Produced by Darleen Dove, Roger Frank, Mary Meehan and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Held for Orders
Being Stories of Railroad Life
By Frank H. Spearman
_Illustrations by
JAY HAMBIDGE_
New York
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & COMPANY
MCMI
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY S. S. MCCLURE CO.
1901, BY MCCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
First impression, October, 1901
Second impression, November, 1901
_To_
John Francis Cordeal
[Illustration: Shockley]
Contents
THE SWITCHMAN'S STORY--SHOCKLEY
THE WIPER'S STORY--HOW MCGRATH GOT AN ENGINE
THE ROADMASTER'S STORY--THE SPIDER WATER
THE STRIKER'S STORY--MCTERZA
THE DESPATCHER'S STORY--THE LAST ORDER
THE NIGHTMAN'S STORY--BULLHEAD
THE MASTER MECHANIC'S STORY--DELAROO
THE OPERATOR'S STORY--DE MOLAY FOUR
THE TRAINMASTER'S STORY--OF THE OLD GUARD
THE YELLOW MAIL STORY--JIMMIE THE WIND
Illustrations
Shockley
Chris
Cooney
Hailey
McTerza
Old Man Nicholson
Dave Hawk
Jimmie the Wind
Held for Orders
The Switchman's Story
SHOCKLEY
"He's rather a bad lot, I guess," wrote Bucks to Callahan, "but I am
satisfied of one thing--you can't run that yard with a Sunday-school
superintendent. He won't make you any trouble unless he gets to
drinking. If that happens, _don't have any words with him_." Bucks
underscored three times. "Simply crawl into a cyclone cellar and wire
me. Sending you eighteen loads of steel to-night, and six cars of ties.
Blair reports section 10 ready for track layers and Mear's outfit moving
into the Palisade Canon. Push the stuff to the front."
It was getting dark, and Callahan sat in that part of the Benkleton
depot he called the office, pulling at a muddy root that went
unaccountably hot in sudden flashes. He took the pipe from his mouth,
leaving his foot on the table, and looked at the bowl resentfully,
wondering again if there could be powder in that infernal tobacco of
Rubedo's. The mouthpiece he eyed as a desperate man might ponder a final
shift.
The pipe had originally come from God's Country, with a Beautiful Amber
Mouthpiece, and a Beautiful Bowl; but it was a present from his sister
and had been bought at a dry-goods store. Once when thinking--or, if you
please, when not thinking--Callahan had held a lighted match to the
Beautiful Amber Mouthpiece instead of to the tobacco, and in the fire
that ensued they had hard work to save the depot.
Callahan never wrote his sister about it; he thought only about buying
pipes at dry-goods stores, and about being, when they exploded, a
thousand miles from the man who sold them. There was plenty in that to
think about. What he now brought his teeth reluctantly together on was
part of the rubber tube of a dismantled atomizer; in happier
post-Christmas days a toilet fixture. But Callahan had abandoned the use
of bay rum after shaving. His razor had gone to the scrap and on Sunday
mornings he merely ran a pair of scissors over the high joints--for
Callahan was railroading--and on the front.
After losing the mouthpiece he would have been completely in the air but
for little Chris Oxen. Chris was Callahan's section gang. His name was
once Ochsner, but that wasn't in Benkleton. Callahan was hurried when he
made up the pay roll and put it Oxen, as being better United States. I
say United States because Callahan said United States, in preference to
English.
Chris had been in America only three years; but he had been in Russia
three hundred, and in that time had learned many ways of getting
something out of nothing. When the red-haired despatcher after the
explosion cast away with bitterness the remains of the pipe, Chris
picked it up and by judicious action on the atomizer figured out a new
mouthpiece no worse than the original, for while the second, like the
first, was of rubber, it was not of the explosive variety.
Chris presented the remodelled root to Callahan as a surprise; Callahan,
in a burst of gratitude, promoted him on the spot: he made little Chris
foreman. It didn't bring any advance in pay--but there was the honor. To
be foreman was an honor, and as little Chris was the only man on the
yard force, he became, by promotion, foreman of himself.
So Callahan sat thinking of the ingenuity of Chris, reflecting on the
sting of construction tobacco, and studying over Bucks's letter.
The yard was his worry. Not that it was much of a yard; just a dozen
runs off the lead to take the construction material for Callahan to
distribute, fast as the grade was pushed westward. The trouble at the
Benkleton yard came from without, not from within.
The road was being pushed into the cattle country, and it was all easy
till they struck Benkleton. Benkleton was just a hard knot on the Yellow
Grass trail: a squally, sandy cattle town. There were some bad men in
Benkleton; they didn't bother often. But there were some men in
Benkleton who thought they were bad, and these were a source of constant
bedevilment to the railroad men.
Southwest of the yard, where the river breaks sheer into the bottoms,
there hived and still hives a colony of railroad laborers, Russians.
They have squatted there, burrowed into the face of the bench like sand
swallows, and scraped caves out for themselves, and the name of the
place is Little Russia.
This was in the troublous days, when the cowboys, homesick for evil,
would ride around Little Russia with rope and gun, and scare the
pioneers cross-eyed. The cattle fellows spent the entire winter months,
all sand and sunshine, putting up schemes to worry Callahan and the
Little Russians. The headquarters for this restless gang were at Pat
Barlie's place, across from the post office; it was there that the
cowboys loved to congregate. To Callahan, Pat Barlie's place was a
wasps' nest; but to Chris, it was a den of wolves--and of a dreader sort
than Russian wolves, for Barlie's pack never slept.
The east and west section men could run away from them on hand cars; it
was the yardmen who caught it, and it grew so bad they couldn't keep a
switchman. About ten o'clock at night, after Number Twenty-three had
pulled in and they were distributing a trainload of bridge timber, a
switch-man's lantern would go up in signal, when _pist!_ a bullet would
knock the lamp clean out of his hand, and the nerve clean out of his
head. Handling a light in the Benkleton yard was like smoking a
celluloid pipe--you never could tell when it would go off.
Cowboys shot away the lamps faster than requisitions could be drawn for
new ones. They shot the signals off the switches, and the lights from
the tops of moving trains. Whenever a brakeman showed a flicker, two
cowboys stood waiting to snuff it. If they missed the lamp, they winged
the brakeman.
It compelled Bucks after a while to run trains through Benkleton
without showing ever a light. This, though tough, could be managed, but
to shunt flats in the yard at night with no light, or to get a switchman
willing to play young Tell to Peg Leg Reynolds's William for any length
of time, was impossible. At last Bucks, on whom the worry reflected at
headquarters, swore he would fight them with fire, and he sent Shockley.
Callahan still sat speculating on what he would be up against when
Shockley arrived.
The impression Bucks's letter gave him--knowing Bucks to be frugal of
words--was that Shockley would rise up with cartridges in his ears and
bowie knives dangling from his watch chain. To live in fear of the
cowboys was one thing; but to live in fear of the cowboys on the one
hand, and in terror of a yard master on the other, seemed, all things
considered, confusing, particularly if the new ally got to drinking and
his fire scattered. Just then train Fifty-nine whistled. Pat Barlie's
corner began to sputter its salute. Callahan shifted around behind his
bomb-proof, lit his powder horn, and looking down the line wondered
whether Shockley might be on that train.
It was not till the next night though that a tall, thinnish chap,
without visible reasons for alighting, got off Fifty-nine and walked
tentatively down the platform. At the ticket office he asked for the
assistant superintendent.
"Out there on the platform talking to the conductor."
The thin fellow emerged and headed for Callahan. Callahan noticed only
his light, springy amble and his hatchet face.
"Mr. Callahan?"
"Yes."
"Bucks sent me up--to take the yard."
"What's your name?"
"Shockley."
"Step upstairs. I'll be up in a minute."
Shockley walked back into the depot but he left the copper-haired
assistant superintendent uncertain as to whether it was really over;
whether Shockley had actually arrived or not. As Callahan studied the
claimant's inoffensive appearance, walking away, he rather thought it
couldn't be over, or that Bucks was mistaken; but Bucks never made a
mistake.
Next morning at seven, the new yard master took hold. Callahan had
intimated that the night air in the yard, it being low land, was
miasmatic, and that Shockley had maybe better try for a while to do his
switching in the daytime. Just before the appointed hour in the morning,
the assistant had looked out on his unlucky yard; he thought to himself
that if that yard didn't drive a man to drink nothing ever would. Piled
shanty high with a bewildering array of material, it was enough to take
the heart out of a Denver switching crew.
While he stood at the window he saw their plug switch engine, that had
been kicked out of every other yard on the system, wheeze out of the
roundhouse, saw the new yard master flirt his hand at the engineer, and
swing up on the footboard. But the swing--it made Callahan's heart warm
to him. Not the lubberly jump of the hoboes that had worried the life
out of him all summer, even when the cattlemen didn't bother. It was
the swing of the sailor into the shrouds, of the Cossack into the
saddle, of the yacht into the wind. It was like falling down or falling
up or falling on--the grace of a mastery of gravitation--that was
Shockley's swing on the footboard of the yard engine as it shot snorting
past him.
"He's all right," muttered Callahan. It was enough.
A man who flipped a tender like that was not like to go very wrong even
in that chaos of rails and ties and stringers and coal.
"Now," continued Callahan to himself, timidly hopeful, "if the cuss only
doesn't get to drinking!" He watched apprehensively, dreading the first
time he should see him entering Pat Barlie's place, but Shockley didn't
appear to know Pat had a place. The cowboys, too, watched him, waiting
for his lamp to gleam at night down in the yard, but their patience was
strained for a long time. Shockley got all his work done by daylight.
To the surprise of Callahan, and probably on the principle of the
watched pot, the whole winter went without a brush between Shockley and
the cowboys. Even Peg Leg Reynolds let him alone. "He's the luckiest
fellow on earth," remarked Callahan one day at McCloud in reply to a
question from Bucks about Shockley. "There hasn't a shot been fired at
him all winter."
"He wasn't always lucky," commented Bucks, signing a batch of letters.
"He came from Chicago," Bucks went on, after a silence. "He was
switching there on the 'Q' at the time of the stock-yards riots.
Shockley used to drink like a pirate. I never knew just the right of it.
I understood it was in a brawl--anyway, he killed a man there; shot him,
and had to get away in a hurry. I was train master. Shockley was a
striker; but I'd always found him decent, and when his wife came to me
about it I helped her out a little; she's dead since. His record isn't
just right back there yet. There's something about the shooting hanging
over him. I never set eyes on the fellow again till he struck me for a
job at McCloud; then I sent him up to you. He claimed he'd quit
drinking--guess he had. Long as he's behaving himself I believe in
giving him a chance--h'm?"
It really wasn't any longer a case of giving him a chance; rather of
whether they could get on without him. When the Colorado Pacific began
racing us into Denver that summer, it began to crowd even Shockley to
keep the yard clean; he saw he would have to have help.
"Chris, what do they give you for tinkering up the ties?" asked Shockley
one day.
"Dollar an' a half."
"Why don't you take hold switching with me and get three dollars?"
Chris was thunderstruck. First he said Callahan wouldn't let him, but
Shockley "guessed yes." Then Chris figured. To save the last of the
hundred dollars necessary to get the woman and the babies over--it could
be done in three months instead of six, if only Callahan would listen.
But when Shockley talked Callahan always listened, and when he asked for
a new switchman he got him. And Chris got his three; to him a sum
unspeakable. By the time the woman and the children arrived in the
fall, Chris would have died for Shockley.
The fall that saw the woman and the stunted subjects of the Czar stowed
away under the bench in Little Russia brought also the cowboys down from
Montana to bait the Russians.
One stormy night, when Chris thought it was perfectly safe to venture up
to Rubedo's after groceries, the cowboys caught him and dragged him over
to
Pat Barlie's.
It was seven when they caught him, and by nine they had put him through
every pace that civilization could suggest. Peg Leg Reynolds, as always,
master of ceremonies, then ordered him tied to the stove. When it was
done, the cowboys got into a big circle for a dance. The fur on Chris's
coat had already begun to sizzle, when the front door opened. Shockley
walked in.
Straight, in his ambling, hurried way, he walked past the deserted bar
through the ring of cowboys at the rear to Chris frying against the
stove, and began cutting him loose. Through every knot that his knife
slit he sent a very loud and very bad word, and no sooner had he freed
Chris than he jerked him by the collar, as if quarreling with him,
toward the back door, which was handy, and before the cowboys got wind
he had shoved him through it.
"Hold on there!" cried Peg Leg Reynolds, when it was just too late.
Chris was out of it, and Shockley turned alone.
"All right, partner; what is it?" he asked amiably.
"You've got a ripping nerve."
"I know it."
"What's your name?"
"Shockley."
"Can you dance?"
"No."
It was Peg Leg's opportunity. He drew his gun. "I reckon maybe you can.
Try it," he added, pointing the suggestion with the pistol. Shockley
looked foolish; he didn't begin tripping soon enough, and a bullet from
the cowboy's gun splintered the baseboard at his feet. Shockley
attempted to shuffle. To any one who didn't know him it looked funny.
But Peg Leg was a rough dancing master, and before he said enough an
ordinary man would have dropped exhausted. Shockley, breathing a good
bit quicker, only steadied himself against the bar.
"Take off your hat before gentlemen," cried the cowboy. Shockley
hesitated, but he did pull off his cap.
"That's more like it. What's your name?"
"Shockley."
"Shockley?" echoed Reynolds with a burst of range amenities. "Well,
Shockley, you can't help your name. Drink for once in your life with a
man of breeding--my name's Reynolds. Pat, set out the good bottle--this
guy pays," exclaimed Peg Leg, wheeling to the bar.
"What'll it be?" asked Pat Barlie of Shockley, as he deftly slid a row
of glasses in front of the men of breeding.
"Ginger ale for me," suggested Shockley mildly. The cowboys put up a
single yell. Ginger ale! It was too funny.
Reynolds, choking with contempt, pointed to the yard master's glass.
"Fill it with whiskey," he shouted. "Fill it, Pat!" he repeated, as
Shockley leaned undecidedly against the bar. The yard master held out
the glass, and the bar keeper began to pour. Shockley looked at the
liquor a moment; then he looked at Reynolds, who fronted him gun in one
hand and red water in the other.
"Drink!"
Shockley paused, looked again at the whiskey and drew the glass towards
him with the curving hand of a drinker. "You want me to drink this?" he
half laughed, turning on his baiter.
"I didn't say so, did I? I said DRINK!" roared Peg Leg.
Everybody looked at Shockley. He stood fingering the glass quietly.
Somehow everybody, drunk or sober, looked at Shockley. He glanced around
at the crowd; other guns were creeping from their holsters. He pushed
the glass back, smiling.
"I don't drink whiskey, partner," said Shockley gently.
"You'll drink that whiskey, or I'll put a little hole into you!"
Shockley reached good-naturedly for the glass, threw the liquor on the
floor, and set it back on the bar.
"Go on!" said Shockley. It confused Reynolds.
"A man that'll waste good whiskey oughtn't t' live, anyhow," he
muttered, fingering his revolver nervously. "You've spoiled my aim.
Throw up your hat," he yelled. "I'll put a hole through that to begin
with."
Instead, Shockley put his cap back on his head.
"Put a hole through it there," said he. Reynolds set down his glass, and
Shockley waited; it was the cowboy who hesitated.
"Where's your nerve?" asked the railroad man. The gun covered him with a
flash and a roar. Reynolds, whatever his faults, was a shot. His bullet
cut cleanly through the crown, and the powder almost burnt Shockley's
face. The switchman recovered himself instantly, and taking off his cap
laughed as he examined the hole.
"Done with me?" he asked evenly, cap in hand.
Peg Leg drained his glass before he spoke. "Get out!" he snapped. The
switchman started on the word for the front door. When he opened it,
everybody laughed--but Shockley.
Maybe an hour later Reynolds was sitting back of the stove in a card
game, when a voice spoke at his ear. "Get up!" Reynolds looked around
into a pistol; behind it stood Shockley, pleasant. "Get up!" he
repeated. Nobody had seen him come in; but there he was, and with an
absolutely infantile gun, a mere baby gun, in the yellow light, but it
shone like bright silver.
Reynolds with visible embarrassment stood up.
"Throw your cannon into the stove, Reynolds, you won't need it,"
suggested Shockley. Reynolds looked around; there appeared to be no
hopeful alternative: the drop looked very cold; not a cowboy interposed.
Under convoy, Reynolds stumped over to the stove and threw in his gun,
but the grace of the doing was bad.
"Get up there on the bar and dance; hustle!" urged Shockley. They had to
help the confused cowboy up; and when he stood shamefaced, looking down
on the scene of his constant triumphs, and did a painful single foot,
marking time with his peg, the cowboys, who had stood their own share of
his bullying, roared. Shockley didn't roar; only stood with busy eyes
where he could cover any man on demand, not forgetting even Pat Barlie.
[Illustration: Chris]
Peg Leg, who had danced so many in his day, danced, and his roasting gun
sputtered an accompaniment from the stove; but as Shockley, who stood in
front of it, paid no attention to the fusillade of bullets, good form
prevented others from dodging. "That'll do; get down. Come here, Chris,"
called Shockley. Chris Oxen, greatly disturbed, issued from an obscure
corner.
"Get down on your knees," exclaimed the yard master, jerking Reynolds
with a chilly twist in front of the frightened Russian. "Get on your
knees; right where I threw your whiskey," and Shockley, crowding
Reynolds down to his humiliation, dropped for the first time into range
civilities himself, and the shame and the abasement of it were very
great.
"Boys," said the yard master, with one restless eye on Reynolds and one
on everybody else, as he pointed at Chris, "this man's coat was burnt
up. He's a poor devil, and his money comes hard. Chip in for a new coat.
I've nothing against any man that don't want to give, but Reynolds must
pass the hat. Take mine, you coyote."
Nearly everybody contributed as Reynolds went round. Shockley made no
comments. "Count it," he commanded, when the fallen monarch had
finished; and when the tale was made, Shockley told Pat Barlie to put in
as much more as the cap held, and he did so.
"There, Chris; go home. I don't like you," added Shockley, insolently,
turning on Reynolds.
"You don't know what fun is. This town won't hold you and me after
to-night. You can take it or you can leave it, but the first time I ever
put eyes on you again one of us will cash in."
He backed directly towards the front door and out.
Peg Leg Reynolds took only the night to decide; next day he hit the
trail. The nervy yard master he might have wiped out if he had stayed,
but the disgrace of kneeling before the dog of a Russian was something
never to be wiped out in the annals of Benkleton. Peg Leg moved on; and
thereafter cowboys took occasion to stop Shockley on the street and
jolly him on the way he did the one-legged bully, and the lights were
shot no more.
The railroad men swore by the new yard master; the Russians took their
cigarettes from their mouths and touched their caps when Shockley
passed; Callahan blessed his name; but little Chris worshiped him.
One day Alfabet Smith dropped off at Benkleton from Omaha headquarters.
Alfabet was the only species of lizard on the pay roll--he was the West
End spotter. "Who is that slim fellow?" he asked of Callahan as Shockley
flew by on the pilot board of an engine.
"That's Shockley."
"Oh, that's Shockley, is it?"
But he could say little things in a way to make a man prick hot all
over.
"Yes, that's Shockley. Why?" asked Callahan with a dash of acid.
"Nothing, only he's a valuable man; he's wanted, Shockley is," smiled
Alfabet Smith, but his smile would freeze tears.
Callahan took it up short. "Look here, Alfabet. Keep off Shockley."
"Why?"
"Why? Because you and I will touch, head on, if you don't."
Smith said nothing; he was used to that sort. The next time Bucks was
up, his assistant told him of the incident.
"If he bothers Shockley," Bucks said, "we'll get his scalp, that's all.
He'd better look after his conductors and leave our men alone."
"I notice Shockley isn't keeping his frogs blocked," continued Bucks,
reverting to other matters. "That won't do. I want every frog in the
yard blocked and kept blocked, and tell him I said so."
But the frog-blocking was not what worried Shockley; his push was to
keep the yard clean, for the month of December brought more stuff twice
over than was ever poured into the front-end yard before. Chris, though,
had developed into a great switchman, and the two never let the work get
ahead.
So it came that Little Russia honored Chris and his big pay check above
most men. Shockley stood first in Little Russia; then the CZAR, then
Chris, then Callahan. Queen Victoria and Bismarck might have admirers;
but they were not in it under the bench.
When the Russian holidays came, down below, Chris concluded that the
celebration would be merely hollow without Shockley; for was not the
very existence of Little Russia due to him? All the growth, all the
prosperity--what was it due to? Protection. What was the protection?
Shockley. There were brakemen who argued that protection came from the
tariff; but they never made any converts in Little Russia, where the
inhabitants could be induced to vote for president only on the assurance
that Shockley was running.
"Well, what's the racket anyhow, Chris?" demanded Shockley lazily, after
Cross-Eyes trying to get rid of the invitation to the festivities had
sputtered switch-English five minutes at him.
"Ve got Chrismus by us," explained Chris desperately.
"Christmas," repeated Shockley grimly. "Christmas. Why, man, Christmas
don't come nowhere on earth in January. You want to wind up your
calendar. Where'd you get them shoes?"
"Dollar sefenty-vife."
"Where?"
"Rubedo."
"And don't you know a switchman oughtn't t' put his feet in flatboats?
Don't you know some day you'll get your foot stuck in a tongue or a
guard? Then where'll you be, Dutch, with a string of flats rolling down
on you, eh?"
However, Chris stuck for his request. He wouldn't take no for an answer.
Next day he tired Shockley out.
"Well, for God's sake let up, Chris," said the yard master at last.
"I'll come down a while after Twenty-three comes in. Get back early
after supper, and we'll make up Fifty-five and let the rest go."
It was a pretty night; pretty enough over the yard for anybody's
Christmas, Julian or Gregorian. No snow, but a moon, and a full one,
rising early over the Arikaree bluffs, and a frost that bit and
sparkled, and the north wind asleep in the sand hills.
Shockley, after supper, snug in a pea-jacket and a storm cap, rode with
the switch engine down from the roundhouse. Chris, in his astrakhan
reefer and turban, walking over from the dugouts in Rubedo's new shoes,
flipped the footboard at the stock-yard with almost the roll of Shockley
himself.
Happily for Christmas in Little Russia, Twenty-three pulled in on time;
but it was long and heavy that night. It brought coal and ties, and the
stuff for the Fort Rawlins depot, and a batch of bridge steel they had
been waiting two weeks for--mostly Cherry Creek stuff--eleven cars of
it.
The minute the tired engine was cut off the long train, up ran the
little switch engine and snapped at the headless monster like a coyote.
Out came the coal with a clatter; out came the depot stuff with a sheet
of flame through the goat's flues--shot here, shot there, shot
yonder--flying down this spur and down that and the other, like stones
from a catapult; and the tough-connected, smut-faced, blear-eyed yard
engine coughed and snorted and spit a shower of sparks and soot and
cinders up into the Christmas air. She darted and dodged and jerked, and
backed up and down and across the lead, and never for a fraction of a
second took her eye off Shockley's lamp. Shivering and clanging and
bucking with steam and bell and air, but always with one smoky eye on
Shockley's lamp, until Twenty-three was wrecked clean to the caboose,
and the switch engine shot down the main line with the battered way-car
in her claws like a hawk with a prairie dog.
Then there was only the westbound freight, Fifty-five, to make up with
the Fort Rawlins stuff and the Cherry Creek steel, which was "_rush_,"
and a few cars of ties flung on behind on general principles. It was
quick work now--sorting and moving the bridge steel--half an hour for an
hour's work, with the north wind waking at the clatter and sweeping a
bank of cloud and sand across the valley. Shockley and Chris and the
goat crew put at it like black ants. There was releasing and setting and
kicking and splitting, and once in a while a flying switch, dead against
the rubrics; and at last the whole train of steel was in line, clean as
the links of a sprocket, and ready to run in on the house-track for the
caboose.
For that run Chris set the east house-track switch, crossed the track,
and swung a great circle with his lamp for the back. To get over to the
switch again, he started to recross the track. In the dark, his ankle
turned on a lump of coal; he recovered lightly, but the misstep sent his
other foot wide, and with a bit of a jolt Rubedo's new shoe slipped into
the frog.
Up the track he heard a roll of stormy coughs from the engine gathering
push to shove the string of flats down. They were coming towards him,
over the spot where he stood, on his signal; and he quietly tried to
loosen his heel.
The engine's drivers let go, and she roared a steaming oath, and Chris
could hear it; but he was glad, for his heel would not work quietly out
of the frog; it stuck. Then the engineer, unruffled, pulled at his sand
lever, and his engine snorted again and her driver tires bit, and slowly
she sent the long train of steel down on Chris's switch; he heard the
frosty flanges grinding on the face of the rails as he tried to loosen
his foot.
Coolly, first, like a confident man in a quicksand; soon, with alarm
running into fright. But there was time enough; the head car was four or
five lengths above the switch and coming very, very slowly, heavy-like,
and squeaking stiffly under its load, yet coming; and he wrenched
harder, but his foot stuck. Then he yelled for Shockley. Shockley had
gone over to open the caboose switch; Shockley couldn't hear, and he
knew it. And he yelled again.
The sweat broke over him as he turned and twisted. The grip of the frog
seemed to stifle him; half the time was gone; the near truck wheels
screeched two car-lengths away: and the switchman played his last card.
Time and time again Shockley had told him what to do if that moment came
in the night; had told him to throw his lamp in the air like a rocket.
But Chris had forgotten all that till the flat dropped heavily on the
tongue in front of him; then he threw his lamp like a rocket high into
the night.
No help came. He raised his arms frantically above his head, and his
cries cut the wind. Desperate at last, he threw himself flat to lie
outside the rail, to save all but a foot; but the frog held him, and
crying horribly he struggled back to his feet, only to sink again half
crazy to the ground. As his senses left him he was hardly aware of a
stinging pain in his foot, of a wrench at his leg, an instant arm round
his back, and his yard master's voice in his ear.
"Jump!" screamed Shockley.
Chris, scrambling frantically on the deadly rails, unable to jump, felt
himself picked from the ground, heard a choke in the throat at his ear,
and he was flung like a drawbar through the dark. Shockley had passed a
knife blade from vamp to sole, slit the Russian's clumsy shoe, jerked
his foot from it, and thrown him bodily into the clear.
Chris staggered panting to his feet. Already the steel was moving slowly
over the switch; he heard the sullen pounding of the trucks on the
contact; a lantern, burning yet, lay on its side near the stand--it was
Shockley's lamp. Chris looked wildly around for his yard master; called
out; called Shockley's name; listened. No scream, no groan, no cry, no
answer; no sound, but just the steady pounding of the wheels over the
contact. The little switchman screamed again in a frenzy, and turning,
raced stumbling up the track to the cab. He swung into it, and by signs
made the engineer shut off. He tried to talk, and only stammered a lingo
of switch-pidgin and the name of Shockley. They couldn't understand it
all, but they shut off with faces pinched and sallow, threw open the
furnace door, and grabbing their lanterns ran back. The fireman on his
knees held his lamp out under the flat that spanned the contact; he drew
shrinking back, and rising, started on the run for the depot to rouse
Callahan.
It was Callahan who pulled the pin a moment later, Chris shivering like
a rabbit at his side. It was Callahan who gave the slow pull-ahead order
that cut the train in two at the frog, and Callahan who stepped wavering
from the gap that opened behind the receding flat--back from something
between the rails--back to put his hands blindly out for the target-rod,
and unsteadily upon it. He heard Shockley breathing.
Some carried the headlight back, and some tore the door off a box car,
and they got him on. They carried him unevenly, stumbling, over to the
depot. They laid him on Callahan's mattress in the waiting room, and the
men stood all about him; but the only sound was his breathing, and
inside under the lamp the receiver, clicking, clicking, clicking, of
Bucks and the company surgeon coming on a special ahead of Fifty-nine.
They twisted tourniquets into his quivering flesh, and with the light
dying in his eyes they put whiskey to his lips. But he turned his head
and spit it from his mouth. Then he looked from face to face about
him--to the engineer and to the fireman, and to little Chris and to
Callahan, and his lips moved.
Chris bent over him, but try as he would he could not catch the words.
And Callahan listened and watched and waited.
"Block--block--" said Shockley's lips. And Callahan wiped
them slowly and bent close again and put his ear over them.
"Block--block--the--frogs."
And Shockley died.
They lifted the mattress into the baggage room; Callahan drew over it a
crumpled sheet. A lantern left, burned on the checking desk, but the
men, except Chris, went their ways. Chris hung irresolute around the
open door.
The special pulled in, and with the shoes wringing fire from her heels
as she slowed, Bucks and a man following close sprang from the step of
the coach. Callahan met them; shook his head.
Twenty minutes later Fifty-nine whistled for the yard; but in the yard
all was dark and still. One man got off Fifty-nine that night. Carrying
his little valise in his hand, he walked in and out of the depot,
hanging on the edges of the grouping men, who still talked of the
accident. After hearing, he walked alone into the baggage room, and with
his valise in his hand drew back the edge of the sheet and, standing,
looked. Afterward he paused at the door, and spoke to a man that was
fixing a lantern.
"What was his name?"
"Shockley."
"Shockley?"
"Yes."
"Yard master here?"
"Yes. Know him?"
"Me? No. I guess not." He walked away with his valise, and drew his coat
collar up in the wind that swept the platform. "I guess I don't want
him," he muttered to himself. "I guess _they_ don't want _him_; not
now." And he went back to the man and asked when a train left again for
Chicago. He had a warrant for Shockley; but Shockley's warrant had been
served.
After the others had gone, Bucks and Callahan and the surgeon talked
together in the waiting room, and Chris hanging by, blear-eyed and
helpless, looked from one to the other: showed his foot when Callahan
pointed, and sat patient while the surgeon stitched the slit where
Shockley's blade had touched the bone. Then he stood again and listened.
While any one talked Chris would listen; silent and helpless, just
listening. And when Bucks had gone up stairs, and the surgeon had gone
up stairs, and Callahan, tired and sick, had gone up stairs, and only
the operator sat under his lamp at the table, Chris stood back in the
gloom in front of the stove and poked stealthily at the fire. When it
blazed he dropped big chunks of smutty coal in on it, and wiped his
frost-bitten nose with the back of his dirty hand, and looked toward the
baggage room door and listened--listened for a cry, or a sound, or for
that fearful, fearful breathing, such breathing as he had not been
hearing before. But no cry, no sound, no stertorous breath came out of
the darkness, and from under the lamp in front of the operator only the
sounder clicked, always talking, talking, talking--talking queer things
to Russian ears.
So Chris drew his cap a little lower, for so he always began, pulled
mechanically from his pocket a time-table, tore off a strip, and holding
it carefully open, sprinkled a few clippings of tobacco upon it, and
rolled his cigarette. He tucked it between his lips; it was company for
the silence, and he could more easily stop the listening. But he did not
light; only pulled his cap again a little lower, buttoned close his
reefer, looked at his bandaged foot, picked up his lamp, and started
home.
It was dark, and the wind from the north was bitter, but he made a great
detour into the teeth of it--around by the coal chutes, a long way
round, a long way from the frog of the east house-track switch; and the
cold stung his face as he limped heavily on. At last by the ice house he
turned south, and reaching the face of the bench paused a moment,
hesitating, on the side of the earthen stairs; it was very dark. After a
bit he walked slowly down and pushed open the door of his dugout. It was
dark inside, and cold; the fire was out. The children were asleep; the
woman was asleep.
He sat down in a chair and put out his lamp. There was no Christmas that
night in Little Russia.
The Wiper's Story
HOW McGRATH GOT AN ENGINE
This came about through there being whiskers on the rails. It may not be
generally understood that whiskers grow on steel rails; curious as it
seems, they do. Moreover, on steel rails they are dangerous, and, at
times, exceedingly dangerous.
Do not infer that all steel rails grow whiskers; nor is it, as one might
suppose, only the old rails that sport them. The youngest rail on the
curve may boast as stout a beard as the oldest rail on the tangent, and
one just as gray. They flourish, too, in spite of orders; for while
whiskers are permitted on engineers and tolerated on conductors, they
are never encouraged on rails. Nature, however, provides the whiskers,
regardless of discipline, and, what is more, shaves them herself.
Their culture depends on conditions. Some months grow better whiskers
than others: September is famous for whiskers, while July grows very
few. Whiskers will grow on steel rails in the air of a single night; but
not every night air will produce whiskers. It takes a high, frosty air,
one that stays out late, to make whiskers. Take, for example, the night
air of the Black Hills; it is known everywhere among steel rails as a
beard tonic. The day's moisture, falling as the sun drops beyond the
hills is drawn into feathery, jewelled crystals of frost on the chilly
steel, as a glass of ice-water beads in summer shade; and these dewy
stalagmites rise in a dainty profusion, until when day peeps into the
canons the track looks like a pair of long white streamers winding up
and down the levels. But beware that track. It is a very dangerous
track, and its possibilities lie where Samson's lay--in the whiskers.
So it lies in early morning, as pretty a death-trap as any flower that
ever lured a fly; only, this pitfall waits for engines and trains and
men--and sometimes gets them.
It waits there on the mountain grades, in an ambush really deadly for an
unwary train, until the sun, which is particularly lazy in the fall,
peeping over into the cuts, smiles, at length, on the bearded steel as
if it were too funny, and the whiskers vanish into thin air.
A smooth-faced rail presents no especial dangers; and if trainmen in the
Hills had their way, they would never turn a wheel until the sun had
done barbering. But despatchers not having to do with them take no
account of whiskers. They make only the schedules, and the whiskers make
the trouble. To lessen their dangers, engineers always start, up hill or
down, with a tankful of sand, and they sand the whiskers. It is rough
barbering, but it helps the driver-tires grit a bit into the face of the
rail, and in that way hang on. In this emergency a tankful of sand is
better than all the air Westinghouse ever stored.
Aloysius McGrath was a little sweeper; but he was an aspiring one, for
even a sweeper may aspire, and in point of fact most of them do aspire.
Aloysius worked in the roundhouse at the head of the Wind River pass on
the West End Mountains. It is an amazingly rough country; and as for
grades, it takes your breath merely to look down the levels. Three per
cent, four per cent, five per cent--it is really frightful! But Aloysius
was used to heavy falls; he had begun working for the company as a
sweeper under Johnnie Horigan, and no engineer would have thought of
running a grade to compare with Johnnie's headers.
Horigan was the first boss Aloysius ever had. Now Aloysius, if caught
just right, is a very pretty name, but Johnnie Horigan could make
nothing whatever of it, so he called Aloysius, Cooney, as he said, for
short--Cooney McGrath--and, by the way, if you will call that McGraw, we
shall be started right. As for Horigan, he may be called anything; at
least it is certain that on the West End he has been called everything.
Johnnie was ordinarily boss sweeper. He had suffered numerous
promotions--several times to wiper, and once to hostler; but his
tendency to celebrate these occasions usually cost him his job, and he
reverted to sweeping. If he had not been such an inoffensive, sawed-off
little old nubbin he wouldn't have been tolerated on the pay rolls; but
he had been with the company so long and discharged so often that
foremen grew tired of trying to get rid of him, and in spite of his very
regular habits, he was hanging on somewhere all the time.
[Illustration: Cooney]
When Johnnie was gone, using the word in at least two senses, Aloysius
Cooney McGrath became, _ipso facto_, boss sweeper. It happened first one
Sunday morning, just after pay day, when Johnnie applied to the foreman
for permission to go to church. Permission was granted, and Johnnie
started for church; but it is doubtful whether he ever found it. At all
events, at the end of three weeks he turned up again at the roundhouse,
considerably the worse for his attempt to locate the house of
prayer--which he had tried to find only after he had been kicked out of
every other place in town.
Aloysius had improved the interval by sweeping the roundhouse as it
never had been swept before; and when Johnnie Horigan returned, morally
disfigured, Aloysius McGrath was already promoted to be wiper over his
old superior. Johnnie was in no wise envious. His only move was to turn
the misfortune to account for an ulterior purpose, and he congratulated
the boy, affecting that he had stayed away to let them see what stuff
the young fellow was made of. This put him in a position to negotiate a
small loan from his _protege_--a position of which he never neglected
the possibilities. It was out of the question to be mad very long at
Johnnie, though one might be very often. After a time Aloysius got to
firing: then he wanted an engine. But he fired many months, and there
came no promotion. The trouble was, there were no new crews added to the
engine service. Nobody got killed; nobody quit; nobody died. One, two,
and three years without a break, and little Aloysius had become a bigger
Aloysius, and was still firing; he became also discouraged, for then the
force was cut down and he was put back wiping.
"Never y' mind, never y' mind, Cooney," old Johnnie would say. "It'll
come all right. You'll get y'r ingin' yet. Lind me a couple till
pay-a-day, Cooney, will you? I'll wahrant y' y'r ingin' yet, Cooney."
Which little assurance always cost Aloysius two dollars till pay day,
and no end of trouble getting it back; for when he attempted
collection, Johnnie took a very dark view of the lad's future, alluding
vaguely to people who were hard-hearted and ungrateful to their best
friends. And though Aloysius paid slight attention to the old sweeper's
vaporings, he really was in the end the means of the boy's getting his
engine.
After three years of panic and hard times on the mountain division, the
mines began to reopen, new spurs were laid out, construction crews were
put on, and a new activity was everywhere apparent. But to fill the cup
of Aloysius' woe, the new crews were all sent up from McCloud. That they
were older men in the order of promotion was cold comfort--Aloysius felt
crowded out. He went very blue, and the next time Johnnie applied for a
loan Aloysius rebuffed him unfeelingly; this in turn depressed John.
"Never mind, never mind, Cooney. I'll not be speakin' t' Neighbor agin
t' set y' up. If y' like wipin', stick to ut. I'll not be troublin'
Neighbor agin." Johnnie professed a great pull with the master mechanic.
That Aloysius might feel still more the sting of his coldness, Johnnie
for some days paid much court to the new firemen and engine runners.
Nothing about the house was too good for them, and as the crafty sweeper
never overlooked an opportunity, he was in debt before the end of the
week to most of the brotherhood.
But the memorable morning for Aloysius came shortly thereafter. It was
one of those keen October mornings that bite so in the Hills. The
construction train, Extra 240 West, had started about five o'clock from
the head of the pass with a load of steel for the track layers, and
stopped for a bite of breakfast at Wind River. Above the roundhouse
there is a switchback. When the train pulled in, the crew got off for
some hot coffee. Johnnie Horigan was around playing good fellow, and he
climbed into the cab to run the train through the switchback while the
crews were at the eating house. It was irregular to leave the engine,
but they did, and as for Johnnie Horigan, he was regularly irregular.
There were sixteen cars of steel in the string, besides a cabooseful of
laborers. The backing up the leg of the nipper was easy. After the
switch was newly set, Johnnie pulled down the lower leg; and that,
considering the whiskers, was too easy.
When he pulled past the eating house on the down grade, he was going so
lively with his flats that he was away before the crew could get out of
the lunch room. In just one minute everybody in Wind River was in
trouble: the crew, because their train was disappearing down the canon;
the eating house man, because nobody paid him for his coffee; and
Johnnie Horigan, because he found it impossible to stop. He had dumped
the sand, he had applied the air, he had reversed the engine--by all the
rules laid down in the instruction car she ought to stop. But she didn't
stop, and--this was the embarrassing feature--she was headed down a hill
twenty miles long, with curves to weary a boa-constrictor. John hung his
head wildly over the drivers, looked back at the yelling crew,
contemplated the load that was pushing him down the grade and his head
began to swim. There appeared but one thing more to do: that was to make
a noise; and as he neared the roundhouse he whistled like the wind.
Aloysius O'Cooney McGrath, at the alarm, darted out of the house like a
fox. As he reached the door he saw the construction train coming, and
Johnnie Horigan in the gangway looking for a soft place to light.
The wiper chartered the situation in a mental second. The train was
running away, and Horigan was leaving it to its fate. From any point of
view it was a tough proposition, but tough propositions come rarely to
ambitious railroad men, and Aloysius was starving for any sort of a
proposition that would help him out of the waste. The laborers in the
caboose, already bewildered, were craning anxiously from the windows.
Horigan, opposite the roundhouse, jumped in a sprawl; the engine was
shot past Aloysius; boarding was out of the question.
But on the siding stood a couple of flats, empty; and with his hair
straight on centres, the little wiper ran for them and mounted the
nearest. The steel train was jumping. Aloysius, bunching his muscle,
ran the length of the two flats for a head, and, from the far corner,
threw himself across the gap, like a bat, on a load of the runaway
steel. Scrambling to his feet, he motioned and yelled to the hoboes, who
were pouring frantic out on the hind flat of the string, to set brakes;
then he made ahead for the engine.
It was a race with the odds all wrong, for with every yard Aloysius
gained, the train gained a dozen. By the time he reached the tender,
breathless, and slid down the coal into the deserted cab, the train was
heading into Little Horn gap, and every Italian aboard, yelling for
life. Aloysius jumped into the levers, poked his head through the
window, and looked at the drivers. They were in the back motion, and in
front of them the sand was streaming wide open. The first thing he did
was to shut half it off--the fight could not be won by wasting
ammunition. Over and over again he jerked at the air. It was refusing
its work. Where so many a hunted runner has turned for salvation there
was none for Aloysius. He opened and closed, threw on and threw off; it
was all one, and all useless. The situation was as simple as it was
frightful. Even if they didn't leave the track, they were certain to
smash into Number Sixteen, the up-passenger, which must meet them
somewhere on the hill.
Aloysius's fingers closed slowly on the sand lever. There was nothing on
earth for it but sand, merely sand; and even the wiper's was oozing with
the stream that poured from the tank on the whiskered rails. He shut off
a bit more, thinking of the terrific curves below, and mentally
calculated--or tried to--how long his steam would last to reverse the
drivers--how he could shovel coal and sand the curves at the same
time--and how much slewing the Italians at the tail of the kite could
stand without landing on the rocks.
The pace was giddy and worse. When his brain was whirling fastest, a man
put a hand on his shoulder. Aloysius started as if Davy Jones had tapped
him, and between bounces looked, scared, around. He looked into a face
he didn't know from Adam's, but there was sand in the eyes that met
his.
"What can I do?"
Aloysius saw the man's lips move, and, without taking his hands from the
levers, bent his head to catch the words.
"What can I do?" shouted the man at his elbow.
"Give me steam--steam," cried the wiper, looking straight ahead.