the backs of his eyes, saw him grab the shovel and make a pass at the
tender. Doing so, he nearly took a header through the gangway, but he
hung to the shovel and braced himself better.
With the next attempt he got a shovelful into the cab, but in the
delivery passed it well up Aloysius's neck. There were neither words nor
grins, but just another shovelful of coal a minute after; and the
track-layer, in spite of the dizzy lurching, shot it where it
belonged--into the furnace. Feeling that if one shovelful could be
landed, more could, Aloysius's own steam rose. As they headed madly
around the Cinnamon bend the dial began to climb in spite of the
obstacles; and the wiper, considering there were two, and the steam and
the sand to fight the thing out, opened his valve and dusted the
whiskers on the curve with something more than a gleam of hope.
If there was confusion on the runaway train, there was terror and more
below it. As the spectre flitted past Pringle station, five miles down
the valley, the agent caught a glimpse of the sallow face of the wiper
at the cab window, and saw the drivers whirling backward. He rushed to
his key and called the Medicine Bend despatcher. With a tattoo like a
drum-roll the despatcher in turn called Soda Springs, ten miles below
Pringle, where Number Sixteen, the up-passenger, was then due. He
rattled on with his heart in his fingers, and answer came on the
instant. Then an order flashed into Soda Springs:
To No. 16.
Take Soda Springs siding quick. Extra 240 West has lost control
of the train. DI.
There never was such a bubbling at Soda Springs as that bubbling. The
operator tore up the platform like a hawk in a chicken yard. Men never
scattered so quick as when Number Sixteen began screaming and wheezing
and backing for the clear. Above the town, Aloysius, eyes white to the
sockets, shooting the curves like a meteor, watched his lessening stream
of sand pour into the frost on the track. As they whipped over bridges
and fills the caboose reeled like a dying top--fear froze every soul on
board. To leave the track now meant a scatter that would break West End
records.
When Soda Springs sighted Extra 240 West, pitching down the mountain,
the steel dancing behind and Aloysius jumping before, there was a
painful sensation--the sensation of good men who see a disaster they are
powerless to avert. Nor did Soda Springs know how desperate the wiper's
extremity had become. Not even the struggling steel foreman knew that
with Soda Springs passing like the films of a cinematograph, and two
more miles of down-grade ahead, the last cupful of sand was trickling
from the wiper's tank. Aloysius, at that moment, wouldn't have given
the odd change on a pay check for all the chances Extra 240 and he
himself had left. He stuck to his levers merely because there was no
particular reason for letting go. It was only a question of how a man
wanted to take the rocks. Yet, with all his figuring, Aloysius had lost
sight of his only salvation--maybe because it was quite out of his power
to effect it himself. But in making the run up to Soda Springs Number
Sixteen had already sanded the rails below.
He could feel the help the minute the tires ground into the grit. They
began to smoke, and Aloysius perceived the grade was easing somewhat.
Even the dazed foreman, looking back, saw an improvement in the lurch of
the caboose. There was one more hair-raiser ahead--the appalling curve
at the forks of the Goose. But, instead of being hurled over the
elevation, they found themselves around it and on the bridge with only a
vicious slew. Aloysius's hair began to lie down, and his heart to rise
up. He had her checked--even the hoboes knew it--and a mile further,
with the dangers past, they took new ones by dropping off the hind end.
At the second bend below the Goose, Aloysius made a stop, and began
again to breathe. A box was blazing on the tender truck, and, with his
handy fireman, he got down at once to doctor it. The whole thing shifted
so mortally quick from danger to safety that the two never stopped to
inventory their fears; they seemed to have vanished with the frost that
lured them to destruction. They jumped together into the cab; and
whistling at the laborers strung back along the right of way Extra 240
West began backing pluckily up hill to Soda Springs. The first man who
approached the cab as they slowed down for the platform--in fact, people
rather stood back for him--was Bucks, Superintendent of the Division;
his car had come in attached to Number Sixteen.
"How did your train get away from you?" he asked of Aloysius; there was
neither speculation nor sympathy in his manner and his words were bitten
with frost.
"It didn't get away from me," retorted Aloysius, who had never before in
his life seen the man, and was not aware that he owed him any money. But
the operator at the Springs, who knew Aloysius and the superintendent
both, was standing behind the latter doing a pantomime that would shame
a medicine man.
"Quick talking will do more for you than smart talking," replied the
superintendent, crisply. "You'll never get a better chance while you're
working for this company to explain yourself."
Aloysius himself began to think so, for the nods and winks of the
operator were bewildering. He tried to speak up, but the foreman of the
steel gang put in: "See here, sport," he snapped, irreverently, at the
angry official. "Why don't you cool your hat before you jump a fellow
like that?"
"What business is it of yours how I jump a fellow?" returned the
superintendent, sharply, "who are you?"
"I'm only foreman of this steel gang, my friend; and I don't take any
back talk from anybody."
"In that case," responded Bucks, with velvet sarcasm, "perhaps you will
explain things. I'm only superintendent of this division; but it's
customary to inquire into matters of this kind."
Aloysius at the words nearly sank to the platform; but the master of the
hoboes, who had all the facts, went at the big man as if he had been one
of the gang, and did not falter till he had covered the perspiring wiper
with glory.
"What's the reason the air wouldn't work?" asked the superintendent,
turning, without comment, when the track-layer had finished, to
Aloysius.
"I haven't had time to find out, sir."
"Find out and report to me. What's your name?"
"McGrath."
"McGraw, eh? Well, McGraw, look close into the air. There may be
something in it for you. You did the firing?" he added, turning short
again on the unabashed steel foreman.
"What there was done."
"I'll do a little now myself. I'll fire you right here and now for
impertinence."
"I suppose you're the boss," responded the man of ties, imperturbably.
"When I made the crack, I'd made it harder if I had known who you were."
"You know now, don't you?"
"I guess so."
"Very good," said Bucks, in his mildest tones. "If you will report to me
at Medicine Bend this afternoon, I'll see whether we can't find
something better for your manners than cursing hoboes. You can ride down
in my car, sport. What do you say? That will save you transportation."
It brought a yell from the railroad men crowding around, for that was
Bucks's way of doing things; and the men liked Bucks and his way. The
ex-captain of the dagoes tried to look cool, but in point of fact went
very sheepish at his honors.
Followed by a mob, eager to see the finish, Superintendent Bucks made
his way up the track along the construction train to where Aloysius and
the engineer of Number Sixteen were examining the air. They found it
frozen between the first and the second car. Bucks heard it all--heard
the whole story. Then he turned to his clerk.
"Discharge both crews of Extra 240. Fire Johnnie Horigan."
"Yes, sir."
"McGrath, run your train back to Wind River behind us. We'll scare up a
conductor here somewhere; if we can't, I'll be your conductor. Make your
report to Medicine Bend," Bucks added, speaking to the operator; and
without further words walked back to his car.
As he turned away, the engineer of Number Sixteen slapped Aloysius on
the back:
"Kid, why the blazes didn't you thank him?"
"Who?"
"Bucks."
"What for?"
"What for? Jiminey Christmas! What for? Didn't he just make you an
engineer? Didn't he just say, 'Run your train back behind us to Wind
River'?"
"My train?"
"Sure, your train. Do you think Bucks ever says a thing like that
without meaning it? You bet not."
Bucks's clerk, too, was a little uncertain about the promotion. "I
suppose he's competent to run the train back, isn't he?" he asked of
Bucks, suggestively.
Bucks was scrawling a message.
"A man that could hold a train from Wind River here on whiskers, with
nothing but a tankful of sand and a hobo fireman, wouldn't be likely to
fall off the right of way running back," he returned dryly. "He's been
firing for years, hasn't he? We haven't got half enough men like McGraw.
Tell Neighbor to give him an engine."
The Roadmaster's Story
THE SPIDER WATER
Not officially; I don't pretend to say that. You might travel the West
End from fresh water to salt--and we dip into both--without ever
locating the Spider Water by map or by name.
But if you should happen anywhere on the West End to sit among a gang of
bridge carpenters; or get to confidence with a bridge foreman; or find
the springy side of a roadmaster's heart; _then_, you might hear all you
wanted about the Spider Water--maybe more; anyway, full plenty, as
Hailey used to say.
The Sioux named it; and whatever may be thought of their interpretation
of Scriptural views on land-grabbing, no man with sense ever attempted
to improve on their names for things, whether birds, or braves, or
winds, or waters--they know.
Our General Managers hadn't always sense--this may seem odd, but on the
system it would excite no comment--and one of them countenanced a
shameful change in the name of the Spider Water. Some polytechnical
idiot at a safe distance dubbed it The Big Sandy; and the Big Sandy it
is to this day on map and in folder--but not in the lingo of trackmen
nor the heart of the Sioux. Don't say Big Sandy to trackmen and hand out
a cigar. It will not go. Say Spider Water without any cigar and you will
get a word and a stool, and if you ask it, fine cut.
The Spider Water--although ours is the pioneer line--was there when we
first bridged it. It is probably as old as sundown, and nothing like as
pretty. The banks--it has none to speak of. Its stones--they are
whiskered. Its bed--full of sand-burs. Everything about the villain
stream has a dilapidate, broken-down air: the very mud of the Spider
Water is rusty.
So our people bridged it; and the trouble began. A number of matters
bothered our pioneer managements--Indians, outlaws, cabinet officers,
congressional committees, and Wall Street magnates--but at one time or
another our folks managed all of them. The only thing they couldn't at
any time satisfactorily manage was the Spider Water. Bridge after bridge
they threw across it--and into it. Year after year the Spider Water
toyed with our civil engineers and our material department. One man at
Omaha given to asthma and statistics estimated, between spells, that the
Spider Water had cost us more money than all the water courses together
from the Missouri to the Sierras.
Then came to the West End a masterful man, a Scotchman, pawky and hard.
Brodie was his name, an Edinburgh man with no end of degrees and master
of every one. Brodie came to be superintendent of bridges on the Western
Division, and to boss every water course on the plains and in the
mountains. But the Spider Water took a fall even out of Brodie. It swept
out a Howe truss bridge for Brodie before he got his bag unpacked, and
thereafter Brodie, who was reputed not to care a stringer for anybody,
did not conceal a distinct respect for the Spider.
Brodie went at it right. He tried, not to make friends with the Spider,
for nobody could do that, but to get acquainted with it. For this he
went to its oldest neighbors, the Sioux. Brodie spent weeks and weeks up
the Spider Water hunting, summers; and with the Sioux he talked Spider
Water and drank fire-water. That was Brodie's shame--the fire-water.
But he was pawky, and he chinned unceasingly the braves and the medicine
men about the uncommonly queer water that took the bridges so fast. The
river that month in and month out couldn't squeeze up water enough to
baptize a pollywog and then, of a sudden, and for a few days, would rage
like the Missouri, restore to the desert its own and living image, and
leave our bewildered rails hung up either side in the wind.
Brodie talked cloudbursts up country; for the floods came, times, under
clear skies--and the Sioux sulked in silence. He suggested an
unsuspected inlet from some mountain stream which maybe, times, sent its
storm water over a low divide into the Spider--and the red men shrugged
their faces. As a last resort and in desperation he hinted at the devil;
and the sceptics took a quick brace with as much as to say, now you
_are_ talking; and muttered very bad Medicine.
Then they gave him the Indian stuff about the Spider Water; took him
away up where once a party of Pawnees had camped in the dust of the
river bed to surprise the Sioux; and told Brodie how the Spider, more
sudden than buck, fleeter than pony, had come down in the night and
surprised the Pawnees--and so well that the next morning there wasn't
enough material left for a scalp dance.
They took Brodie out into the ratty bed himself and when he said, heap
dry, and said, no water, they laughed, Indianwise, and pointed to the
sand. Scooping little wells with their hands they showed him the rising
and the filling; the instant water where before was no water. And
dropping into the wells feathers of the grouse, they showed Brodie how
the current carried them always across the well--every time, and always,
Brodie noticed--southeast.
Then Brodie made Hailey dig many holes, and the Spider welled into them,
and he threw in bits of notebooks and tobacco wrappers, but always they
travelled southeast--always the same; and a bigger fool than Brodie
could see that the water was all there, only underground. But when did
it rise? asked Brodie. When the Chinook spoke, said the Sioux. And why?
persisted Brodie. Because the Spider woke, said the Sioux. And Brodie
went out of the camp of the Sioux wondering.
[Illustration: Hailey]
And he planned a new bridge which should stand the Chinook and the
Spider and the de'il himself, said Brodie, Medicine or no Medicine. And
full seven year it lasted; then the fire-water spoke for the wicked
Scotchman--and he himself went out into the night.
And after he died, miserable wreck of a man--and of a very great
man--the Spider woke and took his pawky bridge and tied up the main line
for two weeks and set us crazy--for we were already losing our grip on
the California fast freight business. But at that time Hailey was
superintendent of bridges on the West End.
I
His father was a section foreman. When Hailey was a kid--a mere kid--he
got into Brodie's office doing errands; but whenever he saw a
draughtsman at work he was no good for errands. At such times he went
all into a mental tangle that could neither be thrashed nor kicked out
of him, though both were conscientiously tried by old man Hailey and
Superintendent Brodie; and Brodie, since he could do nothing else with
him, finally kicked him into learning to read--and to cipher, Brodie
called it. Then, by and by, Hailey got an old table and part of a cake
of India ink himself, and himself became a draughtsman, and soon, with
some cursing from Brodie and a "Luk a' that now!" from his paralyzed
daddy, became chief draughtsman in Brodie's office. Hailey was no
college man--Hailey was a Brodie man. Single mind on single
mind--concentration absolute. Mathematics, drawing, bridges,
brains--that was Hailey. But no classics except Brodie, who himself was
a classic. All that Brodie knew, Hailey had from him; and where Brodie
was weak, Hailey was strong--master of himself. When Brodie shamed the
image he was made in, Hailey hid the shame best he could,--though never
touched or made it his own--and Brodie, who hated even himself, showed
still a light in the wreck by molding Hailey to his work. For, one day,
said Brodie in his heart, this boy shall be master of these bridges.
When I am rot, he will be here what I ought to have been--this Irish
boy--and they will say he was Brodie's man. And better than any of these
dough-heads they send me out, better than any of their Eastern graduates
he shall be, if he was made engineer by a drunkard. And Hailey was
better, far, far better than the graduates, better than Brodie--and to
Hailey came the time to wrestle the Spider.
Stronger than any man before or since he was for that work. All Brodie
knew, all the Indians knew, all that a life's experience, eating,
living, watching, sleeping with the big river had taught him, that
Hailey knew. And when Brodie's bridge went out, Hailey was ready with
his new bridge for the Spider Water which should be better than
Brodie's, just as he was better than Brodie. It was to be such a bridge
as Brodie's bridge with the fire-water left out. And the plans for a
Howe truss, two pier, two abutment, three span, pneumatic caisson bridge
to span the Big Sandy River were submitted to headquarters.
But the cost! The directors jumped their table when they saw the
figures. We were being milked at that time--to put it bluntly, being
sucked, worse than lemons--by a Wall Street clique that robbed our good
road, shaved our salaries, impoverished our equipment, and cut our
maintenance to the quick. They talked economy and studied piracy. In the
matter of appropriations, for themselves they were free-booters; for us,
they were thrifty as men of Hamelin town. When Hailey demanded a
thousand guilders for his Spider Water bridge, they laughed and said,
"Come, take fifty." He couldn't do anything else; and he built a fifty
guilder bridge to bar the Spider's crawl. It lasted really better than
the average bridge and since Hailey never could get a thousand guilders
at once, he kept drawing fifty at a time and throwing them annually at
the Spider.
But the dream of his life--this _we_ all knew, and the Sioux would have
said the Spider knew--was to build a final bridge over the Spider Water:
a bridge to throttle it for all time.
It was the one subject on which you could get a rise out of Hailey any
time, day or night,--the two pier, two abutment, three span, pneumatic
caisson Spider bridge. He would talk Spider bridge to a Chinaman. His
bridge foreman Ed Peeto, a staving big, one-eyed French Canadian,
actually had but two ideas in life: one was Hailey; the other the Spider
bridge. When the management changed again--when the pirates were sent
out on the plank so many good men had walked at their command--and a
great and public-spirited man took control of the system, Ed Peeto
kicked his little water spaniel in a frenzy of delight. "Now, Sport, old
boy," he exclaimed riotously, "we'll get the bridge!"
So there were many long conferences at division headquarters between
Bucks, superintendent, and Callahan, assistant, and Hailey,
superintendent of bridges, and after, Hailey went once more to general
headquarters lugging all his estimates revised and all his plans
refigured. All his expense estimates outside the Spider bridge and one
other point were slight, because Hailey could skin along with less money
than anybody ever in charge of the bridge work. He did it by keeping
everything up; not a sleeper, not a spike--nothing got away from him.
The new president, as befitted a very big man, was no end of a swell,
and received Hailey with a considerate dignity unknown on our End. He
listened carefully to the superintendent's statement of the necessities
at the Big Sandy River. The amount looked large; but the argument,
supported by a mass of statistics, was convincing. Three bridges in ten
years, and the California fast freight business lost twice. Hailey's
budget called, too, for a new bridge at the Peace River--and a good one.
Give him these, he said in effect, and he would guarantee the worst
stretch on the system for a lifetime against tie-up disasters. Hailey
stayed over to await the decision; but he was always in a hurry, and he
haunted the general offices until the president told him he could have
the money. To Hailey this meant, particularly, the bridge of his dreams.
The wire flashed the word to the West End; everybody at the Wickiup was
glad; but Ed Peeto burned red fire and his little dog Sport ate
rattlesnakes.
The old shack of a depot building that served as division headquarters
at Medicine Bend we called the Wickiup. Everybody in it was crowded for
room, and Hailey, whose share was what was left, had hard work to keep
out of the wastebasket. But right away now it was different. Two extra
offices were assigned to Hailey, and he took his place with those who
sported windows and cuspidors--in a word, had departments in the
service. Old Denis Hailey went very near crazy. He resigned as section
boss and took a place at smaller wages in the bridge carpenter's gang so
he could work on the boy's bridge, and Ed Peeto, savage with
responsibility, strutted around the Wickiup like a cyclops.
For a wonder the bridge material came in fast--the Spider stuff
first--and early in the summer Hailey, very quiet, and Peeto, very
profane, with all and several their traps and slaves and belongings
moved into construction headquarters at the Spider, and the first
airlock ever sunk west of the Missouri closed over the heads of tall
Hailey and big Ed Peeto. Like a swarm of ants the bridge-workers cast
the refuse up out of the Spider bed. The blow-pipes never slept: night
and day the sand streamed from below, and Hailey's caissons, like armed
cruisers, sunk foot by foot towards the rock; by the middle of September
the masonry was crowding high-water mark, and the following Saturday
Hailey and Peeto ran back to Medicine Bend to rest up a bit and get
acquainted with their families. Peeto was so deaf he couldn't hear
himself swear, and Hailey looked ragged and thin, like the old depot,
but immensely happy.
Sunday morning counted a little even then in the mountains. It was at
least a day to get your feet on the tables up in Bucks's office and
smoke Callahan's Cavendish--which was enough to make a man bless
Callahan if he did forget his Maker. Sunday mornings Bucks would get out
the dainty, pearl-handled Wostenholm that Lillienfeld, the big San
Francisco spirit-shipper, left annually for him at the Bend, and open
the R. R. B. mail and read the news aloud for the benefit of Callahan
and Hailey and such hangers-on as Peeto and an occasional stray
despatcher.
"Hello," exclaimed Bucks, chucking a nine-inch official manila under the
table, "here's a general order--Number Fourteen----"
The boys drew their briers like one. Bucks read out a lot of stuff that
didn't touch our End, and then he reached this paragraph:
"'The Mountain and the Inter-mountain divisions are hereby consolidated
under the name of the Mountain Division with J. F. Bucks as
Superintendent, headquarters at Medicine Bend. C. T. Callahan is
appointed Assistant Superintendent of the new division.'"
"Good boy!" roared Ed Peeto, straining his ears.
"Well, well, well," said Hailey, opening his eyes, "here's promotions
right and left."
"'H. P. Agnew is appointed Superintendent of bridges of the new division
with headquarters at Omaha, vice P. C. Hailey,'" Bucks read on, with
some little surprise growing into a shock. Then he read fast looking for
some further mention of Hailey. Hailey promoted, transferred,
assigned--but there was no further mention of Hailey in G. O. Number
Fourteen. Bucks threw down the order in a silence. Ed Peeto broke out
first.
"Who's H. P. Canoe?"
"Agnew."
"Who the hell is he?" roared Ed. Nobody answered: nobody knew. Bucks
attempted to talk; Callahan lit his lighted pipe; but Ed Peeto stared at
Hailey like a drunken man.
"Did you hear that?" he snorted at his superior.
Hailey nodded.
"You're out!" stormed Peeto.
Hailey nodded. The bridge foreman took his pipe from his mouth and
dashed it into the stove. He got up and stamped across to the window and
was like to have sworn the glass out before Hailey spoke.