll come. You wait! I'll show +'em some day!" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan lost himself in meditation. After a little, he spoke +again. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not sure about the law," said Sammy Durgan, "but on account of the +fellow that the bullet hit, apart from MacMurtrey taking note of it, +'twould be as well, anyway, if I changed my name temporarily till the +temper of all concerned is cooled down a bit." Sammy Durgan rose from +the stump. "I'll start West," said Sammy Durgan, "and get a lift on +the first way-freight before the word is out. I'm thinking they'll be +asking for Sammy Durgan down at Big Cloud." +</P> + +<P> +And they were. It was quite true. Down at headquarters they were +earnestly concerned about Sammy Durgan. Sammy Durgan had made no +mistake in that respect. +</P> + +<P> +"Fire Sammy Durgan," wired the roadmaster to the nearest station for +transmission by first train to Pat Donovan, the section boss—and he +got this answer back the next morning: +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +I. P. SPEARS, Roadmaster, Big Cloud:<BR> + Sammy Durgan missing.<BR> + P. DONOVAN."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Missing—that was it. Just that, nothing more—as though the earth had +opened and swallowed him up, Sammy Durgan had disappeared. And while +Carleton grew red and apoplectic over the claim sheet for damages +presented by the moving-picture company, and Regan fumed and tugged at +his scraggly brown mustache at thought of the damage to his rolling +stock—Sammy Durgan was just missing, that was all—just missing. +Nobody knew where Sammy Durgan had gone. Nobody had seen him. Station +agents, operators, road bosses, section bosses, construction bosses and +everybody else were instructed to report—and they did. They +reported—nothing. Regan even went so far as to ask Mrs. Durgan. +</P> + +<P> +"Is ut here to taunt me, yez are!" screamed Mrs. Durgan bitterly—and +slammed the door in the little master mechanic's face. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess," observed Regan to himself, as he gazed at the +uncommunicative door panels, "I guess mabbe the neighbors have been +neighborly—h'm? But I guess, too, we're rid of Sammy Durgan at last; +and I dunno but what that comes pretty near squaring accounts for +window glass and about a million other incidentals. Only," added the +little master mechanic, screwing up his eyes, as he walked back to the +station, "only it would have been more to my liking to have got my +hands on him first—and got rid of him after!" +</P> + +<P> +But Regan, and Carleton, and Mrs. Durgan, and the Hill Division +generally were not rid of Sammy Durgan—far from it. For a week he was +missing, and then one afternoon young Hinton, of the division +engineer's staff, strolled into the office, nodded at Carleton, and +grinned at the master mechanic, who was tilted back in a chair with his +feet on the window sill. +</P> + +<P> +"I dropped off this morning to look over the new grading work at The +Gap," said Hinton casually. "And I thought you might be interested to +know that MacMurtrey's got a man working for him up there by the name +of Timmy O'Toole." +</P> + +<P> +"Doesn't interest me," said Regan blandly, chewing steadily on his +blackstrap. "Try and spring it on the super, Hinton. He always bites." +</P> + +<P> +"Who's Timmy O'Toole?" smiled Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +Hinton squinted at the ceiling. +</P> + +<P> +"Sammy Durgan," said Hinton—casually. +</P> + +<P> +There wasn't a word spoken for a minute. Regan lifted his feet from +the window sill and lowered his chair legs softly down to the floor as +though he were afraid of making a noise, and the smile on Carleton's +face sort of faded away as though a blight had withered it. +</P> + +<P> +"What was the name?" said Carleton presently, in a velvet voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Timmy O'Toole," said Hinton. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton's hand reached out, kind of as though of its own initiative, +kind of as though it were just habit, for a telegraph blank—but Regan +stopped him. It wasn't often that the fat, good-natured little master +mechanic was vindictive, but there were times when even Regan's soul +was overburdened. +</P> + +<P> +"Wait!" said Regan, with ferocious grimness. "Wait! I'll make a +better job of it than that, Carleton. I'm going up the line myself +to-morrow morning on Number Three—and <I>I'll</I> drop off at The Gap. +Timmy O'Toole now, is it? I'll make him sick!" Regan clenched his +pudgy fist. "When I'm through with him he'll never have to be fired +again—not on this division. Still looking for an emergency to rise +to, eh? Well, I'll accommodate him! He'll run up against the hottest +emergency to-morrow morning he ever heard of!" +</P> + +<P> +And Regan was right—that was exactly what Sammy Durgan did. Only it +wasn't quite the sort of emergency that Regan——But just a moment till +the line's clear, there go the cautionaries against us. +</P> + +<P> +If it had been any other kind of a switch it would never have +happened—let that be understood from the start. And how it ever came +to be left on the main line when modern equipment was installed is a +mystery, except perhaps that as it was never used it was therefore +never remembered by anybody. Nevertheless, there it stood, an old +weather-beaten, two-throw, stub switch of the vintage of the ark. +Two-throw, mind you, when a one-throw switch, even in the days of its +usefulness, would have answered the purpose just as well, better for +that matter. No modern drop-handle, interlocking safety device about +it. Not at all! A handle sticking straight out like a sore thumb that +could creak around on a semi-circular guide, with a rusty pin dangling +from a rusty chain to lock it—if some itinerant section hand didn't +forget to jab the pin back into the hole it had the habit of worming +its way out of! It stood about a quarter of the way down the grade of +The Gap, which is to say about half a mile from the summit, a deserted +sentinel on guard over a deserted spur that, in the old construction +days, had been built in a few hundred yards through a soft spot in the +mountain side for camp and material stores. +</P> + +<P> +As for The Gap itself, it was not exactly what might be called a nice +piece of track. Officially, the grade is an average of 4.2; +practically, it is likened to a balloon descension by means of a +parachute. It begins at the east end and climbs up in a wriggling, +twisting way, hugging gray rock walls on one side, and opening a caņon +on the other that, as you near the summit, would make you catch your +breath even to look at over the edge—it is a sheer drop. And also the +right of way is narrow, very narrow; just clearance on one side against +the rock walls, and a whole caņon full of nothingness at the edge of +the other rail, and——But there's our "clearance" now. +</P> + +<P> +MacMurtrey's camp was at the summit; and MacMurtrey's work, once the +camp was fairly established and stores in, was to shave the pate of the +summit, looking to an amelioration in The Gap's grade average—that is, +its official grade average. But on the morning that Regan left Big +Cloud on No. 3, the work was not very far along—only the preliminaries +accomplished, so to speak, which were a siding at the top of the grade, +with storehouse and camp shanties flanking it. +</P> + +<P> +And on the siding, that morning, just opposite the storehouse which, it +might be remarked in passing, had already received its first +requisition of blasting materials for the barbering of the grade that +was to come, a hybrid collection of Polacks, Swedes, and Hungarians +were emptying an oil-tank car and discharging supplies from some flats +and box cars; while on the main line track a red-haired man, with +leathery face, was loading some grade stakes on a handcar. +</P> + +<P> +MacMurtrey, tall, lanky and irascible, shouted at the red-haired man +from a little distance up the line. +</P> + +<P> +"Hey, O'Toole!" +</P> + +<P> +The red-haired man paid no attention. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>O'Toole!</I>" It came in a bellow from the road boss. "You, there, +O'Toole, you wooden-headed mud-picker, are you deaf!" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan looked up to get a line on the disturbance—and caught his +breath. +</P> + +<P> +"By glory!" whispered Sammy Durgan to himself. "I was near +forgetting—'tis me he's yelling at." +</P> + +<P> +"O'Too——" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir!" shouted Sammy Durgan hurriedly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you woke up, have you?" shrilled MacMurtrey. "Well, when you've +got those stakes loaded, take 'em down the grade and leave 'em by the +old spur. And take it easy on the grade, and mind your brakes going +down—understand?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir," said Sammy Durgan. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan finished loading his handcar, and, hopping aboard, started +to pump it along. At the brow of the grade he passed the oil-tank car, +and nodded sympathetically at a round-faced, tow-headed Swede who was +snatching a surreptitious drag at his pipe in the lee of the car. +</P> + +<P> +Like one other memorable morning in Sammy Durgan's career, it was +sultry and warm with that same leisurely feeling in the air. Sammy +Durgan and his handcar slid down the grade—for about an eighth of a +mile—rounded a curve that hid Sammy Durgan and the construction camp +one from the other, continued on for another hundred yards—and came to +a stop. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan got off. On the caņon side there was perhaps room for an +agile mountain goat to stretch its legs without falling off; but on the +other side, if a man squeezed in tight enough and curled his legs Turk +fashion, the rock wall made a fairly comfortable backrest. +</P> + +<P> +"'Twas easy, he said, to take it on the grade," said Sammy Durgan +reminiscently. "And why not?" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan composed himself against the rock wall, and produced his +black cutty. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis a better job than track-walking," said Sammy Durgan judicially, +"though more arduous." +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan smoked on. +</P> + +<P> +"But some day," said Sammy Durgan momentously, "I'll have a better one. +I will that! It's a long time in coming mabbe, but it'll come. Once +in every man's life a chance comes to him. 'Tis patience that counts, +that and rising to the emergency that proves the kind of a man you are, +as some day I'll prove to Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em." +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan smoked on. It was a warm summer morning, sultry even, as +has been said, but it was cool and shady against the rock ledge. Peace +fell upon Sammy Durgan—drowsily. Also, presently, the black cutty +fell, or, rather, slipped down into Sammy Durgan's lap—without +disturbing Sammy Durgan. +</P> + +<P> +A half hour, three-quarters of an hour passed—and MacMurtrey, far up +at the extreme end of the construction camp, let a sudden yell out of +him and started on a mad run toward the tank-car and the summit of the +grade, as a series of screeches in seven different varieties of +language smote his ears, and a great burst of black smoke rolling +skyward met his startled gaze. But fast as he ran, the Polacks, Swedes +and Hungarians were faster—pipe smoking under discharging oil-tank +cars and in the shadow of a dynamite storage shed they were accustomed +to, but to the result, a blazing oil-tank car shooting a flame against +the walls of the dynamite shed, they were not—they were only aroused +to action with their lives in peril, and they acted promptly and +earnestly—too earnestly. Some one threw the main line open, and the +others crowbarred the blazing car like mad along the few feet of siding +to get it away from the storage shed, bumped it on the main line, and +then their bars began to lose their purchase under the wheels—the +grade accommodatingly took a hand. +</P> + +<P> +MacMurtrey, tearing along toward the scene, yelled like a crazy man: +</P> + +<P> +"Block her! Block the wheels! You—you——" His voice died in a +gasp. "D'ye hear!" he screamed, as he got his breath again. "Block +the wheels!" +</P> + +<P> +And the Polacks, the Swedes, the Hungarians and the What-Nots, scared +stiff, screeched and jabbered, as they watched the tank-car, gaining +speed with every foot it travelled, sail down the grade. And +MacMurtrey, too late to do anything, stopped dead in his tracks—his +face ashen. He pulled his watch, licked dry lips, and kind of +whispered to himself. +</P> + +<P> +"Number Three 'll be on the foot of the grade now," whispered +MacMurtrey, and licked his lips again. "Oh, my God!" +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile, down the grade around the bend, Sammy Durgan yawned, sat up, +and cocked his ear summitwards. +</P> + +<P> +"Now what the devil are them crazy foreigners yelling about!" +complained Sammy Durgan unhappily. "'Tis always the way with them, +like a cageful of screeching cockatoos, they are—but being foreigners +mabbe they can't help it, 'tis their nature to yell without provocation +and——" +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's ear caught a very strange sound, that mingled the clack +of fast-revolving wheels as they pounded the fish-plates with a roar +that hissed most curiously—and then Sammy Durgan's knees went loose at +the joints and wobbled under him. +</P> + +<P> +Trailing a dense black canopy of smoke, wrapped in a sheet of flame +that spurted even from the trucks, the oil-tank car lurched around the +bend and plunged for him—and for once, Sammy Durgan thought very fast. +There was no room to let it pass—on one side was just nothing, barring +a precipice; and on the rock side, no matter how hard he squeezed back +from the right of way, there wasn't any room to escape that spurting +flame that even in its passing would burn him to a crisp. And with one +wild squeak of terror Sammy Durgan flung himself at his handcar, and, +pushing first like a maniac to start it, sprang aboard. Then he began +to pump. +</P> + +<P> +There were a hundred yards between the bend and the scene of Sammy +Durgan's siesta—only the tank-car had momentum, a whole lot of it, and +Sammy Durgan had not. By the time Sammy Durgan had the handcar started +the hundred yards was twenty-five, and the monster of flame and smoke +behind him was travelling two feet to his one. +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan pumped—for his life. He got up a little better +speed—but the tank-car still gained on him. Down the grade he went, +the handcar rocking, swaying, lurching, and up and down on the handle, +madly, frantically, desperately, wildly went Sammy Durgan's arms, +shoulders and head—his hat blew off, and his red hair sort of stood +straight up in the wind, and his face was like chalk. +</P> + +<P> +Down he went, faster and faster, and the handcar, reeling like a +drunken thing, took a curve with a vicious slew, and the off wheels +hung in air for an instant while Sammy Durgan bellowed in panic, then +found their base again and shot along the straight. And faster and +faster behind him, on wings of fire it seemed, spitting flame tongues, +vomiting its black clouds of smoke like an inferno, roaring like a +mighty furnace in blast, came the tank-car. It was initial momentum +and mass against Sammy Durgan's muscles on a handcar pump handle—and +the race was not to Sammy Durgan. +</P> + +<P> +He cast a wild glance behind, and squeaked again, and his teeth began +to go like castanets, as the hot breath of the thing fanned his back. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis my finish," wheezed and stuttered Sammy Durgan through bursting +lungs and chattering teeth. "'Tis a dead man, I am—oh, Holy +Mither—'tis a dead man I am!" +</P> + +<P> +Ahead and to either side swept Sammy Durgan's eyes like a hunted +rat's—and they held, fascinated, on where the old spur track led off +from the main line. But it was not the spur track that interested +Sammy Durgan—it was that the rock wall, diverging away from his elbow, +as it were, presented a wide and open space. +</P> + +<P> +"It's killed I am, anyway," moaned Sammy Durgan. "But 'tis a chance. +If—if mabbe I could jump far enough there where there's room to let it +pass, I dunno—but 'tis killed, I'll be, anyway—oh, Holy Mither—but +'tis a chance—oh, Holy Mither!" +</P> + +<P> +Hissing in its wind-swept flames, belching its cataract of smoke that +lay behind it up the grade like a pall of death, roaring like some +insensate demon, the tank-car leaped at him five yards away. And, +screaming now in a paroxysm of terror that had his soul in clutch, +crazed with it, blind with it, Sammy Durgan jumped—<I>blindly</I>—just +before he reached the spur. +</P> + +<P> +Like a stone from a catapult, Sammy Durgan went through the air, and +with a sickening thud his body crashed full into the old stub +switch-stand and into the switch handle, whirled around, and he +ricochetted, a senseless, bleeding, shattered Sammy Durgan, three yards +away. +</P> + +<P> +It threw the switch. The handcar, already over it, sailed on down the +main line and around the next bend, climbed up the front end of the 508 +that was hauling No. 3 up the grade, smashed the headlight into +battered ruin, unshipped the stack, and took final lodgment on the +running board, its wheels clinging like tentacles to the 508's bell and +sand-box; but the tank-car, with a screech of wrenching axles, a +frightened, quivering stagger, took the spur, rushed like a Berserker +amuck along its length, plowed up sand and gravel and dirt and rock +where there were no longer any rails, and toppled over, a spent and +buckled thing, on its side. +</P> + +<P> +It was a flying switch that they talk of yet on the Hill Division. No. +3, suspicious of the handcar, sniffed her way cautiously around the +curve, and there, passengers, train crew, engine crew and Tommy Regan, +made an excited exodus from the train—just as MacMurtrey, near mad +with fear, Swedes, Hungarians and Polacks stringing out along the right +of way behind him, also arrived on the scene. +</P> + +<P> +Who disclaims circumstantial evidence! Regan stared at the burning +oil-tank up the spur, stared at the bleeding, senseless form of Sammy +Durgan—and then he yelled for a doctor. +</P> + +<P> +But a medical man amongst the passengers was already jumping for Sammy +Durgan; and MacMurtrey was clawing at the master mechanic's arm, +stuttering out the tale of what had happened. +</P> + +<P> +"And—and if it hadn't been for Timmy O'Toole there," stuttered +MacMurtrey, flirting away the sweat that stood out in great nervous +beads on his face, "I—it makes me sick to think what would have +happened when the tank struck Number Three. Something would have gone +into the caņon sure. Timmy O'Toole's a——" +</P> + +<P> +"His name's Sammy Durgan," said Regan, kind of absently. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't give a blamed hoot what his name is!" declared MacMurtrey +earnestly. "He's a man with grit from the soles up, and a head on him +to use it with. It was three-quarters of an hour ago that I sent him +down, so he must have been near the top on his way back when he saw the +tank-car coming—and he took the one chance there was—to try and beat +it to the spur here to save Number Three; and it was so close on him, +for it's a cinch he hadn't time to stop, that he had to jump for the +switch with about one chance in ten for his own life—see?" +</P> + +<P> +"A blind man could see it," said Regan heavily, "but—Sammy Durgan!" +He reached uncertainly toward his hip pocket for his chewing—and then, +with sudden emotion, the big-hearted, fat, little master mechanic bent +over Sammy Durgan. +</P> + +<P> +"God bless the man!" blurted out Regan. And then, to the doctor: "Will +he live?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, yes; I think so," the doctor answered. "He's pretty badly smashed +up, though." +</P> + +<P> +Sammy Durgan's lips were moving. Regan leaned close to catch the words. +</P> + +<P> +"A steady job," murmured Sammy Durgan. "Never get a chance. But some +day it'll come. I'll show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em!" +</P> + +<P> +"You have, Sammy," said Regan, in a low, anxious voice. "It's all +right, Sammy. It's all right, old boy. Just pull around and you can +have any blamed thing you want on the Hill Division." +</P> + +<P> +The doctor smiled sympathetically at Regan. +</P> + +<P> +"He's delirious, you know," he explained kindly. "What he says doesn't +mean anything." +</P> + +<P> +Regan looked up with a kind of a grim smile. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't it?" inquired Regan softly. Then he cleared his throat, and +tugged at his scraggly brown mustache—both ends of it. "That's what I +used to think myself," said the fat little master mechanic, sort of as +though he were apostrophizing the distant peaks across the caņon, and +not as though he were talking to the doctor at all. "But I guess—I +guess I know Sammy Durgan better than I did. H'm?" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IV +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE WRECKING BOSS +</H4> + +<P> +Opinions, right or wrong, on any subject are a matter of +individuality—there have been different opinions about Flannagan on +the Hill Division. But the story is straight enough—from car-tink to +superintendent, there has never been any difference of opinion about +that. +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan was the wrecking boss. +</P> + +<P> +Tommy Regan said the job fitted Flannagan, for it took a hard man for +the job, and Flannagan, bar none, was the hardest man on the payroll; +hardest at crooking elbows in MacGuire's Blazing Star Saloon, hardest +with his fists, and hardest of all when it came to getting at the heart +of some scalding, mangled horror of death and ruin that a man wouldn't +be called a coward to turn from—sick. +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan looked it. He stood six feet one in his stockings, and his +chest and shoulders were like the front-end view you'd get looking at a +sturdy, well-grown ox. He wasn't pretty. His face was scarred with +cuts and burns enough to stall any German duelling student on a siding +till the rails rusted, and the beard he grew to hide these +multitudinous disfigurements just naturally came out in tussocks; he +had black eyes that could go <I>coal</I> black and lose their pupils, and a +shock of black hair that fell into them half the time; also, he had a +tongue that wasn't elegant. That was Flannagan—Flannagan, the +wrecking boss. +</P> + +<P> +There's no accounting for the way some things come about—and it's +pretty hard to call the turn of the card when Dame Fortune deals the +bank. It's a trite enough saying that it is the unexpected that +happens in life, but the reason it's trite is because it's immeasurably +true. Flannagan growled and swore and cursed one night, coming back +from a bit of a spill up the line, because they stalled him and his +wrecking outfit for an hour about half a mile west of Big Cloud—the +reason being that, like the straw that broke the camel's back, a circus +train in from the East, billed for a three days' lay-off at Big Cloud, +had, seeking siding, temporarily choked the yards, already glutted with +traffic, until the mix-up Gleeson, the yardmaster, had to wrestle with +would have put a problem in differential calculus into the kindergarten +class. +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan was very dirty, and withal very tired, and when, finally, +they gave him the "clear" and his flat and caboose and his staggering +derrick rumbled sullenly down toward the roundhouse and shops, the +sight of gilded cages, gaudily decorated cars, and converted Pullmans +that were second-class-tourist equipment painted white, did not assuage +his feelings; neither was there enchantment for him in the roars of +multifarious beasts, nor in the hybrid smells that assailed his +nostrils from the general direction of the menagerie. Flannagan, for +an hour's loss of sleep, with heartiness and abandon, consigned that +particular circus, also all others and everything thereunto pertaining, +from fangless serpents to steam calliopes, to regions that are +popularly credited with being somewhat warmer than the torrid zone on +the hottest day in mid-summer. But then—Flannagan did not know. +</P> + +<P> +Opinions differ. Flannagan was about the last man on earth that any +one on the Hill Division would have picked out for a marrying man; and, +equally true the other way round, about the last man they would have +picked out as one a pretty girl would want to marry. With her, maybe, +it was the strength of the man, since they say that comes first with +women; with him, maybe, it was just the trim little brown-eyed, +brown-haired figure that could ride with the grace of a fairy. Anyway, +the only thing about it that didn't surprise any one was the fact that, +when it came, it came as sudden and quick as a head-on smash around a +ninety-degree curve. That was Flannagan's way, for Flannagan, if he +was nothing else, was impulsive. +</P> + +<P> +That night Flannagan cursed the circus; the next day he saw Daisy +MacQueen riding in the street parade and—but this isn't the story of +Flannagan's courtship, not but that the courtship of any man like +Flannagan would be worth the telling—only there are other things. +</P> + +<P> +At first, Big Cloud winked and chuckled slyly to itself; and then, when +the circus left and Flannagan got a week off and left with it, it +guffawed outright—but when, at the end of that week, Flannagan brought +back Mrs. Flannagan, <I>née</I> Daisy MacQueen, Big Cloud stuck its tongue +in its cheek, wagged its head and waited developments. +</P> + +<P> +This is the story of the developments. +</P> + +<P> +Maybe that same impulsiveness of Flannagan's, that could be blind and +bullheaded, coupled with a passion that was like a devil's when +aroused, was to blame; maybe the women of Big Cloud, following the lead +of Mrs. MacAloon, the engineer's wife and the leader of society +circles, who shook her fiery red head and turned up her Celtic nose +disdainfully at Daisy MacQueen, had something to do with it; maybe +Daisy herself had a little pride—but what's the use of speculating? +It all goes back to the same beginning—opinions differ. +</P> + +<P> +Tongues wagged; Flannagan listened—that's the gist of it. But, once +for all, let it be said and understood that Daisy MacQueen was as +straight as they make them. She hadn't been brought up the way Mrs. +MacAloon and her coterie had, and she liked to laugh, liked to play, +liked to live, and not exist in a humdrum way ever over washtubs and a +cook stove—though, all credit to her who hadn't been used to them, she +never shirked one nor the other. The women's ideas about circuses and +circus performers were, putting it mildly, puritanical; but the men +liked Daisy MacQueen—and took no pains to hide it. They clustered +around her, and, before long, she ruled them all imperially with a nod +of her pretty head; and, as a result, the women's ideas from +puritanical became more so—which is human nature, Big Cloud or +anywhere else. +</P> + +<P> +At first, Flannagan was proud of the little wife he had brought to Big +Cloud—proud of her for the very attitude adopted toward her by his +mates; but, as the months went by, gradually the wagging tongues got in +their work, gradually Flannagan began to listen, and the jealousy that +was his by nature above the jealousy of most men commenced to smolder +into flame. Just a rankling jealousy, directed against no one in +particular—just jealousy. Things up at the little house off Main +Street where the Flannagans lived weren't as harmonious as they had +been. +</P> + +<P> +In the beginning, Daisy, not treating the matter seriously, answered +Flannagan with a laugh; finally, she answered him not at all. And that +stage, unfortunately far from unique in other homes than Flannagan's +the world over, was reached where only some one act, word or deed was +needed to bring matters to a head. +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps, after all, there was poetic justice in Flannagan's cursing of +the circus, for it was the circus that supplied that one thing needed. +Not that the circus came back to town—it didn't—but a certain round, +little, ferret-eyed, short, pompadour-haired, waxed-mustached, perfumed +Signor Ferraringi, the ringmaster, did. +</P> + +<P> +Ferraringi was a scoundrel—what he got he deserved, there was never +any doubt about that; but that night Flannagan, when he walked into the +house, saw only Ferraringi on his knees before Daisy, heard only +impassioned, flowery words, and, in the blind fury that transformed him +from man to beast, the scorn, contempt and horror in Daisy's eyes, the +significance of the rigid little figure with tight-clenched hands, was +lost. Ferraringi had been in love with Daisy. Flannagan knew that, +and his seething brain remembered that. The circus people had told him +so; Daisy had told him so; Ferraringi had told him so with a snarl and +a threat—and he had laughed—<I>then</I>. +</P> + +<P> +One instant Flannagan hung upon the threshold. He was not a pretty +sight. Back from a wreck, he was still in his overalls, and these were +smeared with blood—four carloads of steers had gone into premature +shambles in the ditch. One instant Flannagan hung there, his face +working convulsively—and then he jumped. His left hand locked into +the collar of the ringmaster's coat, his arm straightened like the +tautening chains of his own derrick crane, and, as the other came off +his knees and upright from the yank, Flannagan's right swung a terrific +full-arm smash that, landing a little above the jaw, plastered one side +of that tonsorial work of art, the waxed and curled mustache, flat into +Ferraringi's cheek. +</P> + +<P> +Ferraringi's answer, as he wriggled free, was a torrent of +malediction—and a blinding flash. Daisy screamed. The shot missed, +but the powder singed Flannagan's face. +</P> + +<P> +It was the only shot that Ferraringi fired! With a roar, high-pitched +like the maddened trumpeting of an elephant amuck, Flannagan with a +single blow sent the revolver sailing ceiling high—then his arms, like +steel piston rods, worked in and out, and his fists drummed an awful, +merciless tattoo upon the ringmaster. +</P> + +<P> +The smoke from the shot filled the room with pungent odor. Chairs and +furniture, overturned, broken, crashed to the floor. Daisy, wild-eyed, +with parted lips, dumb with terror, crouched against the wall, her +hands clasped to her breast—but before Flannagan's eyes all was +red—<I>red</I>. +</P> + +<P> +A battered, bruised, reeling, staggering form before him curled up +suddenly and slid in a heap at his feet. Flannagan, with groping hands +and twitching fingers, reached for it—and then, with a rush, other +forms, many of them, came between him and what was on the floor. +</P> + +<P> +It was very good for Ferraringi, very good, for that was all that saved +him—Flannagan was seeing only red. +</P> + +<P> +The neighbors lifted the stunned ringmaster, limp as rags, to his feet. +Flannagan brushed his great fist once across his eyes in a half-dazed +way, and glared at the roomful of people. Suddenly, he heaved forward, +pushing those nearest him violently toward the door. +</P> + +<P> +"Get out of here!" he bellowed hoarsely. "Get out, curse you, d'ye +hear! Get out!" +</P> + +<P> +There were men in that little crowd, men besides the three or four +women, Mrs. MacAloon amongst them; men not reckoned overfaint of spirit +in Big Cloud by those who knew, but <I>they</I> knew Flannagan, and they +went—went, half carrying, half dragging the ringmaster, oiled and +perfumed now in a fashion grimly different than before. +</P> + +<P> +"Get out!" roared Flannagan again to hurry them, and, as the last one +disappeared, he whirled on Daisy. "And you, too!" he snarled. "Get +out!" +</P> + +<P> +Terrified, shaken by the scene as she was, his words, their +implication, their injustice, whipped her into scorn and anger. +White-lipped, she stared at him for an instant. +</P> + +<P> +"You dare," she burst out, "you dare to——" +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Get out!</I>" Flannagan's voice in his passion was a thick, stumbling, +guttural whisper. "Get out! Go back to your circus—go where you +like! Get out!" His hand dove into his pocket, and its contents, +bills and coins, what there was of them, he flung upon the table. "Get +out—as far as all I've got will take you!" +</P> + +<P> +Daisy MacQueen was proud—perhaps, though, not above the pride of other +women. The blood was hot in her cheeks; her big, brown eyes had a +light in them near to that light with which she had faced Ferraringi +but a short time before; her breath came in short, hard, little gasps. +For a full minute she did not speak—and then the words came cold as +death. +</P> + +<P> +"Some day—some day, Michael Flannagan, you'll get what you deserve." +</P> + +<P> +"That's what I'm gettin' now—what I deserve," he flung back; then, +halting in the doorway: "You understand, eh? Get out! I'm lettin' you +down easy. Get out of Big Cloud! Get out before I'm back. Number +Fifteen 'll be in in an hour—you'd better take her." +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan stepped out on the street. A curious little group had +collected two houses down in front of Mrs. MacAloon's. Flannagan +glanced at them, muttered a curse; and then, head down between his +shoulders, clenched fists rammed in his pockets, he headed in the other +direction toward Main Street. Five minutes later, he pushed the +swinging doors of the Blazing Star open, and walked down the length of +the room to where Pete MacGuire, the proprietor, lounged across the bar. +</P> + +<P> +"Pete"—he jerked out his words hoarsely—"next Tuesday's pay day—is +my face good till then?" +</P> + +<P> +MacGuire looked at him curiously. The news of the fracas had not yet +reached the Blazing Star. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, sure," said he. "Sure it is, Flannagan, if you want it. +What's——" +</P> + +<P> +"Then let 'em come my way," Flannagan rapped out, with a savage laugh; +"an' let 'em come—<I>fast</I>." +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan was the wrecking boss. A hard man, Regan had called him, and +he was—a product of the wild, rough, pioneering life, one of those men +who had followed the grim-faced, bearded corps of engineers as they +pitted their strength against the sullen gray of the mighty Rockies +from the eastern foothills to the plains of the Sierras, fighting every +inch of their way with indomitable perseverance and daring over chasms +and gorges, through tunnels and cuts, in curves and levels and grades, +against obstacles that tried their souls, against death itself, taping +the thin steel lines they left behind them with their own blood. Hard? +Yes, Flannagan was hard. Un-cultured, rough, primal, he undoubtedly +was. A brute man, perhaps, full of the elemental—fiery, hot-headed, +his passions alone swayed him. That side of Flannagan, the years, in +the very environment in which he had lived them, had developed to the +full—the other side had been untouched. What Flannagan did that night +another might not have done—or he might. The judging of men is a +grave business best let alone. +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan let go his hold then; not at once, but gradually. That night +spent in the Blazing Star was the first of others, others that followed +insidiously, each closer upon the former's heels. Daisy had gone—had +gone that night—where, he did not know, and told himself he did not +care. He grew moody, sullen, uncompanionable. Big Cloud took +sides—the women for Flannagan; the men for the wife. Flannagan hated +the women, avoided the men—and went to the Blazing Star. +</P> + +<P> +There was only one result—the inevitable one. Regan, kindly for all +his gruffness, understanding in a way, stood between Flannagan and the +super and warned Flannagan oftener than most men were warned on the +Hill Division. Nor were his warnings altogether without effect. +Flannagan would steady up—temporarily—maybe for a week—than off +again. Steady up just long enough to keep putting off and postponing +the final reckoning. And then one day, some six months after Daisy +Flannagan had gone away, the master mechanic warned him for the last +time. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm through with you, Flannagan," he said. "Understand that? I'm out +from under, and next time you'll talk to Carleton—and what he'll have +to say won't take long—about two seconds. You know Carleton, don't +you? Well, then—what?" +</P> + +<P> +It was just a week to a day after that that Flannagan cut loose and +wild again. He made a night and a day of it, and then another. After +that, though by that time Flannagan was quite unaware of the fact, some +of the boys got him home, dumped him on his bed and left him to his +reflections—which were a blank. +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan slept it off, and it took about eighteen hours to do it. +When he came to himself he was in a humor that, far from being happy, +was atrocious; likewise, there were bodily ailments—Flannagan's head +was bad, and felt as though a gang of boiler-makers, working against +time, were driving rivets in it. He procured himself a bracer and went +back to bed. This resulted in a decidedly improved physical condition, +but when he arose late in the afternoon any improvement there might +have been in his mental state was speedily dissipated—Flannagan found +a letter shoved under his door, postmarked the day before, and with it +an official manila envelope from the super's office. +</P> + +<P> +He opened the letter and read it—read it again while his jaws worked +and the red surged in a passion into his face; then, with an oath, he +tore it savagely into shreds, flung the bits on the floor and stamped +upon them viciously with his heavy nail-heeled boot. +</P> + +<P> +The official manila he did not open at all. A guess was enough for +that—a curt request to present himself in the super's office, +probably. Flannagan glared at it, then grabbed his hat, and started +down for the station. There was no idea of shirking it; Flannagan +wasn't that kind at any time, and just now his mood, if anything, +spurred him on rather than held him back. Flannagan welcomed the +prospect of a row about anything with anybody at that moment—if only a +war of words. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton's office was upstairs over the ticket office and next to the +despatchers' room then, for the station did duty for headquarters and +everything else—not now, it's changed now, and there's a rather +imposing gray-stone structure where the old wooden shack used to be; +but, no matter, that's the way it was then, for those were the early +days when the road was young and in the making. +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan reached the station, climbed the stairs, and pushed +Carleton's door open with little ceremony. +</P> + +<P> +"You want to see me?" he demanded gruffly, as he stepped inside. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton, sitting at his desk, looked up and eyed the wrecking boss +coolly for a minute. +</P> + +<P> +"No, Flannagan," he said curtly. "I don't." +</P> + +<P> +"Then what in blazes d'ye send for me for?" Flannagan flung out in a +growl. +</P> + +<P> +"See here, Flannagan," snapped Carleton, "I've no time to talk to you. +You can read, can't you? You're out!" +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan blinked. +</P> + +<P> +"Was that what was in the letter?" +</P> + +<P> +"It was—just that," said Carleton grimly. +</P> + +<P> +"Hell!" Flannagan's short laugh held a jeering note of contempt. "I +didn't open it—or mabbe I'd have known, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton's eyes narrowed. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you know now, don't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Sure!" Flannagan scowled and licked his lips. "I'm out, thrown out, +and——" +</P> + +<P> +"Then, get out!" Carleton cut in sharply. "You've had more chances +than any man ever got before from me, thanks to Regan; but you've had +your last, and talking won't do you any good now." +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan stepped nearer to the desk. +</P> + +<P> +"Talkin'! Who's talkin'?" he flared in sudden bravado. "Didn't I tell +you I didn't read your damned letter? Didn't I, eh, didn't I? D'ye +think I'd crawl to you or any man for a job? I'm out, am I? D'ye +think I came down to ask you to take me back? I'd see you rot first! +T'hell with the job—see!" +</P> + +<P> +Few men on the Hill Division ever saw Carleton lose his temper—it +wasn't Carleton's way of doing things. He didn't lose it now, but his +words were like trickling drops of ice water. +</P> + +<P> +"Sometimes, Flannagan," he said, "to make a man like you understand one +has to use your language. You say you'd see me rot before you asked me +for the job back again—very well. I'd rot before I gave it to you +after this. Now, will you get out—or be thrown out?" +</P> + +<P> +For a moment it looked as though Flannagan was going to mix it there +and then. His eyes went ugly, and his fists, horny and gnarled, +doubled into knots, as he glared viciously at the super. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton, who was afraid of no man, or any aggregation of men, his face +stern-set and hard, leaned back in his swivel chair and waited. +</P> + +<P> +A tense minute passed. Then Flannagan's better sense weighed down the +balance, and, without so much as a word, he turned, went out of the +room, and stamped heavily down the stairs. +</P> + +<P> +Goaded into it, or through unbridled, ill-advised impulse, men say rash +things sometimes—afterward, both Flannagan and Carleton were to +remember their own and the other's words—and the futility of them. +Nor was it to be long afterward—without warning, without so much as a +premonition, quick and sudden as doom, things happen in railroading. +</P> + +<P> +It was half past five when Flannagan went out of the super's office; it +was but ten minutes later when, before he had decanted a drop from the +bottle he had just lifted to fill his glass, he slapped the bottle back +on the bar of the Blazing Star with a sudden jerk. From down the +street in the direction of the yards boomed three long blasts from the +shop whistle—the wrecking signal. It came again and again. Men +around him began to move. Chairs from the little tables were pushed +hurriedly back. The bell in the English chapel took up the alarm. It +stirred the blood in Flannagan's veins, and whipped it to his cheeks in +fierce excitement—it was the call to arms! +</P> + +<P> +He turned from the bar—and stopped like a man stunned. There had been +times in the last six months when he had not responded to that call, +because, deaf to everything, he had not <I>heard</I> it. Then, it had been +his call—the call for the wrecking crew, and, first of all, for the +wrecking boss; now—there was a dazed look on his face, and his lips +worked queerly. It was not for him, he was barred—<I>out</I>. +</P> + +<P> +Slowly he turned back to the bar, rested his foot on the rail, and, +with a mirthless laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, reached for the +bottle again. He poured the whisky glass full to the brim—and laughed +once more and shrugged his shoulders as his fingers curled around it. +He raised the glass—and held it poised halfway to his lips. +</P> + +<P> +Quick-running steps came up the street, the swinging doors of the +Blazing Star burst open and a call boy shoved in his head. +</P> + +<P> +"Wreckers out! Wreckers out!" he bawled. "Number Eighty's gone to +glory in Spider Cut. Everybody's killed"—and he was gone, a +grimy-faced harbinger of death and disaster; gone, speeding with his +summons to wherever men were gathered throughout the little town. +</P> + +<P> +An instant Flannagan stood motionless as one transformed from flesh to +sculptured clay—then the glass slid from his fingers and crashed into +tinkling splinters on the floor. The liquor splashed his boots. +Number Eighty was the eastbound Coast Express! Like one who moves in +unknown places through the dark, so, then, Flannagan moved toward the +door. Men looked at him in amazement, and stood aside to let him pass. +Something was tugging at his heart, beating at his brain, impelling him +forward; a force irresistible, that, in its first, sudden, overwhelming +surge he could not understand, could not grasp, could not focus into +concrete form—could only obey. +</P> + +<P> +He passed out through the doors, and then for the first time a cry rang +from his lips. There were no halting, stumbling, uncertain steps now. +Men running down the street called to Flannagan as he sped past them. +Flannagan made no answer, did not look their way; his face, strained +and full of dumb anguish, was set toward the station. +</P> + +<P> +He gained the platform and raced along it. Shouts came from across the +yards. Up and down the spurs fluttered the fore-shortened little yard +engine, coughing sparks and wheezing from her exhaust as she bustled +the wrecking train together; lamps swung and twinkled like fireflies, +for it was just opening spring and the dark fell early; and in front of +the roundhouse, the 1014, blowing hard from her safety under a full +head of steam, like a thoroughbred that scents the race, was already on +the table. +</P> + +<P> +With a heave of his great shoulders and a sweep of his arms, Flannagan +won through the group of trainmen, shop hands, and loungers clustered +around the door, and took the stairs four at a leap. +</P> + +<P> +A light burned in the super's office, but the voices came from the +despatchers' room. And there in the doorway Flannagan halted—halted +just for a second's pause while his eyes swept the scene before him. +</P> + +<P> +Regan, the master mechanic, by the window, was mouthing curses under +his breath as men do in times of stress; Spence, the despatcher, +white-faced, the hair straggling into his eyes, was leaning over the +key under the green-shaded lamp, over the key clearing the line while +the sounder clicked in his ears of ruin and of lives gone out. Harvey, +the division engineer, was there, pulling savagely at a brier with +empty bowl. And at the despatcher's elbow stood Carleton, a grim +commander, facing tidings of disaster, his shoulders braced and bent a +little forward as though to take the blow, his jaws clamped tight till +the lips, compressed, were bloodless, and the chiselled lines on his +face told of the bitterness in his heart. +</P> + +<P> +Then Flannagan stepped forward. +</P> + +<P> +"Carleton," he cried, and his words came like panting sobs, "Carleton, +give me back my job." +</P> + +<P> +It was no place for Flannagan. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton's cup was already full to overflowing, and he swung on +Flannagan like a flash. His hand lifted and pointed to the door. +</P> + +<P> +"Get out of here!" he said between his teeth. +</P> + +<P> +"Carleton," cried Flannagan again, and his arms went out in +supplication toward the super, "Carleton, give me back my job—give it +back to me for to-night—just for to-night." +</P> + +<P> +"No!" the single word came from Carleton's lips like a thunder clap. +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan shivered a little and shrank back. +</P> + +<P> +"Just for to-night," he mumbled hoarsely. "Just for——" +</P> + +<P> +"No!" Carleton's voice rang hard as flint. "I tell you, no! Get out +of here!" +</P> + +<P> +Harvey moved suddenly, threateningly, toward Flannagan—and, as +suddenly, Flannagan, roused by the act, brushed the division engineer +aside like a plaything, sprang forward, and, with a quick, fierce grip, +caught Carleton's arms and pinioned them, vise-like, to his sides. +</P> + +<P> +"And I tell you, yes!" his voice rose dominant with the power, the will +that shook him now to the depths of his turbulent soul. As a man who +knows no law, no obstacle, no restraint, as a man who would batter down +the gates of hell itself to gain his end, so then was Flannagan. "I +tell you, yes! I tell you, yes! <I>My wife and baby's in that wreck +to-night?</I>" +</P> + +<P> +Turmoil, shouts, the short, quick intermittent hiss of steam as the +1014, her cylinder cocks open, backed down to the platform, the clash +of coupling cars, a jumbled medley of sounds, floated up from the yard +without—but within the little room, the chattering sounder for the +moment stilled, there fell a silence as of death, and no man among them +moved or spoke. +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan, gray-faced, gasping, his mighty grip still on Carleton, his +head thrown forward close to the other's, stared into the super's +face—and, for a long minute, in the twitching muscles of the big +wrecker's face, in the look that man reads seldom in his fellows' eyes, +Carleton drew the fearful picture, lived the awful story that the +babbling wire had told. "Royal" Carleton, square man and big of heart, +his voice broke. +</P> + +<P> +"God help you, Flannagan—go." +</P> + +<P> +No word came from Flannagan's lips—only a queer choking sound, as his +hands dropped to his sides—only a queer choking sound, as he turned +suddenly and jumped for the door. +</P> + +<P> +On the stairs, Dorsay, the driver of the 1014, coming up for his +orders, passed Flannagan. +</P> + +<P> +"Bad spill, I hear," growled the engineer, as he went by. "The five +hundred and five's pony truck jumped the rails on the lower curve and +everything's in the ditch. Old Burke's gone out and a heap of the +passengers with him. I——" +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan heard no more—he was on the platform now. Coupled behind +the derrick crane and the tool car were two coaches, improvised +ambulances, and into these latter, instead of the tool car, the men of +the wrecking gang were piling—a bad smash brought luxury for them. +Shouts, cries, hubbub, a babel of voices were around him, but in his +brain, repeated and repeated over and over again, lived only a phrase +from the letter he had torn to pieces, stamped under heel that +afternoon—the words were swimming before his eyes: "Michael, dear, +we've both been wrong; I'm bringing <I>baby</I> back on the Coast Express +Friday night." +</P> + +<P> +Men with little black bags brushed by him and tumbled into the rear +coach—the doctors of Big Cloud to the last one of them. Dorsay came +running from the station, a bit of tissue, his orders, fluttering in +his hand, and sprang for the cab. 1014's exhaust burst suddenly into +quick, deafening explosions, the sparks shot volleying heavenward from +her short stack, the big, whirling drivers were beginning to bite—and +then, through the gangway, after the engineer, into the cab swung +Flannagan—Flannagan, the wrecking boss. +</P> + +<P> +Spider Cut is the Eastern gateway of the Rockies, and it lies, as the +crows fly, sixteen miles west of Big Cloud; but the right of way, as it +twists and turns, circling and dodging the buttes that grow from mounds +to foothills, makes it on the blue-prints twenty-one decimal seven. +The running time of the fast fliers on this stretch is—but what of +that? Dorsay that night smashed all records, and the medical men in +the rear coach tell to this day how they clung for life and limb to +their seats and to each other, and most of them will admit—which is +admitting much—that they were frightened, white-lipped men with broken +nerves. +</P> + +<P> +As the wreck special, with a clash and clatter, shattered over the +switches in the upper yard and nosed the main line, Stan Willard, who +had the shovel end of it, with a snatch at the chain swung open the +furnace door and a red glow lighted up the heavens. Dorsay turned in +his seat and looked at the giant form of the wrecking boss behind +him—they had told him the story in the office. +</P> + +<P> +The eyes of the two men met. Flannagan's lips moved dumbly; and, with +a curious, pleading motion, he gestured toward the throttle. +</P> + +<P> +Dorsay opened another notch. He laughed a grim, hard laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"I <I>know</I>," he shouted over the roar. "I know. Leave it to me, +Flannagan." +</P> + +<P> +The bark of the exhaust came quicker and quicker, swelled and rose into +the full, deep-toned thunder of a single note. Notch by notch, Dorsay +opened out the 1014, notch by notch, and the big mountain racer, +answering like a mettlesome steed to the touch of the whip, leapt +forward, ever faster, into the night. +</P> + +<P> +Now the headlight played on shining steel ahead; now suddenly threw a +path of light across the short, yellow stubble of a rising butte, and +Dorsay checked grudgingly for an instant as they swung the curve—just +for an instant—then into the straight again, with wide-flung throttle. +</P> + +<P> +It was mad work, and in that reeling, dizzy cab no man spoke. The +sweep of the singing wind, the wild tattoo of beating trucks, the +sullen whir of flying drivers was in their ears; while behind, the +derrick crane, the tool car and the coaches writhed and wriggled, +swayed and lurched, tearing at their couplings, bouncing on their +trucks, jerking viciously as each slue took up the axle play, rolling, +pitching crazily like cockleshells tossed on an angry sea. +</P> + +<P> +Now they tore through a cut, and the walls took up the deafening roar +and echoed and reëchoed it back in volume a thousandfold; now into the +open, and the sudden contrast was like the gasping breath of an +imprisoned thing escaped; now over culverts, trestles, spans, hollow, +reverberating—the speed was terrific. +</P> + +<P> +Over his levers, bounding on his seat, Dorsay, tense and strained, +leaned far forward following the leaping headlight's glare; while +staggering like a drunken man to keep his balance, the sweat standing +out in glistening beads upon his grimy face, Stan Willard watched the +flickering needle on the gauge, and his shovel clanged and swung; and +in the corner, back of Dorsay, bent low to brace himself, thrown +backward and forward with every lurch, in the fantastic, dancing light +like some tigerish, outraged animal crouched to spring, Flannagan, with +head drawn into his shoulders, jaws outthrust, stared over the +engineer's back, stared with never a look to right or left, stared +through the cab glass to the right of way ahead—stared toward Spider +Cut. +</P> + +<P> +Again and again, with sickening, giddy shock, wheel-base lifted from +the swing, the 1014 struck the tangents, hung a breathless space, and, +with a screech of crunching flanges, found the rails once more. +</P> + +<P> +Again and again—but the story of that ride is the doctors' story—they +tell it best. Dorsay made the run that night from Big Cloud to Spider +Cut, twenty-one point seven miles, in <I>nineteen</I> minutes. +</P> + +<P> +There have been bad spills on the Hill Division, bad spills—but there +have never been worse than on that Friday night when the 505 jumped the +rails at the foot of the curve coming down the grade just east of +Spider Cut, shot over the embankment and piled the Coast Express, +mahogany sleepers and all, into splintered wreckage forty feet below +the right of way. +</P> + +<P> +As Dorsay checked and with screaming brake-shoes the 1014 slowed, +Flannagan, with a wild cry, leaped from the cab and dashed up the track +ahead of the still-moving pilot. It was light enough—the cars of the +wreck nearest him, the mail and baggage cars, had caught, and, fanned +by the wind into yellow flames, were blazing like a huge bonfire. +Shouts arose from below; cries, anguished, piercing, from those +imprisoned in the wreck; figures, those of the crew and passengers who +had made their escape, were moving hither and thither, working as best +they might, pulling others through shattered windows and up-canted +doors, laying those who were past all knowing beside the long row of +silent forms already tenderly stretched upon the edge of the embankment. +</P> + +<P> +A man, with face cut and bleeding, came running toward Flannagan. It +was Kingsley, conductor of Number Eighty. Flannagan jumped for him, +grasped him by the shoulders and stared without a word into his face. +</P> + +<P> +But Kingsley shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know, Flannagan," he choked. "She was in the first-class just +ahead of the Pullmans. There's—there's no one come out of that car +yet"—he turned away his head—"we couldn't get to it." +</P> + +<P> +"Couldn't get to it"—Flannagan's lips repeated the phrase +mechanically. Then he looked—and understood the grim significance of +the words. He laughed suddenly, jarring hoarse, as it is not good to +hear men laugh—and with that laugh Flannagan went into the fight. +</P> + +<P> +The details of that night no one man knows. There in the shadow of the +gray-walled Rockies, men, flint-hearted, calloused, rough and ready +though they were, sobbed as they toiled; and while the derrick tackles +creaked and moaned, axe and pick and bar swung and crashed and tore +through splintering glass and ripping timber. +</P> + +<P> +What men could do they did—and through the hours Flannagan led them. +Tough, grizzled men, more than one dropped from sheer weariness; but +ever Flannagan's great arms rose and fell, ever his mighty shoulders +heaved, ever he led them on. What men could do they did—but it was +graying dawn before they opened a way to the heart of the wreck—the +first-class coach that once ahead of the Pullmans was <I>under</I> them now. +</P> + +<P> +Flannagan, gaunt, burned and bleeding, a madman with reeling brain, +staggered toward the jagged hole that they had torn in the flooring of +the car. They tried to hold him back, the man who had spurred them +through the night alternately with lashing curse and piteous prayer, +the man who had worked with demon strength as no three men among them +had worked, the man who was tottering now at the end in mind and body, +they tried to hold him back—<I>for mercy's sake</I>. But Flannagan shook +them off and went—went laughing again the same fearful laugh with +which he had begun the fight. +</P> + +<P> +He found her there—found her with a little bundle lying in the crook +of her outstretched arm. She moaned and held it toward him—but +Flannagan had gone his limit, his work was done, the tension broke. +</P> + +<P> +And when they worked their way to the far end of the car after him, +those hard, grim-visaged followers of Flannagan, they found a man +squatted on an up-ended seat, a woman beside him, death and desolation +and huddled shapes around him, dandling a tiny infant in his arms, +crooning a lullaby through cracked lips, crooning a lullaby—to a +little one long hushed already in its last sleep. +</P> + +<P> +Opinions differ. But Big Cloud to-day sides about solid with Regan. +</P> + +<P> +"Flannagan?" says the master mechanic. "Flannagan's a pretty good +wrecking boss, pretty good, I don't know of any better—since the +Almighty had him on the carpet. He's got a plot up on the butte behind +the town, he and Daisy, with a little mound on it. They go up there +together every Sunday—never've known 'em to miss. A man ain't likely +to fall off the right of way again as long as he does that, is he? +Well, then, forget it, he's been doing that for a year now—what?" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +V +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE MAN WHO SQUEALED +</H4> + +<P> +Back in the early days the payroll of the Hill Division was full of J. +Smiths, T. Browns and H. Something-or-others—just as it is to-day. +But to-day there is a difference. The years have brought a certain +amount of inevitable pedigree, as it were—a certain amount of gossip, +so to speak, over the back fences of Big Cloud. It's natural enough. +There's a possibility, as a precedent, that one or two of the +passengers on the <I>Mayflower</I> didn't have as much blue blood when they +started on the voyage as their descendants have got now—it's possible. +The old hooker, from all accounts, had a pretty full passenger list, +and there may have been some who secured accommodations with few +questions asked, and a subsequent coat of glorified whitewash that they +couldn't have got if they'd stayed at home where they were intimately +known—that is, they couldn't have got the coat of glorified whitewash. +</P> + +<P> +It's true that there's a few years between the landing of the +<I>Mayflower</I> and the inception of Big Cloud, but the interval doesn't +count—the principle is the same. Out in the mountains on the Hill +Division, "Who's Who" begins with the founding of Big Cloud—it is +verbose, unprofitable and extremely bad taste to go back any farther +than that—even if it were possible. There's quite a bit known about +the J. Smiths, the T. Browns and the H. Something-or-others now, with +the enlightenment of years upon them—but there wasn't then. There +were a good many men who immigrated West to help build the road through +the Rockies, and run it afterwards—for reasons of their own. There +weren't any questions asked. Plain J. Smith, T. Brown or H. +Something-or-other went—that was all there was to it. +</P> + +<P> +He said his name was Walton—P. Walton. He was tall, hollow-cheeked, +with skin of an unhealthy, colorless white, and black eyes under thin, +black brows that were unnaturally bright. He dropped off at Big Cloud +one afternoon—in the early days—from No. 1, the Limited from the +East, climbed upstairs in the station to the super's room, and coughed +out a request to Carleton for a job. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, the squarest man that ever held down a +divisional swivel chair, looked P. Walton over for a moment before he +spoke. P. Walton didn't size up much like a day's work anyway you +looked at him. +</P> + +<P> +"What can you do?" inquired Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +"Anything," said P. Walton—and coughed. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton reached for his pipe and struck a match. +</P> + +<P> +"If you could," said he, sucking at the amber mouthpiece between words, +"there wouldn't be any trouble about it. For instance, the +construction gangs want men to——" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll go—I'll do anything," cut in P. Walton eagerly. "Just give me a +chance." +</P> + +<P> +"Nope!" said Carleton with a grin. "I'm not hankering to break the +Sixth Commandment—know what that is?" +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton licked dry lips with the tip of his tongue. +</P> + +<P> +"Murder," said he. "But you might as well let it come that way as any +other. I'm pretty bad here"—he jerked his thumb toward his +lungs—"and I'm broke here"—he turned an empty trouser's pocket inside +out. +</P> + +<P> +"H'm!" observed Carleton reflectively. There was something in the +other that touched his sympathy, and something apart from that that +appealed to him—a sort of grim, philosophical grit in the man with the +infected lungs. +</P> + +<P> +"I came out," said P. Walton, looking through the window, and kind of +talking to himself, "because I thought it would be healthier for me out +here than back East." +</P> + +<P> +"I dare say," said Carleton kindly; "but not if you start in by +swinging a pick. Maybe we can find something else for you to do. Ever +done any railroading?" +</P> + +<P> +Walton shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"No," he answered. "I've always worked on books. I'm called pretty +good at figures, if you've got anything in that line." +</P> + +<P> +"Clerk, eh? Well, I don't know," said Carleton slowly. "I guess, +perhaps, we can give you a chance. My own clerk's doing double shift +just at present; you might help him out temporarily. And if you're +what you say you are, we'll find something better for you before the +summer's over. Thirty dollars a month—it's not much of a stake—what +do you say?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's a pretty big stake for me," said P. Walton, and his face lighted +up as he turned it upon Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +"All right," said Carleton. "You'd better spend the rest of the +afternoon then in hunting up some place to stay. And here"—he dug +into his pocket and handed P. Walton two five-dollar gold pieces—"this +may come in handy till you're on your feet." +</P> + +<P> +"Say," said P. Walton huskily, "I——" he stopped suddenly, as the door +opened and Regan, the master mechanic, came in. +</P> + +<P> +"Never mind," smiled Carleton. "Report to Halstead in the next room +to-morrow morning at seven o'clock." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton hesitated, as though to complete his interrupted sentence, +and then, with an uncertain look at Regan, turned and walked quietly +from the room. +</P> + +<P> +Regan wheeled around and stared after the retreating figure. When the +door had closed he looked inquiringly at Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +"Touched you for a loan, eh?" he volunteered quizzically. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Carleton, still smiling; "a job. I gave him the money as an +advance." +</P> + +<P> +"More fool you!" said the blunt little master mechanic. "Your +security's bad—he'll never live long enough to earn it. What sort of +a job?" +</P> + +<P> +"Helping Halstead out to begin with," replied Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +"H'm!" remarked Regan. "Poor devil." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Tommy," said Carleton. "Quite so—poor devil." +</P> + +<P> +Regan, big-hearted, good-natured for all his bluntness, walked to the +front window and watched P. Walton's figure disappear slowly, and a +little haltingly, down the platform. The fat little master mechanic's +face puckered. +</P> + +<P> +"We get some queer cards out here," he said. "He looks as though he'd +had a pretty hard time of it—kind of a discard in the game, I guess. +Out here to die—pleasant, what? I wonder where he came from?" +</P> + +<P> +"He didn't say," said Carleton dryly. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Regan; "I dare say he didn't—none of 'em do. I wonder, +though, where he came from?" +</P> + +<P> +And in this the division generally were in accord with Regan. They +didn't ask—which was outside the ethics; and P. Walton didn't +say—which was quite within his rights. But for all that, the +division, with Regan, wondered. Ordinarily, they wouldn't have paid +much attention to a new man one way or the other, but P. Walton was a +little more than just a new man—he was a man they couldn't size up. +That was the trouble. It didn't matter who any one was, or where he +came from, if they could form an opinion of him—which wasn't hard to +form in most instances—that would at all satisfactorily fill the bill. +But P. Walton didn't bear the earmarks of a hard case "wanted" East, or +show any tendency toward deep theological thought; therefore opinions +were conflicting—which wasn't satisfying. +</P> + +<P> +Not that P. Walton refused to mix, or held himself aloof, or anything +of that kind; on the contrary, all hands came to know him pretty +well—as P. Walton. As a matter of cold fact, they had more chances of +knowing him than they had of knowing most new-comers; and that bothered +them a little, because, somehow, they didn't seem to make anything out +of their opportunities. As assistant clerk to the super, P. Walton was +soon a familiar enough figure in the yards, the roundhouse and the +shops, and genial enough, and pleasant enough, too; but they never got +past the pure, soft-spoken, perfect English, and the kind of firm, +determined swing to the jaw that no amount of emaciation could +eliminate. They agreed only on one thing—on the question of +therapeutics—they were unanimous on that point with Regan—P. Walton, +whatever else he was, or wasn't, was out there to die. And it kind of +looked to them as though P. Walton had through rights to the Terminal, +and not much of any limit to speak of on his permit. +</P> + +<P> +Regan put the matter up to Carleton one day in the super's office, +about a month after P. Walton's advent to Big Cloud. +</P> + +<P> +"I said he was a queer card the first minute I clapped eyes on him," +observed the master mechanic. "And I think so now—only more so. What +in blazes does a white man want to go and live in a two-room pigsty, +with a family of Polacks and about eighteen kids, for?" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton tamped down the dottle in his pipe with his forefinger +musingly. +</P> + +<P> +"How much a week, Tommy," he inquired, "is thirty dollars a month, with +about a third of the time out for sick spells?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not a mathematician," growled the little master mechanic. "About +five dollars, I guess." +</P> + +<P> +"It's a good guess," said Carleton quietly. "He bought new clothes you +remember with the ten I gave him—and he needed them badly enough." +Carleton reached into a drawer of his desk, and handed Regan an +envelope that was torn open across the end. "I found this here this +afternoon after the paycar left," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Regan peered into the envelope, then extracted two five-dollar gold +pieces and a note. He unfolded the note, and read the two lines +written in a hand that looked like steel-plate engraving. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +With thanks and grateful appreciation. +<BR> + P. WALTON. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Regan blinked, handed the money, note, and envelope back to Carleton, +and fumbled a little awkwardly with his watch chain. +</P> + +<P> +"He's the best hand with figures and his pen it's ever been my luck to +meet," said Carleton, kind of speculatively. "Better than Halstead; a +whole lot better. Halstead's going back East in a couple of weeks into +the general office—got the offer, and I couldn't stand in his way. I +was thinking of giving P. Walton the job, and breaking some young +fellow in to relay him when he's sick. What do you think about it, +Tommy?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think," said Regan softly, "he's been getting blamed few eggs and +less fresh air than he ought to have had, trying to make good on that +loan. And I think he's a better man than I thought he was. A fellow +that would do that is white enough not to fall very far off the right +of way. I guess you won't make any mistake as far as trusting him +goes." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Carleton, "I don't think I will." +</P> + +<P> +And therein Carleton and Regan were both right and wrong. P. Walton +wasn't—but just a minute, we're over-running our holding orders—P. +Walton is in the block ahead. +</P> + +<P> +The month hadn't helped P. Walton much physically, even if it had +helped him more than he, perhaps, realized in Carleton's estimation. +And the afternoon following Regan's and Carleton's conversation, alone +in the room, for Halstead was out, he was hanging over his desk a +pretty sick man, though his pen moved steadily with the work before +him, when the connecting door from the super's office opened, and Bob +Donkin, the despatcher, came hurriedly in. +</P> + +<P> +"Where's the super?" he asked quickly. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said P. Walton. "He went out in the yards with Regan +half an hour ago. I guess he'll be back shortly." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you'd better try and find him, and give him this. Forty-two'll +be along in twenty minutes." Donkin slapped a tissue on the desk, and +hurried back to his key in the despatchers' room. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton picked up the tissue and read it. It was from the first +station west on the line. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +Gopher Butte, 3.16 P. M. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +J. H. CARLETON, Supt. Hill Division: +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +No. 42 held up by two train robbers three miles west of here Express +messenger Nulty in game fight killed one and captured the other in the +express car. Arrange for removal of body, and have sheriff on hand to +take prisoner into custody on arrival in Big Cloud. Everything O.K. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%"> +McCURDY, Conductor. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +P. Walton, with the telegram in his hand, rose from his chair and made +for the hall through the super's room, reading it a second time as he +went along. There had been some pretty valuable express stuff on the +train, as he knew from the correspondence that had passed through his +hands—and he smiled a little grimly. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, they certainly missed a good one," he muttered to himself. "I +think I'd rather be the dead one than the other. It'll go hard with +him. Twenty years, I guess." +</P> + +<P> +He stepped out into the hall to the head of the stairs—and met +Carleton coming up. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton, quick as a steel trap, getting the gist of the message in a +glance, brushed by P. Walton, hurried along the hall to the +despatchers' room—and the next moment a wide-eyed call boy was +streaking uptown for the sheriff, and breathlessly imparting the tale +of the hold-up, embellished with gory imagination, to every one he met. +</P> + +<P> +By the time Forty-two's whistle sounded down the gorge, there was a +crowd on the platform bigger than a political convention, and P. +Walton, by virtue of his official position, rather than from physical +qualifications, together with his chief, Regan, the ticket agent, the +baggage master and Carruthers, the sheriff, were having a hard time of +it to keep themselves from being shoved off on the tracks, let alone +trying to keep a modest breadth of the platform clear. And when the +train came to a stop with screeching brake-shoes, and the side door of +the express car was shot back with a dramatic bang by some one inside, +the crowd seemed to get altogether beyond P. Walton's control, and +surged past him. As they handed out a hard-visaged, bullet-headed +customer, whose arms were tightly lashed behind him, P. Walton was +pretty well back by the ticket-office window with the crowd between him +and the center of attraction—and P. Walton was holding his +handkerchief to his lips, flecking the handkerchief with a spot or two +of red, and coughing rather badly. Carleton found him there when the +crowd, trailing Carruthers and his prisoner uptown, thinned out—and +Carleton sent him home. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton, however, did not go home, though he started in that +direction. He followed in the rear of the crowd up to Carruthers' +place, saw steel bracelets replace the cords around the captive's +wrists, saw the captive's legs securely bound together, and the captive +chucked into Carruthers' back shed—this was in the early days, and Big +Cloud hadn't yet risen to the dignity of a jail—with about as much +formality as would be used in handling a sack of meal. After that, +Carruthers barred the door by slamming the long, two-inch-thick piece +of timber, that worked on a pivot in the center, home into its iron +rests with a flourish of finality, as though to indicate that the show +was over—and the crowd dispersed—the men heading for the swinging +doors of the Blazing Star; and the women for their own back fences. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton, with a kind of grim smile on his lips, retraced his steps to +the station, climbed the stairs, and started through the super's room +to reach his own desk. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton removed his pipe from his mouth, and stared angrily as the +other came in. +</P> + +<P> +"You blamed idiot!" he exploded. "I thought I told you to go home!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm feeling better," said P. Walton. "I haven't got those night +orders out yet for the roundhouse. There's three specials from the +East to-night." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Halstead can attend to them," said Carleton, a kindliness +creeping into the tones that he tried to make gruff. "What are you +trying to do—commit suicide?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said P. Walton, with a steady smile, "just my work. It was a +little too violent exercise trying to hold the crowd, that was all. +But I'm all right now." +</P> + +<P> +"You blamed idiot!" grunted Carleton again. "Why didn't you say so? I +never thought of it, or I wouldn't have let——" +</P> + +<P> +"It doesn't matter," said P. Walton brightly. "I'm all right now"—and +he passed on into his own room. +</P> + +<P> +When he left his desk again it was ten minutes of six, and Carleton had +already gone. P. Walton, with his neatly written order sheets, walked +across the tracks to the roundhouse, handed them over to Clarihue, the +night turner, who had just come in, and then hung around, toying in an +apparently aimless fashion with the various tools on the workbenches +till the whistle blew, while the fitters, wipers and day gang generally +washed up. After that he plodded across the fields to the Polack +quarters on the other side of the tracks from the town proper, stumbled +into the filthy, garlic smelling interior of one of the shacks, and +flung himself down on the bunk that was his bedroom. +</P> + +<P> +"Lord!" he muttered. "I'm pretty bad to-night. Guess I'll have to +postpone it. Might be as well, anyway." +</P> + +<P> +He lay there for an hour, his bright eyes fastened now on the dirty, +squalling brood of children upon the floor, now on the heavy, +slatternly figure of their mother, and now on the tin bowl of boiled +sheep's head that awaited the arrival of Ivan Peloff, the master of the +house—and then, with abhorrent disgust, he turned his eyes to the wall. +</P> + +<P> +"Thank God, I get into a decent place soon!" he mumbled once. "It's +the roughest month I ever spent. I'd rather be back where"—he smiled +sort of cryptically to himself—"where I came from." A moment later he +spoke again in a queer, kind of argumentative, kind of self-extenuating +way—in broken sentences. "Maybe I put it on a little too thick +boarding here so's to stand in with Carleton and pay that ten back +quick—but, my God, I was scared—I've got to stand in with somebody, +or go to the wall." +</P> + +<P> +It was after seven when Ivan Peloff came—smelling strong of drink, and +excitement heightening the flush upon his cheek. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, Meester Walton!" he bubbled out with earnest inebriety. "We +rise hell to-night—by an' by. Get him goods by midnight." Ivan +Peloff drew his fingers around his throat, and, in lieu of English that +came hard to him at any time, jerked his thumb dramatically up and down +in the air. +</P> + +<P> +"Who?" inquired P. Walton, without much enthusiasm. +</P> + +<P> +"Dam' robber—him by train come in," explained Ivan Peloff laboriously. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," said P. Walton, "talking of stringing him up—is that it?" +</P> + +<P> +Ivan Peloff nodded his head delightedly. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton swung himself lazily from his bunk. +</P> + +<P> +"Eat?" invited Ivan Peloff, moving toward the table. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "I'm not hungry; I'm +going out for some air." +</P> + +<P> +Ivan Peloff pulled two bottles of a deadly brand from under his coat, +and set them on the table. +</P> + +<P> +"Me eat," he grinned. "By an' by have drinks all 'round"—he waved his +hands as though to embrace the whole Polack quarter—"den we +comes—rise hell—do him goods by midnight." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton halted in the doorway. +</P> + +<P> +"Who put you up to this, Peloff?" he inquired casually. +</P> + +<P> +"Cowboys," grinned Peloff, lunging at the sheep's head. "Plenty drink. +Say have fun." +</P> + +<P> +"The cowboys, eh?" observed P. Walton. "So they're in town, are +they—and looking for fun?" +</P> + +<P> +"We fix him goods by midnight," repeated Ivan Peloff, wagging his head; +then, with a sudden scowl: "You not tell—eh, Meester Walton?" +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton smiled disinterestedly—but there wasn't any doubt in P. +Walton's mind that devilment was in the wind—Big Cloud, in the early +days, knew its full share of that. +</P> + +<P> +"I?" said P. Walton quietly, as he went out. "No; I won't tell. It's +no business of mine, is it?" +</P> + +<P> +It was fall, and already dark. P. Walton made his way out of the +Polack quarters, reached the tracks, crossed them—and then headed out +through the fields to circle around the town to the upper end again, +where it dwindled away from cross streets to the houses flanking on +Main Street alone. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess," he coughed—and smiled, "I won't postpone it till to-morrow +night, after all." +</P> + +<P> +It was a long walk for a man in P. Walton's condition, and it was a +good half hour before he finally stopped in the rear of Sheriff +Carruthers' back shed and listened—there were no fences here, just a +procession of buttes and knolls merging the prairie country into the +foothills proper of the Rockies—neither was there any sound. P. +Walton stifled a cough, and slipped like a shadow through the darkness +around to the front of the shed, shifted the wooden bar noiselessly on +its pivot, opened the door, and, as he stepped inside, closed it softly +behind him. +</P> + +<P> +"Butch!" he whispered. +</P> + +<P> +A startled ejaculation, and a quick movement as of a man suddenly +shifting his position on the floor, answered him. +</P> + +<P> +"Keep quiet, Butcher—it's all right," said P. Walton calmly—and, +stooping, guiding his knife blade by the sense of touch, cut away the +rope from the other's ankles. He caught at the steel-linked wrists and +helped the man to his feet. "Come on," he said. "Slip around to the +back of the shed—talk later." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton pushed the door open, and the man he called the Butcher, +lurching a little unsteadily from cramped ankles, passed out. P. +Walton carefully closed the door, coolly replaced the bar in position, +and joined the other. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, run for it!" he said—and led the way straight out from the town. +</P> + +<P> +For two hundred yards, perhaps a little more, they raced—and then P. +Walton stumbled and went down. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm—I'm not very well to-night," he gasped. "This will do—it's far +enough." +</P> + +<P> +The Butcher, halted, gazed at the prostrate form. +</P> + +<P> +"Say, cull, what's yer name?" he demanded. "I owe you something for +this, an' don't you forget it." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton made no answer. His head was swimming, lights were dancing +before his eyes, and there was a premonitory weakness upon him whose +issue he knew too well—unless he could fight it off. +</P> + +<P> +The Butcher bent down until his face was within an inch of P. Walton's. +</P> + +<P> +"So help me!" he informed the universe in unbounded amazement. "It's +de Dook!" +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down there opposite me, and hold out your hands," directed P. +Walton, with an effort. "We haven't got any time to waste." +</P> + +<P> +The Butcher, heavy with wonderment, obeyed mechanically—and P. Walton +drew a rat-tail file from his pocket. +</P> + +<P> +"I saw you in the express car this afternoon, and I went to the +roundhouse for this when I left the office," P. Walton said, as he set +to work on the steel links. "But I was feeling kind of down and out, +and was going to leave you till to-morrow night—only I heard they were +going to lynch you at midnight." +</P> + +<P> +"Lynch me!" growled the Butcher. "What fer? They don't lynch a fellow +'cause he's nipped in a hold-up—we didn't kill no one." +</P> + +<P> +"Some of the cowboys are looking for amusement," said P. Walton +monotonously. "They've distributed red-eye among the Polacks, for the +purpose, I imagine, of putting the blame—on the Polacks." +</P> + +<P> +"I get you!" snarled the Butcher, with an oath. "It's de Bar K +Ranch—we took their payroll away from 'em two weeks ago. Lynchin', +eh? Well, some of 'em 'll dance on air fer this themselves, blast 'em! +Dook, yer white—an' you always was. I thought me luck was out fer +keeps to-day when Spud—you saw Spud, didn't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said P. Walton, filing steadily. +</P> + +<P> +"Spud always had a soft spot in his heart," said the Butcher. "Instead +of drilling that devil, Nulty, when he had the chance, Nulty filled +Spud full of holes, an' we fluked up—yer gettin' a bit of my wrist, +Dook, with that damned file. Well, as I said, I thought me luck was +out fer keeps—an' <I>you</I> show up. Gee! Who'd have thought of seein' +de Angel Dook, de prize penman, de gem of forgers! How'd you make yer +getaway—you was in fer twenty spaces, wasn't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think they wanted to save the expense of burying me," said P. +Walton. "The other wrist, Butch. I got a pardon." +</P> + +<P> +"What's de matter with you, Dook?" inquired the Butcher solicitously. +</P> + +<P> +"Lungs," said P. Walton tersely. "Bad." +</P> + +<P> +"Hell!" said the Butcher earnestly. +</P> + +<P> +There was silence for a moment, save only for the rasping of the file, +and then the Butcher spoke again. +</P> + +<P> +"What's yer lay out here, Dook?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Working for the railroad in the super's office—and keeping my mouth +shut," said P. Walton. +</P> + +<P> +"There's nothin' in that," said the Butcher profoundly. "Nothin' to +it!" +</P> + +<P> +"Not much," agreed P. Walton. "Forty a month, and—oh, well, forty a +month." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll fix that fer you, Dook," said the Butcher cheerily. "You join de +gang. There's de old crowd from Joliet up here in de mountains. We +got a swell layout. There's Larry, an' Big Tom, an' Dago Pete—Spud's +cashed in—an' they'll stand on their heads an' yell Salvation Army +songs when they hear that de slickest of 'em all—that's you, Dook—is +buyin' a stack an' settin' in." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said P. Walton. "No, Butch, I guess not—it's me for the forty +per." +</P> + +<P> +"Eh!" ejaculated the Butcher heavily. "You don't mean to say you've +turned parson, Dook? You wouldn't be lettin' me loose if you had." +</P> + +<P> +"No; nothing like that," replied P. Walton. "I'm sitting tight because +I have to—until some one turns up and gives my record away—if I'm not +dead first. I'm too sick, Butch, to be any use to you—I couldn't +stand the pace." +</P> + +<P> +"Sure, you could," said the Butcher reassuringly. "Anyway, I'm not fer +leavin' a pal out in de cold, an'——" He stopped suddenly, and leaned +toward P. Walton. "What was it you said you was doin' in de office?" +he demanded excitedly. +</P> + +<P> +"Assistant clerk to the superintendent," said P. Walton—and his file +bit through the second link. "You'll have to get the bracelets off +your wrists when you get back to the boys—your hands are free." +</P> + +<P> +"Say," said the Butcher breathlessly, "it's a cinch! You see de +letters, an' know what's goin' on pretty familiar-like, don't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said P. Walton. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, say, can you beat it!" Once more the Butcher invoked the +universe. "You're de inside man, see? Gee—it's a cinch! We only +knew there was mazuma on de train to-day by a fluke, just Spud an' me +heard of it, too late to plan anything fancy an' get de rest of de +gang. You see what happened? After this we don't have to take no +chances. You passes out de word when there's a good juicy lot of swag +comin' along, we does de rest, and you gets your share—equal. An' +that ain't all. They'll be sendin' down East fer de Pinkertons, if +they ain't done it already, an' we gives 'em de laugh—you tippin' us +off on de trains de 'dicks' are ridin' on, an' puttin' us wise to 'em +generally. An' say"—the Butcher's voice dropped suddenly to a low, +sullen, ugly growl—"you give us de lay de first crack we make when +that low-lived, snook-nosed Nulty's aboard. He goes out fer Spud—an' +he goes out quick. He's fired a gun de last time he'll ever fire +one—see?" +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton felt around on the ground, picked up the bit of chain he had +filed from the handcuffs, and handed it, with the file, to the Butcher. +</P> + +<P> +"Put these in your pocket, Butch," he said, "and throw them in the +river where it's deep when you get a chance—especially the file. I +guess from the way you put it I could earn my stake with the gang." +</P> + +<P> +"Didn't I tell you, you could!" The Butcher, with swift change of +mood, grinned delightedly. "Sure, you can! Larry's an +innocent-lookin' kid, an' he's not known in de town. He'll float +around an' get de bulletins from you—you'll know ahead when there's +anything good comin' along, won't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"When it leaves the coast," said P. Walton. "Thirty-six +hours—sometimes more." +</P> + +<P> +"An' I thought me luck was out fer keeps!" observed the Butcher, in an +almost awe-struck voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, don't play it too hard by hanging around here until they get you +again," cautioned P. Walton dryly. "The further you get away from Big +Cloud in the next few hours, the better you'll like it to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm off now," announced the Butcher, rising to his feet. "Dook, +you're white—all de way through. Don't forget about Nulty, blast +him!" He wrung P. Walton's hand with emotion. "So long, Dook!" +</P> + +<P> +"So long, Butch!" said P. Walton. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton watched the Butcher disappear in the darkness, then he began +to retrace his steps toward the Polack quarters. His one thought now +was to reach his bunk. He was sick, good and sick, and those +premonitory symptoms, if they had been arrested, were still with him. +The day had been too much for him—the jostling on the platform, mostly +when he had fought his way through the rear of the crowd for fear of an +unguarded recognition on the part of the Butcher; then the walking he +had done; and, lastly, that run from the sheriff's shed. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton, with swimming head and choking lungs, reeled a little as he +went along. It was farther, quite a lot farther, to go by the fields, +and he was far enough down from Carruthers' now so that it would not +make any difference anyhow, even if the Butcher's escape had been +discovered—which it hadn't, the town was too quiet for that. P. +Walton headed into a cross street, staggered along it, reached the +corner of Main Street—and, fainting, went suddenly down in a heap, as +the hemorrhage caught him, and the bright, crimson "ruby" stained his +lips. +</P> + +<P> +Coming up the street from a conference in the super's office, Nulty, +the express messenger, big, brawny, hard-faced, thin-lipped, swung +along, dragging fiercely at his pipe, scowling grimly as he reviewed +the day's happenings. He passed a little knot of Polacks, quite +obviously far gone in liquor—and almost fell over P. Walton's body. +</P> + +<P> +"Hullo!" said Nulty. "What the deuce is this!" He bent down for a +look into the unconscious man's face. "The super's clerk!" he +exclaimed—and stared around for help. +</P> + +<P> +There was no one in sight, save the approaching Polacks—but one of +these hurriedly, if unsteadily, lurched forward. +</P> + +<P> +"Meester Walton!" announced Ivan Peloff genially. "Him be sick—yes?" +</P> + +<P> +"Where's he live?" demanded Nulty, without waste of words. +</P> + +<P> +"Him by me live," said Ivan Peloff, tapping his chest proudly as he +swayed upon his feet. He called to his companions, and reached for P. +Walton's legs. "We take him by us home." +</P> + +<P> +"Let him alone!" said Nulty gruffly, as the interior of a Polack shanty +pictured itself before his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Him by me live," repeated Ivan Peloff, still reaching doggedly, if +uncertainly, for P. Walton's legs. +</P> + +<P> +"Let him alone, I tell you, you drunken Guinea!" roared Nulty suddenly, +and his arm went out with a sweep that brushed Ivan Peloff back to an +ultimate seat in the road three yards away. Without so much as a +glance in the direction taken by the other, Nulty stepped up to the +rest of the Polacks, stared into their faces, and selecting the one +that appeared less drunk than the others, unceremoniously jerked the +man by the collar into the foreground. "You know me!" he snapped. +"I'm Nulty—Nulty. Say it!" +</P> + +<P> +"Nultee," said the bewildered foreigner. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Nulty. "Now you run for the doctor—and you run like hell. +If he ain't at home—find him. Tell him to come to Nulty—<I>quick</I>. +Understand?" +</P> + +<P> +The Polack nodded his head excitedly. +</P> + +<P> +"Doctor—Nultee," he ejaculated brightly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Nulty. "Go on, now—run!" And he gave the Polack an +initial start with a vigorous push that nearly toppled the man forward +on his nose. +</P> + +<P> +Nulty stooped down, picked up P. Walton in his arms as though the +latter were a baby, and started toward his own home a block away. +</P> + +<P> +"My God," he muttered, "a railroad man down there in a state like +this—he'd have a long chance, he would! Poor devil, guess he won't +last out many more of these. Blast it all, now if the wife was home +she'd know what to do—blamed if I know!" +</P> + +<P> +For all that, however, Nulty did pretty well. He put P. Walton to bed, +and started feeding him cracked ice even before the doctor came—after +that Nulty went on feeding cracked ice. +</P> + +<P> +Along toward midnight, Gleason, the yard-master, burst hurriedly into +the house. +</P> + +<P> +"Say, Nulty, you there!" he bawled. "That blasted train robber's got +away, and—oh!" He had stepped from the hall over the threshold of the +bedroom door, only to halt abruptly as his eyes fell upon the bed. +"Anything I can do—Nulty?" he asked in a booming whisper, that he +tried to make soft. +</P> + +<P> +Nulty, sitting in a chair by the bed, shook his head—and Gleason +tiptoed in squeaky boots out of the house. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton, who had been lying with closed eyes, opened them, and looked +at Nulty. +</P> + +<P> +"What did he say?" he inquired. +</P> + +<P> +"Says the fellow we got to-day has got away," said Nulty shortly. +"Shut up—the doctor says you're not to talk." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton's bright eyes made a circuit of the room, came back, and +rested again on Nulty. +</P> + +<P> +"Would you know him again if you saw him?" he demanded. +</P> + +<P> +"Would I know him!" exclaimed Nulty. "It's not likely I wouldn't, is +it? I was dead-heading him down from Gopher Butte, wasn't I?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think," said P. Walton slowly, "if it were me I'd be scared stiff +that he got away—afraid he'd be trying to revenge that other fellow, +you know. You want to look out for him." +</P> + +<P> +"I'd ask nothing better than to meet him again," said Nulty grimly. +"Now, shut up—you're not to talk." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton was pretty sick. Nulty sat up all that night with him, laid +off from his run the next day, and sat up with P. Walton again the next +night. Then, having sent for Mrs. Nulty, who was visiting relatives +down the line, Mrs. Nulty took a hand in the nursing. Mrs. Nulty was a +little, sweet-faced woman, with gray Irish eyes and no style about +her—Nulty's pay-check didn't reach that far—but she knew how to +nurse; and if her hands were red and the knuckles a little swollen from +the washtub, she could use them with a touch that was full enough of +tender sympathy to discount anything a manicure might have reason to +find fault with on professional grounds. She didn't rate Nulty for +turning her home into a hospital, and crowding her train-sheet of work, +already pretty full, past all endurance—Mrs. Nulty, God bless her, +wasn't that kind of a woman! She looked at her husband with a sort of +happy pride in her eyes; looked at P. Walton, and said, "Poor man," as +her eyes filled—and went to work. But for all that, it was touch and +go with P. Walton—P. Walton was a pretty sick man. +</P> + +<P> +It's queer the way trouble of that sort acts—down and out one day with +every signal in every block set dead against you; and the next day a +clear track, with rights through buttoned in your reefer, a wide-flung +throttle, and the sweep of the wind through the cab glass whipping your +face till you could yell with the mad joy of living. It's queer! +</P> + +<P> +Five days saw P. Walton back at the office, as good, apparently, as +ever he was—but Mrs. Nulty didn't stop nursing. Nulty came down sick +in place of P. Walton and took to bed—"to give her a chance to keep +her hand in," Nulty said. Nulty came down, not from overdoing it on P. +Walton's account—a few nights sitting up wasn't enough to lay a man +like Nulty low—Nulty came down with a touch of just plain mountain +fever. +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't serious, or anything like that; but it put a stop order, +temporarily at least, on the arrangements Nulty had cussed P. Walton +into agreeing to. P. Walton was to come and board with the Nultys at +the same figure he was paying Ivan Peloff until he got a raise and +could pay more. And so, while Nulty was running hot and cold with +mountain fever, P. Walton, with Mrs. Nulty in mind, kept his +reservations on down in the Polack quarters, until such time as Nulty +should get better—and went back to work at the office. +</P> + +<P> +On the first night of his convalescence, P. Walton had a visitor—in +the person of Larry, the brains and leader of the gang. Larry did not +come inside the shack—he waited outside in the dark until P. Walton +went out to him. +</P> + +<P> +"Hullo, Dook!" said Larry. "Tough luck, eh? Been sick? Gee, I'm glad +to see you! All to the mustard again? Couldn't get into town before, +but a fellow uptown said you'd been bad." +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, Larry," returned P. Walton, and he shook the other's hand +cordially. "Glad to see you, too. Yes; I guess I'm all right—till +next time." +</P> + +<P> +"Sure, you are!" said Larry heartily. "Anything good doing?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said P. Walton, "I don't know whether you'd call it good or +not, but there was a new order went into effect yesterday to remain in +force until further notice—owing to the heavy passenger traffic. They +are taking the mail and express cars off the regular afternoon +east-bound trains, and running them as a through extra on fast time. +They figure to land the mails East quicker, and ease up on the +equipment of the regular trains so as to keep them a little nearer +schedule. So now the express stuff comes along on Extra No. 34, due +Spider Cut at eight-seventeen p. m., which is her last stop before Big +Cloud." +</P> + +<P> +"Say," said Larry dubiously, "'taint going to be possible to board a +train like that casual-like, is it?" Then, brightening suddenly: "But +say, when you get to thinking about it, it don't size up so bad, +neither. I got the lay, Dook—I got it for fair—listen! Instead of a +train-load of passengers to handle there won't be no one after the +ditching but what's left of the train crew and the mail clerks; a +couple of us can stand the stamp lickers up easy, while the two others +pinches the swag. We'll stop her, all right! We ditch the train—see? +There's a peach of a place for it about seven miles up the line from +here. We tap the wires, Big Tom's some cheese at that, and then cuts +them as soon as we know the train has passed Spider Cut, and is wafting +its way toward us. Say, it's good, Dook, it's like a Christmas +present—I was near forgetting the registered mail." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton laughed—and coughed. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess it's all right, Larry," he said. "According to a letter I saw +in the office this afternoon, there's a big shipment of banknotes that +some bank is remitting, and that will be on board night after next." +</P> + +<P> +"Say that again," said Larry, sucking in his breath quickly. "I ain't +deaf, but I'd like to hear it just once more." +</P> + +<P> +"I was thinking," said P. Walton, more to himself than to his +companion, "that I'd like to get down to Northern Australia—up +Queensland way. They say it's good for what ails me—bakes it out of +one." +</P> + +<P> +"Dook," said Larry, shoving out his hand, "you can buy your ticket the +day after the night after next—you'll get yours, and don't you forget +it, I'll see to that. We'll move camp to-morrow down handy to the +place I told you about, and get things ready. And say, Dook, is that +cuss Nulty on the new run?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know anything about Nulty," said P. Walton. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I hope he is," said Larry, with a fervent oath. "We're going to +cut the heart out of him for what he did to Spud. The Butcher was for +coming into town and putting a bullet through him anyway, but I'm not +for throwing the game. It won't hurt Spud's memory any to wait a bit, +and we won't lose any enthusiasm by the delay, you can bet your life on +that! And now I guess I'll mosey along. The less I'm seen around here +the better. Well, so long, Dook—I got it straight, eh? Night after +to-morrow, train passes Spider Cut eight-seventeen—that right?" +</P> + +<P> +"Eight-seventeen—night after to-morrow—yes," said P. Walton. "Good +luck to you, Larry." +</P> + +<P> +"Same to you, Dook," said Larry—and slipped away in the shadows. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton went uptown to sit for an hour or two with Nulty—turn about +being no more than fair play. Also on the following night he did the +same—and on this latter occasion he took the opportunity, when Mrs. +Nulty wasn't around to hear and worry about it, to turn the +conversation on the hold-up, after leading up to it casually. +</P> + +<P> +"When you get out and back on your run again, Nulty, I'd keep a sharp +look-out for that fellow whose pal you shot," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"You can trust me for that," said Nulty anxiously. "I'll bet he +wouldn't get away a second time!" +</P> + +<P> +"Unless he saw you first," amended P. Walton evenly. "There's probably +more where those two came from—a gang of them, I dare say. They'll +have it in for you, Nulty." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you worry none about me," said Nulty, and his jaw shot out. +"I'm able to take care of myself." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, well," said P. Walton, "I'm just warning you, that's all. Anyway, +there isn't any immediate need for worry. I guess you're safe +enough—so long as you stay in bed." +</P> + +<P> +The next day P. Walton worked assiduously at the office. If excitement +or nervousness in regard to the events of the night that was to come +was in any wise his portion, he did not show it. There was not a +quiver in the steel-plate hand in which he wrote the super's letters, +not even an inadvertent blur on the tissue pages of the book in which +he copied them. Only, perhaps, he worked a little more slowly—his +work wasn't done when the shop whistle blew and he came back to the +office after supper. It was close on ten minutes after eight when he +finally finished, and went into the despatcher's room with the sheaf of +official telegrams to go East during the night at odd moments when the +wires were light. +</P> + +<P> +"Here's the super's stuff," he said, laying the papers on the +despatcher's desk. +</P> + +<P> +"All right," said Spence, who was sitting in on the early trick. +"How's P. Walton to-night?" +</P> + +<P> +"Pretty fair," said P. Walton, with a smile. "How's everything moving?" +</P> + +<P> +"Slick as clockwork," Spence answered. "Everything on the dot. I'll +get some of that stuff off for you now." +</P> + +<P> +"Good," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "Good-night, Spence." +</P> + +<P> +"'Night, old man," rejoined Spence, and picking up the first of the +super's telegrams began to rattle a call on his key like the tattoo of +a snare drum. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton, in possession of the information he sought—that Extra No. +34 was on time—descended the stairs to the platform, and started +uptown. +</P> + +<P> +"I think," he mused, as he went along, "that about as good a place as +any for me when this thing breaks will be sitting with Nulty." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton noticed the light burning in Nulty's bedroom window as he +reached the house; and, it being a warm night, found the front door +wide open. He stepped into the hall, and from there into the bedroom. +Mrs. Nulty was sitting in a rocking-chair beside the lamp, mending away +busily at a pair of Nulty's overalls—but there wasn't anybody else in +the room. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello!" said P. Walton cheerily. "Where's the sick man?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, didn't you know?" said Mrs. Nulty a little anxiously, as she laid +aside her work and rose from her chair. "The express company sent word +this morning that if he was able they particularly wanted to have him +make the run through the mountains to-night on Extra Number +Thirty-four—I think there was some special shipment of money. He +wasn't at all fit to go, and I tried to keep him home, but he wouldn't +listen to me. He went up to Elk River this morning to meet Thirty-four +and come back on it. I've been worrying all day about him." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton's eyes rested on the anxious face of the little woman before +him, dropped to the red, hard-working hands that played nervously with +the corner of her apron then travelled to Nulty's alarm clock that +ticked raucously upon the table—it was 8.17. P. Walton smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, don't you worry, Mrs. Nulty," he said reassuringly. "A touch of +mountain fever isn't anything one way or the other—don't you worry, +it'll be all right. I didn't know he was out, and I was going to sit +with him for a little while, but what I really came for was to get him +to lend me a revolver—there's a coyote haunting my end of the town +that's kept me awake for the last two nights, and I'd like to even up +the score. If Nulty hasn't taken the whole of his armament with him, +perhaps you'll let me have one. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, yes, of course," said Mrs. Nulty readily. "There's two there in +the top bureau drawer. Take whichever one you want." +</P> + +<P> +"Thanks," said P. Walton—and stepped to the bureau. He took out a +revolver, slipped it into his pocket, and turned toward the door. +"Now, don't you worry, Mrs. Nulty," he said encouragingly, "because +there's nothing to worry about. Tell him I dropped in, will you?—and +thank you again for the revolver. Good-night, Mrs. Nulty."' +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton's eyes strayed to the clock as he left the room—it was 8.19. +On the sidewalk he broke into a run, dashed around the corner and sped, +with instantly protesting lungs, down Main Street, making for the +railroad yards. And as he ran P. Walton did a sum in mental +arithmetic, while his breath came in gasps. +</P> + +<P> +If you remember Flannagan, you will remember that the distance from +Spider Cut to Big Cloud was twenty-one decimal seven miles. P. Walton +figured it roughly twenty-two. No. 34, on time, had already left +Spider Cut at 8.17—and the wires were cut. Her running time for the +twenty-two miles was twenty-nine minutes—she made Big Cloud at 8.46. +Counting Larry's estimate of seven miles to be accurate, No. 34 had +fifteen miles to go from Spider Cut before they piled her in the ditch, +and it would take her a little over nineteen minutes to do it. With +two minutes already elapsed—<I>three</I> now—and allowing, by shaving it +close, another five before he started, P. Walton found that he was left +with eleven minutes in which to cover seven miles. +</P> + +<P> +It took P. Walton four of his five-minute allowance to reach the +station platform; and here, for just an instant, he paused while his +eyes swept the twinkling switch lights in the yards. Then he raced +along the length of the platform, jumped from the upper end to the +ground, and lurching a little, up the main line track to where +fore-shortened, unclassed little switching engine—the 229—was +grunting heavily, and stealing a momentary rest after having sent a +string of flats flying down a spur under the tender guidance of a +brakeman or two. And as P. Walton ran, he reached into his pocket and +drew out Nulty's revolver. +</P> + +<P> +There wasn't much light inside the cab—there was only the lamp over +the gauges—but it was light enough to show P. Walton's glittering +eyes, fever bright, the deadly white of his face, the deadly smile on +his lips, and the deadly weapon in his hand, as he sprang through the +gangway. +</P> + +<P> +"Get out!" panted P. Walton coldly. +</P> + +<P> +Neither Dalheen, the fireman, nor Mulligan, fat as a porpoise, on the +right-hand side, stood upon the order of their going. Dalheen ducked, +and took a flying leap through the left-hand gangway; and Mulligan, +with a sort of anxious gasp that seemed as though he wished to convey +to P. Walton the fact that he was hurrying all he could, squeezed +himself through the right-hand gangway and sat down on the ground. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton pulled the throttle open with an unscientific jerk. +</P> + +<P> +With a kind of startled scream from the hissing steam, the sparks +flying from madly racing drivers as the wheel tires bit into the rails, +the old 229, like a frightened thoroughbred at the vicious lash of a +yokel driver, reared and plunged wildly forward. The sudden, violent +start from inertia pitched P. Walton off his feet across the driver's +seat, and smashed his head against the reversing lever that stood +notched forward in the segment. He gained his feet again, and, his +head swimming a little from the blow, looked behind him. +</P> + +<P> +Yells were coming from half a dozen different directions; forms, racing +along with lanterns bobbing up and down, were tearing madly for the +upper end of the yard toward him; there was a blur of switch lights, +red, white, purple and green—then with a wicked lurch around a curve +darkness hid them, and the sweep of the wind, the roar of the pounding +drivers deadened all other sounds. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton smiled—a strange, curious, wistful smile—and sat down in +Mulligan's seat. His qualifications for a Brotherhood card had been +exhausted when he had pulled the throttle—engine driving was not in P. +Walton's line. P. Walton smiled at the air latch, the water glass, the +gauges and injectors, whose inner workings were mysteries to him—and +clung to the window sill of the cab to keep his seat. He understood +the throttle—in a measure—he had ridden up and down the yards in the +switchers once or twice during the month that was past—that was all. +</P> + +<P> +Quicker came the bark of the exhaust; quicker the speed. P. Walton's +eyes were fixed through the cab glass ahead, following the headlight's +glare, that silvered now the rails, and now flung its beams athwart the +stubble of a butte as the 229 swung a curve. Around him, about him, +was dizzy, lurching chaos, as, like some mad thing, the little switcher +reeled drunkenly through the night—now losing her wheel-base with a +sickening slew on the circling track, now finding it again with a +staggering quiver as she struck the tangent once more. +</P> + +<P> +It was not scientific running—P. Walton never eased her, never helped +her—P. Walton was not an engineer. He only knew that he must go fast +to make the seven miles in eleven minutes—and he was going fast. And, +mocking every formula of dynamics, the little switcher, with no single +trailing coach to steady it, swinging, swaying, rocking, held the rails. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton's lips were still half parted in their strange, curious +smile. A deafening roar was in his ears—the pound of beating trucks +on the fish-plates; the creak and groan of axle play; the screech of +crunching flanges; the whistling wind; the full-toned thunder now of +the exhaust—and reverberating back and forth, flinging it from butte +to butte, for miles around in the foothills the still night woke into a +thousand answering echoes. +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile, back in Big Cloud, things were happening in the super's +office. Spence, the despatcher, interrupting Carleton and Regan at +their nightly pedro, came hastily into the room. +</P> + +<P> +"Something's wrong," he said tersely. "I can't get anything west of +here, and——" He stopped suddenly, as Mulligan, flabby white, came +tumbling into the room. +</P> + +<P> +"He's gone off his chump!" screamed Mulligan. "Gone delirious, or mad, +or——" +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter?" Carleton was on his feet, his words cold as ice. +</P> + +<P> +"Here!" gasped the engineer. "Look!" He dragged Carleton to the side +window, and pointed up the track—the 229, sparks volleying skyward +from her stack, was just disappearing around the first bend. +"That's—that's the two-twenty-nine!" he panted. "P. Walton's in +her—drove me and Dalheen out of the cab with a revolver." +</P> + +<P> +For an instant, no more than a breathing space, no one spoke; then +Spence's voice, with a queer sag in it, broke the silence: +</P> + +<P> +"Extra Thirty-four left Spider Cut eight minutes ago." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton, master always of himself, and master always of the situation, +spoke before the words were hardly out of the despatcher's mouth: +</P> + +<P> +"Order the wrecker out, Spence—jump! Mulligan, go down and help get +the crew together." And then, as Spence and Mulligan hurried from the +room, Carleton looked at the master mechanic. "Well, Tommy, what do +you make of this?" he demanded grimly. +</P> + +<P> +Regan, with thinned lips, was pulling viciously at his mustache. +</P> + +<P> +"What do I make of it!" he growled. "A mail train in the ditch, and +nothing worth speaking of left of the two-twenty-nine—that's what I +make of it!" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"Doesn't it strike you as a rather remarkable coincidence that our +wires should go out, and P. Walton should go off his head with delirium +at the same moment?" +</P> + +<P> +"Eh!" snapped Regan sharply. "Eh!—what do you mean?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't mean anything," Carleton answered, clipping off his words. +"It's strange, that's all—I think we'll go up with the wrecker, Tommy." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Regan slowly, puzzled; then, with a scowl and a tug at his +mustache: "It does look queer, queerer every minute—blamed queer! I +wonder who P. Walton is, and where he came from anyhow?" +</P> + +<P> +"You asked me that once before," Carleton threw back over his shoulder, +moving toward the door. "P. Walton never said." +</P> + +<P> +And while Regan, still tugging at his mustache, followed Carleton down +the stairs to the platform, and ill-omened call boys flew about the +town for the wrecking crew, and the 1018, big and capable, snorting +from a full head of steam, backed the tool car, a flat, and the +rumbling derrick from a spur to the main line, P. Walton still sat, +smiling strangely, clinging to the window sill of the laboring 229, +staring out into the night through the cab glass ahead. +</P> + +<P> +"You see," said P. Walton to himself, as though summing up an argument +dispassionately, "ditching a train travelling pretty near a mile a +minute is apt to result in a few casualties, and Nulty might get hurt, +and if he didn't, the first thing they'd do would be to pass him out +for keeps, anyway, on Spud's account. They're not a very gentle lot—I +remember the night back at Joliet that Larry and the Butcher walked out +with the guards' clothes on, after cracking the guards' skulls. +They're not a very gentle lot, and I guess they've been to some little +trouble fixing up for to-night—enough so's they won't feel pleasant at +having it spoiled. I guess"—P. Walton coughed—"I won't need that +ticket for the <I>heat</I> of Northern Queensland. I guess"—he ended +gravely—"I guess I'm going to hell." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton put his head out through the window and listened—and nodded +his head. +</P> + +<P> +"Sound carries a long way out here in the foothills," he observed. +"They ought to hear it on the mail train as soon as we get close—and I +guess we're close enough now to start it." +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton got down, and, clutching at the cab-frame for support, lifted +up the cover of the engineer's seat—there was sure to be something +there among the tools that would do. P. Walton's hand came out with a +heavy piece of cord. He turned then, pulled the whistle lever down, +tied it down—and, screaming now like a lost soul, the 229 reeled on +through the night. +</P> + +<P> +The minutes passed—and then the pace began to slacken. Dalheen was +always rated a good fireman, and a wizard with the shovel, but even +Dalheen had his limitations—and P. Walton hadn't helped him out any. +The steam was dropping pretty fast as the 229 started to climb a grade. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton stared anxiously about him. It must be eleven minutes now +since he had started from the Big Cloud yards, but how far had he come? +Was he going to stop too soon after all? What was the matter? P. +Walton's eyes on the track ahead dilated suddenly, and, as suddenly, he +reached for the throttle and slammed it shut—he was not going to stop +too soon—perhaps not soon enough. +</P> + +<P> +Larry, the Butcher, Big Tom, and Dago Pete had chosen their position +well. A hundred yards ahead, the headlight played on a dismantled +roadbed and torn-up rails, then shot off into nothingness over the +embankment as the right of way swerved sharply to the right they had +left no single loophole for Extra No. 34, not even a fighting +chance—the mail train would swing the curve and be into the muck +before the men in her cab would be able to touch a lever. +</P> + +<P> +Screaming hoarsely, the 229 slowed, bumped her pony truck on the ties +where there were no longer any rails jarred, bounced, and thumped along +another half dozen yards—and brought up with a shock that sent P. +Walton reeling back on the coal in the tender. +</P> + +<P> +A dark form, springing forward, bulked in the left-hand gangway—and P. +Walton recognized the Butcher. +</P> + +<P> +"Keep out, Butch!" he coughed over the scream of the whistle—and the +Butcher in his surprise sort of sagged mechanically back to the ground. +</P> + +<P> +"It's de Dook!" he yelled, with a gasp; and then, as other forms joined +him, he burst into a torrent of oaths. "What de blazes are you doin'!" +he bawled. "De train 'll be along in a minute, if you ain't queered it +already—cut out that cursed whistle! Cut it out, d'ye hear, or we'll +come in there an' do it for you in a way you won't like—have you gone +nutty?" +</P> + +<P> +"Try it," invited P. Walton—and coughed again. "You won't have far to +come, but I'll drop you if you do. I've changed my mind—there isn't +going to be any wreck to-night. You'd better use what time is left in +making your getaway." +</P> + +<P> +"So that's it, is it!" roared another voice. "You dirty pup, you'd +squeal on your pals, would you, you white-livered snitch, you! Well, +take that!" +</P> + +<P> +There was a flash, a lane of light cut streaming through the darkness, +and a bullet lodged with an angry spat on the coal behind P. Walton's +head. Another and another followed. P. Walton smiled, and flattened +himself down on the coal. A form leaped for the gangway—and P. Walton +fired. There was a yell of pain and the man dropped back. Then P. +Walton heard some of them running around behind the tender, and they +came at him from both sides, firing at an angle through both gangways. +Yells, oaths, revolver shots and the screech of the whistle filled the +air—and again P. Walton smiled—he was hit now, quite badly, somewhere +in his side. +</P> + +<P> +His brain grew sick and giddy. He fired once, twice more +unsteadily—then the revolver slipped from his fingers. From somewhere +came another whistle—they weren't firing at him any more, they were +running away, and—P. Walton tried to rise—and pitched back +unconscious. +</P> + +<P> +Nulty, the first man out from the mail train, found him there, and, +wondering, his face set and grim, carried P. Walton to the express car. +They made a mattress for him out of chair cushions, and laid him on the +floor—and there, a few minutes later, Regan and Carleton, from the +wrecker, after a look at the 229 and the wrecked track that spoke +eloquently for itself, joined the group. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton knelt and looked at P. Walton—then looked into Nulty's face. +</P> + +<P> +Nulty, bending over P. Walton on the other side, shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"He's past all hope," he said gruffly. +</P> + +<P> +P. Walton stirred, and his lips moved—he was talking to himself. +</P> + +<P> +"If I were you, Nulty," he murmured, and they stooped to catch the +words, "I'd look out for—for—that——" +</P> + +<P> +The words trailed off into incoherency. +</P> + +<P> +Regan, tugging at his mustache, swallowed a lump in his throat, and +turned away his head. +</P> + +<P> +"It's queer!" he muttered. "How'd he know—what? I wonder where he +came from, and who he was?" +</P> + +<P> +But P. Walton never said. P. Walton was dead. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE AGE LIMIT +</H4> + +<P> +As its scarred and battle-torn colors are the glory of a regiment, +brave testimony of hard-fought fields where men were men, so to the +Hill Division is its tradition. And there are names there, too, on the +honor roll—not famous, not world-wide, not on every tongue, but names +that in railroading will never die. The years have gone since men +fought and conquered the sullen gray-walled Rockies and shackled them +with steel and iron, and laid their lives on the altar of one of the +mightiest engineering triumphs the world has ever known; but the years +have dimmed no memory, have only brought achievement into clearer +focus, and honor to its fullness where honor is due. They tell the +stories of those days yet, as they always will tell them—at night in +the round-house over the soft pur of steam, with the yellow flicker of +the oil lamps on the group clustered around the pilot of a 1600-class +mountain greyhound—and the telling is as though men stood erect, +bareheaded, at "salute" to the passing of the Old Guard. +</P> + +<P> +Heroes? They never called themselves that—never thought of themselves +in that way, those old fellows who have left their stories. Their +uniform was a suit of overalls, their "decorations" the grime that came +with the day's work—just railroad men, hard-tongued, hard-fisted, +hard-faced, rough, without much polish, perhaps, as some rank polish, +with hearts that were right and big as a woman's—that was all. +</P> + +<P> +MacCaffery, Dan MacCaffery, was one of these. This is old Dan +MacCaffery's story. +</P> + +<P> +MacCaffery? Dan was an engineer, one of the old-timers, blue-eyed, +thin—but you'd never get old Dan that way, he wouldn't look natural! +You've got to put him in the cab of the 304, leaning out of the window, +way out, thin as a bent toothpick, and pounding down the gorge and +around into the straight making for the Big Cloud yards, with a string +of buff-colored coaches jouncing after him, and himself bouncing up and +down in his seat like an animated piece of rubber. Nobody ever saw old +Dan inside the cab, that is, all in—he always had his head out of the +window—said he could see better, though the wind used to send the +water trickling down from the old blue eyes, and generally there were +two little white streaks on his cheeks where no grime or coal dust ever +got a chance at a strangle hold on the skin crevices. For the rest, +what you could see sticking out of the cab over the whirling rod as he +came down the straight, was just a black, greasy peaked cap surmounting +a scanty fringe of gray hair, and a wizened face, with a round little +knob in the center of it for a nose. +</P> + +<P> +But that isn't altogether old Dan MacCaffery, either—there was Mrs. +MacCaffery. Everybody liked Dan, with his smile, and the cheery way he +had of puckering up his lips sympathetically and pushing back his cap +and scratching near his ear where the hair was, as he listened maybe to +a hard-luck story; everybody liked Dan—but they swore by Mrs. +MacCaffery. Leaving out the railroaders who worshipped her anyway, +even the worst characters in Big Cloud, and there were some pretty bad +ones in those early days, hangers-on and touts for the gambling hells +and dives, used to speak of the little old lady in the lace cap with a +sort of veneration. +</P> + +<P> +Lace cap? Yes. Sounds queer, doesn't it? An engineer's wife, keeping +his shanty in a rough and ready, half baked bit of an uncivilized town +in the shadow of the Rockies, and a lace cap don't go together very +often, that's a fact. But it is equally a fact that Mrs. MacCaffery +wore a lace cap—and somehow none of the other women ever had a word to +say about her being "stuck up" either. There was something patrician +about Mrs. MacCaffery—not the cold, stand-offish effect that's only +make-believe, but the real thing. The Lord knows, she had to work hard +enough, but you never saw her rinsing the washtub suds from her hands +and coming to the door with her sleeves rolled up—not at all. The +last thing you'd ever think there was in the house was a washtub. +Little lace cap over smoothly-parted gray hair, little black dress with +a little white frill around the throat, and just a glad look on her +face whether she'd ever seen you before or not—that was Mrs. +MacCaffery. +</P> + +<P> +As far back as any one could remember she had always looked like that, +always a little old lady—never a young woman, although she and Dan had +come there years before, even before the operating department had got +the steel shaken down into anything that might with justice be called a +permanent right of way. Perhaps it was the gray hair—Mrs. +MacCaffery's hair had been gray then, when it ought to have been the +glossy, luxuriant brown that the old-fashioned daguerreotype, hanging +in the shanty's combination dining and silting room, proclaimed that it +once was. +</P> + +<P> +Big Cloud, of course, didn't call her patrician—because they didn't +talk that way out there. They said there was "some class" to Mrs. +MacCaffery—and if their expression was inelegant, what they meant by +it wasn't. Not that they ranked her any finer than Dan, for the last +one of them ranked Dan as one of God's own noblemen, and there's +nothing finer than that, only they figured, at least the women did, +that back in the Old Country she'd been brought up to things that Dan +MacCaffery hadn't. +</P> + +<P> +Maybe that accounted for their sending young Dan East, and pinching +themselves pretty near down to bed rock to give the boy an education +and a start. Not that Mrs. MacCaffery had any notions that railroading +and overalls and dirt was plebeian and beneath her—far from it! She +was proud of old Dan, proud of his work, proud of his record; she'd +talk about Dan's engine to you by the hour just as though it were +alive, just as Dan would, and she would have hung chintz curtains on +the cab windows and put flower pots on the running boards if they had +let her. It wasn't that—Mrs. MacCaffery wasn't that kind. Only there +were limitations to a cab, and she didn't want the boy, he was the only +one they had, to start out with limitations of any kind that would put +a slow order on his reaching the goal her mother's heart dreamed of. +What goal? Who knows? Mothers always dream of their boy's future in +that gentle, loving, all-conquering, up-in-the-clouds kind of a way, +don't they? She wanted young Dan to do something, make a name for +himself some day. +</P> + +<P> +And young Dan did. He handed a jolt to the theory of heredity that +should, if it didn't, have sent the disciples of that creed to the mat +for the full count. When he got through his education, he got into a +bank and backed the brain development, the old couple had scrimped to +the bone to give him, against the market—with five thousand dollars of +the bank's money. Old Dan and Mrs. MacCaffery got him off—Mrs. +MacCaffery with her sweet old face, and Dan with his grim old honesty. +The bank didn't prosecute. The boy was drowned in a ferryboat accident +the year after. And old Dan had been paying up ever since. +</P> + +<P> +He was always paying up. Five thousand dollars, even in instalments +for a whole lot of years, didn't leave much to come and go on from his +monthly pay check. He talked some of dropping the benefit orders he +belonged to, and he belonged to most of them, but Mrs. MacCaffery +talked him out of that on account of the insurance, she said, but +really because she knew that Dan and his lodge rooms and his regalias +and his worshipful titles were just part and parcel of each other, and +that he either was, or was just going to be, Supreme High Chief +Illustrious Something-or-other of every Order in town. Besides, after +all, it didn't cost much compared with the other, just meant pinching a +tiny bit harder—and so they pinched. +</P> + +<P> +Old Dan and Mrs. MacCaffery didn't talk about their troubles. You'd +never get the blues on their account, no matter how intimate you got +with them. But everybody knew the story, of course, for everybody +knows a thing like that; and everybody knew that dollars were scarce up +at the MacCafferys' shanty for, though they didn't know how much old +Dan sent East each year, they knew it had to be a pretty big slice of +what was coming to him to make much impression on that five thousand +dollars at the other end—and they wondered, naturally enough, how the +MacCafferys got along at all. But the MacCafferys got along somehow, +outwardly without a sign of the hurt that was deeper than a mere matter +of dollars and cents, got along through the years—and Mrs. MacCaffery +got a little grayer, a little more gentle and patient and sweet-faced, +and old Dan's hair narrowed to a fringe like a broken tonsure above his +ears, and—but there's our "clearance" now, and we're off with a +clean-swept track and "rights through" into division. +</P> + +<P> +Dan was handling the cab end of one of the local passenger runs when +things broke loose in the East—a flurry in Wall Street. But Wall +Street was a long, long way from the Rockies, and, though the papers +were full of it, there didn't seem to be anything intimate enough in a +battle of brokers and magnates, bitter, prolonged, and to the death +though it might be, to stir up any excitement or enthusiasm on the Hill +Division. The Hill Division, generally speaking, had about all it +could do to mind its own affairs without bothering about those of +others', for the Rockies, if conquered, took their subjection with bad +grace and were always in an incipient state of insurrection that kept +the operating, the motive power and the maintenance-of-way departments +close to the verge of nervous prostration without much let-up to speak +of. But when the smoke cleared away down East, the Hill Division and +Big Cloud forgot their bridge troubles and their washouts and their +slides long enough to stick their tongues in their cheeks and look +askance at each other; and Carleton, in his swivel chair, pulled on the +amber mouthpiece of his brier and looked at Regan, who, in turn, pulled +on his scraggly brown mustache and reached for his hip pocket and his +plug. The system was under new control. +</P> + +<P> +"Who's H. Herrington Campbell when he's at home?" spluttered Regan. +</P> + +<P> +"Our new general manager, Tommy," Carleton told him for the second time. +</P> + +<P> +Regan grunted. +</P> + +<P> +"I ain't blind! I've read that much. Who is he—h'm? Know him?" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton took the pipe from his mouth—a little seriously. +</P> + +<P> +"It's the P. M. & K. crowd, Tommy. Makes quite an amalgamation, +doesn't it—direct eastern tidewater connection—what? They're a +younger lot, pretty progressive, too, and sharp as they make them." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't care a hoot who owns the stock," observed Regan, biting deeply +at his blackstrap. "It's the bucko with the overgrown name in the +center that interests me—who's he? Do you know him?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Carleton slowly. "I know him." He got up suddenly and +walked over to the window, looked out into the yards for a moment, then +turned to face the master mechanic. "I know him, and I know most of +the others; and I'll say, between you and me, Tommy, that I'm blamed +sorry they've got their fingers on the old road. They're a cold, +money-grabbing crew, and Campbell's about as human as a snow man, only +not so warm-blooded. I fancy you'll see some changes out here." +</P> + +<P> +"I turned down an offer from the Penn last week," said the fat little +master mechanic reminiscently, "mabbe I——" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton laughed—he could afford to. There was hardly a road in the +country but had made covetous offers for the services of the cool-eyed +master of the Hill Division, who was the idol of his men down to the +last car tink. +</P> + +<P> +"No; I guess not, Tommy. Our heads are safe enough, I think. When I +go, you go—and as the P. M. & K. have been after me before, I guess +they'll let me alone now I'm on their pay roll." +</P> + +<P> +"What kind of changes, then?" inquired Regan gruffly. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said Carleton. "I don't know, Tommy—new crowd, new +ways. We'll see." +</P> + +<P> +And, in time, Regan saw. Perhaps Regan himself, together with Riley, +the trainmaster, were unwittingly the means of bringing it about a +little sooner than it might otherwise have come—perhaps not. +Ultimately it would have been all the same. Sentiment and H. +Herrington Campbell were not on speaking terms. However, one way or +the other, in results, it makes little difference. +</P> + +<P> +It was natural enough that about the first official act of the new +directors should be a trip to look over the new property they had +acquired; and if there was any resentment on the Hill Division at the +change in ownership, there was no sign of it in Big Cloud when the word +went out of what was coming. On the contrary, everybody sort of +figured to make a kind of holiday affair of it, for the special was to +lay off there until afternoon to give the Big Fellows a chance to see +the shops. Anyway, it was more or less mutually understood that they +were to be given the best the Hill Division had to offer. +</P> + +<P> +Regan kept his pet flyer, the 1608, in the roundhouse, and tinkered +over her for two days, and sent for Dan MacCaffery—there'd been a good +deal of speculation amongst the engine crews as to who would get the +run, and the men were hot for the honor. +</P> + +<P> +Regan squinted at old Dan—and squinted at the 1608 on the pit beside +him. +</P> + +<P> +"How'd you think she looks, Dan?" he inquired casually. +</P> + +<P> +The old engineer ran his eyes wistfully over the big racer, groomed to +the minute, like the thoroughbred it was. +</P> + +<P> +"She'll do you proud, Regan," he said simply. +</P> + +<P> +And then Regan's fat little hand came down with a bang on the other's +overalled shoulder—that was Regan's way. +</P> + +<P> +"And you, too, Dan," he grinned. "I got you slated for the run." +</P> + +<P> +"Me!" said MacCaffery, his wizened face lighting up. +</P> + +<P> +"You—sure!" Regan's grin expanded. "It's coming to you, ain't it? +You're the senior engineer on the division, ain't you? Well, then, +what's the matter with you? Riley's doing the same for Pete +Chartrand—he's putting Pete in the aisles. What?" +</P> + +<P> +Old Dan looked at Regan, then at the 1608, and back at Regan again. +</P> + +<P> +"Say," he said a little huskily, "the missus 'll be pleased when I tell +her. We was talking it over last night, and hoping—just hoping, mind +you, that mabbe——" +</P> + +<P> +"Go tell her, then," said the little master mechanic, who didn't need +any word picture to make him see Mrs. MacCaffery's face when she heard +the news—and he gave the engineer a friendly push doorwards. +</P> + +<P> +Not a very big thing—to pull the latch of the Directors' Special? +Nothing to make a fuss over? Well no, perhaps not—not unless you were +a railroad man. It meant quite a bit to Dan MacCaffery, though, and +quite a bit to Mrs. MacCaffery because it was an honor coming to Dan; +and it meant something to Regan, too. Call it a little thing—but +little things count a whole lot, too, sometimes in this old world of +ours, don't they? +</P> + +<P> +There had been a sort of little programme mapped out. Regan, as +naturally fell to his lot, being master mechanic, was to do the honors +of the shops, and Carleton was to make the run up through the Rockies +and over the division with the new directors: but at the last moment a +telegram sent the superintendent flying East to a brother's sick bed, +and the whole kit and caboodle of the honors, to his inward +consternation and dismay, fell to Regan. +</P> + +<P> +Regan, however, did the best he could. He fished out the black Sunday +suit he wore on the rare occasions when he had time to know one day of +the week from the other, wriggled into a boiled shirt and a stiff +collar that was yellow for want of daylight, and, nervous as a galvanic +battery, was down on the platform an hour before the train was due. +Also, by the time the train rolled in, Regan's handkerchief was +wringing wet from the sweat he mopped off his forehead—but five +minutes after that the earnest little master mechanic, as he afterwards +confided to Carleton, "wouldn't have given a whoop for two trainloads +of 'em, let alone the measly lot you could crowd into one private car." +Somehow, Regan had got it into his head that he was going on his mettle +before a crowd of up-to-the-minute, way-up railroaders; but when he +found there wasn't a practical railroad man amongst them, bar H. +Herrington Campbell, to whom he promptly and whole-heartedly took a +dislike, Regan experienced a sort of pitying contempt, which, if it +passed over the nabobs' heads without doing them any harm, had at least +the effect of putting the fat little master mechanic almost +superciliously at his ease. +</P> + +<P> +Inspect the shops? Not at all. They were out for a joy ride across +the continent and the fun there was in it. +</P> + +<P> +"How long we got here? Three hours? Wow!" boomed a big fellow, +stretching his arms lazily as he gazed about him. +</P> + +<P> +"Let's paint the town, boys," wheezed an asthmatic, bowlegged little +man of fifty, who sported an enormous gold watch chain. "Come on and +look the natives over!" +</P> + +<P> +Regan, who had been a little hazy on the etiquette of chewing in select +company, reached openly for his plug—and kind of squinted over it +non-committingly, as he bit in, at H. Herrington Campbell, who stood +beside him. Carleton had sized the new general manager up pretty +well—cold as a snow man—and he looked it. H. Herrington Campbell was +a spare-built man, with sharp, quick, black eyes, a face like a hawk, +and lips so thin you wouldn't know he had any if one corner of his +mouth hadn't been pried kind of open, so to speak, with the stub of a +cigar. +</P> + +<P> +"Go ahead and amuse yourselves, boys." H. Herrington Campbell talked +out of the corner of his mouth where the cigar was. "We pull out at +twelve-thirty sharp." Then to Regan, curtly: "We'll look the equipment +and shops over, Mr. Regan." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes—sure," agreed Regan, without much enthusiasm, and led the way +across the tracks toward the roundhouse as a starting point for the +inspection tour. +</P> + +<P> +The whole blamed thing was different from the way Regan had figured it +out in his mind beforehand; but Regan set out to make himself +agreeable—and H. Herrington Campbell listened. H. Herrington Campbell +was the greatest listener Regan had ever met, and Regan froze—and then +Regan thawed out again, but not on account of H. Herrington Campbell. +Regan might have an unresponsive audience, but then Regan didn't +require an audience at all to warm him up when it came to his +roundhouse, and his big mountain racers, and the shops he lay awake at +night planning and thinking about. Here and there, H. Herrington +Campbell shot out a question, crisp, incisive, unexpected, and lapsed +into silence again—that was all. +</P> + +<P> +They inspected everything, everything there was to inspect; but when +they got through Regan had about as good an idea of what impression it +had made on H. Herrington Campbell as he had when he started out, which +is to say none at all. The new general manager just listened. Regan +had done all the talking. +</P> + +<P> +Not that H. Herrington Campbell sized up as a misfit, not by any means, +far from it! Regan didn't make that mistake for a minute. He didn't +need to be told that the other knew railroading from the ground up, he +could feel it; but he didn't need to be told, either, that the other +was more a high-geared efficiency machine than he was a man, he could +feel that, too. +</P> + +<P> +One word of praise Regan wanted, not for himself, but for the things he +loved and worked over and into which he put his soul. And the one +word, where a thousand were due, Regan did not get. The new general +manager had the emotional instincts of a wooden Indian. Regan, toward +the end of the morning, got to talking a little less himself, that is, +aloud—inwardly he grew more eloquent than ever, cholerically so. +</P> + +<P> +It was train time when they had finished, and the 1608, with old Dan +MacCaffery, half out of the cab window as usual, had just backed down +and coupled on the special, as Regan and the new general manager came +along the platform from the upper freight sheds. And Regan, for all +his inward spleen, couldn't help it, as they reached the big, powerful +racer, spick and span from the guard-plates up. +</P> + +<P> +"I dunno where you'll beat that, East or West," said Regan proudly, +with a wave of his hand at the 1608. "Wish we had more of that type +out here—we could use 'em. What do you think of her, Mr. +Campbell—h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +H. Herrington Campbell didn't appear to take any notice of the +masterpiece of machine design to speak of. His eyes travelled over the +engine, and fixed on Dan MacCaffery in the cab window. Dan had an old, +but spotless, suit of overalls on, spotless because Mrs. MacCaffery, +who was even then modestly sharing her husband's honors from the back +of the crowd by the ticket-office window, had made them spotless with a +good many hours' work the day before, for grease sticks hard even in a +washtub; and on old Dan's wizened face was a genial smile that would +have got an instant response from anybody—except H. Herrington +Campbell. H. Herrington Campbell didn't smile, neither did he answer +Regan's question. +</P> + +<P> +"How old are you?" said he bluntly to Dan MacCaffery. +</P> + +<P> +"Me?" said old Dan, taken aback for a moment. Then he laughed: "Blest +if I know, sir, it's so long since I've kept track of birthdays. +Sixty-one, I guess—no, sixty-two." +</P> + +<P> +H. Herrington Campbell didn't appear to hear the old engineer's answer, +any more than he had appeared to take any notice of the 1608. He had +barely paused in his walk, and he was pulling out his watch now and +looking at it as he continued along the platform—only to glance up +again as Pete Chartrand, the senior conductor, gray-haired, +gray-bearded, but dapper as you please in his blue uniform and brass +buttons, hurried by toward the cab with the green tissue copy of the +engineer's orders in his hand. +</P> + +<P> +Regan opened his mouth to say something—and, instead, snapped his jaws +shut like a steel trap. The last little bit of enthusiasm had oozed +out of the usually good-natured little master mechanic. Two days' +tinkering with the 1608, the division all keyed up to a smile, +everybody trying to do his best to please, a dozen little intimate +plans and arrangements talked over and worked out, were all now a +matter of earnest and savage regret to Regan. +</P> + +<P> +"By Christmas," growled Regan to himself, as he elbowed his way through +the crowd on the platform—for the town, to the last squaw with a +papoose strapped on her back, had turned out to see the Directors' +Special off—"by Christmas, if 'twere not for Carleton's sake, I'd tell +him, the little tin god that he thinks he is, what <I>I</I> think of him! +And mabbe," added Regan viciously, as he swung aboard the observation +car behind H. Herrington Campbell, "and mabbe I will yet!" +</P> + +<P> +But Regan's cup, brimming as he held it to be, was not yet full. It +was a pretty swell train, the Directors' Special, that the crowd sent +off with a burst of cheering that lasted until the markers were lost to +view around a butte; a pretty swell train, about the swellest that had +ever decorated the train sheet of the Hill Division—two sleepers, a +diner and observation, mostly mahogany, and the baggage car a good +enough imitation to fit into the color scheme without outraging even +the most esthetic taste, and the 1608 on the front end, gold-leafed, +and shining like a mirror from polished steel and brass. As far as +looks went there wasn't a thing the matter with it, not a thing; it +would have pulled a grin of pride out of a Polack section hand—which +is pulling some. And there wasn't anything the matter with the +send-off, either, that was propitious enough to satisfy anybody; but, +for all that, barring the first hour or so out of Big Cloud, trouble +and the Directors' Special that afternoon were as near akin as twin +brothers. Nothing went right; everything went wrong—except the 1608, +that ran as smooth as a full-jewelled watch, when old Dan, for the +mix-up behind him, could run her at all. The coupling on the diner +broke—that started it. When they got that fixed, something else +happened; and then the forward truck of the baggage car developed a +virulent attack of hot box. +</P> + +<P> +The special had the track swept for her clean to the Western foothills, +and rights through. But she didn't need them. Her progress was a +crawl. The directors, in spite of their dollar-ante and the roof of +the observation car for the limit, began to lose interest in their game. +</P> + +<P> +"What is this new toy we've bought?" inquired one of them plaintively. +"A funeral procession?" +</P> + +<P> +Even H. Herrington Campbell began to show emotion—he shifted his cigar +stub at intervals from one corner of his mouth to the other. Regan was +hot—both ways—inside and out; hotter a whole lot than the hot box he +took his coat off to, and helped old Pete Chartrand and the train crew +slosh buckets of water over every time the Directors' Special stopped, +which was frequently. +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't old Pete's fault. It wasn't anybody's fault. It was just +blamed hard luck, and it lasted through the whole blamed afternoon. +And by the time they pulled into Elk River, where Regan had wired for +another car, and had transferred the baggage, the Directors' Special, +as far as temper went, was as touchy as a man with a bad case of gout. +As they coupled on the new car, Regan spoke to old Dan in the +cab—spoke from his heart. +</P> + +<P> +"We're two hours late, Dan—h'm? For the love of Mike, let her out and +do something. That bunch back there's getting so damned polite to me +you'd think the words would melt in their mouths—what?" +</P> + +<P> +Old Dan puckered his face into a reassuring smile under the peak of his +greasy cap. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess we're all right now we've got rid of that car," he said. "You +leave it to me. You leave it to me, Regan." +</P> + +<P> +Pete Chartrand, savage as though the whole matter were a personal and +direct affront, reached up with a new tissue to the cab window. +</P> + +<P> +"Two hours and ten minutes late!" he snapped out. "Nice, ain't it! +Directors' Special, all the swells, we're doing ourselves proud! Oh, +hell!" +</P> + +<P> +"Keep your shirt on, Pete," said Regan, somewhat inconsistently. +"Losing your hair over it won't do any good. You're not to blame, are +you? Well then, forget it!" +</P> + +<P> +Two hours and ten minutes late! Bad enough; but, in itself, nothing +disastrous. It wasn't the first time in railroading that schedules had +gone aglimmering. Only there was more to it than that. There were not +a few other trains, fast freights, passengers, locals and work trains, +whose movements and the movements of the Directors' Special were +intimately connected one with the other. Two hours and ten minutes was +sufficient, a whole lot more than sufficient, to play havoc with a +despatcher's carefully planned meeting points over a hundred miles of +right of way, and all afternoon Donkin had been chewing his lips over +his train sheet back in the despatcher's office at Big Cloud, until the +Directors' Special, officially Special 117, had become a nightmare to +him. Orders, counter orders, cancellations, new orders had followed +each other all afternoon—and now a new batch went out, as the +rehabilitated Special went out of Elk River, and Bob Donkin, with a +sigh of relief at the prospect of clear sailing ahead, pushed the hair +out of his eyes and relaxed a little as he began to give back the +"completes." +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't Donkin's fault; there was never so much as a hint that it +was. The day man at Mitre Peak—forgot. That's all—but it's a hard +word, the hardest there is in railroading. There was a lot of traffic +moving that afternoon, and with sections, regulars, and extras all +trying to dodge Special 117, they were crowding each other pretty +hard—and the day man at Mitre Peak forgot. +</P> + +<P> +It was edging dusk as old Pete Chartrand, from the Elk River platform, +lifted a finger to old Dan MacCaffery in the cab, and old Dan, with a +sort of grim smile at the knowledge that the honor of the Hill +Division, what there was left of it as far as Special 117 was +concerned, was up to him, opened out the 1608 to take the "rights" +they'd given him afresh for all there was in it. +</P> + +<P> +From Elk River to Mitre Peak, where the right of way crosses the +Divide, it is a fairly stiff climb—from Mitre Peak to Eagle Pass, at +the caņon bed, it is an equally emphatic drop; and the track in its +gyrations around the base of the towering, jutting peaks, where it +clings as a fly clings to a wall, is an endless succession of short +tangents and shorter curves. The Rockies, as has been said, had been +harnessed, but they had never been tamed—nor never will be. Silent, +brooding always, there seems a sullen patience about them, as though +they were waiting warily—to strike. There are stretches, many of +them, where no more than a hundred yards will blot utterly one train +from the sight of another; where the thundering reverberations of the +one, flung echoing back and forth from peak to peak, drown utterly the +sounds of the other. And west of Mitre Peak it is like this—and the +operator at Mitre Peak forgot the holding order for Extra Freight No. +69. +</P> + +<P> +It came quick, quick as the winking of an eye, sudden as the crack of +doom. Extra Freight No. 69 was running west, too, in the same +direction as the Directors' Special; only Extra No. 69 was a heavy +train and she was feeling her way down the grade like a snail, while +the Directors' Special, with the spur and prod of her own delinquency +and misbehavior, was hitting up the fastest clip that old Dan, who knew +every inch of the road with his eyes shut, dared to give within the +limits of safety on that particular piece of track. +</P> + +<P> +It came quick. Ten yards clear on the right of way, then a gray wall +of rock, a short, right-angled dive of the track around it—and, as the +pilot of the 1608 swung the curve, old Dan's heart for an instant +stopped its beat—three red lights focussed themselves before his eyes, +the tail lights on the caboose of Extra No. 69. There was a yell from +little Billy Dawes, his fireman. +</P> + +<P> +"My God, Dan, we're into her!" Dawes yelled. "We're into her!" +</P> + +<P> +Cool old veteran, one of the best that ever pulled a throttle in any +cab, there was a queer smile on old Dan MacCaffery's lips. He needed +no telling that disaster he could not avert, could only in a measure +mitigate, perhaps, was upon them; but even as he checked, checked hard, +and checked again, the thought of others was uppermost in his mind—the +train crew of the freight, some of them, anyway, in the caboose. Dawes +was beside him now, almost at his elbow, as nervy and as full of grit +as the engineer he'd shovelled for for five years and thought more of +than he did of any other man on earth—and for the fraction of a second +old Dan MacCaffery looked into the other's eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Give the boys in the caboose a chance for their lives, Billy, in case +they ain't seen or heard us," he shouted in his fireman's ear. "Hold +that whistle lever down." +</P> + +<P> +Twenty yards, fifteen between them—the 1608 in the reverse bucking +like a maddened bronco, old Dan working with all the craft he knew at +his levers—ten yards—and two men, scurrying like rats from a sinking +ship, leaped from the tail of the caboose to the right of way. +</P> + +<P> +"Jump!" The word came like a half sob from old Dan. There was nothing +more that any man could do. And he followed his fireman through the +gangway. +</P> + +<P> +It made a mess—a nasty mess. From the standpoint of traffic, as nasty +a mess as the Hill Division had ever faced. The rear of the freight +went to matchwood, the 1608, the baggage and two Pullmans turned +turtle, derailing the remaining cars behind; but, by a miracle, it +seemed, there wasn't any one seriously hurt. +</P> + +<P> +Scared? Yes—pretty badly. The directors, a shaken, white-lipped +crowd, poured out of the observation car to the track side. There was +no cigar in H. Herrington Campbell's mouth. +</P> + +<P> +It was dark by then, but the wreckage caught fire and flung a yellow +glow far across the caņon, and in a shadowy way lighted up the +immediate surroundings. Train crews and engine crews of both trains +hurried here and there, torches and lanterns began to splutter and +wink, hoarse shouts began to echo back and forth, adding their quota to +a weird medley of escaping steam and crackling flame. +</P> + +<P> +Regan, from a hasty consultation with old Dan MacCaffery and old Pete +Chartrand, that sent the two men on the jump to carry out his orders, +turned—to face H. Herrington Campbell. +</P> + +<P> +"Nobody hurt, sir—thank God!" puffed the fat little master mechanic, +in honest relief. +</P> + +<P> +H. Herrington Campbell's eyes were on the retreating forms of the +engineer and conductor. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, indeed!" he said coldly. "And the whole affair is hardly worth +mentioning, I take it—quite a common occurrence. You've got some +pretty old men handling your trains out here, haven't you?" +</P> + +<P> +Regan's face went hard. +</P> + +<P> +"They're pretty good men," he said shortly. "And there's no blame +coming to them for this, Mr. Campbell, if that's what you mean." +</P> + +<P> +H. Herrington Campbell's fingers went tentatively to his vest pocket +for a cigar, extracted the broken remains of one—the relic of his own +collision with the back of a car seat where the smash had hurled +him—and threw it away with an icy smile. +</P> + +<P> +"Blame?" expostulated H. Herrington Campbell ironically. "I don't want +to blame any one; I'm looking for some one to congratulate—on the +worst run division and the most pitiful exemplification of +near-railroading I've had any experience with in twenty years—Mr. +Regan." +</P> + +<P> +For a full minute Regan did not speak. He couldn't. And then the +words came away with a roar from the bluff little master mechanic. +</P> + +<P> +"By glory!" he exploded. "We don't take that kind of talk out here +even from general managers—we don't have to! That's straight enough, +ain't it? Well, I'll give you some more of it, now I've started. I +don't like you. I don't like that pained look on your face. I've been +filling up on you all morning, and you don't digest well. We don't +stand for anything as raw as that from any man on earth. And you +needn't hunt around for any greased words, as far as I'm concerned, to +do your firing with—you can have my resignation as master mechanic of +the worst run division you've seen in twenty years right now, if you +want it—h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +H. Herrington Campbell was gallingly preoccupied. +</P> + +<P> +"How long are we stalled here for—the rest of the night?" he inquired +irrelevantly. +</P> + +<P> +Regan stared at him a moment—still apoplectic. +</P> + +<P> +"I've ordered them to run the forward end of the freight to Eagle Pass, +and take you down," he said, choking a little. "There's a couple of +flats left whole that you can pile yourselves and your baggage on, and +down there they'll make up a new train for you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, very good," said H. Herrington Campbell curtly. +</P> + +<P> +And ten minutes later, the Directors' Special, metamorphosed into a +string of box cars with two flats trailing on the rear, on which the +newly elected board of the Transcontinental sat, some on their baggage, +and some with their legs hanging over the sides, pulled away from the +wreck and headed down the grade for Eagle Pass. Funny, the transition +from the luxurious leather upholstery of the observation to an angry, +chattering mob of magnates, clinging to each others' necks as they +jounced on the flooring of an old flat? Well perhaps—it depends on +how you look at it. Regan looked at it—and Regan grinned for the pure +savagery that was in him. +</P> + +<P> +"But I guess," said Regan to himself, as he watched them go, "I guess +mabbe I'll be looking for that job on the Penn after all—h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +Everybody talked about the Directors' Special run—naturally. And, +naturally, everybody wondered what was going to come from it. It was +an open secret that Regan had handed one to the general manager without +any candy coating on the pill, and the Hill Division sort of looked to +see the master mechanic's head fall and Regan go. But Regan did not +go; and, for that matter, nothing else happened—for a while. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton came back and got the rights of it from Regan—and said +nothing to Regan about his reply to H. Herrington Campbell's letter, in +which he had stated that if they were looking for a new master mechanic +there would be a division superintendency vacant at the same time. The +day man at Mitre Peak quit railroading—without waiting for an +investigation. Old Dan MacCaffery and Billy Dawes went back to their +regular run with the 304. And the division generally settled down +again to its daily routine—and from the perspective of distance, if +the truth be told, got to grinning reminiscently at the run the Big +Bugs had had for their money. +</P> + +<P> +Only the grin came too soon. +</P> + +<P> +A week or so passed, pay day came and went—and the day after that a +general order from the East hit the Hill Division like a landslide. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton slit the innocent-looking official manila open with his paper +knife, chucked the envelope in the wastebasket, read the communication, +read it again with gathering brows—and sent for Regan. He handed the +form to the master mechanic without a word, as the latter entered the +office. +</P> + +<P> +Regan read it—read it again, as his chief had—and two hectic spots +grew bright on his cheeks. It was brief, curt, cold—for the good of +the service, safety, and operating efficiency, it stated. In a word, +on and after the first of the month the services of employees over the +age of sixty years would no longer be required. Those were early days +in railroading; not a word about pensions, not a word about half-pay; +just sixty years and—out! +</P> + +<P> +The paper crackled in Regan's clenched fists; Carleton was beating a +tattoo on his teeth with the mouthpiece of his pipe—there wasn't +another sound in the office for a moment. Then Regan spoke—and his +voice broke a little. +</P> + +<P> +"It's a damned shame!" he said, through his teeth. "It's that skunk +Campbell." +</P> + +<P> +"How many men does it affect?" asked Carleton, looking through the +window. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," said the little master mechanic bitterly; "but I know +one that it'll hit harder than all the rest put together—and that's +old Dan MacCaffery." +</P> + +<P> +There was hurt in the super's gray eyes, as he looked at the +big-hearted little master mechanic's working face. +</P> + +<P> +"I was thinking of old Dan myself," he said, in his low, quiet way. +</P> + +<P> +"He hasn't a cent!" stormed Regan. "Not a cent—not a thing on earth +to fall back on. Think of it! Him and that little old missus of his, +God bless her sweet old face, that have been scrimping all these years +to pay back what that blasted kid robbed out of the bank. It ain't +right, Carleton—it ain't right—it's hell, that's what it is! Sixty +years! There ain't a better man ever pulled a latch in a cab, there +ain't a better one pulling one anywhere to-day than old Dan MacCaffery. +And—and I kind of feel as though I were to blame for this, in a way." +</P> + +<P> +"To blame?" repeated Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +"I put him on that run, and Riley put old Pete Chartrand on. It kind +of stuck them under Campbell's nose. The two of them together, the two +oldest men—and the blamedest luck that ever happened on a run! H'm?" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think it would have made any difference in the long run, +Tommy. I told you there'd be changes as soon as the new board got +settled in the saddle." +</P> + +<P> +Regan tugged viciously at his scraggly brown mustache. +</P> + +<P> +"Mabbe," he growled fiercely; "but Campbell's seen old Dan now, or I'd +put one over on the pup—I would that! There ain't any birth register +that I ever heard of out here in the mountains, and if Dan said he was +fifty I'd take his word for it." +</P> + +<P> +"Dan wouldn't say that," said Carleton quietly, "not even to hold his +job." +</P> + +<P> +"No, of course he wouldn't!" spluttered the fat little master mechanic, +belligerently inconsistent. "Who said he would? And, anyway, it +wouldn't do any good. Campbell asked him his age, and Dan told him. +And—and—oh, what's the use! I know it, I know I'm only talking, +Carleton." +</P> + +<P> +Neither of them said anything for a minute; then Regan, pacing up and +down the room, spoke again: +</P> + +<P> +"It's a clean sweep, eh? Train crews, engine crews, everything—there +ain't any other job for him. Over sixty is out everywhere. A white +man—one of the whitest"—Regan sort of said it to himself—"old Dan +MacCaffery. Who's to tell him?" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton drew a match, with a long crackling noise, under the arm of +his chair. +</P> + +<P> +"Me?" said Regan, and his voice broke again. He stopped before the +desk, and, leaning, over, stretched out his arm impulsively across it. +"I'd rather have that arm cut off than tell him, Carleton," he said +huskily. "I don't know what he'll say, I don't know what he'll do, but +I know it will break his heart, and break Mrs. MacCaffery's +heart—Carleton." He took another turn the length of the room and back +again. "But I guess it had better be me," said the little master +mechanic, more to himself than to Carleton. "I guess it had—I'd hate +to think of his getting it so's it would hurt any more than it had to, +h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +And so Tommy Regan told old Dan MacCaffery—that afternoon—the day +after pay day. +</P> + +<P> +Regan didn't mean to exactly, not then—he was kind of putting it off, +as it were—until next day—and fretting himself sick over it. But +that afternoon old Dan, on his way down to the roundhouse—Dan took out +the regular passenger local that left Big Cloud at 6.55 every evening, +and to spend an hour ahead of running time with the 304 was as much a +habit with Dan as breathing was—hunted Regan up in the latter's office +just before the six o'clock whistle blew. For an instant Regan thought +the engineer had somehow or other already heard the news, but a glance +at Dan's face dispelled that idea as quickly as it had come. Dan was +always smiling, but there was a smile on the wizened, puckered, honest +old face now that seemed to bubble out all over it. +</P> + +<P> +"Regan," said old Dan, bursting with happy excitement, "I just had to +drop in and tell you on the way over to the roundhouse, and the missus, +she says, 'You tell Mr. Regan, Dan; he'll be rightdown glad.'" +</P> + +<P> +Regan got up out of his chair. There seemed a sense of disaster coming +somehow that set him to breathing heavily. +</P> + +<P> +"Sure, Dan—sure," he said weakly. "What is it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Dan, "you know that—that trouble the boy got into +back—back——' +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know," said Regan hastily. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Dan, "it's taken a long time, a good many years, but +yesterday, you know, was pay day; and to-day, Regan, we, the missus and +me, Regan, sent the last of that money East, interest and all, the last +cent of it, cleaned it all up. Say, Regan, I feel like I was walking +on air, and you'd ought to have seen the missus sitting up there in the +cottage and smiling through the tears. 'Oh, Dan!' she says, and then +she gets up and puts her two hands on my shoulders, and I felt blamed +near like crying myself. 'We can start in now, Dan, to save up for old +age,' she says, smiling. Say, Regan, ain't it—ain't it fine? We're +going to start in now and save up for old age." +</P> + +<P> +Regan didn't say a word. It came with a rush, choking him up in his +throat, and something misty in front of his eyes so he couldn't +see—and he turned his back, searching for his hat on the peg behind +his desk. He jammed his hat on his head, and jerked it low down over +his forehead. +</P> + +<P> +"Ain't you—glad?" said old Dan, a sort of puzzled hurt in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll walk over a bit of the way to the roundhouse with you, Dan," said +Regan gruffly. "Come on." +</P> + +<P> +They stepped out of the shops, and across a spur—old Dan, still +puzzled, striding along beside the master mechanic. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter, Regan?" he asked reproachfully. "I thought you'd +be——" +</P> + +<P> +And then Regan stopped—and his hand fell in a tight grip on the +other's shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"I got to tell you, Dan," he blurted out. "But I don't need to tell +you what I think of it. It's a damned shame! The new crowd that's +running this road don't want anybody helping 'em to do it after the +first of the month that's over sixty years of age. You're—you're out." +</P> + +<P> +Old Dan didn't seem to get it for a minute; then a whiteness kind of +crept around his lips, and his eyes, from Regan, seemed to circuit in a +queer, wistful way about the yards, and fix finally on the roundhouse +in front of him; and then he lifted his peaked cap, in the way he had +of doing, and scratched near his ear where the hair was. He hit Regan +pretty hard with what he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Regan," he said, "there's two weeks yet to the end of the month. +Don't tell her, Regan, and don't you let the boys tell her—there's two +weeks she don't need to worry. I'd kind of like to have her have them +two weeks." +</P> + +<P> +Regan nodded—there weren't any words that would come, and he couldn't +have spoken them if there had. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said old Dan, sort of whispering to himself, "I'd kind of like +to have her have them two weeks." +</P> + +<P> +Regan cleared his throat, pulled at his mustache, swore under his +breath, and cleared his throat again. +</P> + +<P> +"What'll you do, Dan—afterwards?" +</P> + +<P> +Old Dan straightened up, looked at Regan—and smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"I dunno," he said, shaking his head and smiling. "I dunno; but it'll +be all right. We'll get along somehow." His eyes shifted to the +roundhouse again. "I guess I'd better be getting over to the 304," he +said—and turned abruptly away. +</P> + +<P> +Regan watched him go, watched the overalled figure with a slight +shoulder stoop cross the turntable, watched until the other disappeared +inside the roundhouse doors; and then he turned and walked slowly +across the tracks and uptown toward his boarding house. "Don't tell +her"—the words kept reiterating themselves insistently—"don't let the +boys tell her." +</P> + +<P> +"I guess they won't," said Regan, muttering fiercely to himself. "I +guess they won't." +</P> + +<P> +Nor did they. The division and Big Cloud kept the secret for those two +weeks—and they kept it for long after that. The little old lady in +the lace cap never knew—they ranked her high, those pioneering women +kind of hers in that little mountain town, those rough-and-ready +toilers who had been her husband's mates—she never knew. +</P> + +<P> +But everybody else knew, and they watched old Dan as the days went by, +watched him somehow with a tight feeling in their throats, and kept +aloof a little—because they didn't know what to say—kept aloof a +little awkwardly, as it were. Not that there seemed much of any +difference in the old engineer; it was more a something that they +sensed. Old Dan came down to the roundhouse in the late afternoon an +hour before train time, just as he always did, puttered and oiled +around and coddled the 304 for an hour, just as he always did, just as +though he was always going to do it, took his train out, came back on +the early morning run, backed the 304 into the roundhouse, and trudged +up Main Street to where it began to straggle into the buttes, to where +his cottage and the little old lady were—just as he always did. And +the little old lady, with the debt paid, went about the town for those +two weeks happier-looking, younger-looking than Big Cloud had ever seen +her before. That was all. +</P> + +<P> +But Regan, worrying, pulling at his mustache, put it up to little Billy +Dawes, old Dan's fireman, one day in the roundhouse near the end of the +two weeks. +</P> + +<P> +"How's Dan take it in the cab, Billy?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +The little fireman rolled the hunk of greasy waste in his hands, and +swabbed at his fingers with it for a moment before he answered; then he +sent a stream of blackstrap juice viciously into the pit, and with a +savage jerk hurled the hunk of waste after it. +</P> + +<P> +"By God!" he said fiercely. +</P> + +<P> +Regan blinked—and waited. +</P> + +<P> +"Just the same as ever he was," said Billy Dawes huskily, after a +silence. "Just the same—when he thinks you're not looking. I've seen +him sometimes when he didn't know I was looking." +</P> + +<P> +Regan said: "H'm!"—kind of coughed it out, reached for his plug, as +was usual with him in times of stress, bit into it deeply, sputtered +something hurriedly about new piston rings for the left-hand head, and, +muttering to himself, left the roundhouse. +</P> + +<P> +And that night old Dan MacCaffery took out the 304 and the local +passenger for the run west and the run back east—just as he always +did. And the next night, and for two nights after that he did the same. +</P> + +<P> +Came then the night of the 31st. +</P> + +<P> +It was the fall of the year and the dusk fell early; and by a little +after six, with the oil lamps lighted, that at best only filtered +spasmodic yellow streaks of gloom about the roundhouse, the engines +back on the pits were beginning to loom up through the murk in big, +grotesque, shadowy shapes, as Regan, crossing the turntable, paused for +a moment hesitantly. Why he was there, he didn't know. He hadn't +meant to be there. He was just a little early for his nightly game of +pedro with Carleton over in the super's office—it wasn't much more +than half past six—so he had had some time to put in—that must be +about the size of it. He hadn't meant to come. There wasn't any use +in it, none at all, nothing he could do; better, in fact, if he stayed +away—only he had left the boarding house early—and he was down there +now, standing on the turntable—and it was old Dan's last run. +</P> + +<P> +"I guess," mumbled Regan, "I'll go back over to the station. Carleton +'ll be along in a few minutes. I guess I will, h'm?"—only Regan +didn't. He started on again slowly over the turntable, and entered the +roundhouse. +</P> + +<P> +There wasn't anybody in sight around the pit on which the 304 stood, +nobody puttering over the links and motion-gear, poking here and there +solicitously with a long-spouted oil can, as he had half, more than +half, expected to find old Dan doing; but he heard some one moving +about in the cab, and caught the flare of a torch. Regan walked down +the length of the engine, and peered into the cab. It was Billy Dawes. +</P> + +<P> +"Where's Dan, Billy? Ain't he about?" inquired Regan. +</P> + +<P> +The fireman came out into the gangway. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he answered; "he's down there back of the tender by the fitters' +benches. He's looking for some washers he said he wanted for a loose +stud nut. I'll get him for you." +</P> + +<P> +"No; never mind," said Regan. "I'll find him." +</P> + +<P> +It was pretty dark at the rear of the roundhouse in the narrow space +between the engine tenders on the various pits and the row of +workbenches that flanked the wall, and for a moment, as Regan reached +the end of the 304's tender, he could not see any one—and then he +stopped short, as he made out old Dan's form down on the floor by the +end bench as though he were groping for something underneath it. +</P> + +<P> +For a minute, two perhaps, Regan stood there motionless, watching old +Dan MacCaffery. Then he drew back, tiptoed softly away, went out +through the engine doors, and, as he crossed the tracks to the station +platform, brushed his hand hurriedly across his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Regan didn't play much of a game of pedro that night—his heart wasn't +in it. Carleton had barely dealt the first hand when Regan heard the +304 backing down and coupling on the local, and he got up from his +chair and walked to the window, and stood there watching until the +local pulled out. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton didn't say anything—just dealt the cards over again, and +began once more as Regan resumed his seat. +</P> + +<P> +An hour passed. Regan, fidgety and nervous, played in a desultory +fashion; Carleton, disturbed, patiently correcting the master +mechanic's mistakes. The game was a farce. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter, Tommy?" asked Carleton gravely, as Regan made a +misdeal twice in succession. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing," said Regan shortly. "Go on, play; it's your bid." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"You're taking it too much to heart, Tommy," he said. "It won't do you +any good—either of you—you or Dan. He'll pull out of it somehow. +You'll see." +</P> + +<P> +There was a queer look on Regan's face as he stared for an instant at +Carleton across the table, and he opened his lips as though to say +something—and closed them again in a hard line instead. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton bid. +</P> + +<P> +"It's yours," said Regan. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton led—and then Regan, with a sweep of his hand, shot his cards +into the center of the table. +</P> + +<P> +"It's no good," he said gruffly, getting up. "I can't play the blamed +game to-night, I——" He stopped suddenly and turned his head, as a +chair scraped sharply in the despatchers' room next door. +</P> + +<P> +A step sounded in the hall, the super's door was flung open, and Spence +put in his head. +</P> + +<P> +One glance at the despatcher, and Carleton was on his feet. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter, Spence?" he asked, quick and hard. +</P> + +<P> +Regan hadn't moved—but Regan spoke now, answering the question that +was addressed to the despatcher, and answering it in a strangely +assertive, absolute, irrefutable way. +</P> + +<P> +"The local," he said. "Number Forty-seven. Dan MacCaffery's dead." +</P> + +<P> +Both men stared at him in amazement—and Spence, sort of unconsciously, +nodded his head. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Spence, still staring at Regan. "There was some sort of +engine trouble just west of Big Eddy in the Beaver Caņon. I haven't +got the rights of it yet, only that somehow MacCaffery got his engine +stopped just in time to keep the train from going over the bridge +embankment—and went out doing it. There's no one else hurt. Dawes, +the fireman, and Conductor Neale walked back to Big Eddy. I've got +them on the wire now. Come into the other room." +</P> + +<P> +Regan stepped to the door mechanically, and, with Carleton behind him, +followed Spence into the despatchers' room. There, Carleton, +tight-lipped, leaned against the table; Regan, his face like stone, +took his place at Spence's elbow, as the despatcher dropped into his +chair. +</P> + +<P> +There wasn't a sound in the room for a moment save the clicking of the +sender in a quick tattoo under Spence's fingers. Then Spence picked up +a pencil and began scribbling the message on a pad, as the sounder +spoke—Billy Dawes was dictating his story to the Big Eddy operator. +</P> + +<P> +"It was just west of Big Eddy, just before you get to the curve at the +approach to the Beaver Bridge," came Dawes' story, "and we were hitting +up a fast clip, but no more than usual, when we got a jolt in the cab +that spilled me into the coal and knocked Dan off his seat. It all +came so quick there wasn't time to think, but I knew we'd shed a driver +on Dan's side, and the rod was cutting the side of the cab like a knife +through cheese. I heard Dan shout something about the train going over +the embankment and into the river if we ever hit the Beaver curve, and +then he jumped for the throttle and the air. There wasn't a chance in +a million for him, but it was the only chance for every last one of the +rest of us. He made it somehow, I don't know how; it's all a blur to +me. He checked her, and then the rod caught him, and——" The sounder +broke, almost with a human sob in it, it seemed, and then went on +again: "We stopped just as the 304 turned turtle. None of the coaches +left the rails. That's all." +</P> + +<P> +Regan spoke through dry lips. +</P> + +<P> +"Ask him what Dan was like in the cab to-night," he said hoarsely. +</P> + +<P> +Spence looked up and around at the master mechanic, as though he had +not heard aright. +</P> + +<P> +"Ask him what I say," repeated Regan shortly. "What was Dan like in +the cab to-night?" +</P> + +<P> +Spence bent over his key again. There was a pause before the answer +came. +</P> + +<P> +"He says he hadn't seen Dan so cheerful for months," said Spence +presently. +</P> + +<P> +Regan nodded, kind of curiously, kind of as though it were the answer +he expected—and then he nodded at Carleton, and the two went back to +the super's room. +</P> + +<P> +Regan closed the door behind him. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton dropped into his chair, his gray eyes hard and full of pain. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't understand, Tommy," he said heavily. "It's almost as though +you knew it was going to happen." +</P> + +<P> +Regan came across the floor and stood in front of the desk. +</P> + +<P> +"I did," he said in a low way. "I think I was almost certain of it." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton pulled himself forward with a jerk in his chair. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you know what you are saying, Tommy?" he asked sharply. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll tell you," Regan said, in the same low way. "I went over to the +roundhouse to-night before Dan took the 304 out. I didn't see Dan +anywhere about, and I asked Dawes where he was. Dawes said he had gone +back to the fitters' benches to look for some washers. I walked on +past the tender and I found him there down on the floor on his knees by +one of the benches—but he wasn't looking for any washers. He was +praying." +</P> + +<P> +With a sharp exclamation, Carleton pushed back his chair, and, +standing, leaned over the desk toward Regan. +</P> + +<P> +Regan swallowed a lump in his throat—and shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"He didn't see me," he said brokenly, "he didn't know I was there. He +was praying aloud. I heard what he said. It's been ringing in my head +all night, word for word, while I was trying to play with those"—he +jerked his hand toward the scattered cards on the desk between them. +"I can hear him saying it now. It's the queerest prayer I ever heard; +and I guess he prayed the way he lived—as though he was kind of +intimate with God." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" prompted Carleton softly, as Regan paused. +</P> + +<P> +Regan turned his head away as his eyes filled suddenly—and his voice +was choked. +</P> + +<P> +"What he said was this, just as though he was talking to you or me: +'You know how it is, God. I wouldn't take that way myself unless You +fixed it up for me, because it wouldn't be right unless You did it. +But I hope, God, You'll think that's the best way out of it. You see, +there ain't nothing left as it is, but if we fixed it that way there'd +be the fraternal insurance to take care of the missus, and she wouldn't +never know. And then, You see, God, I guess my work is all done, +and—and I'd kind of like to quit while I was still on the pay +roll—I'd kind of like to finish that way, and to-night's the last +chance. You understand, God, don't You?'" +</P> + +<P> +Regan's lips were quivering as he stopped. +</P> + +<P> +There was silence for a moment, then Carleton looked up from the +blotter on his desk. +</P> + +<P> +"Tommy," he said in his big, quiet way, as his hand touched Regan's +sleeve, "tell me why you didn't stop him, then, from going out +to-night?" +</P> + +<P> +Regan didn't answer at once. He went over to the window and stared out +at the twinkling switch lights in the yards below—he was still staring +out of the window as he spoke. +</P> + +<P> +"He didn't put it up to me," said Regan. "He put it up to God." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +"THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS" +</H4> + +<P> +Maguire was a little, washed-out, kind of toil-bent hostler in the +roundhouse—and he married old. How old? Nobody knew—not even old +Bill himself—fifty something. Mrs. Maguire presented him with a son +in due course, and the son's name was Patrick Burke Maguire—but the +Hill Division, being both terse and graphic by nature and education, +called him "Noodles." +</P> + +<P> +Noodles wasn't even a pretty baby. Tommy Regan, who was roped in to +line up at the baptismal font and act as godfather because old Bill was +a boiler-washer in the roundhouse, which was reason enough for the +big-hearted master mechanic, said that Noodles was the ugliest and most +forbidding looking specimen of progeny he had ever seen outside a +zoological garden. Of course, be it understood, Regan wasn't a family +man, and god-fathering wasn't a job in Regan's line, so when he got +outside the church and the perspiration had stopped trickling nervously +down the small of his back and he'd got a piece of blackstrap clamped +firmly home between his teeth, he told old Bill, by way of a grim sort +of revenge for the unhappy position his good nature had led him into, +that the offspring was the dead spit of its father—and he +congratulated Noodles. +</P> + +<P> +The irony, of course, was lost. The boiler-washer walked on air for a +week. He told the roundhouse what Regan had said—and the roundhouse +laughed. Bill thought the roundhouse thought he was lying, but that +didn't dampen his spirits any. It wasn't everybody could get the +master mechanic of the division to stand up with <I>their</I> kids! +Everybody was happy—except Noodles. Noodles, just about then, +developed colic. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles got over the colic, got over the measles, the mumps, the +whooping cough, and the scarlet fever—that may not have been the order +of their coming or their going, but he got over them all. And when he +was twelve he got over the smallpox; but he never got over his +ugliness—the smallpox kind of put a stop-order on any lurking tendency +there might have been in that direction. Also, when he was twelve, he +got over all the schooling the boiler-washer's limited means would +span, which wasn't a university course; and he started in railroading +as a call boy. +</P> + +<P> +There was nothing organically bad about Noodles, except his +exterior—which wasn't his fault. One can't be blamed for hair of a +motley red, ubiquitous freckles wherever the smallpox had left room for +them, no particular colored eyes, a little round knob of uptilted nose, +and a mouth that made even the calloused Dutchy at the lunch counter +feel a little mean inwardly when he compared it with the mathematically +cut slab of contract pie, eight slabs to the pie plate, and so much so +that he went to the extent of—no, he never gave Noodles an extra +piece—but he went to the extent of surreptitiously pocketing Noodles' +nickel as though he were obtaining money under false pretenses—which +was a good deal for Dutchy to do—and just shows. +</P> + +<P> +There was nothing <I>organically</I> bad about Noodles—not a thing. +Noodles' troubles, and they came thick and fast with the inauguration +of his railroad career, lay in quite another direction—his +irrepressible tendency to practical jokes, coupled with a lack of the +sense of the general fitness of things, consequences and results, and +an absence of even a bowing acquaintance with responsibility that was +appalling. +</P> + +<P> +The first night Noodles went on duty as call boy, armed with a nickel +thriller—that being only half the price of a regular dime novel—and +visions of the presidency of the road being offered him before he was +much older, Spence was sitting in on the early night trick. There was +a lot of stuff moving through the mountains that night, and the train +sheet was heavy. And even Spence, counted one of the best despatchers +that ever held down a key on the Hill Division, was hard put to it, +both to keep his crowding sections from treading on each other's heels, +and to jockey the east and westbounds past each other without letting +their pilots get tangled up head-on. It was no night or no place for +foolishness—a despatcher's office never is, for that matter. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles curled himself up in a chair behind the despatcher—and started +in on the thriller. His first call was for the crews of No. 72, the +local freight east, at 8.35, and there was nothing to do until then +unless Spence should happen to want him for something. The thriller +was quite up to the mark, even "thriller" than usual, but Noodles left +the hero at the end of the first chapter securely bound to the +mill-wheel with the villain rushing to open the gate in the dam—and +his eyes strayed around the room. +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't altogether the novelty of his surroundings—no phase of +railroading was altogether a novelty to any Big Cloud youngster—there +was just a sort of newness in his own position that interfered with any +protracted or serious effort along literary lines. From a circuit of +the room, his eyes went to the fly-specked, green-shaded lamp on the +despatcher's table, then from the lamp to the despatcher's back—and +fixed on the despatcher's back. +</P> + +<P> +His eyes held there quite a long time—then his fingers went stealthily +to the lapel of his coat. Spence had a habit when hurried or anxious +of half rising from his chair, as though to give emphasis to his orders +every time he touched the key. Spence was both hurried and anxious +that night and the key was busy. In the somewhat dim light, Spence, to +Noodles' fancy, assumed the aspect of an animated jumping jack. +</P> + +<P> +Deftly, through long experience, Noodles coiled his pin with a wicked +upshoot to the center of attack, cautiously lowered his own chair, +which had been tilted back against the wall, to the more stable +position of four legs on the floor, leaned forward, and laid the pin at +a strategic point on the seat of Spence's chair. Two minutes later, +kicked bodily down the stairs, Noodles was surveying the Big Cloud +yards by moonlight from the perspective of the station platform. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles' career as a call boy had been brief—and it was ended. Old +Bill, the boiler-washer, came to the rescue. He explained to Regan who +the godfather of the boy was and what bearing that had on the case, and +how he'd larruped the boy for what he'd done, and how the boy hadn't +meant anything by it—and could the boy have another chance? +</P> + +<P> +Regan said, "Yes," and said it shortly, more because he was busy at the +time and wanted to get rid of Old Bill than from any predisposition +toward Noodles. Noodles wasn't predisposing any way you looked at him, +and Regan had a good look at his godson now for about the first time +since he'd sponsored him, and he didn't like Noodles' +looks—particularly. But Regan, not taking too serious a view of the +matter, said yes, and put Noodles at work over in the roundhouse under +the eye of his father. +</P> + +<P> +Here, for a month, in one way or another, Noodles succeeded in making +things lively, and himself cordially disliked by about everybody in the +shops, the roundhouse, and the Big Cloud yards generally. And there +was a hint or two thrown out, that reached Regan's ears, that old Bill +had known what he was doing when he got one of the "big fellows" as +godfather for as ugly a blasted little nuisance as the Hill Division +had known for many a long day. Regan got to scowling every time he saw +Noodles' unhandsome countenance, and he took pains on more than one +occasion to give a bit of blunt advice to both Noodles and Noodles' +father—which the former received somewhat ungraciously, and the latter +with trepidation. +</P> + +<P> +And then one night as it grew dark, just before six o'clock, while Bill +and the turner and the wipers were washing up and trying to put in the +time before the whistle blew, Noodles dropped into the turntable pit +and wedged the turntable bearings with iron wedgings. Half an hour +later, when the night crew came to swing it for the 1016, blowing hard +from a full head of steam and ready to go out and couple on to No. 1 +for the westbound run, they couldn't move it. It took them a few +minutes before they could find out what the matter was, and another few +to undo the matter when they did find out—and No. 1 went out five +minutes late. +</P> + +<P> +Nobody asked who did it—it wasn't necessary. They just said +"Noodles," and waited to see what Noodles' godfather would do about it. +</P> + +<P> +They did not have long to wait. The Limited five minutes late out of +division and the delay up to the motive-power department, which was +Regan's department, would have been enough to bring the offender, +whoever he might be, on the carpet with scant ceremony even if it had +been an <I>accident</I>. Regan was boiling mad. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles didn't show up the next day. Deep in Noodles' consciousness +was a feeling that his nickel thriller and a certain spot he knew up +behind the butte, where many a pleasant afternoon had been passed when +he should have been at school, was more conducive to peace and +quietness than the center of railroad activities—also Noodles ached +bodily from his father's attentions. +</P> + +<P> +Old Bill, too, kept conveniently out of sight down in a pit somewhere +every time the master mechanic showed his nose inside the roundhouse +during the morning—but by afternoon, counting the edge of Regan's +wrath to have worn smooth, he followed Regan out over the turntable +after one of the master mechanic's visits. +</P> + +<P> +"Regan," he blurted out anxiously, "about the bhoy, now." +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" snapped Regan, whirling about. +</P> + +<P> +The monosyllable was cold enough in its uncompromise to stagger the +little hostler, and drive all thoughts of the carefully rehearsed +oration he had prepared from his head. He scratched aimlessly at the +half circle of gray billy-goat beard under his chin, and blinked +helplessly at the master mechanic. Noodles lacked much, and in Noodles +was much to be desired perhaps—but Noodles, for all that, had his +place in the Irish heart that beat under the greasy jumper. +</P> + +<P> +"He's the only wan we've got, Regan," stammered the harassed roundhouse +man appealingly. +</P> + +<P> +"It's a wonder, then, you've not holes in the knees of your overalls +giving thanks for it," declared Regan grimly. "That's enough, +Bill—and we've had enough of Noodles. Keep him away from here." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, sure now, Regan," begged the little hostler piteously, "yez don't +mean ut. The bhoy's all right, Regan—'tis but spirit he has. Regan, +listen here now, I've larruped him good for fwhat he's done—an' 'twas +no more than a joke." +</P> + +<P> +"A joke!" Regan choked; then brusquely: "That'll do, Bill. I've said +my last word, and I'm busy this afternoon. Noodles is out—for keeps." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, Regan, listen here"—Noodles' father caught the master mechanic's +arm, as the latter turned away. "Regan, sure, ut's the bhoy's +godfather yez are." +</P> + +<P> +The fat little master mechanic's face went suddenly red—this was the +last straw—<I>Noodles' godfather</I>! Regan had been catching more +whispers than he had liked lately anent godfathers and godfathering. +His eyes puckered up and he wheeled on the boiler-washer—but the hot +words on the tip of his tongue died unborn. There was something in the +dejected droop of the other's figure, something in the blue eyes +growing watery with age that made him change his mind—old Bill wasn't +a young man. As far back as the big-hearted, good-natured master +mechanic could remember, he remembered old Bill—in the roundhouse. +Always the same job, day after day, year after year—boiler-washing, +tinkering around at odd jobs—not much good at anything else—church +every Sunday in shiny black coat, and peaked-faced Mrs. Maguire in the +same threadbare, shiny black dress—not that Regan ever went to church, +but he used to see them going there—church every Sunday, Maguire was +long on church, and week days just boiler-washing and tinkering around +at odd jobs—a dollar-sixty a day. Regan's pucker subsided, and he +reached out his hand to the boiler-washer's shoulder—and he grinned to +kind of take the sting out of his words. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Bill," he said, "as far as that goes, I renounce the honor." +</P> + +<P> +"Raynownce ut!" The boiler-washer's eyes opened wide, and his face was +strained as though he had not heard aright. "Raynownce ut! Ut's an +Irish Protystant yez are, Regan, the same as me an' the missus, an' did +yez not say the words in the church!" +</P> + +<P> +"I did," admitted Regan; "though I've forgotten what they were. It was +well enough, no doubt, for a kid in swaddling clothes—but it's some +time since then." Then, with finality: "Go back to your work, Bill—I +can't talk to you any more this afternoon." +</P> + +<P> +"Raynownce ut!" The words reached Regan as he turned away and started +across the tracks toward the platform, and in their tones was something +akin to stunned awe that caused him to chuckle. "Raynownce ut!—an' +yez said the words forninst the priest!" +</P> + +<P> +Regan's chuckle, however, was not of long duration, either literally or +metaphorically. During the rest of the afternoon the boiler-washer's +words got to swinging through Regan's brain until they became an +obsession, and somewhere down inside of him began to grow an +uncomfortable foreboding that there might be something more to the +godfathering business than he had imagined. He tackled Carleton about +it before the whistle blew. +</P> + +<P> +"Carleton," said he, walking into the super's office, and picking up a +ruler from the other's desk, "don't laugh, or I'll jam this ruler down +your throat. If you can answer a straight question, answer +it—otherwise, let it go. What's a godfather, anyhow?" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton grinned. +</P> + +<P> +"You ought to know, Tommy," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"I was running without a permit and off schedule at the time, and I was +nervous," said Regan. "What happened, or what the goings-on were, I +don't know. What is it?" +</P> + +<P> +Carleton shook his head gravely. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid not, Tommy," he said. "You're in the wrong shop. +Information bureau's downstairs to the right of the ticket office." +</P> + +<P> +"Thanks!" said Regan. +</P> + +<P> +And that was all the help he got from Carleton—then. But that night +over their usual game of pedro in the super's office, it was a little +different. Carleton, as he pulled the cards out of the desk drawer and +tossed them on the table, pulled a small book from his pocket and +tossed it to Regan. +</P> + +<P> +"What's this?" inquired the master mechanic. +</P> + +<P> +"It's not to your credit to ask—it's a prayer book," Carleton informed +him. "Be careful of it—I borrowed it." +</P> + +<P> +"You didn't need to say so," said Regan softly. +</P> + +<P> +"Page two hundred and eight," suggested Carleton. "See if that's what +you were looking for, Tommy." +</P> + +<P> +Regan thumbed the leaves, found the place and began to read—and a +sickly sort of pallor began to spread over his face. +</P> + +<P> +"'You are his sureties that he will renounce the devil and all his +works,'" he mumbled weakly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Carleton cheerfully. "There's some <I>little</I> responsibility +there, you see. But don't skip the parenthesis; get it all, +Tommy—'<I>until he come of age to take it upon himself</I>.'" +</P> + +<P> +Regan didn't say a word—nor was the smile he essayed an enthusiastic +success. He read the "articles" over again word by word, pointing the +lines with his pudgy forefinger. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," inquired Carleton, "what do you make of the running orders, +Tommy?" +</P> + +<P> +"The devil and all his works!"—it came away from Regan now with a rush +from his overburdened soul. "D'ye mean to say that—that"—Regan +choked a little—"that I'm responsible for that brick-topped, +monkey-faced kid?" +</P> + +<P> +"'Until he come of age,'" Carleton amplified pleasantly. +</P> + +<P> +Regan's Celtic temper rose. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll see him hung first!" he roared suddenly. "'Twas no more than to +please Maguire that I stood up with the ugly imp! And mabbe I said +what's here and mabbe I didn't, but in any event 'tis no more than a +matter of form to be repeated parrot-fashion—and it means nothing." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, well," said the super slyly, "if you feel that way about it, don't +let it bother you." +</P> + +<P> +"It will not bother <I>me</I>!" said Regan defiantly, with a scowl. +</P> + +<P> +But it did. +</P> + +<P> +Regan slept that night with an army corps of red-headed, pocked, and +freckled-faced little devils to plague his rest—and their name was +Noodles. His thoughts were unpleasantly more on Noodles than his razor +when he shaved the next morning, and the result was an unsightly gash +across his chin—and when he made his first inspection of the +roundhouse an hour later he was in a temper to be envied by no man. +His irritability was not soothed by the sight of Maguire, who rose +suddenly in front of him from an engine pit as he came in. +</P> + +<P> +"Regan," said the old fellow, "about the bhoy——" +</P> + +<P> +"Maguire," said Regan, in a low, fervent voice, "you bother me about +that again and I'll fire you, too!" +</P> + +<P> +"Wait, Regan." There was a quaver in the little hostler's voice, and +he appeared to stand his ground only by the aid of some previously +arrived at, painful resolution that rose superior to his nervousness. +"Wait, Regan—mabbe yez'll not have to. I talked ut over wid the +missus last night. I've worked well for yez, Regan, all these +years—all these years, Regan, I've worked for yez here in the +roun'house—an' I've worked well, though ut's mesilf that ses ut." +</P> + +<P> +"That's nothing to do with it," snapped the master mechanic. +</P> + +<P> +"Mabbe ut has, an' mabbe ut hasn't." The watery-blue eyes sought the +toes of their owner's grease-smeared, thickly-patched brogans. "I +talked ut over wid the missus. Sure now, Regan, yez weren't thinkin' +fwhat yez said, an' yez didn't mean fwhat yez said yisterday about +raynowncin' the word ye'd passed. Yez'll take ut back, Regan?" +</P> + +<P> +"Take it back? I'll be damned if I do!" said Regan earnestly. +</P> + +<P> +The little hostler's body stiffened, the watery-blue eyes lifted and +held steadily on the master mechanic, and for the first time in his +lowly life he raised a hand to his superior—Maguire pointed a +forefinger, that shook a little, at Regan. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis blasphymus yez are, Regan!" he said in a thin voice. "An' 'tis +no blasphymay I mean, God forbid, fwhen I say yez'll be damned if yez +don't. Before a priest, Regan, an' in the church av God, Regan, yez +swore fwhat yez swore—an' 'tis the wrath av God, Regan, yez'll bring +down on your head. Mind that, Regan! Fire me, is ut?" The little +hostler's voice rose suddenly. "All these years I've worked well for +yez, Regan, but I'll work no more for a man as 'ud do a thing loike +thot—an' the missus ses the same. Poor we may be, but rayspect for +oursilves we have. Yez'll niver fire me, Regan—I fire mesilf. I'm +through this minute!" +</P> + +<P> +Regan glared disdainfully. +</P> + +<P> +"Have you been drinking, Maguire?" he inquired caustically. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles' father did not answer. He brushed past the master mechanic, +walked through the big engine doors, and halted just outside on the +cinders. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis forsworn yez are, Regan," he said heavily. "Yez may make light +av ut now, but the day'll come, Regan, fwhen yez'll find out 'tis no +light matter. 'Tis the wrath av God, Regan, 'll pay yez for ut, yez +can mark my words." +</P> + +<P> +Regan stared after the old man, his eyes puckered, his face a little +red; stared after the bent form in the old worn overalls as it picked +its way across the tracks—and gave vent to his feelings by +expectorating a goodly stream of blackstrap juice savagely into the +engine pit at his side. This did not help very much, and for the rest +of the morning, while he inwardly anathematized Noodles, Noodles' +father and the whole Noodles family collectively, he made things both +uncomfortable and lively for those who were unfortunate enough to be +within reach of his displeasure. +</P> + +<P> +"The wrath of God!" communed Regan angrily. "I always said Noodles +took after his father, both by disposition and looks! It'll be a long +time before the old man gets another job—a long time." +</P> + +<P> +And therein Regan was right. It <I>was</I> a long time—quite a long +time—measured by the elasticity of the boiler-washer's purse, which +wasn't very elastic on the savings from a dollar-sixty a day. +</P> + +<P> +Old Bill Maguire, perhaps, was the only one who hadn't got quite the +proper angle on the "rights" he carried—which were worse than those of +a mixed local when the rails were humming under a stress of through +traffic and the despatchers were biting their nails to the quick trying +to take care of it. Not, possibly, that it would have made any +difference to the little worn-out hostler if he had; for, whether from +principle, having deep-seated awe for the church and its tenets that +forbade even a tacit endorsement of what he considered Regan's +sacrilege, or because of the public slight put upon his family—the +roundhouse hadn't failed to hear his first conversation with Regan, and +hadn't failed to let him know that they had—or maybe from a mixture of +the two, Maguire was beyond question in deadly earnest. But if old +Bill hadn't got his signals right, and was reading green and white when +it should have been red, the rest of the Hill Division wasn't by any +means color blind; it was pretty generally understood that for several +years back all that stood between Maguire and the scrap heap—was +Regan. Not on account of any jolly business about godfather or +godfathering, but because that was Regan's way—old Bill puttered +around the roundhouse on suffrance, thanks to Regan, and didn't know +it, though everybody else did, barring patient little Mrs. Maguire and +Noodles, who didn't count anyhow. +</P> + +<P> +Nor did the little hostler even now pass the color test. +Short-tongued, a hard, grimy lot, just what their rough and ready life +made them, they might have been, those railroaders of the Rockies, but +their hearts were always right. In the yards, in the trainmaster's +office, in the roadmaster's office they pointed Maguire to the quiet +times, to the extra crews laid off, to the spare men back to their old +ratings, to the section gangs pared down to a minimum, and advised him +to ask Regan for his job back again—they never told him he couldn't do +a man's work any more. +</P> + +<P> +"Ask Regan!" stuttered the old boiler-washer, and the gray billy-goat +beard under his chin, as he threw his head up, stuck out straight like +a belligerent <I>chevaux de frise</I>. "Niver! Mind thot, now! +Niver—till he takes back fwhat he said—not av I starrve for ut!" +</P> + +<P> +Regan, during the first few days, the brunt of his temper worn off, +experienced a certain relief, that was no little relief—he was rid, +and well rid, of the Noodles combination. But at the end of about a +week, the bluff, big-hearted master mechanic began to suck in his under +lip at moments when he was alone, as the stories of old Bill's futile +efforts after a job, and old Bill's rather pitiful defiance began to +sift in to him. Regan began to have visions of the little three-room +shack way up in the waste fields at the end of Main Street. A +dollar-sixty a day wasn't much to come and go on, even when the +dollar-sixty was coming regularly every pay day—and when it wasn't, +the cost of food and rent didn't go down any. +</P> + +<P> +Regan got to thinking a good deal about the faded little old drudge of +a woman that was Mrs. Maguire, and the bare floors as he remembered +them even in the palmy days of Noodles' birth when he had attended the +celebration, bare, but scrubbed to a spotless white. She hadn't been +very young then, and not any too strong, and that was twelve years ago. +And he got to thinking a good deal about old Bill himself—not much +good any more, but good enough for a dollar-sixty a day from a company +he'd served for many a long year—in the roundhouse. There had never +been over much of what even an optimistic imagination could call luxury +in the Maguire's home, and the realization got kind of deep under the +worried master mechanic's skin that things were down now to pretty near +a case of bread to fill their mouths. +</P> + +<P> +And Regan was right. Even a week had been long enough for that—a man +out of a job can't expect credit on the strength of the pay car coming +along next month. Things were in pretty straitened circumstances up at +the Maguires. +</P> + +<P> +And the more Regan thought, the hotter he got under the collar—at +Noodles. Where he had formerly disliked and submitted to Noodles' +existence in a passive sort of way, he now hated Noodles in a most +earnest and whole-hearted way—and with an unholy desire in his soul to +murder Noodles on sight. For, even if Noodles was directly responsible +and at the bottom of the pass things had come to, Regan's uncomfortable +feeling grew stronger each day that indirectly he had his share in the +distress and want that had moved into headquarters up at the top of +Main Street. It wasn't a nice feeling or a nice position to be in, and +Regan writhed under it—but primarily he cursed Noodles. +</P> + +<P> +There was nothing small about Regan—there never was. He wasn't small +enough not to do something. He couldn't very well ask the yardmaster +or the section boss to give Maguire a job when he wouldn't give the old +man one himself, so he sent word up to Maguire to come back to work—in +the roundhouse. +</P> + +<P> +Maguire's answer differed in no whit from the answer he had made to +Gleason, the yardmaster, and every one else to whom he had applied for +a job—Maguire was in deadly earnest. +</P> + +<P> +"Niver!" said he, to the messenger who bore the olive branch. "Mind +thot, now! Niver—till he takes back fwhat he said—not av I starrve +for ut!" +</P> + +<P> +Regan swore—and here Regan stuck. <I>Noodles</I>! His gorge rose until he +choked. Kill the brat? Yes—murder was in Regan's soul. But to +proclaim Noodles as a godson—<I>Noodles as a godson</I>! He had done it +once not knowing what he was doing, and to do it now with the years of +enlightenment upon him—Regan choked, that was all, and grew +apoplectically red in the face. It wasn't the grins and laughs of the +Hill Division that he knew were waiting for him if he did—it was just +<I>Noodles</I>. +</P> + +<P> +When Regan had calmed down from this explosion, he inevitably, of +course, got back to the old perspective—and for another week the +Maguire family up Main Street occupied a reserved seat in his mind. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton only spoke to him once about it, and that was along toward the +end of the second week, as they were walking uptown together at the +dinner hour. +</P> + +<P> +"By the way, Tommy," said the super, "how's Maguire getting along?" +</P> + +<P> +Regan's thoughts having been on the same subject at that moment, he +came back a little crossly. +</P> + +<P> +"Blamed if I know!" he growled. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton smiled. Moved by the same motive perhaps, he had gone into +the Cash Grocery Store on the corner the day before and found that +Maguire's credit was re-established—thanks to Regan—though Timmons, +the proprietor, had been sworn to secrecy. +</P> + +<P> +"One of you two will have to capitulate before very long," he said, +with a side glance at Regan. "And I don't think it will be Maguire." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you!" Regan flung out. "You think it will be me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," laughed Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +"When I'm dead," said Regan shortly. "Had any word from those +Westinghouse fittings yet? I'm waiting for them now." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll see about them," said Carleton. "I'm going East this afternoon." +</P> + +<P> +And there wasn't any more said about Maguire. +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile, if Regan's rancor against Noodles had reached a stage that +was acute, Noodles had reached a stage of reciprocative hatred that was +positively deadly. So far as elemental passion and savagery had +developed in twelve years, and Noodles was not a backward boy, just so +far had he developed his malevolence against Regan. Things were in a +pretty strained condition in the environment of the Maguire shack; +Noodles was unhappy all the time, and hungry most of the time. He +heard a good deal about Regan and the depths a man could sink to, and +enough about the immutable inviolability of church tenets and +ordinances to satisfy the most fanatic disciple of orthodoxy—to say +nothing of the deep-seated conviction of the wrath of God that must +inevitably fall upon one who had the sacrilegious temerity to profane +those tenets. +</P> + +<P> +Mostly, Noodles imbibed this at twilight over the sparsely set table, +and when the twilight faded and it grew dark—they weren't using +kerosene any more at the Maguires—he could still sense the look on his +mother's face that mingled anxiety and gentle reproof; and he edged +back his chair out of reach of his father's cuffs, which he could dodge +in the daylight and couldn't in the dark—for on one point Regan and +the old hostler were in perfect accord. +</P> + +<P> +"An' yez are the cause av ut!" old Bill would shout, swinging the flat +of his hand in the direction of Noodles' ear every time his violent +oratory reached a climacteric height where a period became a physical +necessity. +</P> + +<P> +Take it all round, what with the atmosphere of gloom, dodging his +father's attentions, his mother's tears when he had caught her crying +once or twice, and an unsatisfied stomach, black vengeance oozed from +every pore of Noodles' body. His warty little fists clenched, and his +unlovely face contorted into a scowl such as Noodles, and only Noodles, +thanks to the background that nature had already furnished him to work +upon, could scowl. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles set his brains to work. What he must do to Regan must be +something awful and bloodcurdling; and, realizing, perhaps, that, being +but twelve, he would be handicapped in coping with the master mechanic +single-handed, he sought the means of assistance that most logically +presented itself to him. Noodles lay awake nights trying to dovetail +himself and Regan into the situations of his nickel thrillers. There +wasn't any money with which to buy new nickel thrillers, but by then +Noodles had accumulated quite a stock, and he knew them all off pretty +well by heart, the essentials of them, anyhow. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles racked his brain for a week of nights—and was in despair. Not +that the nickel thrillers did not offer situations harrowing enough to +glut even his blood-thirsty little soul—they did—they were +peaches—he could see Regan's blood all over the bank vault that the +master mechanic had been trying to rob—he could see Regan walking the +plank of a pirate ship, while the pirates cheered hoarsely—and he +fairly revelled in every one of them—until cold despair would clutch +again at his raging heart. They were peaches all right, but somehow +they wouldn't fit into Big Cloud—he couldn't figure out how to get +Regan to rob a bank vault, and there weren't any pirates in the +immediate vicinity that he had ever heard of. +</P> + +<P> +Then inspiration came to Noodles one night—and he sat bolt upright in +bed. He would <I>shadow</I> Regan! A fierce, unhallowed joy took hold of +Noodles. Noodles had grasped the constructive technique of the +thriller! Every hero in every nickel thriller shadowed every villain +to his doom. Regan's doom at the end was sure to take care of itself +once he had found Regan out—but the shadowing came first. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles slept feverishly for the rest of the night, and the following +evening he snooped down Main Street and took up his position in a +doorway on the opposite side of the street from Regan's boarding house. +In just what dire deed of criminal rascality he expected to trap the +master mechanic he did not know, but that Regan was capable of +anything, and that he would catch him in something, Noodles now had no +doubt—that was what the shadowing was for—he grimly determined that +he would be unmoved by appeals for mercy—and his heart beat high with +optimistic excitement. +</P> + +<P> +Regan came out of the boarding house; and, bare-footed in lieu of +gum-shoes, and hugging the shadows a block behind—Noodles had +refreshed his memory on the most improved methods—Noodles trailed the +master mechanic down the street. Two blocks down, Regan halted on the +corner and began to peer around him. Noodles' lips thinned +suddenly—it began to look promising already—what was Regan up to? A +man came down the cross street, joined Regan, and the two started on +again toward the station. A little disappointed, Noodles, still +hugging the shadows, resumed the chase—it was only Carleton, the +superintendent. +</P> + +<P> +From the platform, Noodles watched the two men disappear through the +far door of the station. Free from observation now, he hurried along +the platform past the station, and was in time to see a lamp lighted +upstairs in the side window of the super's office. Noodles waited a +moment, then he tiptoed back along the platform, and cautiously pushed +open the door through which the others had disappeared. The door of +the super's room on the upper story opened on the head of the stairs +and, still on tiptoe, Noodles reached the top. Here, on his knees, his +eyes glued to the keyhole, he peered into the room—Regan and the super +were engaged in their nightly game of cards. There was nothing to +raise Noodles' hopes in that, so he descended the stairs and took up +his position behind the rain barrel at the corner of the building, +where he could watch both the window and the entrance. +</P> + +<P> +At half past ten the light went out, Regan and Carleton came down the +stairs and headed uptown. Noodles, not forgetting the shadows, trailed +them. At the corner where Carleton had joined Regan, Carleton left +Regan, and Regan went on two blocks further and disappeared inside his +boarding house. Noodles, being a philosopher of a sort, told himself +that none of the heroes ever succeeded the first night—and went home. +</P> + +<P> +The next night, and the three following night, Noodles shadowed Regan +with the same results. By the fifth night, with no single differing +detail to enliven this somewhat monotonous and unproductive programme, +it had become dispiriting; and though Noodles' thirst for vengeance had +not weakened, his faith in the nickel thrillers had. +</P> + +<P> +But on the sixth night—at the end of the second week since Noodles and +Noodles' father had turned their backs upon the roundhouse—things were +a little different. Noodles, in common with every one else in Big +Cloud, was quite well aware that the super's private car had been +coupled on No. 12 that afternoon, and that Carleton had gone East. +</P> + +<P> +Regan came out of his boarding house at the same hour as usual, and +Noodles dodged along after him down the street—Noodles by this time, +for finesse, could have put a combination of Nick Carter and Old Sleuth +on the siding until the grass sprouted between the ties. Noodles +dodged along—in the shadows. Regan didn't stop at the corner this +time, but he kept right along heading down for the station. Regan +passed two or three people going in the opposite direction up the +street of the sleepy little mountain town, but this did not confuse +Noodles—Noodles kept right along after Regan. There was no Carleton +to-night, and Regan's criminal propensities would have full +scope—Noodles' hopes ran high. +</P> + +<P> +Regan reached the station, went down the platform, and disappeared as +usual through the same door. A little perplexed, Noodles followed along +the platform; but, a moment later, from his coign of vantage behind the +rain barrel, he saw the light flash out from the super's window—and +his heart almost stood still. What was Regan doing in the super's +office—<I>alone</I>! Noodles' face grew very white—<I>Carleton had a safe +there</I>—he had got Regan at last! It had taken a lot of time, but none +of the heroes ever got the villain until after pages and pages of +trying to get him. He had got Regan at last! +</P> + +<P> +Noodles crept from the shelter of the rain barrel stealthily as a cat, +and, with far more caution than he had ever exercised before, pushed +the outside door open and went up the stairs. There wasn't any hurry; +he would give Regan time to drill through the safe, and perhaps even +let the master mechanic get the money before giving the alarm—Noodles +bitterly bemoaned the fact that he would have to give the alarm at all +and let anybody else in on it, but, owing to the fact that he had been +unable to finance a revolver with which to hold up the master mechanic +red-handed and cover himself with glory at the same time, there +appeared to be nothing else to do. +</P> + +<P> +It was just a step from the head of the stairs to the door of the +super's room across the hall. Noodles negotiated it with infinite +circumspection, and, on his knees as usual, his heart pounding like a +trip hammer, got his eye to the keyhole. He held it there a very long +time, until he couldn't see any more through hot, scalding, impotent +tears; then he edged back across the hall, and sat down on the top +step—<I>Regan was playing solitaire</I>. +</P> + +<P> +Hands dug disconsolately in his pockets, playing mechanically with a +bit of cord that was about their sole contents, Noodles sat there—and +his faith in nickel thrillers was shaken to the core. Noodles' +thoughts were too complex for coherency—that is, for coherency in any +but one of his thoughts—he hated Regan worse than ever, for he +couldn't altogether expurgate the nickel thrillers from his mind on +such a short notice, and he could hear Regan gloat and hiss "Foiled!" +in his ear. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles' hands came out of his pocket—with the cord. He wound one end +around the bannisters, and began to see-saw it back and forth aimlessly +in the darkness. There wasn't any good of shadowing Regan any +more—but he wasn't through with Regan. Noodles had a soul above +discouragement. Only what was he to do? If the nickel thrillers had +failed him in his hour of need, he would have to depend on +himself—only what was he to do? Noodles stopped see-sawing the cord +suddenly—and stared at it through the darkness, though he couldn't see +it. Then he edged down another step, turned around on his knees, and +knotted one end of the cord—it was a good stout one—to one side of +the bannisters, about six inches from the level of the hall floor. +There was a bannister railing on each side, and he stretched the cord +tightly across to the other bannister, and knotted it there. That +would do for a beginning! It didn't promise as gory a dénouement as he +thirsted for, and he was a little ashamed of the colorlessness of his +expedient compared with those he'd read about, but there wasn't anybody +else likely to use those stairs before Regan did, and it would do for a +beginning—Regan would get a jolt or two before he reached the bottom! +</P> + +<P> +Noodles retreated down the stairs and retired to the rain barrel. +Waits had been long there before, but to-night the time dragged +hopelessly—he didn't expect to see very much, but he would be able to +hear Regan coming down the stairs, so he waited, curbing his impatience +by biting anxiously on the ends of his finger nails. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly Noodles leaned head and shoulders far out from behind the rain +barrel to miss no single detail of this, the initial act of his +revenge, that he could drink in, his eyes fastened on the station +door—the light in the window above had gone out. Very grim was +Noodles' face, and his teeth were hard set together—there was no +foolishness about this. The super's door upstairs opened and +shut—Noodles leaned a little farther forward out from the rain barrel. +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile, Regan, upstairs, was not in a good humor. Regan, when +alone, played a complicated and somewhat intricate species of +solitaire, a matter of some pride to the master mechanic, and that +evening he had had no luck—his combinations wouldn't work out. So, +after something like fifteen abortive attempts that consumed the better +part of an hour and a half, and victory still remaining an elusive +thing, Regan chucked the cards back into Carleton's drawer in disgust, +knocked the ashes out of his pipe, refilled the pipe for company +homeward, and, growling a little to himself, blew out the super's lamp. +He walked across to the door, opened and shut it, and stepped out into +the hall. Here, he halted and produced a match, both because his pipe +was as yet unlighted, and because the stairs were dark. He struck the +match, applied it to the tamped tobacco, puffed once—and his eyes, +from the bowl of his pipe, focused suddenly downward on the head of the +stairs. Regan's round, fat little face went a color that put the +glowing end of the match, still held mechanically over the pipe bowl, +to shame, and the fist that wasn't occupied with the match clenched +with the wrath that engulfed him—<I>Noodles</I>! +</P> + +<P> +For a moment, breathing heavily with rage, Regan glared at the +cord—then the match, burning his fingers, did not soothe him any, and +he dropped it hastily, swearing earnestly to himself. Then he bent +down, cut away the cord with his knife, and in grim, laborious +silence—Regan was a heavy man, and the stairs had a tendency to creak +that was hard to suppress—descended step by step. Regan was consumed +with but one desire for the present or the hereafter—to get his hands +on Noodles. +</P> + +<P> +Where Noodles had been stealthy, Regan was now positively devilish in +his caution and cunning. Step by step he went down, testing each +foothold much after the fashion of a cat that stretches out its paw, +and, finding something not quite to its liking, draws it back, and, +shaking it vigorously, tries again more warily—and the while a fire +unquenchable burned within him. +</P> + +<P> +He reached the door at the bottom, found the knob, waited an +instant—then suddenly flung the door wide open and sprang out on the +platform. Noodles' form, projecting eagerly far out from the rain +barrel not five yards away, was the first thing his eyes lighted upon. +Regan had no time to waste in words. He made a dash for the rain +barrel—and Noodles, with a sort of surprised squeak of terror, turned +and ran. +</P> + +<P> +A fat man, ordinarily, cannot run very fast, and neither can a +twelve-year-old boy; but, with vengeance supplying wings to the one, +and terror imparting haste to the other, the time they made from the +rain barrel along the platform past the baggage room and freight shed, +off the platform to the ground, and up the track to the construction +department's storehouse, a matter of a hundred and fifty yards, stands +good to-day as a record in Big Cloud. +</P> + +<P> +It was pretty near a dead heat. Noodles had five yards' start when he +left the rain barrel; and when he reached the end of the storehouse he +had five yards' lead—no more. A premonition of disaster began to +twine itself around Noodles' heart in a sickly, dispiriting way. He +dashed along beside the wall of the building—and after him lunged +Regan, grunting like a grampus, a threat in every grunt. +</P> + +<P> +It was a long, low, windowless building, and halfway up its length was +the door—Noodles had known the door to be unlocked at nights for the +purpose of loading rush material for the bridge gangs in the mountains +to go out by the early morning freight west at 4.10—and his hope lay +in the door being open now. The place was full to the ceiling with +boxes, bales, casks, barrels and kegs, and amongst them in the +darkness, being of small dimensions himself, he could soon lose Regan. +He reached the door, snatched at the latch—the door was unlocked—and +with an uplift immeasurable upon his young soul, that gave vent to +itself in a hoot of derision, Noodles flung himself inside. +</P> + +<P> +Regan, still panting earnestly, the beads on his brow now embryonic +fountain-heads that sent trickling streams down his face, lurched, +pretty well winded, through the door five yards behind Noodles—and +then Regan stopped—and the thought of Noodles was swept from Regan's +mind in a flash. +</P> + +<P> +The smell of smoke was in his nostrils, and like a white, misty cloud +in the darkness it hung around him—and through it, up toward the far +end of the shed, a fire showed yellow and ugly, that with a curious, +hissing, sibilant sound flared suddenly bright, then died to yellow +ugliness again. +</P> + +<P> +Grim-faced now, his jaws clamped hard, Regan sprang forward toward the +upper end of the shed. What was afire, he did not know, nor what had +caused it—though the latter, probably, by a match dropped maybe hours +ago by a careless Polack, that had caught and set something smoldering, +and that was now breaking into flame. All Regan knew, all Regan +thought of then, was the—<I>powder</I>. There were fifty kegs of giant +blasting powder massed together there somewhere ahead, and just beyond +where the fire was flinging out its challenge to him—enough to wreck +not only the shed, but half the railroad property in Big Cloud as well. +</P> + +<P> +Up the little handcar tracks between the high-piled stores Regan +ran—and halted where a spurt of flame, ending in a vicious puff of +smoke, shot out beside him, low down on the ground. It was light +enough now, and in a glance the master mechanic caught the black grains +of powder strewing the floor where a broken keg had been rolled along. +A little alleyway had been left here running to the wall, and the fire +itself was bursting from a case in the rear and bottom tier of stores +on one side of this; on the other side were piled the powder kegs—and +the space between, the width of the alleyway, was no more than a bare +five or six feet. +</P> + +<P> +There was no time to wait for help, the powder grains crunched under +his feet, and ran little zigzag, fizzy lines of fire like a miniature +inferno as the sparks caught them; at any moment it might reach the +kegs, and then—Regan flung himself along the alleyway to the rear tier +of cases, they were small ones here, though piled twice the height of +his head—if he could wrench them away, he could get at the burning +case below! Regan bent, strained at the cases—they were light and +moved—he heaved again to topple them over—and then, as a rasping, +ripping sound reached him from above, he let go his hold to jump +back—too late. A heavy casting, that had been placed on top of the +cases, evidently for economy of space, came hurtling downward, struck +Regan on the head, glanced to his shoulder and arm, slid with a thump +to the ground—and Regan dropped like a log. +</P> + +<P> +A minute, perhaps two, it had all taken—no more. Noodles, crouched +down against a case just inside the door, had seen the master mechanic +rush by him; and Noodles, too, had seen the flame and smelt the smoke. +Noodles' first impulse was to make his escape, his next to see if he +could not turn this unexpected intervention of fate to his own account +anent the master mechanic. Noodles heard Regan moving about, and he +stole silently in that direction; then Noodles heard the heavy thump of +iron, the softer thud of Regan's fall, and something inside him seemed +to stop suddenly, and his face went very white. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Regan! Mr. Regan!" he stammered out. +</P> + +<P> +There was no answer—no sound—save an ominous crackle of burning wood. +</P> + +<P> +Noodles stole further forward—and then, as he reached the spot where +Regan lay, he stood stock-still for a second, petrified with fear—but +the next instant, screaming at the top of his voice for help, he threw +himself upon Regan, pounding frantically with the flat of his hands at +the master mechanic's shoulder, where the other's coat was beginning to +blaze. Somehow, Noodles got this out, and then, still screaming for +help, began to drag Regan away from the side of the blazing case. +</P> + +<P> +But Regan was a heavy man—almost too much for Noodles. Noodles, +choking with the smoke, his eyes fascinated with horror as they fixed, +now on the powder kegs—whose unloading, in company with a dozen other +awe-struck boys, he had watched a few days before—now on the +sparkling, fizzing grains of powder upon the floor, tugged, and +wriggled, and pulled at the master mechanic. +</P> + +<P> +Inch by inch, Noodles won Regan to safety—and then, on his hands and +knees, he went back to sweep the grains away from the edge of the kegs. +They burnt his hands as he brushed them along the floor, and he moaned +with the pain between his screams for aid. It was hot in the narrow +place, so narrow that the breath of flame swept his face from the +case—but there was still some powder on the floor to brush back out of +the way, little heaps of it. Weak, and swaying on his knees, Noodles +brushed at it desperately. It seemed to spurt into his face, and he +couldn't breathe any more, and he couldn't see, and his head was +swirling around queerly. He staggered to his feet as there came a rush +of men, and Clarihue, the turner, with the night crew of the roundhouse +came racing up the shed. +</P> + +<P> +"Good God, what's this!" cried Clarihue. +</P> + +<P> +"It's—it's a fire," said Noodles, with a sob—and fell into Clarihue's +arms. +</P> + +<P> +They told Regan about it the next day when they had got his head +patched up and his arm set. Regan didn't say very much as he lay in +his bed, but he asked somebody to go to Maguire's and ask old Bill to +come down. +</P> + +<P> +And an hour later Maguire entered the room—but he halted a good yard +away from the foot of Regan's bed. +</P> + +<P> +"Yez sint for me, Regan," observed the little hostler, in noncommittal, +far-away tones. +</P> + +<P> +"I did, Maguire," said Regan diplomatically. "Things haven't been +going as smooth as they might have over in the roundhouse since you +left, and I want you to come back. What do you say?" +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis not fwhat <I>I</I> say," said Maguire, and he moved no nearer to the +bed. "'Tis whether yez unsay fwhat yez said yersilf. Do yez take ut +back, Regan?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do," said Regan in grave tones—but his hand reached up to help the +bandages hide his grin. "I take it all back, Maguire—every word of +it." +</P> + +<P> +"Thot's all right, thin," said the little hostler, not arrogantly, but +as one justified. "I'm sorry to see yez are sick, Regan, an' I'm glad +to see yez are better—but did I not warn yez, Regan? 'Twas the wrath +av God, Regan, thot's the cause av this." +</P> + +<P> +"Mabbe," said Regan softly. "Mabbe—but to my thinking 'twas the devil +and all his works." +</P> + +<P> +"Fwhat's thot?" inquired Maguire, bending forward. "I didn't catch +fwhat yez said, Regan." +</P> + +<P> +"I said," said Regan, choking a little, "that Noodles is a godson any +godfather would be proud to have." +</P> + +<P> +"Sure he is," said Noodles' father cordially. "He is thot." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VIII +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +ON THE NIGHT WIRE +</H4> + +<P> +Tommy Regan speaks of it yet; so does Carleton; and so, for the matter +of that, does the Hill Division generally—and there's a bit of a smile +goes with it, too, but the smile comes through as a sort of feeble +thing from the grim set of their lips. They remember it—it is one of +the things they have never forgotten—Dan McGrew and the Kid, and the +night the Circus Special pulled out of Big Cloud with Bull Coussirat +and Fatty Hogan in the cab. +</P> + +<P> +Neither the Kid nor McGrew were what you might call born to the Hill +Division; neither of them had been brought up with it, so to speak. +The Kid came from an Eastern system—and McGrew came from +God-knows-where. To pin McGrew down to anything definite or specific +in that regard was something just a little beyond the ability of the +Hill Division, but it was fairly evident that where railroads were +there McGrew had been—he was old enough, anyway—and he knew his +business. When McGrew was sober he was a wizard on the key—but +McGrew's shame was drink. +</P> + +<P> +McGrew dropped off at Big Cloud one day, casually, from nowhere, and +asked for a job despatching. A man in those days out in the new West +wasn't expected to carry around his birth certificate in his vest +pocket—he made good or he didn't in the clothes he stood in, that was +all there was to it. They gave him a job assisting the latest new man +on the early morning trick as a sort of test, found that he was better, +a long way better than the latest new man, gave him a regular +despatcher's trick of his own—and thought they had a treasure. +</P> + +<P> +For a month they were warranted in their belief, for all that McGrew +personally appeared to be a rather rough card—and then McGrew cut +loose. He went into the Blazing Star Saloon one afternoon—and he left +it only when deposited outside on the sidewalk as it closed up at four +o'clock on the following morning. This was the hour McGrew was +supposed to sit in for his trick at the key; but McGrew was quite +oblivious to all such considerations. A freight crew, just in and +coming up from the yards, carried him home to his boarding house. +McGrew got his powers of locomotion back far enough by late afternoon +to reach the Blazing Star again—and the performance was +repeated—McGrew went the limit. He ended up with a week in the hands +of little Doctor McTurk. +</P> + +<P> +McTurk was scientific from the soles of his feet up, and earnestly +professional all the rest of the way. When McGrew began to get a +glimmering of intelligence again, McTurk went at him red-headed. +</P> + +<P> +"Your heart's bad," the little doctor flung at McGrew, and there was no +fooling in his voice. "So's your liver—cirrhosis. But mostly your +heart. You'll try this just once too often—and you'll go out like a +collapsed balloon, out like the snuffing of a candle wick." +</P> + +<P> +McGrew blinked at him. +</P> + +<P> +"I've heard that before," said he indifferently. +</P> + +<P> +"Indeed!" snapped the irascible little doctor. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said McGrew, "quite a few times. This ain't my maiden trip. +You fellows make me tired! I'm a pretty good man yet, ain't I? And +I'm likely to be when you're dead. I've got my job to worry about now, +and that's enough to worry about. Got any idea of what Carleton's said +about it?" +</P> + +<P> +"You keep this up," said McTurk sharply, refusing to sidestep the +point, as, bag in hand, he moved toward the door, "and it won't +interest you much what Carleton or anybody else says—mark my words, my +man." +</P> + +<P> +It was Tommy Regan, fat-paunched, big-hearted, good-natured, who +stepped into the breach. There was only one place on this wide earth +in Carleton's eyes for a railroad man who drank when he should have +been on duty—and that was a six-foot trench, three feet deep. In +Carleton's mind, from the moment he heard of it, McGrew was out. But +Regan saved McGrew; and the matter was settled, as many a matter had +been settled before, over the nightly game of pedro between the +superintendent and the master mechanic, upstairs in the super's office +over the station. Incidentally, they played pedro because there wasn't +anything else to do nights—Big Cloud in those days wasn't boasting a +grand-opera house, and the "movies" were still things of the future. +</P> + +<P> +"He's a pretty rough case, I guess; but give him a chance," said Regan. +</P> + +<P> +"A chance!" exclaimed Carleton, with a hard smile. "Give a despatcher +who drinks a chance—to send a trainload or two of souls into eternity, +and about a hundred thousand dollars' worth of rolling stock to the +junk heap while he's boozing over the key!" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Regan. "A chance—to make good." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton laid down his hand, and stared across the table at the master +mechanic. +</P> + +<P> +"Go on, Tommy," he prompted grimly. "What's the answer?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Regan, "he's a past master on the key, we know that—that +counts for something. What's the matter with sending him somewhere up +the line where he can't get a drink if he goes to blazes for it? It +might make a man of him, and save the company a good operator at the +same time—we're not long on operators." +</P> + +<P> +"H'm!" observed Carleton, with a wry grin, picking up his cards again +one by one. "I suppose you've some such place as Angel Forks, for +instance, in mind, Tommy?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Regan. "I was thinking <I>of</I> Angel Forks." +</P> + +<P> +"I'd rather be fired," submitted Carleton dryly. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," demanded Regan, "what do you say? Can he have it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, yes," agreed Carleton, smiling. "He can have <I>that</I>—after I've +talked to him. We're pretty short of operators, as you say. Perhaps +it will work out. It will as long as he sticks, I guess—if he'll take +it at all." +</P> + +<P> +"He'll take it," said Regan, "and be glad to get it. What do you bid?" +</P> + +<P> +McGrew had been at Angel Forks—night man there—for perhaps the matter +of a month, when the Kid came to Big Cloud fresh from a key on the +Penn. They called him the Kid because he looked it—he wasn't past the +stage of where he had to shave more than once a week. The Kid, they +dubbed him on the spot, but his name was Charlie Keene; a thin, wiry +little chap, with black hair and a bright, snappy, quick look in his +eyes and face. He was pretty good on the key, too; not a master like +McGrew, he hadn't had the experience, but pretty good for all that—he +could "send" with the best of them, and there wasn't much to complain +about in his "taking," either. +</P> + +<P> +The day man at Angel Forks didn't drink—at least his way-bill didn't +read that way—and they gave him promotion in the shape of a station +farther along the line that sized up a little less tomb-like, a little +less like a buried-alive sepulcher than Angel Forks did. And the Kid, +naturally, being young and new to the system, had to start at the +bottom—they sent him up to Angel Forks on the morning way freight the +day after he arrived in Big Cloud. +</P> + +<P> +There was something about the Kid that got the train crew of the way +freight right from the start. They liked a man a whole lot and pretty +sudden in their rough-and-ready way, those railroaders of the Rockies +in those days, or they didn't like him well enough to say a good word +for him at his funeral; that's the way it went—and the caboose was +swearing by the Kid by the time they were halfway to Angel Forks, where +he shifted from the caboose to the cab for the rest of the run. +</P> + +<P> +Against the rules—riding in the cab? Well, perhaps it is—if you're +not a railroad man. It depends. Who was going to say anything about +it? It was Fatty Hogan himself, poking a long-spouted oil can into the +entrails of the 428, while the train crew were throwing out tinned +biscuits and canned meats and contract pie for the lunch counter at Elk +River, who invited him, anyhow. +</P> + +<P> +That's how the Kid came to get acquainted with Hogan, and Hogan's mate, +Bull Coussirat, who was handling the shovel end of it. Coussirat was +an artist in his way—apart from the shovel—and he started in to guy +the Kid. He drew a shuddering picture of the desolation and the +general lack of what made life worth living at Angel Forks, which +wasn't exaggerated because you couldn't exaggerate Angel Forks much in +that particular respect; and he told the Kid about Dan McGrew and how +headquarters—it wasn't any secret—had turned Angel Forks into what he +called a booze-fighter's sanatorium. But he didn't break through the +Kid's optimism or ambition much of any to speak of. +</P> + +<P> +By the time the way freight whistled for Angel Forks, the Kid had Bull +Coussirat's seat, and Coussirat was doing the listening, while Hogan +was leaning toward them to catch what he could of what was going on +over the roar and pound of the 428. There was better pay, and, what +counted most, better chances for a man who was willing to work for them +out in the West than there was in the East, the Kid told them with a +quiet, modest sincerity—and that was why he had come out there. He +was looking for a train despatcher's key some day after he had got +through station operating, and after that—well, something better still. +</P> + +<P> +There wasn't any jolly business or blowhard about the Kid. He meant +what he said—he was going up. And as far as McGrew was concerned, +he'd get along with McGrew. McGrew, or any other man, wouldn't hold +him back from the goal he had his eyes set upon and his mind made up to +work for. There was perhaps a little more of the youthful enthusiasm +in it that looked more buoyantly on the future than hard-headed +experience would; but it was sincere, and they liked him for it—who +wouldn't? Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan in the days to come had +reason to remember that talk in the cab. +</P> + +<P> +Desolate, perhaps, isn't the word to describe Angel Forks—for Angel +Forks was pretty enough, if rugged grandeur is counted pretty. Across +the track and siding, facing the two-story wooden structure that was +the station, the bare gray rock of a cut through the mountain base +reared upward to meet a pine-covered slope, and then blend with bare, +gray rock once until it became a glaciered peak at the sky line; behind +the station was a sort of plateau, a little valley, green and velvety, +bisected by a tumbling, rushing little stream, with the mountains again +closing in around it, towering to majestic heights, the sun playing in +relief and shadow on the fantastic, irregular, snow-capped summits. It +was pretty enough, no one ever disputed that! The road hung +four-by-five-foot photographs of it with +eight-inch-wide-trimmed-with-gilt frames in the big hotel corridors +East, and no one who ever bought a ticket on the strength of the +photographer's art ever sent in a kick to the advertising department, +or asked for their money back—it looked all right from the car windows. +</P> + +<P> +But sign of habitation there was not, apart from the little +station—not even a section man's shanty—just the station. Angel +Forks was important to the Transcontinental on one count, and on one +count only—its siding. Neither freight nor passenger receipts were +swelled, twelve months in or twelve months out, by Angel Forks; but, +geographically, the train despatcher's office back in Big Cloud never +lost sight of it—in the heart of the mountains, single-tracked, mixed +trains, locals, way freights, specials, and the Limiteds that knew no +"rights" on earth but a clean-swept track with their crazy fast +schedules, met and crossed each other as expediency demanded. +</P> + +<P> +So, in a way, after all, perhaps it <I>was</I> desolate—except from the car +windows. Horton, the day man that the Kid was relieving, evidently had +found it so. He was waiting on the platform with his trunk when the +way freight pulled in, and he turned the station over to the Kid +without much formality. +</P> + +<P> +"God be with you till we meet again," was about the gist of what Horton +said—and he said it with a mixture of sympathy for another's +misfortune and an uplift at his own escape from bondage struggling for +the mastery, while he waved his hand from the tail of the caboose as +the way freight pulled out. +</P> + +<P> +There was mighty little formality about the transfer, and the Kid found +himself in charge with almost breathtaking celerity. Angel Forks, Dan +McGrew, way freight No. 47, and the man he had relieved, were sort of +hazy, nebulous things for a moment. There wasn't time for them to be +anything else; for, about one minute after he had jumped to the +platform, he was O.S.-ing "out" the train that had brought him in. +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't quite what he had been used to back in the more sedate East, +and he grinned a little to himself as his fingers tapped the key, and +by the time he had got back his O. K. the tail of the caboose was +swinging a curve and disappearing out of sight. The Kid, then, had a +chance to look around him—and look for Dan McGrew, the man who was to +be his sole companion for the days to come. +</P> + +<P> +He found McGrew upstairs—after he had explored all there was to +explore of the ground floor of the station, which was a sort of +combination kitchen, living room and dining room that led off from the +office—just the two rooms below, with a ladder-like staircase between +them leading up above. And above there was just the one room under the +eaves with two bunks in it, one on either side. The night man was +asleep in one of these, and the Kid did not disturb him. After a +glance around the rather cheerless sleeping quarters, he returned +downstairs, and started in to pick up the threads of the office. +</P> + +<P> +Dusk comes early in the fall in the mountains, and at five o'clock the +switch and semaphore lamps were already lighted, and in the office +under a green-shaded lamp the Kid sat listening to some stray time +stuff coming over the wire, when he heard the night man moving overhead +and presently start down the stairs. The Kid pushed back his chair, +rose to his feet, and turned with outstretched hand to make friends +with his new mate—and his outstretched hand drew back and reached +uncertainly to the table edge beside him. +</P> + +<P> +For a long minute neither man spoke—staring into each other's eyes. +In the opening through the partition at the foot of the stairs, Dan +McGrew seemed to sway a little on his feet, and his face, what could be +seen of it through the tawny beard that Angel Forks had offered him no +incentive to shave, was ashen white. +</P> + +<P> +It was McGrew who broke the silence. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, Charlie!" he said in a sort of cheerful bravado, that rang far +from true. +</P> + +<P> +"So <I>you</I> are Dan McGrew! The last time I heard of you your name was +Brodie." The Kid's lips, as he spoke, hardly seemed to move. +</P> + +<P> +"I've had a dozen since then," said McGrew, in a pleading whine, +"more'n a dozen. I've been chased from place to place, Charlie. I've +lived a dog's life, and——" +</P> + +<P> +The Kid cut him short, in a low, passionate voice: +</P> + +<P> +"And you expect me to keep my mouth shut about you here—is that it?" +</P> + +<P> +McGrew's fingers plucked nervously, hesitantly at his beard; his tongue +circled dry lips, and his black eyes fell from the Kid to trace +aimlessly, it seemed, the cracks in the floor. +</P> + +<P> +The Kid dropped back into his chair, and, elbows on the table, chin in +hands, stared out across the tracks to where the side of the rock cut +was now no more than a black shadow. +</P> + +<P> +Again it was McGrew who broke the silence. +</P> + +<P> +"What are you going to do?" he asked miserably. "What are you going to +do? Use the key and put them wise? You wouldn't do that, would +you—Charlie? You wouldn't throw me down—would you? I'm—I'm living +decent here." +</P> + +<P> +The Kid made no answer—made no movement. +</P> + +<P> +"Charlie!" McGrew's voice rose in a high-pitched, nervous appeal. +"Charlie—what are you going to do?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing!" The Kid's eyes were still on the black, rock shadow through +the station window, and the words came monotonously. "Nothing! As far +as I am concerned, you are—Dan McGrew." +</P> + +<P> +McGrew lurched heavily forward, relief in his face and voice as he put +his hands on the Kid's shoulders. +</P> + +<P> +"You're all right, Charlie, all right; I knew you wouldn't——" +</P> + +<P> +The Kid sprang to his feet, and flung the other's hands roughly from +his shoulders. +</P> + +<P> +"Keep your hands off me!" he said tensely. "I don't stand for that! +And let's understand each other. You do your work here, and I do mine. +I don't want to talk to you. I don't want you to talk to me. I don't +want anything to do with you—that's as straight as I know how to put +it. The first chance I get I'll move—they'll never move you, for I +know why they sent you here. That's all, and that's where we +stand—McGrew." +</P> + +<P> +"D'ye mean that?" said McGrew, in a cowed, helpless way. +</P> + +<P> +The Kid's answer was only a harsh, bitter laugh—but it was answer +enough. McGrew, after a moment's hesitation, turned and went silently +from the room. +</P> + +<P> +A week passed, and another week came and went, and neither man spoke to +the other. Each lived his life apart, cooked for himself, and did his +work; and it was good for neither one. McGrew grew morose and ugly; +and the Kid somehow seemed to droop, and there was a pallor in his +cheeks and a listless air about him that was far from the cheery +optimism with which he had come to take the key at Angel Forks. +</P> + +<P> +Two weeks passed, and then one night, after the Kid had gone to bed, +two men pitched a rough, weather-beaten tent on the plateau below the +station. Hard-looking specimens they were; unkempt, unshaven, each +with a mount and a pack horse. Harvey and Lansing they told McGrew +their names were, when they dropped in for a social call that night, +and they said that they were prospectors—but their geological hammers +were bottles of raw spirit that the Indians loved, and the veins of ore +they tapped were the furs that an Indian will sell for "red-eye" when +he will sell for no other thing on earth. It was against the +law—enough against the law to keep a man's mouth who was engaged in +that business pretty tightly shut—but, perhaps recognizing a kindred +spirit in McGrew, and warmed by the bottle they had hospitably brought, +before that first night was over no secret of that sort lay between +them and McGrew. +</P> + +<P> +And so drink came to Angel Forks; and in a supply that was not stinted. +It was Harvey and Lansing's stock in trade—and they were well stocked. +McGrew bought it from them with cash and with provisions, and played +poker with them with a kitty for the "red-eye." +</P> + +<P> +There was nothing riotous about it at first, not bad enough to +incapacitate McGrew; and it was a night or two before the Kid knew what +was going on, for McGrew was cautious. Harvey and Lansing were away in +the mountains during the daytime, and they came late to fraternize with +McGrew, around midnight, long after the Kid was asleep. Then McGrew +began to tipple steadily, and signs of drink came patently enough—too +patently to be ignored one morning when the Kid relieved McGrew and +went on for the day trick. +</P> + +<P> +The Kid said nothing, no word had passed between them for two weeks; +but that evening, when McGrew in turn went on for his trick, the Kid +went upstairs and found a bottle, nearly full, hidden under McGrew's +mattress. He took it, went outside with it, smashed it against a +rock—and kept on across the plateau to the prospectors' outfit. +Harvey and Lansing, evidently just in from a day's lucrative trading, +were unsaddling and busy over their pack animals. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, Keene!" they greeted in chorus; and Lansing added: "Hang 'round +a bit an' join in; we're just goin' TO cook grub." +</P> + +<P> +The Kid ignored both the salutation and the proffered hospitality. +</P> + +<P> +"I came down here to tell you two fellows something," he said slowly, +and there was a grim, earnest set to his lips that was not to be +misunderstood. "It's none of my business that you're camping around +here, but up there is railroad property, and that <I>is</I> my business. If +you show your faces inside the station again or pass out any more booze +to McGrew, I'll wire headquarters and have you run in; and somehow, +though I've only met you once or twice, I don't fancy you're anxious to +touch head-on with the authorities." He looked at the two steadily for +an instant, while they stared back half angrily, half sheepishly. +"That's fair warning, isn't it?" he ended, as he turned and began to +retrace his steps to the station. "You'd better take it—you won't get +a second one." +</P> + +<P> +They cursed him when they found their tongues, and did it heartily, +interwoven with threats and savage jeers that followed him halfway to +the embankment. But their profanity did not cloak the fact that, to a +certain extent, the Kid's words were worthy of consideration. +</P> + +<P> +The extent was two nights—that night, and the next one. +</P> + +<P> +On the third night, or rather, far on in the early morning hours, the +Kid, upstairs, awakened from sleep, sat suddenly up in his bunk. A +wild outburst of drunken song, accompanied by fists banging time on the +table, reached him—then an abashed hush, through which the click of +the sounder came to him and he read it mechanically—the despatcher at +Big Cloud was making a meeting point for two trains at the Bend, forty +miles away, nothing to do with Angel Forks. Came then a rough +oath—another—and a loud, brawling altercation. +</P> + +<P> +The Kid's lips thinned. He sprang out of his bunk, pulled on shirt and +trousers, and went softly down the stairs. They didn't hear him, they +were too drunk for that; and they didn't see him—until he was fairly +inside the room; and then for a moment they leered at him, suddenly +silent, in a silly, owl-like way. +</P> + +<P> +There was an anger upon the Kid, a seething passion, that showed in his +bloodless face and quivering lips. He stood for an instant motionless, +glancing around the office; the table from the other room had been +dragged in; on either side of it sat Harvey and Lansing; at the end, +within reach of the key, sat Dan McGrew, swaying tipsily back and +forth, cards in hand; under the table was an empty bottle, another had +rolled into a corner against the wall; and on the table itself were two +more bottles amongst greasy, scattered cards, one almost full, the +other still unopened. +</P> + +<P> +"S'all right, Charlie," hiccoughed McGrew blandly. "S'all right—jus' +havin' little game—good boy, Charlie." +</P> + +<P> +McGrew's words seemed to break the spell. With a jump the Kid reached +him, flung him roughly from his seat, toppling him to the floor, and +stretched out his hand for the key—but he never reached it. Harvey +and Lansing, remembering the threat, and having more reason to fear the +law than on the simple count of trespassing on railroad property, +lunged for him simultaneously. Quick as a cat on his feet, the Kid +turned, and his fist shot out, driving full into Lansing's face, +sending the man staggering backward—but Harvey closed. Purling oaths, +Lansing snatched the full bottle, and, as the Kid, locked in Harvey's +arms, swung toward him, he brought the bottle down with a crash on the +back of the Kid's head—and the Kid slid limply to the floor. +</P> + +<P> +White-faced, motionless, unconscious, the Kid lay there, the blood +beginning to trickle from his head, and in a little way it sobered the +two "prospectors"—but not McGrew. +</P> + +<P> +"See whash done," said McGrew with a maudlin sob, picking himself up +from where the Kid had thrown him. "See whash done! Killed him—thash +whash done." +</P> + +<P> +It frightened them, McGrew's words—Harvey and Lansing. They looked +again at the Kid and saw no sign of life—and then they looked at each +other. The bottle was still in Lansing's hand, and he set it back now +on the table with a little shudder. +</P> + +<P> +"We'd better beat it," he croaked hoarsely. "By daylight we want to be +far away from here." +</P> + +<P> +Harvey's answer was a practical one—he made for the door and +disappeared, Lansing close on his heels. +</P> + +<P> +McGrew alternately cursed and pleaded with them long after they were +out of earshot; and then, moved by drunken inspiration, started to +clear up the room. He got as far as reaching for the empty bottles on +the floor, and that act seemed to father a second inspiration—there +were other bottles. He reeled to the table, picked up the one from +which they had been drinking, stared at the Kid upon the floor, brushed +the hair out of his eyes, and, throwing back his head, drank deeply. +</P> + +<P> +"Jus'er steady myself—feel shaky," he mumbled. +</P> + +<P> +He stared at the Kid again. The Kid was beginning to show signs of +returning consciousness. McGrew, blinking, took another drink. +</P> + +<P> +"Nosh dead, after all," said McGrew thickly. "Thank God, nosh dead, +after all!" +</P> + +<P> +Then drunken cunning came into his eyes. He slid the full bottle into +his pocket, and, carrying the ether in his hand, stumbled upstairs, +drank again, and hid them craftily, not beneath the mattress this time, +but under the eaves where the flooring met and there was a loose plank. +</P> + +<P> +When he stumbled downstairs again, the Kid was sitting in a chair, +holding his swimming head in his hands. +</P> + +<P> +"S'all right, Charlie," said McGrew inanely. +</P> + +<P> +The Kid did not look at him; his eyes were fixed upon the table. +</P> + +<P> +"Where are those bottles?" he demanded suspiciously. +</P> + +<P> +"Gone," said McGrew plaintively. "Gone witsh fellows—fellows took 'em +an' ran 'way. Whash goin' to do 'bout it, Charlie?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll tell you when you're sober," said the Kid curtly. "Get up to +your bunk and sleep it off." +</P> + +<P> +"S'my trick," said McGrew heavily, waving his hand toward the key. +"Can't let nusher fellow do my work." +</P> + +<P> +"Your trick!" The words came in a withering, bitter rush from the Kid. +"Your trick! You're in fine shape to hold down a key, aren't you!" +</P> + +<P> +"Whash reason I ain't? Held it down all right, so far," said McGrew, a +world of injury in his voice—and it was true; so far he had held it +down all right that night, for the very simple reason that Angel Forks +had not been the elected meeting point of trains for a matter of some +three hours, not since the time when Harvey and Lansing had dropped in +and McGrew had been sober. +</P> + +<P> +"Get up to your bunk!" said the Kid between his teeth—and that was all. +</P> + +<P> +McGrew swayed hesitantly for a moment on uncertain legs, blinked +soddenly a sort of helpless protest, and, turning, staggered up the +stairs. +</P> + +<P> +For a little while the Kid sat in his chair, trying to conquer his +dizzy, swimming head; and then the warm blood trickling down his +neck—he had not noticed it before—roused him to action. He took the +lamp and went into the other room, bathed his head in the wash-basin, +sopping at the back of his neck to stop the flow, and finally bandaged +it as best he could with a wet cloth as a compress, and a towel drawn +tightly over it, which he knotted on his forehead. +</P> + +<P> +He finished McGrew's abortive attempt at housecleaning after that, and +sat in to hold down the rest of the night trick, while McGrew in sleep +should recover his senses. But McGrew did not sleep. McGrew was +fairly started—and McGrew had two bottles at command. +</P> + +<P> +At five-thirty in the morning, No. 81, the local freight, west, making +a meeting point, rattled her long string of flats and boxes on the +Angel Forks siding; and the Kid, unknotting his bandage, dropped it +into a drawer of his desk. Brannahan, No. 81's conductor, kicked the +door open, and came in for his orders. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, Kid!" exclaimed Brannahan. "What you sitting in for? Where's +your mate?" +</P> + +<P> +"Asleep," the Kid laughed at him. "Where do you suppose he is! We're +swopping tricks for a while for the sake of variety." +</P> + +<P> +Brannahan stooped and lunged the stub of the cigar in his mouth over +the lamp chimney, and with the up-draft nearly extinguished the flame; +then he pulled up a chair, tilted back and stuck his feet up on the +desk. +</P> + +<P> +"Guess most anything would be variety in this God-forsaken hole," he +observed between puffs. "What?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it's not so bad—when you get used to it," said the Kid. +</P> + +<P> +He edged his own chair around to face Brannahan squarely—the wound in +the back of his head was bleeding again; perhaps it had never stopped +bleeding, he did not know. +</P> + +<P> +Brannahan made small talk, waiting for the fast freight, east, to +cross; and the Kid smiled, while his fingers clutched desperately now +and then at the arms of his chair to keep himself from pitching over, +as those sickening, giddy waves, like hot and cold flashes, swept him. +</P> + +<P> +Brannahan went at last, the fast freight roared by, No. 81 pulled out, +and the Kid went back to the wash-basin and put his bandage on again. +</P> + +<P> +The morning came and went, the afternoon, and the evening; and by +evening the Kid was sick and dropping weak. That smash on his head +must have been more serious than he had thought at first; for, again +and again, and growing more frequent, had come those giddy flashes, and +once, he wasn't sure, but it seemed as though he had fainted for a +moment or two. +</P> + +<P> +It was getting on to ten o'clock now, and he sat, or, rather, lay +forward with his head in his arms over the desk under the lighted lamp. +The sounder was clicking busily; the Kid raised his head a little, and +listened. There was a Circus Special, west, that night, and No. 2, the +eastbound Limited, was an hour off schedule, and, trying to make it up, +was running with clear rights while everything else on the train sheet +dodged to the sidings to get out of the way. The sounder stopped for +an instant, then came the dispatcher's "complete"—the Circus Special +was to cross the Limited at L'Aramie, the next station west of Angel +Forks. It had nothing to do with the Kid, and it would be another two +hours at least before the Circus Special was along. +</P> + +<P> +The Kid's head dropped back on his arms again. What was he to do? He +could stick out the night somehow—he <I>must</I> stick it out. If he asked +for a relief it was the sack for the man upstairs—it was throwing +McGrew cold. It wouldn't take them long to find out what was the +matter with McGrew! And surely McGrew would be straight again by +morning—he wasn't any better now, worse if anything, but by morning +surely the worst of the drink would be out of him. McGrew had been +pretty bad all day—as bad as the Kid had ever seen a man. He wondered +a little numbly about it. He had thought once that McGrew might have +had some more drink hidden, and he had searched for it during the +forenoon while McGrew watched him from the bunk; but he had found +nothing. It was strange, too, the way McGrew was acting, strange that +it took so long for the man to get it out of his system, it seemed to +the Kid; but the Kid had not found those last two bottles, neither was +the Kid up in therapeutics, nor was he the diagnostician that Doctor +McTurk was. +</P> + +<P> +"By morning," said the Kid, with the moan, "if he can't stand a trick +I'll <I>have</I> to wire. I'm afraid to-night 'll be my limit." +</P> + +<P> +It was still and quiet—not even a breeze to whisper through the cut, +or stir the pine-clad slope into rustling murmurs. Almost heavily the +silence lay over the little station buried deep in the heart of the +mighty range. Only the sounder spoke and chattered—at +intervals—spasmodically. +</P> + +<P> +An hour passed, an hour and a half, and the Kid scarcely moved—then he +roused himself. It was pretty near time for the Circus Special to be +going through to make its meeting point with the Limited at L'Aramie, +and he looked at his lights. He could see them, up and down, switch +and semaphore, from the bay window of the station where he sat. It was +just a glance to assure himself that all was right. He saw the lights +through red and black flashes before his eyes, saw that the main line +was open as it should be—and dropped his swooning, throbbing head back +on his arms once more. +</P> + +<P> +And then suddenly he sat erect. From overhead came the dull, ominous +thud of a heavy fall. He rose from his chair—and caught at the table, +as the giddiness surged over him and his head swam around. For an +instant he hung there swaying, then made his way weakly for the stairs +and started up. +</P> + +<P> +There was a light above—he had kept a lamp burning there—but for a +moment after he reached the top nothing but those ghastly red and black +flashes met his eyes—and then, with a strange, inarticulate cry, he +moved toward the side of the room. +</P> + +<P> +Sprawled in a huddled heap upon the floor beneath the eaves, collapsed, +out like the snuffing of a candle wick, as Doctor McTurk had said some +day he would go out, dead, lay Dan McGrew—the loose plank up, two +empty bottles beside him, as though the man had snatched first one and +then the other from their hiding place in the wild hope that there +might be something left of the supply drained to the last drop hours +before. +</P> + +<P> +The Kid stooped over McGrew, straightened up, stared at the lifeless +form before him, and his hands went queerly to his temples and the +sides of his head—the room spun dizzily around and around, the lamp, +the dead man on the floor, the bunks, a red-and-black flashed +whirl—the Kid's hands reached grasping into nothingness for support, +and he slipped inertly to the floor. +</P> + +<P> +From below came the sharp tattoo of the sounder making the Angel Forks +call, quick, imperative at first—then like a knell of doom, in frantic +appeal, the despatchers' life and death, the <I>seventeen</I>—and, "Hold +Circus Special." Over and over again the sounder spoke and cried and +babbled and sobbed like a human soul in agony; over and over again +while the minutes passed, and with heavy, resonant roar the long Circus +Special rumbled by—but the man on the night wire at Angel Forks was +dead; and the Kid was past the hearing—there were to come weeks, while +he raved in the furious delirium and lay in the heavy stupor of brain +fever, before a key meant anything to him again. +</P> + +<P> +It's queer the way things happen! Call it luck, if you like—maybe it +is—maybe it's something more than luck. It wouldn't be sacrilege, +would it, to say that the hand of God had something to do with keeping +the Circus Special and the Limited from crashing head-on in the +rock-walled, twisting caņon, four miles west of Angel Forks, whatever +might be the direct means, ridiculous, before-unheard-of, funny, or +absurd, that saved a holocaust that night? That wouldn't be sacrilege, +would it? Well, call it luck, if you like—call it anything you like. +Queer things happen in railroading—but this stands alone, queerest of +all in the annals of fifty roads in a history of fifty years. +</P> + +<P> +The Limited, thanks to a clean-swept track, had been making up time, +making up enough of it to throw meeting point with the Circus Special +at L'Aramie out—and the despatcher had tried to Hold the Circus +Special at Angel Forks and let the Limited pass her there. There was +time enough to do it, plenty of it—and under ordinary circumstances it +would have been all in the night's work. But there was blame, too, and +Saxton, who was on the key at Big Cloud that night, relieving Donkin, +who was sick, went on the carpet for it—he let the Limited tear +through L'Aramie <I>before</I> he sent his order to Angel Forks, with the +Circus Special in the open cutting along for her meeting point with +nothing but Angel Forks between her and L'Aramie. +</P> + +<P> +That was the despatcher's end of it—the other end is a little +different. Whether some disgruntled employee, seeking to revenge +himself on the circus management, loosened the door of one of the cars +while the Special lay on the siding waiting for a crossing at Mitre +Peak, her last stop, or whether it was purely an accident, no one ever +knew—though the betting was pretty heavy on the disgruntled employee +theory—there had been trouble the day before. However, be that as it +may, one way or the other, one thing was certain, they found the door +open after it was all over, and—but, we're over-running our holding +orders—we'll get to that in a minute. +</P> + +<P> +Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan, in the 428, were pulling the Special +that night, and as they shot by the Angel Forks station the fireman was +leaning out of the gangway for a breath of air. +</P> + +<P> +"Wonder how the Kid's making out?" he shouted in Hogan's ear, +retreating into the cab as they bumped over the west-end siding switch +with a shattering racket. "Good kid, that—ain't seen him since the +day he came up with us." +</P> + +<P> +Hogan nodded, checking a bit for the curve ahead, mindful of his +high-priced, heavily insured live freight. +</P> + +<P> +"Did ever you hear such a forsaken row!" he ejaculated irrelevantly. +"Listen to it, Bull. About three runs a year like this and I'd be +clawing at iron bars and trying to mimic a menagerie. Listen to it!" +</P> + +<P> +Coussirat listened. Every conceivable kind of an animal on earth +seemed to be lifting its voice to High Heaven in earnest protest for +some cause or other—the animals, beyond any peradventure of doubt, +were displeased with their accommodations, uncomfortable, and +indignantly uneasy. The rattle of the train was a paltry thing—over +it hyenas laughed, lions roared, elephants trumpeted, and giraffes +emitted whatever noises giraffes emit. It was a medley fit for Bedlam, +from shrill, whistling, piercing shrieks that set the ear-drums +tingling, to hoarse, cavernous bellows like echoing thunder. +</P> + +<P> +"Must be something wrong with the animals," said Coussirat, with an +appreciative grin. "They weren't yowling like that when we +started—guess they don't like their Pullmans." +</P> + +<P> +"It's enough to give you the creeps," growled Fatty Hogan. +</P> + +<P> +Coussirat reached for the chain, and with an expert flip flung wide the +furnace door—and the bright glow lighted up the heavens and shot the +black of the cab into leaping, fiery red. Coussirat swung around, +reaching for his shovel—and grabbed Hogan's arm instead, as a chorus +of unearthly, chattering shrieks rent the air. +</P> + +<P> +"For the love of Mike, for God's sake, Fatty," he gasped, "look at +that!" +</P> + +<P> +Perched on the tender, on the top of the water tank, just beyond the +edge of the coal, sat a well-developed and complacent ape—and, as +Coussirat looked, from the roof of the property car, behind the tender, +another swung to join the first. +</P> + +<P> +"Jiminy Christmas!" yelled Hogan, screwed around in his seat. "The +whole blasted tribe of monkeys is loose! That's what's wrong with the +rest of the animals—the little devils have probably been teasing them +through the barred air-holes at the ends of the cars. Look at 'em! +Look at 'em come!" +</P> + +<P> +Coussirat was looking—he hadn't stopped looking. Along the roof of +the property car they came, a chattering, jabbering, swaying string of +them—and on the brake wheel two sat upright, lurching and clinging for +dear life, the short hair blown straight back from their foreheads with +the sweep of the wind, while they peered with earnest, strained faces +into the cab. And the rest, two dozen strong now, massed on the roof +of the property car, perilously near the edges for anything but +monkeys, inspected the cab critically, picked at each other's hides, +made gestures, some of which were decidedly uncomplimentary, and +chattered volubly to their leaders already on the tender. The tender +seemed to appeal. Down came another monkey via the brake-rod, and +swung by its tail with a sort of flying-trapeze effect to the +tender—and what one did another did—the accommodation on the water +tank was being crowded—the front rank moved up on the coal. +</P> + +<P> +"Say!" bawled Coussirat to his mate. "Say, Fatty, get up and give 'em +your seat—there's ladies present. And say, what are we going to do +about it? The little pets ought to be put back to bed." +</P> + +<P> +"Do nothing!" snapped Hogan, one wary eye on the monkeys, and the other +on the right of way ahead. "If the circus people don't know enough to +shut their damned beasts up properly it's their own lookout—it's not +our funeral, whatever happens." +</P> + +<P> +The advance guard of the monkeys had approached too close to the crest +of the high-piled coal, and as a result, while they scrambled back for +firmer footing, they sent a small avalanche of it rolling into the cab. +This was touching Coussirat personally—and Coussirat glared. +</P> + +<P> +Coussirat was no nature faker—he knew nothing about animals, their +habits, peculiarities, or characteristics. He snatched up a piece of +coal, and heaved it at the nearest monkey. +</P> + +<P> +"Get out, you little devil—<I>scut</I>!" he shouted—and missed—and the +effect was disconcerting to Coussirat. +</P> + +<P> +Monkeys are essentially imitative, earnestly so—and not over-timid +when in force—they imitated Coussirat. Before he could get his +breath, first one and then another began to pick up hunks of coal and +heave them back—and into the cab poured a rain of missiles. For an +instant, a bare instant, Coussirat stood his ground, then he dove for +the shelter of his seat. Soft coal? Yes—but there are some fairish +lumps even in soft coal. +</P> + +<P> +Crash went the plate-glass face of the steam gauge! It was a good +game, a joyous game—and there was plenty of coal, hunks and hunks of +it—and plenty of monkeys, "the largest and most intelligent collection +on earth," the billboards said. +</P> + +<P> +Crash went the cab glass behind Fatty Hogan's head—and the monkeys +shrieked delight. They hopped and jumped and performed gyrations over +each other, those in the rear; while those on the firing line, with +stern, screwed up, wizened faces, blinking furiously, swung their hairy +arms—and into the cab still poured the hail of coal. +</P> + +<P> +With a yell of rage, clasping at his neck where the glass had cut him, +Fatty Hogan bounced forward in his seat. +</P> + +<P> +"You double-blanked, blankety-blanked, triple-plated ass!" he bellowed +at Coussirat. "You—you <I>damned</I> fool, you!" he screamed. "Didn't you +know any better than that! Drive 'em off with the hose—turn the hose +on them!" +</P> + +<P> +"Turn it on yourself," said Coussirat sullenly; he was full length on +his seat, and mindful that his own glass might go as Hogan's had. +"D'ye think I'm looking for glory and a wreath of immortelles?" +</P> + +<P> +Funny? Well, perhaps. Is this sacrilege—to say it wasn't luck? +</P> + +<P> +Crash! There was a hiss of steam, a scalding stream of water, and in a +moment the cab was in a white cloud. Mechanically, Hogan slammed his +throttle shut, and snatched at the "air." It was the water glass—and +the water glass sometimes is a nasty matter. Coussirat was on his feet +now like a flash, and both men, clamped-jawed, groped for the cock; and +neither got off scathless before they shut it—and by then the train +had stopped, and not a monkey was in sight. +</P> + +<P> +Jimmie Burke, the conductor, came running up from the rear end, as +Coussirat and Hogan swung out of the gangway to the ground. +</P> + +<P> +"What's wrong?" demanded Burke—he had his watch in his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Monkeys," said Hogan, and he clipped the word off without any undue +cordiality. +</P> + +<P> +"How?" inquired Burke. +</P> + +<P> +"Monkeys," said Hogan—a little more brittle than before. +</P> + +<P> +"Monkeys?" repeated Burke politely. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, monkeys!" roared Hogan, dancing up and down with the pain of his +scalded hands. "Monkeys—that's plain enough, ain't it? Monkeys, +blast you!—MONKEYS!" +</P> + +<P> +To the group came one of the circus men. +</P> + +<P> +"The door of the monkey car is open!" he announced breathlessly. "The +monkeys have escaped." +</P> + +<P> +"You don't say!" said Coussirat heavily. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said the circus man. "And, look here, we'll have to find them; +they couldn't have got away from the train until it stopped just now." +</P> + +<P> +"Are they intelligent," inquired Coussirat in a velvet voice, "same as +the billboards say?" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course," said the circus man anxiously. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, just write them a letter and let them know when to be on +hand for the next performance," said Coussirat grimly. "There's lots +of time—we can hang around here and stall the line for another hour or +two, anyway!" +</P> + +<P> +Burke and Hogan were in earnest consultation. +</P> + +<P> +"We're close on the Limited's time as it is," said Hogan. "And look at +that cab." +</P> + +<P> +"We'd better back up to the Forks, then, and let her cross us there, +that's the safest thing to do," said Burke—and swung his lamp. +</P> + +<P> +"Look here," said the circus man, "we've got to find those monkeys." +</P> + +<P> +Burke looked at him unhappily—monkeys had thrown their meeting point +out—and there was the trainmaster to talk to when they got back to Big +Cloud. +</P> + +<P> +"Unless you want to spend the night here you'd better climb aboard," he +snapped. "All right, Hogan—back away!" And he swung his lamp again. +</P> + +<P> +Ten minutes later, as the Circus Special took the Angel Forks siding +and the front-end brakeman was throwing the switch clear again for the +main line, a chime whistle came ringing long, imperiously, from the +curve ahead. Fatty Hogan's face went white; he was standing up in the +cab and close to Coussirat, and he clasped the fireman's arm. "What's +that?" he cried. +</P> + +<P> +The answer came with a rush—a headlight cut streaming through the +night, there was a tattoo of beating trucks, an eddying roar of wind, a +storm of exhausts, a flash of window lights like scintillating +diamonds, and the Limited, pounding the fish-plates at sixty miles an +hour, was in and out—and <I>gone</I>. +</P> + +<P> +Hogan sank weakly down on his seat, and a bead of sweat spurted from +his forehead. +</P> + +<P> +"My God, Bull," he whispered, "do you know what that means? +Something's wrong. <I>She's against our order</I>." +</P> + +<P> +They found the Kid and Dan McGrew, and they got the Kid into little +Doctor McTurk's hands at Big Cloud—but it was eight weeks and more, +while the boy raved and lay in stupor, before they got the story. Then +the Kid told it to Carleton in the super's office late one afternoon +when he was convalescent—told him the bald, ugly facts in a sort of +hopeless way. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton listened gravely; it had come near to being a case of more +lives gone out on the Circus Special and the Limited that night than he +cared to think about. He listened gravely, and when the Kid had +finished, Carleton, in that quiet way of his, put his finger instantly +on the crux of the matter—not sharply, but gently, for the Kid had +played a man's part, and "Royal" Carleton loved a man. +</P> + +<P> +"Was it worth it, Keene?" he asked. "Why did you try to shield McGrew?" +</P> + +<P> +The Kid was staring hard at the floor. +</P> + +<P> +"He was my father," he said. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IX +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE OTHER FELLOW'S JOB +</H4> + +<P> +There is a page in Hill Division history that belongs to Jimmy Beezer. +This is Beezer's story, and it goes back to the days of the building of +the long-talked-of, figure-8-canted-over-sideways tunnel on the Devil's +Slide, that worst piece of track on the Hill Division, which is to say, +the worst piece of track, bar none, on the American continent. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer, speaking generally, was a fitter in the Big Cloud shops; +Beezer, in particular, wore a beard. Not that there is anything +remarkable in the fact that one should wear a beard, though there are +two classes of men who shouldn't—the man who chews tobacco, and the +man who tinkers around a railroad shop and on occasions, when major +repairs are the order of the day, is intimate with the "nigger-head" of +a locomotive. Beezer combined both classes in his person—but with +Beezer there were extenuating circumstances. According to Big Cloud, +Beezer wore a beard because Mrs. Beezer said so; Mrs. Beezer, in point +of size, made about two of Beezer, and Big Cloud said she figured the +beard kind of took the cuss off the discrepancy. +</P> + +<P> +Anyway, whether that is so or not, Beezer wore a beard, and the reason +it is emphasized here is because you couldn't possibly know Beezer +without it. Its upper extremity was nicotine-dyed, in spots, to a nut +brown, and from thence shaded down to an indeterminate rust color at +its lower edge—when he hadn't been dusting off and doing parlor-maid +work with it in the unspeakable grime of a "front-end." In shape it +never followed the prevailing tonsorial fashions—as far as any one +knew, no barber was ever the richer for Beezer's beard. Beezer used to +trim it himself Sunday mornings—sort of half moon effect he always +gave it. +</P> + +<P> +He was a spare, short man, all jump and nerves, and active as a cat. +He had shrewd, brown, little eyes, but, owing to the fact that he had a +small head and wore a large-size, black, greasy peaked cap jammed down +as far over his face as it would go, the color of his eyes could hardly +be said to matter much, for when you looked at Beezer, Beezer was +mostly just a round knob of up-tilted nose—and beard. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer's claims to immortality and fame, such as they are, were vested +in disease. Yes; that's it, you've got it right—disease. Beezer had +a disease that is very common to mankind in general. There's a whole +lot of men like Beezer. Beezer envied the other fellow's job. +</P> + +<P> +Somebody has said that the scarcest thing on earth is hen's teeth, but +the man who hasn't some time or other gone green-eyed over the other +chap's trick, and confidentially complained to himself that he could +"sit in" and hold it down a hanged sight better himself, has the +scarcity-of-hen's-teeth-oracle nailed to the mast from the start. And +a curious thing about it is that the less one knows of what the men he +envies is up against the more he envies—and the better he thinks he +could swing the other's job himself. There's a whole lot like Beezer. +</P> + +<P> +Now Beezer was an almighty good fitter. Tommy Regan said so, and Regan +ought to know; that's why he took Beezer out of the shops where the +other had grown up, so to speak, and gave Beezer the roundhouse repair +work to do. And that's where Beezer caught the disease—in the +roundhouse. Beezer contracted a mild attack of it the first day, but +it wasn't bad enough to trouble him much, or see a doctor about, so he +let it go on—and it got chronic. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer commenced to inhale an entirely different atmosphere, and the +more he inhaled it the more discontented he grew. An engine out in the +roundhouse, warm and full of life, the steam whispering and purring at +her valves, was a very different thing from a cold, rusty, dismantled +boiler-shell jacked up on lumbering blocks in the erecting shop; and +the road talk of specials, holding orders, tissues, running time and +what-not had a much more appealing ring to it than discussing how many +inches of muck No. 414 had accumulated on her guard-plates, the +incidental damning of the species wiper, and whether her boxes wanted +new babbitting or not. Toiling like a slave ten hours a day for six +days a week, and maybe overtime on Sundays, so that the other fellow +could have the fun, and the glory, and the fatter pay check, and the +easy time of it, began to get Beezer's goat. The "other fellow" was +the engineer. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer got to contrasting up the two jobs, and the more he contrasted +the less he liked the looks of his own, and the more he was satisfied +of his superior ability to hold down the other over any one of the +crowd that signed on or off in the grease-smeared pages of the turner's +book, which recorded the comings and goings of the engine crews. And +his ability, according to Beezer's way of looking at it, wasn't all +swelled head either; for there wasn't a bolt or a split-pin in any type +of engine that had ever nosed its pilot on the Hill Division that he +couldn't have put his finger on with his eyes shut. How much, anyhow, +did an engineer know about an engine? There wasn't a fitter in the +shops that didn't have the best engineer that ever pulled a throttle +pinned down with his shoulders flat on the mat on that count—and there +wasn't an engineer but what would admit it, either. +</P> + +<P> +But a routine in which one is brought up, gets married in, and comes to +look upon as a sort of fixed quantity for life, isn't to be departed +from offhand, and at a moment's notice. Beezer grew ardent with envy, +it is true; but the idea of actually switching over from the workbench +to the cab didn't strike him for some time. When it did—the first +time—it took his breath away—literally. He was in the pit, and he +stood up suddenly—and the staybolts on the rocker-arm held, and Beezer +promptly sat down from a wallop on the head that would have distracted +the thoughts of any other man than Beezer. +</P> + +<P> +Engineer Beezer! He had to lift the peak of his cap to dig the tears +out of his eyes, but when he put it back again the peak was just a +trifle farther up his nose. Engineer Beezer—a limited run—the +Imperial Flyer—into division on the dot, hanging like a lord of +creation from the cab window—cutting the miles on the grades and +levels like a swallow—roaring over trestles—diving through +tunnels—there was excitement in that, something that made life worth +living, instead of everlastingly messing around with a hammer and a +cold chisel, and pulling himself thin at the hips on the end of a +long-handled union wrench. Day dreams? Well, everybody day-dreams, +don't they? Why not Beezer? +</P> + +<P> +It is not on record that any one ever metamorphosed himself into a +drunkard on the spot the first time he ever stepped up to a bar; but as +the Irishman said: "Kape yer foot on the rail, an' yez have the makin's +av a dombed foine bum in yez!" +</P> + +<P> +Of course, the thing wasn't feasible. It sounded all right, and was +mighty alluring, but it was all dream. Beezer put it from him with an +unctuous, get-thee-behind-me-Satan air, but he purloined a book of +"rules"—road rules—out of Pudgy MacAllister's seat in the cab of the +1016. He read up the rules at odd moments, and moments that weren't +odd—and gradually the peak of his cap crept up as far as the bridge of +his nose. Beezer was keeping his foot on the rail. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Beezer found the book. That's what probably started things along +toward a showdown. She was, as has been said, a very large woman; also +she was a very capable woman of whom Beezer generally stood in some +awe, who washed, and ironed, and cooked for the Beezer brood during the +day, and did overtime at nights on socks and multifarious sewing, +including patches on Beezer's overalls—and other things, which are +unmentionable. The book fell out of the pocket of one of the other +things, one evening. Mrs. Beezer examined it, discovered MacAllister's +name scrawled on it, and leaned across the table under the paper-shaded +lamp in their modest combination sitting and dining room. +</P> + +<P> +"What are you doing with this, Mr. Beezer?" she inquired peremptorily; +Mrs. Beezer was always peremptory—with Beezer. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer coughed behind his copy of the Big Cloud <I>Daily Sentinel</I>. +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" prompted Mrs. Beezer. +</P> + +<P> +"I brought it home for the children to read," said Beezer, who, being +uncomfortable, sought refuge in the facetious. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Beezer," said Mrs. Beezer, with some asperity, "you put down that +paper and look at me." +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Beezer obeyed a little doubtfully. +</P> + +<P> +"Now," continued Mrs. Beezer, "what's got into you since you went into +the roundhouse, I don't know; but I've sorter had suspicions, and this +book looks like 'em. You might just as well make a clean breast of +what's on your mind, because I'm going to know." +</P> + +<P> +Beezer looked at his wife and scowled. He felt what might be imagined +to be somewhat the feelings of a man who is caught sneaking in by the +side entrance after signing the pledge at a Blue Ribbon rally. It was +not a situation conducive to good humor. +</P> + +<P> +"There ain't anything got into me," said he truculently. "If you want +to know what I'm doing with that book, I'm reading it because I'm +interested in it. And I've come to the conclusion that a fitter's job +alongside of an engineer's ain't any better than a mud-picking +Polack's." +</P> + +<P> +"You should have found that out before you went into the shops ten +years ago," said Mrs. Beezer, with a sweetness that tasted like vinegar. +</P> + +<P> +"Ten years ago!" Beezer flared. "How's a fellow to know what he's cut +out for, and what he can do best, when he starts in? How's he to know, +Mrs. Beezer, will you tell me that?" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Beezer was not sympathetic. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know how he's to know," she said, "but I know that the trouble +with some men is that they don't know when they're well off, and if +you're thinking of——" +</P> + +<P> +"I ain't," said Beezer sharply. +</P> + +<P> +"I said 'if,' Mr. Beezer; and if——" +</P> + +<P> +"There's no 'if' about it," Beezer lied fiercely. "I'm not——" +</P> + +<P> +"You are," declared Mrs. Beezer emphatically, but with some wreckage of +English due to exceeding her speed permit—Mrs. Beezer talked fast. +"When you act like that I know you are, and I know you better than you +do yourself, and I'm not going to let you make a fool of yourself, and +come home here dead some night and wake me up same as poor Mrs. Dalheen +got her man back week before last on a box car door. Don't you know +when you're well off? You an engineer! What kind of an engineer do +you think you'd make? Why——" +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Beezer," said Beezer hoarsely, "shut up!" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Beezer caught her breath. +</P> + +<P> +"What did you say?" she gasped. +</P> + +<P> +"I said," said Beezer sullenly, picking up his paper again, "that I'd +never have thought of it, if you hadn't put it into my head; and now +the more I think of it, the better it looks." +</P> + +<P> +"I thought so," sniffed Mrs. Beezer profoundly. "And now, Mr. Beezer, +let this be the last of it. The idea! I never heard of such a thing!" +</P> + +<P> +Curiously enough, or perhaps naturally enough, Mrs. Beezer's cold-water +attitude had precisely the opposite effect on Jimmy Beezer to that +which she had intended it should have. It was the side-entrance +proposition over again. When you've been caught sneaking in that way, +you might just as well use the front door on Main Street next time, and +have done with it. Beezer began to do a little talking around the +roundhouse. The engine crews, by the time they tumbled to the fact +that it wasn't just the ordinary grumble that any man is entitled to in +his day's work, stuck their tongues in their cheeks, winked +surreptitiously at each other—and encouraged him. +</P> + +<P> +Now it is not to be implied that Jimmy Beezer was anybody's fool—not +for a minute—a first-class master fitter with his time served is a +long way from being in that class right on the face of it. Beezer +might have been a little blinded to the tongues and winks on account of +his own earnestness; perhaps he was—for a time. Afterwards—but just +a minute, or we'll be running by a meeting point, which is mighty bad +railroading. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer's cap, when he took the plunge and tackled Regan, had got tilted +pretty far back, so far that the peak stood off his forehead at about +the same rakish angle that his upturned little round knob of a nose +stuck up out of his beard; which is to say that Beezer had got to the +stage where he had decided that the professional swing through the +gangway he had been practising every time, and some others, that he had +occasion to get into a cab, was going to be of some practical use at an +early date. +</P> + +<P> +He put it up to Regan one morning when the master mechanic came into +the roundhouse. +</P> + +<P> +Regan leaned his fat little body up against the jamb of one of the big +engine doors, pulled at his scraggly brown mustache, and blinked as he +listened. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter with you, Beezer, h'm?" he inquired perplexedly, +when the other was at an end. +</P> + +<P> +"Haven't I just told you?" said Beezer. "I want to quit fitting and +get running." +</P> + +<P> +"Talks as though he meant it," commented Regan sotto voce to himself, +as he peered earnestly into the fitter's face. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course, I mean it," declared Beezer, a little tartly. "Why +wouldn't I?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Regan; "that ain't the question. The question is, why would +you? H'm?" +</P> + +<P> +"Because," Beezer answered promptly, "I like a snap as well as the next +man. It's a better job than the one I've got, better money, better +hours, easier all around, and one I can hold down with the best of +them." +</P> + +<P> +Regan's eyebrows went up. +</P> + +<P> +"Think so?" he remarked casually. +</P> + +<P> +"I do," declared Beezer. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then," said Regan, "if you've thought it all out and made up +your mind, there's nothing I know of to stop you. Want to begin right +away?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do," said Beezer again. It was coming easier than he had +expected—there was a jubilant trill in his voice. +</P> + +<P> +"All right," said Regan. "I'll speak to Clarihue about it. You can +start in wiping in the morning." +</P> + +<P> +"Wiping?" echoed Beezer faintly. +</P> + +<P> +"Sure," said Regan. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it? Wiping—a +dollar-ten a day." +</P> + +<P> +"Look here," said Beezer with a gulp; "I ain't joking about this." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, then, what are you kicking about?" demanded Regan. +</P> + +<P> +"About wiping and a dollar-ten," said Beezer. "What would I do with a +dollar-ten, me with a wife and three kids?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know what you'd do with it," returned Regan. "What do you +expect?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't expect to start in wiping," said Beezer, beginning to get a +little hot. +</P> + +<P> +"You've been here long enough to know the way up," said Regan. +"Wiping, firing—you take your turn. And your turn'll come for an +engine according to the way things are shaping up now in, say, about +fifteen years." +</P> + +<P> +"Fifteen years!" +</P> + +<P> +"Mabbe," grinned Regan. "I can't promise to kill off anybody to +accommodate you, can I?" +</P> + +<P> +"And don't the ten years I've put in here count for anything?" queried +Beezer aggressively. "Why don't you start me in sweeping up the +round-house? Wiping! Wiping, my eye! What for? I know all about the +way up. That's all right for a man starting in green; but I ain't +green. Why, there ain't a year-old apprentice over in the shops there +that don't know more about an engine than any blooming engineer on the +division. You know that, Regan—you know it hanged well, don't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," admitted the master mechanic, "you're not far wrong at that, +Beezer." +</P> + +<P> +"You bet, I'm not!" Beezer was emphatic. "How about me, then? Do I +know an engine, every last nut and bolt in her, or don't I?" +</P> + +<P> +"You do," said Regan. "And if it's any satisfaction to you to know it, +I wouldn't ask for a better fitter any time than yourself." +</P> + +<P> +"Then, what's the use of talking about wiping? If I've put in ten +years learning the last kink there is in an engine, and have forgotten +more than the best man of the engine crews 'll know when he dies, +what's the reason I ain't competent to run one?" +</P> + +<P> +Regan reached into his back pocket for his chewing, wriggled his head +till his teeth met in the plug, and tucked the tobacco back into his +pocket again. +</P> + +<P> +"Beezer," said he slowly, spitting out an undesirable piece of stalk, +"did it ever strike you that there's a whole lot of blamed good horse +doctors that'd make damn poor jockeys—h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +Beezer scowled deeply, and kicked at a piece of waste with the toe of +his boot. +</P> + +<P> +"All I want is a chance," he growled shortly. "Give me a chance, and +I'll show you." +</P> + +<P> +"You can have your chance," said Regan. "I've told you that." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Beezer bitterly. "It's a hell of a chance, ain't it? A +dollar-ten a day—<I>wiping</I>! I'd be willing to go on firing for a +spell." +</P> + +<P> +"Wiping," said Regan with finality, as he turned away and started +toward the shops; "but you'd better chew it over again, Beezer, and +have a talk with your wife before you make up your mind." +</P> + +<P> +Somebody chuckled behind Beezer—and Beezer whirled like a shot. The +only man in sight was Pudgy MacAllister. Pudgy's back was turned, and +he was leaning over the main-rod poking assiduously into the internals +of the 1016 with a long-spouted oil can; but Beezer caught the +suspicious rise and fall of the overall straps over the shoulders of +the fat man's jumper. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer was only human. It got Beezer on the raw—which was already +pretty sore. The red flared into his face hard enough to make every +individual hair in his beard incandescent; he walked over to Pudgy, +yanked Pudgy out into the open, and shoved his face into the engineer's. +</P> + +<P> +"What in the double-blanked, blankety-blanked blazes are you grinning +at?" he inquired earnestly. +</P> + +<P> +"H'm?" said Pudgy. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes—<I>h'm</I>!" said Beezer eloquently. "That's what I'm asking you." +</P> + +<P> +Whether Pudgy MacAllister was just plain lion-hearted, or a rotten bad +judge of human nature isn't down on the minutes—all that shows is that +he was one or the other. With some labor and exaggerated patience, he +tugged a paper-covered pamphlet out of his pocket from under his +jumper. It was the book of rules Beezer had "borrowed" some time +before. +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Beezer," said Pudgy blandly, "was over visiting the missus this +morning, and she brought this back. From what she said I dunno as it +would do any good, but I thought, perhaps, if you were going to take +Regan's advice about talking to your wife, you and Mrs. Beezer might +like to look it over again together before you——" +</P> + +<P> +That was as far as Pudgy MacAllister got. Generally speaking, the more +steam there is to the square inch buckled down under the valve, the +shriller the whistle is when it breaks loose. Beezer let a noise out +of him that sounded like a green parrot complaining of indigestion, and +went at MacAllister head-on. +</P> + +<P> +The oil can sailed through the air and crashed into the window glass of +Clarihue's cubby-hole in the corner. There was a tangled and revolving +chaos of arms and legs, and lean and fat bodies. Then a thud. There +wasn't any professional ring work about it. They landed on the floor +and began to roll—and a pail of packing and black oil they knocked +over greased the way. +</P> + +<P> +There was some racket about it, and Regan heard it; so did Clarihue, +and MacAllister's fireman, and another engine crew or two, and a couple +of wipers. The rush reached the combatants when there wasn't more than +a scant thirty-second of an inch between them and the edge of an empty +pit—but a thirty-second is a whole lot sometimes. +</P> + +<P> +When they stood them up and got them uncoupled, MacAllister's black eye +was modestly toned down with a generous share of what had been in the +packing bucket, but his fist still clutched a handful of hair that he +had separated from Beezer's beard—and Beezer's eyes were running like +hydrants from the barbering. Take it all around, thanks mostly to the +packing bucket, they were a fancy enough looking pair to send a +high-class team of professional comedians streaking for the sidings all +along the right of way to get out of their road. +</P> + +<P> +It doesn't take very much, after all, to make trouble, not very much; +and, once started, it's worse than the measles—the way it spreads. +</P> + +<P> +Mostly, they guyed Pudgy MacAllister at first; they liked his make-up +better owing to the black eye. But Pudgy was both generous and modest; +what applause there was coming from the audience he wanted Beezer to +get—he wasn't playing the "lead." +</P> + +<P> +And Beezer got it. Pudgy opened up a bit, and maybe drew on his +imagination a bit about what Mrs. Beezer had said to Mrs. MacAllister +about Jimmy Beezer, and what Beezer had said to Regan, and Regan to +Beezer, not forgetting Regan's remark about the horse doctor. +</P> + +<P> +Oh, yes, trouble once started makes the measles look as though it were +out of training, and couldn't stand the first round. To go into +details would take more space than a treatise on the manners and +customs of the early Moabites; but, summed up, it was something like +this: Mrs. Beezer paid another visit to Mrs. MacAllister, magnanimously +ignoring the social obligation Mrs. MacAllister was under to repay the +former call. Mrs. MacAllister received Mrs. Beezer in the kitchen over +the washtubs, which was just as well for the sake of the rest of the +house, for when Mrs. Beezer withdrew, somewhat shattered, but in good +order, by a flank movement through the back yard, an impartial observer +would have said that the kitchen had been wrecked by a gas explosion. +This brought Big Cloud's one lawyer and the Justice of the Peace into +it, and cost Beezer everything but the odd change on his month's pay +check—when it came. +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile, what with a disturbed condition of marital bliss at home, +Beezer caught it right and left from the train crews, engine crews and +shop hands during the daytime. They hadn't anything against Beezer, +not for a minute, but give a railroad crowd an opening, and there's no +aggregation on earth quicker on the jump to take it. They dubbed him +"Engineer" Beezer, and "Doctor" Beezer; but mostly "Doctor" Beezer—out +of compliment to Regan. And old Grumpy, the timekeeper in the shop, +got so used to hearing it that he absent-mindedly wrote it down "Doctor +Beezer" when he came to make up the pay roll. That put it up to +Carleton, the super, who got a curt letter from the auditors' office +down East, asking for particulars, and calling his attention to the +fact that all medical services were performed by contract with the +company. Carleton scowled perplexedly at the letter, scrawled Tommy +Regan's initials at the bottom of the sheet, plus an interrogation +mark, and put it in the master mechanic's basket. Regan grinned, and +wrote East, telling them facetiously to scratch out the "Doctor" and +squeeze in a "J" in front of the "Beezer" and it would be all right; +but it didn't go—you can't get by a high-browed set of red-tape-bound +expert accountants of unimpeachable integrity, who are safeguarding the +company's funds like that. Hardly! They held out the money, and by +the time the matter was straightened out the pay car had come and gone, +and Beezer got a chance to find out how good his credit was. +Considering everything, Beezer took it pretty well—he went around as +though he had boils. +</P> + +<P> +But if Beezer had a grouch, and cause for one, it didn't make the other +fellow's job look any the less good to Beezer. Mrs. Beezer's sharp +tongue, barbed with contemptuous innuendo that quite often developed +into pointed directness as to her opinion of his opinions, and the kind +of an engineer he'd make, which he was obliged to listen to at night, +and the men—who didn't know what an innuendo was—that he was obliged +to listen to by day, didn't alter Beezer's views on that subject any, +whatever else it might have done. Beezer had a streak of stubbornness +running through the boils. +</P> + +<P> +He never got to blows again. His tormentors took care of that. They +had MacAllister as an example that Beezer was not averse to bringing +matters to an intimate issue at any time, and what they had to say they +said at a safe distance—most of them could run faster than Beezer +could, because nature had made Beezer short. Beezer got to be a pretty +good shot with a two-inch washer or a one-inch nut, and he got to +carrying around a supply of ammunition in the hip pocket of his +overalls. +</P> + +<P> +As for MacAllister, when the two ran foul of each other, as the +engineer came on for his runs or signed off at the end of one, there +wasn't any talking done. Regan had warned them a little too hard to +take chances. They just looked at each other sour enough to turn a +whole milk dairy. The men told Beezer that MacAllister had rigged a +punching bag up in his back yard, and was taking a correspondence +course in pugilism. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer said curried words. +</P> + +<P> +"Driving an engine," said they, "is a dog's life; it's worse than +pick-slinging, there's nothing in it. Why don't you cut it out? +You've had enough experience to get a job in the <I>shops</I>. Why don't +you hit Regan up and change over?" +</P> + +<P> +"By Christmas!" Beezer would roar, while he emptied his pocket and gave +vent to mixed metaphor, "I'd show you a change over if I ever got a +chance; and I'd show you there was something to running an engine +besides bouncing up and down on the seat like balls with nothing but +wind in them, and grinning at the scenery!" +</P> + +<P> +A chance—that's all Beezer asked for—a chance. And he kept on asking +Regan. That dollar-ten a day looked worse than ever since Mrs. +Beezer's invasion of Mrs. MacAllister's kitchen. But Regan was +obdurate, and likewise was beginning to get his usually complacent +outlook on life—all men with a paunch have a complacent, serene +outlook on life as a compensation for the paunch—disturbed a little. +Beezer and his demands were becoming ubiquitous. Regan was getting +decidedly on edge. +</P> + +<P> +"Firing," said Beezer. "Let me start in firing—there's as much in +that as in fitting, and I can get along for the little while it'll be +before you'll be down on your knees begging me to take a throttle." +</P> + +<P> +"Firing, eh!" Regan finally exploded one day. "Look here, Beezer; I've +heard about enough from you. Firing, eh? There'd have been some +firing done before this that would have surprised you if you hadn't +been a family man! Get that? The trouble with you is that you don't +know what you want or what you're talking about." +</P> + +<P> +"I know what I want, and I know what I'm talking about," Beezer +answered doggedly; "and I'm going to keep on putting it up to you till +you quit saying 'No.'" +</P> + +<P> +"You'll be doing it a long time, then," said Regan bluntly, laying a +few inches of engine dust with blackstrap juice; "a long time, +Beezer—till I'm dead." +</P> + +<P> +But it wasn't. Regan was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's +unexplainable the way things work out sometimes! +</P> + +<P> +That afternoon, after a visit from Harvey, who had been promoted from +division engineer to resident and assistant-chief on the Devil's Slide +tunnel, Carleton sent for Regan. +</P> + +<P> +"Tommy," said he, as the master mechanic entered his office, "did you +see Harvey?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Regan. "I didn't know he was in town." +</P> + +<P> +"He said he didn't think he'd have time to see you," said Carleton; "I +guess he's gone back on Number Seven. But I told him I'd put it up to +you, anyway. He says he's along now where he is handling about half a +dozen dump trains, but that what he has been given to pull them with, +as near as he can figure out, is the prehistoric junk of the iron age." +</P> + +<P> +"I saw the engines when they went through," Regan chuckled. "All the +master mechanics on the system cleaned up on him. I sent him the old +Two-twenty-three myself. Harvey's telling the truth so far. What's +next?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," Carleton smiled, "he says the string and tin rivets they're put +together with come off so fast he can't keep more than half of them in +commission at once. He wants a good fitter sent up there on a +permanent job. What do you say?" +</P> + +<P> +"Say?" Regan fairly shouted. "Why, I say, God bless that man!" +</P> + +<P> +"H'm?" inquired Carleton. +</P> + +<P> +"Beezer," said Regan breathlessly. "Tell him he can have Beezer—wire +him I'll send up Beezer. He wants a good fitter, does he? Well, +Beezer's the best fitter on the pay roll, and that's straight. I +always liked Harvey—glad to do him a good turn—Harvey gets the best." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton crammed the dottle down in the bowl of his pipe with his +forefinger, and looked at Regan quizzically. +</P> + +<P> +"I've heard something about it," said he. "What's the matter with +Beezer?" +</P> + +<P> +"Packing loose around his dome cover, and the steam spurts out through +the cracked joint all over you every time you go near him," said Regan. +"He's had me crazy for a month. He's got it into his nut that he could +beat any engineer on the division at his own game, thinks the game's a +cinch and is sour on his own. That's about all—but it's enough. Say, +you wire Harvey that I'll send him Beezer." +</P> + +<P> +Carleton grinned. +</P> + +<P> +"Suppose Beezer doesn't want to go?" he suggested. +</P> + +<P> +"He'll go," said Regan grimly. "According to the neighbors, his home +life at present ain't a perennial dream of delight, and he'll beat it +as joyful as a live fly yanked off the sheet of fly paper it's been +stuck on; besides, he's getting to be a regular spitfire around the +yards. You leave it to me—he'll go." +</P> + +<P> +And Beezer went. +</P> + +<P> +You know the Devil's Slide. Everybody knows it; and everybody has seen +it scores of times, even if they've never been within a thousand miles +of the Rockies—the road carried it for years on the back covers of the +magazines printed in colors. The Transcontinental's publicity man was +a live one, he played it up hard, and as a bit of scenic effect it was +worth all he put into it—there was nothing on the continent to touch +it. But what's the use?—you've seen it hundreds of times. Big +letters on top: +</P> + +<P> +</P> + +<P> +"INCOMPARABLE GRANDEUR OF THE ROCKIES", and underneath: "A SCENE ON THE +LINE OF THE TRANSCONTINENTAL—THE COAST TO COAST ROUTE." +</P> + +<P> +</P> + +<P> +There wasn't anything the matter with the electrotypes, either—nature +backed up those "ads" to the last detail, and threw in a whole lot more +for good measure—even a pessimist didn't hold a good enough hand to +call the raise and had to drop out. Pugsley, the advertising man, was +an awful liar, and what he said may not be strictly true, but he +claimed the road paid their dividends for one quarter through the sale +to a junk and paper-dealer of the letters they got from delighted +tourists telling how far short anything he could say came to being up +to the reality. Anyway, Pugsley and the passenger-agent's department +were the only ones who weren't enthusiastic about the double-loop +tunnel—it spoiled the scenic effect. +</P> + +<P> +This is Beezer's story. Beezer has "rights" through to the terminal, +and pictures of scenery however interesting, and a description of how +Harvey bored his holes into the mountain sides however instructive, +should naturally be relegated to the sidings; but there's just a word +or two necessary before Beezer pulls out into the clear. +</P> + +<P> +One thing the electrotypes didn't show was the approach to the Devil's +Slide. It came along the bottoms fairly straight and level, the track +did, for some five miles from the Bend, until about a mile from the +summit where it hit a long, stiff, heavy climb, that took the breath +out of the best-type engine that Regan, representing the motive-power +department, had to offer. And here, the last few hundred yards were +taken with long-interval, snorting roars from the exhaust, that echoed +up and down the valley, and back and forward from the hills like a +thousand thunders, or the play of a park of artillery, and the pace was +a crawl—you could get out and walk if you wanted to. That was the +approach of the Devil's Slide—on a westbound run, you understand? +Then, once over the summit, the Devil's Slide stretched out ahead, and +in its two reeling, drunken, zigzag miles dropped from where it made +you dizzy to lean out of the cab window and see the Glacier River +swirling below, to where the right of way in a friendly, intimate +fashion hugged the Glacier again at its own bed level. How much of a +drop in that two miles? Grade percentages and dry figures don't mean +very much, do they? Take it another way. It dropped so hard and fast +that that's what the directors were spending three million dollars +for—to divide that drop by two! It just <I>dropped</I>—not an incline, +not by any means—just a drop. However—— +</P> + +<P> +When it was all over the cause of it figured out something like +this—we'll get to the effect and Beezer in a second. Engine 1016 with +Number One, the Imperial Limited, westbound, and with MacAllister in +the cab, blew out a staybolt one afternoon about two miles west of the +Bend. And quicker than you could wink, the cab was all live steam and +boiling water. The fireman screamed and jumped. MacAllister, blinded +and scalded, his hands literally torn from the throttle and "air" +before he could latch in, fell back half unconscious to the floor, +wriggled to the gangway and flung himself out. He sobbed like a +broken-hearted child afterwards when he told his story. +</P> + +<P> +"I left her," he said. "I couldn't help it. The agony wasn't human—I +couldn't stand it. I was already past knowing what I was doing; but +the thought went through my mind that the pressure'd be down, and she'd +stop herself before she got up the mile climb to the summit. That's +the last I remember." +</P> + +<P> +Dave Kinlock, the conductor, testified that he hadn't noticed anything +wrong until after they were over the summit—they'd come along the +bottoms at a stiff clip, as they always did, to get a start up the long +grade. They had slackened up almost to a standstill, as usual, when +they topped the summit; then they commenced to go down the Slide, and +were speeding up before he realized it. He put on the emergency brakes +then, but they wouldn't work. Why? It was never explained. Whether +the angle-cock had never been properly thrown into its socket and had +worked loose and shut off the "air" from the coaches, or whether—and +queerer things than that have happened in railroading—it just plain +went wrong, no one ever knew. They found the trouble there, that was +all. The emergency wouldn't work; and that was all that Dave Kinlock +knew then. +</P> + +<P> +Now, Beezer had been out on the construction work about two weeks when +this happened, about two of the busiest weeks Beezer had ever put in in +his life. Harvey hadn't drawn the long bow any in describing what the +master mechanics had put over on him to haul his dump carts with. They +were engines of the vintage of James Watt, and Beezer's task in keeping +them within the semblance of even a very low coefficient of efficiency +was no sinecure. Harvey had six of these monstrosities, and, as he had +started his work at both ends at once, with a cutting at the eastern +base of the Devil's Slide and another at the summit, he divided them up +three to each camp; and it kept Beezer about as busy as a one-handed +paper-hanger with the hives, running up and down answering "first-aid" +hurry calls from first one and then the other. +</P> + +<P> +The way Beezer negotiated his mileage was simple. He'd swing the cab +or pilot of the first train along in the direction, up or down, that he +wanted to go—and that's how he happened to be standing that afternoon +on the track opposite the upper construction camp about a hundred yards +below the summit, when Number One climbed up the approach, poked her +nose over the top of the grade, crawling like a snail that's worn out +with exertion, and then began to gather speed a little, toboggan-like, +as she started down the Devil's Slide toward him. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer gave a look at her and rubbed his eyes. There wasn't anything +to be seen back of the oncoming big mountain racer's cab but a +swirling, white, vapory cloud. It was breezing pretty stiff through +the hills that day, and his first thought was that she was blowing from +a full head, and the wind was playing tricks with the escaping steam. +With the next look he gulped hard—the steam was coming from the +cab—not the dome. It was the 1016, MacAllister's engine, and when he +happened to go up or down on her he always chose the pilot instead of +the cab—Beezer never forced his society on any man. But this time he +let the pilot go by him—there was something wrong, and badly wrong at +that. The cab glass showed all misty white inside, and there was no +sign of MacAllister. The drivers were spinning, and the exhaust, +indicating a wide-flung throttle, was quickening into a rattle of +sharp, resonant barks as the cab came abreast of him. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer jumped for the gangway, caught the rail with one hand, clung +there an instant, and then the tools in his other hand dropped to the +ground, as, with a choking gasp, he covered his face, and fell back to +the ground himself. +</P> + +<P> +By the time he got his wits about him again the tender had gone by. +Then Beezer started to run, and his face was as white as the steam he +had stuck his head into in the empty cab. He dashed along beside the +track, along past the tender, past the gangway, past the thundering +drivers, and with every foot the 1016 and the Imperial Limited, Number +One, westbound, was hitting up the pace. When he got level with the +cylinder, it was as if he had come to a halt, though his lungs were +bursting, and he was straining with every pound that was in him. He +was barely gaining by the matter of inches, and in about another minute +he was due to lose by feet. But he nosed in over the tape in a dead +heat, flung himself sideways, and, with his fingers clutching at the +drawbar, landed, panting and pretty well all in, on the pilot. A +minute it took him to get his breath and balance, then he crawled to +the footplate, swung to the steam chest and from there to the running +board. +</P> + +<P> +Here, for the first time, Beezer got a view of things and a somewhat +more comprehensive realization of what he was up against, and his heart +went into his mouth and his mouth went dry. Far down below him in a +sheer drop to the base of the caņon wall wound the Glacier like a +silver thread; in front, a gray, sullen mass of rock loomed up dead +ahead, the right of way swerving sharply to the right as it skirted it +in a breath-taking curve; and with every second the 1016 and her +trailing string of coaches was plunging faster and faster down the +grade. The wind was already singing in his ears. There was a sudden +lurch, a shock, as she struck the curve. Beezer flung his arms around +the handrail and hung on grimly. She righted, found her wheel base +again, and darted like an arrow along the opening tangent. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer's face was whiter now than death itself. There were curves +without number ahead, curves to which that first was but child's play, +that even at their present speed would hurl them from the track and +send them crashing in splinters through the hideous depths into the +valley below. It was stop her, or death; death, sure, certain, +absolute and quick, for himself and every man, woman and child, from +colonist coach to the solid-mahogany, brass-railed Pullmans and +observation cars that rocked behind him. +</P> + +<P> +There was no getting into the cab through the gangway; his one glance +had told him that. There was only one other way, little better than a +chance, and he had taken it. Blue-lipped with fear—that glance into +the nothingness almost below his feet had shaken his nerve and turned +him sick and dizzy—Beezer, like a man clinging to a crag, edged along +the running board, gained the rear end, and, holding on tightly with +both hands, lifted his foot, and with a kick shattered the front +cab-glass; another kick and the window frame gave way, and, backing in +feet first, Beezer began to lower himself into the cab. +</P> + +<P> +Meanwhile, white-faced men stood at Spence's elbow in the despatchers' +office at Big Cloud. Some section hands had followed Number One out of +the Bend in a handcar, and had found MacAllister and his fireman about +two hundred yards apart on opposite sides of the right of way. Both +were unconscious. The section hands had picked them up, pumped madly +back to the Bend, and made their report. +</P> + +<P> +Carleton, leaning over Spence, never moved, only the muscles of his jaw +twitched; Regan, as he always did in times of stress, swore to himself +in a grumbling undertone. There was no other sound in the room save +the incessant click of the sender, as Spence frantically called the +construction camp at the summit of the Slide; there was a chance, one +in a thousand, that the section hands had got back to the Bend before +Number One had reached the top of the grade. +</P> + +<P> +Then, suddenly, the sounder broke, and Spence began to spell off the +words. +</P> + +<P> +"Number One passed here five minutes ago." +</P> + +<P> +Regan went down into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. +</P> + +<P> +"Wild," he whispered, and his whisper was like an awe-stricken sob. +"Running wild on the Devil's Slide. <I>No one in the cab</I>. Oh, my God!" +</P> + +<P> +There was a look on Carleton's face no words could describe—it was +gray, gray with a sickness that was a sickness of his soul; but his +words came crisp and clear, cold as steel, and without a tremor. +</P> + +<P> +"Clear the line, Spence. Get out the wrecking crew, and send the +callers for the doctors—that's all that's left for us to do." +</P> + +<P> +But while Big Cloud was making grim preparations for disaster, Beezer +in no less grim a way was averting it, and his salvation, together with +that of every soul aboard the train, came, in a measure at least, from +the very source wherein lay their danger—the speed. That, and the +fact that the pressure MacAllister had thought would drop before the +summit was reached, was at last exhausting itself. The cab was less +dense, and the speed whipping the wind through the now open window +helped a whole lot more, but it was still a swirling mass of vapor. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer lowered himself in, his foot touched the segment, and then found +the floor. The 1016 was rocking like a storm-tossed liner. Again +there came the sickening, deadly slew as she struck a curve, the +nauseating pause as she hung in air with whirring drivers. Beezer shut +his eyes and waited. There was a lurch, another and another, fast and +quick like a dog shaking itself from a cold plunge—she was still on +the right of way. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer wriggled over on his back now, and, with head hanging out over +the running board, groped with his hands for the levers. Around his +legs something warm and tight seemed to clinch and wrap itself. He +edged forward a little farther—his hand closed on the throttle and +flung it in—a fierce, agonizing pain shot through his arm as something +spurted upon it, withering it, blistering it. The fingers of his other +hand were clasped on the air latch and he began to check—then, unable +to endure it longer, he threw it wide. There was a terrific jolt, a +shock that keeled him over on his side as the brake-shoes locked, the +angry grind and crunch of the wheel tires, and the screech of skidding +drivers. +</P> + +<P> +He dragged himself out and crouched again on the running board. Behind +him, like a wriggling snake, the coaches swayed and writhed crazily, +swinging from side to side in drunken, reeling arcs. A deafening roar +of beating flanges and pounding trucks was in his ears—and shriller, +more piercing, the screams of the brake-shoes as they bit and held. He +turned his head and looked down the right of way, and his eyes held +there, riveted and fascinated. Two hundred yards ahead was the worst +twist on the Slide, where the jutting cliff of Old Piebald Mountain +stuck out over the precipice, and the track hugged around it in a +circle like a fly crawling around a wall. +</P> + +<P> +Beezer groaned and shut his eyes again. They say that in the presence +of expected death sometimes one thinks of a whole lot of things. +Engineer Beezer, in charge of Number One, the Imperial Limited, did +then; but mostly he was contrasting up the relative merits of a +workbench and a throttle, and there wasn't any doubt in Beezer's mind +about which he'd take if he ever got the chance to take anything again. +</P> + +<P> +When he opened his eyes Old Piebald Mountain was still ahead of +him—about ten feet ahead of him—and the pony truck was on the curve. +But they had stopped, and Dave Kinlock and a couple of mail clerks were +trying to tear his hands away from the death grip he'd got on the +handrail. It was a weak and shaken Beezer, a Beezer about as flabby as +a sack of flour, that they finally lifted down off the running board. +</P> + +<P> +There was nothing small about Regan—there never was. He came down on +the wrecking train, and, when he had had a look at the 1016 and had +heard Kinlock's story, he went back up to the construction camp, where +Beezer had been outfitted with leg and arm bandages. +</P> + +<P> +"Beezer," said he, "I didn't say all horse doctors wouldn't make +jockeys—what? You can have an engine any time you want one." +</P> + +<P> +Beezer shook his head slowly. +</P> + +<P> +"No," said he thoughtfully; "I guess I don't want one." +</P> + +<P> +Regan's jaw dropped, and his fat little face puckered up as he stared +at Beezer. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't want one!" he gasped. "Don't want one! After howling for one +for three months, now that you can have it, you don't want it! Say, +Beezer, what's the matter with you—h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +But there wasn't anything the matter with Beezer. He was just getting +convalescent, that's all. There's a whole lot of men like Beezer. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +X +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +THE RAT RIVER SPECIAL +</H4> + +<P> +This is Martin Bradley's story; an excerpt, if you will, from the pages +of railroading where strange and grim things are, where death and +laughter lock arms in the winking of an eye, and are written down as +though akin. There have been better men than Martin Bradley—and +worse. Measure him as you will, that is one matter; in the last +analysis frailty is a human heritage, and that is another. On the Hill +Division they called him a game man. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley was a fireman, a silent, taciturn chap. Not sullen or +surly—don't get that idea—more quiet than anything else, never much +of anything to say. When a laugh was going around Bradley could +appreciate the fun, and did; only his laugh seemed tempered somehow by +something behind it all. Not a wet blanket, not by any means—they +didn't understand him then, perhaps, didn't pretend to—he never +invited a confidence or gave one—but the boys would crowd up and make +room for Bradley any time, as they dragged at their pipes and swopped +yarns in the murk of the roundhouse at the midnight lunch hour, about +the time Bradley used to stroll in, snapping his fingers together +softly in that curious, absent-minded way he had of doing—for Bradley +was firing for Smithers then on the 582, that took the local freight, +west, out of Big Cloud in the small morning hours. +</P> + +<P> +Well set-up, jumper tucked in his overalls, the straps over husky +shoulders, thick through the chest, medium height, stocky almost, +steady black eyes, a clean-shaven, serious face, the black hair +grizzled a little and threading gray—that was Martin Bradley. A bit +old to be still firing, perhaps, but he had had to take his turn for +promotion with the rest of the men when he came to the Hill Division. +He'd have gone up in time, way up, to the best on the division, +probably, for Regan had him slated for an engine even then, only——But +we'll come to that in a moment; there's just a word or two to "clear" +the line before we have "rights" through to the terminal. +</P> + +<P> +Big Cloud in those days, which was shortly after the line was laid +through the Rockies, and the East and West were finally linked after +the stress of toil and hardship and bitter struggle was over, was a +pretty hard burg, pretty hard—a whole lot harder than it is to-day. +There was still a big transient population of about every nationality +on earth, for the road, just because they could operate it, wasn't +finished by a good deal, and construction camps were more numerous than +stations. Bridge gangs were still at work; temporary trestles were +being replaced with ones more permanent; there were cuts through the +gray of the mountain rock to be trimmed and barbered with dynamite; and +there were grades and approaches and endless things to struggle over; +and—well, Big Cloud was still the Mecca of the gamblers, the dive +keepers, and the purveyors of "red-eye," who had flocked there to feed +like vultures on the harvest of pay checks that were circling around. +It was a pretty hard place, Big Cloud—everything wide open—not much +of any law there in the far West in the shadow of the Rockies. It's +different to-day, of course; but that's the way it was then, when +Martin Bradley was firing on the Transcontinental. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley from the first boarded with the MacQuigans. That's how, +probably, he came to think more of young Reddy MacQuigan, who was a +wiper in the roundhouse, than he did of any of the rest of the railroad +crowd. Perhaps not altogether for young Reddy's sake; perhaps on +account of Mrs. MacQuigan, and particularly on account of old John +MacQuigan—who wasn't any good on earth—a sodden parasite on the +household when he was drunk, and an ugly brute when there wasn't any +money forthcoming from the products of Mrs. MacQuigan's ubiquitous +washtubs to get drunk with. For old John MacQuigan, between whom and +Bradley there existed an armed truce, each regarding the other mutually +as a necessary evil, had no job—for two reasons: first, because he +didn't want one; and, second, because no one would have given him one +if he had. Mrs. MacQuigan, a patient, faded-out little woman, tireless +because she had to be tireless, shouldered the burden, and hid her +shame as best she could from her neighbors. Reddy? No; he didn't help +out much—then. Reddy used to stray a little from the straight and +narrow himself—far enough so that it was pretty generally conceded +that Reddy held his job in the roundhouse on account of his mother, who +did Regan's washing; and, as a matter of cold fact, that was about the +truth of it; and, as a matter of cold fact, too, that was why the +big-hearted master mechanic liked Martin Bradley. +</P> + +<P> +"I dunno," Regan used to say, twiddling his thumbs over his fat paunch, +"I dunno; it's about the last place <I>I'd</I> want to board, with that +drunken pickings from the scrap heap around. The only decent thing old +John 'll ever do will be to die—h'm? About a week of it would finish +me. Bradley? Yes; he's hung on there quite a spell. Pretty good man, +Martin. I dunno what Mrs. MacQuigan would do without him. Guess +that's why he stays. I'm going to give Martin an engine one of these +days. That'll help out some. When? When his turn comes. First +chance I get. I can't poison anybody off to make room for him—can I?" +</P> + +<P> +And now just a single word more, while we're getting back the +"complete," to say that this had been going on for two or three years; +Martin Bradley boarding at the MacQuigans' and firing the 582; young +Reddy wiping in the roundhouse, and on the ragged edge of dismissal +every time the pay car came along; Mrs. MacQuigan at her washtubs; old +John leading his disreputable, gin-soaked life; Tommy Regan between the +devil of discipline and the deep blue sea of soft-heartedness anent the +MacQuigans' son and heir—and we're off, the tissue buttoned in our +reefer—off with a clean-swept track. +</P> + +<P> +It was pay day, an afternoon in the late fall, and, growing dusk, the +switch lights in the Big Cloud yards were already beginning to twinkle +red and white and green, as Martin Bradley, from the pay car platform, +his pay check in his pocket, swung himself to the ground and pushed his +way through a group of men clustered beside the car. He had caught +sight of Regan across the spur going into the roundhouse a moment +before, and he wanted a word with the master mechanic—nothing very +important—a requisition for an extra allowance of waste. And then, +amongst the crowd, he caught sight of some one else, and smiled a +little grimly. Old John MacQuigan, as he always did on pay days, was +hovering about first one, and then another, playing good fellow and +trying to ring himself in on the invitations that would be going around +presently when the whistle blew. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley, his smile thinning a little as old John, catching sight of him +in turn, sidled off, passed through the group, crossed the +turntable—and halted abruptly, just outside the big engine doors, as +Regan's voice came to him in an angry growl. +</P> + +<P> +"Now mind what I say, Reddy! Once more, and you're through—for keeps. +And that's my last word. Understand?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you needn't jump a fellow before he's done anything!" It was +Reddy MacQuigan, answering sullenly. +</P> + +<P> +There was silence for a moment; then Regan's voice again, pretty cold +and even now. +</P> + +<P> +"I dunno," he said. "I figure you must have been brought into the +world for something, but I dunno what it is. You're not to blame for +your father; but if I let a mother of mine, and nearing sixty years, +slave out the little time she's got left, I'd want to crawl out +somewhere amongst the buttes and make coyote meat of myself. Jump you +before you've done anything—eh!" The little master mechanic's voice +rose suddenly. "I saw you sneak uptown an hour ago when you left the +pay car—one drink for a start—h'm! Well, you put another on top of +it, and it'll be for a—finish! I'd do a lot for that fine old lady of +a mother of yours, and that's why I've taken the trouble to come over +here and warn you what'll happen if you put in the night you're heading +for. 'Tisn't because I can't run the roundhouse without you, my +bucko—mind that!" +</P> + +<P> +Bradley was snapping his fingers in his queer, nervous way. Reddy +MacQuigan made no answer; at least, Bradley did not hear any, but he +heard Regan moving toward the door. He had no wish to talk to the +master mechanic any more, not just at that moment anyhow, so he +crunched through the engine cinders to another door, entering the +roundhouse as Regan went out on the turntable and headed across the +tracks for the station. +</P> + +<P> +Two pits away, Reddy MacQuigan, with a black scowl on his face, leaned +against the steam chest of the 1004. Bradley, pretending not to see +him, swung through the gangway and into the cab of the 582. There, for +half an hour, he busied himself in an aimless fashion; but with an eye +out for the young wiper, as the latter moved about the roundhouse. +</P> + +<P> +The whistle was blowing and Reddy was pulling off his overalls, as +Bradley swung out of his cab again; and he was shading a match from the +wind over the bowl of his pipe just across the turntable, as Reddy came +out. He tossed away the match, puffed, and nodded at MacQuigan. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, Reddy," he said in his quiet way, and fell into step with the +boy. +</P> + +<P> +MacQuigan didn't answer. Bradley never spoke much, anyhow. They +crossed the tracks and started up Main Street in silence. Here, the +railroaders, in groups and twos and threes, filled the street; some +hurrying homeward; others dropping in through the swinging doors, not +infrequently located along the right of way, where gasoline lamps +flared out over the gambling hells, and the crash of tin-pan pianos, +mingled with laughter and shouting, came rolling out from the +dance-hall entrances. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley, with his eyes in front of him, walked along silently. Upon +MacQuigan's young face had settled the black scowl again; and it grew +blacker as he glanced, now and then, at the man beside him. Behind +them came a knot of his cronies—and some one called his name. +</P> + +<P> +MacQuigan halted suddenly. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, so long, Martin," he said gruffly. "I'll be up a little later." +</P> + +<P> +Bradley's hand went out and linked in the other's arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Better come on home, Reddy," he said, with one of his rare smiles. +</P> + +<P> +"Later," Reddy flung out. +</P> + +<P> +"Better make it now," said Bradley quietly. +</P> + +<P> +The group behind had come up with them now, and, crowding into Faro +Dave's place, paused a moment in the entrance to absorb the situation. +</P> + +<P> +"Be a good boy, Reddy, and do as you're told," one of them sang out. +</P> + +<P> +Reddy whirled on Bradley, the hot blood flushing his face. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish you'd mind your own blasted business!" he flared. "I'm blamed +good and sick of you tagging me. This isn't the first time. You make +me weary! The trouble with you is that you don't know anything but the +everlasting grouch you carry around. You're a funeral! You're a +tight-wad. Everybody says so. Nobody ever heard of you spending a +cent. Go on—beat it—leave me alone!" +</P> + +<P> +Bradley's face whitened a little, but the smile was still on his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"Better draw your fire, Reddy; there's no need of getting hot," he +said. "Come on home; you know what'll happen if you don't; and you +know what Regan told you back there in the roundhouse." +</P> + +<P> +"So you heard that, eh?" Reddy shot at him. "I thought you did; and +you thought you'd fool me by hanging around there, playing innocent, to +walk home with me, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +"I wasn't trying to fool you," Bradley answered; and his hand went now +to the wiper's shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"Let go!" snarled Reddy. "I'll go home when I feel like it!" +</P> + +<P> +Bradley's hand closed a little tighter. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't make a fool of yourself, Reddy," he said gravely. "You'll——" +</P> + +<P> +And that was all. MacQuigan wasn't much more than a boy, not much more +than that, and hot-headed—and his chums were looking on. He freed +himself from Bradley's hold—with a smash of his fist in Bradley's face. +</P> + +<P> +Fight? No; there wasn't any fight. There was a laugh—from old John +MacQuigan, who had been trailing the young bloods up the street. And +as Bradley, after staggering back from the unexpected blow, recovered +himself, Reddy MacQuigan, followed by old John, was disappearing into +Faro Dave's "El Dorado" in front of him. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley went home alone. +</P> + +<P> +Supper was ready—it was always ready, as everything else was where +little old Mrs. MacQuigan was concerned; and there were four plates on +the red-checkered tablecloth—as there always were—even on pay day! +Bradley sat down, with Mrs. MacQuigan opposite him. +</P> + +<P> +Not much to look at—Mrs. MacQuigan. A thin, sparse little woman in a +home-made black alpaca dress; the gray hair, thinning, brushed smooth +across her forehead; wrinkles in the patient face, a good many of them; +a hint of wistfulness in the black eyes, that weren't as bright as they +used to be; not very pretty hands, they were red and lumpy around the +knuckles. Not much to look at—just a little old woman, brave as God +Almighty makes them—just Mrs. MacQuigan. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley, uneasy, glancing at her furtively now and again, ate savagely, +without relish. There wasn't much said; nothing at all about old John +and young Reddy. Mrs. MacQuigan never asked a question—it was pay day. +</P> + +<P> +There wasn't much said until after the meal was over, and Bradley had +lighted his pipe and pushed back his chair; with Mrs. MacQuigan +lingering at the table, kind of wistfully it seemed, kind of listening, +kind of hanging back from putting away the dishes and taking the two +empty plates off the table—and then she smiled over at Bradley as +though there wasn't anything on her mind at all. +</P> + +<P> +"Faith, Martin," she said, "sure I don't know at all, at all, what I'd +be doing not seeing you around the house; but it's wondered I have +often enough you've not picked out some nice girl and made a home of +your own." +</P> + +<P> +The words in their suddenness came to Bradley with a shock; and, his +face strained, he stared queerly at Mrs. MacQuigan. +</P> + +<P> +A little startled, Mrs. MacQuigan half rose from her chair. +</P> + +<P> +"What is it, Martin?" she asked tremulously. +</P> + +<P> +For a moment more, Bradley stared at her. Strange that she should have +spoken like that to-night when there seemed more than ever a sort of +grim analogy between her life and his, that seemed like a bond to-night +drawing them closer—that seemed, somehow, to urge him to pour out his +heart to her—there was motherliness in the sweet old face that seemed +to draw him out of himself as no one else had for more years than he +cared to remember—as even she never had before. +</P> + +<P> +"What is it, Martin?" she asked again. +</P> + +<P> +And then Bradley smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"I've picked her out," he said, in a low voice. "I'm waiting for a +little girl that's promised some day to keep house for me." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Martin!" cried Mrs. MacQuigan excitedly. "And—and you never said +a word!" +</P> + +<P> +Bradley's hand dove into his inside pocket and came out with a +photograph—and the smile on his face now was full of pride. +</P> + +<P> +"Here's her picture," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Wait, Martin—wait till I get my spectacles!" exclaimed Mrs. +MacQuigan, all in a flutter; and, rising, she hurried over to the +little shelf in the corner. Then, adjusting the steel bows over her +ears, with little pats to smooth down her hair, she picked up the +photograph and stared at it—at the picture of a little tot of eight or +nine, at a merry, happy little face that smiled at her roguishly. +</P> + +<P> +"She's ten now, God bless her!" said Bradley simply. "That was taken +two years ago—so I haven't so long to wait, you see." +</P> + +<P> +"Why—why, Martin," stammered Mrs. MacQuigan, "sure you never said you +was married. And the wife, Martin, poor boy, she's—she's dead?" +</P> + +<P> +Bradley picked up the photograph and replaced it in his pocket—but the +smile now was gone. +</P> + +<P> +"No—I don't know—I never heard," he said. He walked over to the +window, pulled the shade and stared out, his back to Mrs. MacQuigan. +"She ditched me. I was on the Penn then—doing well. I had my engine +at twenty-five. I went bad for a bit. I'd have gone all the way if it +hadn't been for the kiddie. I'd have had more to answer for than I'd +want to have, blood, perhaps, if I'd stayed, so I pulled up stakes and +came out here." He turned again and came back from the window. "I +couldn't bring the kiddie, of course; it was no place for her. And I +couldn't leave her where she was to grow up with that in her life, for +she was too young then, thank God, to understand; so I'm giving her the +best my money'll buy in a girl's school back East, and"—his voice +broke a little—"and that's the little girl I'm waiting for, to make a +home for me—some time." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. MacQuigan's hands fumbled a little as she took off her spectacles +and laid them down—fumbled a little as she laid them on Bradley's +sleeve. +</P> + +<P> +"God be good to you, Martin," she whispered, and, picking up some +dishes, went hurriedly from the room. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley went back again and stood by the window, looking out, snapping +his fingers softly with that trick of his when any emotion was upon +him. Strange that he should have told his story to Mrs. MacQuigan +to-night! And yet he was glad he had told her; she probably would +never refer to it again—just understand. Yes; he was glad he had told +her. He hadn't intended to, of course. It had come almost +spontaneously, almost as though for some reason it was <I>meant</I> that he +should tell her, and—— +</P> + +<P> +Bradley's eyes fixed on a small boy's figure that came suddenly +streaking across the road and flung itself at the MacQuigans' little +front gate; then the gate swung, and the boy came rushing up the yard. +Bradley thought he recognized the figure as one of the call boys, and a +call boy running like that was always and ever a harbinger of trouble. +Instinctively he glanced back into the room. Mrs. MacQuigan was out in +the kitchen. Bradley stepped quickly into the hall, and reached the +front door as the boy began to pound a tattoo with his fists on the +panels. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley jerked the door open. +</P> + +<P> +"What's wrong?" he demanded tersely. +</P> + +<P> +The light from the hall was on the boy now—and his eyes were popping. +</P> + +<P> +"Say," he panted, in a scared way, "say, one of Reddy's friends sent +me. There's a wild row on at Faro Dave's. Reddy's raisin' the roof, +an'——" +</P> + +<P> +Bradley's hand closed over the youngster's mouth. In answer to the +knock, Mrs. MacQuigan was hurrying down the hall. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter, Martin?" she questioned nervously, looking from +Bradley to the boy and back again to Bradley. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing," said Bradley reassuringly. "I'm wanted down at the +roundhouse to go out with a special." He gave the boy a significant +push gatewards. "Go on, bub," he said. "I'll be right along." +</P> + +<P> +Bradley went back into the house, picked up his cap, and, with a cheery +good-night to Mrs. MacQuigan, started out again. He walked briskly to +the gate and along past the picket fence—Mrs. MacQuigan had the shade +drawn back, and was watching him from the window—and then, hidden by +the Coussirats' cottage next door, he broke into a run. +</P> + +<P> +It wasn't far—distances weren't great in Big Cloud in those days, +aren't now, for that matter—and in less than two minutes Bradley had +Faro Dave's "El Dorado" in sight down Main Street—and his face set +hard. He wasn't the only one that was running; men were racing from +every direction; some coming up the street; others, he passed, who +shouted at him, and to whom he paid no attention. In a subconscious +way he counted a dozen figures dart in through the swinging doors of +the "El Dorado" from the street—news of a row travels fast. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley burst through the doors, still on the run—and brought up at a +dead halt against a solidly packed mass of humanity; Polacks and Swedes +and Hungarians from the construction gangs; a scattering of railroad +men in the rear; and more than a sprinkling of the harder element +gathered from all over town, the hangers-on, the sharpers, and the card +men, the leeches, the ilk of Faro Dave who ran the place, and who +seemed to be intent on maintaining a blockade at the far end of the +barroom. +</P> + +<P> +The place was jammed, everybody craning their necks toward the door of +the back room, where Faro Dave ran his stud, faro and roulette layouts; +and from there, over the shuffling feet of the crowding men in the bar, +came a snarl of voices—amongst them, Reddy's, screaming out in drunken +fury, incoherently. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley, without ceremony, pushed into the crowd, and the foreigners +made way for him the best they could. Then he commenced to shoulder +through the sort of self-constituted guard of sympathizers with the +house. One of these tried to block his way more effectually. +</P> + +<P> +"You'd better keep your hands off, whoever you are," the man threw at +him. "The young fool's been putting the place on the rough ever since +he came in here. All Dave wants to do is put him out of the back door, +and——" +</P> + +<P> +"Thash the boy, Reddy! Don't lesh him bluff you—saw him change cards +m'self. Damn thief—damn cheat—thash the boy, Reddy!" It was old +John MacQuigan's voice, from the other room, high-pitched, +clutter-tongued, drunken. +</P> + +<P> +Then a voice, cold, with a sneer, and a ring in the sneer that there +was no mistaking—Faro Dave's voice: +</P> + +<P> +"You make a move, and I'll drop you quicker'n——" +</P> + +<P> +Bradley's arms swept out with a quick, fierce movement, hurling the man +who tried to block him out of the way; and, fighting now, ramming with +body and shoulders, throwing those in front of him to right and left, +he half fell, half flung himself finally through the doorway into the +room beyond—too late. +</P> + +<P> +"Thash the boy, Reddy!"—it was old John's maudlin voice again. "Thash +the——" +</P> + +<P> +The picture seared itself into Bradley's brain, lightning-quick, +instantaneous, but vivid in every detail, as he ran: The little group +of men, three or four, who had been sitting at the game probably, +seeking cover in the far corner; Reddy MacQuigan, swaying a little, +standing before a somewhat flimsy green-baized card table; old John, +too far gone to stand upright alone, leaning against the wall behind +Reddy; Faro Dave, an ugly white in his face, an uglier revolver in his +hand, standing, facing Reddy across the table; the quick forward lunge +from Reddy, the crash of the table as the boy hurled it to the floor +and flung himself toward the gambler; the roar of a revolver shot, the +flash of the short-tongued flame; a choking scream; another shot, the +tinkle of glass as the bullet shattered the ceiling lamp; then +blackness—all but a dull glow filtering in through the barroom door, +that for the first instant in the sudden contrast gave no light at all. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley, before he could recover himself, pitched over a tangled mass +of wrecked tables—over that and a man's body. Somebody ran through +the room, and the back door slammed. There were shouts now, and +yells—a chorus of them from the barroom. Some one bawled for a light. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley got to his knees, and, reaching to raise the boy, wounded or +killed as he believed, found his throat suddenly caught in a vicious +grasp—and Reddy's snarling laugh was in his ears. +</P> + +<P> +"Let go!" Bradley choked. "Let go, Reddy. It's me—Martin." +</P> + +<P> +Reddy's hands fell. +</P> + +<P> +"Martin, eh?" he said thickly. "Thought it was—hic—that——" +</P> + +<P> +Reddy's voice sort of trailed off. They were bringing lamps into the +room now, holding them up high to get a comprehensive view of +things—and the light fell on the farther wall. Reddy was staring at +it, his eyes slowly dilating, his jaw beginning to hang weakly. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley glanced over his shoulder. Old John, as though he had slid +down the wall, as though his feet had slipped out from under him, sat +on the floor, legs straight out in front of him, shoulders against the +wall and sagged a little to one side, a sort of ironic jeer on the +blotched features, a little red stream trickling down from his right +temple—dead. +</P> + +<P> +Not a pretty sight? No—perhaps not. But old John never was a pretty +sight. He'd gone out the way he'd lived—that's all. +</P> + +<P> +It was Martin Bradley who reached him first, and the crowd hung back +while he bent over the other, hung back and made way for Reddy, who +came unsteadily across the room—not from drink now, the boy's +gait—the drink was out of him—he was weak. There was horror in the +young wiper's eyes, and a white, awful misery in his face. +</P> + +<P> +A silence fell. Not a man spoke. They looked from father to son. The +room was filling up now—but they came on tiptoe. Gamblers, most of +them, and pretty rough, pretty hard cases, and life held light—but in +that room that night they only looked from father to son, the oaths +gone from their lips, sobered, their faces sort of gray and stunned. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley, from bending over the dead man, straightened up. +</P> + +<P> +Reddy MacQuigan, with little jabs of his tongue, wet his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"The old man's gone, ain't he?" he said in a queer, lifeless way. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Bradley simply. +</P> + +<P> +MacQuigan looked around the circle sort of mechanically, sort of +unseeingly—then at the form on the floor. Then he spoke again, almost +as though he were talking to himself. +</P> + +<P> +"Might just as well have been me that fired the shot," he whispered, +nodding his head. "I'm to blame—ain't I? An' I guess—I guess I've +finished the old lady, too." He looked around the circle again, then +his hands kind of wriggled up to his temples—and before Bradley could +spring to catch him, he went down in a heap on the floor. +</P> + +<P> +MacQuigan wasn't much more than a boy, not much more than that—but old +enough in another way. What he went through that night and in the days +that followed was between MacQuigan and his God. Life makes strange +meeting points sometimes, and sometimes the running orders are hard to +understand, and sometimes it looks like disaster quick and absolute, +with everything in the ditch, and the right of way a tangled ruin—and +yet when morning breaks there is no call for the wrecking crew, and it +comes to you deep down inside somewhere that it's the Great Despatcher +who's been sitting in on the night trick. +</P> + +<P> +Reddy MacQuigan went back to the roundhouse a different MacQuigan than +he had left it—sort of older, quieter, more serious—and the days went +by, a month or two of them. +</P> + +<P> +Regan, with a sort of inward satisfaction and some complacency, tugged +at his scraggly brown mustache, and summed it up pretty well. +</P> + +<P> +"Did I not say," said Regan, "that the only decent thing old John would +ever do would be to die? H'm? Well, then, I was right, wasn't I? +Look at young Reddy! Straight as a string—and taking care of the old +lady now. No; I ain't getting my shirts starched the way Mrs. +MacQuigan used to starch them—but no matter. Mrs. MacQuigan isn't +taking in washing any more, God bless her! I guess Reddy got it handed +to him pretty straight on the carpet that night. I'll have him pulling +a throttle one of these days—what?" +</P> + +<P> +Bradley? Yes; this is Martin Bradley's story—not Reddy MacQuigan's. +But Reddy had his part in it—had running orders to make one more of +those strange meeting points fixed by the Great Despatcher that we were +speaking about a minute ago. +</P> + +<P> +It was three months to the day from old John MacQuigan's death that +Bradley, in from a run, found a letter waiting for him up at Mrs. +MacQuigan's—and went down under it like a felled ox! Not the big +thing to do? Well, perhaps not—all that he cared for in life, +everything that he lived for, everything that had kept him straight +since his trouble years ago, snatched from him without a moment's +warning—that was all. Another man might not have lost his grip—or he +might. Bradley lost his—for a little while—but they call him to-day +a game man on the Hill Division. +</P> + +<P> +White-faced, not quite understanding himself, in a queer sort of +groping way, Bradley, in his flood of bitter misery, told Mrs. +MacQuigan, who had watched him open the letter—told her that his +little housekeeper, as he had come to call the kiddie, was dead. Not +even a chance to see her—an accident—the letter from the lawyers who +did his business, transmitting the news received from the school +authorities who knew only the lawyers as the principals—a letter, +trying to break the news in a softer way than a telegram would have +done, since Bradley was too far away to get back East in time, anyhow. +</P> + +<P> +And Mrs. MacQuigan put her arms around him, and, understanding as only +her mother's heart could understand, tried to comfort him, while the +tears rained down the sweet old face. But Bradley's eyes were dry. +With his elbows on the table, holding his chin in his hands, his face +like stone, he stared at the letter he had spread out on the red +checkered cloth—stared for a long time at that, and at the little +photograph he had taken from his pocket. +</P> + +<P> +"Martin, boy," pleaded Mrs. MacQuigan, and her hand brushed back the +hair from his forehead, "Martin, boy, don't take it like that." +</P> + +<P> +And then Bradley turned and looked at her—not a word—only a bitter +laugh—and picked up his letter and the picture and went out. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley went up on the 582 with the local freight, west, that night, +and there was a dare-devil laugh in his heart and a mechanical sense of +existence in his soul. And in the cab that night, deep in the +mountains, Bradley lost his grip. It seemed to sweep him in a sudden, +overwhelming surge; and, with the door swung wide, the cab leaping into +fiery red, the sweat beads trickling down his face that was white in a +curious way where the skin showed through for all the grime and +perspiration, he lurched and snatched at his engineer's arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Life's a hell of a thing, ain't it, Smithers?" he bawled over the roar +of the train and the swirl of the wind, wagging his head and shaking +imperatively at Smithers' arm. +</P> + +<P> +Smithers, a fussy little man, with more nerves than are good for an +engineer, turned, stared, caught a something in the fireman's face—and +tried to edge a little farther over on his seat. In the red, +flickering glare, Bradley's eyes had a look in them that wasn't sane, +and his figure, swaying with the heave of the cab, seemed to shoot back +and forth uncannily, grotesquely, in and out of the shadows. +</P> + +<P> +"Martin, for God's sake, Martin," gasped the engineer, "what's wrong +with you?" +</P> + +<P> +"You heard what I said," shouted Bradley, a sullen note in his voice, +gripping the engineer's arm still harder. "That's what it is, ain't +it? Why don't you answer?" +</P> + +<P> +Smithers, frightened now, stared mutely. The headlight shot suddenly +from the glittering ribbons of steel far out into nothingness, flinging +a filmy ray across a caņon's valley, and mechanically Smithers checked +a little as they swung the curve. Then, with a deafening roar of +thunder racketing through the mountains, they swept into a cut, the +rock walls towering high on either side—and over the din Bradley's +voice screamed again—and again he shook Smithers' arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Ain't it? D'ye hear—ain't it? Say—ain't it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Y-yes," stammered Smithers weakly, with a gulp. +</P> + +<P> +And then Bradley laughed—queerly. +</P> + +<P> +"You're a damn fool, Smithers!" he flung out, with a savage jeer. +"What do you know about it!" And throwing the engineer's arm from him, +his shovel clanged and clanged again, as into the red maw before him he +shot the coal. +</P> + +<P> +Smithers was scared. Bradley never said another word after that—just +kept to his own side of the cab, hugging his seat, staring through the +cab glass ahead, chin down on his breast, pulling the door at +intervals, firing at intervals like an automaton, then back to his seat +again. Smithers was scared. +</P> + +<P> +At Elk River, the end of the local run, Smithers told the train crew +about it, and they laughed at him, and looked around to find out what +Martin Bradley had to say about it—but Bradley wasn't in sight. +</P> + +<P> +Not much of a place, Elk River, not big enough for one to go anywhere +without the whole population knowing it; and it wasn't long before they +knew where Bradley was. The local made a two hours' lay-over there +before starting back for Big Cloud; and Martin Bradley spent most of it +in Kelly's place, a stone's throw from, the station. Not drinking +much, a glass or two all told, sitting most of the time staring out of +the window—not drinking much—getting the <I>taste</I> of it that he hadn't +known for a matter of many years. Two glasses, perhaps three, that was +all—but he left Kelly's for the run back with a flask in his pocket. +</P> + +<P> +It was the flask that did it, not Smithers. Smithers was frightened at +his silent fireman tippling over his shovel, good and frightened before +he got to Big Cloud, and Smithers did not understand; but Smithers, for +all that, wasn't the man to throw a mate down cold. Neither was +Bradley himself bad enough to have aroused any suspicion. It was the +flask that did it. +</P> + +<P> +They made Big Cloud on the dot that morning—11.26. And in the +roundhouse, as Bradley stepped out through the gangway, his overalls +caught on the hasp of the tool-box on the tender, and the jerk sent the +flask flying into splinters on the floor—at Regan's feet. +</P> + +<P> +The fat little master mechanic, on his morning round of inspection, +halted, stared in amazement at the broken glass and trickling beverage, +got a whiff of the raw spirit, and blinked at Bradley, who, by this +time, had reached the ground. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the meaning of this?" demanded Regan, nonplussed. "Not you, +Bradley—on the run?" +</P> + +<P> +Bradley did not answer. He was regarding the master mechanic with a +half smile—not a pleasant one—more a defiant curl of his lips. +</P> + +<P> +Smithers, discreetly attempting to make his escape through the opposite +gangway, caught Regan's attention. +</P> + +<P> +"Here, you, Smithers," Regan called peremptorily, "come——" +</P> + +<P> +Then Bradley spoke, cutting in roughly. +</P> + +<P> +"Leave Smithers out of it," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Regan stared for another moment; then took a quick step forward, close +up to Bradley—and got the fireman's breath. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley shoved him away insolently. +</P> + +<P> +It was a minute before Regan spoke. He liked Bradley and always had; +but from the soles of his feet up to the crown of his head, Regan, +first and last, was a railroad man. And Regan knew but one creed. +Other men might drink and play the fool and be forgiven and trusted +again, a wiper, a shop hand, a brakeman, perhaps, or any one of the +train crew, but a man in the cab of an engine—<I>never</I>. Reasons, +excuses, contributory causes, counted not at all—they were not asked +for—they did not exist. The fact alone stood—as the fact. It was a +minute before Regan spoke, and then he didn't say much, just a word or +two without raising his voice, before he turned on his heel and walked +out of the roundhouse. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sorry for this, Bradley," he said. "You're the last man I +expected it from. You know the rules. You've fired your last run on +this road. You're out." +</P> + +<P> +But Regan might have been making some comment on the weather for all +the concern it appeared to give Bradley. He stood leaning against the +tender, snapping his fingers in his queer way, silent, hard-faced, his +eyes far away from his immediate surroundings. Smithers, a wiper or +two, Reddy MacQuigan amongst them, clustered around him after Regan had +gone; but Bradley paid no attention to them, answered none of their +questions or comments; and after a little while pushed himself through +them and went out of the roundhouse. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley didn't go home that day; but Reddy MacQuigan did—at the noon +hour. That's how Mrs. MacQuigan got it. Mrs. MacQuigan did not wait +to wash up the dishes. She put on the little old-fashioned poke bonnet +that she had worn for as many seasons as Big Cloud could remember, and +started out to find Regan. She ran the master mechanic to earth on the +station platform, and opened up on him, fluttering, anxious, and +distressed. +</P> + +<P> +"Sure, Regan," she faltered, "you did not mean it when you fired Martin +this morning—not for good." +</P> + +<P> +Regan pulled at his mustache and looked at her—and shook his head at +her reprovingly. +</P> + +<P> +"I meant it, Mrs. MacQuigan," he said kindly. "You must know that. It +will do neither of us any good to talk about it. I wouldn't have let +him out if I could have helped it." +</P> + +<P> +"Then listen here, Regan," she pleaded. "Listen to the why of it, that +'tis only me who knows." +</P> + +<P> +And Regan listened—and the story lost nothing in the telling because +the faded eyes were wet, and the wrinkled lips quivered sometimes, and +would not form the words. +</P> + +<P> +At the end, big-hearted Regan reached into his back pocket for his +plug, met his teeth in it, wrenched a piece away without looking at +her, and cleared his throat—but he still shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +"It's no use you talking, Mrs. MacQuigan," he said gruffly, to hide his +emotion. "I'd fire any man on earth, 'tis no matter the who or why, +for drinking in the cab on a run." +</P> + +<P> +"But, Regan," she begged, catching at his arm, "he'll be leaving Big +Cloud with his job gone." +</P> + +<P> +"And what then?" said Regan. "Mabbe 'twould be the best thing—h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, Regan," she said, and her voice caught a little, "sure, 'twould be +the end of Martin, don't you see? 'Tis me that knows him, and 'twill +not last long, the spell, only till the worst of it is over—Martin is +too fine for that, Regan. If I can keep him by me, Regan, d'ye mind? +If he goes away where there's nobody to give him a thought +he'll—he'll—ah, Regan, faith, Regan, 'tis a lot you've thought of +Martin Bradley the same as me." +</P> + +<P> +Regan examined a crack in the planking of the station platform +minutely, while Mrs. MacQuigan held tenaciously to his coat sleeve. +</P> + +<P> +"I dunno," said Regan heavily. "I dunno. Mabbe I'll——" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, Regan!" she cried happily. "I knew 'twas——" +</P> + +<P> +"Not in a cab!" interposed Regan hastily. "Not if he was the president +of the road. But I'll see, Mrs. MacQuigan, I'll see." +</P> + +<P> +And Regan saw—Thornley, the trainmaster. And after Thornley, he saw +Reddy MacQuigan in the roundhouse. +</P> + +<P> +"Reddy," said he, with a growl that wasn't real, "there's a vacancy in +the engine crews—h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +"Martin's?" said Reddy quickly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Regan. "Do you want it?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Reddy MacQuigan shortly. +</P> + +<P> +"Good boy," said the fat little master mechanic. "Then I'll give it to +you just the same. Martin's through in here; but he'll get a chance +braking for Thornley. You'll run spare to begin with, and"—as Reddy +stared a little numbly—"don't break your neck thanking me. Thank +yourself for turning into a man. Your mother's a fine woman, Reddy. I +guess you're beginning to find that out too—h'm?" +</P> + +<P> +So Reddy MacQuigan went to firing where Martin Bradley had fired +before, and his pay went up; and Bradley—no, don't get that +idea—whatever else he may have done, Martin Bradley didn't make a +beast of himself. Bradley took the job they offered him, neither +gratefully nor ungratefully, took it with that spirit of utter +indifference for anything and everything that seemed to have laid hold +of him and got him in its grip—and off duty he spent most of his time +in the emporiums along Main Street. He drank some, but never enough to +snow him under; it was excitement that he seemed to crave, +forgetfulness in anything that would absorb him for the moment. It was +not drink so much; it was the faro tables and the roulette and the stud +poker that, crooked from the drop of the hat, claimed him and cleaned +him out night after night—all except Mrs. MacQuigan's board money, +that they never got away from, him. Mrs. MacQuigan got that as +regularly now that she didn't need it with Reddy to look after her as +she had when she was practically dependent upon Bradley for it all. +</P> + +<P> +Silent, grim, taciturn always, more so now than ever, Bradley went his +way; indifferent to Regan when Regan buttonholed him; indifferent to +Thornley and his threats of dismissal, meant to jerk Bradley into the +straight; indifferent to every mortal thing on earth. And the Hill +Division, with Regan leading, shook its head. There wasn't a man but +knew the story, and, big under the greasy jumpers and the oil-soaked +shirts, they never judged him; but Bradley's eyes held no invitation +for companionship, so they left him pretty much alone. +</P> + +<P> +"I dunno," said Regan, tugging at his mustache, twiddling with his +thumbs over his paunch, "I dunno—looks like the scrap heap at the end +of the run—h'm? I dunno." +</P> + +<P> +But Mrs. MacQuigan said no. +</P> + +<P> +"Wait," said she, with her patient smile. "It's me that knows Martin. +It's a sore, hurt heart the boy has now; but you wait and see—I'll win +him through. It's proud yet you'll be to take your hats off to Martin +Bradley!" +</P> + +<P> +Martin Bradley—a game man—that's what they call him now. Mrs. +MacQuigan was right—wasn't she? Not perhaps just in the way she +thought she was—but right for all that. Call it luck or chance if you +like, something more than that if it strikes you that way—but an +accident in the yards one night, a month after Bradley had lost his +engine, put one of the train crew of the Rat River Special out of +commission with a torn hand, and sent a call boy streaking uptown for a +substitute. Call it luck if you like, that the work train with a +hybrid gang of a hundred-odd Polacks, Armenians, and Swedes, cooped up +in a string of box cars converted into bunk houses, mess houses and +commissariat, a window or two in them to take the curse off, and end +doors connecting them for the sake of sociability, pulled out for the +new Rat River trestle work with Reddy MacQuigan handling the shovel end +of it for Bull Coussirat, who had been promoted in the cab—and Bradley +as the substitute brakeman on the front end. Well, maybe it was +luck—but that's not what they call it on the Hill Division. +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps no one quite understood Bradley, even at the end, except Mrs. +MacQuigan; and possibly even she didn't get it all. Inconsistent, to +put it mildly, that a man like Bradley would have let go at all? Well, +it's an easy matter and a very human one, to judge another from the +safe vantage ground of distance—isn't it? Some men take a thing one +way, and some another; and in some the feelings take deeper root than +in others—and find their expression in a different way. Ditched from +the start, Bradley hadn't much to cling to, had he—only the baby girl +he had dreamed about on the runs at night; only the little tot he had +slaved for, who some day was to make a home for him? But about the Rat +River Special—— +</P> + +<P> +It was midnight when they pulled out of Big Cloud; and Bradley, in the +caboose, glanced at Heney's tissue, which, as a matter of form, the +conductor gave him to read. The Special was to run twenty minutes +behind No. 17, the westbound mail train, and make a meeting point with +the through freight, No. 84, eastbound, at The Forks. The despatchers +had seized the propitious moment to send the rolling camp through in +the quiet hours of traffic, with an eye out to getting the foreigners +promptly on the job in the morning for fear they might draw an extra +hour or two of time—without working for it! The Special was due to +make Rat River at four o'clock. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley handed back the order without comment, picked up his lantern, +and started for the door. +</P> + +<P> +"No need of going forward to-night," said Heney, laying his arm on +Bradley's arm. "We've only a short train, a dozen cars, and we can +watch it well enough from the cupola. It's damn cold out there." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I guess it's all right, Heney," Bradley answered—and went out +through the door. +</P> + +<P> +There weren't any platforms to the box cars, just small end doors. +Once in camp, and stationary on a siding, the cars would be connected +up with little wooden gangways, you understand? Bradley, from the +platform of the caboose, stepped across the buffer, and made his way +through several cars. One was pretty much like another; a stove going, +and stuffy hot; the foreigners stretched out in their bunks, some of +them; some of them playing cards on the floor; some asleep; some +quarrelling, chattering, jabbering; a hard looking lot for the most +part, black-visaged, scowling, unshaven, gold circlets dangling in +their ears—bar the Swedes. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley worked along with scarcely more than a glance at the occupants, +until, in the fourth car, he halted suddenly and shoved his lamp into +the face of a giant of a man, who squatted in the corner, sullen and +apart, with muttering lips. +</P> + +<P> +"What's wrong with you?" he demanded brusquely. +</P> + +<P> +The man drew back with a growl that was like a beast's, lips curling +back over the teeth. Bradley stared at him coolly, then turned +inquiringly to the crowd in the car. He was greeted with a burst of +unintelligible, polyglot words, and spontaneous, excitable +gesticulations. Bradley shrugged his shoulders, and slammed the door +behind him. +</P> + +<P> +Outside on the buffer, he reached for the ladder, swung himself up the +iron rungs to the top of the car, and, with his lantern hooked in his +arm, sat down on the footboard, bracing himself against the brake +wheel, and buttoned his reefer—there was another night—to +think—ahead of him. +</P> + +<P> +To think—if he could only forget! It was that fearful sense of +impotency—impotency—impotency. It seemed to laugh and jeer and mock +at him. It seemed to make a plaything of this father love of his. +There was nothing—nothing he could do to bring her back—that was +it—nothing! Soul, life, mind and body, he would have given them all +to have saved her—would give them now to bring her back—and there was +only this ghastly impotency. It seemed at times that it would drive +him mad—and he could not forget. And then the bitter, crushing grief; +the rebellion, fierce, ungovernable, that his <I>all</I> should have been +taken from him, that the years he had planned should be turned to +nothing but grinning mockery; and then that raging sense of impotency +again, that rocked his turbulent soul as in an angry, storm-tossed sea. +</P> + +<P> +Time passed, and he sat there motionless, save for the jolting of the +train that bumped him this way and that against the brake wheel. They +were into the mountains now; and the snowy summits, moon-touched, +reared themselves in white, grotesque, fanciful shapes, and seemed, +cold in their beauty, to bring an added chill to the frosty night. +Ahead, far ahead, the headlight's ray swept now the track, now the gray +rock side, now, softly green, a clump of pines, as the right of way +curved and twisted and turned; now, slowing up a grade, the heavy, +growling bark of the exhaust came with long intervals between, and now, +on the level, it was quick as the tattoo of a snare drum, with the +short stack belching a myriad fiery sparks insolently skyward in a +steady stream; around him was the sweep of the wind, the roar of the +train, the pound of the trucks beating the fish-plates, the sway, the +jerk, the recovery of the slewing cars, and, curiously, the deep, +brooding silence of the mountains, frowning, it seemed, at this +sacrilege of noise; behind, showed the yellow glimmer from the caboose, +the dark, indistinct outline of a watching figure in the cupola. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly, snatching at the brake wheel to help him up, Bradley sprang +erect. From directly underneath his feet came a strange, confused, +muffled sound, like a rush of men from one end of the car to the other. +Then there broke a perfect bedlam of cries, yells, shouts and +screams—and then a revolver shot. +</P> + +<P> +In an instant Bradley was scrambling down the ladder to +investigate—they could not hear the row, whatever it was, in the +caboose—and in another he had kicked the car door open and plunged +inside. A faint, bluish haze of smoke undulated in the air, creeping +to the roof of the car; and there was the acrid smell of powder—but +there was no sign of a fight, no man, killed or wounded, sprawling on +the floor. But the twenty men who filled the car were crouched in +groups and singly against the car sides; or sat upright in their bunks, +their faces white, frightened—only their volubility unchecked, for all +screamed and talked and waved their arms at once. +</P> + +<P> +They made a rush for Bradley, explaining in half a dozen languages what +had happened. Bradley pushed them roughly away from him. +</P> + +<P> +"Speak English!" he snapped. "What's wrong here? Can't any of you +speak English?" +</P> + +<P> +An Italian grabbed his arm and pointed through the door Bradley had +left open behind him to the next car forward. "Pietro!" he shouted out +wildly. "Gotta da craze—mad—gotta da gun!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, go on!" prodded Bradley. "He's run into the next car. I +understand that—but what happened here? Who's Pietro?" +</P> + +<P> +But the man's knowledge, like his English, was limited. He did not +know much—Pietro was not one of them—Pietro had come only that +morning to Big Cloud from the East—Pietro had gone suddenly mad—no +man had done anything to make Pietro mad. +</P> + +<P> +And then suddenly into Bradley's mind leaped the story that he had read +in the papers a few days before of an Italian, a homicidal maniac, who +had escaped from an asylum somewhere East, and had disappeared. The +description of the man, as he remembered it, particularly the great +size of the man, tallied, now that he thought of it, with the fellow +who had been in the car when he had first passed through. He glanced +quickly around—the man was gone. So that was Pietro! +</P> + +<P> +Bradley started on the run for the next car ahead; and, subconsciously, +as he ran, he felt the speed of the train quicken. But that was +natural enough—they had been crawling to the summit of Mitre Peak, +and, over that now, before them lay a four-percent grade to the level +below, one of the nastiest bits of track on the division, curves all +the way—only Bull Coussirat was hitting it up pretty hard for a +starter. +</P> + +<P> +In the next car the same scene was repeated—the smell of powder smoke, +the blue haze hanging listless near the roof out of the air currents; +the crouched, terrified foreigners, one with a broken wrist, dangling, +where a bullet had shattered it. Pietro, Berserker fashion, was +shooting his way through the train. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley went forward more cautiously now, more warily. Strange the way +the speed was quickening! The cars were rocking now with short, +vicious slews. He thought he heard a shout from the track-side +without, but he could not be sure of that. +</P> + +<P> +Through the next car and the next he went, trailing the maniac; and +then he started to run again. Stumbling feet, trying to hold their +footing, came to him from the top of the car. With every instant now +the speed of the train was increasing—past the limit of safety—past +the point where he would have hesitated to use the emergency brakes, if +there had been any to use—a luxury as yet extended only to the +passenger equipment in those days. The Polacks, the Armenians, and the +Swedes were beginning to yell with another terror, at the frantic +pitching of the cars, making a wild, unearthly chorus that echoed up +and down the length of the train. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley's brain was working quickly now. It wasn't only this madman +that he was chasing fruitlessly. There must be something wrong, more +serious still, in the engine cab—that was Heney, and Carrol, the other +brakeman, who had run along the top. +</P> + +<P> +Bradley dashed through the door, and, between the cars, jumped for the +ladder and swarmed up—the globe of his lamp in a sudden slew shivered +against the car roof, and the flame went out in a puff. He flung the +thing from him; and, with arms wide outspread for balance on his +reeling foothold, ran, staggered, stumbled, recovered himself, and sped +on again, springing from car to car, up the string of them, to where +the red flare, leaping from the open fire box in the cab ahead, +silhouetted two figures snatching for their hold at the brake-wheel on +the front end of the forward car—Heney and Carrol. And as Bradley +ran, a thin stream of flame spurted upward from the cab, and there came +faintly, almost lost in the thunder of the train, the bark of a +revolver shot—and the two figures, ducking instantly, crouched lower. +</P> + +<P> +And then Bradley stood beside the others; and Heney, that no man ever +called a coward, clutched at Martin Bradley and shouted in his ear: +</P> + +<P> +"For God's sake, Martin, what'll we do? The throttle was wide at the +top of the grade when he threw Bull Coussirat off. We saw it from the +cupola. It's certain death to make a move for him!" +</P> + +<P> +But Bradley made no answer. Tight-lipped, he was staring down into the +cab; and a livid face stared back at him—the face of the man that he +had stopped to look at as they had pulled out of Big Cloud—Pietro—the +face, hideously contorted, of a maniac. And on the floor of the cab, +stretched out, wriggling spasmodically, Reddy MacQuigan lay upon his +back; and Pietro half knelt upon him, clutching with one hand at the +boy's throat, pointing a revolver with the other at the roof of the car. +</P> + +<P> +Wild, crazy fast now, the speed was; the engine dancing ahead; the cars +wriggling behind; the yellow glimmer of the caboose shooting this way +and that like a pursuing phantom will-o'-the-wisp; and from beneath the +roofs of the cars rose that muffled, never-ending scream of terror from +the Polacks, the Armenians and the Swedes—rose, too, from the roofs of +the cars themselves, for some were climbing there. It was disaster +absolute and certain not a mile ahead where the track in a short, +murderous curve hugged Bald Eagle Peak, with the caņon dropping a +thousand feet sheer down from the right of way, disaster there—if they +ever got that far! +</P> + +<P> +But Bradley, though he knew it well enough from a hundred runs, was not +thinking of that. In a calm, strange way there seemed to come one more +analogy between Mrs. MacQuigan's life and his—this human thing that +looked like a gorilla was choking her son to death, the son that was +making a home for her as she had dreamed he would do some day, the son +that was all she had to depend upon. Mrs. MacQuigan's son—his little +girl. Both out! +</P> + +<P> +There seemed to flash before him the picture of the gray head bowed +upon the red-checkered tablecloth in the little dining room, the frail +shoulders shaking with the same grief that he was drinking now to the +dregs, the same grief that he would have sold his soul to avert—only +he had been impotent—impotent. But he was not impotent here—to keep +those dregs from Mrs. MacQuigan, the only soul on earth he cared for +now. And suddenly Bradley laughed—loud—high above the roar of the +train, the shouts and screams of the maddened creatures it was sweeping +to eternity, and the human gorilla in the cab shot its head forward and +covered Bradley with its revolver, teeth showing in a snarl. +</P> + +<P> +And so Bradley laughed, and with the laugh poised himself—and sprang +far out from the car roof in a downward plunge for the tender, reached +the coal and rolled, choking with the hot blood in his throat from the +shot that had caught him in mid-air, rolled down with an avalanche of +coal, grappled with the frothing creature that leaped to meet him, +staggered to his feet, struggled for a moment, fast-locked with the +madman, until a lurch of the engine hurled them with a crash against +the cab frame, and the other, stunned, slid inertly from his grasp. +And then for an instant Bradley stood swaying, clutching at his +throat—then he took a step forward—both hands went out pawing for the +throttle, found it, closed it—and he went down across Bull Coussirat's +empty seat—dead. +</P> + +<P> +Only a humble figure, Bradley, just a toiler like millions of others, +not of much account, not a great man in the world's eyes—only a humble +figure. Measure him as it seems best to you to measure him for his +frailty or his strength. They call him a game man on the Hill +Division. His story is told. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night Operator, by Frank L. Packard + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OPERATOR *** + +***** This file should be named 33634-h.htm or 33634-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/6/3/33634/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Night Operator + +Author: Frank L. Packard + +Release Date: September 4, 2010 [EBook #33634] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OPERATOR *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + +THE NIGHT OPERATOR + + +BY + +FRANK L. PACKARD + +AUTHOR OF "THE WIRE DEVILS," "THE ADVENTURES + OF JIMMIE DALE," ETC. + + + + +THE COPP, CLARK CO., LIMITED + +TORONTO + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1919. + +GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY + + + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +TO + +CHARLES AGNEW MACLEAN + + + + +BY FRANK L. PACKARD + + THE NIGHT OPERATOR + THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE + THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMIE DALE + THE WIRE DEVILS + THE SIN THAT WAS HIS + THE BELOVED TRAITOR + GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN + THE MIRACLE MAN + + + + +FOREWORD + +Summed up short, the Hill Division is a vicious piece of track; also, +it is a classic in its profound contempt for the stereotyped equations +and formulae of engineering. And it is that way for the very simple +reason that it could not be any other way. The mountains objected, and +objected strenuously, to the process of manhandling. They were there +first, the mountains, that was all, and their surrender was a bitter +matter. + +So, from Big Cloud, the divisional point, at the eastern fringe of the +Rockies, to where the foothills of the Sierras on the western side +merge with the more open, rolling country, the right of way performs +gyrations that would not shame an acrobatic star. It sweeps through +the rifts in the range like a freed bird from the open door of its +cage; clings to canyon edges where a hissing stream bubbles and boils +eighteen hundred feet below; burrows its way into the heart of things +in long tunnels and short ones; circles a projecting spur in a dizzy +whirl, and swoops from the higher to the lower levels in grades whose +percentages the passenger department does not deem it policy to specify +in its advertising literature, but before which the men in the cabs and +the cabooses shut their teeth and try hard to remember the prayers they +learned at their mothers' knees. Some parts of it are worse than +others, naturally; but no part of it, to the last inch of its +single-tracked mileage, is pretty--leaving out the scenery, which is +_grand_. That is the Hill Division. + +And the men who man the shops, who pull the throttles on the big, +ten-wheel mountain racers, who swing the pick and shovels in the +lurching cabs, who do the work about the yards, or from the cupola of a +caboose stare out on a string of wriggling flats, boxes and gondolas, +and, at night-time, watch the high-flung sparks sail heavenward, as the +full, deep-chested notes of the exhaust roar an accompaniment in their +ears, are men with calloused, horny hands, toilers, grimy of face and +dress, rough if you like, not gentle of word, nor, sometimes, of +action--but men whose hearts are big and right, who look you in the +face, and the grip of whose paws, as they are extended after a hasty +cleansing on a hunk of more or less greasy waste, is the grip of men. + +Many of these have lived their lives, done their work, passed on, and +left no record, barely a memory, behind them, as other men in other +places and in other spheres of work have done and always will do; but +others, for this or that, by circumstance, or personality, or +opportunity, have woven around themselves the very legends and +traditions of their environment. + +And so these are the stories of the Hill Division and of the men who +wrought upon it; the stories of those days when it was young and in the +making; the stories of the days when Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, was +superintendent, when gruff, big-hearted, big-paunched Tommy Regan was +master mechanic, when the grizzled, gray-streaked Harvey was division +engineer, and little Doctor McTurk was the Company surgeon, and Riley +was the trainmaster, and Spence was the chief despatcher; the stories +of men who have done brave duty and come to honor and glory and their +reward--and the stories of some who have gone into Division for the +last time on orders from the Great Trainmaster, and who will never +railroad any more. + +F. L. P. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + + I THE NIGHT OPERATOR + II OWSLET AND THE 1601 + III THE APOTHEOSIS OF SAMMY DURGAN + IV THE WRECKING BOSS + V THE MAN WHO SQUEALED + VI THE AGE LIMIT + VII "THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS" + VIII ON THE NIGHT WIRE + IX THE OTHER FELLOW'S JOB + X THE RAT RIVER SPECIAL + + + + +THE NIGHT OPERATOR + + +I + +THE NIGHT OPERATOR + +Toddles, in the beginning, wasn't exactly a railroad man--for several +reasons. First, he wasn't a man at all; second, he wasn't, strictly +speaking, on the company's pay roll; third, which is apparently +irrelevant, everybody said he was a bad one; and fourth--because +Hawkeye nicknamed him Toddles. + +Toddles had another name--Christopher Hyslop Hoogan--but Big Cloud +never lay awake at nights losing any sleep over that. On the first run +that Christopher Hyslop Hoogan ever made, Hawkeye looked him over for a +minute, said, "Toddles," short-like--and, short-like, that settled the +matter so far as the Hill Division was concerned. His name was Toddles. + +Piecemeal, Toddles wouldn't convey anything to you to speak of. You'd +have to see Toddles coming down the aisle of a car to get him at +all--and then the chances are you'd turn around after he'd gone by and +stare at him, and it would be even money that you'd call him back and +fish for a dime to buy something by way of excuse. Toddles got a good +deal of business that way. Toddles had a uniform and a regular run all +right, but he wasn't what he passionately longed to be--a legitimate, +dyed-in-the-wool railroader. His paycheck, plus commissions, came from +the News Company down East that had the railroad concession. Toddles +was a newsboy. In his blue uniform and silver buttons, Toddles used to +stack up about the height of the back of the car seats as he hawked his +wares along the aisles; and the only thing that was big about him was +his head, which looked as though it had got a whopping big lead on his +body--and didn't intend to let the body cut the lead down any. This +meant a big cap, and, as Toddles used to tilt the vizor forward, the +tip of his nose, bar his mouth which was generous, was about all one +got of his face. Cap, buttons, magazines and peanuts, that was +Toddles--all except his voice. Toddles had a voice that would make you +jump if you were nervous the minute he opened the car door, and if you +weren't nervous you would be before he had reached the other end of the +aisle--it began low down somewhere on high G and went through you +shrill as an east wind, and ended like the shriek of a brake-shoe with +everything the Westinghouse equipment had to offer cutting loose on a +quick stop. + +Hawkeye? That was what Toddles called his beady-eyed conductor in +retaliation. Hawkeye used to nag Toddles every chance he got, and, +being Toddles' conductor, Hawkeye got a good many chances. In a word, +Hawkeye, carrying the punch on the local passenger, that happened to be +the run Toddles was given when the News Company sent him out from the +East, used to think he got a good deal of fun out of Toddles--only his +idea of fun and Toddles' idea of fun were as divergent as the poles, +that was all. + +Toddles, however, wasn't anybody's fool, not by several degrees--not +even Hawkeye's. Toddles hated Hawkeye like poison; and his hate, apart +from daily annoyances, was deep-seated. It was Hawkeye who had dubbed +him "Toddles." And Toddles repudiated the name with his heart, his +soul--and his fists. + +Toddles wasn't anybody's fool, whatever the division thought, and he +was right down to the basic root of things from the start. Coupled +with the stunted growth that nature in a miserly mood had doled out to +him, none knew better than himself that the name of "Toddles," keeping +that nature stuff patently before everybody's eyes, damned him in his +aspirations for a bona fide railroad career. Other boys got a job and +got their feet on the ladder as call-boys, or in the roundhouse; +Toddles got--a grin. Toddles pestered everybody for a job. He +pestered Carleton, the super. He pestered Tommy Regan, the master +mechanic. Every time that he saw anybody in authority Toddles spoke up +for a job, he was in deadly earnest--and got a grin. Toddles with a +basket of unripe fruit and stale chocolates and his "best-seller" voice +was one thing; but Toddles as anything else was just--Toddles. + +Toddles repudiated the name, and did it forcefully. Not that he +couldn't take his share of a bit of guying, but because he felt that he +was face to face with a vital factor in the career he longed for--so he +fought. And if nature had been niggardly in one respect, she had been +generous in others; Toddles, for all his size, possessed the heart of a +lion and the strength of a young ox, and he used both, with black and +bloody effect, on the eyes and noses of the call-boys and younger +element who called him Toddles. He fought it all along the line--at +the drop of the hat--at a whisper of "Toddles." There wasn't a day +went by that Toddles wasn't in a row; and the women, the mothers of the +defeated warriors whose eyes were puffed and whose noses trickled +crimson, denounced him in virulent language over their washtubs and the +back fences of Big Cloud. You see, they didn't understand him, so they +called him a "bad one," and, being from the East and not one of +themselves, "a New York gutter snipe." + +But, for all that, the name stuck. Up and down through the Rockies it +was--Toddles. Toddles, with the idea of getting a lay-over on a +siding, even went to the extent of signing himself in full--Christopher +Hyslop Hoogan--every time his signature was in order; but the official +documents in which he was concerned, being of a private nature between +himself and the News Company, did not, in the very nature of things, +have much effect on the Hill Division. Certainly the big fellows never +knew he had any name but Toddles--and cared less. But they knew him as +Toddles, all right! All of them did, every last one of them! Toddles +was everlastingly and eternally bothering them for a job. Any kind of +a job, no matter what, just so it was real railroading, and so a fellow +could line up with everybody else when the paycar came along, and look +forward to being something some day. + +Toddles, with time, of course, grew older, up to about seventeen or so, +but he didn't grow any bigger--not enough to make it noticeable! Even +Toddles' voice wouldn't break--it was his young heart that did all the +breaking there was done. Not that he ever showed it. No one ever saw +a tear in the boy's eyes. It was clenched fists for Toddles, clenched +fists and passionate attack. And therein, while Toddles had grasped +the basic truth that his nickname militated against his ambitions, he +erred in another direction that was equally fundamental, if not more so. + +And here, it was Bob Donkin, the night despatcher, as white a man as +his record after years of train-handling was white, a railroad man from +the ground up if there ever was one, and one of the best, who set +Toddles-- But we'll come to that presently. We've got our "clearance" +now, and we're off with "rights" through. + +No. 83, Hawkeye's train--and Toddles'--scheduled Big Cloud on the +eastbound run at 9.05; and, on the night the story opens, they were +about an hour away from the little mountain town that was the +divisional point, as Toddles, his basket of edibles in the crook of his +arm, halted in the forward end of the second-class smoker to examine +again the fistful of change that he dug out of his pants pocket with +his free hand. + +Toddles was in an unusually bad humor, and he scowled. With exceeding +deftness he separated one of the coins from the others, using his +fingers like the teeth of a rake, and dropped the rest back jingling +into his pocket. The coin that remained he put into his mouth, and bit +on it--hard. His scowl deepened. Somebody had presented Toddles with +a lead quarter. + +It wasn't so much the quarter, though Toddles' salary wasn't so big as +some people's who would have felt worse over it, it was his _amour +propre_ that was touched--deeply. It wasn't often that any one could +put so bald a thing as lead money across on Toddles. Toddles' mind +harked back along the aisles of the cars behind him. He had only made +two sales that round, and he had changed a quarter each time--for the +pretty girl with the big picture hat, who had giggled at him when she +bought a package of chewing gum; and the man with the three-carat +diamond tie-pin in the parlor car, a little more than on the edge of +inebriety, who had got on at the last stop, and who had bought a cigar +from him. + +Toddles thought it over for a bit; decided he wouldn't have a fuss with +a girl anyway, balked at a parlor car fracas with a drunk, dropped the +coin back into his pocket, and went on into the combination baggage and +express car. Here, just inside the door, was Toddles', or, rather, the +News Company's chest. Toddles lifted the lid; and then his eyes +shifted slowly and travelled up the car. Things were certainly going +badly with Toddles that night. + +There were four men in the car: Bob Donkin, coming back from a holiday +trip somewhere up the line; MacNicoll, the baggage-master; Nulty, the +express messenger--and Hawkeye. Toddles' inventory of the contents of +the chest had been hurried--but intimate. A small bunch of six bananas +was gone, and Hawkeye was munching them unconcernedly. It wasn't the +first time the big, hulking, six-foot conductor had pilfered the boy's +chest, not by many--and never paid for the pilfering. That was +Hawkeye's idea of a joke. + +Hawkeye was talking to Nulty, elaborately simulating ignorance of +Toddles' presence--and he was talking about Toddles. + +"Sure," said Hawkeye, his mouth full of banana, "he'll be a great +railroad man some day! He's the stuff they're made of! You can see it +sticking out all over him! He's only selling peanuts now till he grows +up and----" + +Toddles put down his basket and planted himself before the conductor. + +"You pay for those bananas," said Toddles in a low voice--which was +high. + +"When'll he grow up?" continued Hawkeye, peeling more fruit. "I don't +know--you've got me. The first time I saw him two years ago, I'm +hanged if he wasn't bigger than he is now--guess he grows backwards. +Have a banana?" He offered one to Nulty, who refused it. "You pay for +those bananas, you big stiff!" squealed Toddles belligerently. + +Hawkeye turned his head slowly and turned his little beady, black eyes +on Toddles, then he turned with a wink to the others, and for the first +time in two years offered payment. He fished into his pocket and +handed Toddles a twenty-dollar bill--there always was a mean streak in +Hawkeye, more or less of a bully, none too well liked, and whose name +on the payroll, by the way, was Reynolds. + +"Take fifteen cents out of that," he said, with no idea that the boy +could change the bill. + +For a moment Toddles glared at the yellow-back, then a thrill of unholy +glee came to Toddles. He could just about make it, business all around +had been pretty good that day, particularly on the run west in the +morning. + +Hawkeye went on with the exposition of his idea of humor at Toddles' +expense; and Toddles went back to his chest and his reserve funds. +Toddles counted out eighteen dollars in bills, made a neat pile of four +quarters--the lead one on the bottom--another neat pile of the odd +change, and returned to Hawkeye. The lead quarter wouldn't go very far +toward liquidating Hawkeye's long-standing indebtedness--but it would +help some. + +Hawkeye counted the bills carefully, and crammed them into his pocket. +Toddles dropped the neat little pile of quarters into Hawkeye's +hand--they counted themselves--and Hawkeye put those in his pocket. +Toddles counted out the odd change piece by piece, and as Hawkeye put +_that_ in his pocket--Toddles put his fingers to his nose. + +Queer, isn't it--the way things happen? Think of a man's whole life, +aspirations, hopes, ambitions, everything, pivoting on--a lead quarter! +But then they say that opportunity knocks once at the door of every +man; and, if that be true, let it be remarked in passing that Toddles +wasn't deaf! + +Hawkeye, making Toddles a target for a parting gibe, took up his +lantern and started through the train to pick up the fares from the +last stop. In due course he halted before the inebriated one with the +glittering tie-pin in the smoking compartment of the parlor car. + +"Ticket, please," said Hawkeye. + +"Too busy to buysh ticket," the man informed him, with heavy +confidence. "Whash fare Loon Dam to Big Cloud?" + +"One-fifty," said Hawkeye curtly. + +The man produced a roll of bills, and from the roll extracted a +two-dollar note. + +Hawkeye handed him back two quarters, and started to punch a cash-fare +slip. He looked up to find the man holding out one of the quarters +insistently, if somewhat unsteadily. + +"What's the matter?" demanded Hawkeye brusquely. + +"Bad," said the man. + +A drummer grinned; and an elderly gentleman, from his magazine, looked +up inquiringly over his spectacles. + +"Bad!" Hawkeye brought his elbow sharply around to focus his lamp on +the coin; then he leaned over and rang it on the window sill--only it +wouldn't ring. It was indubitably bad. Hawkeye, however, was dealing +with a drunk--and Hawkeye always did have a mean streak in him. + +"It's perfectly good," he asserted gruffly. + +The man rolled an eye at the conductor that mingled a sudden shrewdness +and anger, and appealed to his fellow travellers. The verdict was +against Hawkeye, and Hawkeye ungraciously pocketed the lead piece and +handed over another quarter. + +"Shay," observed the inebriated one insolently, "shay, conductor, I +don't like you. You thought I was--hic!--s'drunk I wouldn't know--eh? +Thash where you fooled yerself!" + +"What do you mean?" Hawkeye bridled virtuously for the benefit of the +drummer and the old gentleman with the spectacles. + +And then the other began to laugh immoderately. + +"Same ol' quarter," said he. "Same--hic!--ol' quarter back again. +Great system--peanut boy--conductor--hic! Pass it off on one--other +passes it off on some one else. Just passed it off on--hic!--peanut +boy for a joke. Goin' to give him a dollar when he comes back." + +"Oh, you did, did you!" snapped Hawkeye ominously. "And you mean to +insinuate that I deliberately tried to----" + +"Sure!" declared the man heartily. + +"You're a liar!" announced Hawkeye, spluttering mad. "And what's more, +since it came from you, you'll take it back!" He dug into his pocket +for the ubiquitous lead piece. + +"Not--hic!--on your life!" said the man earnestly. "You hang onto it, +old top. I didn't pass it off on you." + +"Haw!" exploded the drummer suddenly. "Haw--haw, haw!" + +And the elderly gentleman smiled. + +Hawkeye's face went red, and then purple. + +"Go 'way!" said the man petulantly. "I don't like you. Go 'way! Go +an' tell peanuts I--hic!--got a dollar for him." + +And Hawkeye went--but Toddles never got the dollar. Hawkeye went out +of the smoking compartment of the parlor car with the lead quarter in +his pocket--because he couldn't do anything else--which didn't soothe +his feelings any--and he went out mad enough to bite himself. The +drummer's guffaw followed him, and he thought he even caught a chuckle +from the elderly party with the magazine and spectacles. + +Hawkeye was mad; and he was quite well aware, painfully well aware that +he had looked like a fool, which is about one of the meanest feelings +there is to feel; and, as he made his way forward through the train, he +grew madder still. That change was the change from his twenty-dollar +bill. He had not needed to be told that the lead quarter had come from +Toddles. The only question at all in doubt was whether or not Toddles +had put the counterfeit coin over on him knowingly and with malice +aforethought. Hawkeye, however, had an intuition deep down inside of +him that there wasn't any doubt even about that, and as he opened the +door of the baggage car his intuition was vindicated. There was a grin +on the faces of Nulty, MacNicoll and Bob Donkin that disappeared with +suspicious celerity at sight of him as he came through the door. + +There was no hesitation then on Hawkeye's part. Toddles, equipped for +another excursion through the train with a stack of magazines and books +that almost hid him, received a sudden and vicious clout on the side of +the ear. + +"You'd try your tricks on me, would you?" Hawkeye snarled. "Lead +quarters--eh?" Another clout. "I'll teach you, you blasted little +runt!" + +And with the clouts, the stack of carefully balanced periodicals went +flying over the floor; and with the clouts, the nagging, and the +hectoring, and the bullying, that had rankled for close on two years in +Toddles' turbulent soul, rose in a sudden all-possessing sweep of fury. +Toddles was a fighter--with the heart of a fighter. And Toddles' cause +was just. He couldn't reach the conductor's face--so he went for +Hawkeye's legs. And the screams of rage from his high-pitched voice, +as he shot himself forward, sounded like a cageful of Australian +cockatoos on the rampage. + +Toddles was small, pitifully small for his age; but he wasn't an infant +in arms--not for a minute. And in action Toddles was as near to a wild +cat as anything else that comes handy by way of illustration. Two legs +and one arm he twined and twisted around Hawkeye's legs; and the other +arm, with a hard and knotty fist on the end of it, caught the conductor +a wicked jab in the region of the bottom button of the vest. The brass +button peeled the skin off Toddles' knuckles, but the jab doubled the +conductor forward, and coincident with Hawkeye's winded grunt, the +lantern in his hand sailed ceilingwards, crashed into the center lamps +in the roof of the car, and down in a shower of tinkling glass, +dripping oil and burning wicks, came the wreckage to the floor. + +There was a yell from Nulty; but Toddles hung on like grim death. +Hawkeye was bawling fluent profanity and seeing red. Toddles heard one +and sensed the other--and he clung grimly on. He was all doubled up +around Hawkeye's knees, and in that position Hawkeye couldn't get at +him very well; and, besides, Toddles had his own plan of battle. He +was waiting for an extra heavy lurch of the car. + +It came. Toddles' muscles strained legs and arms and back in concert, +and for an instant across the car they tottered, Hawkeye staggering in +a desperate attempt to maintain his equilibrium--and then +down--speaking generally, on a heterogeneous pile of express parcels; +concretely, with an eloquent squnch, on a crate of eggs, thirty dozen +of them, at forty cents a dozen. + +Toddles, over his rage, experienced a sickening sense of disaster, but +still he clung; he didn't dare let go. Hawkeye's fists, both in an +effort to recover himself and in an endeavor to reach Toddles, were +going like a windmill; and Hawkeye's threats were something terrifying +to listen to. And now they rolled over, and Toddles was underneath; +and then they rolled over again; and then a hand locked on Toddles' +collar, and he was yanked, terrier-fashion, to his feet. + +His face white and determined, his fists doubled, Toddles waited for +Hawkeye to get up--the word "run" wasn't in Toddles' vocabulary. He +hadn't long to wait. + +Hawkeye lunged up, draped in the broken crate--a sight. The road +always prided itself on the natty uniforms of its train crews, but +Hawkeye wasn't dressed in uniform then--mostly egg yolks. He made a +dash for Toddles, but he never reached the boy. Bob Donkin was between +them. + +"Cut it out!" said Donkin coldly, as he pushed Toddles behind him. +"You asked for it, Reynolds, and you got it. Now cut it out!" + +And Hawkeye "cut it out." It was pretty generally understood that Bob +Donkin never talked much for show, and Bob Donkin was bigger than +Toddles, a whole lot bigger, as big as Hawkeye himself. Hawkeye "cut +it out." + +Funny, the egg part of it? Well, perhaps. But the fire wasn't. True, +they got it out with the help of the hand extinguishers before it did +any serious damage, for Nulty had gone at it on the jump; but while it +lasted the burning oil on the car floor looked dangerous. Anyway, it +was bad enough so that they couldn't hide it when they got into Big +Cloud--and Hawkeye and Toddles went on the carpet for it the next +morning in the super's office. + +Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, reached for a match, and, to keep his lips +straight, clamped them firmly on the amber mouthpiece of his brier, and +stumpy, big-paunched Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who was sitting +in a chair by the window, reached hurriedly into his back pocket for +his chewing and looked out of the window to hide a grin, as the two +came in and ranged themselves in front of the super's desk--Hawkeye, +six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds, with Toddles trailing him, +mostly cap and buttons and no weight at all. + +Carleton didn't ask many questions--he'd asked them before--of Bob +Donkin--and the despatcher hadn't gone out of his way to invest the +conductor with any glorified halo. Carleton, always a strict +disciplinarian, said what he had to say and said it quietly; but he +meant to let the conductor have the worst of it, and he did--in a way +that was all Carleton's own. Two years' picking on a youngster didn't +appeal to Carleton, no matter who the youngster was. Before he was +half through he had the big conductor squirming. Hawkeye was looking +for something else--besides a galling and matter-of-fact impartiality +that accepted himself and Toddles as being on exactly the same plane +and level. + +"There's a case of eggs," said Carleton at the end. "You can divide up +the damage between you. And I'm going to change your runs, unless +you've got some good reason to give me why I shouldn't?" + +He waited for an answer. + +Hawkeye, towering, sullen, his eyes resting bitterly on Regan, having +caught the master mechanic's grin, said nothing; Toddles, whose head +barely showed over the top of Carleton's desk, and the whole of him +sizing up about big enough to go into the conductor's pocket, was +equally silent--Toddles was thinking of something else. + +"Very good," said Carleton suavely, as he surveyed the ridiculous +incongruity before him. "I'll change your runs, then. I can't have +you two men brawling and prize-fighting every trip." + +There was a sudden sound from the window, as though Regan had got some +of his blackstrap juice down the wrong way. + +Hawkeye's face went black as thunder. + +Carleton's face was like a sphinx. + +"That'll do, then," he said. "You can go, both of you." + +Hawkeye stamped out of the room and down the stairs. But Toddles +stayed. + +"Please, Mr. Carleton, won't you give me a job on----" Toddles stopped. + +So had Regan's chuckle. Toddles, the irrepressible, was at it +again--and Toddles after a job, any kind of a job, was something that +Regan's experience had taught him to fly from without standing on the +order of his flight. Regan hurried from the room. + +Toddles watched him go--kind of speculatively, kind of reproachfully. +Then he turned to Carleton. + +"Please give me a job, Mr. Carleton," he pleaded. "Give me a job, +won't you?" + +It was only yesterday on the platform that Toddles had waylaid the +super with the same demand--and about, every day before that as far +back as Carleton could remember. It was hopelessly chronic. Anything +convincing or appealing about it had gone long ago--Toddles said it +parrot-fashion now. Carleton took refuge in severity. + +"See here, young man," he said grimly, "you were brought into this +office for a reprimand and not to apply for a job! You can thank your +stars and Bob Donkin you haven't lost the one you've got. Now, get +out!" + +"I'd make good if you gave me one," said Toddles earnestly. "Honest, I +would, Mr. Carleton." + +"Get out!" said the super, not altogether unkindly. "I'm busy." + +Toddles swallowed a lump in his throat--but not until after his head +was turned and he'd started for the door so the super couldn't see it. +Toddles swallowed the lump--and got out. He hadn't expected anything +else, of course. The refusals were just as chronic as the demands. +But that didn't make each new one any easier for Toddles. It made it +worse. + +Toddles' heart was heavy as he stepped out into the hall, and the iron +was in his soul. He was seventeen now, and it looked as though he +never would get a chance--except to be a newsboy all his life. Toddles +swallowed another lump. He loved railroading; it was his one ambition, +his one desire. If he could ever get a chance, he'd show them! He'd +show them that he wasn't a joke, just because he was small! + +Toddles turned at the head of the stairs to go down, when somebody +called his name. + +"Here--Toddles! Come here!" + +Toddles looked over his shoulder, hesitated, then marched in through +the open door of the despatchers' room. Bob Donkin was alone there. + +"What's your name--Toddles?" inquired Donkin, as Toddles halted before +the despatcher's table. + +Toddles froze instantly--hard. His fists doubled; there was a smile on +Donkin's face. Then his fists slowly uncurled; the smile on Donkin's +face had broadened, but there wasn't any malice in the smile. + +"Christopher Hyslop Hoogan," said Toddles, unbending. + +Donkin put his hand quickly to his mouth--and coughed. + +"Um-m!" said he pleasantly. "Super hard on you this morning--Hoogan?" + +And with the words Toddles' heart went out to the big despatcher: +"Hoogan"--and a man-to-man tone. + +"No," said Toddles cordially. "Say, I thought you were on the night +trick." + +"Double-shift--short-handed," replied Donkin. "Come from New York, +don't you?" + +"Yes," said Toddles. + +"Mother and father down there still?" + +It came quick and unexpected, and Toddles stared for a moment. Then he +walked over to the window. + +"I haven't got any," he said. + +There wasn't any sound for an instant, save the clicking of the +instruments; then Donkin spoke again--a little gruffly: + +"When are you going to quit making an ass of yourself?" + +Toddles swung from the window, hurt. Donkin, after all, was like all +the rest of them. + +"Well?" prompted the despatcher. + +"You go to blazes!" said Toddles bitterly, and started for the door. + +Donkin halted him. + +"You're only fooling yourself, Hoogan," he said coolly. "If you wanted +what you call a real railroad job as much as you pretend you do, you'd +get one." + +"Eh?" demanded Toddles defiantly; and went back to the table. + +"A fellow," said Donkin, putting a little sting into his words, "never +got anywhere by going around with a chip on his shoulder fighting +everybody because they called him Toddles, and making a nuisance of +himself with the Big Fellows until they got sick of the sight of him." + +It was a pretty stiff arraignment. Toddles choked over it, and the +angry blood flushed to his cheeks. + +"That's all right for you!" he spluttered out hotly. "You don't look +too small for the train crews or the roundhouse, and they don't call +you Toddles so's nobody 'll forget it. What'd you do?" + +"I'll tell you what I'd do," said Donkin quietly. "I'd make everybody +on the division wish their own name was Toddles before I was through +with them, and I'd _make_ a job for myself." + +Toddles blinked helplessly. + +"Getting right down to a cash fare," continued Donkin, after a moment, +as Toddles did not speak, "they're not so far wrong, either, about you +sizing up pretty small for the train crews or the roundhouse, are they?" + +"No-o," admitted Toddles reluctantly; "but----" + +"Then why not something where there's no handicap hanging over you?" +suggested the despatcher--and his hand reached out and touched the +sender. "The key, for instance?" + +"But I don't know anything about it," said Toddles, still helplessly. + +"That's just it," returned Donkin smoothly. "You never tried to learn." + +Toddles' eyes widened, and into Toddles' heart leaped a sudden joy. A +new world seemed to open out before him in which aspirations, +ambitions, longings all were a reality. A key! That was real +railroading, the top-notch of railroading, too. First an operator, and +then a despatcher, and--and--and then his face fell, and the vision +faded. + +"How'd I get a chance to learn?" he said miserably. "Who'd teach me?" + +The smile was back on Donkin's face as he pushed his chair from the +table, stood up, and held out his hand--man-to-man fashion. + +"I will," he said. "I liked your grit last night, Hoogan. And if you +want to be a railroad man, I'll make you one--before I'm through. I've +some old instruments you can have to practise with, and I've nothing to +do in my spare time. What do you say?" + +Toddles didn't say anything. For the first time since Toddles' advent +to the Hill Division, there were tears in Toddles' eyes for some one +else to see. + +Donkin laughed. + +"All right, old man, you're on. See that you don't throw me down. And +keep your mouth shut; you'll need all your wind. It's work that +counts, and nothing else. Now chase yourself! I'll dig up the things +you'll need, and you can drop in here and get them when you come off +your run to-night." + +Spare time! Bob Donkin didn't have any spare time those days! But +that was Donkin's way. Spence sick, and two men handling the +despatching where three had handled it before, didn't leave Bob Donkin +much spare time--not much. But a boost for the kid was worth a +sacrifice. Donkin went at it as earnestly as Toddles did--and Toddles +was in deadly earnest. + +When Toddles left the despatcher's office that morning with Donkin's +promise to teach him the key, Toddles had a hazy idea that Donkin had +wings concealed somewhere under his coat and was an angel in disguise; +and at the end of two weeks he was sure of it. But at the end of a +month Bob Donkin was a god! Throw Bob Donkin down! Toddles would have +sold his soul for the despatcher. + +It wasn't easy, though; and Bob Donkin wasn't an easy-going taskmaster, +not by long odds. Donkin had a tongue, and on occasions could use it. +Short and quick in his explanations, he expected his pupil to get it +short and quick; either that, or Donkin's opinion of him. But Toddles +stuck. He'd have crawled on his knees for Donkin anywhere, and he +worked like a major--not only for his own advancement, but for what he +came to prize quite as much, if not more, Donkin's approval. + +Toddles, mindful of Donkin's words, didn't fight so much as the days +went by, though he found it difficult to swear off all at once; and on +his runs he studied his Morse code, and he had the "calls" of every +station on the division off by heart right from the start. Toddles +mastered the "sending" by leaps and bounds; but the "taking" came +slower, as it does for everybody--but even at that, at the end of six +weeks, if it wasn't thrown at him too fast and hard, Toddles could get +it after a fashion. + +Take it all around, Toddles felt like whistling most of the time; and, +pleased with his own progress, looked forward to starting in presently +as a full-fledged operator. He mentioned the matter to Bob +Donkin--once. Donkin picked his words and spoke fervently. Toddles +never brought the subject up again. + +And so things went on. Late summer turned to early fall, and early +fall to still sharper weather, until there came the night that the +operator at Blind River muddled his orders and gave No. 73, the +westbound fast freight, her clearance against the second section of the +eastbound Limited that doomed them to meet somewhere head-on in the +Glacier Canyon; the night that Toddles--but there's just a word or two +that comes before. + +When it was all over, it was up to Sam Beale, the Blind River operator, +straight enough. Beale blundered. That's all there was to it; that +covers it all--he blundered. It would have finished Beale's railroad +career forever and a day--only Beale played the man, and the instant he +realized what he had done, even while the tail lights of the freight +were disappearing down the track and he couldn't stop her, he was +stammering the tale of his mistake over the wire, the sweat beads +dripping from his wrist, his face gray with horror, to Bob Donkin under +the green-shaded lamp in the despatchers' room at Big Cloud, miles away. + +Donkin got the miserable story over the chattering wire--got it before +it was half told--cut Beale out and began to pound the Gap call. And +as though it were before him in reality, that stretch of track, fifteen +miles of it, from Blind River to the Gap, unfolded itself like a grisly +panorama before his mind. There wasn't a half mile of tangent at a +single stretch in the whole of it. It swung like the writhings of a +snake, through cuts and tunnels, hugging the canyon walls, twisting this +way and that. Anywhere else there might be a chance, one in a thousand +even, that they would see each other's headlights in time--here it was +disaster quick and absolute. + +Donkin's lips were set in a thin, straight line. The Gap answered him; +and the answer was like the knell of doom. He had not expected +anything else; he had only hoped against hope. The second section of +the Limited had pulled out of the Gap, eastbound, two minutes before. +The two trains were in the open against each other's orders. + +In the next room, Carleton and Regan, over their pipes, were at their +nightly game of pedro. Donkin called them--and his voice sounded +strange to himself. Chairs scraped and crashed to the floor, and an +instant later the super and the master mechanic were in the room. + +"What's wrong, Bob?" Carleton flung the words from him in a single +breath. + +Donkin told them. But his fingers were on the key again as he talked. +There was still one chance, worse than the thousand-to-one shot; but it +was the only one. Between the Gap and Blind River, eight miles from +the Gap, seven miles from Blind River, was Cassil's Siding. But there +was no night man at Cassil's, and the little town lay a mile from the +station. It was ten o'clock--Donkin's watch lay face up on the table +before him--the day man at Cassil's went off at seven--the chance was +that the day man might have come back to the station for something or +other! + +Not much of a chance? No--not much! It was a possibility, that was +all; and Donkin's fingers worked--the seventeen, the life and +death--calling, calling on the night trick to the day man at Cassil's +Siding. + +Carleton came and stood at Donkin's elbow, and Regan stood at the +other; and there was silence now, save only for the key that, under +Donkin's fingers, seemed to echo its stammering appeal about the room +like the sobbing of a human soul. + +"CS--CS--CS," Donkin called; and then, "the seventeen," and then, "hold +second Number Two." And then the same thing over and over again. + +And there was no answer. + +It had turned cold that night and there was a fire in the little +heater. Donkin had opened the draft a little while before, and the +sheet-iron sides now began to pur red-hot. Nobody noticed it. Regan's +kindly, good-humored face had the stamp of horror in it, and he pulled +at his scraggly brown mustache, his eyes seemingly fascinated by +Donkin's fingers. Everybody's eyes, the three of them, were on +Donkin's fingers and the key. Carleton was like a man of stone, +motionless, his face set harder than face was ever carved in marble. + +It grew hot in the room; but Donkin's fingers were like ice on the key, +and, strong man though he was, he faltered. + +"Oh, my God!" he whispered--and never a prayer rose more fervently from +lips than those three broken words. + +Again he called, and again, and again. The minutes slipped away. +Still he called--with the life and death--the "seventeen"--called and +called. And there was no answer save that echo in the room that +brought the perspiration streaming now from Regan's face, a harder +light into Carleton's eyes, and a chill like death into Donkin's heart. + +Suddenly Donkin pushed back his chair; and his fingers, from the key, +touched the crystal of his watch. + +"The second section will have passed Cassil's now," he said in a +curious, unnatural, matter-of-fact tone. "It'll bring them together +about a mile east of there--in another minute." + +And then Carleton spoke--master railroader, "Royal" Carleton, it was up +to him then, all the pity of it, the ruin, the disaster, the lives out, +all the bitterness to cope with as he could. And it was in his eyes, +all of it. But his voice was quiet. It rang quick, peremptory, his +voice--but quiet. + +"Clear the line, Bob," he said. "Plug in the roundhouse for the +wrecker--and tell them to send uptown for the crew." + +Toddles? What did Toddles have to do with this? Well, a good deal, in +one way and another. We're coming to Toddles now. You see, Toddles, +since his fracas with Hawkeye, had been put on the Elk River local run +that left Big Cloud at 9.45 in the morning for the run west, and +scheduled Big Cloud again on the return trip at 10.10 in the evening. + +It had turned cold that night, after a day of rain. Pretty cold--the +thermometer can drop on occasions in the late fall in the +mountains--and by eight o'clock, where there had been rain before, +there was now a thin sheeting of ice over everything--very thin--you +know the kind--rails and telegraph wires glistening like the +decorations on a Christmas tree--very pretty--and also very nasty +running on a mountain grade. Likewise, the rain, in a way rain has, +had dripped from the car roofs to the platforms--the local did not +boast any closed vestibules--and had also been blown upon the car steps +with the sweep of the wind, and, having frozen, it stayed there. Not a +very serious matter; annoying, perhaps, but not serious, demanding a +little extra caution, that was all. + +Toddles was in high fettle that night. He had been getting on famously +of late; even Bob Donkin had admitted it. Toddles, with his stack of +books and magazines, an unusually big one, for a number of the new +periodicals were out that day, was dreaming rosy dreams to himself as +he started from the door of the first-class smoker to the door of the +first-class coach. In another hour now he'd be up in the despatcher's +room at Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with Bob Donkin. He could +see Bob Donkin there now; and he could hear the big despatcher growl at +him in his bluff way: "Use your head--use your head--_Hoogan_!" It was +always "Hoogan," never "Toddles." "Use your head"--Donkin was +everlastingly drumming that into him; for the despatcher used to +confront him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and +demand Toddles' instant solution. Toddles realized that Donkin was +getting to the heart of things, and that some day he, Toddles, would be +a great despatcher--like Donkin. "Use your head, Hoogan"--that's the +way Donkin talked--"anybody can learn a key, but that doesn't make a +railroad man out of him. It's the man when trouble comes who can think +quick and think _right_. Use your----" + +Toddles stepped out on the platform--and walked on ice. But that +wasn't Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles was that he was +walking on air at the same time. It was treacherous running, they were +nosing a curve, and in the cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with +a little jerk at the "air." And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and +with the slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals +shifted, and they bulged ominously from the middle. Toddles grabbed at +them--and his heels went out from under him. He ricochetted down the +steps, snatched desperately at the handrail, missed it, shot out from +the train, and, head, heels, arms and body going every which way at +once, rolled over and over down the embankment. And, starting from the +point of Toddles' departure from the train, the right of way for a +hundred yards was strewn with "the latest magazines" and "new books +just out to-day." + +Toddles lay there, a little, curled, huddled heap, motionless in the +darkness. The tail lights of the local disappeared. No one aboard +would miss Toddles until they got into Big Cloud--and found him gone. +Which is Irish for saying that no one would attempt to keep track of a +newsboy's idiosyncrasies on a train; it would be asking too much of any +train crew; and, besides, there was no mention of it in the rules. + +It was a long while before Toddles stirred; a very long while before +consciousness crept slowly back to him. Then he moved, tried to get +up--and fell back with a quick, sharp cry of pain. He lay still, then, +for a moment. His ankle hurt him frightfully, and his back, and his +shoulder, too. He put his hand to his face where something seemed to +be trickling warm--and brought it away wet. Toddles, grim little +warrior, tried to think. They hadn't been going very fast when he fell +off. If they had, he would have been killed. As it was, he was hurt, +badly hurt, and his head swam, nauseating him. + +Where was he? Was he near any help? He'd have to get help somewhere, +or--or with the cold and--and everything he'd probably die out here +before morning. Toddles shouted out--again and again. Perhaps his +voice was too weak to carry very far; anyway, there was no reply. + +He looked up at the top of the embankment, clamped his teeth, and +started to crawl. If he got up there, perhaps he could tell where he +was. It had taken Toddles a matter of seconds to roll down; it took +him ten minutes of untold agony to get up. Then he dashed his hand +across his eyes where the blood was, and cried a little with the surge +of relief. East, down the track, only a few yards away, the green eye +of a switch lamp winked at him. + +Where there was a switch lamp there was a siding, and where there was a +siding there was promise of a station. Toddles, with the sudden uplift +upon him, got to his feet and started along the track--two steps--and +went down again. He couldn't walk, the pain was more than he could +bear--his right ankle, his left shoulder, and his back--hopping only +made it worse--it was easier to crawl. + +And so Toddles crawled. + +It took him a long time even to pass the switch light. The pain made +him weak, his senses seemed to trail off giddily every now and then, +and he'd find himself lying flat and still beside the track. It was a +white, drawn face that Toddles lifted up each time he started on +again--miserably white, except where the blood kept trickling from his +forehead. + +And then Toddles' heart, stout as it was, seemed to snap. He had +reached the station platform, wondering vaguely why the little building +that loomed ahead was dark--and now it came to him in a flash, as he +recognized the station. It was Cassil's Siding--_and there was no +night man at Cassil's Siding_! The switch lights were lit before the +day man left, of course. Everything swam before Toddles' eyes. +There--there was no help here. And yet--yet perhaps--desperate hope +came again--perhaps there might be. The pain was terrible--all over +him. And--and he'd got so weak now--but it wasn't far to the door. + +Toddles squirmed along the platform, and reached the door finally--only +to find it shut and fastened. And then Toddles fainted on the +threshold. + +When Toddles came to himself again, he thought at first that he was up +in the despatcher's room at Big Cloud with Bob Donkin pounding away on +the battered old key they used to practise with--only there seemed to +be something the matter with the key, and it didn't sound as loud as it +usually did--it seemed to come from a long way off somehow. And then, +besides, Bob was working it faster than he had ever done before when +they were practising. "Hold second"--second something--Toddles +couldn't make it out. Then the "seventeen"--yes, he knew that--that +was the life and death. Bob was going pretty quick, though. Then +"CS--CS--CS"--Toddles' brain fumbled a bit over that--then it came to +him. CS was the call for Cassil's Siding. _Cassil's Siding_! +Toddles' head came up with a jerk. + +A little cry burst from Toddles' lips--and his brain, cleared. He +wasn't at Big Cloud at all--he was at Cassil's Siding--and he was +hurt--and that was the sounder inside calling, calling frantically for +Cassil's Siding---where he was. + +The life and death--_the seventeen_--it sent a thrill through Toddles' +pain-twisted spine. He wriggled to the window. It, too, was closed, +of course, but he could hear better there. The sounder was babbling +madly. + +"Hold second----" + +He missed it again--and as, on top of it, the "seventeen" came +pleading, frantic, urgent, he wrung his hands. + +"Hold second"--he got it this time--"Number Two." + +Toddles' first impulse was to smash in the window and reach the key. +And then, like a dash of cold water over him, Donkin's words seemed to +ring in his ears: "Use your head." + +With the "seventeen" it meant a matter of minutes, perhaps even +seconds. Why smash the window? Why waste the moment required to do it +simply to answer the call? The order stood for itself--"Hold second +Number Two." That was the second section of the Limited, east-bound. +Hold her! How? There was nothing--not a thing to stop her with. "Use +your head," said Donkin in a far-away voice to Toddles' wobbling brain. + +Toddles looked up the track--west--where he had come from--to where the +switch light twinkled green at him--and, with a little sob, he started +to drag himself back along the platform. If he could throw the switch, +it would throw the light from green to red, and--and the Limited would +take the siding. But the switch was a long way off. + +Toddles half fell, half bumped from the end of the platform to the +right of way. He cried to himself with low moans as he went along. He +had the heart of a fighter, and grit to the last tissue; but he needed +it all now--needed it all to stand the pain and fight the weakness that +kept swirling over him in flashes. + +On he went, on his hands and knees, slithering from tie to tie---and +from one tie to the next was a great distance. The life and death, the +despatcher's call--he seemed to hear it yet--throbbing, throbbing on +the wire. + +On he went, up the track; and the green eye of the lamp, winking at +him, drew nearer. And then suddenly, clear and mellow through the +mountains, caught up and echoed far and near, came the notes of a chime +whistle ringing down the gorge. + +Fear came upon Toddles then, and a great sob shook him. That was the +Limited coming now! Toddles' fingers dug into the ballast, and he +hurried--that is, in bitter pain, he tried to crawl a little faster. +And as he crawled, he kept his eyes strained up the track--she wasn't +in sight yet around the curve--not yet, anyway. + +Another foot, only another foot, and he would reach the siding +switch--in time--in plenty of time. Again the sob--but now in a burst +of relief that, for the moment, made him forget his hurts. He was in +time! + +He flung himself at the switch lever, tugged upon it--and then, +trembling, every ounce of remaining strength seeming to ooze from him, +he covered his face with his hands. It was _locked_--padlocked. + +Came a rumble now--a distant roar, growing louder and louder, +reverberating down the canyon walls--louder and louder--nearer and +nearer. "Hold second Number Two. Hold second Number Two"--the +"seventeen," the life and death, pleading with him to hold Number Two. +And she was coming now, coming--and--and--the switch was locked. The +deadly nausea racked Toddles again; there was nothing to do +now--nothing. He couldn't stop her--couldn't stop her. He'd--he'd +tried--very hard--and--and he couldn't stop her now. He took his hands +from his face, and stole a glance up the track, afraid almost, with the +horror that was upon him, to look. She hadn't swung the curve yet, but +she would in a minute--and come pounding down the stretch at fifty +miles an hour, shoot by him like a rocket to where, somewhere ahead, in +some form, he did not know what, only knew that it was there, death and +ruin and---- + +"_Use your head!_" snapped Donkin's voice to his consciousness. + +Toddles' eyes were on the light above his head. It blinked _red_ at +him as he stood on the track facing it; the green rays were shooting up +and down the line. He couldn't swing the switch--but the _lamp_ was +there--and there was the red side to show just by turning it. He +remembered then that the lamp fitted into a socket at the top of the +switch stand, and could be lifted off--if he could reach it! + +It wasn't very high--for an ordinary-sized man--for an ordinary-sized +man had to get at it to trim and fill it daily--only Toddles wasn't an +ordinary-sized man. It was just nine or ten feet above the rails--just +a standard siding switch. + +Toddles gritted his teeth, and climbed upon the base of the switch--and +nearly fainted as his ankle swung against the rod. A foot above the +base was a footrest for a man to stand on and reach up for the lamp, +and Toddles drew himself up and got his foot on it--and then at his +full height the tips of his fingers only just touched the bottom of the +lamp. Toddles cried aloud, and the tears streamed down his face now. +Oh, if he weren't hurt--if he could only shin up another foot--but--but +it was all he could do to hang there where he was. + +_What was that_! He turned his head. Up the track, sweeping in a +great circle as it swung the curve, a headlight's glare cut through the +night--and Toddles "shinned" the foot. He tugged and tore at the lamp, +tugged and tore at it, loosened it, lifted it from its socket, sprawled +and wriggled with it to the ground--and turned the red side of the lamp +against second Number Two. + +The quick, short blasts of a whistle answered, then the crunch and +grind and scream of biting brake-shoes--and the big mountain racer, the +1012, pulling the second section of the Limited that night, stopped +with its pilot nosing a diminutive figure in a torn and silver-buttoned +uniform, whose hair was clotted red, and whose face was covered with +blood and dirt. + +Masters, the engineer, and Pete Leroy, his fireman, swung from the +gangways; Kelly, the conductor, came running up from the forward coach. + +Kelly shoved his lamp into Toddles' face--and whistled low under his +breath. + +"Toddles!" he gasped; and then, quick as a steel trap: "What's wrong?" + +"I don't know," said Toddles weakly. "There's--there's something +wrong. Get into the clear--on the siding." + +"Something wrong," repeated Kelly, "and you don't----" + +But Masters cut the conductor short with a grab at the other's arm that +was like the shutting of a vise--and then bolted for his engine like a +gopher for its hole. From, down the track came the heavy, grumbling +roar of a freight. Everybody flew then, and there was quick work done +in the next half minute--and none too quickly done--the Limited was no +more than on the siding when the fast freight rolled her long string of +flats, boxes and gondolas thundering by. + +And while she passed, Toddles, on the platform, stammered out his story +to Kelly. + +Kelly didn't say anything--then. With the express messenger and a +brakeman carrying Toddles, Kelly kicked in the station door, and set +his lamp down on the operator's table. + +"Hold me up," whispered Toddles--and, while they held him, he made the +despatcher's call. + +Big Cloud answered him on the instant. Haltingly, Toddles reported the +second section "in" and the freight "out"--only he did it very slowly, +and he couldn't think very much more, for things were going black. He +got an order for the Limited to run to Blind River and told Kelly, and +got the "complete"--and then Big Cloud asked who was on the wire, and +Toddles answered that in a mechanical sort of a way without quite +knowing what he was doing--and went limp in Kelly's arms. + +And as Toddles answered, back in Big Cloud, Regan, the sweat still +standing out in great beads on his forehead, fierce now in the +revulsion of relief, glared over Donkin's left shoulder, as Donkin's +left hand scribbled on a pad what was coming over the wire. + +Regan glared fiercely--then he spluttered: + +"Who in hell's Christopher Hyslop Hoogan--h'm?" + +Donkin's lips had a queer smile on them. + +"Toddles," he said. + +Regan sat down heavily in his chair. + +"_What?_" demanded the super. + +"Toddles," said Donkin. "I've been trying to drum a little railroading +into him--on the key." + +Regan wiped his face. He looked helplessly from Donkin to the super, +and then back again at Donkin. + +"But--but what's he doing at Cassil's Siding? How'd he get there--h'm? +H'm? How'd he get there?" + +"I don't know," said Donkin, his fingers rattling the Cassil's Siding +call again. "He doesn't answer any more. We'll have to wait for the +story till they make Blind River, I guess." + +And so they waited. And presently at Blind River, Kelly, dictating to +the operator--not Beale, Beale's day man--told the story. It lost +nothing in the telling--Kelly wasn't that kind of a man--he told them +what Toddles had done, and he left nothing out; and he added that they +had Toddles on a mattress in the baggage car, with a doctor they had +discovered amongst the passengers looking after him. + +At the end, Carleton tamped down the dottle in the bowl of his pipe +thoughtfully with his forefinger--and glanced at Donkin. + +"Got along far enough to take a station key somewhere?" he inquired +casually. "He's made a pretty good job of it as the night operator at +Cassil's." + +Donkin was smiling. + +"Not yet," he said. + +"No?" Carleton's eyebrows went up. "Well, let him come in here with +you, then, till he has; and when you say he's ready, we'll see what we +can do. I guess it's coming to him; and I guess"--he shifted his +glance to the master mechanic--"I guess we'll go down and meet Number +Two when she comes in, Tommy." + +Regan grinned. + +"With our hats in our hands," said the big-hearted master mechanic. + +Donkin shook his head. + +"Don't you do it," he said. "I don't want him to get a swelled head." + +Carleton stared; and Regan's hand, reaching into his back pocket for +his chewing, stopped midway. + +Donkin was still smiling. + +"I'm going to make a railroad man out of Toddles," he said. + + + + +II + +OWSLEY AND THE 1601 + +His name was Owsley--Jake Owsley--and he was a railroad man before ever +he came to Big Cloud and the Hill Division--before ever the Hill +Division was even advanced to the blue-print stage, before steel had +ever spider-webbed the stubborn Rockies, before the Herculean task of +bridging a continent was more than a thought in even the most ambitious +minds. + +Owsley was an engineer, and he came from the East, when they broke +ground at Big Cloud for a start toward the western goal through the +mighty range, a comparatively young man--thirty, or thereabouts. Then, +inch by inch and foot by foot, Owsley, with his ballast cars and his +boxes and his flats bumping material behind him, followed the +construction gangs as they burrowed and blasted and trestled their way +along--day in, day out, month in, month out, until the years went by, +and they were through the Rockies, with the Coast and the blue of the +Pacific in sight. + +First over every bridge and culvert, first through every cut, first +through every tunnel shorn in the bitter gray rock of the mountain +sides, the pilot of Owsley's engine nosed its way; and, when the rough +of the work was over, and in the hysteria of celebration, the toll of +lives, the hardships and the cost were forgotten for the moment, and +the directors and their guests crowded the cab and perched on running +boards and footplates till you couldn't see the bunting they'd draped +the engine with, and the mahogany coaches behind looked like the +striped sticks of candy the kids buy on account of more bunting, and +then some, and the local band they'd brought along from Big Cloud got +the mouthpieces of their trombones and cornets mixed up with the necks +of champagne bottles, and the Indian braves squatted gravely at +different points along the trackside and thought their white brothers +had gone mad, Owsley was at the throttle for the first through run over +the division--it was Owsley's due. + +Then other years went by, and the steel was shaken down into the +permanent right of way that is an engineering marvel to-day, and Owsley +still held a throttle on a through run--just kept growing a little +older, that was all--but one of the best of them, for all +that--steadier than the younger men, wise in experience, and with a +love for his engine that was like the love of a man for a woman. + +It's a strange thing, perhaps, a love like that; but, strange or not, +there was never an engineer worth his salt who hasn't had it--some more +than others, of course--as some men's love for a woman is deeper than +others. With Owsley it came pretty near being the whole thing, and it +was queer enough to see him when they'd change his engine to give him a +newer and more improved type for a running mate. He'd refuse +point-blank at first to be separated from the obsolete engine, that was +either carded for some local jerk-water, mixed-freight run, or for a +construction job somewhere. + +"Leave her with me," he'd say to Regan, the master mechanic. "Leave me +with her. You can give my run to some one else, Regan, d'ye mind? +It's little I care for the swell run; me and the old girl sticks. I'll +have nothing else." + +But the bluff, fat, big-hearted, good-natured, little master mechanic, +knew his man--and he knew an engineer when he saw one. Regan would no +more have thought of letting Owsley get away from the Imperial's +throttle than he would have thought of putting call boys in the cabs to +run his engines. + +"H'm!" he would say, blinking fast at Owsley. "Feel that way, do you? +Well, then, mabbe it's about time you quit altogether. I didn't offer +you your choice, did I? You take the Imperial with what I give you to +take her with--or take nothing. Think it over!" + +And Owsley, perforce, had to "think it over"--and, perforce, he stayed +on the limited run. + +Came then the day when changes in engine types were not so frequent, +and a fair maximum in machine-design efficiency had been obtained--and +Owsley came to love, more than he had ever loved any engine before, his +big, powerful, 1600-class racer, with its four pairs of massive +drivers, that took the curves with the grace of a circling bird, that +laughed in glee at anything lower than a three per cent grade, and +tackled the "fives" with no more than a grunt of disdain--Owsley and +the 1601, right from the start, clipped fifty-five minutes off the +running time of the Imperial Limited through the Rockies, where before +it had been nip and tuck to make the old schedule anywhere near the dot. + +For three years it was Owsley and the 1601; for three years east and +west through the mountains--and a smile in the roundhouse at him as he +nursed and cuddled and groomed his big flyer, in from a run. Not +now--they don't smile now about it. It was Owsley and the 1601 for +three years--and at the end it was still Owsley and the 1601. The two +are coupled together--they never speak of one on the Hill Division +without the other--Owsley and the 1601. + +Owsley! One of the old guard who answered the roll call at the birth +of the Hill Division! Forty years a railroader--call boy at +ten--twenty years of service, counting the construction period, on the +Hill Division! Straight and upright as a young sapling at fifty-odd, +with a swing through the gangway that the younger men tried to imitate; +hair short-cropped, a little grizzled; gray, steady eyes; a beard whose +color, once brown, was nondescript, kind of shading tawny and gray in +streaks; a slim, little man, overalled and jumpered, with greasy, +peaked cap--and, wifeless, without kith or kin save his engine, the +star boarder at Mrs. McCann's short-order house. Liked by everybody, +known by everybody on the division down to the last Polack construction +hand, quiet, no bluster about him, full of good-humored fun, ready to +take his part or do his share in anything going, from a lodge minstrel +show to sitting up all night and playing trained nurse to anybody that +needed one--that was Owsley. + +Oh, you, in your millions, who ride in trains by day and night, do you +ever give a thought to the men into whose keeping you hand your lives? +Does it ever occur to you that they are not just part of the equipment +of iron and wood and steel and rolling things to be accepted callously, +as bought and paid for with the strip of ticket that you hold, animate +only that you may voice your grumblings and your discontent at some +delay that saves you probably from being hurled into eternity while you +chafe impatiently and childishly at something you know nothing +about--that they, like you, are human too, with hopes achieved and +aspirations shattered, and plans and interests in life? Have you ever +thought that there was a human side to railroading, and that--but we +were speaking of Owsley, Jake Owsley, perhaps you'll understand a +little better farther on along the right of way. + +Elbow Bend, were it not for the insurmountable obstacles that Dame +Nature had seen fit to place there--the bed of the Glacier River on one +side and a sheer rock base of mountain on the other--would have been a +black mark against the record of the engineering corps who built the +station. Speaking generally, it's not good railroad practice to put a +station on a curve--when it can be helped. Elbow Bend, the whole of +it, main line and siding, made a curve--that's how it got its name. +And yet, in a way, it wasn't the curve that was to blame; though, too, +in a way, it was--Owsley had a patched eye that night from a bit of +steel that had got into it in the afternoon, nothing much, but a patch +on it to keep the cold and the sweep of the wind out. + +It was the eastbound run, and, to make up for the loss of time a slow +order over new construction work back a dozen miles or so had cost him, +the 1601 was hitting a pretty fast clip as he whistled for Elbow Bend. +Owsley checked just a little as he nosed the curve--the Imperial +Limited made no stop at Elbow Bend--and then, as the 1601 sort of got +her footing, so to speak, on the long bend, he opened her out again, +and the storm of exhausts from her short, stubby stack went echoing +through the mountains like the play of artillery. + +The light of the west-end siding switch flashed by like a scintillating +gem in the darkness. Brannigan, Owsley's fireman, pulled his door, +shooting the cab and the heavens full of leaping, fiery red, and swung +to the tender for a shovelful of coal. Owsley, crouched a little +forward in his seat, his body braced against the cant of the mogul on +the curve, was "feeling" the throttle with careful hand, as he peered +ahead through the cab glass. Came the station lights; the black bulk +of a locomotive, cascading steam from her safety, on the siding; and +then the thundering reverberation as the 1601 began to sweep past a +long, curving line of boxes, flats and gondolas, the end of which +Owsley could not see--for the curve. + +Owsley relaxed a little. That was right--Extra No. 49, west, was to +cross him at Elbow Bend--and she was on the siding as she should be. +His headlight, streaming out at a tangent to the curve, played its ray +kaleidoscopically along the sides of the string of freights, now edging +the roof of a box car, now opening a hole to the gray rock of the cut +when a flat or two intervened--and then, sudden, quick as doom, with a +yell from his fireman ringing in his ears, Owsley, his jaws clamping +like a steel trap, flung his arm forward, jamming the throttle shut, +while with the other hand he grabbed at the "air." + +Owsley had seen it, too--as quick as Brannigan--a figure, arms waving +frantically, for a fleeting second strangely silhouetted in the dancing +headlight's glare on the roof of one of the box cars. A wild shout +from the man, fluttering, indistinguishable, reached them as they +roared by--then the grind and scream of brake-shoes as the "air" went +on--the answering shudder vibrating through the cab of the big +racer--the meeting clash of buffer plates echoing down the length of +the train behind--and a queer obstructing blackness dead ahead ere the +headlight, tardy in its sweep, could point the way--but Owsley knew +now--too late. + +Brannigan screamed in his ear. + +"She ain't in the clear!" he screamed. "It's a swipe! She ain't in +the clear!" he screamed again--and took a flying leap through the +off-side gangway. + +Owsley never turned his head--only held there, grim-faced, +tight-lipped, facing what was to come--facing it with clear head, quick +brain, doing what he could to lessen the disaster, as forty years had +schooled him to face emergency. Owsley--for forty years with his +record, until that moment, as clean and unsmirched as the day he +started as a kid calling train crews back in the little division town +on the Penn in the far East! Strange it should come to Owsley, the one +man of all you'd never think it would! It's hard to understand the +running orders of the Great Trainmaster sometimes--isn't it? And +sometimes it doesn't help much to realize that we never will understand +this side of the Great Divide--does it? + +The headlight caught it now--seemed to gloat upon it in a flood of +blazing, insolent light--the rear cars of the freight crawling +frantically from the main line to the siding--then the pitiful yellow +from the cupola of the caboose, the light from below filtering up +through the windows. It seared into Owsley's brain lightning quick, +but vivid in every detail in a horrible, fascinating way. It was a +second, the fraction of a second since Brannigan had jumped--it might +have been an hour. + +The front of the caboose seemed to leap suddenly at the 1601, seemed to +rise up in the air and hurl itself at the straining engine as though in +impotent fury at unwarranted attack. There was a terrific crash, the +groan and rend of timber, the sickening grind and crunch as the van +went to matchwood--the debris hurtling along the running boards, +shattering the cab glass in flying splinters--and Owsley dropped where +he stood--like a log. And the pony truck caught the tongue of the open +switch, and, with a vicious, nasty lurch, the 1601 wrenched herself +loose from her string of coaches, staggered like a lost and drunken +soul a few yards along the ties--and turned turtle in the ditch. + +It was a bad spill, but it might have been worse, a great deal worse--a +box car and the van for the junk heap, and the 1601 for the shops to +repair fractures--and nobody hurt except Owsley. + +But they couldn't make head or tail of the cause of it. Everybody went +on the carpet for it--and still it was a mystery. The main line was +clear at the west end of the siding, and the switch was right; +everybody was agreed on that, and it showed that way on the face of +it--and that was as it should have been. The operator at Elbow Bend +swore that he had shown his red, and that it was showing when the +Limited swept by. He said he knew it was going to be a close shave +whether the freight, a little late and crowding the Limited's running +time, would be clear of the main line without delaying the express, and +he had shown his red before ever he had heard her whistle--his red was +showing. The engine crew and the train crew of Extra No. 49, west, +backed the operator up--the red was showing. + +Brannigan, the fireman, didn't count as a witness. The only light he'd +seen at all was the west-end switch light, the curve had hidden +anything ahead until after he'd pulled his door and turned to the +tender for coal, and by then they were past the station. And Owsley, +pretty badly smashed up, and in bed down in Mrs. McCann's short-order +house, talked kind of queer when he got around to where he could talk +at all. They asked him what color light the station semaphore was +showing, and Owsley said white--white as the moon. That's what he +said--white as the moon. And they weren't quite sure he understood +what they were driving at. + +For a week that's all they could make out of it, and then, with Regan +scratching his head over it one day in confab with Carleton, the +superintendent, it came more by chance than anything else. + +"Blamed if I know what to make of it!" he growled. "Ordinary, six +men's words would be the end of it, but Owsley's the best man that ever +latched a throttle in our cabs, and for twenty years his record's +cleaner than a baby's. What he says now don't count, because he ain't +right again yet; but what you can't get away from is the fact that +Owsley's not the man to have slipped a signal. Either the six of them +are doing him cold to save their own skins, or there's something queer +about it." + +Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, in his grave, quiet way, shook his head. + +"We've been trying hard enough to get to the bottom of it, Tommy," he +said. "I wish to the Lord we could. I don't think the men are +lying--they tell a pretty straight story. I've been wondering about +that patch Owsley had on his eye, and----" + +"What's that got to do with it?" cut in the blunt little master +mechanic, who made no bones about his fondness for the engineer. "He +isn't blind in the other, is he?" + +Carleton stared at the master mechanic for a moment, pulling +ruminatively at his brier; then--they were in the super's office at the +time--his fist came down with a sudden bang upon the desk. + +"I believe you've got it, Tommy!" he exclaimed. + +"Believe I've got it!" echoed Regan, and his hand half-way to his mouth +with his plug of chewing stopped in mid-air. "Got what? I said he +wasn't blind in the other, and neither he is--you know that as well as +I do." + +"Wait!" said Carleton. "It's very rare, I know, but it seems to me +I've heard of it. Wait a minute, Tommy." He was leaning over from his +chair and twirling the little revolving bookcase beside the desk, as he +spoke--not a large library was Carleton's, just a few technical books, +and his cherished Britannica. He pulled out a volume of the +encyclopedia, laid it upon his desk, and began to turn the leaves. +"Yes, here it is," he said, after a moment. "Listen"--and he commenced +to read rapidly: + +"'The most common form of Daltonism'--that's color-blindness you know, +Tommy--'depends on the absence of the red sense. Great additions to +our knowledge of this subject, if only in confirmation of results +already deduced from theory, have been obtained in the last few years +by Holmgren, who has experimented on two persons, each of whom was +found to have _one color-blind eye_, the other being nearly normal." + +"Color-blind!" spluttered the master mechanic. + +"In one eye," said Carleton, sort of as though he were turning a +problem over in his mind. "That would account for it all, Tommy. As +far as I know, one doesn't go color-blind--one is born that way--and if +this is what's at the bottom of it, Owsley's been color-blind all his +life in one eye, and probably didn't know what was the matter. That +would account for his passing the tests, and would account for what +happened at Elbow Bend. It was the patch that did it--you remember +what he said--the light was white as the moon." + +"And he's out!" stormed Regan. "Out for keeps--after forty years. +Say, d'ye know what this'll mean to Owsley--do you, eh, do you? It'll +be hell for him, Carleton--he thinks more of his engine than a woman +does of her child." + +Carleton closed the volume and replaced it mechanically in the bookcase. + +Regan's teeth met in his plug and jerked savagely at the tobacco. + +"I wish to blazes you hadn't read that!" he muttered fiercely. "What's +to be done now?" + +"I'm afraid there's only one thing to be done," Carleton answered +gravely. "Sentiment doesn't let us out--there's too many lives at +stake every time he takes out an engine. He'll have to try the color +test with a patch over the same eye he had it on that night. Perhaps, +after all, I'm wrong, and----" + +"He's out!" said the master mechanic gruffly. "He's out--I don't need +any test to know that now. That's what's the matter, and no other +thing on earth. It's rough, damn rough, ain't it--after forty +years?"--and Regan, with a short laugh, strode to the window and stood +staring out at the choked railroad yards below him. + +And Regan was right. Three weeks later, when he got out of bed, Owsley +took the color test under the queerest conditions that ever a railroad +man took it--with his right eye bandaged--and failed utterly. + +But Owsley didn't quite seem to understand--and little Doctor McTurk, +the company surgeon, was badly worried, and had been all along. Owsley +was a long way from being the same Owsley he was before the accident. +Not physically--that way he was shaping up pretty well, but his head +seemed to bother him--he seemed to have lost his grip on a whole lot of +things. They gave him the test more to settle the point in their own +minds, but they knew before they gave it to him that it wasn't much use +as far as he was concerned one way or the other. There was more than a +mere matter of color wrong with Owsley now. And maybe that was the +kindest thing that could have happened to him, maybe it made it easier +for him since the colors barred him anyway from ever pulling a throttle +again--not to understand! + +They tried to tell him he hadn't passed the color test--Regan tried to +tell him in a clumsy, big-hearted way, breaking it as easy as he +could--and Owsley laughed as though he were pleased--just laughed, and +with a glance at the clock and a jerky pull at his watch for +comparison, a way he had of doing, walked out of Riley's, the +trainmaster's office, and started across the tracks for the roundhouse. +Owsley's head wasn't working right--it was as though the mechanism was +running down--the memory kind of tapering off. But the 1601, his +engine--stuck. And it was train time when he walked out of Riley's +office that afternoon--the first afternoon he'd been out of bed and +Mrs. McCann's motherly hands since the night at Elbow Bend. + +Perhaps you'll smile a little tolerantly at this, and perhaps you'll +say the story's "cooked." Well, perhaps! If you think that way about +it, you'll probably smile more broadly still, and with the same grounds +for a smile, before we make division and sign the train register at the +end of the run. Anyway, that afternoon, as Owsley, out for the first +time, walked a little shakily across the turntable and through the big +engine doors into the roundhouse, the 1601 was out for the first time +herself from the repair shops, and for the first time since the +accident was standing on the pit, blowing from a full head of steam, +and ready to move out and couple on for the mountain run west, as soon +as the Imperial Limited came in off the Prairie Division from the East. +Is it a coincidence to smile at? Yes? Well, then, there is more of +the same humor to come. They tell the story on the Hill Division this +way, those hard, grimy-handed men of the Rockies, in the cab, in the +caboose, in the smoker, if you get intimate enough with the conductor +or brakeman, in the roundhouse and in the section shanty--but they +never smile themselves when they tell it. + +Paxley, big as two of Owsley, promoted from a local passenger run, had +been given the Imperial--and the 1601. He was standing by the +front-end, chatting with Clarihue, the turner, as Owsley came in. + +Owsley didn't appear to notice either of the men--didn't answer either +of them as they greeted him cheerily. His face, that had grown white +from his illness, was tinged a little red with excitement, and his eyes +seemed trying to take in every single detail of the big mountain racer +all at once. He walked along to the gangway, his shoulders sort of +bracing further back all the time, and then with the old-time swing he +disappeared into the cab. He was out again in a minute with a +long-spouted oil can, and, just as he always did, started in for an oil +around. + +Paxley and Clarihue looked at each other. And Paxley sort of fumbled +aimlessly with the peak of his cap, while Clarihue couldn't seem to get +the straps of his overalls adjusted comfortably. Brannigan, Owsley's +old fireman, joined them from the other side of the engine. None of +them spoke. Owsley went on oiling--making the round slowly, carefully, +head and shoulders hidden completely at times as he leaned in over the +rod, poking at the motion-gear. And Regan, who had followed Owsley, +coming in, got the thing in a glance--and swore fiercely deep down in +his throat. + +Not much to choke strong men up and throw them into the "dead-center"? +Well, perhaps not. Just a railroad man for forty years, just an +engineer, and the best of them all--out! + +Owsley finished his round, and, instead of climbing into the cab +through the opposite gangway, came back to the front-end and halted +before Jim Clarihue. + +"I see you got that injector valve packed at last," said he +approvingly. "She looks cleaner under the guard-plates than I've seen +her for a long time, too. Give me the 'table, Jim." + +Not one of them answered. Regan said afterward that he felt as though +there'd been a head-on smash somewhere inside of him. But Owsley +didn't seem to expect any answer. He went on down the side of the +locomotive, went in through the gangway, and the next instant the steam +came purring into the cylinders, just warming her up for a moment, as +Owsley always did before he moved out of the roundhouse. + +It was Clarihue then who spoke--with a kind of catchy jerk: + +"She's stiff from the shops. He ain't strong enough to hold her on the +'table." + +Regan looked at Paxley--and tugged at his scraggly little brown +mustache. + +"You'll have to get him out of there, Bob," he said gruffly, to hide +his emotion. "Get him out--gently." + +The steam was coming now into the cylinders with a more businesslike +rush--and Paxley jumped for the cab. As he climbed in, Brannigan +followed, and in a sort of helpless way hung in the gangway behind him. +Owsley was standing up, his hand on the throttle, and evidently puzzled +a little at the stiffness of the reversing lever, that refused to budge +on the segment with what strength he had in one hand to give to it. + +Paxley reached over and tried to loosen Owsley's hand on the throttle. + +"Let me take her, Jake," he said. + +Owsley stared at him for a moment in mingled perplexity and irritation. + +"What in blazes would I let you take her for?" he snapped suddenly, and +attempted to shoulder Paxley aside. "Get out of here, and mind your +own business! Get out!" He snatched his wrist away from Paxley's +fingers and gave a jerk at the throttle--and the 1601 began to move. + +The 'table wasn't set, and Paxley had no time for hesitation. More +roughly than he had any wish to do it, he brushed Owsley's hand from +the throttle and latched the throttle shut. + +And then, quick as a cat, Owsley was on him. + +It wasn't much of a fight--hardly a fight at all--Owsley, from three +weeks on his back, was dropping weak. But Owsley snatched up a spanner +that was lying on the seat, and smashed Paxley with it between the +eyes. Paxley was a big man physically--and a bigger man still where it +counts most and doesn't show--with the blood streaming down his face, +and half blinded, regardless of the blows that Owsley still tried to +rain upon him, he picked the engineer up in his arms like a baby, and +with Brannigan, dropping off the gangway and helping, got Owsley to the +ground. + +Owsley hadn't been fit for excitement or exertion of that kind--for +_any_ kind of excitement or exertion. They took him back to his +boarding house, and Doctor McTurk screwed his eyes up over him in the +funny way he had when things looked critical, and Mrs. McCann nursed +him daytimes, and Carleton and Regan and two or three others took turns +sitting up with him nights--for a month. Then Owsley began to mend +again, and began to talk of getting back on the Limited run with the +1601--always the 1601. And most times he talked pretty straight, +too--as straight as any of the rest of them--only his memory seemed to +keep that queer sort of haze over it--up to the time of the accident it +seemed all right, but after that things blurred woefully. + +Regan, Carleton and Doctor McTurk went into committee over it in the +super's office one afternoon just before Owsley was out of bed again. + +"What d'ye say--h'm? What d'ye say, doc?" demanded Regan. + +Doctor McTurk, scientific and professional in every inch of his little +body, lined his eyebrows up into a ferocious black streak across his +forehead, and talked medicine in medical terms into the superintendent +and the master mechanic for a good five minutes. + +When he had finished, Carleton's brows were puckered, too, his face was +a little blank, and he tapped the edge of his desk with the end of his +pencil somewhat helplessly. + +Regan tugged at both ends of his mustache and sputtered. + +"What the blazes!" he growled. "Give it to us in plain railroading! +Has he got rights through--or hasn't he? Does he get better--or does +he not? H'm?" + +"I don't know, I tell you!" retorted Doctor McTurk. "I don't know--and +that's flat. I've told you why a minute ago. I don't know whether +he'll ever be better in his head than he is now--otherwise he'll come +around all right." + +"Well, what's to be done?" inquired Carleton. + +"He's got to work for a living, I suppose--eh?" Doctor McTurk answered. +"And he can't run an engine any more on account of the colors, no +matter what happens. That's the state of affairs, isn't it?" + +Carleton didn't answer; Regan only mumbled under his breath. + +"Well then," submitted Doctor McTurk, "the best thing for him, +temporarily at least, to build him up, is fresh air and plenty of it. +Give him a job somewhere out in the open." + +Carleton's eyebrows went up. He looked across at Regan questioningly. + +"He wouldn't take it," said Regan slowly. "There's nothing to anything +for Owsley but the 1601." + +"Wouldn't take it!" snapped the little doctor. "He's got to take it. +And if you care half what you pretend you do for him, you've got to see +that he does." + +"How about construction work with McCann?" suggested Carleton. "He +likes McCann, and he's lived at their place for years now." + +"Just the thing!" declared Doctor McTurk heartily. "Couldn't be +better." + +Carleton looked at Regan again. + +"You can handle him better than any one else, Tommy. Suppose you see +what you can do? And speaking of the 1601, how would it do to tell him +what's happened in the last month. Maybe he wouldn't think so much of +her as he does now." + +"No!" exclaimed Doctor McTurk quickly. "Don't you do it!" + +"No," said Regan, shaking his head. "It would make him worse. He'd +blame it on Paxley, and we'd have trouble on our hands before you could +bat an eyelash." + +"Yes; perhaps you're right," agreed Carleton. "Well, then, try him on +the construction tack, Tommy." + +And so Regan went that afternoon from the super's office over to Mrs. +McCann's short-order house, and up to Owsley's room. + +"Well, how's Jake to-day?" he inquired, in his bluff, cheery way, +drawing a chair up beside the bed. + +"I'm fine, Regan," said Owsley earnestly. "Fine! What day is this?" + +"Thursday," Regan told him. + +"Yes," said Owsley, "that's right--Thursday. Well, you can put me down +to take the old 1601 out Monday night. I'm figuring to get back on the +run Monday night, Regan." + +Regan ran his hand through his short-cropped hair, twisted a little +uneasily in his chair--and coughed to fill in the gap. + +"I wouldn't be in a hurry about it, if I were you, Jake," he said. "In +fact, that's what I came over to have a little talk with you about. We +don't think you're strong enough yet for the cab." + +"Who don't?" demanded Owsley antagonistically. + +"The doctor and Carleton and myself--we were just speaking about it." + +"Why ain't I?" demanded Owsley again. + +"Why, good Lord, Jake," said Regan patiently, "you've been sick--dashed +near two months. A man can't expect to get out of bed after a lay-off +like that and start right in again before he gets his strength back. +You know that as well as I do." + +"Mabbe I do, and mabbe I don't," said Owsley, a little uncertainly. +"How'm I going to get strong?" + +"Well," replied Regan, "the doc says open-air work to build you up, and +we were thinking you might like to put in a month, say, with Bill +McCann up on the Elk River work--helping him boss Polacks, for +instance." + +Owsley didn't speak for a moment, he seemed to be puzzling something +out; then, still in a puzzled way: + +"And then what about after the month?" + +"Why then," said Regan, "then"--he reached for his hip pocket and his +plug, pulled out the plug, picked the heart-shaped tin tag off with his +thumb nail, decided not to take a bite, and put the blackstrap back in +his pocket again. "Why then," said he, "you'll--you ought to be all +right again." + +Owsley sat up in bed. + +"You playing straight with me, Regan?" he asked slowly. + +"Sure," said Regan gruffly. "Sure, I am." + +Owsley passed his hand two or three times across his eyes. + +"I don't quite seem to get the signals right on what's happened," he +said. "I guess I've been pretty sick. I kind of had a feeling a +minute ago that you were trying to side-track me, but if you say you +ain't, I believe you. I ain't going to be side-tracked. When I quit +for keeps, I quit in the cab with my boots on--no way else. I'll tell +you something, Regan. When I go out, I'm going out with my hand on the +throttle, same as it's been for more'n twenty years. And me and the +old 1601, we're going out together--that's the way I want to go when +the time comes--and that's the way I'm going. I've known it for a long +time." + +"How do you mean you've known it for a long time?" Regan swallowed a +lump in his throat, as he asked the question--Owsley's mind seemed to +be wandering a little. + +"I dunno," said Owsley, and his hand crept to his head again. "I +dunno--I just know." Then abruptly: "I got to get strong for the old +1601, ain't I? That's right. I'll go up there--only you give me your +word I get the 1601 back after the month." + +Regan's eyes, from the floor, lifted and met Owsley's steadily. + +"You bet, Jake!" he said. + +"Give me your hand on it," said Owsley happily. + +And Regan gripped the engineer's hand. + +Regan left the room a moment or two after that, and on his way +downstairs he brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. + +"What the hell!" he growled to himself. "I had to lie to him, didn't +I?" + +And so, on the Monday following, Owsley went up to the new Elk River +road work, and--But just a moment, we've over-run our holding orders a +bit, and we've got to back for the siding. The 1601 crosses us here. + +Superstition is a queer thing, isn't it? Speaking generally, we look +on it somewhat from the viewpoint of the old adage that all men are +mortal save ourselves; that is, we can accept, with more or less +tolerant condescension, the existence of superstition in others, and, +with more or less tolerant condescension, put it down to ignorance--in +others. But we're not superstitious ourselves, so we've got to have +something better to go on than that, as far as the 1601 is concerned. +Well, the 1601 was pretty badly shaken up that night in the spill at +Elbow Bend, and when they overhauled her in the shops, while they made +her look like new, perhaps they missed something down deep in her +vitals in the doing of it; perhaps she was weakened and strained where +they didn't know she was; perhaps they didn't get clean to the bottom +of all her troubles; perhaps they made a bad job of a job that looked +all right under the fresh paint and the gold leaf. There's nothing +superstitious about that, is there? It's logical and reasonable enough +to satisfy even the most hypercritical crank amongst us +anti-superstitionists--isn't it? + +But that doesn't go in the cabs, and the roundhouses, and the section +shanties on the Hill Division. You could talk and reason out there +along that line until you were blue in the face from shortness of +breath, and they'd listen to you while they wiped their hands on a hunk +of waste--they'd listen, but they've got their own notions. + +It was the night at Elbow Bend that Owsley and the 1601 together first +went wrong; and both went into hospital together and came out together +to the day--the 1601 for her old run through the mountains, and Owsley +with no other idea in life possessing his sick brain than to make the +run with her. Owsley had a relapse that day--and that day, twenty +miles west of Big Cloud, the 1601 blew her cylinder head off. And from +then on, while Owsley lay in bed again at Mrs. McCann's, the 1601, when +she wasn't in the shops from an endless series of mishaps, was turning +the hair gray on a despatcher or two, and had got most of Paxley's +nerve. + +But what's the use of going into all the details--there was enough +paper used up in the specification repair-sheets! Going slow up a +grade and around a curve that was protected with ninety-pound +guard-rails, her pony truck jumped the steel where a baby carriage +would have held the right of way; she broke this, she broke that, she +was always breaking something; and rare was the night that she didn't +limp into division dragging the grumbling occupants of the mahogany +sleepers after her with her schedule gone to smash. And then, finally, +putting a clincher on it all, she ended up, when she was running fifty +miles an hour, by shedding a driving wheel, and nearly killing Paxley +as the rod ripped through and through, tearing the right-hand side of +the cab into mangled wreckage--and that finished her for the Limited +run. Do you recall that Owsley, too, was finished for the Limited run? + +Superstition? You can figure it any way you like--they've got their +own notions on the Hill Division. + +When the 1601 came out of the shops again after that, the marks of +authority's disapprobation were heavy upon her--the gold leaf of the +passenger flyer was gone; the big figures on the tender were only +yellow paint. + +Regan scowled at her as they ran her into the yards. + +"Damn her!" said Regan fervently; and then, as he thought of Owsley, he +scowled deeper, and yanked at his mustache. "Say," said Regan heavily, +"it's queer, ain't it? Blamed queer--h'm--when you come to think of +it?" + +And so, while the 1601, disfranchised, went to hauling extra freights, +kind of a misfit doing spare jobs, anything that turned up, no regular +run any more, Owsley, kind of a misfit, too, without any very definite +duties, because there wasn't anything very definite they dared trust +him with, went up on the Elk River work with Bill McCann, the husband +of Mrs. McCann, who kept the short-order house. + +Owsley told McCann, as he had told Regan, that he was only up there +getting strong again for the 1601--and he went around on the +construction work whistling and laughing like a schoolboy, and happy as +a child--getting strong again for the 1601! + +McCann couldn't see anything very much the matter with Owsley--except +that Owsley was happy. He studied the letter Regan had sent him, and +watched the engineer, and scratched at his bullet head, and blinked +fast with his gray Irish eyes. + +"Faith," said McCann, "it's them that's off their chumps--not Owsley. +Hark to him singin' out there like a lark! An', bedad, ut's mesilf'll +tell 'em so!'" + +And he did. He wrote his opinion in concise, forceful, misspelled +English on the back of a requisition slip, and sent it to Regan. Regan +didn't say much--just choked up a little when he read it. McCann +wasn't strong on diagnosis. + +It was still early spring when Owsley went to the new loop they were +building around the main line to tap a bit of the country south, and +the chinook, blowing warm, had melted most of the snow, and the creeks, +rivers and sluices were running full--the busiest time in all the year +for the trackmen and section hands. It was a summer's job, the +loop--if luck was with them--and the orders were to push the work, the +steel was to be down before the snow flew again. That was the way it +was put up to McCann when he first moved into construction camp, a +short while before Owsley joined him. + +"Then give me the stuff," said McCann. "Shoot the material along, an' +don't lave me bitin' me finger nails for the want av ut--d'ye moind?" + +So the Big Cloud yards, too, had orders--standing orders to rush out +all material for the Elk River loop as fast as it came in from the East. + +In a way, of course, that was how it happened--from the standing +orders. It was just the kind of work the 1601 was hanging around +waiting to do--the odd jobs--pulling the extras. Ordinarily, perhaps, +somebody would have thought of it, and maybe they wouldn't have sent +her out--maybe they would. You can't operate a railroad wholly on +sentiment--and there were ten cars of steel and as many more of ties +and conglomerate supplies helping to choke up the Big Cloud yards when +they should have been where they were needed a whole lot more--in +McCann's construction camp. + +But there had been two days of bad weather in the mountains, two days +of solid rain, track troubles, and troubles generally, and what with +one thing and another, the motive-power department had been taxed to +its limit. The first chance they got in a lull of pressure, not the +storm, they sent the material west with the only spare engine that +happened to be in the roundhouse at the time--the 1601--and never +thought of Owsley. Regan might have, would have, if he had known it; +but Regan didn't know it--then. Regan wasn't handling the operating. + +Perhaps, after all, they needn't have been in a belated hurry that +day--McCann and his foreigners had done nothing but hug their shanties +and listen to the rain washing the ballast away for two days and a +half, until, as it got dark on that particular day, barely a week after +Owsley had come to the work, they listened, by way of variation, to the +chime whistle of an engine that came ringing down with the wind. + +McCann and Owsley shared a little shanty by themselves, and McCann was +trying to initiate Owsley into the mysteries of that grand old game so +dear to the hearts of Irishmen--the game of forty-five. But at the +first sound of the whistle, the cards dropped from Owsley's hands, and +he jumped to his feet. + +"D'ye hear that! D'ye hear that!" he cried. + +"An' fwhat av ut?" inquired McCann. "Ut'll be the material we'd be +hung up for, if 'twere not for the storm." + +Owsley leaned across the table, his head turned a little sideways in a +curious listening attitude--leaned across the table and gripped +McCann's shoulders. + +"It's the 1601!" he whispered. He put his finger to his lips to +caution silence, and with the other hand patted McCann's shoulder +confidentially. "It's the 1601!" he whispered--and jumped for the +door--out into the storm. + +"For the love av Mike!" gasped McCann, staggering to his feet as the +lamp flared up and out with the draft. "Now, fwhat the divil--from +this, an' the misfortunate way he picks up forty-foive, mabbe, mabbe I +was wrong, an' mabbe ut's queer after all, he is, an'----" McCann was +still muttering to himself as he stumbled to the door. + +There was no sign of Owsley--only a string of boxes and flats, backed +down, and rattling and bumping to a halt on the temporary track a +hundred yards away--then the joggling light of a trainman running +through the murk and, evidently, hopping the engine pilot, for the +light disappeared suddenly and McCann heard the locomotive moving off +again. + +McCann couldn't see the main line, or the little station they had +erected there since the work began for the purpose of operating the +construction trains, but he knew well enough what was going on. Off +the main line, in lieu of a turntable and to facilitate matters +generally, they had built a Y into the construction camp; and the work +train, in from the East, had dropped its caboose on the main line +between the arms of the Y, gone ahead, backed the flats and boxes down +the west-end arm of the Y into the camp, left them there in front of +him, and the engine, shooting off on the main line again, via the +east-end arm of the Y, would be heading east, and had only to back up +the main line and couple on the caboose for the return trip to Big +Cloud--there were no empties to go back, he knew. + +It was raining in torrents, pitilessly, and, over the gusts of wind, +the thunder went racketing through the mountains like the discharge of +heavy guns. McCann swore with sincerity as he gazed from the doorway, +didn't like the look of it, and was minded to let Owsley go to the +devil; but, instead, after getting into rubber boots, a rubber coat, +and lighting a lantern, he put his head down to butt the storm, goat +fashion, and started out. + +"Me conscience 'ud not be clear av anything happened the man," communed +McCann, as he battered and sloshed his way along. "'Tis wan hell av a +night!" + +McCann lost some time. He could have made a short cut over to the main +line and the station; but, instead, thinking Owsley might have run up +the track beside the camp toward the front-end of the construction +train and the engine, he kept along past the string of cars. There was +no Owsley; and the only result he obtained from shouting at the top of +his lungs was to have the wind slap his voice back in his teeth. +McCann headed then for the station. He took the west-end arm of the Y, +that being the nearer to his destination. Halfway across, he heard the +engine backing up on the main line, and, a moment later, saw her +headlight and the red tail lights of the caboose as she coupled on. + +Of course, it was against the rules--but rules are broken sometimes, +aren't they? It was a wicked night, and the station, diminutive and +makeshift as it was, looked mighty hospitable and inviting by +comparison. The engine crew, Matt Duggan and Greene, his fireman, +thought it sized up better while they were waiting for orders than the +cab of the 1601 did, and they didn't see why the train crew, +MacGonigle, the conductor, and his two brakemen, should have any the +better of it--so they left their engine and crowded into the station, +too. + +There wasn't much room left for McCann when he came in like an animated +shower bath. He heard Merle, the young operator--they'd probably been +guying him--snap at MacGonigle: + +"I ain't got any orders for you yet, but you'd better get into the +clear on the Y--the Limited, east, is due in four minutes." + +"Say!" panted McCann. "Say----" and that was as far as he got. Matt +Duggan, making a wild dash for the door, knocked the rest of his breath +out of him. + +And after Duggan, in a mad and concerted rush, sweeping McCann along +with it, the others burst through the door and out on the platform, as, +volleying through the storm, came suddenly the quick, staccato bark of +engine exhaust. + +For a moment, huddled there, trying to get the rights of it, no one +spoke--then it came in a yell from Matt Duggan. + +"She's _gone_!" he screamed--and gulped for his breath. "She's gone!" + +McCann looked, and blinked, and shook the rain out of his face. Two +hundred yards east down the track, and disappearing fast, were the +twinkling red tail lights of the caboose. + +"By the tokens av all the saints," stammered McCann. + +"Ut's--ut's----" He grabbed at Matt Duggan. "Fwhat engine is ut?" + +It was MacGonigle who answered, as they crowded back inside again for +shelter--and answered quick, getting McCann's dropped jaw. + +"The 1601. What's wrong with you, McCann?" + +"Holy Mither!" stuttered McCann miserably. "That settles ut! Ut's +Owsley! 'Twas the whistle, d'ye moind--the whistle!" + +Merle, young and hysterical, was up in the air. + +"The Limited! The Limited!" he burst out, white-faced. "There ain't +three minutes between them! She's coming now!" + +MacGonigle, grizzled old veteran, cool in any emergency, whirled on the +younger man. + +"Then stop her!" he drawled. "Don't make a fool of yourself! Show +your red and hold her here until you get Big Cloud on the wire--they're +both running the _same_ way, aren't they, you blamed idiot! +Everything's out of the road far enough east of here on account of the +Limited to give 'em time at headquarters to take care of things. Let +'em have it at Big Cloud." + +And Big Cloud got it. Spence, the despatcher, on the early night +trick, got it--and Carleton and Regan, at their homes, got it in a +hurried call from Spence over their private keys, that brought them +running to headquarters. + +"I've cleared the line," said Spence. "The Limited is holding at Elk +River till Brook's Cut reports Owsley through--then she's to trail +along." + +Carleton nodded, and took a chair beside the despatcher's table. +Regan, as ever with him in times of stress, tugged at his mustache, and +paced up and down the room. + +He stepped once in front of Carleton and laughed shortly--and there was +more in his words, a whole lot more, than he realized then. + +"The Lord knows where he'll stop now with the bit in his teeth, but +suppose he'd been heading the other way _into_ the Limited--h'm! +Head-on--instead of just tying up all the blamed traffic between here +and the Elk--what? We can thank God for that!" + +Carleton didn't answer, except by another nod. He was listening to +Spence at the key, asking Brook's Cut why they didn't report Owsley +through. + +The rain rattled at the window panes, and the sashes shook under the +gusts of wind; out in the yards below the switch lights showed blurred +and indistinct. Regan paced the room more and more impatiently. +Carleton's face began to go hard. Spence hung tensely over the table, +his fingers on the key, waiting for the sounder to break, waiting for +the Brook's Cut call. + +It was only seven miles from Elk River, where the stalled passengers of +the Limited--will you remember this?--grumbled and complained, pettish +in their discontent at the delay, only seven miles from there to +Brook's Cut, the first station east--only seven miles, but the minutes +passed, and still Brook's Cut answered: "No." And Carleton's face grew +harder still, and Regan swore deep down under his breath from a full +heart, and Spence grew white and rigid in his chair. And so they +waited there, waited with the sense of disaster growing cold upon +them--waited--but Brook's Cut never reported Owsley "in" or "out" that +night. + +Owsley? Who knows what was in the poor, warped brain that night? He +had heard her call to him, and they had brought him back the 1601, and +she was standing there, alone, deserted--and she had called to him. +Who knows what was in his mind, as, together, he and the 1601 went +tearing through that black, storm-rent night, when the rivers, and the +creeks, and the sluices were running full, and the Elk River, that +paralleled the right of way for a mile or two to the crossing, was a +raging torrent? Who knows if he ever heard the thundering crash with +which the Elk River bridge went out? Who knows, as he swung the curve +that opened the bridge approach, without time for any man, Owsley or +another, to have stopped, if the headlight playing on the surge of +maddened waters meant anything to him? Who knows? That was where they +found them, beneath the waters, Owsley and the 1601--and Owsley was +smiling, his hand tight-gripped upon the throttle that he loved. + +"I dunno," says Regan, when he speaks of Owsley, "if the mountains out +here have anything to do with making a man think harder. I +dunno--sometimes I think they do. You get to figuring that the Grand +Master mabbe goes a long way back, years and years, to work things +out--if it hadn't been for Owsley the Limited would have gone into the +Elk that night with every soul on board. Owsley? That's the way he +wanted to go out, wasn't it?--with the 1601. Mabbe the Grand Master +thought of him, too." + + + + +III + +THE APOTHEOSIS OF SAMMY DURGAN + +The only point the Hill Division, from Carleton, the super, to the last +car tink, would admit it was at all hazy on as far as Sammy Durgan was +concerned, was why in the everlasting name of everything the man stuck +to railroading. When the Hill Division got up against that point it +was floored and took the count. + +Sammy Durgan wore the belt. He held a record never equalled before or +since. Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who had a warped gift for +metaphor, said the man was as migratory on jobs as a flock of crows in +a poor year for corn, only a blamed sight harder to get rid of. + +As far back as anybody could remember they remembered Sammy Durgan. +Somewhere on the division you were bound to bump up against him--but +rarely twice in the same place. There wasn't any one in authority, +even so mild an authority as a section boss, who hadn't fired Sammy +Durgan so often that it had grown on them like a habit. Not that it +made much difference, however; for, ejected from the roundhouse, Sammy +Durgan's name would be found decorating the pay roll next month in the +capacity of baggage master, possibly, at some obscure spot up the line; +and here, for example, a slight mix-up of checks in the baggage of a +tourist family, that divided the family against itself and its baggage +as far as the East is from the West--and Sammy Durgan moved on again. +What the Hill Division said about him would have been complimentary if +it hadn't been for the grin; they said he was an _all-round_ railroad +man. Shops, roundhouse, train crews, station work and construction +gangs, Sammy Durgan knew them all; and they knew Sammy Durgan. +Eternally and everlastingly in trouble--that was Sammy Durgan. + +Nothing much else the matter with him--just trouble. Brains all right; +only, as far as the Hill Division could make out, the last thing Sammy +Durgan ever thought of doing was to give his brains a little exercise +to keep them in condition. But, if appalling in his irresponsibility, +Sammy Durgan nevertheless had a saving grace--no cork ever bobbed more +buoyantly on troubled waters than Sammy Durgan did on his sea of +adversity. Sammy Durgan always came up smiling. He had a perennial +sort of cheerfulness on his leathery face that infected his guileless +blue eyes, while a mop of fiery red hair like a flaming halo kind of +guaranteed the effect to be genuine. One half of you felt like kicking +the man violently, and the other half was obsessed with an insane +desire to hobnob with him just as violently. Sammy Durgan, to say the +least of it, was a contradictory proposition. He had an ambition--he +wanted a steady job. + +He mentioned the matter to Regan one day immediately following that +period in his career when, doing odd jobs over at the station, he had, +in filling up the fire buckets upstairs, inadvertently left the tap +running. The sink being small and the flooring none too good, a +cherished collection of Regan's blue-prints in the room below were +reduced to a woebegone mass of sticky pulp. Sammy Durgan mentioned his +ambition as a sort of corollary, as it were, to the bitter and concise +remarks in which the fat little master mechanic had just couched Sammy +Durgan's ubiquitous discharge. + +Regan didn't stop breathing--he had dealt with Sammy Durgan before. +Regan smiled as though it hurt him. + +"A _steady_ job, is it?" said Regan softly. "I've been thinking so +hard daytimes trying to place you in a railroad job and still keep +railroading safe out in this part of the world that I've got to +dreaming about it at nights. Last night I dreamt I was in a foundry +and there was an enormous vat of red, bubbling, liquid iron they'd just +drawn off the furnace, and you came down from the ceiling on a spider +web and hung over it. And then I woke up, and I was covered with cold +sweat--for fear the web wouldn't break." + +"Regan," said Sammy Durgan, blinking fast, "you don't know a man when +you see one. You're where you are because you've had the chance to get +there. Mind that! I've never had a chance. But it'll come, Regan. +And the day'll come, Regan, when you'll be down on your knees begging +me to take what I'm asking for now, a steady job on your blessed +railroad." + +"Mabbe," said Regan, chewing absently on his blackstrap; and then, as a +sort of afterthought: "What kind of a job?" + +"A steady one," said Sammy Durgan doggedly. "I dunno just what, +but----" + +"H'm!" said Regan solicitously. "Well, don't make up your mind in a +hurry, Durgan--I don't want to press you. When you've had a chance to +look around a little more, mabbe you'll be able to decide better--what? +Get out!" + +Sammy Durgan backed to the door. There he paused, blinking fast again: + +"Some day I'll show you, Regan, you and all the rest of 'em, and----" + +"Get out!" said the little master mechanic peremptorily. + +And Sammy Durgan got out. He was always getting out. That was his +forte. When he got in, it was only to get out. + +"Some day," said Sammy Durgan--and the Hill Division stuck its tongue +in its cheek. But Sammy Durgan had his answer to the blunt refusal +that invariably greeted his modest request for a fresh job. + +"Listen here," said Sammy Durgan, with a firm hold on the overalls' +strap of, it might be, the bridge foreman he was trying to wheedle a +time check out of. "'Twas Regan fired me first, but he was in a bad +humor at the time; 'twas the steam hose I was washing out boiler tubes +with in the roundhouse got away from me, and it was accidental, though +mabbe for the moment it was painful for him. It just shows that if you +get fired once it sticks to you. And as for them baggage checks out to +Moose Peak, they weren't no family, they was a tribe, about eighteen +kids besides the pa and ma, and fourteen baggage cars full of trunks. +_He_ was a little bow-legged fellow with a scared look, and he whispers +where he wants the checks for about three minutes before train time, +then _she_ comes in, bigger'n two elephants, scorches him through a +pair of glasses she carries on a handle, and orders 'em checked +somewhere else. Say, was I to blame if some of them checks in the +hurry didn't get the first name I'd written on 'em scratched out? And +over there to the station the time Regan's office got flooded 'twasn't +my fault. If you get fired once, you keep on getting fired no matter +what you do. I turned the tap off. It was one of them little devils +of call boys turned it on again. But do you think any one would +believe that? They would not--or I'd have mentioned it at the time. +If there's any trouble anywhere and I'm around it's put onto me. And +there's Mrs. Durgan back there to Big Cloud. She ain't very well. +Cough's troubling her more'n usual lately, and worrying about the rent +not being paid ain't helping her any. Say, you'll give me a job, won't +you?" + +Sammy Durgan got the job. + +Now, as may be inferred, Sammy Durgan did not always adhere strictly to +the truth--not that he swerved from it with vicious intent, but that, +like some other things, trouble for instance, the swerving had grown, +as it were, to be a habit. Mrs. Durgan did not have a cough, neither +was she worrying about the unpaid rent. Mrs. Durgan, speaking strictly +in a physical sense, was mightiest among women in Big Cloud, and on the +night the story proper opens--a very black night for Sammy +Durgan--Sammy Durgan was sitting on Mrs. Durgan's front door step, and +the door was locked upon him. Sammy Durgan, paradoxical as it may +sound, though temporarily out of a job again and with no job to be +fired from, was being fired at that moment harder than he had ever been +fired before in his life--and the firing was being done by Mrs. Durgan. +It had been threatening for quite a while, quite a long while, two or +three years, but it none the less came to Sammy Durgan with something +of a shock, and he gasped. + +Mrs. Durgan was intensely Irish, from purer stock than Sammy Durgan, +and through the window Mrs. Durgan spoke barbed words: + +"'Tis shame yez should take to yersilf, Sammy Durgan, if yez had the +sinse to take annything--the loikes av yez, a big strong man! 'Tis +years I've put up wid yez, whin another woman would not, but I'll put +up wid yez no more! 'Tis the ind this night, Sammy Durgan, an' the +Holy Mither be praised there's no children to blush fer the disgrace +yez are!" + +"Maria," said Sammy Durgan craftily, for this had worked before, "do I +drink?" + +Mrs. Durgan choked in her rage. + +"I do not," said Sammy Durgan soothingly. "And who but me lays the pay +envelopes on your lap without so much as tearing 'em to count the +insides of 'em? Listen here, Maria, listen----" + +"Is ut mocking me, yez are!" shrieked Mrs. Durgan. "'Tis little good +the opening av 'em would do! Listen, is ut, to the smooth tongue av +yez! I've listened till me fingers are bare to the bone wid the +washtubs to kape a roof over me head. I'll listen no more, Sammy +Durgan, moind thot!" + +"Maria," said Sammy Durgan, with a softness that was meant to turn away +wrath, "Maria, open the door." + +"I will not," said Mrs. Durgan, with a truculent gasp. "Niver! Not +while yez live, Sammy Durgan--fer yez funeral mabbe, but fer no less +than thot, an' thin only fer the joy av bein' a widdy!" + +It sounded inevitable. There was a sort of cold uncompromise even in +the fire of Mrs. Durgan's voice. Sammy Durgan rose heavily from the +doorstep. + +"Some day," said Sammy Durgan sadly, "some day, Maria, you'll be sorry +for this. You'll break your heart for it, Maria! You wait! 'Tis no +fault of mine, the trouble. Everybody's against me--and now my wife. +But you wait. Once in the life of every man he gets his chance. Mine +ain't come yet. But you wait! It's the man who rises to an emergency +that counts, and----" + +There was a gurgling sound from Mrs. Durgan's throat. Then the window +slammed down--hard. + +Sammy Durgan stared, stared a little blankly as the lamp retreated from +the window and the front of the house grew black. + +"I guess," said Sammy Durgan a little wistfully to himself, "I guess +I'm fired all around for fair." He turned and walked slowly out to the +street and headed downtown toward the railroad yards. And as he walked +he communed with himself somewhat bitterly: "Any blamed little thing +that comes up, that, if 'twere anybody else, nobody'd pay any attention +to it, and everybody yells 'fire Sammy Durgan.' That's me----'fire +Sammy Durgan.' And why? Because I never get a chance--that's why!" +Sammy Durgan grew earnest in his soliloquy. "Some day," said he, as he +reached the station platform, "I'll show 'em--I'll show Maria! It'll +come, every man gets his chance. Give me the chance to rise to an +emergency, that's all I ask--just give me that and I'll show 'em!" + +Sammy Durgan walked up the deserted platform with no very definite +destination in view, and stopped abruptly in front of the freight shed +as he suddenly remembered that it was very late. He sat down on the +edge of the platform, and kicked at the main-line rail with the toe of +his boot. Sammy Durgan was bedless, penniless, wifeless and jobless. +It was a very black night indeed for Sammy Durgan. + +Sammy Durgan's mind catalogued those in authority in Big Cloud in whose +gift a job was, and he went over the list--but it did not take him +long, as he had need to hesitate over no single name. Big Cloud and a +job for Sammy Durgan were separated by a great gulf. Sammy Durgan, +however, his perennial optimism gaining the ascendancy again, found +solace even in that fact. In view of his present marital difficulties +a job in Big Cloud would be an awkward thing anyhow. In fact, for the +first time in his life, he would have refused a job in Big Cloud. +Sammy Durgan had a certain pride about him. Given the opportunity, the +roundhouse, the shops, the yards, and the train crews, once they +discovered the little impasse that had arisen in the Durgan family, +might be safely trusted to make capital out of it--at his expense. + +Sammy Durgan's mind in search of a job went further afield. This was +quite a different proposition, for the mileage of the Hill Division was +big. For an hour Sammy Durgan sat there, scratching at his red hair, +puckering his leathery face, and kicking at the rail to the detriment +of the toe-cap of his boot. He knew the division well, very well--too +well. At the moment, he could not place any spot upon it that he did +not know, or, perhaps what was more to the point, that was not +intimately acquainted with him. Road work, bridge work, yard work, +station work passed in review before him, but always and with each one +arose a certain well-remembered face whose expression, Biblically +speaking, was not like unto a father's on the prodigal's return. + +And then at last Sammy Durgan sighed in relief. There was Pat Donovan! +True, he and Pat Donovan had had a little misunderstanding incident to +the premature explosion of a keg of blasting powder that had wrecked +the construction shanty, but that was two years ago and under quite +different conditions. Pat Donovan now was a section boss on a desolate +stretch of track about five stations up the line, and his only +companions were a few Polacks who spoke English like parrots--voluble +enough as far as it went, but not entirely soul-filling to an Irishman +of the sociable tendencies of Pat Donovan. He could certainly get a +job out of Pat Donovan. + +The matter ultimately settled, Sammy Durgan stood up. Across the yards +they were making up the early morning freight. That solved the +transportation question. A railroad man, whether he was out of a job +or not, could always get a lift in any caboose that carried the markers +or the tail lights of old Bill Wallis' train. Sammy Durgan got a lift +that morning up to Dam River; and there, a little further along the +line, he ran Pat Donovan and his Polacks to earth where they were +putting in some new ties. + +Donovan, a squat, wizened, red eye-lidded little man, with a short, +bristling crop of sandy whiskers circling his jaws like an ill-trimmed +hedge, hurriedly drew back the hand he had extended as he caught the +tail end of Sammy Durgan's greeting. + +"Oh, a job is ut?" he inquired without enthusiasm, from his seat on a +pile of ties beside the track. + +"Listen, here, Pat," said Sammy Durgan brightly. "Listen to----" + +"Yez have yer nerve wid yez!" observed the section boss caustically. +"Yez put me in moind av a felley I had workin' fer me wance, for yez +are the dead spit av him, Sammy Durgan, that blew the roof off av the +construction shanty, an'----" + +"That was two years ago, Donovan," interposed Sammy Durgan hurriedly, +"and you've no blasting powder on this job, and it was no fault of +mine. I would have explained it at the time, but you were a bit hot +under the collar, Pat, and you would not listen. I was but testing the +detonator box, and 'twas yourself told me the connections were not +made." + +"Did I?"--the section boss was watching his chattering gang of +foreigners with gradually narrowing eyes. + +"You did," asserted Sammy Durgan earnestly, "and----" + +Sammy Durgan stopped. Donovan had leaped from his seat, and was +gesticulating fiercely at his gold-earringed, greasy-haired laboring +crew. + +"Yez are apes!" he yelled, dancing frantically up and down. "Yez are +oorang-ootangs! An' yez talk like a cageful av monkeys! Yez look +loike men, but yez are not! Yez are annything that has no brains! +Have I not told yez till me throat's cracked doin' ut thot yez are not +rayquired to lift the whole dombed right av way to put in a single +measly tie? Is ut a hump loike a camel's back yez are try in' to make +in the rail? Here! Dig--_here_!"--the little section boss, with +wrathful precision, indicated the exact spot with the toe of his boot. + +He returned to his seat, and regarded Sammy Durgan helplessly. + +"'Tis a new lot," said he sadly, "an' the worst, bar none, that iver I +had." + +"But an Irishman, and one that can talk your own tongue, you won't hire +when he's out of a job," insinuated Sammy Durgan reproachfully. + +The section boss scrubbed reflectively at his chin whiskers. + +"An' how's Mrs. Durgan?" he asked, with some cordiality. + +"She's bad," said Sammy Durgan, suddenly mournful and shaking his head. +"She's worse than ever she's been, Donovan. I felt bad at leaving her +last night, Donovan--I did that. But what could I do? 'Twas a job I +had to get, Donovan, bad as I felt at leaving her, Donovan." + +"Sure now, is thot so?" said the little section boss sympathetically. +"'Tis cruel harrd luck yez have, Durgan. But yez'll moind I've not +much in the way av jobs--'tis a desolate bit av country, an' mostly +track-walkin' at a dollar-tin a day." + +"Donovan," said Sammy Durgan from a full heart, "the day'll come, +Donovan, when I'll keep the grass green on your grave for this. I knew +you'd not throw an old friend down." + +"'Tis glad I am to do ut," said Donovan, waving his hand royally. "An' +yez can start in at wance." + +And Sammy Durgan started. And for a week Sammy Durgan assiduously +tramped his allotted mileage out and back to the section shanty each +day--and for a week Sammy Durgan and trouble were asunder. + +Trouble? Where, from what possible source, could there be any trouble? +Not a soul for miles around the section shanty, just mountains and +track and cuts and fills, and nothing on earth for Sammy Durgan to do +but keep a paternal eye generally on the roadbed. Trouble? It even +got monotonous for Sammy Durgan himself. + +"'Tis not," confided Sammy Durgan to himself one morning, after a week +of this, that found him plodding along the track some two miles east of +the section shanty, "'tis not precisely the job I'd like, for it's a +chance I'm looking for to show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of +'em, and there'll be no chance here--but temporarily it'll do. 'Tis +not much of a job, and beneath me at that, but have I not heard that +them as are faithful in little will some day be handed much? There'll +be no one to say"--he glanced carefully around him in all +directions--"that Sammy Durgan was not a good track-walker." + +Sammy Durgan sat down on the edge of the embankment, extracted a black +cutty from his pocket, charged it with very black tobacco, lit it, +tamped the top of the bowl with a calloused forefinger, and from +another pocket extracted a newspaper--one of a bundle that the train +crew of No. 7 thoughtfully heaved at the section shanty door each +morning on their way up the line. + +It was a warm, bright morning; one of those comfortable summer mornings +with just enough heat to lift a little simmering haze from the rails, +and just enough sun to make a man feel leisurely, so to speak. Sammy +Durgan, the cutty drawing well, wormed a comfortable and inviting +hollow in the gravel of the embankment, propped his back against an +obliging tie, and opened his paper. + +"Track-walking," said Sammy Durgan, "is not much of a job, and 'tis not +what I'm looking for, but there are worse jobs." + +Somebody had read the paper before Sammy Durgan, hence the sheet that +first presented itself to his view was a page of classified +advertisements. His eye roved down the column of "Situations +Vacant"--and held on one of them. + + +MEN WANTED for grading work at The Gap. Apply at Engineers' Office, +Big Cloud, or to T. H. MacMurtrey, foreman, at The Gap. + + +Sammy Durgan pursed his lips. + +"There's no telling," said Sammy Durgan thoughtfully, "when I'll be +looking for a new job, so I'll bear it in mind. Not that they'd give +me a job at the office, for they would not; but by the name of him this +T. H. MacMurtrey 'll be a new man and unknown to me, which is quite +another matter--and I'll keep it in mind." + +Sammy Durgan turned the sheet absently--and then, forgetful of the +obliging tie that propped his back, he sat bolt upright with a jerk. + +"For the love of Mike!" observed Sammy Durgan breathlessly, with his +eyes glued to the paper. + +It leaped right out at him in the biggest type the Big Cloud _Daily +Sentinel_ had to offer, which, if it had its limitations, was not to be +despised, since it had acquired a second-hand font or two from a +metropolitan daily east that made no pretense at being modest in such +matters. + +Sammy Durgan's eyes began to pop, and his leathery face to screw up. + + + GHASTLY RAILROAD TRAGEDY + + UNKNOWN MAN MURDERED IN STATEROOM + OF EASTBOUND FLYER + + _No Clue to Assassin_ + + +Sammy Durgan's eyes bored into the fine print of the "story." If the +style was a trifle provincial and harrowing, Sammy Durgan was not +fastidious enough to be disturbed thereby--it was intensely vivid. +Sammy Durgan's mouth was half open, as he read. + + +One of the most atrocious, daring and bloody murders in the annals of +the country's crime was perpetrated last night in a compartment of the +sleeping car on No. 12, the eastbound through express. It is a +baffling mystery, though suspicion is directed against a passenger who +gave his name as Samuel Starke of New York. The details, gathered by +the _Sentinel_ staff from Conductor Hurley, and Clements, the porter, +on the arrival of the train at Big Cloud, are as follows: + +The car was a new-type compartment car, with the compartment doors +opening off the corridor that runs along one side of the length of the +car. As the train was passing Dam River, Clements, the porter, at the +forward end of the car, thought he heard two revolver shots from +somewhere in the rear. Clements says he thought at first he had been +mistaken, for the train was travelling fast and making a great uproar, +and he did not at once make any effort to investigate. Then he heard a +compartment door open, and he started down the corridor. Starke was +standing in the doorway of B compartment where the murdered man was, +and Starke yelled at Clements. "Here, porter, quick!" is what Clements +says Starke said to him: "There's a man been shot in here! My +compartment's next to this, you know, and I heard two shots and rushed +in." + +It was a horrible and unnerving sight that greeted the porter's eyes. +Mr. Clements was still visibly affected by it as he talked to the +_Sentinel_ reporter in Big Cloud. The unknown murdered man lay +pitifully huddled on the floor, lifeless and dead, a great bullet wound +in one temple and another along the side of his neck that must have +severed the jugular vein. It was as though blood had rained upon the +victim. He was literally covered with it. He was already past aid, +being quite dead. Conductor Hurley was quickly summoned. But +investigation only deepened the mystery. Suicide was out of the +question because there was no weapon to be found. Mr. Starke, at his +own request, was searched, but had no revolver. Mr. Starke, however, +has been held by the police. + +The _Sentinel_, without wishing to infringe upon the sphere of the +authorities or cast aspersions upon their acumen, but in the simple +furtherance of justice, offers the suggestion that, as the compartment +window was open, the assassin, whoever he was, hurled the revolver out +of the window after committing his dastardly and unspeakable crime; and +the _Sentinel_ hereby offers _Twenty-five Dollars Reward_ for the +recovery of the revolver. Lawlessness and crime, we had fondly +believed, was stamped out of the West, and we raise our voice in +protest against the return of desperadoes, bandits, and train robbers, +and we solemnly warn all those of that caliber that they will not be +tolerated in the new West, and we call upon all public-spirited +citizens in whose veins red blood flows to rise up and put them down +with an iron and merciless---- + + +There were still three columns. Sammy Durgan read them voraciously. +At the end, he sucked hard on the black cutty. The black cutty was out. + +"To think of the likes of that!" muttered Sammy Durgan heavily, as he +dug for a match. "The fellow that wrote the piece--'twill be that +little squint-eyed runt Labatt--is not the fool I thought him. It's +right, he is; what with murders and desperadoes no man's life's +safe--it is not! And to think of it right on this same railroad! And +who knows"--Sammy Durgan rose with sudden haste--"but 'twas right on +this same spot where I am this blessed minute, for the paper says it +was close to Dam River, that the poor devil was shot dead and foully +killed! And--" The match flamed over the bowl of the cutty, but Sammy +Durgan's attention was not on it. + +Sammy Durgan, in a sort of strained way, descended the embankment. The +match burned his fingers, and Sammy Durgan dropped it. Sammy Durgan +rubbed his eyes--yes, it was still glistening away there in the +sunlight. He stooped, and from the grass, trembling a little with +excitement, picked up a heavy-calibered, nickel-trimmed revolver. + +"Holy Christmas!" whispered Sammy Durgan, blinking fast. "'Tis the +same! There's no doubt of it--'tis the same that done the bloody deed! +And 'tis the first bit of luck I've had since I was born! Twenty-five +dollars reward!" He said it over very softly again: "Twenty-five +dollars reward!" + +Sammy Durgan returned to the track, and resumed his way along it; +though, as far as his services to the road were concerned, he might +just as well have remained where he was. Sammy Durgan's thoughts were +not of loosened spikes and erring fishplates, and neither were his eyes +intent on their discovery--his mind, thanks to Labatt, of the Big Cloud +_Daily Sentinel_, teemed with scenes of violence vividly portrayed, +midnight murders, corpses in grotesque attitudes on gore-bespattered +compartment floors, desperadoes of all descriptions, train bandits and +train robbers in masks holding up trains. + +"'Tis true," said Sammy Durgan to himself. "'Tis a lawless country, +these same Rockies. I mind 'twas only a year ago that Black Dempsey +and his gang tried to wreck Number Two in the Cut near Coyote Bend--I +mind it well." + +Sammy Durgan walked on down the track. At intervals he took the +revolver from his pocket and put it back again, as though to assure +himself beyond peradventure of doubt that it was in his possession. + +"Twenty-five dollars reward!" communed Sammy Durgan, grown arrogant +with wealth. "'Tis near a month's pay at a dollar-ten--and all for the +picking of it up. I called it luck--but it is not luck. An ordinary +track-walker would have walked it by and not seen it. 'Tis what you +get for keeping your eyes about you, and besides the twenty-five 'tis +promotion, too, mabbe I'll get. 'Twill show 'em that there's +track-walkers _and_ track-walkers. I'll say to Regan: 'Regan,' I'll +say, 'you've said hard words to me, Regan, but I ask you, Regan, how +many track-walkers would have brought a bloody murderer to justice by +keeping their eyes about them in the faithful performance of their +duty, Regan? 'Tis but the chance I ask. 'Tis the man in an emergency +that counts, and if ever I get a chance at an emergency I'll show you.' +And Regan'll say: 'Sammy,' he'll say, 'you----'" + +Sammy Durgan paused in his engrossing soliloquy as the roar of an +approaching train fell on his ears, and he scrambled quickly down from +the right of way to the bottom of the embankment. Just ahead of him +was a short, narrow, high-walled rock cut, and at the farther end the +track swerved sharply to the right, side-stepping, as it were, the +twist of the Dam River that swung in, steep-banked, to the right of way. + +"I'll wait here," said Sammy Durgan, "'till she's through the cut." + +Sammy Durgan waited. The train came nearer and nearer--and then Sammy +Durgan cocked his head in a puzzled way and stared through the cut. He +couldn't see anything, of course, for the curve, but from the sound she +had stopped just beyond the cut. + +"Now, what the devil is she stopping there for?" inquired Sammy Durgan +of the universe in an injured tone. + +He started along through the cut. And then Sammy Durgan stopped +himself--as though he were rooted to the earth--and a sort of grayish +white began to creep over his face. Came echoing through the cut a +shout, a yell, another, a chorus of them--then a shot, another shot, a +fusilade of them--and then a din mingling the oaths, the yells, and the +shots into a hideous babel that rang terror in Sammy Durgan's ears. + +Sammy Durgan promptly sidled in and hugged up against the rock wall +that towered above him. Here he hesitated an instant, then he crept +cautiously forward. Where he could not see, it was axiomatic that he +could not be seen; and where he could not be seen, it was equally +logical that he would be safe. + +Sammy Durgan's face, quite white now, was puckered as it had never been +puckered before, and his lips moved in a kind of twitching, jerky way +as he crept along. Then suddenly, a voice, that seemed nearer than the +others, but which from the acoustic properties of the cut he could not +quite locate, bawled out fiercely over the confusion, prefaced with an +oath: + +"Get that express car door open, and be damned quick about it! Go on, +shoot along the side of the train every time you see a head in a +window!" + +Sammy Durgan's mouth went dry, and his heart lost a beat, then went to +pounding like a trip-hammer. Labatt and the Big Cloud _Daily Sentinel_ +hadn't drawn any exaggerated picture. A hold-up--in broad daylight! + +"Holy Mither!" whispered Sammy Durgan. + +He crept farther forward, very cautiously--still farther--and then he +lay full length, crouched against the rock wall at the end of the cut. +He could see now, and the red hair of Sammy Durgan kind of straggled +down damp over his forehead, and his little black eyes lost their +pupils. + +It was a passenger train; one side of it quite hidden by the sharp +curve of the track, the other side presented almost full on to Sammy +Durgan's view--the whole length of it. And Sammy Durgan, gasping, +stared. Not ten yards away from the mouth of the cut a huge pile of +ties were laid across the rails, with the pilot of the stalled engine +almost nosing them. Down the embankment, a very steep embankment where +the Dam River swirled along, marched there evidently at the revolver's +point, the engine crew stood with their hands up in the air--at the +revolver's point with a masked man behind it. Along the length of the +train, two or three more masked men were shooting past the windows in +curt intimation to the passengers that the safest thing they could do +was to stay where they were; and farther down, by the rear coach, the +conductor and two brakemen, like their mates of the engine crew, held +their hands steadfastly above their heads as another bandit covered +them with his weapon. And through the open door of the express car +Sammy Durgan could see bobbing heads and straining backs, and the +express company's safe being worked across the floor preparatory to +heaving it out on the ground. + +It takes long to tell it--Sammy Durgan got it all as a second flies. +And something, a bitter something, seemed to be gnawing at Sammy +Durgan's vitals. + +"Holy Mither!" he mumbled miserably. "'Tis an emergency, all +right--but 'tis not the right kind of an emergency. What could any one +man do against a lot of bloodthirsty, desperate devils like that, +that'd sooner cut your throat than look at you!" + +Sammy Durgan's hand inadvertently rubbed against his right-hand coat +pocket--and his revolver. He drew it out mechanically, and it seemed +to put new life into Sammy Durgan, for, as he stared again at the scene +before him, Sammy Durgan quivered with a sudden, fierce elation. + +"I was wrong," said Sammy Durgan grimly. "'Tis the right kind of an +emergency, after all--and 'tis the man that uses his head and rises to +one that counts. I'll show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em! +Begorra, it can be done! 'Tis no one 'll notice me while I'm getting +to the engine and climbing in on the other side, and, by glory, if I +back her out quick enough them thieving hellions in the express car can +either jump for it or ride back to the arms of authority at the next +station--but the safe 'll be there, and 'twill be Sammy Durgan that +kept it there!" + +But Sammy Durgan still lay on the ground and stared--while the safe was +being pushed to the express car door, and one edge of it already +protruded out from the car. + +"Go on, Sammy Durgan!" urged Sammy Durgan anxiously to himself. "Don't +you be skeered, Sammy, you got a revolver. 'Tis yourself, and not +Maria, that'll do the locking of the doors hereafter, and 'tis Regan +you can pass with fine contempt. Think of that, Sammy Durgan! And all +for a bit of a run that'll not take the time of a batting of an +eyelash, and with no one to notice you doing it. 'Tis a clever plan +you've devised, Sammy Durgan--it is that. Go on, Sammy; go on!" + +Sammy Durgan wriggled a little on the ground, cocked his revolver--and +wriggled a little more. + +"I will!" said Sammy Durgan with a sudden pinnacling of +determination--and he sprang to his feet. + +Some loosened shale rattled down behind him. Sammy Durgan dashed +through the mouth of the cut--and then for a moment all was a sort of +chaos to Sammy Durgan. From the narrow edge of the embankment, just +clear of the cut, a man stepped suddenly out. Sammy Durgan collided +with him, his cocked revolver went off, and, jerked from his grasp by +the shock, sailed riverwards through the air, while, echoing its report +from the express car door, a man screamed wildly and grabbed at a +bullet-shattered wrist; and the man with whom Sammy Durgan had +collided, having but precarious footing at best, reeled back from the +impact, smashed into another man behind him, and with a crash both +rolled down the almost perpendicular embankment. Followed a splash and +a spout of water as they struck the river--and from every side a +tornado of yells and curses. + +"'Tis my finish!" moaned Sammy Durgan--but his feet were flying. +"I--I've done it now! If I ran back up the cut they'd chase me and +finish me--'tis my finish, anyway, but the engine 'll be the only +chance I got." + +Sammy Durgan streaked across the track, hurdled, tumbled, fell, and +sprawled over the pile of ties, recovered himself, regained his feet, +and made a frantic spring through the gangway and into the cab. + +With a sweep Sammy Durgan shot the reversing lever over into the back +notch, and with a single yank he wrenched the throttle wide. There was +nothing of the craftsman in engine-handling about Sammy Durgan at that +instant--only hurry. The engine, from a passive, indolent and +inanimate thing, seemed to rise straight up in the air like an aroused +and infuriated beast that had been stung. With one mad plunge it +backed crashing into the buffer plates of the express car behind it, +backed again, and once again, and the tinkle of breaking glass sort of +ricochetted along the train as one car after another added its quota of +shattered window panes, while the drivers, slipping on the rails, +roared around like gigantic and insensate pinwheels. + +Sammy Durgan snatched at the cab frame for support--and then with a +yell he snatched at a shovel. A masked face showed in the gangway. +Sammy Durgan brought the flat of the shovel down on the top of the +man's head. + +The gangway was clear again. There was life for it yet! The train was +backing quickly now under the urgent, prodding bucks of the engine. +Sammy Durgan mopped at his face, his eyes warily on the gangways. +Another man made a running jump for it--again Sammy Durgan's shovel +swung--and again the gangway was clear. + +Shovel poised, lurching with the lurch of the cab, red hair flaming, +half terrified and half defiant, eyes shooting first to one gangway and +then the other, Sammy Durgan held the cab. A minute passed with no +renewal of attack. Sammy Durgan stole a quick glance over his shoulder +through the cab glass up the track--and, with a triumphant shout, he +flung the shovel clanging to the iron floor-plates, and, leaning far +out of the gangway, shook his fist. Strewn out along the right of way +masked men yelled and shouted and cursed, but Sammy Durgan was beyond +their reach--and so was the express company's safe. + +"Yah!" screamed Sammy Durgan, wildly derisive and also belligerent in +the knowledge of his own safety. "Yah! Yah! Yah! 'Twas me, ye +bloody hellions, that turned the trick on ye! 'Twas me, Sammy Durgan, +and I'll have you know it! 'Twas----" + +Sammy Durgan turned, as the express car opened, and Macy, the +conductor, hatless and wild-eyed, appeared on the platform. + +"'S'all right, Macy!" Sammy Durgan screeched reassuringly. "'S'all +right--it's me, Sammy Durgan." + +Macy jumped from the platform to the tender, jumped over the water +tank, and came down into the cab with an avalanche of coal. His mouth +was twitching and jerking, but for a moment he could not speak--and +then the words came like an explosion, and he shook his fist under +Sammy Durgan's nose. + +"You--you damned fathead!" he roared. "What in the double-blanked, +blankety-blanked son of blazes are you doing!" + +"Fathead, yourself!" retorted Sammy Durgan promptly--and there was +spice in the way Sammy Durgan said it. "I'm doing what you hadn't the +nerve or the head to do, Macy--unless mabbe you're in the gang +yourself! I'm saving that safe back there in the express car, that's +what I'm doing." + +"Saving nothing!" bellowed Macy crazily, as he slammed the throttle +shut. "There! Look there!" He reached for Sammy Durgan's head, and +with both hands twisted it around, and fairly flattened Sammy Durgan's +nose against the cab glass. + +"What--what is it?" faltered Sammy Durgan, a little less assertively. + +Macy was excitable. He danced upon the cab floor as though it were a +hornets' nest. + +"What is it!" he echoed in a scream. "What is it! It's moving +pictures, you tangle-brained, rusty-headed idiot! That's what it is!" + +A sort of dull gray film seemed to spread itself over Sammy Durgan's +face. Sammy Durgan stared through the cab glass. The track ahead was +just disappearing from view as the engine backed around a curve, but +what Sammy Durgan saw was enough--two dripping figures were salvaging a +wrecked and bedragged photographic outfit on the river bank, close to +the entrance of the cut where he had been in collision with them; an +excited group of train bandits, without any masks now, were +gesticulating around the marooned engineer and fireman; and in the +middle distance, squatting on a rail, a man, coatless, his shirt sleeve +rolled up, was making horrible grimaces as a companion bandaged his +wrist. + +Macy's laugh rang hollow--it wasn't exactly a laugh. + +"I don't know how much it costs," stuttered the conductor demoniacally, +"but there's about four million dollars' worth of film they're fishing +out of the river there, and they paid a thousand dollars for the train +and thirty-five minutes between stations to clear Number Forty, and +there's about eight thousand car windows gone, and one vestibule and +two platforms in splinters, and a man shot through the wrist, and if +that crowd up there ever get their hands on you they'll----" + +"I think," said Sammy Durgan hurriedly, "that I'll get off." + +He edged back to the gangway and peered out. The friendly bend of the +road hid the "outlaws." The train was almost at a standstill--and +Sammy Durgan jumped. Not on the river side--on the other side. Sammy +Durgan's destination was somewhere deep in the wooded growth that +clothed the towering mountain before him. + +There is an official record for cross-country mileage registered in the +name of some one whose name is not Sammy Durgan--but it is not +accurate. Sammy Durgan holds it. And it was far up on the mountain +side that he finally crossed the tape and collapsed, breathless and +gasping, on a tree stump. He sat there for quite a while, jabbing at +his streaming face with the sleeve of his jumper; and there was trouble +in Sammy Durgan's eyes, and plaint in his voice when at last he spoke. + +"Twenty-five dollars reward," said Sammy Durgan wistfully. "And 'twas +as good as in my pocket, and now 'tis gone. 'Tis hard luck, cruel hard +luck. It is that!" + +Sammy Durgan's eyes roved around the woods about him and grew +thoughtful. + +"I was minded at the time," said Sammy Durgan, "that 'twas not the +right kind of an emergency, and when he hears of it Regan will be +displeased. And now what'll I do? 'Twill do no good to return to the +section shanty, for they'll be telegraphing Donovan to fire Sammy +Durgan. That's me--fire Sammy Durgan. 'Tis trouble dogs me and cruel +hard luck--and all I'm asking for is a steady job and a chance." + +Sammy Durgan relapsed into mournful silence and contemplation for a +spell--and then his face began to clear. Sammy Durgan's optimism was +like the bobbing cork. + +"'Tis another streak of cruel hard luck, of bitter, cruel hard luck +I've had this day, but am I down and out for the likes of that?" +inquired Sammy Durgan defiantly of himself. + +"I am not!" replied Sammy Durgan buoyantly to Sammy Durgan. "'Tis not +the first time I've been fired, and did I not read that there's +MacMurtrey begging for men up at The Gap? And him being a new man and +unknown to me, 'tis a job sure. 'Tis only my name might stand in the +way, for 'tis likely 'twill be mentioned in his hearing on account of +the bit of trouble down yonder. But 'tis the job I care for and not +the name. I'll be working for MacMurtrey to-morrow morning--I will +that! And what's more," added Sammy Durgan, beginning to blink fast, +"I'll show 'em yet, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em. Once in +every man's life he gets his chance. Mine ain't come yet. I thought +it had to-day, but I was wrong. But it'll come. You wait! I'll show +'em some day!" + +Sammy Durgan lost himself in meditation. After a little, he spoke +again. + +"I'm not sure about the law," said Sammy Durgan, "but on account of the +fellow that the bullet hit, apart from MacMurtrey taking note of it, +'twould be as well, anyway, if I changed my name temporarily till the +temper of all concerned is cooled down a bit." Sammy Durgan rose from +the stump. "I'll start West," said Sammy Durgan, "and get a lift on +the first way-freight before the word is out. I'm thinking they'll be +asking for Sammy Durgan down at Big Cloud." + +And they were. It was quite true. Down at headquarters they were +earnestly concerned about Sammy Durgan. Sammy Durgan had made no +mistake in that respect. + +"Fire Sammy Durgan," wired the roadmaster to the nearest station for +transmission by first train to Pat Donovan, the section boss--and he +got this answer back the next morning: + +I. P. SPEARS, Roadmaster, Big Cloud: + Sammy Durgan missing. + P. DONOVAN." + + +Missing--that was it. Just that, nothing more--as though the earth had +opened and swallowed him up, Sammy Durgan had disappeared. And while +Carleton grew red and apoplectic over the claim sheet for damages +presented by the moving-picture company, and Regan fumed and tugged at +his scraggly brown mustache at thought of the damage to his rolling +stock--Sammy Durgan was just missing, that was all--just missing. +Nobody knew where Sammy Durgan had gone. Nobody had seen him. Station +agents, operators, road bosses, section bosses, construction bosses and +everybody else were instructed to report--and they did. They +reported--nothing. Regan even went so far as to ask Mrs. Durgan. + +"Is ut here to taunt me, yez are!" screamed Mrs. Durgan bitterly--and +slammed the door in the little master mechanic's face. + +"I guess," observed Regan to himself, as he gazed at the +uncommunicative door panels, "I guess mabbe the neighbors have been +neighborly--h'm? But I guess, too, we're rid of Sammy Durgan at last; +and I dunno but what that comes pretty near squaring accounts for +window glass and about a million other incidentals. Only," added the +little master mechanic, screwing up his eyes, as he walked back to the +station, "only it would have been more to my liking to have got my +hands on him first--and got rid of him after!" + +But Regan, and Carleton, and Mrs. Durgan, and the Hill Division +generally were not rid of Sammy Durgan--far from it. For a week he was +missing, and then one afternoon young Hinton, of the division +engineer's staff, strolled into the office, nodded at Carleton, and +grinned at the master mechanic, who was tilted back in a chair with his +feet on the window sill. + +"I dropped off this morning to look over the new grading work at The +Gap," said Hinton casually. "And I thought you might be interested to +know that MacMurtrey's got a man working for him up there by the name +of Timmy O'Toole." + +"Doesn't interest me," said Regan blandly, chewing steadily on his +blackstrap. "Try and spring it on the super, Hinton. He always bites." + +"Who's Timmy O'Toole?" smiled Carleton. + +Hinton squinted at the ceiling. + +"Sammy Durgan," said Hinton--casually. + +There wasn't a word spoken for a minute. Regan lifted his feet from +the window sill and lowered his chair legs softly down to the floor as +though he were afraid of making a noise, and the smile on Carleton's +face sort of faded away as though a blight had withered it. + +"What was the name?" said Carleton presently, in a velvet voice. + +"Timmy O'Toole," said Hinton. + +Carleton's hand reached out, kind of as though of its own initiative, +kind of as though it were just habit, for a telegraph blank--but Regan +stopped him. It wasn't often that the fat, good-natured little master +mechanic was vindictive, but there were times when even Regan's soul +was overburdened. + +"Wait!" said Regan, with ferocious grimness. "Wait! I'll make a +better job of it than that, Carleton. I'm going up the line myself +to-morrow morning on Number Three--and _I'll_ drop off at The Gap. +Timmy O'Toole now, is it? I'll make him sick!" Regan clenched his +pudgy fist. "When I'm through with him he'll never have to be fired +again--not on this division. Still looking for an emergency to rise +to, eh? Well, I'll accommodate him! He'll run up against the hottest +emergency to-morrow morning he ever heard of!" + +And Regan was right--that was exactly what Sammy Durgan did. Only it +wasn't quite the sort of emergency that Regan----But just a moment till +the line's clear, there go the cautionaries against us. + +If it had been any other kind of a switch it would never have +happened--let that be understood from the start. And how it ever came +to be left on the main line when modern equipment was installed is a +mystery, except perhaps that as it was never used it was therefore +never remembered by anybody. Nevertheless, there it stood, an old +weather-beaten, two-throw, stub switch of the vintage of the ark. +Two-throw, mind you, when a one-throw switch, even in the days of its +usefulness, would have answered the purpose just as well, better for +that matter. No modern drop-handle, interlocking safety device about +it. Not at all! A handle sticking straight out like a sore thumb that +could creak around on a semi-circular guide, with a rusty pin dangling +from a rusty chain to lock it--if some itinerant section hand didn't +forget to jab the pin back into the hole it had the habit of worming +its way out of! It stood about a quarter of the way down the grade of +The Gap, which is to say about half a mile from the summit, a deserted +sentinel on guard over a deserted spur that, in the old construction +days, had been built in a few hundred yards through a soft spot in the +mountain side for camp and material stores. + +As for The Gap itself, it was not exactly what might be called a nice +piece of track. Officially, the grade is an average of 4.2; +practically, it is likened to a balloon descension by means of a +parachute. It begins at the east end and climbs up in a wriggling, +twisting way, hugging gray rock walls on one side, and opening a canyon +on the other that, as you near the summit, would make you catch your +breath even to look at over the edge--it is a sheer drop. And also the +right of way is narrow, very narrow; just clearance on one side against +the rock walls, and a whole canyon full of nothingness at the edge of +the other rail, and----But there's our "clearance" now. + +MacMurtrey's camp was at the summit; and MacMurtrey's work, once the +camp was fairly established and stores in, was to shave the pate of the +summit, looking to an amelioration in The Gap's grade average--that is, +its official grade average. But on the morning that Regan left Big +Cloud on No. 3, the work was not very far along--only the preliminaries +accomplished, so to speak, which were a siding at the top of the grade, +with storehouse and camp shanties flanking it. + +And on the siding, that morning, just opposite the storehouse which, it +might be remarked in passing, had already received its first +requisition of blasting materials for the barbering of the grade that +was to come, a hybrid collection of Polacks, Swedes, and Hungarians +were emptying an oil-tank car and discharging supplies from some flats +and box cars; while on the main line track a red-haired man, with +leathery face, was loading some grade stakes on a handcar. + +MacMurtrey, tall, lanky and irascible, shouted at the red-haired man +from a little distance up the line. + +"Hey, O'Toole!" + +The red-haired man paid no attention. + +"_O'Toole!_" It came in a bellow from the road boss. "You, there, +O'Toole, you wooden-headed mud-picker, are you deaf!" + +Sammy Durgan looked up to get a line on the disturbance--and caught his +breath. + +"By glory!" whispered Sammy Durgan to himself. "I was near +forgetting--'tis me he's yelling at." + +"O'Too----" + +"Yes, sir!" shouted Sammy Durgan hurriedly. + +"Oh, you woke up, have you?" shrilled MacMurtrey. "Well, when you've +got those stakes loaded, take 'em down the grade and leave 'em by the +old spur. And take it easy on the grade, and mind your brakes going +down--understand?" + +"Yes, sir," said Sammy Durgan. + +Sammy Durgan finished loading his handcar, and, hopping aboard, started +to pump it along. At the brow of the grade he passed the oil-tank car, +and nodded sympathetically at a round-faced, tow-headed Swede who was +snatching a surreptitious drag at his pipe in the lee of the car. + +Like one other memorable morning in Sammy Durgan's career, it was +sultry and warm with that same leisurely feeling in the air. Sammy +Durgan and his handcar slid down the grade--for about an eighth of a +mile--rounded a curve that hid Sammy Durgan and the construction camp +one from the other, continued on for another hundred yards--and came to +a stop. + +Sammy Durgan got off. On the canyon side there was perhaps room for an +agile mountain goat to stretch its legs without falling off; but on the +other side, if a man squeezed in tight enough and curled his legs Turk +fashion, the rock wall made a fairly comfortable backrest. + +"'Twas easy, he said, to take it on the grade," said Sammy Durgan +reminiscently. "And why not?" + +Sammy Durgan composed himself against the rock wall, and produced his +black cutty. + +"'Tis a better job than track-walking," said Sammy Durgan judicially, +"though more arduous." + +Sammy Durgan smoked on. + +"But some day," said Sammy Durgan momentously, "I'll have a better one. +I will that! It's a long time in coming mabbe, but it'll come. Once +in every man's life a chance comes to him. 'Tis patience that counts, +that and rising to the emergency that proves the kind of a man you are, +as some day I'll prove to Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em." + +Sammy Durgan smoked on. It was a warm summer morning, sultry even, as +has been said, but it was cool and shady against the rock ledge. Peace +fell upon Sammy Durgan--drowsily. Also, presently, the black cutty +fell, or, rather, slipped down into Sammy Durgan's lap--without +disturbing Sammy Durgan. + +A half hour, three-quarters of an hour passed--and MacMurtrey, far up +at the extreme end of the construction camp, let a sudden yell out of +him and started on a mad run toward the tank-car and the summit of the +grade, as a series of screeches in seven different varieties of +language smote his ears, and a great burst of black smoke rolling +skyward met his startled gaze. But fast as he ran, the Polacks, Swedes +and Hungarians were faster--pipe smoking under discharging oil-tank +cars and in the shadow of a dynamite storage shed they were accustomed +to, but to the result, a blazing oil-tank car shooting a flame against +the walls of the dynamite shed, they were not--they were only aroused +to action with their lives in peril, and they acted promptly and +earnestly--too earnestly. Some one threw the main line open, and the +others crowbarred the blazing car like mad along the few feet of siding +to get it away from the storage shed, bumped it on the main line, and +then their bars began to lose their purchase under the wheels--the +grade accommodatingly took a hand. + +MacMurtrey, tearing along toward the scene, yelled like a crazy man: + +"Block her! Block the wheels! You--you----" His voice died in a +gasp. "D'ye hear!" he screamed, as he got his breath again. "Block +the wheels!" + +And the Polacks, the Swedes, the Hungarians and the What-Nots, scared +stiff, screeched and jabbered, as they watched the tank-car, gaining +speed with every foot it travelled, sail down the grade. And +MacMurtrey, too late to do anything, stopped dead in his tracks--his +face ashen. He pulled his watch, licked dry lips, and kind of +whispered to himself. + +"Number Three 'll be on the foot of the grade now," whispered +MacMurtrey, and licked his lips again. "Oh, my God!" + +Meanwhile, down the grade around the bend, Sammy Durgan yawned, sat up, +and cocked his ear summitwards. + +"Now what the devil are them crazy foreigners yelling about!" +complained Sammy Durgan unhappily. "'Tis always the way with them, +like a cageful of screeching cockatoos, they are--but being foreigners +mabbe they can't help it, 'tis their nature to yell without provocation +and----" + +Sammy Durgan's ear caught a very strange sound, that mingled the clack +of fast-revolving wheels as they pounded the fish-plates with a roar +that hissed most curiously--and then Sammy Durgan's knees went loose at +the joints and wobbled under him. + +Trailing a dense black canopy of smoke, wrapped in a sheet of flame +that spurted even from the trucks, the oil-tank car lurched around the +bend and plunged for him--and for once, Sammy Durgan thought very fast. +There was no room to let it pass--on one side was just nothing, barring +a precipice; and on the rock side, no matter how hard he squeezed back +from the right of way, there wasn't any room to escape that spurting +flame that even in its passing would burn him to a crisp. And with one +wild squeak of terror Sammy Durgan flung himself at his handcar, and, +pushing first like a maniac to start it, sprang aboard. Then he began +to pump. + +There were a hundred yards between the bend and the scene of Sammy +Durgan's siesta--only the tank-car had momentum, a whole lot of it, and +Sammy Durgan had not. By the time Sammy Durgan had the handcar started +the hundred yards was twenty-five, and the monster of flame and smoke +behind him was travelling two feet to his one. + +Sammy Durgan pumped--for his life. He got up a little better +speed--but the tank-car still gained on him. Down the grade he went, +the handcar rocking, swaying, lurching, and up and down on the handle, +madly, frantically, desperately, wildly went Sammy Durgan's arms, +shoulders and head--his hat blew off, and his red hair sort of stood +straight up in the wind, and his face was like chalk. + +Down he went, faster and faster, and the handcar, reeling like a +drunken thing, took a curve with a vicious slew, and the off wheels +hung in air for an instant while Sammy Durgan bellowed in panic, then +found their base again and shot along the straight. And faster and +faster behind him, on wings of fire it seemed, spitting flame tongues, +vomiting its black clouds of smoke like an inferno, roaring like a +mighty furnace in blast, came the tank-car. It was initial momentum +and mass against Sammy Durgan's muscles on a handcar pump handle--and +the race was not to Sammy Durgan. + +He cast a wild glance behind, and squeaked again, and his teeth began +to go like castanets, as the hot breath of the thing fanned his back. + +"'Tis my finish," wheezed and stuttered Sammy Durgan through bursting +lungs and chattering teeth. "'Tis a dead man, I am--oh, Holy +Mither--'tis a dead man I am!" + +Ahead and to either side swept Sammy Durgan's eyes like a hunted +rat's--and they held, fascinated, on where the old spur track led off +from the main line. But it was not the spur track that interested +Sammy Durgan--it was that the rock wall, diverging away from his elbow, +as it were, presented a wide and open space. + +"It's killed I am, anyway," moaned Sammy Durgan. "But 'tis a chance. +If--if mabbe I could jump far enough there where there's room to let it +pass, I dunno--but 'tis killed, I'll be, anyway--oh, Holy Mither--but +'tis a chance--oh, Holy Mither!" + +Hissing in its wind-swept flames, belching its cataract of smoke that +lay behind it up the grade like a pall of death, roaring like some +insensate demon, the tank-car leaped at him five yards away. And, +screaming now in a paroxysm of terror that had his soul in clutch, +crazed with it, blind with it, Sammy Durgan jumped--_blindly_--just +before he reached the spur. + +Like a stone from a catapult, Sammy Durgan went through the air, and +with a sickening thud his body crashed full into the old stub +switch-stand and into the switch handle, whirled around, and he +ricochetted, a senseless, bleeding, shattered Sammy Durgan, three yards +away. + +It threw the switch. The handcar, already over it, sailed on down the +main line and around the next bend, climbed up the front end of the 508 +that was hauling No. 3 up the grade, smashed the headlight into +battered ruin, unshipped the stack, and took final lodgment on the +running board, its wheels clinging like tentacles to the 508's bell and +sand-box; but the tank-car, with a screech of wrenching axles, a +frightened, quivering stagger, took the spur, rushed like a Berserker +amuck along its length, plowed up sand and gravel and dirt and rock +where there were no longer any rails, and toppled over, a spent and +buckled thing, on its side. + +It was a flying switch that they talk of yet on the Hill Division. No. +3, suspicious of the handcar, sniffed her way cautiously around the +curve, and there, passengers, train crew, engine crew and Tommy Regan, +made an excited exodus from the train--just as MacMurtrey, near mad +with fear, Swedes, Hungarians and Polacks stringing out along the right +of way behind him, also arrived on the scene. + +Who disclaims circumstantial evidence! Regan stared at the burning +oil-tank up the spur, stared at the bleeding, senseless form of Sammy +Durgan--and then he yelled for a doctor. + +But a medical man amongst the passengers was already jumping for Sammy +Durgan; and MacMurtrey was clawing at the master mechanic's arm, +stuttering out the tale of what had happened. + +"And--and if it hadn't been for Timmy O'Toole there," stuttered +MacMurtrey, flirting away the sweat that stood out in great nervous +beads on his face, "I--it makes me sick to think what would have +happened when the tank struck Number Three. Something would have gone +into the canyon sure. Timmy O'Toole's a----" + +"His name's Sammy Durgan," said Regan, kind of absently. + +"I don't give a blamed hoot what his name is!" declared MacMurtrey +earnestly. "He's a man with grit from the soles up, and a head on him +to use it with. It was three-quarters of an hour ago that I sent him +down, so he must have been near the top on his way back when he saw the +tank-car coming--and he took the one chance there was--to try and beat +it to the spur here to save Number Three; and it was so close on him, +for it's a cinch he hadn't time to stop, that he had to jump for the +switch with about one chance in ten for his own life--see?" + +"A blind man could see it," said Regan heavily, "but--Sammy Durgan!" +He reached uncertainly toward his hip pocket for his chewing--and then, +with sudden emotion, the big-hearted, fat, little master mechanic bent +over Sammy Durgan. + +"God bless the man!" blurted out Regan. And then, to the doctor: "Will +he live?" + +"Oh, yes; I think so," the doctor answered. "He's pretty badly smashed +up, though." + +Sammy Durgan's lips were moving. Regan leaned close to catch the words. + +"A steady job," murmured Sammy Durgan. "Never get a chance. But some +day it'll come. I'll show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em!" + +"You have, Sammy," said Regan, in a low, anxious voice. "It's all +right, Sammy. It's all right, old boy. Just pull around and you can +have any blamed thing you want on the Hill Division." + +The doctor smiled sympathetically at Regan. + +"He's delirious, you know," he explained kindly. "What he says doesn't +mean anything." + +Regan looked up with a kind of a grim smile. + +"Don't it?" inquired Regan softly. Then he cleared his throat, and +tugged at his scraggly brown mustache--both ends of it. "That's what I +used to think myself," said the fat little master mechanic, sort of as +though he were apostrophizing the distant peaks across the canyon, and +not as though he were talking to the doctor at all. "But I guess--I +guess I know Sammy Durgan better than I did. H'm?" + + + + +IV + +THE WRECKING BOSS + +Opinions, right or wrong, on any subject are a matter of +individuality--there have been different opinions about Flannagan on +the Hill Division. But the story is straight enough--from car-tink to +superintendent, there has never been any difference of opinion about +that. + +Flannagan was the wrecking boss. + +Tommy Regan said the job fitted Flannagan, for it took a hard man for +the job, and Flannagan, bar none, was the hardest man on the payroll; +hardest at crooking elbows in MacGuire's Blazing Star Saloon, hardest +with his fists, and hardest of all when it came to getting at the heart +of some scalding, mangled horror of death and ruin that a man wouldn't +be called a coward to turn from--sick. + +Flannagan looked it. He stood six feet one in his stockings, and his +chest and shoulders were like the front-end view you'd get looking at a +sturdy, well-grown ox. He wasn't pretty. His face was scarred with +cuts and burns enough to stall any German duelling student on a siding +till the rails rusted, and the beard he grew to hide these +multitudinous disfigurements just naturally came out in tussocks; he +had black eyes that could go _coal_ black and lose their pupils, and a +shock of black hair that fell into them half the time; also, he had a +tongue that wasn't elegant. That was Flannagan--Flannagan, the +wrecking boss. + +There's no accounting for the way some things come about--and it's +pretty hard to call the turn of the card when Dame Fortune deals the +bank. It's a trite enough saying that it is the unexpected that +happens in life, but the reason it's trite is because it's immeasurably +true. Flannagan growled and swore and cursed one night, coming back +from a bit of a spill up the line, because they stalled him and his +wrecking outfit for an hour about half a mile west of Big Cloud--the +reason being that, like the straw that broke the camel's back, a circus +train in from the East, billed for a three days' lay-off at Big Cloud, +had, seeking siding, temporarily choked the yards, already glutted with +traffic, until the mix-up Gleeson, the yardmaster, had to wrestle with +would have put a problem in differential calculus into the kindergarten +class. + +Flannagan was very dirty, and withal very tired, and when, finally, +they gave him the "clear" and his flat and caboose and his staggering +derrick rumbled sullenly down toward the roundhouse and shops, the +sight of gilded cages, gaudily decorated cars, and converted Pullmans +that were second-class-tourist equipment painted white, did not assuage +his feelings; neither was there enchantment for him in the roars of +multifarious beasts, nor in the hybrid smells that assailed his +nostrils from the general direction of the menagerie. Flannagan, for +an hour's loss of sleep, with heartiness and abandon, consigned that +particular circus, also all others and everything thereunto pertaining, +from fangless serpents to steam calliopes, to regions that are +popularly credited with being somewhat warmer than the torrid zone on +the hottest day in mid-summer. But then--Flannagan did not know. + +Opinions differ. Flannagan was about the last man on earth that any +one on the Hill Division would have picked out for a marrying man; and, +equally true the other way round, about the last man they would have +picked out as one a pretty girl would want to marry. With her, maybe, +it was the strength of the man, since they say that comes first with +women; with him, maybe, it was just the trim little brown-eyed, +brown-haired figure that could ride with the grace of a fairy. Anyway, +the only thing about it that didn't surprise any one was the fact that, +when it came, it came as sudden and quick as a head-on smash around a +ninety-degree curve. That was Flannagan's way, for Flannagan, if he +was nothing else, was impulsive. + +That night Flannagan cursed the circus; the next day he saw Daisy +MacQueen riding in the street parade and--but this isn't the story of +Flannagan's courtship, not but that the courtship of any man like +Flannagan would be worth the telling--only there are other things. + +At first, Big Cloud winked and chuckled slyly to itself; and then, when +the circus left and Flannagan got a week off and left with it, it +guffawed outright--but when, at the end of that week, Flannagan brought +back Mrs. Flannagan, _nee_ Daisy MacQueen, Big Cloud stuck its tongue +in its cheek, wagged its head and waited developments. + +This is the story of the developments. + +Maybe that same impulsiveness of Flannagan's, that could be blind and +bullheaded, coupled with a passion that was like a devil's when +aroused, was to blame; maybe the women of Big Cloud, following the lead +of Mrs. MacAloon, the engineer's wife and the leader of society +circles, who shook her fiery red head and turned up her Celtic nose +disdainfully at Daisy MacQueen, had something to do with it; maybe +Daisy herself had a little pride--but what's the use of speculating? +It all goes back to the same beginning--opinions differ. + +Tongues wagged; Flannagan listened--that's the gist of it. But, once +for all, let it be said and understood that Daisy MacQueen was as +straight as they make them. She hadn't been brought up the way Mrs. +MacAloon and her coterie had, and she liked to laugh, liked to play, +liked to live, and not exist in a humdrum way ever over washtubs and a +cook stove--though, all credit to her who hadn't been used to them, she +never shirked one nor the other. The women's ideas about circuses and +circus performers were, putting it mildly, puritanical; but the men +liked Daisy MacQueen--and took no pains to hide it. They clustered +around her, and, before long, she ruled them all imperially with a nod +of her pretty head; and, as a result, the women's ideas from +puritanical became more so--which is human nature, Big Cloud or +anywhere else. + +At first, Flannagan was proud of the little wife he had brought to Big +Cloud--proud of her for the very attitude adopted toward her by his +mates; but, as the months went by, gradually the wagging tongues got in +their work, gradually Flannagan began to listen, and the jealousy that +was his by nature above the jealousy of most men commenced to smolder +into flame. Just a rankling jealousy, directed against no one in +particular--just jealousy. Things up at the little house off Main +Street where the Flannagans lived weren't as harmonious as they had +been. + +In the beginning, Daisy, not treating the matter seriously, answered +Flannagan with a laugh; finally, she answered him not at all. And that +stage, unfortunately far from unique in other homes than Flannagan's +the world over, was reached where only some one act, word or deed was +needed to bring matters to a head. + +Perhaps, after all, there was poetic justice in Flannagan's cursing of +the circus, for it was the circus that supplied that one thing needed. +Not that the circus came back to town--it didn't--but a certain round, +little, ferret-eyed, short, pompadour-haired, waxed-mustached, perfumed +Signor Ferraringi, the ringmaster, did. + +Ferraringi was a scoundrel--what he got he deserved, there was never +any doubt about that; but that night Flannagan, when he walked into the +house, saw only Ferraringi on his knees before Daisy, heard only +impassioned, flowery words, and, in the blind fury that transformed him +from man to beast, the scorn, contempt and horror in Daisy's eyes, the +significance of the rigid little figure with tight-clenched hands, was +lost. Ferraringi had been in love with Daisy. Flannagan knew that, +and his seething brain remembered that. The circus people had told him +so; Daisy had told him so; Ferraringi had told him so with a snarl and +a threat--and he had laughed--_then_. + +One instant Flannagan hung upon the threshold. He was not a pretty +sight. Back from a wreck, he was still in his overalls, and these were +smeared with blood--four carloads of steers had gone into premature +shambles in the ditch. One instant Flannagan hung there, his face +working convulsively--and then he jumped. His left hand locked into +the collar of the ringmaster's coat, his arm straightened like the +tautening chains of his own derrick crane, and, as the other came off +his knees and upright from the yank, Flannagan's right swung a terrific +full-arm smash that, landing a little above the jaw, plastered one side +of that tonsorial work of art, the waxed and curled mustache, flat into +Ferraringi's cheek. + +Ferraringi's answer, as he wriggled free, was a torrent of +malediction--and a blinding flash. Daisy screamed. The shot missed, +but the powder singed Flannagan's face. + +It was the only shot that Ferraringi fired! With a roar, high-pitched +like the maddened trumpeting of an elephant amuck, Flannagan with a +single blow sent the revolver sailing ceiling high--then his arms, like +steel piston rods, worked in and out, and his fists drummed an awful, +merciless tattoo upon the ringmaster. + +The smoke from the shot filled the room with pungent odor. Chairs and +furniture, overturned, broken, crashed to the floor. Daisy, wild-eyed, +with parted lips, dumb with terror, crouched against the wall, her +hands clasped to her breast--but before Flannagan's eyes all was +red--_red_. + +A battered, bruised, reeling, staggering form before him curled up +suddenly and slid in a heap at his feet. Flannagan, with groping hands +and twitching fingers, reached for it--and then, with a rush, other +forms, many of them, came between him and what was on the floor. + +It was very good for Ferraringi, very good, for that was all that saved +him--Flannagan was seeing only red. + +The neighbors lifted the stunned ringmaster, limp as rags, to his feet. +Flannagan brushed his great fist once across his eyes in a half-dazed +way, and glared at the roomful of people. Suddenly, he heaved forward, +pushing those nearest him violently toward the door. + +"Get out of here!" he bellowed hoarsely. "Get out, curse you, d'ye +hear! Get out!" + +There were men in that little crowd, men besides the three or four +women, Mrs. MacAloon amongst them; men not reckoned overfaint of spirit +in Big Cloud by those who knew, but _they_ knew Flannagan, and they +went--went, half carrying, half dragging the ringmaster, oiled and +perfumed now in a fashion grimly different than before. + +"Get out!" roared Flannagan again to hurry them, and, as the last one +disappeared, he whirled on Daisy. "And you, too!" he snarled. "Get +out!" + +Terrified, shaken by the scene as she was, his words, their +implication, their injustice, whipped her into scorn and anger. +White-lipped, she stared at him for an instant. + +"You dare," she burst out, "you dare to----" + +"_Get out!_" Flannagan's voice in his passion was a thick, stumbling, +guttural whisper. "Get out! Go back to your circus--go where you +like! Get out!" His hand dove into his pocket, and its contents, +bills and coins, what there was of them, he flung upon the table. "Get +out--as far as all I've got will take you!" + +Daisy MacQueen was proud--perhaps, though, not above the pride of other +women. The blood was hot in her cheeks; her big, brown eyes had a +light in them near to that light with which she had faced Ferraringi +but a short time before; her breath came in short, hard, little gasps. +For a full minute she did not speak--and then the words came cold as +death. + +"Some day--some day, Michael Flannagan, you'll get what you deserve." + +"That's what I'm gettin' now--what I deserve," he flung back; then, +halting in the doorway: "You understand, eh? Get out! I'm lettin' you +down easy. Get out of Big Cloud! Get out before I'm back. Number +Fifteen 'll be in in an hour--you'd better take her." + +Flannagan stepped out on the street. A curious little group had +collected two houses down in front of Mrs. MacAloon's. Flannagan +glanced at them, muttered a curse; and then, head down between his +shoulders, clenched fists rammed in his pockets, he headed in the other +direction toward Main Street. Five minutes later, he pushed the +swinging doors of the Blazing Star open, and walked down the length of +the room to where Pete MacGuire, the proprietor, lounged across the bar. + +"Pete"--he jerked out his words hoarsely--"next Tuesday's pay day--is +my face good till then?" + +MacGuire looked at him curiously. The news of the fracas had not yet +reached the Blazing Star. + +"Why, sure," said he. "Sure it is, Flannagan, if you want it. +What's----" + +"Then let 'em come my way," Flannagan rapped out, with a savage laugh; +"an' let 'em come--_fast_." + +Flannagan was the wrecking boss. A hard man, Regan had called him, and +he was--a product of the wild, rough, pioneering life, one of those men +who had followed the grim-faced, bearded corps of engineers as they +pitted their strength against the sullen gray of the mighty Rockies +from the eastern foothills to the plains of the Sierras, fighting every +inch of their way with indomitable perseverance and daring over chasms +and gorges, through tunnels and cuts, in curves and levels and grades, +against obstacles that tried their souls, against death itself, taping +the thin steel lines they left behind them with their own blood. Hard? +Yes, Flannagan was hard. Un-cultured, rough, primal, he undoubtedly +was. A brute man, perhaps, full of the elemental--fiery, hot-headed, +his passions alone swayed him. That side of Flannagan, the years, in +the very environment in which he had lived them, had developed to the +full--the other side had been untouched. What Flannagan did that night +another might not have done--or he might. The judging of men is a +grave business best let alone. + +Flannagan let go his hold then; not at once, but gradually. That night +spent in the Blazing Star was the first of others, others that followed +insidiously, each closer upon the former's heels. Daisy had gone--had +gone that night--where, he did not know, and told himself he did not +care. He grew moody, sullen, uncompanionable. Big Cloud took +sides--the women for Flannagan; the men for the wife. Flannagan hated +the women, avoided the men--and went to the Blazing Star. + +There was only one result--the inevitable one. Regan, kindly for all +his gruffness, understanding in a way, stood between Flannagan and the +super and warned Flannagan oftener than most men were warned on the +Hill Division. Nor were his warnings altogether without effect. +Flannagan would steady up--temporarily--maybe for a week--than off +again. Steady up just long enough to keep putting off and postponing +the final reckoning. And then one day, some six months after Daisy +Flannagan had gone away, the master mechanic warned him for the last +time. + +"I'm through with you, Flannagan," he said. "Understand that? I'm out +from under, and next time you'll talk to Carleton--and what he'll have +to say won't take long--about two seconds. You know Carleton, don't +you? Well, then--what?" + +It was just a week to a day after that that Flannagan cut loose and +wild again. He made a night and a day of it, and then another. After +that, though by that time Flannagan was quite unaware of the fact, some +of the boys got him home, dumped him on his bed and left him to his +reflections--which were a blank. + +Flannagan slept it off, and it took about eighteen hours to do it. +When he came to himself he was in a humor that, far from being happy, +was atrocious; likewise, there were bodily ailments--Flannagan's head +was bad, and felt as though a gang of boiler-makers, working against +time, were driving rivets in it. He procured himself a bracer and went +back to bed. This resulted in a decidedly improved physical condition, +but when he arose late in the afternoon any improvement there might +have been in his mental state was speedily dissipated--Flannagan found +a letter shoved under his door, postmarked the day before, and with it +an official manila envelope from the super's office. + +He opened the letter and read it--read it again while his jaws worked +and the red surged in a passion into his face; then, with an oath, he +tore it savagely into shreds, flung the bits on the floor and stamped +upon them viciously with his heavy nail-heeled boot. + +The official manila he did not open at all. A guess was enough for +that--a curt request to present himself in the super's office, +probably. Flannagan glared at it, then grabbed his hat, and started +down for the station. There was no idea of shirking it; Flannagan +wasn't that kind at any time, and just now his mood, if anything, +spurred him on rather than held him back. Flannagan welcomed the +prospect of a row about anything with anybody at that moment--if only a +war of words. + +Carleton's office was upstairs over the ticket office and next to the +despatchers' room then, for the station did duty for headquarters and +everything else--not now, it's changed now, and there's a rather +imposing gray-stone structure where the old wooden shack used to be; +but, no matter, that's the way it was then, for those were the early +days when the road was young and in the making. + +Flannagan reached the station, climbed the stairs, and pushed +Carleton's door open with little ceremony. + +"You want to see me?" he demanded gruffly, as he stepped inside. + +Carleton, sitting at his desk, looked up and eyed the wrecking boss +coolly for a minute. + +"No, Flannagan," he said curtly. "I don't." + +"Then what in blazes d'ye send for me for?" Flannagan flung out in a +growl. + +"See here, Flannagan," snapped Carleton, "I've no time to talk to you. +You can read, can't you? You're out!" + +Flannagan blinked. + +"Was that what was in the letter?" + +"It was--just that," said Carleton grimly. + +"Hell!" Flannagan's short laugh held a jeering note of contempt. "I +didn't open it--or mabbe I'd have known, eh?" + +Carleton's eyes narrowed. + +"Well, you know now, don't you?" + +"Sure!" Flannagan scowled and licked his lips. "I'm out, thrown out, +and----" + +"Then, get out!" Carleton cut in sharply. "You've had more chances +than any man ever got before from me, thanks to Regan; but you've had +your last, and talking won't do you any good now." + +Flannagan stepped nearer to the desk. + +"Talkin'! Who's talkin'?" he flared in sudden bravado. "Didn't I tell +you I didn't read your damned letter? Didn't I, eh, didn't I? D'ye +think I'd crawl to you or any man for a job? I'm out, am I? D'ye +think I came down to ask you to take me back? I'd see you rot first! +T'hell with the job--see!" + +Few men on the Hill Division ever saw Carleton lose his temper--it +wasn't Carleton's way of doing things. He didn't lose it now, but his +words were like trickling drops of ice water. + +"Sometimes, Flannagan," he said, "to make a man like you understand one +has to use your language. You say you'd see me rot before you asked me +for the job back again--very well. I'd rot before I gave it to you +after this. Now, will you get out--or be thrown out?" + +For a moment it looked as though Flannagan was going to mix it there +and then. His eyes went ugly, and his fists, horny and gnarled, +doubled into knots, as he glared viciously at the super. + +Carleton, who was afraid of no man, or any aggregation of men, his face +stern-set and hard, leaned back in his swivel chair and waited. + +A tense minute passed. Then Flannagan's better sense weighed down the +balance, and, without so much as a word, he turned, went out of the +room, and stamped heavily down the stairs. + +Goaded into it, or through unbridled, ill-advised impulse, men say rash +things sometimes--afterward, both Flannagan and Carleton were to +remember their own and the other's words--and the futility of them. +Nor was it to be long afterward--without warning, without so much as a +premonition, quick and sudden as doom, things happen in railroading. + +It was half past five when Flannagan went out of the super's office; it +was but ten minutes later when, before he had decanted a drop from the +bottle he had just lifted to fill his glass, he slapped the bottle back +on the bar of the Blazing Star with a sudden jerk. From down the +street in the direction of the yards boomed three long blasts from the +shop whistle--the wrecking signal. It came again and again. Men +around him began to move. Chairs from the little tables were pushed +hurriedly back. The bell in the English chapel took up the alarm. It +stirred the blood in Flannagan's veins, and whipped it to his cheeks in +fierce excitement--it was the call to arms! + +He turned from the bar--and stopped like a man stunned. There had been +times in the last six months when he had not responded to that call, +because, deaf to everything, he had not _heard_ it. Then, it had been +his call--the call for the wrecking crew, and, first of all, for the +wrecking boss; now--there was a dazed look on his face, and his lips +worked queerly. It was not for him, he was barred--_out_. + +Slowly he turned back to the bar, rested his foot on the rail, and, +with a mirthless laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, reached for the +bottle again. He poured the whisky glass full to the brim--and laughed +once more and shrugged his shoulders as his fingers curled around it. +He raised the glass--and held it poised halfway to his lips. + +Quick-running steps came up the street, the swinging doors of the +Blazing Star burst open and a call boy shoved in his head. + +"Wreckers out! Wreckers out!" he bawled. "Number Eighty's gone to +glory in Spider Cut. Everybody's killed"--and he was gone, a +grimy-faced harbinger of death and disaster; gone, speeding with his +summons to wherever men were gathered throughout the little town. + +An instant Flannagan stood motionless as one transformed from flesh to +sculptured clay--then the glass slid from his fingers and crashed into +tinkling splinters on the floor. The liquor splashed his boots. +Number Eighty was the eastbound Coast Express! Like one who moves in +unknown places through the dark, so, then, Flannagan moved toward the +door. Men looked at him in amazement, and stood aside to let him pass. +Something was tugging at his heart, beating at his brain, impelling him +forward; a force irresistible, that, in its first, sudden, overwhelming +surge he could not understand, could not grasp, could not focus into +concrete form--could only obey. + +He passed out through the doors, and then for the first time a cry rang +from his lips. There were no halting, stumbling, uncertain steps now. +Men running down the street called to Flannagan as he sped past them. +Flannagan made no answer, did not look their way; his face, strained +and full of dumb anguish, was set toward the station. + +He gained the platform and raced along it. Shouts came from across the +yards. Up and down the spurs fluttered the fore-shortened little yard +engine, coughing sparks and wheezing from her exhaust as she bustled +the wrecking train together; lamps swung and twinkled like fireflies, +for it was just opening spring and the dark fell early; and in front of +the roundhouse, the 1014, blowing hard from her safety under a full +head of steam, like a thoroughbred that scents the race, was already on +the table. + +With a heave of his great shoulders and a sweep of his arms, Flannagan +won through the group of trainmen, shop hands, and loungers clustered +around the door, and took the stairs four at a leap. + +A light burned in the super's office, but the voices came from the +despatchers' room. And there in the doorway Flannagan halted--halted +just for a second's pause while his eyes swept the scene before him. + +Regan, the master mechanic, by the window, was mouthing curses under +his breath as men do in times of stress; Spence, the despatcher, +white-faced, the hair straggling into his eyes, was leaning over the +key under the green-shaded lamp, over the key clearing the line while +the sounder clicked in his ears of ruin and of lives gone out. Harvey, +the division engineer, was there, pulling savagely at a brier with +empty bowl. And at the despatcher's elbow stood Carleton, a grim +commander, facing tidings of disaster, his shoulders braced and bent a +little forward as though to take the blow, his jaws clamped tight till +the lips, compressed, were bloodless, and the chiselled lines on his +face told of the bitterness in his heart. + +Then Flannagan stepped forward. + +"Carleton," he cried, and his words came like panting sobs, "Carleton, +give me back my job." + +It was no place for Flannagan. + +Carleton's cup was already full to overflowing, and he swung on +Flannagan like a flash. His hand lifted and pointed to the door. + +"Get out of here!" he said between his teeth. + +"Carleton," cried Flannagan again, and his arms went out in +supplication toward the super, "Carleton, give me back my job--give it +back to me for to-night--just for to-night." + +"No!" the single word came from Carleton's lips like a thunder clap. + +Flannagan shivered a little and shrank back. + +"Just for to-night," he mumbled hoarsely. "Just for----" + +"No!" Carleton's voice rang hard as flint. "I tell you, no! Get out +of here!" + +Harvey moved suddenly, threateningly, toward Flannagan--and, as +suddenly, Flannagan, roused by the act, brushed the division engineer +aside like a plaything, sprang forward, and, with a quick, fierce grip, +caught Carleton's arms and pinioned them, vise-like, to his sides. + +"And I tell you, yes!" his voice rose dominant with the power, the will +that shook him now to the depths of his turbulent soul. As a man who +knows no law, no obstacle, no restraint, as a man who would batter down +the gates of hell itself to gain his end, so then was Flannagan. "I +tell you, yes! I tell you, yes! _My wife and baby's in that wreck +to-night?_" + +Turmoil, shouts, the short, quick intermittent hiss of steam as the +1014, her cylinder cocks open, backed down to the platform, the clash +of coupling cars, a jumbled medley of sounds, floated up from the yard +without--but within the little room, the chattering sounder for the +moment stilled, there fell a silence as of death, and no man among them +moved or spoke. + +Flannagan, gray-faced, gasping, his mighty grip still on Carleton, his +head thrown forward close to the other's, stared into the super's +face--and, for a long minute, in the twitching muscles of the big +wrecker's face, in the look that man reads seldom in his fellows' eyes, +Carleton drew the fearful picture, lived the awful story that the +babbling wire had told. "Royal" Carleton, square man and big of heart, +his voice broke. + +"God help you, Flannagan--go." + +No word came from Flannagan's lips--only a queer choking sound, as his +hands dropped to his sides--only a queer choking sound, as he turned +suddenly and jumped for the door. + +On the stairs, Dorsay, the driver of the 1014, coming up for his +orders, passed Flannagan. + +"Bad spill, I hear," growled the engineer, as he went by. "The five +hundred and five's pony truck jumped the rails on the lower curve and +everything's in the ditch. Old Burke's gone out and a heap of the +passengers with him. I----" + +Flannagan heard no more--he was on the platform now. Coupled behind +the derrick crane and the tool car were two coaches, improvised +ambulances, and into these latter, instead of the tool car, the men of +the wrecking gang were piling--a bad smash brought luxury for them. +Shouts, cries, hubbub, a babel of voices were around him, but in his +brain, repeated and repeated over and over again, lived only a phrase +from the letter he had torn to pieces, stamped under heel that +afternoon--the words were swimming before his eyes: "Michael, dear, +we've both been wrong; I'm bringing _baby_ back on the Coast Express +Friday night." + +Men with little black bags brushed by him and tumbled into the rear +coach--the doctors of Big Cloud to the last one of them. Dorsay came +running from the station, a bit of tissue, his orders, fluttering in +his hand, and sprang for the cab. 1014's exhaust burst suddenly into +quick, deafening explosions, the sparks shot volleying heavenward from +her short stack, the big, whirling drivers were beginning to bite--and +then, through the gangway, after the engineer, into the cab swung +Flannagan--Flannagan, the wrecking boss. + +Spider Cut is the Eastern gateway of the Rockies, and it lies, as the +crows fly, sixteen miles west of Big Cloud; but the right of way, as it +twists and turns, circling and dodging the buttes that grow from mounds +to foothills, makes it on the blue-prints twenty-one decimal seven. +The running time of the fast fliers on this stretch is--but what of +that? Dorsay that night smashed all records, and the medical men in +the rear coach tell to this day how they clung for life and limb to +their seats and to each other, and most of them will admit--which is +admitting much--that they were frightened, white-lipped men with broken +nerves. + +As the wreck special, with a clash and clatter, shattered over the +switches in the upper yard and nosed the main line, Stan Willard, who +had the shovel end of it, with a snatch at the chain swung open the +furnace door and a red glow lighted up the heavens. Dorsay turned in +his seat and looked at the giant form of the wrecking boss behind +him--they had told him the story in the office. + +The eyes of the two men met. Flannagan's lips moved dumbly; and, with +a curious, pleading motion, he gestured toward the throttle. + +Dorsay opened another notch. He laughed a grim, hard laugh. + +"I _know_," he shouted over the roar. "I know. Leave it to me, +Flannagan." + +The bark of the exhaust came quicker and quicker, swelled and rose into +the full, deep-toned thunder of a single note. Notch by notch, Dorsay +opened out the 1014, notch by notch, and the big mountain racer, +answering like a mettlesome steed to the touch of the whip, leapt +forward, ever faster, into the night. + +Now the headlight played on shining steel ahead; now suddenly threw a +path of light across the short, yellow stubble of a rising butte, and +Dorsay checked grudgingly for an instant as they swung the curve--just +for an instant--then into the straight again, with wide-flung throttle. + +It was mad work, and in that reeling, dizzy cab no man spoke. The +sweep of the singing wind, the wild tattoo of beating trucks, the +sullen whir of flying drivers was in their ears; while behind, the +derrick crane, the tool car and the coaches writhed and wriggled, +swayed and lurched, tearing at their couplings, bouncing on their +trucks, jerking viciously as each slue took up the axle play, rolling, +pitching crazily like cockleshells tossed on an angry sea. + +Now they tore through a cut, and the walls took up the deafening roar +and echoed and reechoed it back in volume a thousandfold; now into the +open, and the sudden contrast was like the gasping breath of an +imprisoned thing escaped; now over culverts, trestles, spans, hollow, +reverberating--the speed was terrific. + +Over his levers, bounding on his seat, Dorsay, tense and strained, +leaned far forward following the leaping headlight's glare; while +staggering like a drunken man to keep his balance, the sweat standing +out in glistening beads upon his grimy face, Stan Willard watched the +flickering needle on the gauge, and his shovel clanged and swung; and +in the corner, back of Dorsay, bent low to brace himself, thrown +backward and forward with every lurch, in the fantastic, dancing light +like some tigerish, outraged animal crouched to spring, Flannagan, with +head drawn into his shoulders, jaws outthrust, stared over the +engineer's back, stared with never a look to right or left, stared +through the cab glass to the right of way ahead--stared toward Spider +Cut. + +Again and again, with sickening, giddy shock, wheel-base lifted from +the swing, the 1014 struck the tangents, hung a breathless space, and, +with a screech of crunching flanges, found the rails once more. + +Again and again--but the story of that ride is the doctors' story--they +tell it best. Dorsay made the run that night from Big Cloud to Spider +Cut, twenty-one point seven miles, in _nineteen_ minutes. + +There have been bad spills on the Hill Division, bad spills--but there +have never been worse than on that Friday night when the 505 jumped the +rails at the foot of the curve coming down the grade just east of +Spider Cut, shot over the embankment and piled the Coast Express, +mahogany sleepers and all, into splintered wreckage forty feet below +the right of way. + +As Dorsay checked and with screaming brake-shoes the 1014 slowed, +Flannagan, with a wild cry, leaped from the cab and dashed up the track +ahead of the still-moving pilot. It was light enough--the cars of the +wreck nearest him, the mail and baggage cars, had caught, and, fanned +by the wind into yellow flames, were blazing like a huge bonfire. +Shouts arose from below; cries, anguished, piercing, from those +imprisoned in the wreck; figures, those of the crew and passengers who +had made their escape, were moving hither and thither, working as best +they might, pulling others through shattered windows and up-canted +doors, laying those who were past all knowing beside the long row of +silent forms already tenderly stretched upon the edge of the embankment. + +A man, with face cut and bleeding, came running toward Flannagan. It +was Kingsley, conductor of Number Eighty. Flannagan jumped for him, +grasped him by the shoulders and stared without a word into his face. + +But Kingsley shook his head. + +"I don't know, Flannagan," he choked. "She was in the first-class just +ahead of the Pullmans. There's--there's no one come out of that car +yet"--he turned away his head--"we couldn't get to it." + +"Couldn't get to it"--Flannagan's lips repeated the phrase +mechanically. Then he looked--and understood the grim significance of +the words. He laughed suddenly, jarring hoarse, as it is not good to +hear men laugh--and with that laugh Flannagan went into the fight. + +The details of that night no one man knows. There in the shadow of the +gray-walled Rockies, men, flint-hearted, calloused, rough and ready +though they were, sobbed as they toiled; and while the derrick tackles +creaked and moaned, axe and pick and bar swung and crashed and tore +through splintering glass and ripping timber. + +What men could do they did--and through the hours Flannagan led them. +Tough, grizzled men, more than one dropped from sheer weariness; but +ever Flannagan's great arms rose and fell, ever his mighty shoulders +heaved, ever he led them on. What men could do they did--but it was +graying dawn before they opened a way to the heart of the wreck--the +first-class coach that once ahead of the Pullmans was _under_ them now. + +Flannagan, gaunt, burned and bleeding, a madman with reeling brain, +staggered toward the jagged hole that they had torn in the flooring of +the car. They tried to hold him back, the man who had spurred them +through the night alternately with lashing curse and piteous prayer, +the man who had worked with demon strength as no three men among them +had worked, the man who was tottering now at the end in mind and body, +they tried to hold him back--_for mercy's sake_. But Flannagan shook +them off and went--went laughing again the same fearful laugh with +which he had begun the fight. + +He found her there--found her with a little bundle lying in the crook +of her outstretched arm. She moaned and held it toward him--but +Flannagan had gone his limit, his work was done, the tension broke. + +And when they worked their way to the far end of the car after him, +those hard, grim-visaged followers of Flannagan, they found a man +squatted on an up-ended seat, a woman beside him, death and desolation +and huddled shapes around him, dandling a tiny infant in his arms, +crooning a lullaby through cracked lips, crooning a lullaby--to a +little one long hushed already in its last sleep. + +Opinions differ. But Big Cloud to-day sides about solid with Regan. + +"Flannagan?" says the master mechanic. "Flannagan's a pretty good +wrecking boss, pretty good, I don't know of any better--since the +Almighty had him on the carpet. He's got a plot up on the butte behind +the town, he and Daisy, with a little mound on it. They go up there +together every Sunday--never've known 'em to miss. A man ain't likely +to fall off the right of way again as long as he does that, is he? +Well, then, forget it, he's been doing that for a year now--what?" + + + + +V + +THE MAN WHO SQUEALED + +Back in the early days the payroll of the Hill Division was full of J. +Smiths, T. Browns and H. Something-or-others--just as it is to-day. +But to-day there is a difference. The years have brought a certain +amount of inevitable pedigree, as it were--a certain amount of gossip, +so to speak, over the back fences of Big Cloud. It's natural enough. +There's a possibility, as a precedent, that one or two of the +passengers on the _Mayflower_ didn't have as much blue blood when they +started on the voyage as their descendants have got now--it's possible. +The old hooker, from all accounts, had a pretty full passenger list, +and there may have been some who secured accommodations with few +questions asked, and a subsequent coat of glorified whitewash that they +couldn't have got if they'd stayed at home where they were intimately +known--that is, they couldn't have got the coat of glorified whitewash. + +It's true that there's a few years between the landing of the +_Mayflower_ and the inception of Big Cloud, but the interval doesn't +count--the principle is the same. Out in the mountains on the Hill +Division, "Who's Who" begins with the founding of Big Cloud--it is +verbose, unprofitable and extremely bad taste to go back any farther +than that--even if it were possible. There's quite a bit known about +the J. Smiths, the T. Browns and the H. Something-or-others now, with +the enlightenment of years upon them--but there wasn't then. There +were a good many men who immigrated West to help build the road through +the Rockies, and run it afterwards--for reasons of their own. There +weren't any questions asked. Plain J. Smith, T. Brown or H. +Something-or-other went--that was all there was to it. + +He said his name was Walton--P. Walton. He was tall, hollow-cheeked, +with skin of an unhealthy, colorless white, and black eyes under thin, +black brows that were unnaturally bright. He dropped off at Big Cloud +one afternoon--in the early days--from No. 1, the Limited from the +East, climbed upstairs in the station to the super's room, and coughed +out a request to Carleton for a job. + +Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, the squarest man that ever held down a +divisional swivel chair, looked P. Walton over for a moment before he +spoke. P. Walton didn't size up much like a day's work anyway you +looked at him. + +"What can you do?" inquired Carleton. + +"Anything," said P. Walton--and coughed. + +Carleton reached for his pipe and struck a match. + +"If you could," said he, sucking at the amber mouthpiece between words, +"there wouldn't be any trouble about it. For instance, the +construction gangs want men to----" + +"I'll go--I'll do anything," cut in P. Walton eagerly. "Just give me a +chance." + +"Nope!" said Carleton with a grin. "I'm not hankering to break the +Sixth Commandment--know what that is?" + +P. Walton licked dry lips with the tip of his tongue. + +"Murder," said he. "But you might as well let it come that way as any +other. I'm pretty bad here"--he jerked his thumb toward his +lungs--"and I'm broke here"--he turned an empty trouser's pocket inside +out. + +"H'm!" observed Carleton reflectively. There was something in the +other that touched his sympathy, and something apart from that that +appealed to him--a sort of grim, philosophical grit in the man with the +infected lungs. + +"I came out," said P. Walton, looking through the window, and kind of +talking to himself, "because I thought it would be healthier for me out +here than back East." + +"I dare say," said Carleton kindly; "but not if you start in by +swinging a pick. Maybe we can find something else for you to do. Ever +done any railroading?" + +Walton shook his head. + +"No," he answered. "I've always worked on books. I'm called pretty +good at figures, if you've got anything in that line." + +"Clerk, eh? Well, I don't know," said Carleton slowly. "I guess, +perhaps, we can give you a chance. My own clerk's doing double shift +just at present; you might help him out temporarily. And if you're +what you say you are, we'll find something better for you before the +summer's over. Thirty dollars a month--it's not much of a stake--what +do you say?" + +"It's a pretty big stake for me," said P. Walton, and his face lighted +up as he turned it upon Carleton. + +"All right," said Carleton. "You'd better spend the rest of the +afternoon then in hunting up some place to stay. And here"--he dug +into his pocket and handed P. Walton two five-dollar gold pieces--"this +may come in handy till you're on your feet." + +"Say," said P. Walton huskily, "I----" he stopped suddenly, as the door +opened and Regan, the master mechanic, came in. + +"Never mind," smiled Carleton. "Report to Halstead in the next room +to-morrow morning at seven o'clock." + +P. Walton hesitated, as though to complete his interrupted sentence, +and then, with an uncertain look at Regan, turned and walked quietly +from the room. + +Regan wheeled around and stared after the retreating figure. When the +door had closed he looked inquiringly at Carleton. + +"Touched you for a loan, eh?" he volunteered quizzically. + +"No," said Carleton, still smiling; "a job. I gave him the money as an +advance." + +"More fool you!" said the blunt little master mechanic. "Your +security's bad--he'll never live long enough to earn it. What sort of +a job?" + +"Helping Halstead out to begin with," replied Carleton. + +"H'm!" remarked Regan. "Poor devil." + +"Yes, Tommy," said Carleton. "Quite so--poor devil." + +Regan, big-hearted, good-natured for all his bluntness, walked to the +front window and watched P. Walton's figure disappear slowly, and a +little haltingly, down the platform. The fat little master mechanic's +face puckered. + +"We get some queer cards out here," he said. "He looks as though he'd +had a pretty hard time of it--kind of a discard in the game, I guess. +Out here to die--pleasant, what? I wonder where he came from?" + +"He didn't say," said Carleton dryly. + +"No," said Regan; "I dare say he didn't--none of 'em do. I wonder, +though, where he came from?" + +And in this the division generally were in accord with Regan. They +didn't ask--which was outside the ethics; and P. Walton didn't +say--which was quite within his rights. But for all that, the +division, with Regan, wondered. Ordinarily, they wouldn't have paid +much attention to a new man one way or the other, but P. Walton was a +little more than just a new man--he was a man they couldn't size up. +That was the trouble. It didn't matter who any one was, or where he +came from, if they could form an opinion of him--which wasn't hard to +form in most instances--that would at all satisfactorily fill the bill. +But P. Walton didn't bear the earmarks of a hard case "wanted" East, or +show any tendency toward deep theological thought; therefore opinions +were conflicting--which wasn't satisfying. + +Not that P. Walton refused to mix, or held himself aloof, or anything +of that kind; on the contrary, all hands came to know him pretty +well--as P. Walton. As a matter of cold fact, they had more chances of +knowing him than they had of knowing most new-comers; and that bothered +them a little, because, somehow, they didn't seem to make anything out +of their opportunities. As assistant clerk to the super, P. Walton was +soon a familiar enough figure in the yards, the roundhouse and the +shops, and genial enough, and pleasant enough, too; but they never got +past the pure, soft-spoken, perfect English, and the kind of firm, +determined swing to the jaw that no amount of emaciation could +eliminate. They agreed only on one thing--on the question of +therapeutics--they were unanimous on that point with Regan--P. Walton, +whatever else he was, or wasn't, was out there to die. And it kind of +looked to them as though P. Walton had through rights to the Terminal, +and not much of any limit to speak of on his permit. + +Regan put the matter up to Carleton one day in the super's office, +about a month after P. Walton's advent to Big Cloud. + +"I said he was a queer card the first minute I clapped eyes on him," +observed the master mechanic. "And I think so now--only more so. What +in blazes does a white man want to go and live in a two-room pigsty, +with a family of Polacks and about eighteen kids, for?" + +Carleton tamped down the dottle in his pipe with his forefinger +musingly. + +"How much a week, Tommy," he inquired, "is thirty dollars a month, with +about a third of the time out for sick spells?" + +"I'm not a mathematician," growled the little master mechanic. "About +five dollars, I guess." + +"It's a good guess," said Carleton quietly. "He bought new clothes you +remember with the ten I gave him--and he needed them badly enough." +Carleton reached into a drawer of his desk, and handed Regan an +envelope that was torn open across the end. "I found this here this +afternoon after the paycar left," he said. + +Regan peered into the envelope, then extracted two five-dollar gold +pieces and a note. He unfolded the note, and read the two lines +written in a hand that looked like steel-plate engraving. + + +With thanks and grateful appreciation. + +P. WALTON. + + +Regan blinked, handed the money, note, and envelope back to Carleton, +and fumbled a little awkwardly with his watch chain. + +"He's the best hand with figures and his pen it's ever been my luck to +meet," said Carleton, kind of speculatively. "Better than Halstead; a +whole lot better. Halstead's going back East in a couple of weeks into +the general office--got the offer, and I couldn't stand in his way. I +was thinking of giving P. Walton the job, and breaking some young +fellow in to relay him when he's sick. What do you think about it, +Tommy?" + +"I think," said Regan softly, "he's been getting blamed few eggs and +less fresh air than he ought to have had, trying to make good on that +loan. And I think he's a better man than I thought he was. A fellow +that would do that is white enough not to fall very far off the right +of way. I guess you won't make any mistake as far as trusting him +goes." + +"No," said Carleton, "I don't think I will." + +And therein Carleton and Regan were both right and wrong. P. Walton +wasn't--but just a minute, we're over-running our holding orders--P. +Walton is in the block ahead. + +The month hadn't helped P. Walton much physically, even if it had +helped him more than he, perhaps, realized in Carleton's estimation. +And the afternoon following Regan's and Carleton's conversation, alone +in the room, for Halstead was out, he was hanging over his desk a +pretty sick man, though his pen moved steadily with the work before +him, when the connecting door from the super's office opened, and Bob +Donkin, the despatcher, came hurriedly in. + +"Where's the super?" he asked quickly. + +"I don't know," said P. Walton. "He went out in the yards with Regan +half an hour ago. I guess he'll be back shortly." + +"Well, you'd better try and find him, and give him this. Forty-two'll +be along in twenty minutes." Donkin slapped a tissue on the desk, and +hurried back to his key in the despatchers' room. + +P. Walton picked up the tissue and read it. It was from the first +station west on the line. + + +Gopher Butte, 3.16 P. M. + +J. H. CARLETON, Supt. Hill Division: + +No. 42 held up by two train robbers three miles west of here Express +messenger Nulty in game fight killed one and captured the other in the +express car. Arrange for removal of body, and have sheriff on hand to +take prisoner into custody on arrival in Big Cloud. Everything O.K. + +McCURDY, Conductor. + + +P. Walton, with the telegram in his hand, rose from his chair and made +for the hall through the super's room, reading it a second time as he +went along. There had been some pretty valuable express stuff on the +train, as he knew from the correspondence that had passed through his +hands--and he smiled a little grimly. + +"Well, they certainly missed a good one," he muttered to himself. "I +think I'd rather be the dead one than the other. It'll go hard with +him. Twenty years, I guess." + +He stepped out into the hall to the head of the stairs--and met +Carleton coming up. + +Carleton, quick as a steel trap, getting the gist of the message in a +glance, brushed by P. Walton, hurried along the hall to the +despatchers' room--and the next moment a wide-eyed call boy was +streaking uptown for the sheriff, and breathlessly imparting the tale +of the hold-up, embellished with gory imagination, to every one he met. + +By the time Forty-two's whistle sounded down the gorge, there was a +crowd on the platform bigger than a political convention, and P. +Walton, by virtue of his official position, rather than from physical +qualifications, together with his chief, Regan, the ticket agent, the +baggage master and Carruthers, the sheriff, were having a hard time of +it to keep themselves from being shoved off on the tracks, let alone +trying to keep a modest breadth of the platform clear. And when the +train came to a stop with screeching brake-shoes, and the side door of +the express car was shot back with a dramatic bang by some one inside, +the crowd seemed to get altogether beyond P. Walton's control, and +surged past him. As they handed out a hard-visaged, bullet-headed +customer, whose arms were tightly lashed behind him, P. Walton was +pretty well back by the ticket-office window with the crowd between him +and the center of attraction--and P. Walton was holding his +handkerchief to his lips, flecking the handkerchief with a spot or two +of red, and coughing rather badly. Carleton found him there when the +crowd, trailing Carruthers and his prisoner uptown, thinned out--and +Carleton sent him home. + +P. Walton, however, did not go home, though he started in that +direction. He followed in the rear of the crowd up to Carruthers' +place, saw steel bracelets replace the cords around the captive's +wrists, saw the captive's legs securely bound together, and the captive +chucked into Carruthers' back shed--this was in the early days, and Big +Cloud hadn't yet risen to the dignity of a jail--with about as much +formality as would be used in handling a sack of meal. After that, +Carruthers barred the door by slamming the long, two-inch-thick piece +of timber, that worked on a pivot in the center, home into its iron +rests with a flourish of finality, as though to indicate that the show +was over--and the crowd dispersed--the men heading for the swinging +doors of the Blazing Star; and the women for their own back fences. + +P. Walton, with a kind of grim smile on his lips, retraced his steps to +the station, climbed the stairs, and started through the super's room +to reach his own desk. + +Carleton removed his pipe from his mouth, and stared angrily as the +other came in. + +"You blamed idiot!" he exploded. "I thought I told you to go home!" + +"I'm feeling better," said P. Walton. "I haven't got those night +orders out yet for the roundhouse. There's three specials from the +East to-night." + +"Well, Halstead can attend to them," said Carleton, a kindliness +creeping into the tones that he tried to make gruff. "What are you +trying to do--commit suicide?" + +"No," said P. Walton, with a steady smile, "just my work. It was a +little too violent exercise trying to hold the crowd, that was all. +But I'm all right now." + +"You blamed idiot!" grunted Carleton again. "Why didn't you say so? I +never thought of it, or I wouldn't have let----" + +"It doesn't matter," said P. Walton brightly. "I'm all right now"--and +he passed on into his own room. + +When he left his desk again it was ten minutes of six, and Carleton had +already gone. P. Walton, with his neatly written order sheets, walked +across the tracks to the roundhouse, handed them over to Clarihue, the +night turner, who had just come in, and then hung around, toying in an +apparently aimless fashion with the various tools on the workbenches +till the whistle blew, while the fitters, wipers and day gang generally +washed up. After that he plodded across the fields to the Polack +quarters on the other side of the tracks from the town proper, stumbled +into the filthy, garlic smelling interior of one of the shacks, and +flung himself down on the bunk that was his bedroom. + +"Lord!" he muttered. "I'm pretty bad to-night. Guess I'll have to +postpone it. Might be as well, anyway." + +He lay there for an hour, his bright eyes fastened now on the dirty, +squalling brood of children upon the floor, now on the heavy, +slatternly figure of their mother, and now on the tin bowl of boiled +sheep's head that awaited the arrival of Ivan Peloff, the master of the +house--and then, with abhorrent disgust, he turned his eyes to the wall. + +"Thank God, I get into a decent place soon!" he mumbled once. "It's +the roughest month I ever spent. I'd rather be back where"--he smiled +sort of cryptically to himself--"where I came from." A moment later he +spoke again in a queer, kind of argumentative, kind of self-extenuating +way--in broken sentences. "Maybe I put it on a little too thick +boarding here so's to stand in with Carleton and pay that ten back +quick--but, my God, I was scared--I've got to stand in with somebody, +or go to the wall." + +It was after seven when Ivan Peloff came--smelling strong of drink, and +excitement heightening the flush upon his cheek. + +"Hello, Meester Walton!" he bubbled out with earnest inebriety. "We +rise hell to-night--by an' by. Get him goods by midnight." Ivan +Peloff drew his fingers around his throat, and, in lieu of English that +came hard to him at any time, jerked his thumb dramatically up and down +in the air. + +"Who?" inquired P. Walton, without much enthusiasm. + +"Dam' robber--him by train come in," explained Ivan Peloff laboriously. + +"Oh," said P. Walton, "talking of stringing him up--is that it?" + +Ivan Peloff nodded his head delightedly. + +P. Walton swung himself lazily from his bunk. + +"Eat?" invited Ivan Peloff, moving toward the table. + +"No," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "I'm not hungry; I'm +going out for some air." + +Ivan Peloff pulled two bottles of a deadly brand from under his coat, +and set them on the table. + +"Me eat," he grinned. "By an' by have drinks all 'round"--he waved his +hands as though to embrace the whole Polack quarter--"den we +comes--rise hell--do him goods by midnight." + +P. Walton halted in the doorway. + +"Who put you up to this, Peloff?" he inquired casually. + +"Cowboys," grinned Peloff, lunging at the sheep's head. "Plenty drink. +Say have fun." + +"The cowboys, eh?" observed P. Walton. "So they're in town, are +they--and looking for fun?" + +"We fix him goods by midnight," repeated Ivan Peloff, wagging his head; +then, with a sudden scowl: "You not tell--eh, Meester Walton?" + +P. Walton smiled disinterestedly--but there wasn't any doubt in P. +Walton's mind that devilment was in the wind--Big Cloud, in the early +days, knew its full share of that. + +"I?" said P. Walton quietly, as he went out. "No; I won't tell. It's +no business of mine, is it?" + +It was fall, and already dark. P. Walton made his way out of the +Polack quarters, reached the tracks, crossed them--and then headed out +through the fields to circle around the town to the upper end again, +where it dwindled away from cross streets to the houses flanking on +Main Street alone. + +"I guess," he coughed--and smiled, "I won't postpone it till to-morrow +night, after all." + +It was a long walk for a man in P. Walton's condition, and it was a +good half hour before he finally stopped in the rear of Sheriff +Carruthers' back shed and listened--there were no fences here, just a +procession of buttes and knolls merging the prairie country into the +foothills proper of the Rockies--neither was there any sound. P. +Walton stifled a cough, and slipped like a shadow through the darkness +around to the front of the shed, shifted the wooden bar noiselessly on +its pivot, opened the door, and, as he stepped inside, closed it softly +behind him. + +"Butch!" he whispered. + +A startled ejaculation, and a quick movement as of a man suddenly +shifting his position on the floor, answered him. + +"Keep quiet, Butcher--it's all right," said P. Walton calmly--and, +stooping, guiding his knife blade by the sense of touch, cut away the +rope from the other's ankles. He caught at the steel-linked wrists and +helped the man to his feet. "Come on," he said. "Slip around to the +back of the shed--talk later." + +P. Walton pushed the door open, and the man he called the Butcher, +lurching a little unsteadily from cramped ankles, passed out. P. +Walton carefully closed the door, coolly replaced the bar in position, +and joined the other. + +"Now, run for it!" he said--and led the way straight out from the town. + +For two hundred yards, perhaps a little more, they raced--and then P. +Walton stumbled and went down. + +"I'm--I'm not very well to-night," he gasped. "This will do--it's far +enough." + +The Butcher, halted, gazed at the prostrate form. + +"Say, cull, what's yer name?" he demanded. "I owe you something for +this, an' don't you forget it." + +P. Walton made no answer. His head was swimming, lights were dancing +before his eyes, and there was a premonitory weakness upon him whose +issue he knew too well--unless he could fight it off. + +The Butcher bent down until his face was within an inch of P. Walton's. + +"So help me!" he informed the universe in unbounded amazement. "It's +de Dook!" + +"Sit down there opposite me, and hold out your hands," directed P. +Walton, with an effort. "We haven't got any time to waste." + +The Butcher, heavy with wonderment, obeyed mechanically--and P. Walton +drew a rat-tail file from his pocket. + +"I saw you in the express car this afternoon, and I went to the +roundhouse for this when I left the office," P. Walton said, as he set +to work on the steel links. "But I was feeling kind of down and out, +and was going to leave you till to-morrow night--only I heard they were +going to lynch you at midnight." + +"Lynch me!" growled the Butcher. "What fer? They don't lynch a fellow +'cause he's nipped in a hold-up--we didn't kill no one." + +"Some of the cowboys are looking for amusement," said P. Walton +monotonously. "They've distributed red-eye among the Polacks, for the +purpose, I imagine, of putting the blame--on the Polacks." + +"I get you!" snarled the Butcher, with an oath. "It's de Bar K +Ranch--we took their payroll away from 'em two weeks ago. Lynchin', +eh? Well, some of 'em 'll dance on air fer this themselves, blast 'em! +Dook, yer white--an' you always was. I thought me luck was out fer +keeps to-day when Spud--you saw Spud, didn't you?" + +"Yes," said P. Walton, filing steadily. + +"Spud always had a soft spot in his heart," said the Butcher. "Instead +of drilling that devil, Nulty, when he had the chance, Nulty filled +Spud full of holes, an' we fluked up--yer gettin' a bit of my wrist, +Dook, with that damned file. Well, as I said, I thought me luck was +out fer keeps--an' _you_ show up. Gee! Who'd have thought of seein' +de Angel Dook, de prize penman, de gem of forgers! How'd you make yer +getaway--you was in fer twenty spaces, wasn't you?" + +"I think they wanted to save the expense of burying me," said P. +Walton. "The other wrist, Butch. I got a pardon." + +"What's de matter with you, Dook?" inquired the Butcher solicitously. + +"Lungs," said P. Walton tersely. "Bad." + +"Hell!" said the Butcher earnestly. + +There was silence for a moment, save only for the rasping of the file, +and then the Butcher spoke again. + +"What's yer lay out here, Dook?" he asked. + +"Working for the railroad in the super's office--and keeping my mouth +shut," said P. Walton. + +"There's nothin' in that," said the Butcher profoundly. "Nothin' to +it!" + +"Not much," agreed P. Walton. "Forty a month, and--oh, well, forty a +month." + +"I'll fix that fer you, Dook," said the Butcher cheerily. "You join de +gang. There's de old crowd from Joliet up here in de mountains. We +got a swell layout. There's Larry, an' Big Tom, an' Dago Pete--Spud's +cashed in--an' they'll stand on their heads an' yell Salvation Army +songs when they hear that de slickest of 'em all--that's you, Dook--is +buyin' a stack an' settin' in." + +"No," said P. Walton. "No, Butch, I guess not--it's me for the forty +per." + +"Eh!" ejaculated the Butcher heavily. "You don't mean to say you've +turned parson, Dook? You wouldn't be lettin' me loose if you had." + +"No; nothing like that," replied P. Walton. "I'm sitting tight because +I have to--until some one turns up and gives my record away--if I'm not +dead first. I'm too sick, Butch, to be any use to you--I couldn't +stand the pace." + +"Sure, you could," said the Butcher reassuringly. "Anyway, I'm not fer +leavin' a pal out in de cold, an'----" He stopped suddenly, and leaned +toward P. Walton. "What was it you said you was doin' in de office?" +he demanded excitedly. + +"Assistant clerk to the superintendent," said P. Walton--and his file +bit through the second link. "You'll have to get the bracelets off +your wrists when you get back to the boys--your hands are free." + +"Say," said the Butcher breathlessly, "it's a cinch! You see de +letters, an' know what's goin' on pretty familiar-like, don't you?" + +"Yes," said P. Walton. + +"Well, say, can you beat it!" Once more the Butcher invoked the +universe. "You're de inside man, see? Gee--it's a cinch! We only +knew there was mazuma on de train to-day by a fluke, just Spud an' me +heard of it, too late to plan anything fancy an' get de rest of de +gang. You see what happened? After this we don't have to take no +chances. You passes out de word when there's a good juicy lot of swag +comin' along, we does de rest, and you gets your share--equal. An' +that ain't all. They'll be sendin' down East fer de Pinkertons, if +they ain't done it already, an' we gives 'em de laugh--you tippin' us +off on de trains de 'dicks' are ridin' on, an' puttin' us wise to 'em +generally. An' say"--the Butcher's voice dropped suddenly to a low, +sullen, ugly growl--"you give us de lay de first crack we make when +that low-lived, snook-nosed Nulty's aboard. He goes out fer Spud--an' +he goes out quick. He's fired a gun de last time he'll ever fire +one--see?" + +P. Walton felt around on the ground, picked up the bit of chain he had +filed from the handcuffs, and handed it, with the file, to the Butcher. + +"Put these in your pocket, Butch," he said, "and throw them in the +river where it's deep when you get a chance--especially the file. I +guess from the way you put it I could earn my stake with the gang." + +"Didn't I tell you, you could!" The Butcher, with swift change of +mood, grinned delightedly. "Sure, you can! Larry's an +innocent-lookin' kid, an' he's not known in de town. He'll float +around an' get de bulletins from you--you'll know ahead when there's +anything good comin' along, won't you?" + +"When it leaves the coast," said P. Walton. "Thirty-six +hours--sometimes more." + +"An' I thought me luck was out fer keeps!" observed the Butcher, in an +almost awe-struck voice. + +"Well, don't play it too hard by hanging around here until they get you +again," cautioned P. Walton dryly. "The further you get away from Big +Cloud in the next few hours, the better you'll like it to-morrow." + +"I'm off now," announced the Butcher, rising to his feet. "Dook, +you're white--all de way through. Don't forget about Nulty, blast +him!" He wrung P. Walton's hand with emotion. "So long, Dook!" + +"So long, Butch!" said P. Walton. + +P. Walton watched the Butcher disappear in the darkness, then he began +to retrace his steps toward the Polack quarters. His one thought now +was to reach his bunk. He was sick, good and sick, and those +premonitory symptoms, if they had been arrested, were still with him. +The day had been too much for him--the jostling on the platform, mostly +when he had fought his way through the rear of the crowd for fear of an +unguarded recognition on the part of the Butcher; then the walking he +had done; and, lastly, that run from the sheriff's shed. + +P. Walton, with swimming head and choking lungs, reeled a little as he +went along. It was farther, quite a lot farther, to go by the fields, +and he was far enough down from Carruthers' now so that it would not +make any difference anyhow, even if the Butcher's escape had been +discovered--which it hadn't, the town was too quiet for that. P. +Walton headed into a cross street, staggered along it, reached the +corner of Main Street--and, fainting, went suddenly down in a heap, as +the hemorrhage caught him, and the bright, crimson "ruby" stained his +lips. + +Coming up the street from a conference in the super's office, Nulty, +the express messenger, big, brawny, hard-faced, thin-lipped, swung +along, dragging fiercely at his pipe, scowling grimly as he reviewed +the day's happenings. He passed a little knot of Polacks, quite +obviously far gone in liquor--and almost fell over P. Walton's body. + +"Hullo!" said Nulty. "What the deuce is this!" He bent down for a +look into the unconscious man's face. "The super's clerk!" he +exclaimed--and stared around for help. + +There was no one in sight, save the approaching Polacks--but one of +these hurriedly, if unsteadily, lurched forward. + +"Meester Walton!" announced Ivan Peloff genially. "Him be sick--yes?" + +"Where's he live?" demanded Nulty, without waste of words. + +"Him by me live," said Ivan Peloff, tapping his chest proudly as he +swayed upon his feet. He called to his companions, and reached for P. +Walton's legs. "We take him by us home." + +"Let him alone!" said Nulty gruffly, as the interior of a Polack shanty +pictured itself before his eyes. + +"Him by me live," repeated Ivan Peloff, still reaching doggedly, if +uncertainly, for P. Walton's legs. + +"Let him alone, I tell you, you drunken Guinea!" roared Nulty suddenly, +and his arm went out with a sweep that brushed Ivan Peloff back to an +ultimate seat in the road three yards away. Without so much as a +glance in the direction taken by the other, Nulty stepped up to the +rest of the Polacks, stared into their faces, and selecting the one +that appeared less drunk than the others, unceremoniously jerked the +man by the collar into the foreground. "You know me!" he snapped. +"I'm Nulty--Nulty. Say it!" + +"Nultee," said the bewildered foreigner. + +"Yes," said Nulty. "Now you run for the doctor--and you run like hell. +If he ain't at home--find him. Tell him to come to Nulty--_quick_. +Understand?" + +The Polack nodded his head excitedly. + +"Doctor--Nultee," he ejaculated brightly. + +"Yes," said Nulty. "Go on, now--run!" And he gave the Polack an +initial start with a vigorous push that nearly toppled the man forward +on his nose. + +Nulty stooped down, picked up P. Walton in his arms as though the +latter were a baby, and started toward his own home a block away. + +"My God," he muttered, "a railroad man down there in a state like +this--he'd have a long chance, he would! Poor devil, guess he won't +last out many more of these. Blast it all, now if the wife was home +she'd know what to do--blamed if I know!" + +For all that, however, Nulty did pretty well. He put P. Walton to bed, +and started feeding him cracked ice even before the doctor came--after +that Nulty went on feeding cracked ice. + +Along toward midnight, Gleason, the yard-master, burst hurriedly into +the house. + +"Say, Nulty, you there!" he bawled. "That blasted train robber's got +away, and--oh!" He had stepped from the hall over the threshold of the +bedroom door, only to halt abruptly as his eyes fell upon the bed. +"Anything I can do--Nulty?" he asked in a booming whisper, that he +tried to make soft. + +Nulty, sitting in a chair by the bed, shook his head--and Gleason +tiptoed in squeaky boots out of the house. + +P. Walton, who had been lying with closed eyes, opened them, and looked +at Nulty. + +"What did he say?" he inquired. + +"Says the fellow we got to-day has got away," said Nulty shortly. +"Shut up--the doctor says you're not to talk." + +P. Walton's bright eyes made a circuit of the room, came back, and +rested again on Nulty. + +"Would you know him again if you saw him?" he demanded. + +"Would I know him!" exclaimed Nulty. "It's not likely I wouldn't, is +it? I was dead-heading him down from Gopher Butte, wasn't I?" + +"I think," said P. Walton slowly, "if it were me I'd be scared stiff +that he got away--afraid he'd be trying to revenge that other fellow, +you know. You want to look out for him." + +"I'd ask nothing better than to meet him again," said Nulty grimly. +"Now, shut up--you're not to talk." + +P. Walton was pretty sick. Nulty sat up all that night with him, laid +off from his run the next day, and sat up with P. Walton again the next +night. Then, having sent for Mrs. Nulty, who was visiting relatives +down the line, Mrs. Nulty took a hand in the nursing. Mrs. Nulty was a +little, sweet-faced woman, with gray Irish eyes and no style about +her--Nulty's pay-check didn't reach that far--but she knew how to +nurse; and if her hands were red and the knuckles a little swollen from +the washtub, she could use them with a touch that was full enough of +tender sympathy to discount anything a manicure might have reason to +find fault with on professional grounds. She didn't rate Nulty for +turning her home into a hospital, and crowding her train-sheet of work, +already pretty full, past all endurance--Mrs. Nulty, God bless her, +wasn't that kind of a woman! She looked at her husband with a sort of +happy pride in her eyes; looked at P. Walton, and said, "Poor man," as +her eyes filled--and went to work. But for all that, it was touch and +go with P. Walton--P. Walton was a pretty sick man. + +It's queer the way trouble of that sort acts--down and out one day with +every signal in every block set dead against you; and the next day a +clear track, with rights through buttoned in your reefer, a wide-flung +throttle, and the sweep of the wind through the cab glass whipping your +face till you could yell with the mad joy of living. It's queer! + +Five days saw P. Walton back at the office, as good, apparently, as +ever he was--but Mrs. Nulty didn't stop nursing. Nulty came down sick +in place of P. Walton and took to bed--"to give her a chance to keep +her hand in," Nulty said. Nulty came down, not from overdoing it on P. +Walton's account--a few nights sitting up wasn't enough to lay a man +like Nulty low--Nulty came down with a touch of just plain mountain +fever. + +It wasn't serious, or anything like that; but it put a stop order, +temporarily at least, on the arrangements Nulty had cussed P. Walton +into agreeing to. P. Walton was to come and board with the Nultys at +the same figure he was paying Ivan Peloff until he got a raise and +could pay more. And so, while Nulty was running hot and cold with +mountain fever, P. Walton, with Mrs. Nulty in mind, kept his +reservations on down in the Polack quarters, until such time as Nulty +should get better--and went back to work at the office. + +On the first night of his convalescence, P. Walton had a visitor--in +the person of Larry, the brains and leader of the gang. Larry did not +come inside the shack--he waited outside in the dark until P. Walton +went out to him. + +"Hullo, Dook!" said Larry. "Tough luck, eh? Been sick? Gee, I'm glad +to see you! All to the mustard again? Couldn't get into town before, +but a fellow uptown said you'd been bad." + +"Hello, Larry," returned P. Walton, and he shook the other's hand +cordially. "Glad to see you, too. Yes; I guess I'm all right--till +next time." + +"Sure, you are!" said Larry heartily. "Anything good doing?" + +"Well," said P. Walton, "I don't know whether you'd call it good or +not, but there was a new order went into effect yesterday to remain in +force until further notice--owing to the heavy passenger traffic. They +are taking the mail and express cars off the regular afternoon +east-bound trains, and running them as a through extra on fast time. +They figure to land the mails East quicker, and ease up on the +equipment of the regular trains so as to keep them a little nearer +schedule. So now the express stuff comes along on Extra No. 34, due +Spider Cut at eight-seventeen p. m., which is her last stop before Big +Cloud." + +"Say," said Larry dubiously, "'taint going to be possible to board a +train like that casual-like, is it?" Then, brightening suddenly: "But +say, when you get to thinking about it, it don't size up so bad, +neither. I got the lay, Dook--I got it for fair--listen! Instead of a +train-load of passengers to handle there won't be no one after the +ditching but what's left of the train crew and the mail clerks; a +couple of us can stand the stamp lickers up easy, while the two others +pinches the swag. We'll stop her, all right! We ditch the train--see? +There's a peach of a place for it about seven miles up the line from +here. We tap the wires, Big Tom's some cheese at that, and then cuts +them as soon as we know the train has passed Spider Cut, and is wafting +its way toward us. Say, it's good, Dook, it's like a Christmas +present--I was near forgetting the registered mail." + +P. Walton laughed--and coughed. + +"I guess it's all right, Larry," he said. "According to a letter I saw +in the office this afternoon, there's a big shipment of banknotes that +some bank is remitting, and that will be on board night after next." + +"Say that again," said Larry, sucking in his breath quickly. "I ain't +deaf, but I'd like to hear it just once more." + +"I was thinking," said P. Walton, more to himself than to his +companion, "that I'd like to get down to Northern Australia--up +Queensland way. They say it's good for what ails me--bakes it out of +one." + +"Dook," said Larry, shoving out his hand, "you can buy your ticket the +day after the night after next--you'll get yours, and don't you forget +it, I'll see to that. We'll move camp to-morrow down handy to the +place I told you about, and get things ready. And say, Dook, is that +cuss Nulty on the new run?" + +"I don't know anything about Nulty," said P. Walton. + +"Well, I hope he is," said Larry, with a fervent oath. "We're going to +cut the heart out of him for what he did to Spud. The Butcher was for +coming into town and putting a bullet through him anyway, but I'm not +for throwing the game. It won't hurt Spud's memory any to wait a bit, +and we won't lose any enthusiasm by the delay, you can bet your life on +that! And now I guess I'll mosey along. The less I'm seen around here +the better. Well, so long, Dook--I got it straight, eh? Night after +to-morrow, train passes Spider Cut eight-seventeen--that right?" + +"Eight-seventeen--night after to-morrow--yes," said P. Walton. "Good +luck to you, Larry." + +"Same to you, Dook," said Larry--and slipped away in the shadows. + +P. Walton went uptown to sit for an hour or two with Nulty--turn about +being no more than fair play. Also on the following night he did the +same--and on this latter occasion he took the opportunity, when Mrs. +Nulty wasn't around to hear and worry about it, to turn the +conversation on the hold-up, after leading up to it casually. + +"When you get out and back on your run again, Nulty, I'd keep a sharp +look-out for that fellow whose pal you shot," he said. + +"You can trust me for that," said Nulty anxiously. "I'll bet he +wouldn't get away a second time!" + +"Unless he saw you first," amended P. Walton evenly. "There's probably +more where those two came from--a gang of them, I dare say. They'll +have it in for you, Nulty." + +"Don't you worry none about me," said Nulty, and his jaw shot out. +"I'm able to take care of myself." + +"Oh, well," said P. Walton, "I'm just warning you, that's all. Anyway, +there isn't any immediate need for worry. I guess you're safe +enough--so long as you stay in bed." + +The next day P. Walton worked assiduously at the office. If excitement +or nervousness in regard to the events of the night that was to come +was in any wise his portion, he did not show it. There was not a +quiver in the steel-plate hand in which he wrote the super's letters, +not even an inadvertent blur on the tissue pages of the book in which +he copied them. Only, perhaps, he worked a little more slowly--his +work wasn't done when the shop whistle blew and he came back to the +office after supper. It was close on ten minutes after eight when he +finally finished, and went into the despatcher's room with the sheaf of +official telegrams to go East during the night at odd moments when the +wires were light. + +"Here's the super's stuff," he said, laying the papers on the +despatcher's desk. + +"All right," said Spence, who was sitting in on the early trick. +"How's P. Walton to-night?" + +"Pretty fair," said P. Walton, with a smile. "How's everything moving?" + +"Slick as clockwork," Spence answered. "Everything on the dot. I'll +get some of that stuff off for you now." + +"Good," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "Good-night, Spence." + +"'Night, old man," rejoined Spence, and picking up the first of the +super's telegrams began to rattle a call on his key like the tattoo of +a snare drum. + +P. Walton, in possession of the information he sought--that Extra No. +34 was on time--descended the stairs to the platform, and started +uptown. + +"I think," he mused, as he went along, "that about as good a place as +any for me when this thing breaks will be sitting with Nulty." + +P. Walton noticed the light burning in Nulty's bedroom window as he +reached the house; and, it being a warm night, found the front door +wide open. He stepped into the hall, and from there into the bedroom. +Mrs. Nulty was sitting in a rocking-chair beside the lamp, mending away +busily at a pair of Nulty's overalls--but there wasn't anybody else in +the room. + +"Hello!" said P. Walton cheerily. "Where's the sick man?" + +"Why, didn't you know?" said Mrs. Nulty a little anxiously, as she laid +aside her work and rose from her chair. "The express company sent word +this morning that if he was able they particularly wanted to have him +make the run through the mountains to-night on Extra Number +Thirty-four--I think there was some special shipment of money. He +wasn't at all fit to go, and I tried to keep him home, but he wouldn't +listen to me. He went up to Elk River this morning to meet Thirty-four +and come back on it. I've been worrying all day about him." + +P. Walton's eyes rested on the anxious face of the little woman before +him, dropped to the red, hard-working hands that played nervously with +the corner of her apron then travelled to Nulty's alarm clock that +ticked raucously upon the table--it was 8.17. P. Walton smiled. + +"Now, don't you worry, Mrs. Nulty," he said reassuringly. "A touch of +mountain fever isn't anything one way or the other--don't you worry, +it'll be all right. I didn't know he was out, and I was going to sit +with him for a little while, but what I really came for was to get him +to lend me a revolver--there's a coyote haunting my end of the town +that's kept me awake for the last two nights, and I'd like to even up +the score. If Nulty hasn't taken the whole of his armament with him, +perhaps you'll let me have one. + +"Why, yes, of course," said Mrs. Nulty readily. "There's two there in +the top bureau drawer. Take whichever one you want." + +"Thanks," said P. Walton--and stepped to the bureau. He took out a +revolver, slipped it into his pocket, and turned toward the door. +"Now, don't you worry, Mrs. Nulty," he said encouragingly, "because +there's nothing to worry about. Tell him I dropped in, will you?--and +thank you again for the revolver. Good-night, Mrs. Nulty."' + +P. Walton's eyes strayed to the clock as he left the room--it was 8.19. +On the sidewalk he broke into a run, dashed around the corner and sped, +with instantly protesting lungs, down Main Street, making for the +railroad yards. And as he ran P. Walton did a sum in mental +arithmetic, while his breath came in gasps. + +If you remember Flannagan, you will remember that the distance from +Spider Cut to Big Cloud was twenty-one decimal seven miles. P. Walton +figured it roughly twenty-two. No. 34, on time, had already left +Spider Cut at 8.17--and the wires were cut. Her running time for the +twenty-two miles was twenty-nine minutes--she made Big Cloud at 8.46. +Counting Larry's estimate of seven miles to be accurate, No. 34 had +fifteen miles to go from Spider Cut before they piled her in the ditch, +and it would take her a little over nineteen minutes to do it. With +two minutes already elapsed--_three_ now--and allowing, by shaving it +close, another five before he started, P. Walton found that he was left +with eleven minutes in which to cover seven miles. + +It took P. Walton four of his five-minute allowance to reach the +station platform; and here, for just an instant, he paused while his +eyes swept the twinkling switch lights in the yards. Then he raced +along the length of the platform, jumped from the upper end to the +ground, and lurching a little, up the main line track to where +fore-shortened, unclassed little switching engine--the 229--was +grunting heavily, and stealing a momentary rest after having sent a +string of flats flying down a spur under the tender guidance of a +brakeman or two. And as P. Walton ran, he reached into his pocket and +drew out Nulty's revolver. + +There wasn't much light inside the cab--there was only the lamp over +the gauges--but it was light enough to show P. Walton's glittering +eyes, fever bright, the deadly white of his face, the deadly smile on +his lips, and the deadly weapon in his hand, as he sprang through the +gangway. + +"Get out!" panted P. Walton coldly. + +Neither Dalheen, the fireman, nor Mulligan, fat as a porpoise, on the +right-hand side, stood upon the order of their going. Dalheen ducked, +and took a flying leap through the left-hand gangway; and Mulligan, +with a sort of anxious gasp that seemed as though he wished to convey +to P. Walton the fact that he was hurrying all he could, squeezed +himself through the right-hand gangway and sat down on the ground. + +P. Walton pulled the throttle open with an unscientific jerk. + +With a kind of startled scream from the hissing steam, the sparks +flying from madly racing drivers as the wheel tires bit into the rails, +the old 229, like a frightened thoroughbred at the vicious lash of a +yokel driver, reared and plunged wildly forward. The sudden, violent +start from inertia pitched P. Walton off his feet across the driver's +seat, and smashed his head against the reversing lever that stood +notched forward in the segment. He gained his feet again, and, his +head swimming a little from the blow, looked behind him. + +Yells were coming from half a dozen different directions; forms, racing +along with lanterns bobbing up and down, were tearing madly for the +upper end of the yard toward him; there was a blur of switch lights, +red, white, purple and green--then with a wicked lurch around a curve +darkness hid them, and the sweep of the wind, the roar of the pounding +drivers deadened all other sounds. + +P. Walton smiled--a strange, curious, wistful smile--and sat down in +Mulligan's seat. His qualifications for a Brotherhood card had been +exhausted when he had pulled the throttle--engine driving was not in P. +Walton's line. P. Walton smiled at the air latch, the water glass, the +gauges and injectors, whose inner workings were mysteries to him--and +clung to the window sill of the cab to keep his seat. He understood +the throttle--in a measure--he had ridden up and down the yards in the +switchers once or twice during the month that was past--that was all. + +Quicker came the bark of the exhaust; quicker the speed. P. Walton's +eyes were fixed through the cab glass ahead, following the headlight's +glare, that silvered now the rails, and now flung its beams athwart the +stubble of a butte as the 229 swung a curve. Around him, about him, +was dizzy, lurching chaos, as, like some mad thing, the little switcher +reeled drunkenly through the night--now losing her wheel-base with a +sickening slew on the circling track, now finding it again with a +staggering quiver as she struck the tangent once more. + +It was not scientific running--P. Walton never eased her, never helped +her--P. Walton was not an engineer. He only knew that he must go fast +to make the seven miles in eleven minutes--and he was going fast. And, +mocking every formula of dynamics, the little switcher, with no single +trailing coach to steady it, swinging, swaying, rocking, held the rails. + +P. Walton's lips were still half parted in their strange, curious +smile. A deafening roar was in his ears--the pound of beating trucks +on the fish-plates; the creak and groan of axle play; the screech of +crunching flanges; the whistling wind; the full-toned thunder now of +the exhaust--and reverberating back and forth, flinging it from butte +to butte, for miles around in the foothills the still night woke into a +thousand answering echoes. + +Meanwhile, back in Big Cloud, things were happening in the super's +office. Spence, the despatcher, interrupting Carleton and Regan at +their nightly pedro, came hastily into the room. + +"Something's wrong," he said tersely. "I can't get anything west of +here, and----" He stopped suddenly, as Mulligan, flabby white, came +tumbling into the room. + +"He's gone off his chump!" screamed Mulligan. "Gone delirious, or mad, +or----" + +"What's the matter?" Carleton was on his feet, his words cold as ice. + +"Here!" gasped the engineer. "Look!" He dragged Carleton to the side +window, and pointed up the track--the 229, sparks volleying skyward +from her stack, was just disappearing around the first bend. +"That's--that's the two-twenty-nine!" he panted. "P. Walton's in +her--drove me and Dalheen out of the cab with a revolver." + +For an instant, no more than a breathing space, no one spoke; then +Spence's voice, with a queer sag in it, broke the silence: + +"Extra Thirty-four left Spider Cut eight minutes ago." + +Carleton, master always of himself, and master always of the situation, +spoke before the words were hardly out of the despatcher's mouth: + +"Order the wrecker out, Spence--jump! Mulligan, go down and help get +the crew together." And then, as Spence and Mulligan hurried from the +room, Carleton looked at the master mechanic. "Well, Tommy, what do +you make of this?" he demanded grimly. + +Regan, with thinned lips, was pulling viciously at his mustache. + +"What do I make of it!" he growled. "A mail train in the ditch, and +nothing worth speaking of left of the two-twenty-nine--that's what I +make of it!" + +Carleton shook his head. + +"Doesn't it strike you as a rather remarkable coincidence that our +wires should go out, and P. Walton should go off his head with delirium +at the same moment?" + +"Eh!" snapped Regan sharply. "Eh!--what do you mean?" + +"I don't mean anything," Carleton answered, clipping off his words. +"It's strange, that's all--I think we'll go up with the wrecker, Tommy." + +"Yes," said Regan slowly, puzzled; then, with a scowl and a tug at his +mustache: "It does look queer, queerer every minute--blamed queer! I +wonder who P. Walton is, and where he came from anyhow?" + +"You asked me that once before," Carleton threw back over his shoulder, +moving toward the door. "P. Walton never said." + +And while Regan, still tugging at his mustache, followed Carleton down +the stairs to the platform, and ill-omened call boys flew about the +town for the wrecking crew, and the 1018, big and capable, snorting +from a full head of steam, backed the tool car, a flat, and the +rumbling derrick from a spur to the main line, P. Walton still sat, +smiling strangely, clinging to the window sill of the laboring 229, +staring out into the night through the cab glass ahead. + +"You see," said P. Walton to himself, as though summing up an argument +dispassionately, "ditching a train travelling pretty near a mile a +minute is apt to result in a few casualties, and Nulty might get hurt, +and if he didn't, the first thing they'd do would be to pass him out +for keeps, anyway, on Spud's account. They're not a very gentle lot--I +remember the night back at Joliet that Larry and the Butcher walked out +with the guards' clothes on, after cracking the guards' skulls. +They're not a very gentle lot, and I guess they've been to some little +trouble fixing up for to-night--enough so's they won't feel pleasant at +having it spoiled. I guess"--P. Walton coughed--"I won't need that +ticket for the _heat_ of Northern Queensland. I guess"--he ended +gravely--"I guess I'm going to hell." + +P. Walton put his head out through the window and listened--and nodded +his head. + +"Sound carries a long way out here in the foothills," he observed. +"They ought to hear it on the mail train as soon as we get close--and I +guess we're close enough now to start it." + +P. Walton got down, and, clutching at the cab-frame for support, lifted +up the cover of the engineer's seat--there was sure to be something +there among the tools that would do. P. Walton's hand came out with a +heavy piece of cord. He turned then, pulled the whistle lever down, +tied it down--and, screaming now like a lost soul, the 229 reeled on +through the night. + +The minutes passed--and then the pace began to slacken. Dalheen was +always rated a good fireman, and a wizard with the shovel, but even +Dalheen had his limitations--and P. Walton hadn't helped him out any. +The steam was dropping pretty fast as the 229 started to climb a grade. + +P. Walton stared anxiously about him. It must be eleven minutes now +since he had started from the Big Cloud yards, but how far had he come? +Was he going to stop too soon after all? What was the matter? P. +Walton's eyes on the track ahead dilated suddenly, and, as suddenly, he +reached for the throttle and slammed it shut--he was not going to stop +too soon--perhaps not soon enough. + +Larry, the Butcher, Big Tom, and Dago Pete had chosen their position +well. A hundred yards ahead, the headlight played on a dismantled +roadbed and torn-up rails, then shot off into nothingness over the +embankment as the right of way swerved sharply to the right they had +left no single loophole for Extra No. 34, not even a fighting +chance--the mail train would swing the curve and be into the muck +before the men in her cab would be able to touch a lever. + +Screaming hoarsely, the 229 slowed, bumped her pony truck on the ties +where there were no longer any rails jarred, bounced, and thumped along +another half dozen yards--and brought up with a shock that sent P. +Walton reeling back on the coal in the tender. + +A dark form, springing forward, bulked in the left-hand gangway--and P. +Walton recognized the Butcher. + +"Keep out, Butch!" he coughed over the scream of the whistle--and the +Butcher in his surprise sort of sagged mechanically back to the ground. + +"It's de Dook!" he yelled, with a gasp; and then, as other forms joined +him, he burst into a torrent of oaths. "What de blazes are you doin'!" +he bawled. "De train 'll be along in a minute, if you ain't queered it +already--cut out that cursed whistle! Cut it out, d'ye hear, or we'll +come in there an' do it for you in a way you won't like--have you gone +nutty?" + +"Try it," invited P. Walton--and coughed again. "You won't have far to +come, but I'll drop you if you do. I've changed my mind--there isn't +going to be any wreck to-night. You'd better use what time is left in +making your getaway." + +"So that's it, is it!" roared another voice. "You dirty pup, you'd +squeal on your pals, would you, you white-livered snitch, you! Well, +take that!" + +There was a flash, a lane of light cut streaming through the darkness, +and a bullet lodged with an angry spat on the coal behind P. Walton's +head. Another and another followed. P. Walton smiled, and flattened +himself down on the coal. A form leaped for the gangway--and P. Walton +fired. There was a yell of pain and the man dropped back. Then P. +Walton heard some of them running around behind the tender, and they +came at him from both sides, firing at an angle through both gangways. +Yells, oaths, revolver shots and the screech of the whistle filled the +air--and again P. Walton smiled--he was hit now, quite badly, somewhere +in his side. + +His brain grew sick and giddy. He fired once, twice more +unsteadily--then the revolver slipped from his fingers. From somewhere +came another whistle--they weren't firing at him any more, they were +running away, and--P. Walton tried to rise--and pitched back +unconscious. + +Nulty, the first man out from the mail train, found him there, and, +wondering, his face set and grim, carried P. Walton to the express car. +They made a mattress for him out of chair cushions, and laid him on the +floor--and there, a few minutes later, Regan and Carleton, from the +wrecker, after a look at the 229 and the wrecked track that spoke +eloquently for itself, joined the group. + +Carleton knelt and looked at P. Walton--then looked into Nulty's face. + +Nulty, bending over P. Walton on the other side, shook his head. + +"He's past all hope," he said gruffly. + +P. Walton stirred, and his lips moved--he was talking to himself. + +"If I were you, Nulty," he murmured, and they stooped to catch the +words, "I'd look out for--for--that----" + +The words trailed off into incoherency. + +Regan, tugging at his mustache, swallowed a lump in his throat, and +turned away his head. + +"It's queer!" he muttered. "How'd he know--what? I wonder where he +came from, and who he was?" + +But P. Walton never said. P. Walton was dead. + + + + +VI + +THE AGE LIMIT + +As its scarred and battle-torn colors are the glory of a regiment, +brave testimony of hard-fought fields where men were men, so to the +Hill Division is its tradition. And there are names there, too, on the +honor roll--not famous, not world-wide, not on every tongue, but names +that in railroading will never die. The years have gone since men +fought and conquered the sullen gray-walled Rockies and shackled them +with steel and iron, and laid their lives on the altar of one of the +mightiest engineering triumphs the world has ever known; but the years +have dimmed no memory, have only brought achievement into clearer +focus, and honor to its fullness where honor is due. They tell the +stories of those days yet, as they always will tell them--at night in +the round-house over the soft pur of steam, with the yellow flicker of +the oil lamps on the group clustered around the pilot of a 1600-class +mountain greyhound--and the telling is as though men stood erect, +bareheaded, at "salute" to the passing of the Old Guard. + +Heroes? They never called themselves that--never thought of themselves +in that way, those old fellows who have left their stories. Their +uniform was a suit of overalls, their "decorations" the grime that came +with the day's work--just railroad men, hard-tongued, hard-fisted, +hard-faced, rough, without much polish, perhaps, as some rank polish, +with hearts that were right and big as a woman's--that was all. + +MacCaffery, Dan MacCaffery, was one of these. This is old Dan +MacCaffery's story. + +MacCaffery? Dan was an engineer, one of the old-timers, blue-eyed, +thin--but you'd never get old Dan that way, he wouldn't look natural! +You've got to put him in the cab of the 304, leaning out of the window, +way out, thin as a bent toothpick, and pounding down the gorge and +around into the straight making for the Big Cloud yards, with a string +of buff-colored coaches jouncing after him, and himself bouncing up and +down in his seat like an animated piece of rubber. Nobody ever saw old +Dan inside the cab, that is, all in--he always had his head out of the +window--said he could see better, though the wind used to send the +water trickling down from the old blue eyes, and generally there were +two little white streaks on his cheeks where no grime or coal dust ever +got a chance at a strangle hold on the skin crevices. For the rest, +what you could see sticking out of the cab over the whirling rod as he +came down the straight, was just a black, greasy peaked cap surmounting +a scanty fringe of gray hair, and a wizened face, with a round little +knob in the center of it for a nose. + +But that isn't altogether old Dan MacCaffery, either--there was Mrs. +MacCaffery. Everybody liked Dan, with his smile, and the cheery way he +had of puckering up his lips sympathetically and pushing back his cap +and scratching near his ear where the hair was, as he listened maybe to +a hard-luck story; everybody liked Dan--but they swore by Mrs. +MacCaffery. Leaving out the railroaders who worshipped her anyway, +even the worst characters in Big Cloud, and there were some pretty bad +ones in those early days, hangers-on and touts for the gambling hells +and dives, used to speak of the little old lady in the lace cap with a +sort of veneration. + +Lace cap? Yes. Sounds queer, doesn't it? An engineer's wife, keeping +his shanty in a rough and ready, half baked bit of an uncivilized town +in the shadow of the Rockies, and a lace cap don't go together very +often, that's a fact. But it is equally a fact that Mrs. MacCaffery +wore a lace cap--and somehow none of the other women ever had a word to +say about her being "stuck up" either. There was something patrician +about Mrs. MacCaffery--not the cold, stand-offish effect that's only +make-believe, but the real thing. The Lord knows, she had to work hard +enough, but you never saw her rinsing the washtub suds from her hands +and coming to the door with her sleeves rolled up--not at all. The +last thing you'd ever think there was in the house was a washtub. +Little lace cap over smoothly-parted gray hair, little black dress with +a little white frill around the throat, and just a glad look on her +face whether she'd ever seen you before or not--that was Mrs. +MacCaffery. + +As far back as any one could remember she had always looked like that, +always a little old lady--never a young woman, although she and Dan had +come there years before, even before the operating department had got +the steel shaken down into anything that might with justice be called a +permanent right of way. Perhaps it was the gray hair--Mrs. +MacCaffery's hair had been gray then, when it ought to have been the +glossy, luxuriant brown that the old-fashioned daguerreotype, hanging +in the shanty's combination dining and silting room, proclaimed that it +once was. + +Big Cloud, of course, didn't call her patrician--because they didn't +talk that way out there. They said there was "some class" to Mrs. +MacCaffery--and if their expression was inelegant, what they meant by +it wasn't. Not that they ranked her any finer than Dan, for the last +one of them ranked Dan as one of God's own noblemen, and there's +nothing finer than that, only they figured, at least the women did, +that back in the Old Country she'd been brought up to things that Dan +MacCaffery hadn't. + +Maybe that accounted for their sending young Dan East, and pinching +themselves pretty near down to bed rock to give the boy an education +and a start. Not that Mrs. MacCaffery had any notions that railroading +and overalls and dirt was plebeian and beneath her--far from it! She +was proud of old Dan, proud of his work, proud of his record; she'd +talk about Dan's engine to you by the hour just as though it were +alive, just as Dan would, and she would have hung chintz curtains on +the cab windows and put flower pots on the running boards if they had +let her. It wasn't that--Mrs. MacCaffery wasn't that kind. Only there +were limitations to a cab, and she didn't want the boy, he was the only +one they had, to start out with limitations of any kind that would put +a slow order on his reaching the goal her mother's heart dreamed of. +What goal? Who knows? Mothers always dream of their boy's future in +that gentle, loving, all-conquering, up-in-the-clouds kind of a way, +don't they? She wanted young Dan to do something, make a name for +himself some day. + +And young Dan did. He handed a jolt to the theory of heredity that +should, if it didn't, have sent the disciples of that creed to the mat +for the full count. When he got through his education, he got into a +bank and backed the brain development, the old couple had scrimped to +the bone to give him, against the market--with five thousand dollars of +the bank's money. Old Dan and Mrs. MacCaffery got him off--Mrs. +MacCaffery with her sweet old face, and Dan with his grim old honesty. +The bank didn't prosecute. The boy was drowned in a ferryboat accident +the year after. And old Dan had been paying up ever since. + +He was always paying up. Five thousand dollars, even in instalments +for a whole lot of years, didn't leave much to come and go on from his +monthly pay check. He talked some of dropping the benefit orders he +belonged to, and he belonged to most of them, but Mrs. MacCaffery +talked him out of that on account of the insurance, she said, but +really because she knew that Dan and his lodge rooms and his regalias +and his worshipful titles were just part and parcel of each other, and +that he either was, or was just going to be, Supreme High Chief +Illustrious Something-or-other of every Order in town. Besides, after +all, it didn't cost much compared with the other, just meant pinching a +tiny bit harder--and so they pinched. + +Old Dan and Mrs. MacCaffery didn't talk about their troubles. You'd +never get the blues on their account, no matter how intimate you got +with them. But everybody knew the story, of course, for everybody +knows a thing like that; and everybody knew that dollars were scarce up +at the MacCafferys' shanty for, though they didn't know how much old +Dan sent East each year, they knew it had to be a pretty big slice of +what was coming to him to make much impression on that five thousand +dollars at the other end--and they wondered, naturally enough, how the +MacCafferys got along at all. But the MacCafferys got along somehow, +outwardly without a sign of the hurt that was deeper than a mere matter +of dollars and cents, got along through the years--and Mrs. MacCaffery +got a little grayer, a little more gentle and patient and sweet-faced, +and old Dan's hair narrowed to a fringe like a broken tonsure above his +ears, and--but there's our "clearance" now, and we're off with a +clean-swept track and "rights through" into division. + +Dan was handling the cab end of one of the local passenger runs when +things broke loose in the East--a flurry in Wall Street. But Wall +Street was a long, long way from the Rockies, and, though the papers +were full of it, there didn't seem to be anything intimate enough in a +battle of brokers and magnates, bitter, prolonged, and to the death +though it might be, to stir up any excitement or enthusiasm on the Hill +Division. The Hill Division, generally speaking, had about all it +could do to mind its own affairs without bothering about those of +others', for the Rockies, if conquered, took their subjection with bad +grace and were always in an incipient state of insurrection that kept +the operating, the motive power and the maintenance-of-way departments +close to the verge of nervous prostration without much let-up to speak +of. But when the smoke cleared away down East, the Hill Division and +Big Cloud forgot their bridge troubles and their washouts and their +slides long enough to stick their tongues in their cheeks and look +askance at each other; and Carleton, in his swivel chair, pulled on the +amber mouthpiece of his brier and looked at Regan, who, in turn, pulled +on his scraggly brown mustache and reached for his hip pocket and his +plug. The system was under new control. + +"Who's H. Herrington Campbell when he's at home?" spluttered Regan. + +"Our new general manager, Tommy," Carleton told him for the second time. + +Regan grunted. + +"I ain't blind! I've read that much. Who is he--h'm? Know him?" + +Carleton took the pipe from his mouth--a little seriously. + +"It's the P. M. & K. crowd, Tommy. Makes quite an amalgamation, +doesn't it--direct eastern tidewater connection--what? They're a +younger lot, pretty progressive, too, and sharp as they make them." + +"I don't care a hoot who owns the stock," observed Regan, biting deeply +at his blackstrap. "It's the bucko with the overgrown name in the +center that interests me--who's he? Do you know him?" + +"Yes," said Carleton slowly. "I know him." He got up suddenly and +walked over to the window, looked out into the yards for a moment, then +turned to face the master mechanic. "I know him, and I know most of +the others; and I'll say, between you and me, Tommy, that I'm blamed +sorry they've got their fingers on the old road. They're a cold, +money-grabbing crew, and Campbell's about as human as a snow man, only +not so warm-blooded. I fancy you'll see some changes out here." + +"I turned down an offer from the Penn last week," said the fat little +master mechanic reminiscently, "mabbe I----" + +Carleton laughed--he could afford to. There was hardly a road in the +country but had made covetous offers for the services of the cool-eyed +master of the Hill Division, who was the idol of his men down to the +last car tink. + +"No; I guess not, Tommy. Our heads are safe enough, I think. When I +go, you go--and as the P. M. & K. have been after me before, I guess +they'll let me alone now I'm on their pay roll." + +"What kind of changes, then?" inquired Regan gruffly. + +"I don't know," said Carleton. "I don't know, Tommy--new crowd, new +ways. We'll see." + +And, in time, Regan saw. Perhaps Regan himself, together with Riley, +the trainmaster, were unwittingly the means of bringing it about a +little sooner than it might otherwise have come--perhaps not. +Ultimately it would have been all the same. Sentiment and H. +Herrington Campbell were not on speaking terms. However, one way or +the other, in results, it makes little difference. + +It was natural enough that about the first official act of the new +directors should be a trip to look over the new property they had +acquired; and if there was any resentment on the Hill Division at the +change in ownership, there was no sign of it in Big Cloud when the word +went out of what was coming. On the contrary, everybody sort of +figured to make a kind of holiday affair of it, for the special was to +lay off there until afternoon to give the Big Fellows a chance to see +the shops. Anyway, it was more or less mutually understood that they +were to be given the best the Hill Division had to offer. + +Regan kept his pet flyer, the 1608, in the roundhouse, and tinkered +over her for two days, and sent for Dan MacCaffery--there'd been a good +deal of speculation amongst the engine crews as to who would get the +run, and the men were hot for the honor. + +Regan squinted at old Dan--and squinted at the 1608 on the pit beside +him. + +"How'd you think she looks, Dan?" he inquired casually. + +The old engineer ran his eyes wistfully over the big racer, groomed to +the minute, like the thoroughbred it was. + +"She'll do you proud, Regan," he said simply. + +And then Regan's fat little hand came down with a bang on the other's +overalled shoulder--that was Regan's way. + +"And you, too, Dan," he grinned. "I got you slated for the run." + +"Me!" said MacCaffery, his wizened face lighting up. + +"You--sure!" Regan's grin expanded. "It's coming to you, ain't it? +You're the senior engineer on the division, ain't you? Well, then, +what's the matter with you? Riley's doing the same for Pete +Chartrand--he's putting Pete in the aisles. What?" + +Old Dan looked at Regan, then at the 1608, and back at Regan again. + +"Say," he said a little huskily, "the missus 'll be pleased when I tell +her. We was talking it over last night, and hoping--just hoping, mind +you, that mabbe----" + +"Go tell her, then," said the little master mechanic, who didn't need +any word picture to make him see Mrs. MacCaffery's face when she heard +the news--and he gave the engineer a friendly push doorwards. + +Not a very big thing--to pull the latch of the Directors' Special? +Nothing to make a fuss over? Well no, perhaps not--not unless you were +a railroad man. It meant quite a bit to Dan MacCaffery, though, and +quite a bit to Mrs. MacCaffery because it was an honor coming to Dan; +and it meant something to Regan, too. Call it a little thing--but +little things count a whole lot, too, sometimes in this old world of +ours, don't they? + +There had been a sort of little programme mapped out. Regan, as +naturally fell to his lot, being master mechanic, was to do the honors +of the shops, and Carleton was to make the run up through the Rockies +and over the division with the new directors: but at the last moment a +telegram sent the superintendent flying East to a brother's sick bed, +and the whole kit and caboodle of the honors, to his inward +consternation and dismay, fell to Regan. + +Regan, however, did the best he could. He fished out the black Sunday +suit he wore on the rare occasions when he had time to know one day of +the week from the other, wriggled into a boiled shirt and a stiff +collar that was yellow for want of daylight, and, nervous as a galvanic +battery, was down on the platform an hour before the train was due. +Also, by the time the train rolled in, Regan's handkerchief was +wringing wet from the sweat he mopped off his forehead--but five +minutes after that the earnest little master mechanic, as he afterwards +confided to Carleton, "wouldn't have given a whoop for two trainloads +of 'em, let alone the measly lot you could crowd into one private car." +Somehow, Regan had got it into his head that he was going on his mettle +before a crowd of up-to-the-minute, way-up railroaders; but when he +found there wasn't a practical railroad man amongst them, bar H. +Herrington Campbell, to whom he promptly and whole-heartedly took a +dislike, Regan experienced a sort of pitying contempt, which, if it +passed over the nabobs' heads without doing them any harm, had at least +the effect of putting the fat little master mechanic almost +superciliously at his ease. + +Inspect the shops? Not at all. They were out for a joy ride across +the continent and the fun there was in it. + +"How long we got here? Three hours? Wow!" boomed a big fellow, +stretching his arms lazily as he gazed about him. + +"Let's paint the town, boys," wheezed an asthmatic, bowlegged little +man of fifty, who sported an enormous gold watch chain. "Come on and +look the natives over!" + +Regan, who had been a little hazy on the etiquette of chewing in select +company, reached openly for his plug--and kind of squinted over it +non-committingly, as he bit in, at H. Herrington Campbell, who stood +beside him. Carleton had sized the new general manager up pretty +well--cold as a snow man--and he looked it. H. Herrington Campbell was +a spare-built man, with sharp, quick, black eyes, a face like a hawk, +and lips so thin you wouldn't know he had any if one corner of his +mouth hadn't been pried kind of open, so to speak, with the stub of a +cigar. + +"Go ahead and amuse yourselves, boys." H. Herrington Campbell talked +out of the corner of his mouth where the cigar was. "We pull out at +twelve-thirty sharp." Then to Regan, curtly: "We'll look the equipment +and shops over, Mr. Regan." + +"Yes--sure," agreed Regan, without much enthusiasm, and led the way +across the tracks toward the roundhouse as a starting point for the +inspection tour. + +The whole blamed thing was different from the way Regan had figured it +out in his mind beforehand; but Regan set out to make himself +agreeable--and H. Herrington Campbell listened. H. Herrington Campbell +was the greatest listener Regan had ever met, and Regan froze--and then +Regan thawed out again, but not on account of H. Herrington Campbell. +Regan might have an unresponsive audience, but then Regan didn't +require an audience at all to warm him up when it came to his +roundhouse, and his big mountain racers, and the shops he lay awake at +night planning and thinking about. Here and there, H. Herrington +Campbell shot out a question, crisp, incisive, unexpected, and lapsed +into silence again--that was all. + +They inspected everything, everything there was to inspect; but when +they got through Regan had about as good an idea of what impression it +had made on H. Herrington Campbell as he had when he started out, which +is to say none at all. The new general manager just listened. Regan +had done all the talking. + +Not that H. Herrington Campbell sized up as a misfit, not by any means, +far from it! Regan didn't make that mistake for a minute. He didn't +need to be told that the other knew railroading from the ground up, he +could feel it; but he didn't need to be told, either, that the other +was more a high-geared efficiency machine than he was a man, he could +feel that, too. + +One word of praise Regan wanted, not for himself, but for the things he +loved and worked over and into which he put his soul. And the one +word, where a thousand were due, Regan did not get. The new general +manager had the emotional instincts of a wooden Indian. Regan, toward +the end of the morning, got to talking a little less himself, that is, +aloud--inwardly he grew more eloquent than ever, cholerically so. + +It was train time when they had finished, and the 1608, with old Dan +MacCaffery, half out of the cab window as usual, had just backed down +and coupled on the special, as Regan and the new general manager came +along the platform from the upper freight sheds. And Regan, for all +his inward spleen, couldn't help it, as they reached the big, powerful +racer, spick and span from the guard-plates up. + +"I dunno where you'll beat that, East or West," said Regan proudly, +with a wave of his hand at the 1608. "Wish we had more of that type +out here--we could use 'em. What do you think of her, Mr. +Campbell--h'm?" + +H. Herrington Campbell didn't appear to take any notice of the +masterpiece of machine design to speak of. His eyes travelled over the +engine, and fixed on Dan MacCaffery in the cab window. Dan had an old, +but spotless, suit of overalls on, spotless because Mrs. MacCaffery, +who was even then modestly sharing her husband's honors from the back +of the crowd by the ticket-office window, had made them spotless with a +good many hours' work the day before, for grease sticks hard even in a +washtub; and on old Dan's wizened face was a genial smile that would +have got an instant response from anybody--except H. Herrington +Campbell. H. Herrington Campbell didn't smile, neither did he answer +Regan's question. + +"How old are you?" said he bluntly to Dan MacCaffery. + +"Me?" said old Dan, taken aback for a moment. Then he laughed: "Blest +if I know, sir, it's so long since I've kept track of birthdays. +Sixty-one, I guess--no, sixty-two." + +H. Herrington Campbell didn't appear to hear the old engineer's answer, +any more than he had appeared to take any notice of the 1608. He had +barely paused in his walk, and he was pulling out his watch now and +looking at it as he continued along the platform--only to glance up +again as Pete Chartrand, the senior conductor, gray-haired, +gray-bearded, but dapper as you please in his blue uniform and brass +buttons, hurried by toward the cab with the green tissue copy of the +engineer's orders in his hand. + +Regan opened his mouth to say something--and, instead, snapped his jaws +shut like a steel trap. The last little bit of enthusiasm had oozed +out of the usually good-natured little master mechanic. Two days' +tinkering with the 1608, the division all keyed up to a smile, +everybody trying to do his best to please, a dozen little intimate +plans and arrangements talked over and worked out, were all now a +matter of earnest and savage regret to Regan. + +"By Christmas," growled Regan to himself, as he elbowed his way through +the crowd on the platform--for the town, to the last squaw with a +papoose strapped on her back, had turned out to see the Directors' +Special off--"by Christmas, if 'twere not for Carleton's sake, I'd tell +him, the little tin god that he thinks he is, what _I_ think of him! +And mabbe," added Regan viciously, as he swung aboard the observation +car behind H. Herrington Campbell, "and mabbe I will yet!" + +But Regan's cup, brimming as he held it to be, was not yet full. It +was a pretty swell train, the Directors' Special, that the crowd sent +off with a burst of cheering that lasted until the markers were lost to +view around a butte; a pretty swell train, about the swellest that had +ever decorated the train sheet of the Hill Division--two sleepers, a +diner and observation, mostly mahogany, and the baggage car a good +enough imitation to fit into the color scheme without outraging even +the most esthetic taste, and the 1608 on the front end, gold-leafed, +and shining like a mirror from polished steel and brass. As far as +looks went there wasn't a thing the matter with it, not a thing; it +would have pulled a grin of pride out of a Polack section hand--which +is pulling some. And there wasn't anything the matter with the +send-off, either, that was propitious enough to satisfy anybody; but, +for all that, barring the first hour or so out of Big Cloud, trouble +and the Directors' Special that afternoon were as near akin as twin +brothers. Nothing went right; everything went wrong--except the 1608, +that ran as smooth as a full-jewelled watch, when old Dan, for the +mix-up behind him, could run her at all. The coupling on the diner +broke--that started it. When they got that fixed, something else +happened; and then the forward truck of the baggage car developed a +virulent attack of hot box. + +The special had the track swept for her clean to the Western foothills, +and rights through. But she didn't need them. Her progress was a +crawl. The directors, in spite of their dollar-ante and the roof of +the observation car for the limit, began to lose interest in their game. + +"What is this new toy we've bought?" inquired one of them plaintively. +"A funeral procession?" + +Even H. Herrington Campbell began to show emotion--he shifted his cigar +stub at intervals from one corner of his mouth to the other. Regan was +hot--both ways--inside and out; hotter a whole lot than the hot box he +took his coat off to, and helped old Pete Chartrand and the train crew +slosh buckets of water over every time the Directors' Special stopped, +which was frequently. + +It wasn't old Pete's fault. It wasn't anybody's fault. It was just +blamed hard luck, and it lasted through the whole blamed afternoon. +And by the time they pulled into Elk River, where Regan had wired for +another car, and had transferred the baggage, the Directors' Special, +as far as temper went, was as touchy as a man with a bad case of gout. +As they coupled on the new car, Regan spoke to old Dan in the +cab--spoke from his heart. + +"We're two hours late, Dan--h'm? For the love of Mike, let her out and +do something. That bunch back there's getting so damned polite to me +you'd think the words would melt in their mouths--what?" + +Old Dan puckered his face into a reassuring smile under the peak of his +greasy cap. + +"I guess we're all right now we've got rid of that car," he said. "You +leave it to me. You leave it to me, Regan." + +Pete Chartrand, savage as though the whole matter were a personal and +direct affront, reached up with a new tissue to the cab window. + +"Two hours and ten minutes late!" he snapped out. "Nice, ain't it! +Directors' Special, all the swells, we're doing ourselves proud! Oh, +hell!" + +"Keep your shirt on, Pete," said Regan, somewhat inconsistently. +"Losing your hair over it won't do any good. You're not to blame, are +you? Well then, forget it!" + +Two hours and ten minutes late! Bad enough; but, in itself, nothing +disastrous. It wasn't the first time in railroading that schedules had +gone aglimmering. Only there was more to it than that. There were not +a few other trains, fast freights, passengers, locals and work trains, +whose movements and the movements of the Directors' Special were +intimately connected one with the other. Two hours and ten minutes was +sufficient, a whole lot more than sufficient, to play havoc with a +despatcher's carefully planned meeting points over a hundred miles of +right of way, and all afternoon Donkin had been chewing his lips over +his train sheet back in the despatcher's office at Big Cloud, until the +Directors' Special, officially Special 117, had become a nightmare to +him. Orders, counter orders, cancellations, new orders had followed +each other all afternoon--and now a new batch went out, as the +rehabilitated Special went out of Elk River, and Bob Donkin, with a +sigh of relief at the prospect of clear sailing ahead, pushed the hair +out of his eyes and relaxed a little as he began to give back the +"completes." + +It wasn't Donkin's fault; there was never so much as a hint that it +was. The day man at Mitre Peak--forgot. That's all--but it's a hard +word, the hardest there is in railroading. There was a lot of traffic +moving that afternoon, and with sections, regulars, and extras all +trying to dodge Special 117, they were crowding each other pretty +hard--and the day man at Mitre Peak forgot. + +It was edging dusk as old Pete Chartrand, from the Elk River platform, +lifted a finger to old Dan MacCaffery in the cab, and old Dan, with a +sort of grim smile at the knowledge that the honor of the Hill +Division, what there was left of it as far as Special 117 was +concerned, was up to him, opened out the 1608 to take the "rights" +they'd given him afresh for all there was in it. + +From Elk River to Mitre Peak, where the right of way crosses the +Divide, it is a fairly stiff climb--from Mitre Peak to Eagle Pass, at +the canyon bed, it is an equally emphatic drop; and the track in its +gyrations around the base of the towering, jutting peaks, where it +clings as a fly clings to a wall, is an endless succession of short +tangents and shorter curves. The Rockies, as has been said, had been +harnessed, but they had never been tamed--nor never will be. Silent, +brooding always, there seems a sullen patience about them, as though +they were waiting warily--to strike. There are stretches, many of +them, where no more than a hundred yards will blot utterly one train +from the sight of another; where the thundering reverberations of the +one, flung echoing back and forth from peak to peak, drown utterly the +sounds of the other. And west of Mitre Peak it is like this--and the +operator at Mitre Peak forgot the holding order for Extra Freight No. +69. + +It came quick, quick as the winking of an eye, sudden as the crack of +doom. Extra Freight No. 69 was running west, too, in the same +direction as the Directors' Special; only Extra No. 69 was a heavy +train and she was feeling her way down the grade like a snail, while +the Directors' Special, with the spur and prod of her own delinquency +and misbehavior, was hitting up the fastest clip that old Dan, who knew +every inch of the road with his eyes shut, dared to give within the +limits of safety on that particular piece of track. + +It came quick. Ten yards clear on the right of way, then a gray wall +of rock, a short, right-angled dive of the track around it--and, as the +pilot of the 1608 swung the curve, old Dan's heart for an instant +stopped its beat--three red lights focussed themselves before his eyes, +the tail lights on the caboose of Extra No. 69. There was a yell from +little Billy Dawes, his fireman. + +"My God, Dan, we're into her!" Dawes yelled. "We're into her!" + +Cool old veteran, one of the best that ever pulled a throttle in any +cab, there was a queer smile on old Dan MacCaffery's lips. He needed +no telling that disaster he could not avert, could only in a measure +mitigate, perhaps, was upon them; but even as he checked, checked hard, +and checked again, the thought of others was uppermost in his mind--the +train crew of the freight, some of them, anyway, in the caboose. Dawes +was beside him now, almost at his elbow, as nervy and as full of grit +as the engineer he'd shovelled for for five years and thought more of +than he did of any other man on earth--and for the fraction of a second +old Dan MacCaffery looked into the other's eyes. + +"Give the boys in the caboose a chance for their lives, Billy, in case +they ain't seen or heard us," he shouted in his fireman's ear. "Hold +that whistle lever down." + +Twenty yards, fifteen between them--the 1608 in the reverse bucking +like a maddened bronco, old Dan working with all the craft he knew at +his levers--ten yards--and two men, scurrying like rats from a sinking +ship, leaped from the tail of the caboose to the right of way. + +"Jump!" The word came like a half sob from old Dan. There was nothing +more that any man could do. And he followed his fireman through the +gangway. + +It made a mess--a nasty mess. From the standpoint of traffic, as nasty +a mess as the Hill Division had ever faced. The rear of the freight +went to matchwood, the 1608, the baggage and two Pullmans turned +turtle, derailing the remaining cars behind; but, by a miracle, it +seemed, there wasn't any one seriously hurt. + +Scared? Yes--pretty badly. The directors, a shaken, white-lipped +crowd, poured out of the observation car to the track side. There was +no cigar in H. Herrington Campbell's mouth. + +It was dark by then, but the wreckage caught fire and flung a yellow +glow far across the canyon, and in a shadowy way lighted up the +immediate surroundings. Train crews and engine crews of both trains +hurried here and there, torches and lanterns began to splutter and +wink, hoarse shouts began to echo back and forth, adding their quota to +a weird medley of escaping steam and crackling flame. + +Regan, from a hasty consultation with old Dan MacCaffery and old Pete +Chartrand, that sent the two men on the jump to carry out his orders, +turned--to face H. Herrington Campbell. + +"Nobody hurt, sir--thank God!" puffed the fat little master mechanic, +in honest relief. + +H. Herrington Campbell's eyes were on the retreating forms of the +engineer and conductor. + +"Oh, indeed!" he said coldly. "And the whole affair is hardly worth +mentioning, I take it--quite a common occurrence. You've got some +pretty old men handling your trains out here, haven't you?" + +Regan's face went hard. + +"They're pretty good men," he said shortly. "And there's no blame +coming to them for this, Mr. Campbell, if that's what you mean." + +H. Herrington Campbell's fingers went tentatively to his vest pocket +for a cigar, extracted the broken remains of one--the relic of his own +collision with the back of a car seat where the smash had hurled +him--and threw it away with an icy smile. + +"Blame?" expostulated H. Herrington Campbell ironically. "I don't want +to blame any one; I'm looking for some one to congratulate--on the +worst run division and the most pitiful exemplification of +near-railroading I've had any experience with in twenty years--Mr. +Regan." + +For a full minute Regan did not speak. He couldn't. And then the +words came away with a roar from the bluff little master mechanic. + +"By glory!" he exploded. "We don't take that kind of talk out here +even from general managers--we don't have to! That's straight enough, +ain't it? Well, I'll give you some more of it, now I've started. I +don't like you. I don't like that pained look on your face. I've been +filling up on you all morning, and you don't digest well. We don't +stand for anything as raw as that from any man on earth. And you +needn't hunt around for any greased words, as far as I'm concerned, to +do your firing with--you can have my resignation as master mechanic of +the worst run division you've seen in twenty years right now, if you +want it--h'm?" + +H. Herrington Campbell was gallingly preoccupied. + +"How long are we stalled here for--the rest of the night?" he inquired +irrelevantly. + +Regan stared at him a moment--still apoplectic. + +"I've ordered them to run the forward end of the freight to Eagle Pass, +and take you down," he said, choking a little. "There's a couple of +flats left whole that you can pile yourselves and your baggage on, and +down there they'll make up a new train for you." + +"Oh, very good," said H. Herrington Campbell curtly. + +And ten minutes later, the Directors' Special, metamorphosed into a +string of box cars with two flats trailing on the rear, on which the +newly elected board of the Transcontinental sat, some on their baggage, +and some with their legs hanging over the sides, pulled away from the +wreck and headed down the grade for Eagle Pass. Funny, the transition +from the luxurious leather upholstery of the observation to an angry, +chattering mob of magnates, clinging to each others' necks as they +jounced on the flooring of an old flat? Well perhaps--it depends on +how you look at it. Regan looked at it--and Regan grinned for the pure +savagery that was in him. + +"But I guess," said Regan to himself, as he watched them go, "I guess +mabbe I'll be looking for that job on the Penn after all--h'm?" + +Everybody talked about the Directors' Special run--naturally. And, +naturally, everybody wondered what was going to come from it. It was +an open secret that Regan had handed one to the general manager without +any candy coating on the pill, and the Hill Division sort of looked to +see the master mechanic's head fall and Regan go. But Regan did not +go; and, for that matter, nothing else happened--for a while. + +Carleton came back and got the rights of it from Regan--and said +nothing to Regan about his reply to H. Herrington Campbell's letter, in +which he had stated that if they were looking for a new master mechanic +there would be a division superintendency vacant at the same time. The +day man at Mitre Peak quit railroading--without waiting for an +investigation. Old Dan MacCaffery and Billy Dawes went back to their +regular run with the 304. And the division generally settled down +again to its daily routine--and from the perspective of distance, if +the truth be told, got to grinning reminiscently at the run the Big +Bugs had had for their money. + +Only the grin came too soon. + +A week or so passed, pay day came and went--and the day after that a +general order from the East hit the Hill Division like a landslide. + +Carleton slit the innocent-looking official manila open with his paper +knife, chucked the envelope in the wastebasket, read the communication, +read it again with gathering brows--and sent for Regan. He handed the +form to the master mechanic without a word, as the latter entered the +office. + +Regan read it--read it again, as his chief had--and two hectic spots +grew bright on his cheeks. It was brief, curt, cold--for the good of +the service, safety, and operating efficiency, it stated. In a word, +on and after the first of the month the services of employees over the +age of sixty years would no longer be required. Those were early days +in railroading; not a word about pensions, not a word about half-pay; +just sixty years and--out! + +The paper crackled in Regan's clenched fists; Carleton was beating a +tattoo on his teeth with the mouthpiece of his pipe--there wasn't +another sound in the office for a moment. Then Regan spoke--and his +voice broke a little. + +"It's a damned shame!" he said, through his teeth. "It's that skunk +Campbell." + +"How many men does it affect?" asked Carleton, looking through the +window. + +"I don't know," said the little master mechanic bitterly; "but I know +one that it'll hit harder than all the rest put together--and that's +old Dan MacCaffery." + +There was hurt in the super's gray eyes, as he looked at the +big-hearted little master mechanic's working face. + +"I was thinking of old Dan myself," he said, in his low, quiet way. + +"He hasn't a cent!" stormed Regan. "Not a cent--not a thing on earth +to fall back on. Think of it! Him and that little old missus of his, +God bless her sweet old face, that have been scrimping all these years +to pay back what that blasted kid robbed out of the bank. It ain't +right, Carleton--it ain't right--it's hell, that's what it is! Sixty +years! There ain't a better man ever pulled a latch in a cab, there +ain't a better one pulling one anywhere to-day than old Dan MacCaffery. +And--and I kind of feel as though I were to blame for this, in a way." + +"To blame?" repeated Carleton. + +"I put him on that run, and Riley put old Pete Chartrand on. It kind +of stuck them under Campbell's nose. The two of them together, the two +oldest men--and the blamedest luck that ever happened on a run! H'm?" + +Carleton shook his head. + +"I don't think it would have made any difference in the long run, +Tommy. I told you there'd be changes as soon as the new board got +settled in the saddle." + +Regan tugged viciously at his scraggly brown mustache. + +"Mabbe," he growled fiercely; "but Campbell's seen old Dan now, or I'd +put one over on the pup--I would that! There ain't any birth register +that I ever heard of out here in the mountains, and if Dan said he was +fifty I'd take his word for it." + +"Dan wouldn't say that," said Carleton quietly, "not even to hold his +job." + +"No, of course he wouldn't!" spluttered the fat little master mechanic, +belligerently inconsistent. "Who said he would? And, anyway, it +wouldn't do any good. Campbell asked him his age, and Dan told him. +And--and--oh, what's the use! I know it, I know I'm only talking, +Carleton." + +Neither of them said anything for a minute; then Regan, pacing up and +down the room, spoke again: + +"It's a clean sweep, eh? Train crews, engine crews, everything--there +ain't any other job for him. Over sixty is out everywhere. A white +man--one of the whitest"--Regan sort of said it to himself--"old Dan +MacCaffery. Who's to tell him?" + +Carleton drew a match, with a long crackling noise, under the arm of +his chair. + +"Me?" said Regan, and his voice broke again. He stopped before the +desk, and, leaning, over, stretched out his arm impulsively across it. +"I'd rather have that arm cut off than tell him, Carleton," he said +huskily. "I don't know what he'll say, I don't know what he'll do, but +I know it will break his heart, and break Mrs. MacCaffery's +heart--Carleton." He took another turn the length of the room and back +again. "But I guess it had better be me," said the little master +mechanic, more to himself than to Carleton. "I guess it had--I'd hate +to think of his getting it so's it would hurt any more than it had to, +h'm?" + +And so Tommy Regan told old Dan MacCaffery--that afternoon--the day +after pay day. + +Regan didn't mean to exactly, not then--he was kind of putting it off, +as it were--until next day--and fretting himself sick over it. But +that afternoon old Dan, on his way down to the roundhouse--Dan took out +the regular passenger local that left Big Cloud at 6.55 every evening, +and to spend an hour ahead of running time with the 304 was as much a +habit with Dan as breathing was--hunted Regan up in the latter's office +just before the six o'clock whistle blew. For an instant Regan thought +the engineer had somehow or other already heard the news, but a glance +at Dan's face dispelled that idea as quickly as it had come. Dan was +always smiling, but there was a smile on the wizened, puckered, honest +old face now that seemed to bubble out all over it. + +"Regan," said old Dan, bursting with happy excitement, "I just had to +drop in and tell you on the way over to the roundhouse, and the missus, +she says, 'You tell Mr. Regan, Dan; he'll be rightdown glad.'" + +Regan got up out of his chair. There seemed a sense of disaster coming +somehow that set him to breathing heavily. + +"Sure, Dan--sure," he said weakly. "What is it?" + +"Well," said Dan, "you know that--that trouble the boy got into +back--back----' + +"Yes, I know," said Regan hastily. + +"Well," said Dan, "it's taken a long time, a good many years, but +yesterday, you know, was pay day; and to-day, Regan, we, the missus and +me, Regan, sent the last of that money East, interest and all, the last +cent of it, cleaned it all up. Say, Regan, I feel like I was walking +on air, and you'd ought to have seen the missus sitting up there in the +cottage and smiling through the tears. 'Oh, Dan!' she says, and then +she gets up and puts her two hands on my shoulders, and I felt blamed +near like crying myself. 'We can start in now, Dan, to save up for old +age,' she says, smiling. Say, Regan, ain't it--ain't it fine? We're +going to start in now and save up for old age." + +Regan didn't say a word. It came with a rush, choking him up in his +throat, and something misty in front of his eyes so he couldn't +see--and he turned his back, searching for his hat on the peg behind +his desk. He jammed his hat on his head, and jerked it low down over +his forehead. + +"Ain't you--glad?" said old Dan, a sort of puzzled hurt in his eyes. + +"I'll walk over a bit of the way to the roundhouse with you, Dan," said +Regan gruffly. "Come on." + +They stepped out of the shops, and across a spur--old Dan, still +puzzled, striding along beside the master mechanic. + +"What's the matter, Regan?" he asked reproachfully. "I thought you'd +be----" + +And then Regan stopped--and his hand fell in a tight grip on the +other's shoulder. + +"I got to tell you, Dan," he blurted out. "But I don't need to tell +you what I think of it. It's a damned shame! The new crowd that's +running this road don't want anybody helping 'em to do it after the +first of the month that's over sixty years of age. You're--you're out." + +Old Dan didn't seem to get it for a minute; then a whiteness kind of +crept around his lips, and his eyes, from Regan, seemed to circuit in a +queer, wistful way about the yards, and fix finally on the roundhouse +in front of him; and then he lifted his peaked cap, in the way he had +of doing, and scratched near his ear where the hair was. He hit Regan +pretty hard with what he said. + +"Regan," he said, "there's two weeks yet to the end of the month. +Don't tell her, Regan, and don't you let the boys tell her--there's two +weeks she don't need to worry. I'd kind of like to have her have them +two weeks." + +Regan nodded--there weren't any words that would come, and he couldn't +have spoken them if there had. + +"Yes," said old Dan, sort of whispering to himself, "I'd kind of like +to have her have them two weeks." + +Regan cleared his throat, pulled at his mustache, swore under his +breath, and cleared his throat again. + +"What'll you do, Dan--afterwards?" + +Old Dan straightened up, looked at Regan--and smiled. + +"I dunno," he said, shaking his head and smiling. "I dunno; but it'll +be all right. We'll get along somehow." His eyes shifted to the +roundhouse again. "I guess I'd better be getting over to the 304," he +said--and turned abruptly away. + +Regan watched him go, watched the overalled figure with a slight +shoulder stoop cross the turntable, watched until the other disappeared +inside the roundhouse doors; and then he turned and walked slowly +across the tracks and uptown toward his boarding house. "Don't tell +her"--the words kept reiterating themselves insistently--"don't let the +boys tell her." + +"I guess they won't," said Regan, muttering fiercely to himself. "I +guess they won't." + +Nor did they. The division and Big Cloud kept the secret for those two +weeks--and they kept it for long after that. The little old lady in +the lace cap never knew--they ranked her high, those pioneering women +kind of hers in that little mountain town, those rough-and-ready +toilers who had been her husband's mates--she never knew. + +But everybody else knew, and they watched old Dan as the days went by, +watched him somehow with a tight feeling in their throats, and kept +aloof a little--because they didn't know what to say--kept aloof a +little awkwardly, as it were. Not that there seemed much of any +difference in the old engineer; it was more a something that they +sensed. Old Dan came down to the roundhouse in the late afternoon an +hour before train time, just as he always did, puttered and oiled +around and coddled the 304 for an hour, just as he always did, just as +though he was always going to do it, took his train out, came back on +the early morning run, backed the 304 into the roundhouse, and trudged +up Main Street to where it began to straggle into the buttes, to where +his cottage and the little old lady were--just as he always did. And +the little old lady, with the debt paid, went about the town for those +two weeks happier-looking, younger-looking than Big Cloud had ever seen +her before. That was all. + +But Regan, worrying, pulling at his mustache, put it up to little Billy +Dawes, old Dan's fireman, one day in the roundhouse near the end of the +two weeks. + +"How's Dan take it in the cab, Billy?" he asked. + +The little fireman rolled the hunk of greasy waste in his hands, and +swabbed at his fingers with it for a moment before he answered; then he +sent a stream of blackstrap juice viciously into the pit, and with a +savage jerk hurled the hunk of waste after it. + +"By God!" he said fiercely. + +Regan blinked--and waited. + +"Just the same as ever he was," said Billy Dawes huskily, after a +silence. "Just the same--when he thinks you're not looking. I've seen +him sometimes when he didn't know I was looking." + +Regan said: "H'm!"--kind of coughed it out, reached for his plug, as +was usual with him in times of stress, bit into it deeply, sputtered +something hurriedly about new piston rings for the left-hand head, and, +muttering to himself, left the roundhouse. + +And that night old Dan MacCaffery took out the 304 and the local +passenger for the run west and the run back east--just as he always +did. And the next night, and for two nights after that he did the same. + +Came then the night of the 31st. + +It was the fall of the year and the dusk fell early; and by a little +after six, with the oil lamps lighted, that at best only filtered +spasmodic yellow streaks of gloom about the roundhouse, the engines +back on the pits were beginning to loom up through the murk in big, +grotesque, shadowy shapes, as Regan, crossing the turntable, paused for +a moment hesitantly. Why he was there, he didn't know. He hadn't +meant to be there. He was just a little early for his nightly game of +pedro with Carleton over in the super's office--it wasn't much more +than half past six--so he had had some time to put in--that must be +about the size of it. He hadn't meant to come. There wasn't any use +in it, none at all, nothing he could do; better, in fact, if he stayed +away--only he had left the boarding house early--and he was down there +now, standing on the turntable--and it was old Dan's last run. + +"I guess," mumbled Regan, "I'll go back over to the station. Carleton +'ll be along in a few minutes. I guess I will, h'm?"--only Regan +didn't. He started on again slowly over the turntable, and entered the +roundhouse. + +There wasn't anybody in sight around the pit on which the 304 stood, +nobody puttering over the links and motion-gear, poking here and there +solicitously with a long-spouted oil can, as he had half, more than +half, expected to find old Dan doing; but he heard some one moving +about in the cab, and caught the flare of a torch. Regan walked down +the length of the engine, and peered into the cab. It was Billy Dawes. + +"Where's Dan, Billy? Ain't he about?" inquired Regan. + +The fireman came out into the gangway. + +"Yes," he answered; "he's down there back of the tender by the fitters' +benches. He's looking for some washers he said he wanted for a loose +stud nut. I'll get him for you." + +"No; never mind," said Regan. "I'll find him." + +It was pretty dark at the rear of the roundhouse in the narrow space +between the engine tenders on the various pits and the row of +workbenches that flanked the wall, and for a moment, as Regan reached +the end of the 304's tender, he could not see any one--and then he +stopped short, as he made out old Dan's form down on the floor by the +end bench as though he were groping for something underneath it. + +For a minute, two perhaps, Regan stood there motionless, watching old +Dan MacCaffery. Then he drew back, tiptoed softly away, went out +through the engine doors, and, as he crossed the tracks to the station +platform, brushed his hand hurriedly across his eyes. + +Regan didn't play much of a game of pedro that night--his heart wasn't +in it. Carleton had barely dealt the first hand when Regan heard the +304 backing down and coupling on the local, and he got up from his +chair and walked to the window, and stood there watching until the +local pulled out. + +Carleton didn't say anything--just dealt the cards over again, and +began once more as Regan resumed his seat. + +An hour passed. Regan, fidgety and nervous, played in a desultory +fashion; Carleton, disturbed, patiently correcting the master +mechanic's mistakes. The game was a farce. + +"What's the matter, Tommy?" asked Carleton gravely, as Regan made a +misdeal twice in succession. + +"Nothing," said Regan shortly. "Go on, play; it's your bid." + +Carleton shook his head. + +"You're taking it too much to heart, Tommy," he said. "It won't do you +any good--either of you--you or Dan. He'll pull out of it somehow. +You'll see." + +There was a queer look on Regan's face as he stared for an instant at +Carleton across the table, and he opened his lips as though to say +something--and closed them again in a hard line instead. + +Carleton bid. + +"It's yours," said Regan. + +Carleton led--and then Regan, with a sweep of his hand, shot his cards +into the center of the table. + +"It's no good," he said gruffly, getting up. "I can't play the blamed +game to-night, I----" He stopped suddenly and turned his head, as a +chair scraped sharply in the despatchers' room next door. + +A step sounded in the hall, the super's door was flung open, and Spence +put in his head. + +One glance at the despatcher, and Carleton was on his feet. + +"What's the matter, Spence?" he asked, quick and hard. + +Regan hadn't moved--but Regan spoke now, answering the question that +was addressed to the despatcher, and answering it in a strangely +assertive, absolute, irrefutable way. + +"The local," he said. "Number Forty-seven. Dan MacCaffery's dead." + +Both men stared at him in amazement--and Spence, sort of unconsciously, +nodded his head. + +"Yes," said Spence, still staring at Regan. "There was some sort of +engine trouble just west of Big Eddy in the Beaver Canyon. I haven't +got the rights of it yet, only that somehow MacCaffery got his engine +stopped just in time to keep the train from going over the bridge +embankment--and went out doing it. There's no one else hurt. Dawes, +the fireman, and Conductor Neale walked back to Big Eddy. I've got +them on the wire now. Come into the other room." + +Regan stepped to the door mechanically, and, with Carleton behind him, +followed Spence into the despatchers' room. There, Carleton, +tight-lipped, leaned against the table; Regan, his face like stone, +took his place at Spence's elbow, as the despatcher dropped into his +chair. + +There wasn't a sound in the room for a moment save the clicking of the +sender in a quick tattoo under Spence's fingers. Then Spence picked up +a pencil and began scribbling the message on a pad, as the sounder +spoke--Billy Dawes was dictating his story to the Big Eddy operator. + +"It was just west of Big Eddy, just before you get to the curve at the +approach to the Beaver Bridge," came Dawes' story, "and we were hitting +up a fast clip, but no more than usual, when we got a jolt in the cab +that spilled me into the coal and knocked Dan off his seat. It all +came so quick there wasn't time to think, but I knew we'd shed a driver +on Dan's side, and the rod was cutting the side of the cab like a knife +through cheese. I heard Dan shout something about the train going over +the embankment and into the river if we ever hit the Beaver curve, and +then he jumped for the throttle and the air. There wasn't a chance in +a million for him, but it was the only chance for every last one of the +rest of us. He made it somehow, I don't know how; it's all a blur to +me. He checked her, and then the rod caught him, and----" The sounder +broke, almost with a human sob in it, it seemed, and then went on +again: "We stopped just as the 304 turned turtle. None of the coaches +left the rails. That's all." + +Regan spoke through dry lips. + +"Ask him what Dan was like in the cab to-night," he said hoarsely. + +Spence looked up and around at the master mechanic, as though he had +not heard aright. + +"Ask him what I say," repeated Regan shortly. "What was Dan like in +the cab to-night?" + +Spence bent over his key again. There was a pause before the answer +came. + +"He says he hadn't seen Dan so cheerful for months," said Spence +presently. + +Regan nodded, kind of curiously, kind of as though it were the answer +he expected--and then he nodded at Carleton, and the two went back to +the super's room. + +Regan closed the door behind him. + +Carleton dropped into his chair, his gray eyes hard and full of pain. + +"I don't understand, Tommy," he said heavily. "It's almost as though +you knew it was going to happen." + +Regan came across the floor and stood in front of the desk. + +"I did," he said in a low way. "I think I was almost certain of it." + +Carleton pulled himself forward with a jerk in his chair. + +"Do you know what you are saying, Tommy?" he asked sharply. + +"I'll tell you," Regan said, in the same low way. "I went over to the +roundhouse to-night before Dan took the 304 out. I didn't see Dan +anywhere about, and I asked Dawes where he was. Dawes said he had gone +back to the fitters' benches to look for some washers. I walked on +past the tender and I found him there down on the floor on his knees by +one of the benches--but he wasn't looking for any washers. He was +praying." + +With a sharp exclamation, Carleton pushed back his chair, and, +standing, leaned over the desk toward Regan. + +Regan swallowed a lump in his throat--and shook his head. + +"He didn't see me," he said brokenly, "he didn't know I was there. He +was praying aloud. I heard what he said. It's been ringing in my head +all night, word for word, while I was trying to play with those"--he +jerked his hand toward the scattered cards on the desk between them. +"I can hear him saying it now. It's the queerest prayer I ever heard; +and I guess he prayed the way he lived--as though he was kind of +intimate with God." + +"Yes?" prompted Carleton softly, as Regan paused. + +Regan turned his head away as his eyes filled suddenly--and his voice +was choked. + +"What he said was this, just as though he was talking to you or me: +'You know how it is, God. I wouldn't take that way myself unless You +fixed it up for me, because it wouldn't be right unless You did it. +But I hope, God, You'll think that's the best way out of it. You see, +there ain't nothing left as it is, but if we fixed it that way there'd +be the fraternal insurance to take care of the missus, and she wouldn't +never know. And then, You see, God, I guess my work is all done, +and--and I'd kind of like to quit while I was still on the pay +roll--I'd kind of like to finish that way, and to-night's the last +chance. You understand, God, don't You?'" + +Regan's lips were quivering as he stopped. + +There was silence for a moment, then Carleton looked up from the +blotter on his desk. + +"Tommy," he said in his big, quiet way, as his hand touched Regan's +sleeve, "tell me why you didn't stop him, then, from going out +to-night?" + +Regan didn't answer at once. He went over to the window and stared out +at the twinkling switch lights in the yards below--he was still staring +out of the window as he spoke. + +"He didn't put it up to me," said Regan. "He put it up to God." + + + + +VII + +"THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS" + +Maguire was a little, washed-out, kind of toil-bent hostler in the +roundhouse--and he married old. How old? Nobody knew--not even old +Bill himself--fifty something. Mrs. Maguire presented him with a son +in due course, and the son's name was Patrick Burke Maguire--but the +Hill Division, being both terse and graphic by nature and education, +called him "Noodles." + +Noodles wasn't even a pretty baby. Tommy Regan, who was roped in to +line up at the baptismal font and act as godfather because old Bill was +a boiler-washer in the roundhouse, which was reason enough for the +big-hearted master mechanic, said that Noodles was the ugliest and most +forbidding looking specimen of progeny he had ever seen outside a +zoological garden. Of course, be it understood, Regan wasn't a family +man, and god-fathering wasn't a job in Regan's line, so when he got +outside the church and the perspiration had stopped trickling nervously +down the small of his back and he'd got a piece of blackstrap clamped +firmly home between his teeth, he told old Bill, by way of a grim sort +of revenge for the unhappy position his good nature had led him into, +that the offspring was the dead spit of its father--and he +congratulated Noodles. + +The irony, of course, was lost. The boiler-washer walked on air for a +week. He told the roundhouse what Regan had said--and the roundhouse +laughed. Bill thought the roundhouse thought he was lying, but that +didn't dampen his spirits any. It wasn't everybody could get the +master mechanic of the division to stand up with _their_ kids! +Everybody was happy--except Noodles. Noodles, just about then, +developed colic. + +Noodles got over the colic, got over the measles, the mumps, the +whooping cough, and the scarlet fever--that may not have been the order +of their coming or their going, but he got over them all. And when he +was twelve he got over the smallpox; but he never got over his +ugliness--the smallpox kind of put a stop-order on any lurking tendency +there might have been in that direction. Also, when he was twelve, he +got over all the schooling the boiler-washer's limited means would +span, which wasn't a university course; and he started in railroading +as a call boy. + +There was nothing organically bad about Noodles, except his +exterior--which wasn't his fault. One can't be blamed for hair of a +motley red, ubiquitous freckles wherever the smallpox had left room for +them, no particular colored eyes, a little round knob of uptilted nose, +and a mouth that made even the calloused Dutchy at the lunch counter +feel a little mean inwardly when he compared it with the mathematically +cut slab of contract pie, eight slabs to the pie plate, and so much so +that he went to the extent of--no, he never gave Noodles an extra +piece--but he went to the extent of surreptitiously pocketing Noodles' +nickel as though he were obtaining money under false pretenses--which +was a good deal for Dutchy to do--and just shows. + +There was nothing _organically_ bad about Noodles--not a thing. +Noodles' troubles, and they came thick and fast with the inauguration +of his railroad career, lay in quite another direction--his +irrepressible tendency to practical jokes, coupled with a lack of the +sense of the general fitness of things, consequences and results, and +an absence of even a bowing acquaintance with responsibility that was +appalling. + +The first night Noodles went on duty as call boy, armed with a nickel +thriller--that being only half the price of a regular dime novel--and +visions of the presidency of the road being offered him before he was +much older, Spence was sitting in on the early night trick. There was +a lot of stuff moving through the mountains that night, and the train +sheet was heavy. And even Spence, counted one of the best despatchers +that ever held down a key on the Hill Division, was hard put to it, +both to keep his crowding sections from treading on each other's heels, +and to jockey the east and westbounds past each other without letting +their pilots get tangled up head-on. It was no night or no place for +foolishness--a despatcher's office never is, for that matter. + +Noodles curled himself up in a chair behind the despatcher--and started +in on the thriller. His first call was for the crews of No. 72, the +local freight east, at 8.35, and there was nothing to do until then +unless Spence should happen to want him for something. The thriller +was quite up to the mark, even "thriller" than usual, but Noodles left +the hero at the end of the first chapter securely bound to the +mill-wheel with the villain rushing to open the gate in the dam--and +his eyes strayed around the room. + +It wasn't altogether the novelty of his surroundings--no phase of +railroading was altogether a novelty to any Big Cloud youngster--there +was just a sort of newness in his own position that interfered with any +protracted or serious effort along literary lines. From a circuit of +the room, his eyes went to the fly-specked, green-shaded lamp on the +despatcher's table, then from the lamp to the despatcher's back--and +fixed on the despatcher's back. + +His eyes held there quite a long time--then his fingers went stealthily +to the lapel of his coat. Spence had a habit when hurried or anxious +of half rising from his chair, as though to give emphasis to his orders +every time he touched the key. Spence was both hurried and anxious +that night and the key was busy. In the somewhat dim light, Spence, to +Noodles' fancy, assumed the aspect of an animated jumping jack. + +Deftly, through long experience, Noodles coiled his pin with a wicked +upshoot to the center of attack, cautiously lowered his own chair, +which had been tilted back against the wall, to the more stable +position of four legs on the floor, leaned forward, and laid the pin at +a strategic point on the seat of Spence's chair. Two minutes later, +kicked bodily down the stairs, Noodles was surveying the Big Cloud +yards by moonlight from the perspective of the station platform. + +Noodles' career as a call boy had been brief--and it was ended. Old +Bill, the boiler-washer, came to the rescue. He explained to Regan who +the godfather of the boy was and what bearing that had on the case, and +how he'd larruped the boy for what he'd done, and how the boy hadn't +meant anything by it--and could the boy have another chance? + +Regan said, "Yes," and said it shortly, more because he was busy at the +time and wanted to get rid of Old Bill than from any predisposition +toward Noodles. Noodles wasn't predisposing any way you looked at him, +and Regan had a good look at his godson now for about the first time +since he'd sponsored him, and he didn't like Noodles' +looks--particularly. But Regan, not taking too serious a view of the +matter, said yes, and put Noodles at work over in the roundhouse under +the eye of his father. + +Here, for a month, in one way or another, Noodles succeeded in making +things lively, and himself cordially disliked by about everybody in the +shops, the roundhouse, and the Big Cloud yards generally. And there +was a hint or two thrown out, that reached Regan's ears, that old Bill +had known what he was doing when he got one of the "big fellows" as +godfather for as ugly a blasted little nuisance as the Hill Division +had known for many a long day. Regan got to scowling every time he saw +Noodles' unhandsome countenance, and he took pains on more than one +occasion to give a bit of blunt advice to both Noodles and Noodles' +father--which the former received somewhat ungraciously, and the latter +with trepidation. + +And then one night as it grew dark, just before six o'clock, while Bill +and the turner and the wipers were washing up and trying to put in the +time before the whistle blew, Noodles dropped into the turntable pit +and wedged the turntable bearings with iron wedgings. Half an hour +later, when the night crew came to swing it for the 1016, blowing hard +from a full head of steam and ready to go out and couple on to No. 1 +for the westbound run, they couldn't move it. It took them a few +minutes before they could find out what the matter was, and another few +to undo the matter when they did find out--and No. 1 went out five +minutes late. + +Nobody asked who did it--it wasn't necessary. They just said +"Noodles," and waited to see what Noodles' godfather would do about it. + +They did not have long to wait. The Limited five minutes late out of +division and the delay up to the motive-power department, which was +Regan's department, would have been enough to bring the offender, +whoever he might be, on the carpet with scant ceremony even if it had +been an _accident_. Regan was boiling mad. + +Noodles didn't show up the next day. Deep in Noodles' consciousness +was a feeling that his nickel thriller and a certain spot he knew up +behind the butte, where many a pleasant afternoon had been passed when +he should have been at school, was more conducive to peace and +quietness than the center of railroad activities--also Noodles ached +bodily from his father's attentions. + +Old Bill, too, kept conveniently out of sight down in a pit somewhere +every time the master mechanic showed his nose inside the roundhouse +during the morning--but by afternoon, counting the edge of Regan's +wrath to have worn smooth, he followed Regan out over the turntable +after one of the master mechanic's visits. + +"Regan," he blurted out anxiously, "about the bhoy, now." + +"Well?" snapped Regan, whirling about. + +The monosyllable was cold enough in its uncompromise to stagger the +little hostler, and drive all thoughts of the carefully rehearsed +oration he had prepared from his head. He scratched aimlessly at the +half circle of gray billy-goat beard under his chin, and blinked +helplessly at the master mechanic. Noodles lacked much, and in Noodles +was much to be desired perhaps--but Noodles, for all that, had his +place in the Irish heart that beat under the greasy jumper. + +"He's the only wan we've got, Regan," stammered the harassed roundhouse +man appealingly. + +"It's a wonder, then, you've not holes in the knees of your overalls +giving thanks for it," declared Regan grimly. "That's enough, +Bill--and we've had enough of Noodles. Keep him away from here." + +"Ah, sure now, Regan," begged the little hostler piteously, "yez don't +mean ut. The bhoy's all right, Regan--'tis but spirit he has. Regan, +listen here now, I've larruped him good for fwhat he's done--an' 'twas +no more than a joke." + +"A joke!" Regan choked; then brusquely: "That'll do, Bill. I've said +my last word, and I'm busy this afternoon. Noodles is out--for keeps." + +"Ah, Regan, listen here"--Noodles' father caught the master mechanic's +arm, as the latter turned away. "Regan, sure, ut's the bhoy's +godfather yez are." + +The fat little master mechanic's face went suddenly red--this was the +last straw--_Noodles' godfather_! Regan had been catching more +whispers than he had liked lately anent godfathers and godfathering. +His eyes puckered up and he wheeled on the boiler-washer--but the hot +words on the tip of his tongue died unborn. There was something in the +dejected droop of the other's figure, something in the blue eyes +growing watery with age that made him change his mind--old Bill wasn't +a young man. As far back as the big-hearted, good-natured master +mechanic could remember, he remembered old Bill--in the roundhouse. +Always the same job, day after day, year after year--boiler-washing, +tinkering around at odd jobs--not much good at anything else--church +every Sunday in shiny black coat, and peaked-faced Mrs. Maguire in the +same threadbare, shiny black dress--not that Regan ever went to church, +but he used to see them going there--church every Sunday, Maguire was +long on church, and week days just boiler-washing and tinkering around +at odd jobs--a dollar-sixty a day. Regan's pucker subsided, and he +reached out his hand to the boiler-washer's shoulder--and he grinned to +kind of take the sting out of his words. + +"Well, Bill," he said, "as far as that goes, I renounce the honor." + +"Raynownce ut!" The boiler-washer's eyes opened wide, and his face was +strained as though he had not heard aright. "Raynownce ut! Ut's an +Irish Protystant yez are, Regan, the same as me an' the missus, an' did +yez not say the words in the church!" + +"I did," admitted Regan; "though I've forgotten what they were. It was +well enough, no doubt, for a kid in swaddling clothes--but it's some +time since then." Then, with finality: "Go back to your work, Bill--I +can't talk to you any more this afternoon." + +"Raynownce ut!" The words reached Regan as he turned away and started +across the tracks toward the platform, and in their tones was something +akin to stunned awe that caused him to chuckle. "Raynownce ut!--an' +yez said the words forninst the priest!" + +Regan's chuckle, however, was not of long duration, either literally or +metaphorically. During the rest of the afternoon the boiler-washer's +words got to swinging through Regan's brain until they became an +obsession, and somewhere down inside of him began to grow an +uncomfortable foreboding that there might be something more to the +godfathering business than he had imagined. He tackled Carleton about +it before the whistle blew. + +"Carleton," said he, walking into the super's office, and picking up a +ruler from the other's desk, "don't laugh, or I'll jam this ruler down +your throat. If you can answer a straight question, answer +it--otherwise, let it go. What's a godfather, anyhow?" + +Carleton grinned. + +"You ought to know, Tommy," he said. + +"I was running without a permit and off schedule at the time, and I was +nervous," said Regan. "What happened, or what the goings-on were, I +don't know. What is it?" + +Carleton shook his head gravely. + +"I'm afraid not, Tommy," he said. "You're in the wrong shop. +Information bureau's downstairs to the right of the ticket office." + +"Thanks!" said Regan. + +And that was all the help he got from Carleton--then. But that night +over their usual game of pedro in the super's office, it was a little +different. Carleton, as he pulled the cards out of the desk drawer and +tossed them on the table, pulled a small book from his pocket and +tossed it to Regan. + +"What's this?" inquired the master mechanic. + +"It's not to your credit to ask--it's a prayer book," Carleton informed +him. "Be careful of it--I borrowed it." + +"You didn't need to say so," said Regan softly. + +"Page two hundred and eight," suggested Carleton. "See if that's what +you were looking for, Tommy." + +Regan thumbed the leaves, found the place and began to read--and a +sickly sort of pallor began to spread over his face. + +"'You are his sureties that he will renounce the devil and all his +works,'" he mumbled weakly. + +"Yes," said Carleton cheerfully. "There's some _little_ responsibility +there, you see. But don't skip the parenthesis; get it all, +Tommy--'_until he come of age to take it upon himself_.'" + +Regan didn't say a word--nor was the smile he essayed an enthusiastic +success. He read the "articles" over again word by word, pointing the +lines with his pudgy forefinger. + +"Well," inquired Carleton, "what do you make of the running orders, +Tommy?" + +"The devil and all his works!"--it came away from Regan now with a rush +from his overburdened soul. "D'ye mean to say that--that"--Regan +choked a little--"that I'm responsible for that brick-topped, +monkey-faced kid?" + +"'Until he come of age,'" Carleton amplified pleasantly. + +Regan's Celtic temper rose. + +"I'll see him hung first!" he roared suddenly. "'Twas no more than to +please Maguire that I stood up with the ugly imp! And mabbe I said +what's here and mabbe I didn't, but in any event 'tis no more than a +matter of form to be repeated parrot-fashion--and it means nothing." + +"Oh, well," said the super slyly, "if you feel that way about it, don't +let it bother you." + +"It will not bother _me_!" said Regan defiantly, with a scowl. + +But it did. + +Regan slept that night with an army corps of red-headed, pocked, and +freckled-faced little devils to plague his rest--and their name was +Noodles. His thoughts were unpleasantly more on Noodles than his razor +when he shaved the next morning, and the result was an unsightly gash +across his chin--and when he made his first inspection of the +roundhouse an hour later he was in a temper to be envied by no man. +His irritability was not soothed by the sight of Maguire, who rose +suddenly in front of him from an engine pit as he came in. + +"Regan," said the old fellow, "about the bhoy----" + +"Maguire," said Regan, in a low, fervent voice, "you bother me about +that again and I'll fire you, too!" + +"Wait, Regan." There was a quaver in the little hostler's voice, and +he appeared to stand his ground only by the aid of some previously +arrived at, painful resolution that rose superior to his nervousness. +"Wait, Regan--mabbe yez'll not have to. I talked ut over wid the +missus last night. I've worked well for yez, Regan, all these +years--all these years, Regan, I've worked for yez here in the +roun'house--an' I've worked well, though ut's mesilf that ses ut." + +"That's nothing to do with it," snapped the master mechanic. + +"Mabbe ut has, an' mabbe ut hasn't." The watery-blue eyes sought the +toes of their owner's grease-smeared, thickly-patched brogans. "I +talked ut over wid the missus. Sure now, Regan, yez weren't thinkin' +fwhat yez said, an' yez didn't mean fwhat yez said yisterday about +raynowncin' the word ye'd passed. Yez'll take ut back, Regan?" + +"Take it back? I'll be damned if I do!" said Regan earnestly. + +The little hostler's body stiffened, the watery-blue eyes lifted and +held steadily on the master mechanic, and for the first time in his +lowly life he raised a hand to his superior--Maguire pointed a +forefinger, that shook a little, at Regan. + +"'Tis blasphymus yez are, Regan!" he said in a thin voice. "An' 'tis +no blasphymay I mean, God forbid, fwhen I say yez'll be damned if yez +don't. Before a priest, Regan, an' in the church av God, Regan, yez +swore fwhat yez swore--an' 'tis the wrath av God, Regan, yez'll bring +down on your head. Mind that, Regan! Fire me, is ut?" The little +hostler's voice rose suddenly. "All these years I've worked well for +yez, Regan, but I'll work no more for a man as 'ud do a thing loike +thot--an' the missus ses the same. Poor we may be, but rayspect for +oursilves we have. Yez'll niver fire me, Regan--I fire mesilf. I'm +through this minute!" + +Regan glared disdainfully. + +"Have you been drinking, Maguire?" he inquired caustically. + +Noodles' father did not answer. He brushed past the master mechanic, +walked through the big engine doors, and halted just outside on the +cinders. + +"'Tis forsworn yez are, Regan," he said heavily. "Yez may make light +av ut now, but the day'll come, Regan, fwhen yez'll find out 'tis no +light matter. 'Tis the wrath av God, Regan, 'll pay yez for ut, yez +can mark my words." + +Regan stared after the old man, his eyes puckered, his face a little +red; stared after the bent form in the old worn overalls as it picked +its way across the tracks--and gave vent to his feelings by +expectorating a goodly stream of blackstrap juice savagely into the +engine pit at his side. This did not help very much, and for the rest +of the morning, while he inwardly anathematized Noodles, Noodles' +father and the whole Noodles family collectively, he made things both +uncomfortable and lively for those who were unfortunate enough to be +within reach of his displeasure. + +"The wrath of God!" communed Regan angrily. "I always said Noodles +took after his father, both by disposition and looks! It'll be a long +time before the old man gets another job--a long time." + +And therein Regan was right. It _was_ a long time--quite a long +time--measured by the elasticity of the boiler-washer's purse, which +wasn't very elastic on the savings from a dollar-sixty a day. + +Old Bill Maguire, perhaps, was the only one who hadn't got quite the +proper angle on the "rights" he carried--which were worse than those of +a mixed local when the rails were humming under a stress of through +traffic and the despatchers were biting their nails to the quick trying +to take care of it. Not, possibly, that it would have made any +difference to the little worn-out hostler if he had; for, whether from +principle, having deep-seated awe for the church and its tenets that +forbade even a tacit endorsement of what he considered Regan's +sacrilege, or because of the public slight put upon his family--the +roundhouse hadn't failed to hear his first conversation with Regan, and +hadn't failed to let him know that they had--or maybe from a mixture of +the two, Maguire was beyond question in deadly earnest. But if old +Bill hadn't got his signals right, and was reading green and white when +it should have been red, the rest of the Hill Division wasn't by any +means color blind; it was pretty generally understood that for several +years back all that stood between Maguire and the scrap heap--was +Regan. Not on account of any jolly business about godfather or +godfathering, but because that was Regan's way--old Bill puttered +around the roundhouse on suffrance, thanks to Regan, and didn't know +it, though everybody else did, barring patient little Mrs. Maguire and +Noodles, who didn't count anyhow. + +Nor did the little hostler even now pass the color test. +Short-tongued, a hard, grimy lot, just what their rough and ready life +made them, they might have been, those railroaders of the Rockies, but +their hearts were always right. In the yards, in the trainmaster's +office, in the roadmaster's office they pointed Maguire to the quiet +times, to the extra crews laid off, to the spare men back to their old +ratings, to the section gangs pared down to a minimum, and advised him +to ask Regan for his job back again--they never told him he couldn't do +a man's work any more. + +"Ask Regan!" stuttered the old boiler-washer, and the gray billy-goat +beard under his chin, as he threw his head up, stuck out straight like +a belligerent _chevaux de frise_. "Niver! Mind thot, now! +Niver--till he takes back fwhat he said--not av I starrve for ut!" + +Regan, during the first few days, the brunt of his temper worn off, +experienced a certain relief, that was no little relief--he was rid, +and well rid, of the Noodles combination. But at the end of about a +week, the bluff, big-hearted master mechanic began to suck in his under +lip at moments when he was alone, as the stories of old Bill's futile +efforts after a job, and old Bill's rather pitiful defiance began to +sift in to him. Regan began to have visions of the little three-room +shack way up in the waste fields at the end of Main Street. A +dollar-sixty a day wasn't much to come and go on, even when the +dollar-sixty was coming regularly every pay day--and when it wasn't, +the cost of food and rent didn't go down any. + +Regan got to thinking a good deal about the faded little old drudge of +a woman that was Mrs. Maguire, and the bare floors as he remembered +them even in the palmy days of Noodles' birth when he had attended the +celebration, bare, but scrubbed to a spotless white. She hadn't been +very young then, and not any too strong, and that was twelve years ago. +And he got to thinking a good deal about old Bill himself--not much +good any more, but good enough for a dollar-sixty a day from a company +he'd served for many a long year--in the roundhouse. There had never +been over much of what even an optimistic imagination could call luxury +in the Maguire's home, and the realization got kind of deep under the +worried master mechanic's skin that things were down now to pretty near +a case of bread to fill their mouths. + +And Regan was right. Even a week had been long enough for that--a man +out of a job can't expect credit on the strength of the pay car coming +along next month. Things were in pretty straitened circumstances up at +the Maguires. + +And the more Regan thought, the hotter he got under the collar--at +Noodles. Where he had formerly disliked and submitted to Noodles' +existence in a passive sort of way, he now hated Noodles in a most +earnest and whole-hearted way--and with an unholy desire in his soul to +murder Noodles on sight. For, even if Noodles was directly responsible +and at the bottom of the pass things had come to, Regan's uncomfortable +feeling grew stronger each day that indirectly he had his share in the +distress and want that had moved into headquarters up at the top of +Main Street. It wasn't a nice feeling or a nice position to be in, and +Regan writhed under it--but primarily he cursed Noodles. + +There was nothing small about Regan--there never was. He wasn't small +enough not to do something. He couldn't very well ask the yardmaster +or the section boss to give Maguire a job when he wouldn't give the old +man one himself, so he sent word up to Maguire to come back to work--in +the roundhouse. + +Maguire's answer differed in no whit from the answer he had made to +Gleason, the yardmaster, and every one else to whom he had applied for +a job--Maguire was in deadly earnest. + +"Niver!" said he, to the messenger who bore the olive branch. "Mind +thot, now! Niver--till he takes back fwhat he said--not av I starrve +for ut!" + +Regan swore--and here Regan stuck. _Noodles_! His gorge rose until he +choked. Kill the brat? Yes--murder was in Regan's soul. But to +proclaim Noodles as a godson--_Noodles as a godson_! He had done it +once not knowing what he was doing, and to do it now with the years of +enlightenment upon him--Regan choked, that was all, and grew +apoplectically red in the face. It wasn't the grins and laughs of the +Hill Division that he knew were waiting for him if he did--it was just +_Noodles_. + +When Regan had calmed down from this explosion, he inevitably, of +course, got back to the old perspective--and for another week the +Maguire family up Main Street occupied a reserved seat in his mind. + +Carleton only spoke to him once about it, and that was along toward the +end of the second week, as they were walking uptown together at the +dinner hour. + +"By the way, Tommy," said the super, "how's Maguire getting along?" + +Regan's thoughts having been on the same subject at that moment, he +came back a little crossly. + +"Blamed if I know!" he growled. + +Carleton smiled. Moved by the same motive perhaps, he had gone into +the Cash Grocery Store on the corner the day before and found that +Maguire's credit was re-established--thanks to Regan--though Timmons, +the proprietor, had been sworn to secrecy. + +"One of you two will have to capitulate before very long," he said, +with a side glance at Regan. "And I don't think it will be Maguire." + +"Don't you!" Regan flung out. "You think it will be me?" + +"Yes," laughed Carleton. + +"When I'm dead," said Regan shortly. "Had any word from those +Westinghouse fittings yet? I'm waiting for them now." + +"I'll see about them," said Carleton. "I'm going East this afternoon." + +And there wasn't any more said about Maguire. + +Meanwhile, if Regan's rancor against Noodles had reached a stage that +was acute, Noodles had reached a stage of reciprocative hatred that was +positively deadly. So far as elemental passion and savagery had +developed in twelve years, and Noodles was not a backward boy, just so +far had he developed his malevolence against Regan. Things were in a +pretty strained condition in the environment of the Maguire shack; +Noodles was unhappy all the time, and hungry most of the time. He +heard a good deal about Regan and the depths a man could sink to, and +enough about the immutable inviolability of church tenets and +ordinances to satisfy the most fanatic disciple of orthodoxy--to say +nothing of the deep-seated conviction of the wrath of God that must +inevitably fall upon one who had the sacrilegious temerity to profane +those tenets. + +Mostly, Noodles imbibed this at twilight over the sparsely set table, +and when the twilight faded and it grew dark--they weren't using +kerosene any more at the Maguires--he could still sense the look on his +mother's face that mingled anxiety and gentle reproof; and he edged +back his chair out of reach of his father's cuffs, which he could dodge +in the daylight and couldn't in the dark--for on one point Regan and +the old hostler were in perfect accord. + +"An' yez are the cause av ut!" old Bill would shout, swinging the flat +of his hand in the direction of Noodles' ear every time his violent +oratory reached a climacteric height where a period became a physical +necessity. + +Take it all round, what with the atmosphere of gloom, dodging his +father's attentions, his mother's tears when he had caught her crying +once or twice, and an unsatisfied stomach, black vengeance oozed from +every pore of Noodles' body. His warty little fists clenched, and his +unlovely face contorted into a scowl such as Noodles, and only Noodles, +thanks to the background that nature had already furnished him to work +upon, could scowl. + +Noodles set his brains to work. What he must do to Regan must be +something awful and bloodcurdling; and, realizing, perhaps, that, being +but twelve, he would be handicapped in coping with the master mechanic +single-handed, he sought the means of assistance that most logically +presented itself to him. Noodles lay awake nights trying to dovetail +himself and Regan into the situations of his nickel thrillers. There +wasn't any money with which to buy new nickel thrillers, but by then +Noodles had accumulated quite a stock, and he knew them all off pretty +well by heart, the essentials of them, anyhow. + +Noodles racked his brain for a week of nights--and was in despair. Not +that the nickel thrillers did not offer situations harrowing enough to +glut even his blood-thirsty little soul--they did--they were +peaches--he could see Regan's blood all over the bank vault that the +master mechanic had been trying to rob--he could see Regan walking the +plank of a pirate ship, while the pirates cheered hoarsely--and he +fairly revelled in every one of them--until cold despair would clutch +again at his raging heart. They were peaches all right, but somehow +they wouldn't fit into Big Cloud--he couldn't figure out how to get +Regan to rob a bank vault, and there weren't any pirates in the +immediate vicinity that he had ever heard of. + +Then inspiration came to Noodles one night--and he sat bolt upright in +bed. He would _shadow_ Regan! A fierce, unhallowed joy took hold of +Noodles. Noodles had grasped the constructive technique of the +thriller! Every hero in every nickel thriller shadowed every villain +to his doom. Regan's doom at the end was sure to take care of itself +once he had found Regan out--but the shadowing came first. + +Noodles slept feverishly for the rest of the night, and the following +evening he snooped down Main Street and took up his position in a +doorway on the opposite side of the street from Regan's boarding house. +In just what dire deed of criminal rascality he expected to trap the +master mechanic he did not know, but that Regan was capable of +anything, and that he would catch him in something, Noodles now had no +doubt--that was what the shadowing was for--he grimly determined that +he would be unmoved by appeals for mercy--and his heart beat high with +optimistic excitement. + +Regan came out of the boarding house; and, bare-footed in lieu of +gum-shoes, and hugging the shadows a block behind--Noodles had +refreshed his memory on the most improved methods--Noodles trailed the +master mechanic down the street. Two blocks down, Regan halted on the +corner and began to peer around him. Noodles' lips thinned +suddenly--it began to look promising already--what was Regan up to? A +man came down the cross street, joined Regan, and the two started on +again toward the station. A little disappointed, Noodles, still +hugging the shadows, resumed the chase--it was only Carleton, the +superintendent. + +From the platform, Noodles watched the two men disappear through the +far door of the station. Free from observation now, he hurried along +the platform past the station, and was in time to see a lamp lighted +upstairs in the side window of the super's office. Noodles waited a +moment, then he tiptoed back along the platform, and cautiously pushed +open the door through which the others had disappeared. The door of +the super's room on the upper story opened on the head of the stairs +and, still on tiptoe, Noodles reached the top. Here, on his knees, his +eyes glued to the keyhole, he peered into the room--Regan and the super +were engaged in their nightly game of cards. There was nothing to +raise Noodles' hopes in that, so he descended the stairs and took up +his position behind the rain barrel at the corner of the building, +where he could watch both the window and the entrance. + +At half past ten the light went out, Regan and Carleton came down the +stairs and headed uptown. Noodles, not forgetting the shadows, trailed +them. At the corner where Carleton had joined Regan, Carleton left +Regan, and Regan went on two blocks further and disappeared inside his +boarding house. Noodles, being a philosopher of a sort, told himself +that none of the heroes ever succeeded the first night--and went home. + +The next night, and the three following night, Noodles shadowed Regan +with the same results. By the fifth night, with no single differing +detail to enliven this somewhat monotonous and unproductive programme, +it had become dispiriting; and though Noodles' thirst for vengeance had +not weakened, his faith in the nickel thrillers had. + +But on the sixth night--at the end of the second week since Noodles and +Noodles' father had turned their backs upon the roundhouse--things were +a little different. Noodles, in common with every one else in Big +Cloud, was quite well aware that the super's private car had been +coupled on No. 12 that afternoon, and that Carleton had gone East. + +Regan came out of his boarding house at the same hour as usual, and +Noodles dodged along after him down the street--Noodles by this time, +for finesse, could have put a combination of Nick Carter and Old Sleuth +on the siding until the grass sprouted between the ties. Noodles +dodged along--in the shadows. Regan didn't stop at the corner this +time, but he kept right along heading down for the station. Regan +passed two or three people going in the opposite direction up the +street of the sleepy little mountain town, but this did not confuse +Noodles--Noodles kept right along after Regan. There was no Carleton +to-night, and Regan's criminal propensities would have full +scope--Noodles' hopes ran high. + +Regan reached the station, went down the platform, and disappeared as +usual through the same door. A little perplexed, Noodles followed along +the platform; but, a moment later, from his coign of vantage behind the +rain barrel, he saw the light flash out from the super's window--and +his heart almost stood still. What was Regan doing in the super's +office--_alone_! Noodles' face grew very white--_Carleton had a safe +there_--he had got Regan at last! It had taken a lot of time, but none +of the heroes ever got the villain until after pages and pages of +trying to get him. He had got Regan at last! + +Noodles crept from the shelter of the rain barrel stealthily as a cat, +and, with far more caution than he had ever exercised before, pushed +the outside door open and went up the stairs. There wasn't any hurry; +he would give Regan time to drill through the safe, and perhaps even +let the master mechanic get the money before giving the alarm--Noodles +bitterly bemoaned the fact that he would have to give the alarm at all +and let anybody else in on it, but, owing to the fact that he had been +unable to finance a revolver with which to hold up the master mechanic +red-handed and cover himself with glory at the same time, there +appeared to be nothing else to do. + +It was just a step from the head of the stairs to the door of the +super's room across the hall. Noodles negotiated it with infinite +circumspection, and, on his knees as usual, his heart pounding like a +trip hammer, got his eye to the keyhole. He held it there a very long +time, until he couldn't see any more through hot, scalding, impotent +tears; then he edged back across the hall, and sat down on the top +step--_Regan was playing solitaire_. + +Hands dug disconsolately in his pockets, playing mechanically with a +bit of cord that was about their sole contents, Noodles sat there--and +his faith in nickel thrillers was shaken to the core. Noodles' +thoughts were too complex for coherency--that is, for coherency in any +but one of his thoughts--he hated Regan worse than ever, for he +couldn't altogether expurgate the nickel thrillers from his mind on +such a short notice, and he could hear Regan gloat and hiss "Foiled!" +in his ear. + +Noodles' hands came out of his pocket--with the cord. He wound one end +around the bannisters, and began to see-saw it back and forth aimlessly +in the darkness. There wasn't any good of shadowing Regan any +more--but he wasn't through with Regan. Noodles had a soul above +discouragement. Only what was he to do? If the nickel thrillers had +failed him in his hour of need, he would have to depend on +himself--only what was he to do? Noodles stopped see-sawing the cord +suddenly--and stared at it through the darkness, though he couldn't see +it. Then he edged down another step, turned around on his knees, and +knotted one end of the cord--it was a good stout one--to one side of +the bannisters, about six inches from the level of the hall floor. +There was a bannister railing on each side, and he stretched the cord +tightly across to the other bannister, and knotted it there. That +would do for a beginning! It didn't promise as gory a denouement as he +thirsted for, and he was a little ashamed of the colorlessness of his +expedient compared with those he'd read about, but there wasn't anybody +else likely to use those stairs before Regan did, and it would do for a +beginning--Regan would get a jolt or two before he reached the bottom! + +Noodles retreated down the stairs and retired to the rain barrel. +Waits had been long there before, but to-night the time dragged +hopelessly--he didn't expect to see very much, but he would be able to +hear Regan coming down the stairs, so he waited, curbing his impatience +by biting anxiously on the ends of his finger nails. + +Suddenly Noodles leaned head and shoulders far out from behind the rain +barrel to miss no single detail of this, the initial act of his +revenge, that he could drink in, his eyes fastened on the station +door--the light in the window above had gone out. Very grim was +Noodles' face, and his teeth were hard set together--there was no +foolishness about this. The super's door upstairs opened and +shut--Noodles leaned a little farther forward out from the rain barrel. + +Meanwhile, Regan, upstairs, was not in a good humor. Regan, when +alone, played a complicated and somewhat intricate species of +solitaire, a matter of some pride to the master mechanic, and that +evening he had had no luck--his combinations wouldn't work out. So, +after something like fifteen abortive attempts that consumed the better +part of an hour and a half, and victory still remaining an elusive +thing, Regan chucked the cards back into Carleton's drawer in disgust, +knocked the ashes out of his pipe, refilled the pipe for company +homeward, and, growling a little to himself, blew out the super's lamp. +He walked across to the door, opened and shut it, and stepped out into +the hall. Here, he halted and produced a match, both because his pipe +was as yet unlighted, and because the stairs were dark. He struck the +match, applied it to the tamped tobacco, puffed once--and his eyes, +from the bowl of his pipe, focused suddenly downward on the head of the +stairs. Regan's round, fat little face went a color that put the +glowing end of the match, still held mechanically over the pipe bowl, +to shame, and the fist that wasn't occupied with the match clenched +with the wrath that engulfed him--_Noodles_! + +For a moment, breathing heavily with rage, Regan glared at the +cord--then the match, burning his fingers, did not soothe him any, and +he dropped it hastily, swearing earnestly to himself. Then he bent +down, cut away the cord with his knife, and in grim, laborious +silence--Regan was a heavy man, and the stairs had a tendency to creak +that was hard to suppress--descended step by step. Regan was consumed +with but one desire for the present or the hereafter--to get his hands +on Noodles. + +Where Noodles had been stealthy, Regan was now positively devilish in +his caution and cunning. Step by step he went down, testing each +foothold much after the fashion of a cat that stretches out its paw, +and, finding something not quite to its liking, draws it back, and, +shaking it vigorously, tries again more warily--and the while a fire +unquenchable burned within him. + +He reached the door at the bottom, found the knob, waited an +instant--then suddenly flung the door wide open and sprang out on the +platform. Noodles' form, projecting eagerly far out from the rain +barrel not five yards away, was the first thing his eyes lighted upon. +Regan had no time to waste in words. He made a dash for the rain +barrel--and Noodles, with a sort of surprised squeak of terror, turned +and ran. + +A fat man, ordinarily, cannot run very fast, and neither can a +twelve-year-old boy; but, with vengeance supplying wings to the one, +and terror imparting haste to the other, the time they made from the +rain barrel along the platform past the baggage room and freight shed, +off the platform to the ground, and up the track to the construction +department's storehouse, a matter of a hundred and fifty yards, stands +good to-day as a record in Big Cloud. + +It was pretty near a dead heat. Noodles had five yards' start when he +left the rain barrel; and when he reached the end of the storehouse he +had five yards' lead--no more. A premonition of disaster began to +twine itself around Noodles' heart in a sickly, dispiriting way. He +dashed along beside the wall of the building--and after him lunged +Regan, grunting like a grampus, a threat in every grunt. + +It was a long, low, windowless building, and halfway up its length was +the door--Noodles had known the door to be unlocked at nights for the +purpose of loading rush material for the bridge gangs in the mountains +to go out by the early morning freight west at 4.10--and his hope lay +in the door being open now. The place was full to the ceiling with +boxes, bales, casks, barrels and kegs, and amongst them in the +darkness, being of small dimensions himself, he could soon lose Regan. +He reached the door, snatched at the latch--the door was unlocked--and +with an uplift immeasurable upon his young soul, that gave vent to +itself in a hoot of derision, Noodles flung himself inside. + +Regan, still panting earnestly, the beads on his brow now embryonic +fountain-heads that sent trickling streams down his face, lurched, +pretty well winded, through the door five yards behind Noodles--and +then Regan stopped--and the thought of Noodles was swept from Regan's +mind in a flash. + +The smell of smoke was in his nostrils, and like a white, misty cloud +in the darkness it hung around him--and through it, up toward the far +end of the shed, a fire showed yellow and ugly, that with a curious, +hissing, sibilant sound flared suddenly bright, then died to yellow +ugliness again. + +Grim-faced now, his jaws clamped hard, Regan sprang forward toward the +upper end of the shed. What was afire, he did not know, nor what had +caused it--though the latter, probably, by a match dropped maybe hours +ago by a careless Polack, that had caught and set something smoldering, +and that was now breaking into flame. All Regan knew, all Regan +thought of then, was the--_powder_. There were fifty kegs of giant +blasting powder massed together there somewhere ahead, and just beyond +where the fire was flinging out its challenge to him--enough to wreck +not only the shed, but half the railroad property in Big Cloud as well. + +Up the little handcar tracks between the high-piled stores Regan +ran--and halted where a spurt of flame, ending in a vicious puff of +smoke, shot out beside him, low down on the ground. It was light +enough now, and in a glance the master mechanic caught the black grains +of powder strewing the floor where a broken keg had been rolled along. +A little alleyway had been left here running to the wall, and the fire +itself was bursting from a case in the rear and bottom tier of stores +on one side of this; on the other side were piled the powder kegs--and +the space between, the width of the alleyway, was no more than a bare +five or six feet. + +There was no time to wait for help, the powder grains crunched under +his feet, and ran little zigzag, fizzy lines of fire like a miniature +inferno as the sparks caught them; at any moment it might reach the +kegs, and then--Regan flung himself along the alleyway to the rear tier +of cases, they were small ones here, though piled twice the height of +his head--if he could wrench them away, he could get at the burning +case below! Regan bent, strained at the cases--they were light and +moved--he heaved again to topple them over--and then, as a rasping, +ripping sound reached him from above, he let go his hold to jump +back--too late. A heavy casting, that had been placed on top of the +cases, evidently for economy of space, came hurtling downward, struck +Regan on the head, glanced to his shoulder and arm, slid with a thump +to the ground--and Regan dropped like a log. + +A minute, perhaps two, it had all taken--no more. Noodles, crouched +down against a case just inside the door, had seen the master mechanic +rush by him; and Noodles, too, had seen the flame and smelt the smoke. +Noodles' first impulse was to make his escape, his next to see if he +could not turn this unexpected intervention of fate to his own account +anent the master mechanic. Noodles heard Regan moving about, and he +stole silently in that direction; then Noodles heard the heavy thump of +iron, the softer thud of Regan's fall, and something inside him seemed +to stop suddenly, and his face went very white. + +"Mr. Regan! Mr. Regan!" he stammered out. + +There was no answer--no sound--save an ominous crackle of burning wood. + +Noodles stole further forward--and then, as he reached the spot where +Regan lay, he stood stock-still for a second, petrified with fear--but +the next instant, screaming at the top of his voice for help, he threw +himself upon Regan, pounding frantically with the flat of his hands at +the master mechanic's shoulder, where the other's coat was beginning to +blaze. Somehow, Noodles got this out, and then, still screaming for +help, began to drag Regan away from the side of the blazing case. + +But Regan was a heavy man--almost too much for Noodles. Noodles, +choking with the smoke, his eyes fascinated with horror as they fixed, +now on the powder kegs--whose unloading, in company with a dozen other +awe-struck boys, he had watched a few days before--now on the +sparkling, fizzing grains of powder upon the floor, tugged, and +wriggled, and pulled at the master mechanic. + +Inch by inch, Noodles won Regan to safety--and then, on his hands and +knees, he went back to sweep the grains away from the edge of the kegs. +They burnt his hands as he brushed them along the floor, and he moaned +with the pain between his screams for aid. It was hot in the narrow +place, so narrow that the breath of flame swept his face from the +case--but there was still some powder on the floor to brush back out of +the way, little heaps of it. Weak, and swaying on his knees, Noodles +brushed at it desperately. It seemed to spurt into his face, and he +couldn't breathe any more, and he couldn't see, and his head was +swirling around queerly. He staggered to his feet as there came a rush +of men, and Clarihue, the turner, with the night crew of the roundhouse +came racing up the shed. + +"Good God, what's this!" cried Clarihue. + +"It's--it's a fire," said Noodles, with a sob--and fell into Clarihue's +arms. + +They told Regan about it the next day when they had got his head +patched up and his arm set. Regan didn't say very much as he lay in +his bed, but he asked somebody to go to Maguire's and ask old Bill to +come down. + +And an hour later Maguire entered the room--but he halted a good yard +away from the foot of Regan's bed. + +"Yez sint for me, Regan," observed the little hostler, in noncommittal, +far-away tones. + +"I did, Maguire," said Regan diplomatically. "Things haven't been +going as smooth as they might have over in the roundhouse since you +left, and I want you to come back. What do you say?" + +"'Tis not fwhat _I_ say," said Maguire, and he moved no nearer to the +bed. "'Tis whether yez unsay fwhat yez said yersilf. Do yez take ut +back, Regan?" + +"I do," said Regan in grave tones--but his hand reached up to help the +bandages hide his grin. "I take it all back, Maguire--every word of +it." + +"Thot's all right, thin," said the little hostler, not arrogantly, but +as one justified. "I'm sorry to see yez are sick, Regan, an' I'm glad +to see yez are better--but did I not warn yez, Regan? 'Twas the wrath +av God, Regan, thot's the cause av this." + +"Mabbe," said Regan softly. "Mabbe--but to my thinking 'twas the devil +and all his works." + +"Fwhat's thot?" inquired Maguire, bending forward. "I didn't catch +fwhat yez said, Regan." + +"I said," said Regan, choking a little, "that Noodles is a godson any +godfather would be proud to have." + +"Sure he is," said Noodles' father cordially. "He is thot." + + + + +VIII + +ON THE NIGHT WIRE + +Tommy Regan speaks of it yet; so does Carleton; and so, for the matter +of that, does the Hill Division generally--and there's a bit of a smile +goes with it, too, but the smile comes through as a sort of feeble +thing from the grim set of their lips. They remember it--it is one of +the things they have never forgotten--Dan McGrew and the Kid, and the +night the Circus Special pulled out of Big Cloud with Bull Coussirat +and Fatty Hogan in the cab. + +Neither the Kid nor McGrew were what you might call born to the Hill +Division; neither of them had been brought up with it, so to speak. +The Kid came from an Eastern system--and McGrew came from +God-knows-where. To pin McGrew down to anything definite or specific +in that regard was something just a little beyond the ability of the +Hill Division, but it was fairly evident that where railroads were +there McGrew had been--he was old enough, anyway--and he knew his +business. When McGrew was sober he was a wizard on the key--but +McGrew's shame was drink. + +McGrew dropped off at Big Cloud one day, casually, from nowhere, and +asked for a job despatching. A man in those days out in the new West +wasn't expected to carry around his birth certificate in his vest +pocket--he made good or he didn't in the clothes he stood in, that was +all there was to it. They gave him a job assisting the latest new man +on the early morning trick as a sort of test, found that he was better, +a long way better than the latest new man, gave him a regular +despatcher's trick of his own--and thought they had a treasure. + +For a month they were warranted in their belief, for all that McGrew +personally appeared to be a rather rough card--and then McGrew cut +loose. He went into the Blazing Star Saloon one afternoon--and he left +it only when deposited outside on the sidewalk as it closed up at four +o'clock on the following morning. This was the hour McGrew was +supposed to sit in for his trick at the key; but McGrew was quite +oblivious to all such considerations. A freight crew, just in and +coming up from the yards, carried him home to his boarding house. +McGrew got his powers of locomotion back far enough by late afternoon +to reach the Blazing Star again--and the performance was +repeated--McGrew went the limit. He ended up with a week in the hands +of little Doctor McTurk. + +McTurk was scientific from the soles of his feet up, and earnestly +professional all the rest of the way. When McGrew began to get a +glimmering of intelligence again, McTurk went at him red-headed. + +"Your heart's bad," the little doctor flung at McGrew, and there was no +fooling in his voice. "So's your liver--cirrhosis. But mostly your +heart. You'll try this just once too often--and you'll go out like a +collapsed balloon, out like the snuffing of a candle wick." + +McGrew blinked at him. + +"I've heard that before," said he indifferently. + +"Indeed!" snapped the irascible little doctor. + +"Yes," said McGrew, "quite a few times. This ain't my maiden trip. +You fellows make me tired! I'm a pretty good man yet, ain't I? And +I'm likely to be when you're dead. I've got my job to worry about now, +and that's enough to worry about. Got any idea of what Carleton's said +about it?" + +"You keep this up," said McTurk sharply, refusing to sidestep the +point, as, bag in hand, he moved toward the door, "and it won't +interest you much what Carleton or anybody else says--mark my words, my +man." + +It was Tommy Regan, fat-paunched, big-hearted, good-natured, who +stepped into the breach. There was only one place on this wide earth +in Carleton's eyes for a railroad man who drank when he should have +been on duty--and that was a six-foot trench, three feet deep. In +Carleton's mind, from the moment he heard of it, McGrew was out. But +Regan saved McGrew; and the matter was settled, as many a matter had +been settled before, over the nightly game of pedro between the +superintendent and the master mechanic, upstairs in the super's office +over the station. Incidentally, they played pedro because there wasn't +anything else to do nights--Big Cloud in those days wasn't boasting a +grand-opera house, and the "movies" were still things of the future. + +"He's a pretty rough case, I guess; but give him a chance," said Regan. + +"A chance!" exclaimed Carleton, with a hard smile. "Give a despatcher +who drinks a chance--to send a trainload or two of souls into eternity, +and about a hundred thousand dollars' worth of rolling stock to the +junk heap while he's boozing over the key!" + +"No," said Regan. "A chance--to make good." + +Carleton laid down his hand, and stared across the table at the master +mechanic. + +"Go on, Tommy," he prompted grimly. "What's the answer?" + +"Well," said Regan, "he's a past master on the key, we know that--that +counts for something. What's the matter with sending him somewhere up +the line where he can't get a drink if he goes to blazes for it? It +might make a man of him, and save the company a good operator at the +same time--we're not long on operators." + +"H'm!" observed Carleton, with a wry grin, picking up his cards again +one by one. "I suppose you've some such place as Angel Forks, for +instance, in mind, Tommy?" + +"Yes," said Regan. "I was thinking _of_ Angel Forks." + +"I'd rather be fired," submitted Carleton dryly. + +"Well," demanded Regan, "what do you say? Can he have it?" + +"Oh, yes," agreed Carleton, smiling. "He can have _that_--after I've +talked to him. We're pretty short of operators, as you say. Perhaps +it will work out. It will as long as he sticks, I guess--if he'll take +it at all." + +"He'll take it," said Regan, "and be glad to get it. What do you bid?" + +McGrew had been at Angel Forks--night man there--for perhaps the matter +of a month, when the Kid came to Big Cloud fresh from a key on the +Penn. They called him the Kid because he looked it--he wasn't past the +stage of where he had to shave more than once a week. The Kid, they +dubbed him on the spot, but his name was Charlie Keene; a thin, wiry +little chap, with black hair and a bright, snappy, quick look in his +eyes and face. He was pretty good on the key, too; not a master like +McGrew, he hadn't had the experience, but pretty good for all that--he +could "send" with the best of them, and there wasn't much to complain +about in his "taking," either. + +The day man at Angel Forks didn't drink--at least his way-bill didn't +read that way--and they gave him promotion in the shape of a station +farther along the line that sized up a little less tomb-like, a little +less like a buried-alive sepulcher than Angel Forks did. And the Kid, +naturally, being young and new to the system, had to start at the +bottom--they sent him up to Angel Forks on the morning way freight the +day after he arrived in Big Cloud. + +There was something about the Kid that got the train crew of the way +freight right from the start. They liked a man a whole lot and pretty +sudden in their rough-and-ready way, those railroaders of the Rockies +in those days, or they didn't like him well enough to say a good word +for him at his funeral; that's the way it went--and the caboose was +swearing by the Kid by the time they were halfway to Angel Forks, where +he shifted from the caboose to the cab for the rest of the run. + +Against the rules--riding in the cab? Well, perhaps it is--if you're +not a railroad man. It depends. Who was going to say anything about +it? It was Fatty Hogan himself, poking a long-spouted oil can into the +entrails of the 428, while the train crew were throwing out tinned +biscuits and canned meats and contract pie for the lunch counter at Elk +River, who invited him, anyhow. + +That's how the Kid came to get acquainted with Hogan, and Hogan's mate, +Bull Coussirat, who was handling the shovel end of it. Coussirat was +an artist in his way--apart from the shovel--and he started in to guy +the Kid. He drew a shuddering picture of the desolation and the +general lack of what made life worth living at Angel Forks, which +wasn't exaggerated because you couldn't exaggerate Angel Forks much in +that particular respect; and he told the Kid about Dan McGrew and how +headquarters--it wasn't any secret--had turned Angel Forks into what he +called a booze-fighter's sanatorium. But he didn't break through the +Kid's optimism or ambition much of any to speak of. + +By the time the way freight whistled for Angel Forks, the Kid had Bull +Coussirat's seat, and Coussirat was doing the listening, while Hogan +was leaning toward them to catch what he could of what was going on +over the roar and pound of the 428. There was better pay, and, what +counted most, better chances for a man who was willing to work for them +out in the West than there was in the East, the Kid told them with a +quiet, modest sincerity--and that was why he had come out there. He +was looking for a train despatcher's key some day after he had got +through station operating, and after that--well, something better still. + +There wasn't any jolly business or blowhard about the Kid. He meant +what he said--he was going up. And as far as McGrew was concerned, +he'd get along with McGrew. McGrew, or any other man, wouldn't hold +him back from the goal he had his eyes set upon and his mind made up to +work for. There was perhaps a little more of the youthful enthusiasm +in it that looked more buoyantly on the future than hard-headed +experience would; but it was sincere, and they liked him for it--who +wouldn't? Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan in the days to come had +reason to remember that talk in the cab. + +Desolate, perhaps, isn't the word to describe Angel Forks--for Angel +Forks was pretty enough, if rugged grandeur is counted pretty. Across +the track and siding, facing the two-story wooden structure that was +the station, the bare gray rock of a cut through the mountain base +reared upward to meet a pine-covered slope, and then blend with bare, +gray rock once until it became a glaciered peak at the sky line; behind +the station was a sort of plateau, a little valley, green and velvety, +bisected by a tumbling, rushing little stream, with the mountains again +closing in around it, towering to majestic heights, the sun playing in +relief and shadow on the fantastic, irregular, snow-capped summits. It +was pretty enough, no one ever disputed that! The road hung +four-by-five-foot photographs of it with +eight-inch-wide-trimmed-with-gilt frames in the big hotel corridors +East, and no one who ever bought a ticket on the strength of the +photographer's art ever sent in a kick to the advertising department, +or asked for their money back--it looked all right from the car windows. + +But sign of habitation there was not, apart from the little +station--not even a section man's shanty--just the station. Angel +Forks was important to the Transcontinental on one count, and on one +count only--its siding. Neither freight nor passenger receipts were +swelled, twelve months in or twelve months out, by Angel Forks; but, +geographically, the train despatcher's office back in Big Cloud never +lost sight of it--in the heart of the mountains, single-tracked, mixed +trains, locals, way freights, specials, and the Limiteds that knew no +"rights" on earth but a clean-swept track with their crazy fast +schedules, met and crossed each other as expediency demanded. + +So, in a way, after all, perhaps it _was_ desolate--except from the car +windows. Horton, the day man that the Kid was relieving, evidently had +found it so. He was waiting on the platform with his trunk when the +way freight pulled in, and he turned the station over to the Kid +without much formality. + +"God be with you till we meet again," was about the gist of what Horton +said--and he said it with a mixture of sympathy for another's +misfortune and an uplift at his own escape from bondage struggling for +the mastery, while he waved his hand from the tail of the caboose as +the way freight pulled out. + +There was mighty little formality about the transfer, and the Kid found +himself in charge with almost breathtaking celerity. Angel Forks, Dan +McGrew, way freight No. 47, and the man he had relieved, were sort of +hazy, nebulous things for a moment. There wasn't time for them to be +anything else; for, about one minute after he had jumped to the +platform, he was O.S.-ing "out" the train that had brought him in. + +It wasn't quite what he had been used to back in the more sedate East, +and he grinned a little to himself as his fingers tapped the key, and +by the time he had got back his O. K. the tail of the caboose was +swinging a curve and disappearing out of sight. The Kid, then, had a +chance to look around him--and look for Dan McGrew, the man who was to +be his sole companion for the days to come. + +He found McGrew upstairs--after he had explored all there was to +explore of the ground floor of the station, which was a sort of +combination kitchen, living room and dining room that led off from the +office--just the two rooms below, with a ladder-like staircase between +them leading up above. And above there was just the one room under the +eaves with two bunks in it, one on either side. The night man was +asleep in one of these, and the Kid did not disturb him. After a +glance around the rather cheerless sleeping quarters, he returned +downstairs, and started in to pick up the threads of the office. + +Dusk comes early in the fall in the mountains, and at five o'clock the +switch and semaphore lamps were already lighted, and in the office +under a green-shaded lamp the Kid sat listening to some stray time +stuff coming over the wire, when he heard the night man moving overhead +and presently start down the stairs. The Kid pushed back his chair, +rose to his feet, and turned with outstretched hand to make friends +with his new mate--and his outstretched hand drew back and reached +uncertainly to the table edge beside him. + +For a long minute neither man spoke--staring into each other's eyes. +In the opening through the partition at the foot of the stairs, Dan +McGrew seemed to sway a little on his feet, and his face, what could be +seen of it through the tawny beard that Angel Forks had offered him no +incentive to shave, was ashen white. + +It was McGrew who broke the silence. + +"Hello, Charlie!" he said in a sort of cheerful bravado, that rang far +from true. + +"So _you_ are Dan McGrew! The last time I heard of you your name was +Brodie." The Kid's lips, as he spoke, hardly seemed to move. + +"I've had a dozen since then," said McGrew, in a pleading whine, +"more'n a dozen. I've been chased from place to place, Charlie. I've +lived a dog's life, and----" + +The Kid cut him short, in a low, passionate voice: + +"And you expect me to keep my mouth shut about you here--is that it?" + +McGrew's fingers plucked nervously, hesitantly at his beard; his tongue +circled dry lips, and his black eyes fell from the Kid to trace +aimlessly, it seemed, the cracks in the floor. + +The Kid dropped back into his chair, and, elbows on the table, chin in +hands, stared out across the tracks to where the side of the rock cut +was now no more than a black shadow. + +Again it was McGrew who broke the silence. + +"What are you going to do?" he asked miserably. "What are you going to +do? Use the key and put them wise? You wouldn't do that, would +you--Charlie? You wouldn't throw me down--would you? I'm--I'm living +decent here." + +The Kid made no answer--made no movement. + +"Charlie!" McGrew's voice rose in a high-pitched, nervous appeal. +"Charlie--what are you going to do?" + +"Nothing!" The Kid's eyes were still on the black, rock shadow through +the station window, and the words came monotonously. "Nothing! As far +as I am concerned, you are--Dan McGrew." + +McGrew lurched heavily forward, relief in his face and voice as he put +his hands on the Kid's shoulders. + +"You're all right, Charlie, all right; I knew you wouldn't----" + +The Kid sprang to his feet, and flung the other's hands roughly from +his shoulders. + +"Keep your hands off me!" he said tensely. "I don't stand for that! +And let's understand each other. You do your work here, and I do mine. +I don't want to talk to you. I don't want you to talk to me. I don't +want anything to do with you--that's as straight as I know how to put +it. The first chance I get I'll move--they'll never move you, for I +know why they sent you here. That's all, and that's where we +stand--McGrew." + +"D'ye mean that?" said McGrew, in a cowed, helpless way. + +The Kid's answer was only a harsh, bitter laugh--but it was answer +enough. McGrew, after a moment's hesitation, turned and went silently +from the room. + +A week passed, and another week came and went, and neither man spoke to +the other. Each lived his life apart, cooked for himself, and did his +work; and it was good for neither one. McGrew grew morose and ugly; +and the Kid somehow seemed to droop, and there was a pallor in his +cheeks and a listless air about him that was far from the cheery +optimism with which he had come to take the key at Angel Forks. + +Two weeks passed, and then one night, after the Kid had gone to bed, +two men pitched a rough, weather-beaten tent on the plateau below the +station. Hard-looking specimens they were; unkempt, unshaven, each +with a mount and a pack horse. Harvey and Lansing they told McGrew +their names were, when they dropped in for a social call that night, +and they said that they were prospectors--but their geological hammers +were bottles of raw spirit that the Indians loved, and the veins of ore +they tapped were the furs that an Indian will sell for "red-eye" when +he will sell for no other thing on earth. It was against the +law--enough against the law to keep a man's mouth who was engaged in +that business pretty tightly shut--but, perhaps recognizing a kindred +spirit in McGrew, and warmed by the bottle they had hospitably brought, +before that first night was over no secret of that sort lay between +them and McGrew. + +And so drink came to Angel Forks; and in a supply that was not stinted. +It was Harvey and Lansing's stock in trade--and they were well stocked. +McGrew bought it from them with cash and with provisions, and played +poker with them with a kitty for the "red-eye." + +There was nothing riotous about it at first, not bad enough to +incapacitate McGrew; and it was a night or two before the Kid knew what +was going on, for McGrew was cautious. Harvey and Lansing were away in +the mountains during the daytime, and they came late to fraternize with +McGrew, around midnight, long after the Kid was asleep. Then McGrew +began to tipple steadily, and signs of drink came patently enough--too +patently to be ignored one morning when the Kid relieved McGrew and +went on for the day trick. + +The Kid said nothing, no word had passed between them for two weeks; +but that evening, when McGrew in turn went on for his trick, the Kid +went upstairs and found a bottle, nearly full, hidden under McGrew's +mattress. He took it, went outside with it, smashed it against a +rock--and kept on across the plateau to the prospectors' outfit. +Harvey and Lansing, evidently just in from a day's lucrative trading, +were unsaddling and busy over their pack animals. + +"Hello, Keene!" they greeted in chorus; and Lansing added: "Hang 'round +a bit an' join in; we're just goin' TO cook grub." + +The Kid ignored both the salutation and the proffered hospitality. + +"I came down here to tell you two fellows something," he said slowly, +and there was a grim, earnest set to his lips that was not to be +misunderstood. "It's none of my business that you're camping around +here, but up there is railroad property, and that _is_ my business. If +you show your faces inside the station again or pass out any more booze +to McGrew, I'll wire headquarters and have you run in; and somehow, +though I've only met you once or twice, I don't fancy you're anxious to +touch head-on with the authorities." He looked at the two steadily for +an instant, while they stared back half angrily, half sheepishly. +"That's fair warning, isn't it?" he ended, as he turned and began to +retrace his steps to the station. "You'd better take it--you won't get +a second one." + +They cursed him when they found their tongues, and did it heartily, +interwoven with threats and savage jeers that followed him halfway to +the embankment. But their profanity did not cloak the fact that, to a +certain extent, the Kid's words were worthy of consideration. + +The extent was two nights--that night, and the next one. + +On the third night, or rather, far on in the early morning hours, the +Kid, upstairs, awakened from sleep, sat suddenly up in his bunk. A +wild outburst of drunken song, accompanied by fists banging time on the +table, reached him--then an abashed hush, through which the click of +the sounder came to him and he read it mechanically--the despatcher at +Big Cloud was making a meeting point for two trains at the Bend, forty +miles away, nothing to do with Angel Forks. Came then a rough +oath--another--and a loud, brawling altercation. + +The Kid's lips thinned. He sprang out of his bunk, pulled on shirt and +trousers, and went softly down the stairs. They didn't hear him, they +were too drunk for that; and they didn't see him--until he was fairly +inside the room; and then for a moment they leered at him, suddenly +silent, in a silly, owl-like way. + +There was an anger upon the Kid, a seething passion, that showed in his +bloodless face and quivering lips. He stood for an instant motionless, +glancing around the office; the table from the other room had been +dragged in; on either side of it sat Harvey and Lansing; at the end, +within reach of the key, sat Dan McGrew, swaying tipsily back and +forth, cards in hand; under the table was an empty bottle, another had +rolled into a corner against the wall; and on the table itself were two +more bottles amongst greasy, scattered cards, one almost full, the +other still unopened. + +"S'all right, Charlie," hiccoughed McGrew blandly. "S'all right--jus' +havin' little game--good boy, Charlie." + +McGrew's words seemed to break the spell. With a jump the Kid reached +him, flung him roughly from his seat, toppling him to the floor, and +stretched out his hand for the key--but he never reached it. Harvey +and Lansing, remembering the threat, and having more reason to fear the +law than on the simple count of trespassing on railroad property, +lunged for him simultaneously. Quick as a cat on his feet, the Kid +turned, and his fist shot out, driving full into Lansing's face, +sending the man staggering backward--but Harvey closed. Purling oaths, +Lansing snatched the full bottle, and, as the Kid, locked in Harvey's +arms, swung toward him, he brought the bottle down with a crash on the +back of the Kid's head--and the Kid slid limply to the floor. + +White-faced, motionless, unconscious, the Kid lay there, the blood +beginning to trickle from his head, and in a little way it sobered the +two "prospectors"--but not McGrew. + +"See whash done," said McGrew with a maudlin sob, picking himself up +from where the Kid had thrown him. "See whash done! Killed him--thash +whash done." + +It frightened them, McGrew's words--Harvey and Lansing. They looked +again at the Kid and saw no sign of life--and then they looked at each +other. The bottle was still in Lansing's hand, and he set it back now +on the table with a little shudder. + +"We'd better beat it," he croaked hoarsely. "By daylight we want to be +far away from here." + +Harvey's answer was a practical one--he made for the door and +disappeared, Lansing close on his heels. + +McGrew alternately cursed and pleaded with them long after they were +out of earshot; and then, moved by drunken inspiration, started to +clear up the room. He got as far as reaching for the empty bottles on +the floor, and that act seemed to father a second inspiration--there +were other bottles. He reeled to the table, picked up the one from +which they had been drinking, stared at the Kid upon the floor, brushed +the hair out of his eyes, and, throwing back his head, drank deeply. + +"Jus'er steady myself--feel shaky," he mumbled. + +He stared at the Kid again. The Kid was beginning to show signs of +returning consciousness. McGrew, blinking, took another drink. + +"Nosh dead, after all," said McGrew thickly. "Thank God, nosh dead, +after all!" + +Then drunken cunning came into his eyes. He slid the full bottle into +his pocket, and, carrying the ether in his hand, stumbled upstairs, +drank again, and hid them craftily, not beneath the mattress this time, +but under the eaves where the flooring met and there was a loose plank. + +When he stumbled downstairs again, the Kid was sitting in a chair, +holding his swimming head in his hands. + +"S'all right, Charlie," said McGrew inanely. + +The Kid did not look at him; his eyes were fixed upon the table. + +"Where are those bottles?" he demanded suspiciously. + +"Gone," said McGrew plaintively. "Gone witsh fellows--fellows took 'em +an' ran 'way. Whash goin' to do 'bout it, Charlie?" + +"I'll tell you when you're sober," said the Kid curtly. "Get up to +your bunk and sleep it off." + +"S'my trick," said McGrew heavily, waving his hand toward the key. +"Can't let nusher fellow do my work." + +"Your trick!" The words came in a withering, bitter rush from the Kid. +"Your trick! You're in fine shape to hold down a key, aren't you!" + +"Whash reason I ain't? Held it down all right, so far," said McGrew, a +world of injury in his voice--and it was true; so far he had held it +down all right that night, for the very simple reason that Angel Forks +had not been the elected meeting point of trains for a matter of some +three hours, not since the time when Harvey and Lansing had dropped in +and McGrew had been sober. + +"Get up to your bunk!" said the Kid between his teeth--and that was all. + +McGrew swayed hesitantly for a moment on uncertain legs, blinked +soddenly a sort of helpless protest, and, turning, staggered up the +stairs. + +For a little while the Kid sat in his chair, trying to conquer his +dizzy, swimming head; and then the warm blood trickling down his +neck--he had not noticed it before--roused him to action. He took the +lamp and went into the other room, bathed his head in the wash-basin, +sopping at the back of his neck to stop the flow, and finally bandaged +it as best he could with a wet cloth as a compress, and a towel drawn +tightly over it, which he knotted on his forehead. + +He finished McGrew's abortive attempt at housecleaning after that, and +sat in to hold down the rest of the night trick, while McGrew in sleep +should recover his senses. But McGrew did not sleep. McGrew was +fairly started--and McGrew had two bottles at command. + +At five-thirty in the morning, No. 81, the local freight, west, making +a meeting point, rattled her long string of flats and boxes on the +Angel Forks siding; and the Kid, unknotting his bandage, dropped it +into a drawer of his desk. Brannahan, No. 81's conductor, kicked the +door open, and came in for his orders. + +"Hello, Kid!" exclaimed Brannahan. "What you sitting in for? Where's +your mate?" + +"Asleep," the Kid laughed at him. "Where do you suppose he is! We're +swopping tricks for a while for the sake of variety." + +Brannahan stooped and lunged the stub of the cigar in his mouth over +the lamp chimney, and with the up-draft nearly extinguished the flame; +then he pulled up a chair, tilted back and stuck his feet up on the +desk. + +"Guess most anything would be variety in this God-forsaken hole," he +observed between puffs. "What?" + +"Oh, it's not so bad--when you get used to it," said the Kid. + +He edged his own chair around to face Brannahan squarely--the wound in +the back of his head was bleeding again; perhaps it had never stopped +bleeding, he did not know. + +Brannahan made small talk, waiting for the fast freight, east, to +cross; and the Kid smiled, while his fingers clutched desperately now +and then at the arms of his chair to keep himself from pitching over, +as those sickening, giddy waves, like hot and cold flashes, swept him. + +Brannahan went at last, the fast freight roared by, No. 81 pulled out, +and the Kid went back to the wash-basin and put his bandage on again. + +The morning came and went, the afternoon, and the evening; and by +evening the Kid was sick and dropping weak. That smash on his head +must have been more serious than he had thought at first; for, again +and again, and growing more frequent, had come those giddy flashes, and +once, he wasn't sure, but it seemed as though he had fainted for a +moment or two. + +It was getting on to ten o'clock now, and he sat, or, rather, lay +forward with his head in his arms over the desk under the lighted lamp. +The sounder was clicking busily; the Kid raised his head a little, and +listened. There was a Circus Special, west, that night, and No. 2, the +eastbound Limited, was an hour off schedule, and, trying to make it up, +was running with clear rights while everything else on the train sheet +dodged to the sidings to get out of the way. The sounder stopped for +an instant, then came the dispatcher's "complete"--the Circus Special +was to cross the Limited at L'Aramie, the next station west of Angel +Forks. It had nothing to do with the Kid, and it would be another two +hours at least before the Circus Special was along. + +The Kid's head dropped back on his arms again. What was he to do? He +could stick out the night somehow--he _must_ stick it out. If he asked +for a relief it was the sack for the man upstairs--it was throwing +McGrew cold. It wouldn't take them long to find out what was the +matter with McGrew! And surely McGrew would be straight again by +morning--he wasn't any better now, worse if anything, but by morning +surely the worst of the drink would be out of him. McGrew had been +pretty bad all day--as bad as the Kid had ever seen a man. He wondered +a little numbly about it. He had thought once that McGrew might have +had some more drink hidden, and he had searched for it during the +forenoon while McGrew watched him from the bunk; but he had found +nothing. It was strange, too, the way McGrew was acting, strange that +it took so long for the man to get it out of his system, it seemed to +the Kid; but the Kid had not found those last two bottles, neither was +the Kid up in therapeutics, nor was he the diagnostician that Doctor +McTurk was. + +"By morning," said the Kid, with the moan, "if he can't stand a trick +I'll _have_ to wire. I'm afraid to-night 'll be my limit." + +It was still and quiet--not even a breeze to whisper through the cut, +or stir the pine-clad slope into rustling murmurs. Almost heavily the +silence lay over the little station buried deep in the heart of the +mighty range. Only the sounder spoke and chattered--at +intervals--spasmodically. + +An hour passed, an hour and a half, and the Kid scarcely moved--then he +roused himself. It was pretty near time for the Circus Special to be +going through to make its meeting point with the Limited at L'Aramie, +and he looked at his lights. He could see them, up and down, switch +and semaphore, from the bay window of the station where he sat. It was +just a glance to assure himself that all was right. He saw the lights +through red and black flashes before his eyes, saw that the main line +was open as it should be--and dropped his swooning, throbbing head back +on his arms once more. + +And then suddenly he sat erect. From overhead came the dull, ominous +thud of a heavy fall. He rose from his chair--and caught at the table, +as the giddiness surged over him and his head swam around. For an +instant he hung there swaying, then made his way weakly for the stairs +and started up. + +There was a light above--he had kept a lamp burning there--but for a +moment after he reached the top nothing but those ghastly red and black +flashes met his eyes--and then, with a strange, inarticulate cry, he +moved toward the side of the room. + +Sprawled in a huddled heap upon the floor beneath the eaves, collapsed, +out like the snuffing of a candle wick, as Doctor McTurk had said some +day he would go out, dead, lay Dan McGrew--the loose plank up, two +empty bottles beside him, as though the man had snatched first one and +then the other from their hiding place in the wild hope that there +might be something left of the supply drained to the last drop hours +before. + +The Kid stooped over McGrew, straightened up, stared at the lifeless +form before him, and his hands went queerly to his temples and the +sides of his head--the room spun dizzily around and around, the lamp, +the dead man on the floor, the bunks, a red-and-black flashed +whirl--the Kid's hands reached grasping into nothingness for support, +and he slipped inertly to the floor. + +From below came the sharp tattoo of the sounder making the Angel Forks +call, quick, imperative at first--then like a knell of doom, in frantic +appeal, the despatchers' life and death, the _seventeen_--and, "Hold +Circus Special." Over and over again the sounder spoke and cried and +babbled and sobbed like a human soul in agony; over and over again +while the minutes passed, and with heavy, resonant roar the long Circus +Special rumbled by--but the man on the night wire at Angel Forks was +dead; and the Kid was past the hearing--there were to come weeks, while +he raved in the furious delirium and lay in the heavy stupor of brain +fever, before a key meant anything to him again. + +It's queer the way things happen! Call it luck, if you like--maybe it +is--maybe it's something more than luck. It wouldn't be sacrilege, +would it, to say that the hand of God had something to do with keeping +the Circus Special and the Limited from crashing head-on in the +rock-walled, twisting canyon, four miles west of Angel Forks, whatever +might be the direct means, ridiculous, before-unheard-of, funny, or +absurd, that saved a holocaust that night? That wouldn't be sacrilege, +would it? Well, call it luck, if you like--call it anything you like. +Queer things happen in railroading--but this stands alone, queerest of +all in the annals of fifty roads in a history of fifty years. + +The Limited, thanks to a clean-swept track, had been making up time, +making up enough of it to throw meeting point with the Circus Special +at L'Aramie out--and the despatcher had tried to Hold the Circus +Special at Angel Forks and let the Limited pass her there. There was +time enough to do it, plenty of it--and under ordinary circumstances it +would have been all in the night's work. But there was blame, too, and +Saxton, who was on the key at Big Cloud that night, relieving Donkin, +who was sick, went on the carpet for it--he let the Limited tear +through L'Aramie _before_ he sent his order to Angel Forks, with the +Circus Special in the open cutting along for her meeting point with +nothing but Angel Forks between her and L'Aramie. + +That was the despatcher's end of it--the other end is a little +different. Whether some disgruntled employee, seeking to revenge +himself on the circus management, loosened the door of one of the cars +while the Special lay on the siding waiting for a crossing at Mitre +Peak, her last stop, or whether it was purely an accident, no one ever +knew--though the betting was pretty heavy on the disgruntled employee +theory--there had been trouble the day before. However, be that as it +may, one way or the other, one thing was certain, they found the door +open after it was all over, and--but, we're over-running our holding +orders--we'll get to that in a minute. + +Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan, in the 428, were pulling the Special +that night, and as they shot by the Angel Forks station the fireman was +leaning out of the gangway for a breath of air. + +"Wonder how the Kid's making out?" he shouted in Hogan's ear, +retreating into the cab as they bumped over the west-end siding switch +with a shattering racket. "Good kid, that--ain't seen him since the +day he came up with us." + +Hogan nodded, checking a bit for the curve ahead, mindful of his +high-priced, heavily insured live freight. + +"Did ever you hear such a forsaken row!" he ejaculated irrelevantly. +"Listen to it, Bull. About three runs a year like this and I'd be +clawing at iron bars and trying to mimic a menagerie. Listen to it!" + +Coussirat listened. Every conceivable kind of an animal on earth +seemed to be lifting its voice to High Heaven in earnest protest for +some cause or other--the animals, beyond any peradventure of doubt, +were displeased with their accommodations, uncomfortable, and +indignantly uneasy. The rattle of the train was a paltry thing--over +it hyenas laughed, lions roared, elephants trumpeted, and giraffes +emitted whatever noises giraffes emit. It was a medley fit for Bedlam, +from shrill, whistling, piercing shrieks that set the ear-drums +tingling, to hoarse, cavernous bellows like echoing thunder. + +"Must be something wrong with the animals," said Coussirat, with an +appreciative grin. "They weren't yowling like that when we +started--guess they don't like their Pullmans." + +"It's enough to give you the creeps," growled Fatty Hogan. + +Coussirat reached for the chain, and with an expert flip flung wide the +furnace door--and the bright glow lighted up the heavens and shot the +black of the cab into leaping, fiery red. Coussirat swung around, +reaching for his shovel--and grabbed Hogan's arm instead, as a chorus +of unearthly, chattering shrieks rent the air. + +"For the love of Mike, for God's sake, Fatty," he gasped, "look at +that!" + +Perched on the tender, on the top of the water tank, just beyond the +edge of the coal, sat a well-developed and complacent ape--and, as +Coussirat looked, from the roof of the property car, behind the tender, +another swung to join the first. + +"Jiminy Christmas!" yelled Hogan, screwed around in his seat. "The +whole blasted tribe of monkeys is loose! That's what's wrong with the +rest of the animals--the little devils have probably been teasing them +through the barred air-holes at the ends of the cars. Look at 'em! +Look at 'em come!" + +Coussirat was looking--he hadn't stopped looking. Along the roof of +the property car they came, a chattering, jabbering, swaying string of +them--and on the brake wheel two sat upright, lurching and clinging for +dear life, the short hair blown straight back from their foreheads with +the sweep of the wind, while they peered with earnest, strained faces +into the cab. And the rest, two dozen strong now, massed on the roof +of the property car, perilously near the edges for anything but +monkeys, inspected the cab critically, picked at each other's hides, +made gestures, some of which were decidedly uncomplimentary, and +chattered volubly to their leaders already on the tender. The tender +seemed to appeal. Down came another monkey via the brake-rod, and +swung by its tail with a sort of flying-trapeze effect to the +tender--and what one did another did--the accommodation on the water +tank was being crowded--the front rank moved up on the coal. + +"Say!" bawled Coussirat to his mate. "Say, Fatty, get up and give 'em +your seat--there's ladies present. And say, what are we going to do +about it? The little pets ought to be put back to bed." + +"Do nothing!" snapped Hogan, one wary eye on the monkeys, and the other +on the right of way ahead. "If the circus people don't know enough to +shut their damned beasts up properly it's their own lookout--it's not +our funeral, whatever happens." + +The advance guard of the monkeys had approached too close to the crest +of the high-piled coal, and as a result, while they scrambled back for +firmer footing, they sent a small avalanche of it rolling into the cab. +This was touching Coussirat personally--and Coussirat glared. + +Coussirat was no nature faker--he knew nothing about animals, their +habits, peculiarities, or characteristics. He snatched up a piece of +coal, and heaved it at the nearest monkey. + +"Get out, you little devil--_scut_!" he shouted--and missed--and the +effect was disconcerting to Coussirat. + +Monkeys are essentially imitative, earnestly so--and not over-timid +when in force--they imitated Coussirat. Before he could get his +breath, first one and then another began to pick up hunks of coal and +heave them back--and into the cab poured a rain of missiles. For an +instant, a bare instant, Coussirat stood his ground, then he dove for +the shelter of his seat. Soft coal? Yes--but there are some fairish +lumps even in soft coal. + +Crash went the plate-glass face of the steam gauge! It was a good +game, a joyous game--and there was plenty of coal, hunks and hunks of +it--and plenty of monkeys, "the largest and most intelligent collection +on earth," the billboards said. + +Crash went the cab glass behind Fatty Hogan's head--and the monkeys +shrieked delight. They hopped and jumped and performed gyrations over +each other, those in the rear; while those on the firing line, with +stern, screwed up, wizened faces, blinking furiously, swung their hairy +arms--and into the cab still poured the hail of coal. + +With a yell of rage, clasping at his neck where the glass had cut him, +Fatty Hogan bounced forward in his seat. + +"You double-blanked, blankety-blanked, triple-plated ass!" he bellowed +at Coussirat. "You--you _damned_ fool, you!" he screamed. "Didn't you +know any better than that! Drive 'em off with the hose--turn the hose +on them!" + +"Turn it on yourself," said Coussirat sullenly; he was full length on +his seat, and mindful that his own glass might go as Hogan's had. +"D'ye think I'm looking for glory and a wreath of immortelles?" + +Funny? Well, perhaps. Is this sacrilege--to say it wasn't luck? + +Crash! There was a hiss of steam, a scalding stream of water, and in a +moment the cab was in a white cloud. Mechanically, Hogan slammed his +throttle shut, and snatched at the "air." It was the water glass--and +the water glass sometimes is a nasty matter. Coussirat was on his feet +now like a flash, and both men, clamped-jawed, groped for the cock; and +neither got off scathless before they shut it--and by then the train +had stopped, and not a monkey was in sight. + +Jimmie Burke, the conductor, came running up from the rear end, as +Coussirat and Hogan swung out of the gangway to the ground. + +"What's wrong?" demanded Burke--he had his watch in his hand. + +"Monkeys," said Hogan, and he clipped the word off without any undue +cordiality. + +"How?" inquired Burke. + +"Monkeys," said Hogan--a little more brittle than before. + +"Monkeys?" repeated Burke politely. + +"Yes, monkeys!" roared Hogan, dancing up and down with the pain of his +scalded hands. "Monkeys--that's plain enough, ain't it? Monkeys, +blast you!--MONKEYS!" + +To the group came one of the circus men. + +"The door of the monkey car is open!" he announced breathlessly. "The +monkeys have escaped." + +"You don't say!" said Coussirat heavily. + +"Yes," said the circus man. "And, look here, we'll have to find them; +they couldn't have got away from the train until it stopped just now." + +"Are they intelligent," inquired Coussirat in a velvet voice, "same as +the billboards say?" + +"Of course," said the circus man anxiously. + +"Well, then, just write them a letter and let them know when to be on +hand for the next performance," said Coussirat grimly. "There's lots +of time--we can hang around here and stall the line for another hour or +two, anyway!" + +Burke and Hogan were in earnest consultation. + +"We're close on the Limited's time as it is," said Hogan. "And look at +that cab." + +"We'd better back up to the Forks, then, and let her cross us there, +that's the safest thing to do," said Burke--and swung his lamp. + +"Look here," said the circus man, "we've got to find those monkeys." + +Burke looked at him unhappily--monkeys had thrown their meeting point +out--and there was the trainmaster to talk to when they got back to Big +Cloud. + +"Unless you want to spend the night here you'd better climb aboard," he +snapped. "All right, Hogan--back away!" And he swung his lamp again. + +Ten minutes later, as the Circus Special took the Angel Forks siding +and the front-end brakeman was throwing the switch clear again for the +main line, a chime whistle came ringing long, imperiously, from the +curve ahead. Fatty Hogan's face went white; he was standing up in the +cab and close to Coussirat, and he clasped the fireman's arm. "What's +that?" he cried. + +The answer came with a rush--a headlight cut streaming through the +night, there was a tattoo of beating trucks, an eddying roar of wind, a +storm of exhausts, a flash of window lights like scintillating +diamonds, and the Limited, pounding the fish-plates at sixty miles an +hour, was in and out--and _gone_. + +Hogan sank weakly down on his seat, and a bead of sweat spurted from +his forehead. + +"My God, Bull," he whispered, "do you know what that means? +Something's wrong. _She's against our order_." + +They found the Kid and Dan McGrew, and they got the Kid into little +Doctor McTurk's hands at Big Cloud--but it was eight weeks and more, +while the boy raved and lay in stupor, before they got the story. Then +the Kid told it to Carleton in the super's office late one afternoon +when he was convalescent--told him the bald, ugly facts in a sort of +hopeless way. + +Carleton listened gravely; it had come near to being a case of more +lives gone out on the Circus Special and the Limited that night than he +cared to think about. He listened gravely, and when the Kid had +finished, Carleton, in that quiet way of his, put his finger instantly +on the crux of the matter--not sharply, but gently, for the Kid had +played a man's part, and "Royal" Carleton loved a man. + +"Was it worth it, Keene?" he asked. "Why did you try to shield McGrew?" + +The Kid was staring hard at the floor. + +"He was my father," he said. + + + + +IX + +THE OTHER FELLOW'S JOB + +There is a page in Hill Division history that belongs to Jimmy Beezer. +This is Beezer's story, and it goes back to the days of the building of +the long-talked-of, figure-8-canted-over-sideways tunnel on the Devil's +Slide, that worst piece of track on the Hill Division, which is to say, +the worst piece of track, bar none, on the American continent. + +Beezer, speaking generally, was a fitter in the Big Cloud shops; +Beezer, in particular, wore a beard. Not that there is anything +remarkable in the fact that one should wear a beard, though there are +two classes of men who shouldn't--the man who chews tobacco, and the +man who tinkers around a railroad shop and on occasions, when major +repairs are the order of the day, is intimate with the "nigger-head" of +a locomotive. Beezer combined both classes in his person--but with +Beezer there were extenuating circumstances. According to Big Cloud, +Beezer wore a beard because Mrs. Beezer said so; Mrs. Beezer, in point +of size, made about two of Beezer, and Big Cloud said she figured the +beard kind of took the cuss off the discrepancy. + +Anyway, whether that is so or not, Beezer wore a beard, and the reason +it is emphasized here is because you couldn't possibly know Beezer +without it. Its upper extremity was nicotine-dyed, in spots, to a nut +brown, and from thence shaded down to an indeterminate rust color at +its lower edge--when he hadn't been dusting off and doing parlor-maid +work with it in the unspeakable grime of a "front-end." In shape it +never followed the prevailing tonsorial fashions--as far as any one +knew, no barber was ever the richer for Beezer's beard. Beezer used to +trim it himself Sunday mornings--sort of half moon effect he always +gave it. + +He was a spare, short man, all jump and nerves, and active as a cat. +He had shrewd, brown, little eyes, but, owing to the fact that he had a +small head and wore a large-size, black, greasy peaked cap jammed down +as far over his face as it would go, the color of his eyes could hardly +be said to matter much, for when you looked at Beezer, Beezer was +mostly just a round knob of up-tilted nose--and beard. + +Beezer's claims to immortality and fame, such as they are, were vested +in disease. Yes; that's it, you've got it right--disease. Beezer had +a disease that is very common to mankind in general. There's a whole +lot of men like Beezer. Beezer envied the other fellow's job. + +Somebody has said that the scarcest thing on earth is hen's teeth, but +the man who hasn't some time or other gone green-eyed over the other +chap's trick, and confidentially complained to himself that he could +"sit in" and hold it down a hanged sight better himself, has the +scarcity-of-hen's-teeth-oracle nailed to the mast from the start. And +a curious thing about it is that the less one knows of what the men he +envies is up against the more he envies--and the better he thinks he +could swing the other's job himself. There's a whole lot like Beezer. + +Now Beezer was an almighty good fitter. Tommy Regan said so, and Regan +ought to know; that's why he took Beezer out of the shops where the +other had grown up, so to speak, and gave Beezer the roundhouse repair +work to do. And that's where Beezer caught the disease--in the +roundhouse. Beezer contracted a mild attack of it the first day, but +it wasn't bad enough to trouble him much, or see a doctor about, so he +let it go on--and it got chronic. + +Beezer commenced to inhale an entirely different atmosphere, and the +more he inhaled it the more discontented he grew. An engine out in the +roundhouse, warm and full of life, the steam whispering and purring at +her valves, was a very different thing from a cold, rusty, dismantled +boiler-shell jacked up on lumbering blocks in the erecting shop; and +the road talk of specials, holding orders, tissues, running time and +what-not had a much more appealing ring to it than discussing how many +inches of muck No. 414 had accumulated on her guard-plates, the +incidental damning of the species wiper, and whether her boxes wanted +new babbitting or not. Toiling like a slave ten hours a day for six +days a week, and maybe overtime on Sundays, so that the other fellow +could have the fun, and the glory, and the fatter pay check, and the +easy time of it, began to get Beezer's goat. The "other fellow" was +the engineer. + +Beezer got to contrasting up the two jobs, and the more he contrasted +the less he liked the looks of his own, and the more he was satisfied +of his superior ability to hold down the other over any one of the +crowd that signed on or off in the grease-smeared pages of the turner's +book, which recorded the comings and goings of the engine crews. And +his ability, according to Beezer's way of looking at it, wasn't all +swelled head either; for there wasn't a bolt or a split-pin in any type +of engine that had ever nosed its pilot on the Hill Division that he +couldn't have put his finger on with his eyes shut. How much, anyhow, +did an engineer know about an engine? There wasn't a fitter in the +shops that didn't have the best engineer that ever pulled a throttle +pinned down with his shoulders flat on the mat on that count--and there +wasn't an engineer but what would admit it, either. + +But a routine in which one is brought up, gets married in, and comes to +look upon as a sort of fixed quantity for life, isn't to be departed +from offhand, and at a moment's notice. Beezer grew ardent with envy, +it is true; but the idea of actually switching over from the workbench +to the cab didn't strike him for some time. When it did--the first +time--it took his breath away--literally. He was in the pit, and he +stood up suddenly--and the staybolts on the rocker-arm held, and Beezer +promptly sat down from a wallop on the head that would have distracted +the thoughts of any other man than Beezer. + +Engineer Beezer! He had to lift the peak of his cap to dig the tears +out of his eyes, but when he put it back again the peak was just a +trifle farther up his nose. Engineer Beezer--a limited run--the +Imperial Flyer--into division on the dot, hanging like a lord of +creation from the cab window--cutting the miles on the grades and +levels like a swallow--roaring over trestles--diving through +tunnels--there was excitement in that, something that made life worth +living, instead of everlastingly messing around with a hammer and a +cold chisel, and pulling himself thin at the hips on the end of a +long-handled union wrench. Day dreams? Well, everybody day-dreams, +don't they? Why not Beezer? + +It is not on record that any one ever metamorphosed himself into a +drunkard on the spot the first time he ever stepped up to a bar; but as +the Irishman said: "Kape yer foot on the rail, an' yez have the makin's +av a dombed foine bum in yez!" + +Of course, the thing wasn't feasible. It sounded all right, and was +mighty alluring, but it was all dream. Beezer put it from him with an +unctuous, get-thee-behind-me-Satan air, but he purloined a book of +"rules"--road rules--out of Pudgy MacAllister's seat in the cab of the +1016. He read up the rules at odd moments, and moments that weren't +odd--and gradually the peak of his cap crept up as far as the bridge of +his nose. Beezer was keeping his foot on the rail. + +Mrs. Beezer found the book. That's what probably started things along +toward a showdown. She was, as has been said, a very large woman; also +she was a very capable woman of whom Beezer generally stood in some +awe, who washed, and ironed, and cooked for the Beezer brood during the +day, and did overtime at nights on socks and multifarious sewing, +including patches on Beezer's overalls--and other things, which are +unmentionable. The book fell out of the pocket of one of the other +things, one evening. Mrs. Beezer examined it, discovered MacAllister's +name scrawled on it, and leaned across the table under the paper-shaded +lamp in their modest combination sitting and dining room. + +"What are you doing with this, Mr. Beezer?" she inquired peremptorily; +Mrs. Beezer was always peremptory--with Beezer. + +Beezer coughed behind his copy of the Big Cloud _Daily Sentinel_. + +"Well?" prompted Mrs. Beezer. + +"I brought it home for the children to read," said Beezer, who, being +uncomfortable, sought refuge in the facetious. + +"Mr. Beezer," said Mrs. Beezer, with some asperity, "you put down that +paper and look at me." + +Mr. Beezer obeyed a little doubtfully. + +"Now," continued Mrs. Beezer, "what's got into you since you went into +the roundhouse, I don't know; but I've sorter had suspicions, and this +book looks like 'em. You might just as well make a clean breast of +what's on your mind, because I'm going to know." + +Beezer looked at his wife and scowled. He felt what might be imagined +to be somewhat the feelings of a man who is caught sneaking in by the +side entrance after signing the pledge at a Blue Ribbon rally. It was +not a situation conducive to good humor. + +"There ain't anything got into me," said he truculently. "If you want +to know what I'm doing with that book, I'm reading it because I'm +interested in it. And I've come to the conclusion that a fitter's job +alongside of an engineer's ain't any better than a mud-picking +Polack's." + +"You should have found that out before you went into the shops ten +years ago," said Mrs. Beezer, with a sweetness that tasted like vinegar. + +"Ten years ago!" Beezer flared. "How's a fellow to know what he's cut +out for, and what he can do best, when he starts in? How's he to know, +Mrs. Beezer, will you tell me that?" + +Mrs. Beezer was not sympathetic. + +"I don't know how he's to know," she said, "but I know that the trouble +with some men is that they don't know when they're well off, and if +you're thinking of----" + +"I ain't," said Beezer sharply. + +"I said 'if,' Mr. Beezer; and if----" + +"There's no 'if' about it," Beezer lied fiercely. "I'm not----" + +"You are," declared Mrs. Beezer emphatically, but with some wreckage of +English due to exceeding her speed permit--Mrs. Beezer talked fast. +"When you act like that I know you are, and I know you better than you +do yourself, and I'm not going to let you make a fool of yourself, and +come home here dead some night and wake me up same as poor Mrs. Dalheen +got her man back week before last on a box car door. Don't you know +when you're well off? You an engineer! What kind of an engineer do +you think you'd make? Why----" + +"Mrs. Beezer," said Beezer hoarsely, "shut up!" + +Mrs. Beezer caught her breath. + +"What did you say?" she gasped. + +"I said," said Beezer sullenly, picking up his paper again, "that I'd +never have thought of it, if you hadn't put it into my head; and now +the more I think of it, the better it looks." + +"I thought so," sniffed Mrs. Beezer profoundly. "And now, Mr. Beezer, +let this be the last of it. The idea! I never heard of such a thing!" + +Curiously enough, or perhaps naturally enough, Mrs. Beezer's cold-water +attitude had precisely the opposite effect on Jimmy Beezer to that +which she had intended it should have. It was the side-entrance +proposition over again. When you've been caught sneaking in that way, +you might just as well use the front door on Main Street next time, and +have done with it. Beezer began to do a little talking around the +roundhouse. The engine crews, by the time they tumbled to the fact +that it wasn't just the ordinary grumble that any man is entitled to in +his day's work, stuck their tongues in their cheeks, winked +surreptitiously at each other--and encouraged him. + +Now it is not to be implied that Jimmy Beezer was anybody's fool--not +for a minute--a first-class master fitter with his time served is a +long way from being in that class right on the face of it. Beezer +might have been a little blinded to the tongues and winks on account of +his own earnestness; perhaps he was--for a time. Afterwards--but just +a minute, or we'll be running by a meeting point, which is mighty bad +railroading. + +Beezer's cap, when he took the plunge and tackled Regan, had got tilted +pretty far back, so far that the peak stood off his forehead at about +the same rakish angle that his upturned little round knob of a nose +stuck up out of his beard; which is to say that Beezer had got to the +stage where he had decided that the professional swing through the +gangway he had been practising every time, and some others, that he had +occasion to get into a cab, was going to be of some practical use at an +early date. + +He put it up to Regan one morning when the master mechanic came into +the roundhouse. + +Regan leaned his fat little body up against the jamb of one of the big +engine doors, pulled at his scraggly brown mustache, and blinked as he +listened. + +"What's the matter with you, Beezer, h'm?" he inquired perplexedly, +when the other was at an end. + +"Haven't I just told you?" said Beezer. "I want to quit fitting and +get running." + +"Talks as though he meant it," commented Regan sotto voce to himself, +as he peered earnestly into the fitter's face. + +"Of course, I mean it," declared Beezer, a little tartly. "Why +wouldn't I?" + +"No," said Regan; "that ain't the question. The question is, why would +you? H'm?" + +"Because," Beezer answered promptly, "I like a snap as well as the next +man. It's a better job than the one I've got, better money, better +hours, easier all around, and one I can hold down with the best of +them." + +Regan's eyebrows went up. + +"Think so?" he remarked casually. + +"I do," declared Beezer. + +"Well, then," said Regan, "if you've thought it all out and made up +your mind, there's nothing I know of to stop you. Want to begin right +away?" + +"I do," said Beezer again. It was coming easier than he had +expected--there was a jubilant trill in his voice. + +"All right," said Regan. "I'll speak to Clarihue about it. You can +start in wiping in the morning." + +"Wiping?" echoed Beezer faintly. + +"Sure," said Regan. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it? Wiping--a +dollar-ten a day." + +"Look here," said Beezer with a gulp; "I ain't joking about this." + +"Well, then, what are you kicking about?" demanded Regan. + +"About wiping and a dollar-ten," said Beezer. "What would I do with a +dollar-ten, me with a wife and three kids?" + +"I don't know what you'd do with it," returned Regan. "What do you +expect?" + +"I don't expect to start in wiping," said Beezer, beginning to get a +little hot. + +"You've been here long enough to know the way up," said Regan. +"Wiping, firing--you take your turn. And your turn'll come for an +engine according to the way things are shaping up now in, say, about +fifteen years." + +"Fifteen years!" + +"Mabbe," grinned Regan. "I can't promise to kill off anybody to +accommodate you, can I?" + +"And don't the ten years I've put in here count for anything?" queried +Beezer aggressively. "Why don't you start me in sweeping up the +round-house? Wiping! Wiping, my eye! What for? I know all about the +way up. That's all right for a man starting in green; but I ain't +green. Why, there ain't a year-old apprentice over in the shops there +that don't know more about an engine than any blooming engineer on the +division. You know that, Regan--you know it hanged well, don't you?" + +"Well," admitted the master mechanic, "you're not far wrong at that, +Beezer." + +"You bet, I'm not!" Beezer was emphatic. "How about me, then? Do I +know an engine, every last nut and bolt in her, or don't I?" + +"You do," said Regan. "And if it's any satisfaction to you to know it, +I wouldn't ask for a better fitter any time than yourself." + +"Then, what's the use of talking about wiping? If I've put in ten +years learning the last kink there is in an engine, and have forgotten +more than the best man of the engine crews 'll know when he dies, +what's the reason I ain't competent to run one?" + +Regan reached into his back pocket for his chewing, wriggled his head +till his teeth met in the plug, and tucked the tobacco back into his +pocket again. + +"Beezer," said he slowly, spitting out an undesirable piece of stalk, +"did it ever strike you that there's a whole lot of blamed good horse +doctors that'd make damn poor jockeys--h'm?" + +Beezer scowled deeply, and kicked at a piece of waste with the toe of +his boot. + +"All I want is a chance," he growled shortly. "Give me a chance, and +I'll show you." + +"You can have your chance," said Regan. "I've told you that." + +"Yes," said Beezer bitterly. "It's a hell of a chance, ain't it? A +dollar-ten a day--_wiping_! I'd be willing to go on firing for a +spell." + +"Wiping," said Regan with finality, as he turned away and started +toward the shops; "but you'd better chew it over again, Beezer, and +have a talk with your wife before you make up your mind." + +Somebody chuckled behind Beezer--and Beezer whirled like a shot. The +only man in sight was Pudgy MacAllister. Pudgy's back was turned, and +he was leaning over the main-rod poking assiduously into the internals +of the 1016 with a long-spouted oil can; but Beezer caught the +suspicious rise and fall of the overall straps over the shoulders of +the fat man's jumper. + +Beezer was only human. It got Beezer on the raw--which was already +pretty sore. The red flared into his face hard enough to make every +individual hair in his beard incandescent; he walked over to Pudgy, +yanked Pudgy out into the open, and shoved his face into the engineer's. + +"What in the double-blanked, blankety-blanked blazes are you grinning +at?" he inquired earnestly. + +"H'm?" said Pudgy. + +"Yes--_h'm_!" said Beezer eloquently. "That's what I'm asking you." + +Whether Pudgy MacAllister was just plain lion-hearted, or a rotten bad +judge of human nature isn't down on the minutes--all that shows is that +he was one or the other. With some labor and exaggerated patience, he +tugged a paper-covered pamphlet out of his pocket from under his +jumper. It was the book of rules Beezer had "borrowed" some time +before. + +"Mrs. Beezer," said Pudgy blandly, "was over visiting the missus this +morning, and she brought this back. From what she said I dunno as it +would do any good, but I thought, perhaps, if you were going to take +Regan's advice about talking to your wife, you and Mrs. Beezer might +like to look it over again together before you----" + +That was as far as Pudgy MacAllister got. Generally speaking, the more +steam there is to the square inch buckled down under the valve, the +shriller the whistle is when it breaks loose. Beezer let a noise out +of him that sounded like a green parrot complaining of indigestion, and +went at MacAllister head-on. + +The oil can sailed through the air and crashed into the window glass of +Clarihue's cubby-hole in the corner. There was a tangled and revolving +chaos of arms and legs, and lean and fat bodies. Then a thud. There +wasn't any professional ring work about it. They landed on the floor +and began to roll--and a pail of packing and black oil they knocked +over greased the way. + +There was some racket about it, and Regan heard it; so did Clarihue, +and MacAllister's fireman, and another engine crew or two, and a couple +of wipers. The rush reached the combatants when there wasn't more than +a scant thirty-second of an inch between them and the edge of an empty +pit--but a thirty-second is a whole lot sometimes. + +When they stood them up and got them uncoupled, MacAllister's black eye +was modestly toned down with a generous share of what had been in the +packing bucket, but his fist still clutched a handful of hair that he +had separated from Beezer's beard--and Beezer's eyes were running like +hydrants from the barbering. Take it all around, thanks mostly to the +packing bucket, they were a fancy enough looking pair to send a +high-class team of professional comedians streaking for the sidings all +along the right of way to get out of their road. + +It doesn't take very much, after all, to make trouble, not very much; +and, once started, it's worse than the measles--the way it spreads. + +Mostly, they guyed Pudgy MacAllister at first; they liked his make-up +better owing to the black eye. But Pudgy was both generous and modest; +what applause there was coming from the audience he wanted Beezer to +get--he wasn't playing the "lead." + +And Beezer got it. Pudgy opened up a bit, and maybe drew on his +imagination a bit about what Mrs. Beezer had said to Mrs. MacAllister +about Jimmy Beezer, and what Beezer had said to Regan, and Regan to +Beezer, not forgetting Regan's remark about the horse doctor. + +Oh, yes, trouble once started makes the measles look as though it were +out of training, and couldn't stand the first round. To go into +details would take more space than a treatise on the manners and +customs of the early Moabites; but, summed up, it was something like +this: Mrs. Beezer paid another visit to Mrs. MacAllister, magnanimously +ignoring the social obligation Mrs. MacAllister was under to repay the +former call. Mrs. MacAllister received Mrs. Beezer in the kitchen over +the washtubs, which was just as well for the sake of the rest of the +house, for when Mrs. Beezer withdrew, somewhat shattered, but in good +order, by a flank movement through the back yard, an impartial observer +would have said that the kitchen had been wrecked by a gas explosion. +This brought Big Cloud's one lawyer and the Justice of the Peace into +it, and cost Beezer everything but the odd change on his month's pay +check--when it came. + +Meanwhile, what with a disturbed condition of marital bliss at home, +Beezer caught it right and left from the train crews, engine crews and +shop hands during the daytime. They hadn't anything against Beezer, +not for a minute, but give a railroad crowd an opening, and there's no +aggregation on earth quicker on the jump to take it. They dubbed him +"Engineer" Beezer, and "Doctor" Beezer; but mostly "Doctor" Beezer--out +of compliment to Regan. And old Grumpy, the timekeeper in the shop, +got so used to hearing it that he absent-mindedly wrote it down "Doctor +Beezer" when he came to make up the pay roll. That put it up to +Carleton, the super, who got a curt letter from the auditors' office +down East, asking for particulars, and calling his attention to the +fact that all medical services were performed by contract with the +company. Carleton scowled perplexedly at the letter, scrawled Tommy +Regan's initials at the bottom of the sheet, plus an interrogation +mark, and put it in the master mechanic's basket. Regan grinned, and +wrote East, telling them facetiously to scratch out the "Doctor" and +squeeze in a "J" in front of the "Beezer" and it would be all right; +but it didn't go--you can't get by a high-browed set of red-tape-bound +expert accountants of unimpeachable integrity, who are safeguarding the +company's funds like that. Hardly! They held out the money, and by +the time the matter was straightened out the pay car had come and gone, +and Beezer got a chance to find out how good his credit was. +Considering everything, Beezer took it pretty well--he went around as +though he had boils. + +But if Beezer had a grouch, and cause for one, it didn't make the other +fellow's job look any the less good to Beezer. Mrs. Beezer's sharp +tongue, barbed with contemptuous innuendo that quite often developed +into pointed directness as to her opinion of his opinions, and the kind +of an engineer he'd make, which he was obliged to listen to at night, +and the men--who didn't know what an innuendo was--that he was obliged +to listen to by day, didn't alter Beezer's views on that subject any, +whatever else it might have done. Beezer had a streak of stubbornness +running through the boils. + +He never got to blows again. His tormentors took care of that. They +had MacAllister as an example that Beezer was not averse to bringing +matters to an intimate issue at any time, and what they had to say they +said at a safe distance--most of them could run faster than Beezer +could, because nature had made Beezer short. Beezer got to be a pretty +good shot with a two-inch washer or a one-inch nut, and he got to +carrying around a supply of ammunition in the hip pocket of his +overalls. + +As for MacAllister, when the two ran foul of each other, as the +engineer came on for his runs or signed off at the end of one, there +wasn't any talking done. Regan had warned them a little too hard to +take chances. They just looked at each other sour enough to turn a +whole milk dairy. The men told Beezer that MacAllister had rigged a +punching bag up in his back yard, and was taking a correspondence +course in pugilism. + +Beezer said curried words. + +"Driving an engine," said they, "is a dog's life; it's worse than +pick-slinging, there's nothing in it. Why don't you cut it out? +You've had enough experience to get a job in the _shops_. Why don't +you hit Regan up and change over?" + +"By Christmas!" Beezer would roar, while he emptied his pocket and gave +vent to mixed metaphor, "I'd show you a change over if I ever got a +chance; and I'd show you there was something to running an engine +besides bouncing up and down on the seat like balls with nothing but +wind in them, and grinning at the scenery!" + +A chance--that's all Beezer asked for--a chance. And he kept on asking +Regan. That dollar-ten a day looked worse than ever since Mrs. +Beezer's invasion of Mrs. MacAllister's kitchen. But Regan was +obdurate, and likewise was beginning to get his usually complacent +outlook on life--all men with a paunch have a complacent, serene +outlook on life as a compensation for the paunch--disturbed a little. +Beezer and his demands were becoming ubiquitous. Regan was getting +decidedly on edge. + +"Firing," said Beezer. "Let me start in firing--there's as much in +that as in fitting, and I can get along for the little while it'll be +before you'll be down on your knees begging me to take a throttle." + +"Firing, eh!" Regan finally exploded one day. "Look here, Beezer; I've +heard about enough from you. Firing, eh? There'd have been some +firing done before this that would have surprised you if you hadn't +been a family man! Get that? The trouble with you is that you don't +know what you want or what you're talking about." + +"I know what I want, and I know what I'm talking about," Beezer +answered doggedly; "and I'm going to keep on putting it up to you till +you quit saying 'No.'" + +"You'll be doing it a long time, then," said Regan bluntly, laying a +few inches of engine dust with blackstrap juice; "a long time, +Beezer--till I'm dead." + +But it wasn't. Regan was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's +unexplainable the way things work out sometimes! + +That afternoon, after a visit from Harvey, who had been promoted from +division engineer to resident and assistant-chief on the Devil's Slide +tunnel, Carleton sent for Regan. + +"Tommy," said he, as the master mechanic entered his office, "did you +see Harvey?" + +"No," said Regan. "I didn't know he was in town." + +"He said he didn't think he'd have time to see you," said Carleton; "I +guess he's gone back on Number Seven. But I told him I'd put it up to +you, anyway. He says he's along now where he is handling about half a +dozen dump trains, but that what he has been given to pull them with, +as near as he can figure out, is the prehistoric junk of the iron age." + +"I saw the engines when they went through," Regan chuckled. "All the +master mechanics on the system cleaned up on him. I sent him the old +Two-twenty-three myself. Harvey's telling the truth so far. What's +next?" + +"Well," Carleton smiled, "he says the string and tin rivets they're put +together with come off so fast he can't keep more than half of them in +commission at once. He wants a good fitter sent up there on a +permanent job. What do you say?" + +"Say?" Regan fairly shouted. "Why, I say, God bless that man!" + +"H'm?" inquired Carleton. + +"Beezer," said Regan breathlessly. "Tell him he can have Beezer--wire +him I'll send up Beezer. He wants a good fitter, does he? Well, +Beezer's the best fitter on the pay roll, and that's straight. I +always liked Harvey--glad to do him a good turn--Harvey gets the best." + +Carleton crammed the dottle down in the bowl of his pipe with his +forefinger, and looked at Regan quizzically. + +"I've heard something about it," said he. "What's the matter with +Beezer?" + +"Packing loose around his dome cover, and the steam spurts out through +the cracked joint all over you every time you go near him," said Regan. +"He's had me crazy for a month. He's got it into his nut that he could +beat any engineer on the division at his own game, thinks the game's a +cinch and is sour on his own. That's about all--but it's enough. Say, +you wire Harvey that I'll send him Beezer." + +Carleton grinned. + +"Suppose Beezer doesn't want to go?" he suggested. + +"He'll go," said Regan grimly. "According to the neighbors, his home +life at present ain't a perennial dream of delight, and he'll beat it +as joyful as a live fly yanked off the sheet of fly paper it's been +stuck on; besides, he's getting to be a regular spitfire around the +yards. You leave it to me--he'll go." + +And Beezer went. + +You know the Devil's Slide. Everybody knows it; and everybody has seen +it scores of times, even if they've never been within a thousand miles +of the Rockies--the road carried it for years on the back covers of the +magazines printed in colors. The Transcontinental's publicity man was +a live one, he played it up hard, and as a bit of scenic effect it was +worth all he put into it--there was nothing on the continent to touch +it. But what's the use?--you've seen it hundreds of times. Big +letters on top: + + +"INCOMPARABLE GRANDEUR OF THE ROCKIES", and underneath: "A SCENE ON THE +LINE OF THE TRANSCONTINENTAL--THE COAST TO COAST ROUTE." + + +There wasn't anything the matter with the electrotypes, either--nature +backed up those "ads" to the last detail, and threw in a whole lot more +for good measure--even a pessimist didn't hold a good enough hand to +call the raise and had to drop out. Pugsley, the advertising man, was +an awful liar, and what he said may not be strictly true, but he +claimed the road paid their dividends for one quarter through the sale +to a junk and paper-dealer of the letters they got from delighted +tourists telling how far short anything he could say came to being up +to the reality. Anyway, Pugsley and the passenger-agent's department +were the only ones who weren't enthusiastic about the double-loop +tunnel--it spoiled the scenic effect. + +This is Beezer's story. Beezer has "rights" through to the terminal, +and pictures of scenery however interesting, and a description of how +Harvey bored his holes into the mountain sides however instructive, +should naturally be relegated to the sidings; but there's just a word +or two necessary before Beezer pulls out into the clear. + +One thing the electrotypes didn't show was the approach to the Devil's +Slide. It came along the bottoms fairly straight and level, the track +did, for some five miles from the Bend, until about a mile from the +summit where it hit a long, stiff, heavy climb, that took the breath +out of the best-type engine that Regan, representing the motive-power +department, had to offer. And here, the last few hundred yards were +taken with long-interval, snorting roars from the exhaust, that echoed +up and down the valley, and back and forward from the hills like a +thousand thunders, or the play of a park of artillery, and the pace was +a crawl--you could get out and walk if you wanted to. That was the +approach of the Devil's Slide--on a westbound run, you understand? +Then, once over the summit, the Devil's Slide stretched out ahead, and +in its two reeling, drunken, zigzag miles dropped from where it made +you dizzy to lean out of the cab window and see the Glacier River +swirling below, to where the right of way in a friendly, intimate +fashion hugged the Glacier again at its own bed level. How much of a +drop in that two miles? Grade percentages and dry figures don't mean +very much, do they? Take it another way. It dropped so hard and fast +that that's what the directors were spending three million dollars +for--to divide that drop by two! It just _dropped_--not an incline, +not by any means--just a drop. However---- + +When it was all over the cause of it figured out something like +this--we'll get to the effect and Beezer in a second. Engine 1016 with +Number One, the Imperial Limited, westbound, and with MacAllister in +the cab, blew out a staybolt one afternoon about two miles west of the +Bend. And quicker than you could wink, the cab was all live steam and +boiling water. The fireman screamed and jumped. MacAllister, blinded +and scalded, his hands literally torn from the throttle and "air" +before he could latch in, fell back half unconscious to the floor, +wriggled to the gangway and flung himself out. He sobbed like a +broken-hearted child afterwards when he told his story. + +"I left her," he said. "I couldn't help it. The agony wasn't human--I +couldn't stand it. I was already past knowing what I was doing; but +the thought went through my mind that the pressure'd be down, and she'd +stop herself before she got up the mile climb to the summit. That's +the last I remember." + +Dave Kinlock, the conductor, testified that he hadn't noticed anything +wrong until after they were over the summit--they'd come along the +bottoms at a stiff clip, as they always did, to get a start up the long +grade. They had slackened up almost to a standstill, as usual, when +they topped the summit; then they commenced to go down the Slide, and +were speeding up before he realized it. He put on the emergency brakes +then, but they wouldn't work. Why? It was never explained. Whether +the angle-cock had never been properly thrown into its socket and had +worked loose and shut off the "air" from the coaches, or whether--and +queerer things than that have happened in railroading--it just plain +went wrong, no one ever knew. They found the trouble there, that was +all. The emergency wouldn't work; and that was all that Dave Kinlock +knew then. + +Now, Beezer had been out on the construction work about two weeks when +this happened, about two of the busiest weeks Beezer had ever put in in +his life. Harvey hadn't drawn the long bow any in describing what the +master mechanics had put over on him to haul his dump carts with. They +were engines of the vintage of James Watt, and Beezer's task in keeping +them within the semblance of even a very low coefficient of efficiency +was no sinecure. Harvey had six of these monstrosities, and, as he had +started his work at both ends at once, with a cutting at the eastern +base of the Devil's Slide and another at the summit, he divided them up +three to each camp; and it kept Beezer about as busy as a one-handed +paper-hanger with the hives, running up and down answering "first-aid" +hurry calls from first one and then the other. + +The way Beezer negotiated his mileage was simple. He'd swing the cab +or pilot of the first train along in the direction, up or down, that he +wanted to go--and that's how he happened to be standing that afternoon +on the track opposite the upper construction camp about a hundred yards +below the summit, when Number One climbed up the approach, poked her +nose over the top of the grade, crawling like a snail that's worn out +with exertion, and then began to gather speed a little, toboggan-like, +as she started down the Devil's Slide toward him. + +Beezer gave a look at her and rubbed his eyes. There wasn't anything +to be seen back of the oncoming big mountain racer's cab but a +swirling, white, vapory cloud. It was breezing pretty stiff through +the hills that day, and his first thought was that she was blowing from +a full head, and the wind was playing tricks with the escaping steam. +With the next look he gulped hard--the steam was coming from the +cab--not the dome. It was the 1016, MacAllister's engine, and when he +happened to go up or down on her he always chose the pilot instead of +the cab--Beezer never forced his society on any man. But this time he +let the pilot go by him--there was something wrong, and badly wrong at +that. The cab glass showed all misty white inside, and there was no +sign of MacAllister. The drivers were spinning, and the exhaust, +indicating a wide-flung throttle, was quickening into a rattle of +sharp, resonant barks as the cab came abreast of him. + +Beezer jumped for the gangway, caught the rail with one hand, clung +there an instant, and then the tools in his other hand dropped to the +ground, as, with a choking gasp, he covered his face, and fell back to +the ground himself. + +By the time he got his wits about him again the tender had gone by. +Then Beezer started to run, and his face was as white as the steam he +had stuck his head into in the empty cab. He dashed along beside the +track, along past the tender, past the gangway, past the thundering +drivers, and with every foot the 1016 and the Imperial Limited, Number +One, westbound, was hitting up the pace. When he got level with the +cylinder, it was as if he had come to a halt, though his lungs were +bursting, and he was straining with every pound that was in him. He +was barely gaining by the matter of inches, and in about another minute +he was due to lose by feet. But he nosed in over the tape in a dead +heat, flung himself sideways, and, with his fingers clutching at the +drawbar, landed, panting and pretty well all in, on the pilot. A +minute it took him to get his breath and balance, then he crawled to +the footplate, swung to the steam chest and from there to the running +board. + +Here, for the first time, Beezer got a view of things and a somewhat +more comprehensive realization of what he was up against, and his heart +went into his mouth and his mouth went dry. Far down below him in a +sheer drop to the base of the canyon wall wound the Glacier like a +silver thread; in front, a gray, sullen mass of rock loomed up dead +ahead, the right of way swerving sharply to the right as it skirted it +in a breath-taking curve; and with every second the 1016 and her +trailing string of coaches was plunging faster and faster down the +grade. The wind was already singing in his ears. There was a sudden +lurch, a shock, as she struck the curve. Beezer flung his arms around +the handrail and hung on grimly. She righted, found her wheel base +again, and darted like an arrow along the opening tangent. + +Beezer's face was whiter now than death itself. There were curves +without number ahead, curves to which that first was but child's play, +that even at their present speed would hurl them from the track and +send them crashing in splinters through the hideous depths into the +valley below. It was stop her, or death; death, sure, certain, +absolute and quick, for himself and every man, woman and child, from +colonist coach to the solid-mahogany, brass-railed Pullmans and +observation cars that rocked behind him. + +There was no getting into the cab through the gangway; his one glance +had told him that. There was only one other way, little better than a +chance, and he had taken it. Blue-lipped with fear--that glance into +the nothingness almost below his feet had shaken his nerve and turned +him sick and dizzy--Beezer, like a man clinging to a crag, edged along +the running board, gained the rear end, and, holding on tightly with +both hands, lifted his foot, and with a kick shattered the front +cab-glass; another kick and the window frame gave way, and, backing in +feet first, Beezer began to lower himself into the cab. + +Meanwhile, white-faced men stood at Spence's elbow in the despatchers' +office at Big Cloud. Some section hands had followed Number One out of +the Bend in a handcar, and had found MacAllister and his fireman about +two hundred yards apart on opposite sides of the right of way. Both +were unconscious. The section hands had picked them up, pumped madly +back to the Bend, and made their report. + +Carleton, leaning over Spence, never moved, only the muscles of his jaw +twitched; Regan, as he always did in times of stress, swore to himself +in a grumbling undertone. There was no other sound in the room save +the incessant click of the sender, as Spence frantically called the +construction camp at the summit of the Slide; there was a chance, one +in a thousand, that the section hands had got back to the Bend before +Number One had reached the top of the grade. + +Then, suddenly, the sounder broke, and Spence began to spell off the +words. + +"Number One passed here five minutes ago." + +Regan went down into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. + +"Wild," he whispered, and his whisper was like an awe-stricken sob. +"Running wild on the Devil's Slide. _No one in the cab_. Oh, my God!" + +There was a look on Carleton's face no words could describe--it was +gray, gray with a sickness that was a sickness of his soul; but his +words came crisp and clear, cold as steel, and without a tremor. + +"Clear the line, Spence. Get out the wrecking crew, and send the +callers for the doctors--that's all that's left for us to do." + +But while Big Cloud was making grim preparations for disaster, Beezer +in no less grim a way was averting it, and his salvation, together with +that of every soul aboard the train, came, in a measure at least, from +the very source wherein lay their danger--the speed. That, and the +fact that the pressure MacAllister had thought would drop before the +summit was reached, was at last exhausting itself. The cab was less +dense, and the speed whipping the wind through the now open window +helped a whole lot more, but it was still a swirling mass of vapor. + +Beezer lowered himself in, his foot touched the segment, and then found +the floor. The 1016 was rocking like a storm-tossed liner. Again +there came the sickening, deadly slew as she struck a curve, the +nauseating pause as she hung in air with whirring drivers. Beezer shut +his eyes and waited. There was a lurch, another and another, fast and +quick like a dog shaking itself from a cold plunge--she was still on +the right of way. + +Beezer wriggled over on his back now, and, with head hanging out over +the running board, groped with his hands for the levers. Around his +legs something warm and tight seemed to clinch and wrap itself. He +edged forward a little farther--his hand closed on the throttle and +flung it in--a fierce, agonizing pain shot through his arm as something +spurted upon it, withering it, blistering it. The fingers of his other +hand were clasped on the air latch and he began to check--then, unable +to endure it longer, he threw it wide. There was a terrific jolt, a +shock that keeled him over on his side as the brake-shoes locked, the +angry grind and crunch of the wheel tires, and the screech of skidding +drivers. + +He dragged himself out and crouched again on the running board. Behind +him, like a wriggling snake, the coaches swayed and writhed crazily, +swinging from side to side in drunken, reeling arcs. A deafening roar +of beating flanges and pounding trucks was in his ears--and shriller, +more piercing, the screams of the brake-shoes as they bit and held. He +turned his head and looked down the right of way, and his eyes held +there, riveted and fascinated. Two hundred yards ahead was the worst +twist on the Slide, where the jutting cliff of Old Piebald Mountain +stuck out over the precipice, and the track hugged around it in a +circle like a fly crawling around a wall. + +Beezer groaned and shut his eyes again. They say that in the presence +of expected death sometimes one thinks of a whole lot of things. +Engineer Beezer, in charge of Number One, the Imperial Limited, did +then; but mostly he was contrasting up the relative merits of a +workbench and a throttle, and there wasn't any doubt in Beezer's mind +about which he'd take if he ever got the chance to take anything again. + +When he opened his eyes Old Piebald Mountain was still ahead of +him--about ten feet ahead of him--and the pony truck was on the curve. +But they had stopped, and Dave Kinlock and a couple of mail clerks were +trying to tear his hands away from the death grip he'd got on the +handrail. It was a weak and shaken Beezer, a Beezer about as flabby as +a sack of flour, that they finally lifted down off the running board. + +There was nothing small about Regan--there never was. He came down on +the wrecking train, and, when he had had a look at the 1016 and had +heard Kinlock's story, he went back up to the construction camp, where +Beezer had been outfitted with leg and arm bandages. + +"Beezer," said he, "I didn't say all horse doctors wouldn't make +jockeys--what? You can have an engine any time you want one." + +Beezer shook his head slowly. + +"No," said he thoughtfully; "I guess I don't want one." + +Regan's jaw dropped, and his fat little face puckered up as he stared +at Beezer. + +"Don't want one!" he gasped. "Don't want one! After howling for one +for three months, now that you can have it, you don't want it! Say, +Beezer, what's the matter with you--h'm?" + +But there wasn't anything the matter with Beezer. He was just getting +convalescent, that's all. There's a whole lot of men like Beezer. + + + + +X + +THE RAT RIVER SPECIAL + +This is Martin Bradley's story; an excerpt, if you will, from the pages +of railroading where strange and grim things are, where death and +laughter lock arms in the winking of an eye, and are written down as +though akin. There have been better men than Martin Bradley--and +worse. Measure him as you will, that is one matter; in the last +analysis frailty is a human heritage, and that is another. On the Hill +Division they called him a game man. + +Bradley was a fireman, a silent, taciturn chap. Not sullen or +surly--don't get that idea--more quiet than anything else, never much +of anything to say. When a laugh was going around Bradley could +appreciate the fun, and did; only his laugh seemed tempered somehow by +something behind it all. Not a wet blanket, not by any means--they +didn't understand him then, perhaps, didn't pretend to--he never +invited a confidence or gave one--but the boys would crowd up and make +room for Bradley any time, as they dragged at their pipes and swopped +yarns in the murk of the roundhouse at the midnight lunch hour, about +the time Bradley used to stroll in, snapping his fingers together +softly in that curious, absent-minded way he had of doing--for Bradley +was firing for Smithers then on the 582, that took the local freight, +west, out of Big Cloud in the small morning hours. + +Well set-up, jumper tucked in his overalls, the straps over husky +shoulders, thick through the chest, medium height, stocky almost, +steady black eyes, a clean-shaven, serious face, the black hair +grizzled a little and threading gray--that was Martin Bradley. A bit +old to be still firing, perhaps, but he had had to take his turn for +promotion with the rest of the men when he came to the Hill Division. +He'd have gone up in time, way up, to the best on the division, +probably, for Regan had him slated for an engine even then, only----But +we'll come to that in a moment; there's just a word or two to "clear" +the line before we have "rights" through to the terminal. + +Big Cloud in those days, which was shortly after the line was laid +through the Rockies, and the East and West were finally linked after +the stress of toil and hardship and bitter struggle was over, was a +pretty hard burg, pretty hard--a whole lot harder than it is to-day. +There was still a big transient population of about every nationality +on earth, for the road, just because they could operate it, wasn't +finished by a good deal, and construction camps were more numerous than +stations. Bridge gangs were still at work; temporary trestles were +being replaced with ones more permanent; there were cuts through the +gray of the mountain rock to be trimmed and barbered with dynamite; and +there were grades and approaches and endless things to struggle over; +and--well, Big Cloud was still the Mecca of the gamblers, the dive +keepers, and the purveyors of "red-eye," who had flocked there to feed +like vultures on the harvest of pay checks that were circling around. +It was a pretty hard place, Big Cloud--everything wide open--not much +of any law there in the far West in the shadow of the Rockies. It's +different to-day, of course; but that's the way it was then, when +Martin Bradley was firing on the Transcontinental. + +Bradley from the first boarded with the MacQuigans. That's how, +probably, he came to think more of young Reddy MacQuigan, who was a +wiper in the roundhouse, than he did of any of the rest of the railroad +crowd. Perhaps not altogether for young Reddy's sake; perhaps on +account of Mrs. MacQuigan, and particularly on account of old John +MacQuigan--who wasn't any good on earth--a sodden parasite on the +household when he was drunk, and an ugly brute when there wasn't any +money forthcoming from the products of Mrs. MacQuigan's ubiquitous +washtubs to get drunk with. For old John MacQuigan, between whom and +Bradley there existed an armed truce, each regarding the other mutually +as a necessary evil, had no job--for two reasons: first, because he +didn't want one; and, second, because no one would have given him one +if he had. Mrs. MacQuigan, a patient, faded-out little woman, tireless +because she had to be tireless, shouldered the burden, and hid her +shame as best she could from her neighbors. Reddy? No; he didn't help +out much--then. Reddy used to stray a little from the straight and +narrow himself--far enough so that it was pretty generally conceded +that Reddy held his job in the roundhouse on account of his mother, who +did Regan's washing; and, as a matter of cold fact, that was about the +truth of it; and, as a matter of cold fact, too, that was why the +big-hearted master mechanic liked Martin Bradley. + +"I dunno," Regan used to say, twiddling his thumbs over his fat paunch, +"I dunno; it's about the last place _I'd_ want to board, with that +drunken pickings from the scrap heap around. The only decent thing old +John 'll ever do will be to die--h'm? About a week of it would finish +me. Bradley? Yes; he's hung on there quite a spell. Pretty good man, +Martin. I dunno what Mrs. MacQuigan would do without him. Guess +that's why he stays. I'm going to give Martin an engine one of these +days. That'll help out some. When? When his turn comes. First +chance I get. I can't poison anybody off to make room for him--can I?" + +And now just a single word more, while we're getting back the +"complete," to say that this had been going on for two or three years; +Martin Bradley boarding at the MacQuigans' and firing the 582; young +Reddy wiping in the roundhouse, and on the ragged edge of dismissal +every time the pay car came along; Mrs. MacQuigan at her washtubs; old +John leading his disreputable, gin-soaked life; Tommy Regan between the +devil of discipline and the deep blue sea of soft-heartedness anent the +MacQuigans' son and heir--and we're off, the tissue buttoned in our +reefer--off with a clean-swept track. + +It was pay day, an afternoon in the late fall, and, growing dusk, the +switch lights in the Big Cloud yards were already beginning to twinkle +red and white and green, as Martin Bradley, from the pay car platform, +his pay check in his pocket, swung himself to the ground and pushed his +way through a group of men clustered beside the car. He had caught +sight of Regan across the spur going into the roundhouse a moment +before, and he wanted a word with the master mechanic--nothing very +important--a requisition for an extra allowance of waste. And then, +amongst the crowd, he caught sight of some one else, and smiled a +little grimly. Old John MacQuigan, as he always did on pay days, was +hovering about first one, and then another, playing good fellow and +trying to ring himself in on the invitations that would be going around +presently when the whistle blew. + +Bradley, his smile thinning a little as old John, catching sight of him +in turn, sidled off, passed through the group, crossed the +turntable--and halted abruptly, just outside the big engine doors, as +Regan's voice came to him in an angry growl. + +"Now mind what I say, Reddy! Once more, and you're through--for keeps. +And that's my last word. Understand?" + +"Well, you needn't jump a fellow before he's done anything!" It was +Reddy MacQuigan, answering sullenly. + +There was silence for a moment; then Regan's voice again, pretty cold +and even now. + +"I dunno," he said. "I figure you must have been brought into the +world for something, but I dunno what it is. You're not to blame for +your father; but if I let a mother of mine, and nearing sixty years, +slave out the little time she's got left, I'd want to crawl out +somewhere amongst the buttes and make coyote meat of myself. Jump you +before you've done anything--eh!" The little master mechanic's voice +rose suddenly. "I saw you sneak uptown an hour ago when you left the +pay car--one drink for a start--h'm! Well, you put another on top of +it, and it'll be for a--finish! I'd do a lot for that fine old lady of +a mother of yours, and that's why I've taken the trouble to come over +here and warn you what'll happen if you put in the night you're heading +for. 'Tisn't because I can't run the roundhouse without you, my +bucko--mind that!" + +Bradley was snapping his fingers in his queer, nervous way. Reddy +MacQuigan made no answer; at least, Bradley did not hear any, but he +heard Regan moving toward the door. He had no wish to talk to the +master mechanic any more, not just at that moment anyhow, so he +crunched through the engine cinders to another door, entering the +roundhouse as Regan went out on the turntable and headed across the +tracks for the station. + +Two pits away, Reddy MacQuigan, with a black scowl on his face, leaned +against the steam chest of the 1004. Bradley, pretending not to see +him, swung through the gangway and into the cab of the 582. There, for +half an hour, he busied himself in an aimless fashion; but with an eye +out for the young wiper, as the latter moved about the roundhouse. + +The whistle was blowing and Reddy was pulling off his overalls, as +Bradley swung out of his cab again; and he was shading a match from the +wind over the bowl of his pipe just across the turntable, as Reddy came +out. He tossed away the match, puffed, and nodded at MacQuigan. + +"Hello, Reddy," he said in his quiet way, and fell into step with the +boy. + +MacQuigan didn't answer. Bradley never spoke much, anyhow. They +crossed the tracks and started up Main Street in silence. Here, the +railroaders, in groups and twos and threes, filled the street; some +hurrying homeward; others dropping in through the swinging doors, not +infrequently located along the right of way, where gasoline lamps +flared out over the gambling hells, and the crash of tin-pan pianos, +mingled with laughter and shouting, came rolling out from the +dance-hall entrances. + +Bradley, with his eyes in front of him, walked along silently. Upon +MacQuigan's young face had settled the black scowl again; and it grew +blacker as he glanced, now and then, at the man beside him. Behind +them came a knot of his cronies--and some one called his name. + +MacQuigan halted suddenly. + +"Well, so long, Martin," he said gruffly. "I'll be up a little later." + +Bradley's hand went out and linked in the other's arm. + +"Better come on home, Reddy," he said, with one of his rare smiles. + +"Later," Reddy flung out. + +"Better make it now," said Bradley quietly. + +The group behind had come up with them now, and, crowding into Faro +Dave's place, paused a moment in the entrance to absorb the situation. + +"Be a good boy, Reddy, and do as you're told," one of them sang out. + +Reddy whirled on Bradley, the hot blood flushing his face. + +"I wish you'd mind your own blasted business!" he flared. "I'm blamed +good and sick of you tagging me. This isn't the first time. You make +me weary! The trouble with you is that you don't know anything but the +everlasting grouch you carry around. You're a funeral! You're a +tight-wad. Everybody says so. Nobody ever heard of you spending a +cent. Go on--beat it--leave me alone!" + +Bradley's face whitened a little, but the smile was still on his lips. + +"Better draw your fire, Reddy; there's no need of getting hot," he +said. "Come on home; you know what'll happen if you don't; and you +know what Regan told you back there in the roundhouse." + +"So you heard that, eh?" Reddy shot at him. "I thought you did; and +you thought you'd fool me by hanging around there, playing innocent, to +walk home with me, eh?" + +"I wasn't trying to fool you," Bradley answered; and his hand went now +to the wiper's shoulder. + +"Let go!" snarled Reddy. "I'll go home when I feel like it!" + +Bradley's hand closed a little tighter. + +"Don't make a fool of yourself, Reddy," he said gravely. "You'll----" + +And that was all. MacQuigan wasn't much more than a boy, not much more +than that, and hot-headed--and his chums were looking on. He freed +himself from Bradley's hold--with a smash of his fist in Bradley's face. + +Fight? No; there wasn't any fight. There was a laugh--from old John +MacQuigan, who had been trailing the young bloods up the street. And +as Bradley, after staggering back from the unexpected blow, recovered +himself, Reddy MacQuigan, followed by old John, was disappearing into +Faro Dave's "El Dorado" in front of him. + +Bradley went home alone. + +Supper was ready--it was always ready, as everything else was where +little old Mrs. MacQuigan was concerned; and there were four plates on +the red-checkered tablecloth--as there always were--even on pay day! +Bradley sat down, with Mrs. MacQuigan opposite him. + +Not much to look at--Mrs. MacQuigan. A thin, sparse little woman in a +home-made black alpaca dress; the gray hair, thinning, brushed smooth +across her forehead; wrinkles in the patient face, a good many of them; +a hint of wistfulness in the black eyes, that weren't as bright as they +used to be; not very pretty hands, they were red and lumpy around the +knuckles. Not much to look at--just a little old woman, brave as God +Almighty makes them--just Mrs. MacQuigan. + +Bradley, uneasy, glancing at her furtively now and again, ate savagely, +without relish. There wasn't much said; nothing at all about old John +and young Reddy. Mrs. MacQuigan never asked a question--it was pay day. + +There wasn't much said until after the meal was over, and Bradley had +lighted his pipe and pushed back his chair; with Mrs. MacQuigan +lingering at the table, kind of wistfully it seemed, kind of listening, +kind of hanging back from putting away the dishes and taking the two +empty plates off the table--and then she smiled over at Bradley as +though there wasn't anything on her mind at all. + +"Faith, Martin," she said, "sure I don't know at all, at all, what I'd +be doing not seeing you around the house; but it's wondered I have +often enough you've not picked out some nice girl and made a home of +your own." + +The words in their suddenness came to Bradley with a shock; and, his +face strained, he stared queerly at Mrs. MacQuigan. + +A little startled, Mrs. MacQuigan half rose from her chair. + +"What is it, Martin?" she asked tremulously. + +For a moment more, Bradley stared at her. Strange that she should have +spoken like that to-night when there seemed more than ever a sort of +grim analogy between her life and his, that seemed like a bond to-night +drawing them closer--that seemed, somehow, to urge him to pour out his +heart to her--there was motherliness in the sweet old face that seemed +to draw him out of himself as no one else had for more years than he +cared to remember--as even she never had before. + +"What is it, Martin?" she asked again. + +And then Bradley smiled. + +"I've picked her out," he said, in a low voice. "I'm waiting for a +little girl that's promised some day to keep house for me." + +"Oh, Martin!" cried Mrs. MacQuigan excitedly. "And--and you never said +a word!" + +Bradley's hand dove into his inside pocket and came out with a +photograph--and the smile on his face now was full of pride. + +"Here's her picture," he said. + +"Wait, Martin--wait till I get my spectacles!" exclaimed Mrs. +MacQuigan, all in a flutter; and, rising, she hurried over to the +little shelf in the corner. Then, adjusting the steel bows over her +ears, with little pats to smooth down her hair, she picked up the +photograph and stared at it--at the picture of a little tot of eight or +nine, at a merry, happy little face that smiled at her roguishly. + +"She's ten now, God bless her!" said Bradley simply. "That was taken +two years ago--so I haven't so long to wait, you see." + +"Why--why, Martin," stammered Mrs. MacQuigan, "sure you never said you +was married. And the wife, Martin, poor boy, she's--she's dead?" + +Bradley picked up the photograph and replaced it in his pocket--but the +smile now was gone. + +"No--I don't know--I never heard," he said. He walked over to the +window, pulled the shade and stared out, his back to Mrs. MacQuigan. +"She ditched me. I was on the Penn then--doing well. I had my engine +at twenty-five. I went bad for a bit. I'd have gone all the way if it +hadn't been for the kiddie. I'd have had more to answer for than I'd +want to have, blood, perhaps, if I'd stayed, so I pulled up stakes and +came out here." He turned again and came back from the window. "I +couldn't bring the kiddie, of course; it was no place for her. And I +couldn't leave her where she was to grow up with that in her life, for +she was too young then, thank God, to understand; so I'm giving her the +best my money'll buy in a girl's school back East, and"--his voice +broke a little--"and that's the little girl I'm waiting for, to make a +home for me--some time." + +Mrs. MacQuigan's hands fumbled a little as she took off her spectacles +and laid them down--fumbled a little as she laid them on Bradley's +sleeve. + +"God be good to you, Martin," she whispered, and, picking up some +dishes, went hurriedly from the room. + +Bradley went back again and stood by the window, looking out, snapping +his fingers softly with that trick of his when any emotion was upon +him. Strange that he should have told his story to Mrs. MacQuigan +to-night! And yet he was glad he had told her; she probably would +never refer to it again--just understand. Yes; he was glad he had told +her. He hadn't intended to, of course. It had come almost +spontaneously, almost as though for some reason it was _meant_ that he +should tell her, and---- + +Bradley's eyes fixed on a small boy's figure that came suddenly +streaking across the road and flung itself at the MacQuigans' little +front gate; then the gate swung, and the boy came rushing up the yard. +Bradley thought he recognized the figure as one of the call boys, and a +call boy running like that was always and ever a harbinger of trouble. +Instinctively he glanced back into the room. Mrs. MacQuigan was out in +the kitchen. Bradley stepped quickly into the hall, and reached the +front door as the boy began to pound a tattoo with his fists on the +panels. + +Bradley jerked the door open. + +"What's wrong?" he demanded tersely. + +The light from the hall was on the boy now--and his eyes were popping. + +"Say," he panted, in a scared way, "say, one of Reddy's friends sent +me. There's a wild row on at Faro Dave's. Reddy's raisin' the roof, +an'----" + +Bradley's hand closed over the youngster's mouth. In answer to the +knock, Mrs. MacQuigan was hurrying down the hall. + +"What's the matter, Martin?" she questioned nervously, looking from +Bradley to the boy and back again to Bradley. + +"Nothing," said Bradley reassuringly. "I'm wanted down at the +roundhouse to go out with a special." He gave the boy a significant +push gatewards. "Go on, bub," he said. "I'll be right along." + +Bradley went back into the house, picked up his cap, and, with a cheery +good-night to Mrs. MacQuigan, started out again. He walked briskly to +the gate and along past the picket fence--Mrs. MacQuigan had the shade +drawn back, and was watching him from the window--and then, hidden by +the Coussirats' cottage next door, he broke into a run. + +It wasn't far--distances weren't great in Big Cloud in those days, +aren't now, for that matter--and in less than two minutes Bradley had +Faro Dave's "El Dorado" in sight down Main Street--and his face set +hard. He wasn't the only one that was running; men were racing from +every direction; some coming up the street; others, he passed, who +shouted at him, and to whom he paid no attention. In a subconscious +way he counted a dozen figures dart in through the swinging doors of +the "El Dorado" from the street--news of a row travels fast. + +Bradley burst through the doors, still on the run--and brought up at a +dead halt against a solidly packed mass of humanity; Polacks and Swedes +and Hungarians from the construction gangs; a scattering of railroad +men in the rear; and more than a sprinkling of the harder element +gathered from all over town, the hangers-on, the sharpers, and the card +men, the leeches, the ilk of Faro Dave who ran the place, and who +seemed to be intent on maintaining a blockade at the far end of the +barroom. + +The place was jammed, everybody craning their necks toward the door of +the back room, where Faro Dave ran his stud, faro and roulette layouts; +and from there, over the shuffling feet of the crowding men in the bar, +came a snarl of voices--amongst them, Reddy's, screaming out in drunken +fury, incoherently. + +Bradley, without ceremony, pushed into the crowd, and the foreigners +made way for him the best they could. Then he commenced to shoulder +through the sort of self-constituted guard of sympathizers with the +house. One of these tried to block his way more effectually. + +"You'd better keep your hands off, whoever you are," the man threw at +him. "The young fool's been putting the place on the rough ever since +he came in here. All Dave wants to do is put him out of the back door, +and----" + +"Thash the boy, Reddy! Don't lesh him bluff you--saw him change cards +m'self. Damn thief--damn cheat--thash the boy, Reddy!" It was old +John MacQuigan's voice, from the other room, high-pitched, +clutter-tongued, drunken. + +Then a voice, cold, with a sneer, and a ring in the sneer that there +was no mistaking--Faro Dave's voice: + +"You make a move, and I'll drop you quicker'n----" + +Bradley's arms swept out with a quick, fierce movement, hurling the man +who tried to block him out of the way; and, fighting now, ramming with +body and shoulders, throwing those in front of him to right and left, +he half fell, half flung himself finally through the doorway into the +room beyond--too late. + +"Thash the boy, Reddy!"--it was old John's maudlin voice again. "Thash +the----" + +The picture seared itself into Bradley's brain, lightning-quick, +instantaneous, but vivid in every detail, as he ran: The little group +of men, three or four, who had been sitting at the game probably, +seeking cover in the far corner; Reddy MacQuigan, swaying a little, +standing before a somewhat flimsy green-baized card table; old John, +too far gone to stand upright alone, leaning against the wall behind +Reddy; Faro Dave, an ugly white in his face, an uglier revolver in his +hand, standing, facing Reddy across the table; the quick forward lunge +from Reddy, the crash of the table as the boy hurled it to the floor +and flung himself toward the gambler; the roar of a revolver shot, the +flash of the short-tongued flame; a choking scream; another shot, the +tinkle of glass as the bullet shattered the ceiling lamp; then +blackness--all but a dull glow filtering in through the barroom door, +that for the first instant in the sudden contrast gave no light at all. + +Bradley, before he could recover himself, pitched over a tangled mass +of wrecked tables--over that and a man's body. Somebody ran through +the room, and the back door slammed. There were shouts now, and +yells--a chorus of them from the barroom. Some one bawled for a light. + +Bradley got to his knees, and, reaching to raise the boy, wounded or +killed as he believed, found his throat suddenly caught in a vicious +grasp--and Reddy's snarling laugh was in his ears. + +"Let go!" Bradley choked. "Let go, Reddy. It's me--Martin." + +Reddy's hands fell. + +"Martin, eh?" he said thickly. "Thought it was--hic--that----" + +Reddy's voice sort of trailed off. They were bringing lamps into the +room now, holding them up high to get a comprehensive view of +things--and the light fell on the farther wall. Reddy was staring at +it, his eyes slowly dilating, his jaw beginning to hang weakly. + +Bradley glanced over his shoulder. Old John, as though he had slid +down the wall, as though his feet had slipped out from under him, sat +on the floor, legs straight out in front of him, shoulders against the +wall and sagged a little to one side, a sort of ironic jeer on the +blotched features, a little red stream trickling down from his right +temple--dead. + +Not a pretty sight? No--perhaps not. But old John never was a pretty +sight. He'd gone out the way he'd lived--that's all. + +It was Martin Bradley who reached him first, and the crowd hung back +while he bent over the other, hung back and made way for Reddy, who +came unsteadily across the room--not from drink now, the boy's +gait--the drink was out of him--he was weak. There was horror in the +young wiper's eyes, and a white, awful misery in his face. + +A silence fell. Not a man spoke. They looked from father to son. The +room was filling up now--but they came on tiptoe. Gamblers, most of +them, and pretty rough, pretty hard cases, and life held light--but in +that room that night they only looked from father to son, the oaths +gone from their lips, sobered, their faces sort of gray and stunned. + +Bradley, from bending over the dead man, straightened up. + +Reddy MacQuigan, with little jabs of his tongue, wet his lips. + +"The old man's gone, ain't he?" he said in a queer, lifeless way. + +"Yes," said Bradley simply. + +MacQuigan looked around the circle sort of mechanically, sort of +unseeingly--then at the form on the floor. Then he spoke again, almost +as though he were talking to himself. + +"Might just as well have been me that fired the shot," he whispered, +nodding his head. "I'm to blame--ain't I? An' I guess--I guess I've +finished the old lady, too." He looked around the circle again, then +his hands kind of wriggled up to his temples--and before Bradley could +spring to catch him, he went down in a heap on the floor. + +MacQuigan wasn't much more than a boy, not much more than that--but old +enough in another way. What he went through that night and in the days +that followed was between MacQuigan and his God. Life makes strange +meeting points sometimes, and sometimes the running orders are hard to +understand, and sometimes it looks like disaster quick and absolute, +with everything in the ditch, and the right of way a tangled ruin--and +yet when morning breaks there is no call for the wrecking crew, and it +comes to you deep down inside somewhere that it's the Great Despatcher +who's been sitting in on the night trick. + +Reddy MacQuigan went back to the roundhouse a different MacQuigan than +he had left it--sort of older, quieter, more serious--and the days went +by, a month or two of them. + +Regan, with a sort of inward satisfaction and some complacency, tugged +at his scraggly brown mustache, and summed it up pretty well. + +"Did I not say," said Regan, "that the only decent thing old John would +ever do would be to die? H'm? Well, then, I was right, wasn't I? +Look at young Reddy! Straight as a string--and taking care of the old +lady now. No; I ain't getting my shirts starched the way Mrs. +MacQuigan used to starch them--but no matter. Mrs. MacQuigan isn't +taking in washing any more, God bless her! I guess Reddy got it handed +to him pretty straight on the carpet that night. I'll have him pulling +a throttle one of these days--what?" + +Bradley? Yes; this is Martin Bradley's story--not Reddy MacQuigan's. +But Reddy had his part in it--had running orders to make one more of +those strange meeting points fixed by the Great Despatcher that we were +speaking about a minute ago. + +It was three months to the day from old John MacQuigan's death that +Bradley, in from a run, found a letter waiting for him up at Mrs. +MacQuigan's--and went down under it like a felled ox! Not the big +thing to do? Well, perhaps not--all that he cared for in life, +everything that he lived for, everything that had kept him straight +since his trouble years ago, snatched from him without a moment's +warning--that was all. Another man might not have lost his grip--or he +might. Bradley lost his--for a little while--but they call him to-day +a game man on the Hill Division. + +White-faced, not quite understanding himself, in a queer sort of +groping way, Bradley, in his flood of bitter misery, told Mrs. +MacQuigan, who had watched him open the letter--told her that his +little housekeeper, as he had come to call the kiddie, was dead. Not +even a chance to see her--an accident--the letter from the lawyers who +did his business, transmitting the news received from the school +authorities who knew only the lawyers as the principals--a letter, +trying to break the news in a softer way than a telegram would have +done, since Bradley was too far away to get back East in time, anyhow. + +And Mrs. MacQuigan put her arms around him, and, understanding as only +her mother's heart could understand, tried to comfort him, while the +tears rained down the sweet old face. But Bradley's eyes were dry. +With his elbows on the table, holding his chin in his hands, his face +like stone, he stared at the letter he had spread out on the red +checkered cloth--stared for a long time at that, and at the little +photograph he had taken from his pocket. + +"Martin, boy," pleaded Mrs. MacQuigan, and her hand brushed back the +hair from his forehead, "Martin, boy, don't take it like that." + +And then Bradley turned and looked at her--not a word--only a bitter +laugh--and picked up his letter and the picture and went out. + +Bradley went up on the 582 with the local freight, west, that night, +and there was a dare-devil laugh in his heart and a mechanical sense of +existence in his soul. And in the cab that night, deep in the +mountains, Bradley lost his grip. It seemed to sweep him in a sudden, +overwhelming surge; and, with the door swung wide, the cab leaping into +fiery red, the sweat beads trickling down his face that was white in a +curious way where the skin showed through for all the grime and +perspiration, he lurched and snatched at his engineer's arm. + +"Life's a hell of a thing, ain't it, Smithers?" he bawled over the roar +of the train and the swirl of the wind, wagging his head and shaking +imperatively at Smithers' arm. + +Smithers, a fussy little man, with more nerves than are good for an +engineer, turned, stared, caught a something in the fireman's face--and +tried to edge a little farther over on his seat. In the red, +flickering glare, Bradley's eyes had a look in them that wasn't sane, +and his figure, swaying with the heave of the cab, seemed to shoot back +and forth uncannily, grotesquely, in and out of the shadows. + +"Martin, for God's sake, Martin," gasped the engineer, "what's wrong +with you?" + +"You heard what I said," shouted Bradley, a sullen note in his voice, +gripping the engineer's arm still harder. "That's what it is, ain't +it? Why don't you answer?" + +Smithers, frightened now, stared mutely. The headlight shot suddenly +from the glittering ribbons of steel far out into nothingness, flinging +a filmy ray across a canyon's valley, and mechanically Smithers checked +a little as they swung the curve. Then, with a deafening roar of +thunder racketing through the mountains, they swept into a cut, the +rock walls towering high on either side--and over the din Bradley's +voice screamed again--and again he shook Smithers' arm. + +"Ain't it? D'ye hear--ain't it? Say--ain't it?" + +"Y-yes," stammered Smithers weakly, with a gulp. + +And then Bradley laughed--queerly. + +"You're a damn fool, Smithers!" he flung out, with a savage jeer. +"What do you know about it!" And throwing the engineer's arm from him, +his shovel clanged and clanged again, as into the red maw before him he +shot the coal. + +Smithers was scared. Bradley never said another word after that--just +kept to his own side of the cab, hugging his seat, staring through the +cab glass ahead, chin down on his breast, pulling the door at +intervals, firing at intervals like an automaton, then back to his seat +again. Smithers was scared. + +At Elk River, the end of the local run, Smithers told the train crew +about it, and they laughed at him, and looked around to find out what +Martin Bradley had to say about it--but Bradley wasn't in sight. + +Not much of a place, Elk River, not big enough for one to go anywhere +without the whole population knowing it; and it wasn't long before they +knew where Bradley was. The local made a two hours' lay-over there +before starting back for Big Cloud; and Martin Bradley spent most of it +in Kelly's place, a stone's throw from, the station. Not drinking +much, a glass or two all told, sitting most of the time staring out of +the window--not drinking much--getting the _taste_ of it that he hadn't +known for a matter of many years. Two glasses, perhaps three, that was +all--but he left Kelly's for the run back with a flask in his pocket. + +It was the flask that did it, not Smithers. Smithers was frightened at +his silent fireman tippling over his shovel, good and frightened before +he got to Big Cloud, and Smithers did not understand; but Smithers, for +all that, wasn't the man to throw a mate down cold. Neither was +Bradley himself bad enough to have aroused any suspicion. It was the +flask that did it. + +They made Big Cloud on the dot that morning--11.26. And in the +roundhouse, as Bradley stepped out through the gangway, his overalls +caught on the hasp of the tool-box on the tender, and the jerk sent the +flask flying into splinters on the floor--at Regan's feet. + +The fat little master mechanic, on his morning round of inspection, +halted, stared in amazement at the broken glass and trickling beverage, +got a whiff of the raw spirit, and blinked at Bradley, who, by this +time, had reached the ground. + +"What's the meaning of this?" demanded Regan, nonplussed. "Not you, +Bradley--on the run?" + +Bradley did not answer. He was regarding the master mechanic with a +half smile--not a pleasant one--more a defiant curl of his lips. + +Smithers, discreetly attempting to make his escape through the opposite +gangway, caught Regan's attention. + +"Here, you, Smithers," Regan called peremptorily, "come----" + +Then Bradley spoke, cutting in roughly. + +"Leave Smithers out of it," he said. + +Regan stared for another moment; then took a quick step forward, close +up to Bradley--and got the fireman's breath. + +Bradley shoved him away insolently. + +It was a minute before Regan spoke. He liked Bradley and always had; +but from the soles of his feet up to the crown of his head, Regan, +first and last, was a railroad man. And Regan knew but one creed. +Other men might drink and play the fool and be forgiven and trusted +again, a wiper, a shop hand, a brakeman, perhaps, or any one of the +train crew, but a man in the cab of an engine--_never_. Reasons, +excuses, contributory causes, counted not at all--they were not asked +for--they did not exist. The fact alone stood--as the fact. It was a +minute before Regan spoke, and then he didn't say much, just a word or +two without raising his voice, before he turned on his heel and walked +out of the roundhouse. + +"I'm sorry for this, Bradley," he said. "You're the last man I +expected it from. You know the rules. You've fired your last run on +this road. You're out." + +But Regan might have been making some comment on the weather for all +the concern it appeared to give Bradley. He stood leaning against the +tender, snapping his fingers in his queer way, silent, hard-faced, his +eyes far away from his immediate surroundings. Smithers, a wiper or +two, Reddy MacQuigan amongst them, clustered around him after Regan had +gone; but Bradley paid no attention to them, answered none of their +questions or comments; and after a little while pushed himself through +them and went out of the roundhouse. + +Bradley didn't go home that day; but Reddy MacQuigan did--at the noon +hour. That's how Mrs. MacQuigan got it. Mrs. MacQuigan did not wait +to wash up the dishes. She put on the little old-fashioned poke bonnet +that she had worn for as many seasons as Big Cloud could remember, and +started out to find Regan. She ran the master mechanic to earth on the +station platform, and opened up on him, fluttering, anxious, and +distressed. + +"Sure, Regan," she faltered, "you did not mean it when you fired Martin +this morning--not for good." + +Regan pulled at his mustache and looked at her--and shook his head at +her reprovingly. + +"I meant it, Mrs. MacQuigan," he said kindly. "You must know that. It +will do neither of us any good to talk about it. I wouldn't have let +him out if I could have helped it." + +"Then listen here, Regan," she pleaded. "Listen to the why of it, that +'tis only me who knows." + +And Regan listened--and the story lost nothing in the telling because +the faded eyes were wet, and the wrinkled lips quivered sometimes, and +would not form the words. + +At the end, big-hearted Regan reached into his back pocket for his +plug, met his teeth in it, wrenched a piece away without looking at +her, and cleared his throat--but he still shook his head. + +"It's no use you talking, Mrs. MacQuigan," he said gruffly, to hide his +emotion. "I'd fire any man on earth, 'tis no matter the who or why, +for drinking in the cab on a run." + +"But, Regan," she begged, catching at his arm, "he'll be leaving Big +Cloud with his job gone." + +"And what then?" said Regan. "Mabbe 'twould be the best thing--h'm?" + +"Ah, Regan," she said, and her voice caught a little, "sure, 'twould be +the end of Martin, don't you see? 'Tis me that knows him, and 'twill +not last long, the spell, only till the worst of it is over--Martin is +too fine for that, Regan. If I can keep him by me, Regan, d'ye mind? +If he goes away where there's nobody to give him a thought +he'll--he'll--ah, Regan, faith, Regan, 'tis a lot you've thought of +Martin Bradley the same as me." + +Regan examined a crack in the planking of the station platform +minutely, while Mrs. MacQuigan held tenaciously to his coat sleeve. + +"I dunno," said Regan heavily. "I dunno. Mabbe I'll----" + +"Ah, Regan!" she cried happily. "I knew 'twas----" + +"Not in a cab!" interposed Regan hastily. "Not if he was the president +of the road. But I'll see, Mrs. MacQuigan, I'll see." + +And Regan saw--Thornley, the trainmaster. And after Thornley, he saw +Reddy MacQuigan in the roundhouse. + +"Reddy," said he, with a growl that wasn't real, "there's a vacancy in +the engine crews--h'm?" + +"Martin's?" said Reddy quickly. + +"Yes," said Regan. "Do you want it?" + +"No," said Reddy MacQuigan shortly. + +"Good boy," said the fat little master mechanic. "Then I'll give it to +you just the same. Martin's through in here; but he'll get a chance +braking for Thornley. You'll run spare to begin with, and"--as Reddy +stared a little numbly--"don't break your neck thanking me. Thank +yourself for turning into a man. Your mother's a fine woman, Reddy. I +guess you're beginning to find that out too--h'm?" + +So Reddy MacQuigan went to firing where Martin Bradley had fired +before, and his pay went up; and Bradley--no, don't get that +idea--whatever else he may have done, Martin Bradley didn't make a +beast of himself. Bradley took the job they offered him, neither +gratefully nor ungratefully, took it with that spirit of utter +indifference for anything and everything that seemed to have laid hold +of him and got him in its grip--and off duty he spent most of his time +in the emporiums along Main Street. He drank some, but never enough to +snow him under; it was excitement that he seemed to crave, +forgetfulness in anything that would absorb him for the moment. It was +not drink so much; it was the faro tables and the roulette and the stud +poker that, crooked from the drop of the hat, claimed him and cleaned +him out night after night--all except Mrs. MacQuigan's board money, +that they never got away from, him. Mrs. MacQuigan got that as +regularly now that she didn't need it with Reddy to look after her as +she had when she was practically dependent upon Bradley for it all. + +Silent, grim, taciturn always, more so now than ever, Bradley went his +way; indifferent to Regan when Regan buttonholed him; indifferent to +Thornley and his threats of dismissal, meant to jerk Bradley into the +straight; indifferent to every mortal thing on earth. And the Hill +Division, with Regan leading, shook its head. There wasn't a man but +knew the story, and, big under the greasy jumpers and the oil-soaked +shirts, they never judged him; but Bradley's eyes held no invitation +for companionship, so they left him pretty much alone. + +"I dunno," said Regan, tugging at his mustache, twiddling with his +thumbs over his paunch, "I dunno--looks like the scrap heap at the end +of the run--h'm? I dunno." + +But Mrs. MacQuigan said no. + +"Wait," said she, with her patient smile. "It's me that knows Martin. +It's a sore, hurt heart the boy has now; but you wait and see--I'll win +him through. It's proud yet you'll be to take your hats off to Martin +Bradley!" + +Martin Bradley--a game man--that's what they call him now. Mrs. +MacQuigan was right--wasn't she? Not perhaps just in the way she +thought she was--but right for all that. Call it luck or chance if you +like, something more than that if it strikes you that way--but an +accident in the yards one night, a month after Bradley had lost his +engine, put one of the train crew of the Rat River Special out of +commission with a torn hand, and sent a call boy streaking uptown for a +substitute. Call it luck if you like, that the work train with a +hybrid gang of a hundred-odd Polacks, Armenians, and Swedes, cooped up +in a string of box cars converted into bunk houses, mess houses and +commissariat, a window or two in them to take the curse off, and end +doors connecting them for the sake of sociability, pulled out for the +new Rat River trestle work with Reddy MacQuigan handling the shovel end +of it for Bull Coussirat, who had been promoted in the cab--and Bradley +as the substitute brakeman on the front end. Well, maybe it was +luck--but that's not what they call it on the Hill Division. + +Perhaps no one quite understood Bradley, even at the end, except Mrs. +MacQuigan; and possibly even she didn't get it all. Inconsistent, to +put it mildly, that a man like Bradley would have let go at all? Well, +it's an easy matter and a very human one, to judge another from the +safe vantage ground of distance--isn't it? Some men take a thing one +way, and some another; and in some the feelings take deeper root than +in others--and find their expression in a different way. Ditched from +the start, Bradley hadn't much to cling to, had he--only the baby girl +he had dreamed about on the runs at night; only the little tot he had +slaved for, who some day was to make a home for him? But about the Rat +River Special---- + +It was midnight when they pulled out of Big Cloud; and Bradley, in the +caboose, glanced at Heney's tissue, which, as a matter of form, the +conductor gave him to read. The Special was to run twenty minutes +behind No. 17, the westbound mail train, and make a meeting point with +the through freight, No. 84, eastbound, at The Forks. The despatchers +had seized the propitious moment to send the rolling camp through in +the quiet hours of traffic, with an eye out to getting the foreigners +promptly on the job in the morning for fear they might draw an extra +hour or two of time--without working for it! The Special was due to +make Rat River at four o'clock. + +Bradley handed back the order without comment, picked up his lantern, +and started for the door. + +"No need of going forward to-night," said Heney, laying his arm on +Bradley's arm. "We've only a short train, a dozen cars, and we can +watch it well enough from the cupola. It's damn cold out there." + +"Oh, I guess it's all right, Heney," Bradley answered--and went out +through the door. + +There weren't any platforms to the box cars, just small end doors. +Once in camp, and stationary on a siding, the cars would be connected +up with little wooden gangways, you understand? Bradley, from the +platform of the caboose, stepped across the buffer, and made his way +through several cars. One was pretty much like another; a stove going, +and stuffy hot; the foreigners stretched out in their bunks, some of +them; some of them playing cards on the floor; some asleep; some +quarrelling, chattering, jabbering; a hard looking lot for the most +part, black-visaged, scowling, unshaven, gold circlets dangling in +their ears--bar the Swedes. + +Bradley worked along with scarcely more than a glance at the occupants, +until, in the fourth car, he halted suddenly and shoved his lamp into +the face of a giant of a man, who squatted in the corner, sullen and +apart, with muttering lips. + +"What's wrong with you?" he demanded brusquely. + +The man drew back with a growl that was like a beast's, lips curling +back over the teeth. Bradley stared at him coolly, then turned +inquiringly to the crowd in the car. He was greeted with a burst of +unintelligible, polyglot words, and spontaneous, excitable +gesticulations. Bradley shrugged his shoulders, and slammed the door +behind him. + +Outside on the buffer, he reached for the ladder, swung himself up the +iron rungs to the top of the car, and, with his lantern hooked in his +arm, sat down on the footboard, bracing himself against the brake +wheel, and buttoned his reefer--there was another night--to +think--ahead of him. + +To think--if he could only forget! It was that fearful sense of +impotency--impotency--impotency. It seemed to laugh and jeer and mock +at him. It seemed to make a plaything of this father love of his. +There was nothing--nothing he could do to bring her back--that was +it--nothing! Soul, life, mind and body, he would have given them all +to have saved her--would give them now to bring her back--and there was +only this ghastly impotency. It seemed at times that it would drive +him mad--and he could not forget. And then the bitter, crushing grief; +the rebellion, fierce, ungovernable, that his _all_ should have been +taken from him, that the years he had planned should be turned to +nothing but grinning mockery; and then that raging sense of impotency +again, that rocked his turbulent soul as in an angry, storm-tossed sea. + +Time passed, and he sat there motionless, save for the jolting of the +train that bumped him this way and that against the brake wheel. They +were into the mountains now; and the snowy summits, moon-touched, +reared themselves in white, grotesque, fanciful shapes, and seemed, +cold in their beauty, to bring an added chill to the frosty night. +Ahead, far ahead, the headlight's ray swept now the track, now the gray +rock side, now, softly green, a clump of pines, as the right of way +curved and twisted and turned; now, slowing up a grade, the heavy, +growling bark of the exhaust came with long intervals between, and now, +on the level, it was quick as the tattoo of a snare drum, with the +short stack belching a myriad fiery sparks insolently skyward in a +steady stream; around him was the sweep of the wind, the roar of the +train, the pound of the trucks beating the fish-plates, the sway, the +jerk, the recovery of the slewing cars, and, curiously, the deep, +brooding silence of the mountains, frowning, it seemed, at this +sacrilege of noise; behind, showed the yellow glimmer from the caboose, +the dark, indistinct outline of a watching figure in the cupola. + +Suddenly, snatching at the brake wheel to help him up, Bradley sprang +erect. From directly underneath his feet came a strange, confused, +muffled sound, like a rush of men from one end of the car to the other. +Then there broke a perfect bedlam of cries, yells, shouts and +screams--and then a revolver shot. + +In an instant Bradley was scrambling down the ladder to +investigate--they could not hear the row, whatever it was, in the +caboose--and in another he had kicked the car door open and plunged +inside. A faint, bluish haze of smoke undulated in the air, creeping +to the roof of the car; and there was the acrid smell of powder--but +there was no sign of a fight, no man, killed or wounded, sprawling on +the floor. But the twenty men who filled the car were crouched in +groups and singly against the car sides; or sat upright in their bunks, +their faces white, frightened--only their volubility unchecked, for all +screamed and talked and waved their arms at once. + +They made a rush for Bradley, explaining in half a dozen languages what +had happened. Bradley pushed them roughly away from him. + +"Speak English!" he snapped. "What's wrong here? Can't any of you +speak English?" + +An Italian grabbed his arm and pointed through the door Bradley had +left open behind him to the next car forward. "Pietro!" he shouted out +wildly. "Gotta da craze--mad--gotta da gun!" + +"Well, go on!" prodded Bradley. "He's run into the next car. I +understand that--but what happened here? Who's Pietro?" + +But the man's knowledge, like his English, was limited. He did not +know much--Pietro was not one of them--Pietro had come only that +morning to Big Cloud from the East--Pietro had gone suddenly mad--no +man had done anything to make Pietro mad. + +And then suddenly into Bradley's mind leaped the story that he had read +in the papers a few days before of an Italian, a homicidal maniac, who +had escaped from an asylum somewhere East, and had disappeared. The +description of the man, as he remembered it, particularly the great +size of the man, tallied, now that he thought of it, with the fellow +who had been in the car when he had first passed through. He glanced +quickly around--the man was gone. So that was Pietro! + +Bradley started on the run for the next car ahead; and, subconsciously, +as he ran, he felt the speed of the train quicken. But that was +natural enough--they had been crawling to the summit of Mitre Peak, +and, over that now, before them lay a four-percent grade to the level +below, one of the nastiest bits of track on the division, curves all +the way--only Bull Coussirat was hitting it up pretty hard for a +starter. + +In the next car the same scene was repeated--the smell of powder smoke, +the blue haze hanging listless near the roof out of the air currents; +the crouched, terrified foreigners, one with a broken wrist, dangling, +where a bullet had shattered it. Pietro, Berserker fashion, was +shooting his way through the train. + +Bradley went forward more cautiously now, more warily. Strange the way +the speed was quickening! The cars were rocking now with short, +vicious slews. He thought he heard a shout from the track-side +without, but he could not be sure of that. + +Through the next car and the next he went, trailing the maniac; and +then he started to run again. Stumbling feet, trying to hold their +footing, came to him from the top of the car. With every instant now +the speed of the train was increasing--past the limit of safety--past +the point where he would have hesitated to use the emergency brakes, if +there had been any to use--a luxury as yet extended only to the +passenger equipment in those days. The Polacks, the Armenians, and the +Swedes were beginning to yell with another terror, at the frantic +pitching of the cars, making a wild, unearthly chorus that echoed up +and down the length of the train. + +Bradley's brain was working quickly now. It wasn't only this madman +that he was chasing fruitlessly. There must be something wrong, more +serious still, in the engine cab--that was Heney, and Carrol, the other +brakeman, who had run along the top. + +Bradley dashed through the door, and, between the cars, jumped for the +ladder and swarmed up--the globe of his lamp in a sudden slew shivered +against the car roof, and the flame went out in a puff. He flung the +thing from him; and, with arms wide outspread for balance on his +reeling foothold, ran, staggered, stumbled, recovered himself, and sped +on again, springing from car to car, up the string of them, to where +the red flare, leaping from the open fire box in the cab ahead, +silhouetted two figures snatching for their hold at the brake-wheel on +the front end of the forward car--Heney and Carrol. And as Bradley +ran, a thin stream of flame spurted upward from the cab, and there came +faintly, almost lost in the thunder of the train, the bark of a +revolver shot--and the two figures, ducking instantly, crouched lower. + +And then Bradley stood beside the others; and Heney, that no man ever +called a coward, clutched at Martin Bradley and shouted in his ear: + +"For God's sake, Martin, what'll we do? The throttle was wide at the +top of the grade when he threw Bull Coussirat off. We saw it from the +cupola. It's certain death to make a move for him!" + +But Bradley made no answer. Tight-lipped, he was staring down into the +cab; and a livid face stared back at him--the face of the man that he +had stopped to look at as they had pulled out of Big Cloud--Pietro--the +face, hideously contorted, of a maniac. And on the floor of the cab, +stretched out, wriggling spasmodically, Reddy MacQuigan lay upon his +back; and Pietro half knelt upon him, clutching with one hand at the +boy's throat, pointing a revolver with the other at the roof of the car. + +Wild, crazy fast now, the speed was; the engine dancing ahead; the cars +wriggling behind; the yellow glimmer of the caboose shooting this way +and that like a pursuing phantom will-o'-the-wisp; and from beneath the +roofs of the cars rose that muffled, never-ending scream of terror from +the Polacks, the Armenians and the Swedes--rose, too, from the roofs of +the cars themselves, for some were climbing there. It was disaster +absolute and certain not a mile ahead where the track in a short, +murderous curve hugged Bald Eagle Peak, with the canyon dropping a +thousand feet sheer down from the right of way, disaster there--if they +ever got that far! + +But Bradley, though he knew it well enough from a hundred runs, was not +thinking of that. In a calm, strange way there seemed to come one more +analogy between Mrs. MacQuigan's life and his--this human thing that +looked like a gorilla was choking her son to death, the son that was +making a home for her as she had dreamed he would do some day, the son +that was all she had to depend upon. Mrs. MacQuigan's son--his little +girl. Both out! + +There seemed to flash before him the picture of the gray head bowed +upon the red-checkered tablecloth in the little dining room, the frail +shoulders shaking with the same grief that he was drinking now to the +dregs, the same grief that he would have sold his soul to avert--only +he had been impotent--impotent. But he was not impotent here--to keep +those dregs from Mrs. MacQuigan, the only soul on earth he cared for +now. And suddenly Bradley laughed--loud--high above the roar of the +train, the shouts and screams of the maddened creatures it was sweeping +to eternity, and the human gorilla in the cab shot its head forward and +covered Bradley with its revolver, teeth showing in a snarl. + +And so Bradley laughed, and with the laugh poised himself--and sprang +far out from the car roof in a downward plunge for the tender, reached +the coal and rolled, choking with the hot blood in his throat from the +shot that had caught him in mid-air, rolled down with an avalanche of +coal, grappled with the frothing creature that leaped to meet him, +staggered to his feet, struggled for a moment, fast-locked with the +madman, until a lurch of the engine hurled them with a crash against +the cab frame, and the other, stunned, slid inertly from his grasp. +And then for an instant Bradley stood swaying, clutching at his +throat--then he took a step forward--both hands went out pawing for the +throttle, found it, closed it--and he went down across Bull Coussirat's +empty seat--dead. + +Only a humble figure, Bradley, just a toiler like millions of others, +not of much account, not a great man in the world's eyes--only a humble +figure. Measure him as it seems best to you to measure him for his +frailty or his strength. They call him a game man on the Hill +Division. His story is told. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Night Operator, by Frank L. Packard + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OPERATOR *** + +***** This file should be named 33634.txt or 33634.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/6/3/33634/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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