Title: The Night Operator
Author: Packard, Frank L. (Frank Lucius), 1877-1942
Language: English
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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 cañon 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 Cañon; 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon
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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon, 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 cañon 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 cañon, 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 Cañon.  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 cañon, 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 cañon 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 cañon'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 cañon 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 this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Night Operator" ***

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