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THE SHORT LINE WAR
By Samuel Merwin
CHAPTER
I. JIM WEEKS
II. MR. MCNALLY GOES TO TILLMAN CITY
III. POLITICS AND OTHER THINGS
IV. JIM WEEKS CLOSES IN
V. TUESDAY EVENING
VI. JUDGE BLACK
VII. BETWEEN THE LINES
VIII. JUDGE GREY
IX. THE MATTER OF POSSESSION
X. SOMEBODY LOSES THE BOOKS
XI. A POLITICIAN
XII. KATHERINE
XIII. TRAIN NO. 14
XIV. A CAPTURE AT BRUSHINGHAM
XV. DEUS EX MACHINA
XVI. MCNALLY'S EXPEDIENT
XVII. IN THE DARK
XVIII. THE COMING OF DAWN
XIX. KATHERINE DECIDES
XX. HARVEY
XXI. THE TILLMAN CITY STOCK
XXII. THE WINNING OF THE ROAD
XXIII. THE SURRENDER
CHAPTER I
JIM WEEKS
James Weeks came of a fighting stock.
His great-grandfather, Ashbel Weeks, was born in Connecticut in 1748; he
migrated to New York in '70, and settled among the Oneida Indians on the
Upper Mohawk. It was the kind of life he was built for; he sniffed at
danger like a young horse catching a breath off the meadows. He did not
take the war fever until St. Leger came up the valley, when he fought
beside Herkimer in the ambush on Oriskany Creek. He joined the army of
the North, and remained with it through the long three years that
ended at Yorktown; then he married, and returned to his home among the
half-civilized Oneidas.
His oldest son, Jonathan, was born in '90. He grew like his father
in physique and temperament, and his migrating disposition led him
to Kentucky. The commercial instinct, which had never appeared in his
father, was strong in him, so that he turned naturally to trading. He
began in a small way, but he succeeded at it, and amassed what was then
considered a large fortune.
In 1823 he moved to Louisville, and interested himself in promoting the
steamboat traffic on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. As the business
developed, Jonathan Weeks's fortune grew with it. His only son, who
was born in 1815, was sent to Harvard; he spent a very merry four years
there, and a good deal of money. He fell in love in the meantime, and
married immediately after his graduation. Not many months after his
marriage he was killed by the accidental discharge of a rifle, and,
shortly after this, his widow died in giving birth to a son.
The care of the child devolved entirely upon Jonathan, the grandfather.
He assumed it gladly, even eagerly, and his whole existence soon centred
about the boy, and James--for so they had named him--became more to him
than his son had ever been. It grew evident that he would have the
Weeks build, and, by the time he was fifteen, he was as lean, big-boned,
awkward a hobbledehoy as the old man could wish. His grandfather's
wealth did not spoil him in the least; he was the kind of a boy it would
have been difficult to spoil.
He had no fondness for books, but it is to be doubted if that was much
of a grief to his grandfather. He was good at mathematics,--he used to
work out problems for fun,--and an excellent memory for certain kinds
of details enabled him to master geography without difficulty. The great
passion of his boyhood was for the big, roaring, pounding steamboats
that went down to New Orleans. His ambition, like that of nearly every
boy who lived in sight of those packets, was to be a river pilot, and he
was nearing his majority before he outgrew it.
He was twenty-two years old when he fell in love with Ethel Harvey. She
was nineteen when she came home from the Eastern school where she had
spent the past five years, and she burst upon Jim in the first glory
of her womanhood. When she had grown an old woman the young girls still
envied her beauty, and wondered what it must have been in its first
bloom. Small wonder that Jim fell in love with her; it was inevitable.
He first saw her, after her return, on a bright June morning as he was
strolling down the path from his grandfather's house to the street. She
was riding her big bay mare at a smart gallop, but she pulled up short
at sight of him, and drawing off a riding gauntlet held out her hand.
From that moment Jim loved her. The old man was coming down the path,
but seeing them there together, he paused, for they made a striking
picture. Her little silk hat sat daintily on her hair, which would
be rebellious and fluffy; the dark green riding habit with its tight
sleeves revealed the perfect lines of her lithe figure, which swayed
gracefully as the mare pawed and backed and plunged, impatient for the
morning gallop. She seemed quite indifferent to the protests of the
big brute, and talked merrily to Jim, who stood looking up at her in
bewildered admiration. At last she shook hands again and rode away,
and Jonathan Weeks walked back into the house with a satisfied smile.
“They'll do,” he said.
It looked as though they would. Through the short happy weeks that
followed, Ethel did not ride alone. Together they explored the country
lanes or left them for a dash straight across the fields, taking
anything that chanced to be in the way. In their impromptu races, which
were frequent, Ethel almost always won; for racer though he was, Jim's
sorrel found the two hundred and eight pounds he carried too much of
a handicap. So the days went by, and though nothing was said about it,
they talked to each other, and thought of each other, as lovers do.
But all the while there was growing in Ethel's mind an intuition that
something was wrong. She had not an analytical mind, but she became
convinced that though she might learn to understand Jim, he could never
understand her. It was not only that she was the first woman who had
come into his life, though that had much to do with it. But he was a man
without much instinct or imagination; he took everything seriously and
literally, he could not understand a whim. And when she saw how her
pretty feminine inconsistencies puzzled him, and how he failed to
understand the whimsical, butterfly fancies she confided to him, she
would cry with vexation, and think she hated him; but then the knightly
devotion of his big heart would win her back again, and her tears would
cease to burn her cheeks, and she would tell herself how unworthy she
was of the love of a man like that. But the trouble was still there;
Ethel grew sad, and Jim, more than ever, failed to understand. The old
man watched, but said nothing.
One evening Jim took her out on the river. It was the summer of
'61, when the North was learning how bitter was the task it had to
accomplish. Kentucky was disputed ground and feeling ran high there;
little else was thought of. Jim had been talking to her for some time
on this all-absorbing topic while she sat silent in the stern, her hand
trailing in the water. Finally he asked why she was so quiet.
“I think this war is very stupid,” she said. “Let's talk about”--here
she paused and her eyes followed the big night boat which was churning
its way down the river--“about paddle-wheels, or port lights, or
something.”
Jim said nothing; he had nothing to say. She went on:--
“Don't you think it is tiresome to always mean what you say? I hate to
tell the truth. Anybody can do that.”
“I thought,” said Jim, “that you believed in sincerity.”
“Oh, of course I do,” she exclaimed impatiently, and again Jim was
silent.
The next day he took her for a drive and it was then that the end came.
They had been having a glorious time, for the rapid motion and the
bright sunshine had driven away her mood of the night before and she was
perfectly happy; Jim was happy in her happiness. The half-broken colts
were fairly steady and he let her drive them and turned in his seat so
that he could watch her. As he looked at her there, her head erect, her
elbows squared, her bright eyes looking straight out ahead, Jim
fell deeper than ever in love with her. The colts felt a new and
unrestraining hand on the reins, and the pace increased rapidly. Jim
noted it.
“You'd better pull up a little,” he said. “They'll be getting away from
you.”
“I love to go this way,” she replied, and over the reins she told the
colts the same thing, in a language they understood. Suddenly one of
them broke, and in a second both were running.
“Pull 'em in,” said Jim, sharply. “Here--give me the reins.”
“I can hold them,” she protested wilfully.
Then, without hesitation and with perfectly unconscious brutality, Jim
tore the reins out of her hands, and addressed himself to the task of
quieting the horses.
It was not easy, but he was cool and strong, and the horses knew he was
their master; nevertheless it was several minutes before he had them on
their legs again. During that time neither had spoken; then Jim waited
for her to break the silence. He was somewhat vexed, for he thought she
had deliberately exposed herself to an unnecessary peril. But she said
nothing and they finished their drive in silence.
At her door he sprang out to help her to alight, but she ignored his
offered aid. Though she turned away he saw that there were tears in her
eyes.
“Ethel,” he said softly, but she faced him in a flash of anger.
“Don't speak to me. Oh--how I hate you!”
Jim seemed suddenly to grow bigger. “Will you please tell me if you mean
that?” he said slowly.
“I mean just that,” she answered. “I--I hate you.” She stood still a
moment; then she seemed to choke, and turning, fled into the house.
To Jim's mind that was the end of it. She had told him that she hated
him. The fact that there had been a catch in her voice as she said it
weighed not at all with him; that was an unknown language. So he took
her literally and exactly and went away by himself to think it over.
He was late for dinner that night, and when he came in his grandfather
was pacing the dining room. But Jim wasted no words in explanation.
“Grandfather,” he said, “I think if you won't need me for a while I'll
enlist to-morrow.”
“I can get along all right,” said the old man, “but I'm sorry you're
going.”
The older man was looking at the younger one narrowly. Suddenly and
bluntly he asked:--
“Is anything the matter with you and Ethel Harvey?”
Jim nodded, and without further invitation or questioning he related the
whole incident. “That's all there is to it,” he concluded. “The team had
bolted and she wouldn't give me the reins; so I took them away from her
and pulled in the horses. There was nothing else to do.”
“And then she said she hated you,” added Jonathan, musingly. “I reckon
she hasn't much sense.”
“It ain't that,” Jim answered quickly. “She's got sense enough. The
trouble with her is she's too damned plucky.”
A few days later he was a private in the Nineteenth Indiana Volunteers.
He made a good soldier, for not only did he love danger as had his
great-grandfather before him, but he had nerves which months of inaction
could not set jangling, and a constitution which hardship and privation
could not undermine.
The keenest delight he had ever known came with his first experience
under fire. He felt his breath coming in long deep inhalations; he could
think faster and more clearly than at other times, and he knew that his
hands were steady and his aim was good. Somehow it seemed that years
of life were crowded into those few minutes, and he retired reluctantly
when the order came.
His regiment was in the Army of the Potomac, and the story of its
waiting and blundering and magnificent fighting need not be told again
in these pages. Jim was one of thousands of brave, intelligent fighters
who did not rise to the command of a division or even of a regiment.
He was a lieutenant in Company E when the Nineteenth marched down the
Emmittsburg Pike, through Gettysburg and out to the ridge beyond, to
hold it until reenforcements should come.
They fought there during four long hours, until the thin line of
blue could hold no longer, and gray ranks under Ewell and Fender had
enveloped both flanks. Then sullenly they came back through the town,
still firing defiantly, and cursing the help that had not come. It
was during this retreat that Jim was hit, but he did not drop.
Somehow--though as in a dream--he kept with his regiment, and it was not
until they were rallied in the cemetery on the other side of the town
that he pitched forward and lay quite still.
Everybody knows how the Eleventh Corps held the cemetery through the two
bloody days that followed. But Jim was unconscious of it all, for he lay
on a cot in the Sanitary Commission tent, raving in delirium. And the
surgeons and nurses looked at him gravely and wondered with every hour
why he did not die.
But, as one of his comrades had said, “it took a lot of pounding to lick
Jim Weeks,” and in a surprisingly short time he was strong enough to be
taken home.
When he first saw his grandfather he was dimly conscious of a change
in him, and as he grew stronger and better able to observe closely he
became surer of it. Jonathan had been a young old man when Jim went
away; now he looked every one of his seventy-three years, and instead
of the tireless energy of former times Jim noted a listlessness hard to
understand.
One night after both had gone to bed Jim heard his grandfather groping
his way down the stairs and out upon the veranda. He listened intently
until he heard the creak of the rocking chair, which told him that the
old man was visiting again with old friends and old fancies. The slow
rhythm lulled Jim into a doze, and then into sleep. He awakened with a
start; his pioneer blood made him a light sleeper, and he knew that the
old man could not have got upstairs and past his door without waking
him. “He must have gone to sleep down there,” thought Jim, and rising he
went down to the veranda. Jonathan had gone to sleep, but the black cob
pipe was clenched between rigid jaws; his sightless eyes were open and
seemed to be looking at the stars.
At first Jim felt that sails, helm, and compass had been swept clean
away, but he was strong enough to recover his bearings quickly. His
grandfather's death marked an end and a beginning, and just as a needle
when a magnet is taken away swings unerringly into the line of force of
the original magnet, the earth, so Jim's life swung to a new direction.
There was no one whose life could direct or influence his, and alone he
started on what business men of the next generation knew as his career.
The war had lessened but not destroyed Jonathan's fortune, and it went
without reservation to Jim. The times offered golden opportunities to
a man with ready money and good business training, and his success was
almost inevitable. His life from this time was the logical working out
of what he had in him.
He turned naturally to the railroad business, and those who know the
history of Western railroads from '65 to '90 will understand what a
field it was for a man who was at once fearless and level-headed. The
craze for construction and then the equally mad competition did not
confuse him, they simply gave him opportunities. When the reaction
against the railroads set in, and the Granger movement wrecked nearly
all the Western roads, Jim bowed to the inevitable, but he saved
himself--no one knew just how--and when the State legislators were over
their midsummer madness he was again in the field, and again succeeding.
With the details of these struggles we are not concerned. The “inside”
history of many of them will never be known; in almost every case it
differs materially from the story which appeared in the papers. Jim
became famous and was libelled and flattered, respected and abused, by
turns; but always he was feared. He was supposed to be dishonest, and
it is true he did not scruple to use his enemies' weapons; but at
directors' meetings it was the interest of the stockholders that he
fought for.
Men wondered at his success, and over their cigars gravely discussed
the reasons for it. Some said it was sheer good luck that turned what
he touched to gold, some laid it to his start, and others to his cool,
dispassionate strategy. To some extent it was all of these things; but
more than anything else he had won as a bulldog does, by hanging on.
Often he had beaten better strategists simply by keeping up the fight
when by all the rules he was beaten. For as the comrade of long ago had
said, “it took a lot of pounding to lick Jim Weeks.”