in the district for twenty-four hours and every hand-car was running
smoothly. Moreover, there were no extra sections marked up and only one
Special on the Division card--a theatrical train eastbound with Henry
Irving and company from 'Frisco to Chicago. The Irving Special was
heavy, as it always is; that night there were five baggage cars, a coach
and two sleepers. I am particular to lay all this out just as the night
opened when Blackburn took his train sheet, because sometimes these
things happen under extraordinary pressure on the line and sometimes
they don't; sometimes they happen under pressure on the despatcher
himself. It was all fixed, too, for Blackburn to handle not only his own
trick but the first two hours of Fred's trick, which would carry till
six o'clock in the morning. At six Maxwell was to double into a
four-hour dog-watch, and Callahan was to sit in till noon.
There was nothing to hold the big fellows around the depot that night,
and they began straggling home through the rain about nine o'clock.
Before ten, Bucks and Callahan had left the office; by eleven, Neighbor
had got away from the roundhouse; Doubleday had gone back to sit with
Fred Norman.
The lights in the yard were low and the drizzle had eased into a mist;
it was a nasty night, and yet one never promised better for quiet.
Before midnight the switchmen were snug in the yard shanties; in the
Wickiup there were the night ticket agent downstairs and the night
baggageman. Up-stairs every door was locked and every room was dark,
except the despatcher's office. In that, Blackburn sat at his key;
nearby, but closer to the stove, sat the night caller for the train
crews, trying to starch his hair with a ten-cent novel.
The westbound Overland passenger, Number One, was due to leave Ames at
12.40 A. M., and ordinarily would have met a Special like the Irving at
Rosebud, which is a good bit west of the river. But Number One's engine
had been steaming badly all the way from McCloud, and on her schedule,
which was crazy fast all night, she did not make Ames till some fifty
minutes late. While there were no special orders, it was understood we
were to help the Irving train as much as possible anyway. Bucks had made
the acquaintance of the great man and his fellows on the westbound run,
and as they had paid us the particular compliment of a return trip, we
were minded to give them the best of it--even against Number One, which
was always rather sacred on the sheet. This, I say, was pretty generally
understood; for when it was all over there was no criticism whatever on
Blackburn's intention of making a meeting-point for the two trains, as
they then stood, at O'Fallon's siding.
Between Ames and Rosebud, twenty miles apart, there are two
sidings--O'Fallon's, west of the river, and Salt Rocks, east. There was
no operator at either place. The train that leaves Ames westbound is in
the open for twenty miles with only schedule rights or a despatcher's
tissue between her and the worst of it. At one o'clock that morning
Blackburn wired an order to Ames for Number One to hold at O'Fallon's
for Special 202. A minute later he sent an order for Special 202 to run
to O'Fallon's regardless of Number One. At least, he thought he sent
such an order; but he didn't--he made a mistake.
When he had fixed the meeting-point, Blackburn rose from his chair and
sat down by the stove. I lazily watched him, till, falling into a doze
as I eyed him drowsily, he began to loom up in his chair and to curl and
twist toward the roof like a signal column; then the front legs of his
chair struck the floor, and with a start I woke, just as he stepped
hurriedly back to his table and picked up the order book.
The first suspicion I had that anything was wrong was an exclamation
from Blackburn as he stared at the book. Putting it down almost at once
and holding the page open with his left hand, he plugged Callahan's
house wire and began drumming his call. Callahan's "Aye, aye," came back
inside of a minute, and Blackburn tapped right at him: "Come down." And
I began to wonder what _was_ up.
There was an interval; then Callahan asked, "What's the matter?"
I got up and walked over to the water-tank for a drink. Blackburn again
pressed the key, and repeated to Callahan precisely the words he had
used before: "Come down."
His face was drawn into the very shape of fear and his eyes, bent hard
on me, were looking through me and through the shivering window--I know
it now--and through the storming night, horror-set, into the canon of
the Peace River.
The sounder broke and he turned back, listened a moment; but it was
stray stuff about time freight. He pushed the chair from behind him,
still like a man listening--listening; then with an effort, plain even
to me, he walked across the office, pushed open the door of Callahan's
private room, and stood with his hand on the knob, looking back at the
lamp. It was as if he still seemed to listen, for he stood undecided a
moment; then he stepped into the dark room and closed the door behind
him, leaving me alone and dumb with fear.
The mystery lay, I knew, in the order book. Curiosity gradually got the
better of my fright, and I walked from the cooler over to the counter to
get courage, and shoved the train register around noisily. I crossed to
the despatchers' table and made a pretence of arranging the pads and
blanks. The train order book was lying open where he had left it under
the lamp. With my eyes bulging, I read the last two orders copied in it:
C. and E. No. One, Ames.
No. One, Eng. 871, will hold at O'Fallon's for Special 202.
C. and E. Special 202, Rosebud.
Special 202, Eng. 636, will run to Salt Rocks regardless of No.
One.
SALT ROCKS! I glared at the words and the letters of the words.
I re-read the first order and read again the second. O'Fallon's for
Number One. That was right. O'Fallon's it should be for the Special 202,
of course, to meet her. But it wasn't: it was the first station east of
O'Fallon's he had ordered the Special to run to. It was a lap order. My
scalp began to creep. A lap order for the Irving Special and the Number
One passenger, and it doomed them to meet head on somewhere between
O'Fallon's and the Salt Rocks, in the Peace River canon.
My mouth went sticking dry. The sleet outside had deepened into a hail
that beat the west glass sharper and the window shook again in the wind.
I asked myself, afraid to look around, what Blackburn could be doing in
Callahan's room. The horror of the wreck impending through his mistake
began to grow on me; I know what I suffered; I ask myself now what he
suffered, inside, alone, in the dark.
Oh, you who lie down upon the rail at night to sleep, in a despatcher's
hand, think you, ever, in your darkened berths of the cruel
responsibility on the man who in the watches of the night holds you in
his keeping?
Others may blunder; others may forget; others may fall and stand again:
not the despatcher; a single mistake damns him. When he falls he falls
forever.
Young as I was, I realized that night the meaning of the career to which
my little ambition urged me. The soldier, the officer, the general, the
statesman, the president, may make mistakes, do make mistakes, that cost
a life or cost ten thousand lives. They redeem them and live honored. It
is the obscure despatcher under the lamp who for a single lapse pays the
penalty of eternal disgrace. I felt something of it even then, and from
my boy's heart, in the face of the error, in the face of the slaughter,
I pitied Blackburn.
Callahan's room door opened again and Blackburn came out of the dark. I
had left the table and was standing in front of the stove. He looked at
me almost eagerly; the expression of his face had completely changed. I
never in my life saw such a change in so few minutes on any man's face,
and, like all the rest, it alarmed me. It was not for me to speak if I
had been able, and he did not. He walked straight over to the table,
closed the order book, plugged Callahan's house wire again, and began
calling him. The assistant superintendent answered, and Blackburn sent
him just these words:
"You need not come down."
I heard Callahan reply with a question: "What is the matter?"
Blackburn stood calmly over the key, but he made no answer. Instead, he
repeated only the words, "You need not come down."
Callahan, easily excitable always, was wrought up. "Blackburn," he asked
over the wire, impatiently, "what in God's name is the matter?" But
Blackburn only pulled the plug and cut him out, and sunk into the chair
like a man wearied.
"Mr. Blackburn," I said, my heart thumping like an injector, "Mr.
Blackburn?" He glanced vacantly around; seemed for the first time to see
me. "Is there anything," I faltered, "I can do?"
Even if the words meant nothing, the offer must have touched him. "No,
Jack," he answered quietly; "there isn't." With the words the hall door
opened and Bucks, storm-beaten in his ulster, threw it wide and stood
facing us both. The wind that swept in behind him blew out the lamps and
left us in darkness.
"Jack, will you light up?"
It was Blackburn who spoke to me. But Bucks broke in instantly, speaking
to him:
"Callahan called me over his house wire a few minutes ago, Blackburn,
and told me to meet him here right away. Is anything wrong?" he asked,
with anxiety restrained in his tone.
I struck a match. I was so nervous that I took hold of the hot chimney
of the counter lamp and dropped it smash to the floor. No one said a
word and that made me worse. I struck a second match, and a third, and
with a fourth got the lamp on the despatchers' table lighted as
Blackburn answered the superintendent. "Something serious has
happened," he replied to Bucks. "I sent lap orders at one o'clock for
Number One and the Irving Special."
Bucks stared at him.
"Instead of making a meeting-point at O'Fallon's I sent One an order to
run to O'Fallon's and ordered the Special to run to Salt Rocks against
One."
"Why, my God!" exclaimed Bucks, "that will bring them together in--the
Peace canon--Blackburn!--Blackburn!--Blackburn!" he cried, tearing off
his storm-coat. He walked to the table, seized the order book and
steadied himself with one hand on the chair; I never saw him like that.
But it looked as if the horror long averted, the trouble in the Peace
River canon, had come. The sleet tore at the old depot like a wolf, and
with the sash shivering, Bucks turned like an executioner on his
subordinate.
"What have you done to meet it?" He drew his watch, and his words came
sharp as doom. "Where's your wreckers? Where's your relief? What have
you done? What are you doing? _Nothing?_ Why don't you speak? Will you
kill two trainloads of people without an effort to do anything?"
His voice rang absolute terror to me; I looked toward Blackburn
perfectly helpless.
"Bucks, there will be no wreck," he answered steadily.
"Be no wreck!" thundered Bucks, towering in the dingy room dark as the
sweep of the wind. "Be no wreck? Two passenger trains meet in hell and
be no wreck? Are you crazy?"
The despatcher's hands clutched at the table. "No," he persisted
steadily, "I am not crazy, Bucks. Don't make me so. I tell you there
will not be a wreck."
Bucks, uncertain with amazement, stared at him again.
"Blackburn, if you're sane I don't know what you mean. Don't stand
there like that. Do you know what you have done?" The superintendent
advanced toward him as he spoke; there was a trace of pity in his words
that seemed to open Blackburn's pent heart more than all the bitterness.
"Bucks," he struggled, putting out a hand toward his chief, "I am sure
of what I say. There will be no wreck. When I saw what I had done--knew
it was too late to undo it--I begged God that my hands might not be
stained with their blood." Sweat oozed from the wretched man's forehead.
Every word wrung its bead of agony. "I was answered," he exclaimed with
a strange confidence, "there will be no wreck. I cannot see what will
happen. I do not know what; but there will be no wreck, believe me or
not--it is so."
His steadfast manner staggered the superintendent. I could imagine what
he was debating as he looked at Blackburn--wondering, maybe, whether the
man's mind was gone. Bucks was staggered; he looked it, and as he
collected himself to speak again the hall door opened like an uncanny
thing, and we all started as Callahan burst in on us.
"What's so?" he echoed. "What's up here? What did it mean, Blackburn?
There's been trouble, hasn't there? What's the matter with you all?
Bucks? Is everybody struck dumb?"
Bucks spoke. "There's a lap order out on One and the theatrical Special,
Callahan. We don't know what's happened," said Bucks sullenly.
"Blackburn here has gone crazy--or he knows--somehow--there won't be any
wreck," added the superintendent slowly and bewilderedly. "It's between
O'Fallon's and Salt Rocks somewhere. Callahan, take the key," he cried
of a sudden. "There's a call now. Despatcher! Don't speak; ask no
questions. Get that message," he exclaimed sharply, pointing to the
instrument. "It may be news."
And it was news: news from Ames Station reporting the Irving Special
_in_ at 1.52 A. M.--out at 1.54! We all heard it together, or it might
not have been believed. The Irving Special, eastbound, safely past
Number One, westbound, on a single track when their meeting orders had
lapped! Past without a word of danger or of accident, or even that they
had seen Number One and stopped in time to avoid a collision? Exactly;
not a word; nothing. In at 52; out at 54. And the actors hard asleep in
the berths--and on about its business the Irving Special--that's what we
got from Ames.
Callahan looked around. "Gentlemen, what does this mean? Somebody here
is insane. I don't know whether it's me or you, Blackburn. Are you
horsing me?" he exclaimed, raising his voice angrily. "If you are, I
want to say I consider it a damned shabby joke."
Bucks put up a hand and without a word of comment repeated Blackburn's
story just as the despatcher had told it. "In any event there's nothing
to do now; it's on us or we're past it. Let us wait for Number One to
report."
Callahan pored over the order book. "Maybe," he asked after a while,
"didn't you send the orders right and copy them wrong in the book,
Blackburn?"
The despatcher shook his head. "They went as they stand. The orders
lapped, Callahan. Wait till we hear from Number One. I feel sure she is
safe. Wait."
Bucks was pacing the floor. Callahan stuck silent to the key, taking
what little work came, for I saw neither of the chiefs wanted to trust
Blackburn at the key. He sat, looking, for the most part, vacantly into
the fire. Callahan meantime had the orders repeated back from Ames and
Rosebud. It was as Blackburn had said; they did lap; they had been sent
just as the order book showed. There was nothing for it but to wait for
Rosebud to hear from Number One. When the night operator there called
the despatcher again it brought Blackburn out of his gloom like a
thunderclap.
"Give me the key!" he exclaimed. "There is Rosebud." Callahan pushed
back and Blackburn, dropping into the chair, took the message from the
night operator at Rosebud.
"Number One, in, 2.03 A. M."
Blackburn answered him, and strangely, with all the easy confidence of
his ordinary sending. He sat and took and sent like one again master of
the situation.
"Ask Engineer Sampson to come to the wire," said he to Rosebud. Sampson,
not Maje, but his brother Arnold, was pulling Number One that night.
"Engineer Sampson here," came from Rosebud presently.
"Ask Sampson where he met Special 202 to-night."
We waited, wrought up, for in that reply must come the answer to all the
mystery. There was a hitch at the other end of the wire; then Rosebud
answered:
"Sampson says he will tell you all about it in the morning."
"That will not do," tapped the despatcher. "This is Blackburn.
Superintendent Bucks and Callahan are here. They want the facts. Where
did you meet Special 202?"
There was another wearing delay. When the answer came it was slowly, at
the engineer's dictation.
"My orders were to hold at O'Fallon's for Special 202," clicked the
sounder, repeating the engineer's halting statement. "When we cleared
Salt Rocks siding and got down among the Quakers, I was cutting along
pretty hard to make the canon when I saw, or thought I saw, a headlight
flash between the buttes across the river. It startled me, for I knew
the 202 Special could not be very far west of us. Anyway, I made a quick
stop, and reversed and backed tight as I could make it for Salt Rocks
siding. Before we had got a mile I saw the headlight again, and I knew
the 202 was against our order. We got into the clear just as the Special
went by humming. Nobody but our train crew and my fireman knows anything
about this."
The three men in front of me made no comment as they looked at each
other. How was it possible for one train to have seen the headlight of
another among the buttes of the Peace River country?
It was--possible. Just possible. But to figure once in how many times a
vista would have opened for a single second so one engineer could see
the light of another would stagger a multiplying machine. Chance? Well,
yes, perhaps. But there were no suggestions of that nature that night
under the despatcher's lamp at the Wickiup, with the storm driving down
the pass as it drove that night; and yet at Peace River, where the
clouds never rested, that night was clear. Blackburn, getting up,
steadied himself on his feet.
"Go in there and lie down," said Callahan to him. "You're used up, old
fellow, I can see that. I'll take the key. Don't say a word."
"Not a word, Blackburn," put in Bucks, resting his big hand on the
despatcher's shoulder. "There's no harm done; nobody knows it. Bury the
thing right here to-night. You're broke up. Go in there and lie down."
He took their hands; started to speak; but they pushed him into
Callahan's room; they didn't want to hear anything.
All the night it stormed at the Wickiup. In the morning the Irving
Special, flying toward Chicago, was far down the Platte. Number One was
steaming west, deep in the heart of the Rockies; Blackburn lay in
Callahan's room. It was nine o'clock, and the sun was streaming through
the east windows when Fred Norman opened the office door. Fred could do
those things even when he was sickest. Have a hemorrhage one day, scare
everybody to death, and go back to his trick the next. He asked right
away for Kit, as he called Blackburn, and when they pointed to
Callahan's door Fred pushed it open and went in. A cry brought the
operators to him. Blackburn was stretched on his knees half on the
floor, half face downward on the sofa. His head had fallen between his
arms, which were stretched above it. In his hands, clasped tight, they
found his watch with the picture of his wife and his baby. Had he asked,
when he first went into that room that night--when he wrestled like
Jacob of old in his agony of prayer--that his life be taken if only
their lives, the lives of those in his keeping, might be spared? I do
not know. They found him dead.
The Nightman's Story
BULLHEAD
His full name was James Gillespie Blaine Lyons; but his real name was
Bullhead--just plain Bullhead.
When he began passenger braking the trainmaster put him on with Pat
Francis. The very first trip he made, a man in the smoking car asked him
where the drinking water was. Bullhead, though sufficiently gaudy in his
new uniform, was not prepared for any question that might be thrown at
him. He pulled out his book of rules, which he had been told to consult
in case of doubt, and after some study referred his inquirer to the
fire-bucket hanging at the front end of the car. The passenger happened
to be a foreigner and very thirsty. He climbed up on the Baker heater,
according to directions, and did at some risk get hold of the
bucket--but it was empty.
"Iss no vater hier," cried the second-class man. Bullhead sat half way
back in the car, still studying the rules. He looked up surprised but
turning around pointed with confidence to the firepail at the hind end
of the smoker.
"Try the other bucket, Johnnie," he said, calmly. At that every man in
the car began to choke; and the German, thinking the new brakeman was
making funny of him, wanted to fight. Now Bullhead would rather fight
than go to Sunday-school any day, and without parley he engaged the
insulted homesteader. Pat Francis parted them after some hard words on
his part; and Kenyon, the trainmaster, gave Bullhead three months to
study up where the water cooler was located in Standard, A pattern,
smoking cars. Bullhead's own mother, who did Callahan's washing, refused
to believe her son was so stupid as not to know; but Bullhead, who now
tells the story himself, claims he did not know.
When he got back to work he tried the freight trains. They put him on
the Number Twenty-nine, local, and one day they were drifting into the
yard at Goose River Junction when there came from the cab a sharp call
for brakes. Instead of climbing out and grabbing a brakewheel for dear
life, Bullhead looked out the window to see what the excitement was. By
the time he had decided what rule covered the emergency his train had
driven a stray flat half way through the eating house east of the depot.
Kenyon, after hearing Bullhead's own candid statement of fact, coughed
apologetically and said three years; whereupon Bullhead resigned
permanently from the train service and applied for a job in the
roundhouse.
But the roundhouse--for a boy like Bullhead. It would hardly do. He was
put at helping Pete Beezer, the boiler washer. One night Pete was
snatching his customary nap in the pit when the hose got away from
Bullhead and struck his boss. In the confusion, Peter, who was nearly
drowned, lost a set of teeth; that was sufficient in that department of
the motive power; Bullhead moved on, suddenly. Neighbor thought he might
do for a wiper. After the boy had learned something about wiping he
tried one day to back an engine out on the turn-table just to see
whether it was easy. It was; dead easy; but the turn-table happened to
be arranged wrong for the experiment; and Neighbor, before calling in
the wrecking gang, took occasion to kick Bullhead out of the roundhouse
bodily.
Nevertheless, Bullhead, like every Medicine Bend boy, wanted to
railroad. Some fellows can't be shut off. He was offered the presidency
of a Cincinnati bank by a private detective agency which had just sent
up the active head of the institution for ten years; but as Bullhead
could not arrange transportation east of the river he was obliged to let
the opportunity pass.
When the widow Lyons asked Callahan to put Jamie at telegraphing the
assistant superintendent nearly fell off his chair. Mrs. Lyons, however,
was in earnest, as the red-haired man soon found by the way his shirts
were starched. Her son, meantime, had gotten hold of a sounder, and was
studying telegraphy, corresponding at the same time with the Cincinnati
detective agency for the town and county rights to all "hidden and
undiscovered crime," on the Mountain Division--rights offered at the
very reasonable price of ten dollars by registered mail, bank draft or
express money order; currency at sender's risk. The only obligations
imposed by this deal were secrecy and a German silver star; and
Bullhead, after holding his trusting mother up for the ten, became a
regularly installed detective with proprietary rights to local misdeeds.
Days he plied his sounder, and nights he lay awake trying to mix up Pete
Beezer and Neighbor with the disappearance of various bunches of horses
from the Bar M ranch.
About the same time he became interested in dentistry; not that there is
any obvious connection between railroading and detective work and
filling teeth--but his thoughts just turned that way and following the
advice of a local dentist, who didn't want altogether to discourage him,
Bullhead borrowed a pair of forceps and pulled all the teeth out of a
circular saw to get his arm into practice. Before the dentist pronounced
him proficient, though, his mother had Callahan reduced to terms, and
the assistant superintendent put Bullhead among the operators.