Molay over the Pass, and spoke him low. Jack nodded; everything went
with Jack, even the turn-tables that stuck with other engineers. Martin
in his shirt-sleeves leaned out the window and, looking down on the
turbaned and turbulent mob, spoke so Bucks could hear.
"What is it?" demanded the most puissant commander of De Molay
excitedly. "What does he say, Bucks?"
"What says the slave?" growled a second formidable crusader; "out with
it!"
"All we want is fifteen minutes."
"You wouldn't turn us down on fifteen minutes this far from an oasis,
would you, Bucks?" protested a glass-eyed Shriner.
Bucks looked around royally. "Fifteen minutes?" he drawled. "What's a
quarter of an hour in a lifetime, Jackman, on the last oasis? Take off
your clothes, you fellows, and take half an hour. Now will you be good?"
De Molay put up a Templar yell. They always get the good things of life,
those Pittsburg men; things other fellows couldn't begin to get. They
passed the word through the sleepers, and the women began pouring from
the vestibules. In two quick minutes out came the Duquesne band in red
pompoms, duck trousers and military jackets, white corded with black.
The crowd broke, the band marched down the platform and, striking up the
"Washington Post," opened ranks on the grass plot above the Wickiup to
receive the De Molay guard. One hundred Knights Templar in fatigue
debouched into a bit of a park, and in the purple of the sunset gave a
commandery drill to the honor of Bucks--Bucks and the West End.
It was Sunday night, and still as August could make it. The battalion
moving silent and mobile as a streamer over the grass, marched, deployed
and rested. They broke, to the clear-cut music, into crosses and squares
and crescents and stars until small boys went cross-eyed, and wheeling
at last on the line, they saluted Bucks--himself a past grand
commander--and the railroad men yelled.
Meantime the General Manager's private car had been pasted on the
tail-end of De Molay Four, and a pusher edging up, stuck its nose into
the rear vestibule. On the head end Jack Moore and Oyster were backing
down on the olive-green string with the two smoothest moguls on the
division. Bucks and Neighbor had held back everything good all day for
De Molay Four, down to engines and runners and conductor. Pat Francis
carried the punch, and the little Chief sat again in the despatcher's
chair for De Molay Four.
And while the lovely women strolled in the cool of the evening and the
odor of mountain sweetness, and the guard drilled, and the band played,
the Chief knit his brows over his train sheet. It looked now,
re-arranged, re-ordered, re-adjusted and re-organized, as if a Gila
Monster had crawled over it without wiping his feet. And when De Molay
Four got ready to pull out, with Moore and Oyster on the throttles and
old John Parker in the baggage, where he had absolutely nothing to do
but drink cigars and smoke champagne and Pat Francis in the aisles, and
Bucks, with Mr. and Mrs. Callahan and their crowd, in private Number
Twelve--there was that much shouting and tooting and waving that Martin
Duffy simply couldn't think for a few seconds; yet he held them all, for
life or for death, every last one, in the curve of his fingers.
So they stood ready in the gorge while Duffy studied wearily how to
handle First, Second, and Third Eighty against them.
First, Second, and Third Eighty! If they could only have been wiped off
the face of the rails as easy as they might have been wiped off a train
sheet! But there they were, three sections, and big ones, of the
California fast freight. High-class stuff for Chicago and New York that
couldn't be held or laid out that Sunday, not for a dozen Conclaves. All
day First, Second, and Third Eighty had been feeling their way east
through the mountains, trying to dodge the swell commanderies rolling by
impudent as pay cars. But all the final plans to keep them out of
everybody's way, out of the way of fez and turban and chapeau and Greek
cross and crimson-splashed sleepers, were now dashed by thirty minutes
at Medicine for De Molay Four.
Order after order went from under his hand. New meeting-points for
First, Second, and Third Eighty and De Molay Four, otherwise Special
326.
Pat Francis snatched the tissues from Duffy's hand and, after the
battalion had dispersed among their wives and sisters, and among the
sisters of the other fellow; after the pomponed chaps had chucked the
trombones and cymbals and drums at old John Parker's shins; after the
last air-cock had been tested and the last laggard crusader thrown
forcibly aboard by the provost guard, the double-header tooted, "Out!"
and, with the flutter of an ocean liner, De Molay Four pulled up the
gorge.
The orders buttoned in the reefers gave De Molay a free sweep to Elcho,
and Jack Moore and Oyster were the men to take it, good and hard.
Moreover, there was glory aboard. Pennsylvania nobs, way-up railroad
men, waiting to see what for motive power we had in the Woolly West; how
we climbed mountains and skirted canon walls, and crawled down two and
three per cent grades. Then with Bucks himself in the private car--what
wonder they let her out and swung De Molay through the gorge as maybe
you've seen a particularly buoyant kite snake its tail out of the grass
and drag it careening skyward. When they slowed for Elcho at nightfall,
past First and Second Eighty, and Bucks named the mileage, the Pennsys
refused to believe it for the hour's run. But fast as they had sped
along the iron trail, Martin Duffy's work had sped ahead of them, and
this order was waiting:
Telegraphic Train Order Number 79.
C. and E. Third No. 80, Rat River.
C. and E. Special 326, Elcho.
Third No. 80, Engine 210, and Special 326 will meet at Rock Point.
J. M. C.
D.
With this meeting-point made, it would be pretty much over in the
despatchers' office. Martin Duffy pushed his sallow hair back for the
last time, and, leaving young Giddings to get the last O. K.'s and the
last Complete on his trick, got out of the chair.
It had been a tremendous day for Giddings, a tremendous day. Thirty-two
Specials on the despatchers, and Giddings copying for the Chief. He sat
down after Duffy, filled with a riotous importance because it was now,
in effect, all up to Giddings, personally; at least until Barnes Tracy
should presently kick him out of the seat of honor for the night trick.
Mr. Giddings sat down and waited for the signature of the orders.
Very soon Pat Francis dropped off De Molay Four, slowing at Elcho, ran
straight to the operator for his order, signed it and at once Order 79
was throbbing back to young Giddings at Medicine Bend. It was precisely
7.54 P. M. when Giddings gave back the Complete and at 7.55 Elcho
reported Special 326, "out," all just like clockwork. What a head Martin
Duffy has, thought young Giddings--and behold! all the complicated
everlasting headwork of the trick and the day, and of the West End and
its honor, was now up to the signature of Third Eighty at Rat River.
Just Third Eighty's signature for the Rock Point meeting, and the
biggest job ever tackled by a single-track road in America (Giddings
thought) was done and well done.
So the ambitious Giddings by means of a pocket-mirror inspected a
threatening pimple on the end of his chubby nose palming the glass
skilfully so Barnes Tracy couldn't see it even if he did interrupt his
eruption, and waited for Bob Duffy, the Rat River nightman, to come back
at him with Third Eighty's signature. Under Giddings' eye, as he sat,
ticked Martin Duffy's chronometer--the watch that split the seconds and
chimed the quarters and stopped and started so impossibly and ran to a
second a month--the watch that Bucks (who never did things by halves)
had given little Martin Duffy with the order that made him Chief. It lay
at Giddings's fingers, and the minute hand wiped from the enamelled dial
seven o'clock fifty-five, fifty-six, seven, eight--nine. Young Giddings
turned to his order book and inspected his entries like a methodical
bookkeeper, and Martin Duffy's chronometer chimed the fourth quarter,
eight o'clock. One entry he had still to make. Book in hand he called
Rat River.
"Get Third Eighty's signature to Order 79 and hurry them out," he tapped
impatiently at Bob Duffy.
There was a wait. Giddings lighted his pipe the way Callahan always
lighted _his_ pipe--putting out his lips to catch all the perfume and
blowing the first cloud away wearily, as Callahan always did wearily.
Then he twirled the match meditatively, and listened, and got suddenly
this from Bob Duffy at Rat River:
"I forgot Order 79," came Bob Duffy's message. "I let Third Eighty go
without it. They left here at seven--fifty"--fifty something, Giddings
never heard fifty what. The match went into the ink, the pipe into the
water-pail, and Giddings, before Bob Duffy finished, like a drowning
man was calling Elcho with the life and death, the Nineteen call.
"Hold Special 326!" he cried over the wire the instant Elcho replied.
But Elcho, steadily, answered this:
"Special--Three-twenty-six--left--here--seven-fifty-five."
Giddings, with both hands on the table, raised up like a drunken man.
The West End was against it. Third Eighty in the open and going against
the De Molay Four. Bucks, Callahan, wife--everybody--and Rock Point a
blind siding that no word from anybody on earth could reach ahead of
Third Eighty.
Giddings sprang to the open window and shouted to anybody and everybody
to call Martin Duffy. But Martin Duffy spoke behind him.
"What do you want?" he asked; it came terribly quick on Giddings as he
turned.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Martin, looking into the boy's face.
"Speak, can't you? What's the matter, Giddings?"
"Bob forgot Order 79 and let Third Eighty go without it--and Special 326
is out of Elcho," choked Giddings.
"_What?_"
"Bob at--Rat River--gave Third Eighty a clearance without the Order 79."
Martin Duffy sprang straight up in the air. Once he shut his lifted
hands; once he looked at Giddings, staggering again through the
frightful news, then he dropped into the chair, looked wildly around,
seized his key like a hunted man, stared at his train sheet, grabbed the
order book, and listened to Giddings cutting off one hope after another
of stopping Special 326. His fingers set mechanically and he made the
Rat River call; but Rat River was silent. With Barnes Tracy tiptoeing in
behind on the instinct of trouble, and young Giddings shaking like a
leaf, the Chief called Rat River. Then he called Elcho, asked for
Special 326, and Elcho again repeated steadily:
"Special--326--left--here--on--Order--79--at--seven-fifty-five P. M."
Martin Duffy bent before the message; young Giddings, who had been
whispering to Tracy, dropped on a stool and covered his face.
"Don't cry, Giddings." It was Duffy who spoke; dry and parched his
voice. "It's nothing you--could help." He looked around and saw Tracy at
his elbow. "Barnes," he said, but he tried twice before his voice would
carry. "Barnes--they will meet in the Cinnamon cut. Giddings told you?
Bob forgot, forgot my order. Run, Giddings, for Benedict Morgan and
Doubleday and Carhart--_quick!_"
Giddings ran, the Rat River call echoing again down the hall behind him.
Rat River was closest to Rock Point--would get the first news of the
wreck, and Martin Duffy was calling his recreant brother at the River;
but the River was silent.
Doubleday and the company surgeon, Dr. Carhart, rushed into the room
almost together. Then came with a storm the wrecking boss, Benedict
Morgan; it was only an evil hour that brought Benedict Morgan into the
despatchers' office. Stooped and silent, Martin Duffy, holding the
chair, was calling Rat River. Carhart watched him just a moment, then he
took Barnes Tracy aside and whispered--and, going back, bent over Duffy.
The Chief pulled himself up.
"Let Tracy take the key," repeated the doctor. "Get away from the table
a minute, Martin. It may not be as bad as you think."
Duffy, looking into the surgeon's face, put his hand on his arm. "It's
the De Molay train, the Special 326, with Bucks's car, double-headed.
Oh, my God--I can't stop them. Doctor, they will meet!"
Carhart unfastened the fingers on his arm. "Come away a minute. Let
Tracy have the key," he urged.
"A head-ender, eh?" croaked Benedict Morgan from the counter, and with a
frightful oath. "A head-ender!"
"Shut up, you brute!" hissed Carhart. Duffy's hands were creeping
queerly up the sides of his head.
"Sure," growled Benedict Morgan, loweringly, "sure. Shut up. Of course.
Shut up."
Carhart was a quick man. He started for the wrecker, but Duffy,
springing, stopped him. "For God's sake, keep cool, everybody," he
exclaimed, piteously. There was no one else to talk, to give the orders.
Bucks and Callahan both on the Special--maybe past order-giving now.
Only Martin Duffy to take the double load and the double shame. He
stared, dazed again, into the faces around as he held to the fiery
surgeon. "Morgan," he added steadily, looking at the surly wrecker, "get
up your crew, quick. Doubleday, make up all the coaches in the yard for
an ambulance train. Get every doctor in town to go with you. Tracy,
clear the line."
The Master Mechanic and Benedict Morgan clattered down stairs. Carhart,
running to the telephone, told Central to summon every medical man in
the Bend, and hurried out. Before he had covered a block, roundhouse
callers, like flaws of wind before a storm, were scurrying the streets,
and from the tower of the fire-house sounded the harsh clang of the
emergency gong for the wreckers.
Caught where they could be caught, out of saloons, beds, poker joints,
Salvation barracks, churches,--the men of the wrecking crew ran down the
silent streets, waking now fast into life. Congregations were dispersed,
hymns cut, prayers forgotten, bars deserted, hells emptied, barracks
raided at that call, the emergency gong call, fell as a fire-bell, for
the Mountain Division wrecking gang.
While the yard crews shot up and down the spurs switching coaches into
the relief train, Benedict Morgan with solid volleys of oaths was
organizing his men and filling them at the lunch counters with huge
schooners of coffee. Carhart pushed again through the jam of men and up
to the despatchers' office. Before and behind him crowded the local
physicians with instrument bags and bandages. The ominous baggage
deposited on the office floor, they sat down about the room or hovered
around Carhart asking for details. Doubleday, tall and grim, came over
from the roundhouse. Benedict Morgan stamped up from the yard--the
Mountain Division was ready.
All three despatchers were in the room. John Mallers, the day man, stood
near Tracy, who had relieved Giddings. The line was clear for the relief
run. Elcho had been notified of the impending disaster, and at Tracy's
elbow sat the Chief looking fixedly at the key--taking the bob of the
sounder with his eye. A dozen men in the room were talking; but they
spoke as men who speaking wait on the life of a fuse. Duffy, with
suspense deepening into frenzy, pushed Tracy's hand from the key and,
sliding into the chair, began once more to call his brother at Rat
River.
"R, T--R, T--R, T--R, T--" clicked the River call. "R, T--R, T--R,
T--Bob--Bob--Bob," spelled the sender. "Answer me, answer, answer. R,
T--R, T--R, T--R, T--"
And Barnes Tracy edged away and leaned back to where the shadow hid his
face. And John Mallers, turning from the pleading of the current, stared
gloomily out of the window across the yard shimmering under the double
relay of arc lights; and young Giddings, who couldn't stand it--just
_couldn't_ stand it--bending on his stool, shook with gulping sobs.
The others knew nothing of the heartbreaking in the little clicks. But
they all knew the track--knew where the trains would meet; knew they
could not by any possibility see each other till they whirled together
on the curve of the Cinnamon cut or on the trestle west of it and they
waited only for the breaking of the suspense that settled heavily over
them.
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty minutes went, with Martin Duffy at intervals
vainly calling. Then--as the crack opens in the field of ice, as the
snow breaks in the mountain slide, as the sea gives up at last its dead,
the sounder spoke--Rat River made the despatcher's call. And Martin
Duffy, staring at the copper coil, pushed himself up in his chair like a
man that chokes, caught smothering at his neck, and slipped wriggling to
the floor.
Carhart caught him up, but Duffy's eyes stared meaningless past him. Rat
River was calling him, but Martin Duffy was past the taking. Like the
man next at the gun, Barnes Tracy sprang into the chair with the I, I,
D. The surgeon, Giddings helping, dragged Duffy to the lounge in
Callahan's room--his Chief was more to Giddings then than the fate of
Special 326. But soon confused voices began to ring from where men were
crowding around the despatchers' table. They echoed in to where the
doctors worked over the raving Chief. And young Giddings, helping,
began, too, to hear strange things from the other room.
"The moon--"
"The _moon_?"
"The MOON!"
"_What?_"
Barnes Tracy was trying to make himself heard:
"The moon, damn it! MOON! That's English, ain't it? _Moon._"
"Who's talking at Rat River?" demanded Benedict Morgan, hoarsely.
"Chick Neale, conductor of Third Eighty; their train is back at Rat
River. God bless that man," stammered Barnes Tracy, wiping his forehead
feverishly; "he's an old operator. He says Bob Duffy is missing--tell
Martin, quick, there isn't any wreck--quick!"
"What does Neale say?" cried Doubleday with an explosion.
Tracy thought he had told them, but he hadn't. "He says his engineer,
Abe Monsoon, was scared by the moon rising just as they cleared Kennel
Butte," explained Tracy unsteadily. "He took it for the headlight of
Special 326 and jumped from his engine. The fireman backed the train to
Rat River--see?"
While Tracy talked, Mallers at the key was getting it all. "Look here,"
he exclaimed, "did you ever hear of such a mix-up in your life? The head
brakeman of the freight was in the cab, Neale says. He and the engineer
were talking about the last Conclave train, wondering where they were
going to meet it, when the brakeman spied the moon coming up around
Kennel Butte curve. 'There's the 326 Special!' he yelled, and lighted
out the gangway. Monsoon reversed and jumped off after him so quick he
knocked the fireman over in the coal. When the fireman got up--he hadn't
heard a word of it all--he couldn't see anything ahead but the moon. So
he stops the train and backs up for the two guys. When Neale and he
picked them up they ran right back to Rat River for orders. They never
got to Rock Point at all--why, they never got two miles east of Rat
River."
"And where's Special 326?" cried Doubleday.
"At Rock Point, you loco. She must be there and waiting yet for Third
Eighty. The stopping of the freight gave her plenty of time to make the
meeting-point, don't you see, and there she is--sweating--yet. Neale is
an old operator. By Heaven! Give me a man of the key against the the
world. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"
"Then there isn't to be any wreck?" ventured a shy little lady
homeopathic physician, who had been crimped into the fray to help do up
the mangled Knights and was modestly waiting her opportunity.
"Not to-night," announced Tracy with the dignity of a man temporarily in
charge of the entire division.
A yell went out of the room like a tidal wave. Doubleday and Benedict
Morgan had not spoken to each other since the night of the roundhouse
fire--that was two years. They turned wonder-struck to each other.
Doubleday impulsively put out his hand and, before he could pull it in
again, the wrecking boss grabbed it like a pay check. Carhart, who was
catching the news from the rattle of young Giddings, went wild trying to
repeat it to Duffy without losing it in his throat. The Chief was
opening his eyes, trying to understand.
Medical men of violently differing schools, allopaths, homeopaths,
osteopaths, eclectics--made their peace with a whoop. A red-headed
druggist, who had rung himself in for a free ride to the horror, threw
his emergency packets into the middle of the floor. The doctors caught
the impulse: instrument cases were laid with solemn tenderness on the
heap, and a dozen crazy men, joining hands around the pyred saws and
gauze, struck up "Old Hundred."
Engineer Monsoon was a new man, who had been over the division only
twice before in his life, both times in daylight. For that emergency Abe
Monsoon was the man of all others, because it takes more than an
ordinary moon to scare a thoroughbred West End engineer. But Monsoon and
his moon headlight had between them saved De Molay Four from the scrap.
The relief arrangements and Monsoon's headlight were the fun of it, but
there was more. Martin Duffy lay eleven weeks with brain fever before
they could say moon again to him. Bob had skipped into the mountains in
the very hour that he had disgraced himself. He has never shown up at
Medicine since; but Martin is still Chief, and they think more of him on
the Mountain district than ever.
Bucks got the whole thing when De Molay Four reached Rat River that
night. Bucks and Callahan and Moore and Oyster and Pat Francis got it
and smiled grimly. Nobody else on Special 326 even dreamed of leaving a
bone that Sunday night in the Cinnamon cut. All the rest of the evening
Bucks smiled just the same at the Knights and the Knightesses, and they
thought him for a bachelor wonderfully entertaining.
A month later, when the old boys more or less ragged came straggling
back from 'Frisco, Bucks's crowd stayed over a train, and he told his
Pennsylvania cronies what they had slipped through in that delay at Rock
Point.
"Just luck," laughed one of the Eastern superintendents, who wore on his
watch chain an enormous Greek cross with "Our Trust is in God" engraved
on it. "Just luck," he laughed, "wasn't it?"
"Maybe," murmured Bucks, looking through the Wickiup window at the Teton
peaks. "That is--you might call it that--back on the Penn. Out here I
guess they'd call it, Just God."
The Trainmaster's Story
OF THE OLD GUARD
I never found it very hard to get into trouble: as far back as I can
remember that has come dead easy for me.
When this happened I hadn't been railroading a month and I was up with
my conductor on the carpet, sweating from sheer grogginess and
excitement. The job of front-end brakeman on a mountain division is no
great stake for a man ordinarily, but it was one for me, just then. We
knew when we went into the superintendent's office that somebody was to
get fired; the only question was, who?--the train crew or the operator?
Our engine crew were out of it; it was up to the conductor and to me.
Had the operator displayed red signals? The conductor said, no; I said,
no; the operator said, yes: but he lied. We couldn't prove it; we could
only put our word against his: and what made it the worse for me, my
conductor was something of a liar himself.
I stood beading in a cold sweat for I could see with half an eye it was
going against us; the superintendent, an up-and-up railroad man every
inch and all business, but suspicious, was leaning the operator's way
the strongest kind.
There wasn't another soul in the little room as the three of us stood
before the superintendent's desk except a passenger conductor, who sat
behind me with his feet on the window ledge, looking out into the yard.
"Morrison's record in this office is clean," the superintendent was
saying of the operator, who was doing us smooth as smokeless powder,
"he has never to my knowledge lied in an investigation. But, Allbers,"
continued the superintendent speaking bluntly to my conductor, "you've
never told a straight story about that Rat River switch matter yet. This
man is a new man," he added, throwing a hard look at me. "Ordinarily I'd
be inclined to take the word of two men against one, but I don't know
one at all and the other has done me once. I can't see anything for it
but to take Morrison's word and let you fellows both out. There wasn't
any wreck, but that's not your fault; not for a minute."