despatcher. It was an hour and twenty minutes after Ponca Station
reported the Yellow Mail out, before Fort Rucker, eighteen miles west,
reported the box-cars and Jimmie Bradshaw in, and followed with a wreck
report from the Crockett siding. When that end of it began to tumble
into the Wickiup office Doubleday's face turned hard; fate was against
him, the contract gone glimmering, and he didn't feel at all sure his
own head and the roadmaster's wouldn't follow it. Then the Rucker
operator began again to talk about Jimmie Bradshaw, and "Who's
Bradshaw?" asked somebody; and Rucker went on excitedly with the story
of the mogul and of three box-cars, and of a war party of Sioux
squatting on the brake-wheels; it came so mixed that Medicine Bend
thought everybody at Rucker Station had gone mad.
While they fumed, Jimmie Bradshaw was speeding the mail through the
mountains. He had Kingsley's fireman, big as an ox and full of his own
enthusiasm. In no time they were flying across the flats of the Spider
Water, threading the curves of the Peace River, and hitting the rails of
the Painted Desert, with the mogul sprinting like a Texas steer, and the
box-cars leaping like yearlings at the joints. It was no case of
scientific running, no case of favoring the roadbed, of easing the
strain on the equipment; it was simply a case of galloping to a Broadway
fire with a Silsby rotary on a 4-11 call. Up hill and down, curve and
tangent, it was all one. There was speed made on the plains with that
mail, and there was speed made in the foothills with the fancy
equipment, but never the speed that Jimmie Bradshaw made when he ran the
mail through the gorges in three box-cars; and frightened operators and
paralyzed station agents all the way up the line watched the fearful and
wonderful train, with Bradshaw's red head sticking out of the cab
window, shiver the switches.
Medicine Bend couldn't get the straight of it over the wires. There was
an electric storm in the mountains, and the wires went bad in the midst
of the confusion. They knew there was a wreck, and understood there was
mail in the ditch, and, with Doubleday frantic, the despatchers were
trying to get the track to run a train down to Crockett's. But Jimmie
Bradshaw had asked at Rucker for rights to the Bend, and in an unguarded
moment they had been given; after that it was all off. Nobody could get
action on Jimmie Bradshaw. He took the rights, and stayed not for stake
nor stopped not for stone. In thirty minutes the operating department
were wild to kill him, but he was making such time it was concluded
better to humor the lunatic than to hold him up anywhere for a parley.
When this was decided Jimmie and his war party were already reported
past Bad Axe, fifteen miles below the Bend with every truck on the
box-cars smoking.
The Bad Axe run to the Bend was never done in less than fourteen minutes
until Bradshaw that day brought up the mail. Between those two points
the line is modeled on the curves of a ram's horn, but Jimmie with the
mogul found every twist on the right of way in eleven minutes; that
particular record is good yet. Indeed, before Doubleday, then in a
frenzied condition, got his cohorts fairly on the platform to look for
Jimmie, the hollow scream of the big freight engine echoed through the
mountains. Shouts from below brought the operators to the upper windows;
down the Bend they saw a monster locomotive flying from a trailing horn
of smoke. As the stubby string of freight cars slewed quartering into
the lower yard, the startled officials saw them from the Wickiup
windows wrapped in a stream of flame. Every journal was afire, and the
blaze from the boxes, rolling into the steam from the stack, curled
hotly around a bevy of Sioux Indians, who clung sternly to the
footboards and brake-wheels on top of the box-cars. It was a ride for
the red men that is told around the council fires yet. But they do not
always add in their traditions that they were hanging on, not only for
life, but likewise for a butt of plug tobacco promised for their timely
aid at Crockett siding.
By the time Jimmie slowed up his astounding equipment the fire brigade
was on the run from the roundhouse. The Sioux warriors climbed hastily
down the fire escapes, a force of bruised and bare-headed mail clerks
shoved back the box-car doors, the car tinks tackled the conflagration,
and Jimmie Bradshaw, dropping from the cab with the swing of a man who
has done a trick, waited at the gangway for the questions to come at
him. For a minute they came hot.
"What the blazes do you mean by bringing in an engine in that
condition?" choked Doubleday, pointing to the blown machine.
"I thought you wanted the mail?" winked Jimmie.
"How the devil are we to get the mail with you blocking the track two
hours?" demanded Callahan, insanely.
"Why, the mail's here, in these box-cars," answered Jimmie Bradshaw,
pointing to his bobtail train. "Now don't look daffy like that; every
sack is right here. I thought the best way to get the mail here was to
bring it. Hm? We're forty minutes late, ain't we?"
Doubleday waited to hear no more. Orders flew like curlews from the
superintendent and the master mechanic. They saw there was a life for it
yet. Before the fire brigade had done with the trucks a string of new
mail cars was backed down beside the train. The relieving mail crews
waiting at the Bend took hold like cats at a pudding, and a dozen extra
men helped them sling the pouches. The 1014, blowing porpoisewise, was
backed up just as Benedict Morgan's train pulled down for Crockett's
siding, and the Yellow Mail, rehabilitated, rejuvenated, and exultant,
started up the gorge for Bear Dance, only fifty-three minutes late with
Hawksworth in the cab.
"And if you can't make that up, Frank, you're no good on earth,"
sputtered Doubleday at the engineer he had put in for that especial
endeavor. And Frank Hawksworth did make it up, and the Yellow Mail went
on and off the West End on the test, and into the Sierras for the coast,
ON TIME.
"There's a butt of plug tobacco and transportation to Crockett's coming
to these bucks, Mr. Doubleday," wheezed Jimmie Bradshaw uncertainly, for
with the wearing off of the strain came the idea to Jimmie that he might
have to pay for it himself. "I promised them that," he added, "for
helping with the transfer. If it hadn't been for the blankets we
wouldn't have got off for another hour. They chew Tomahawk, rough and
ready preferred, Mr. Doubleday. Hm?"
Doubleday was looking off into the yard.
"You've been on a freight run some time, Jimmie," said he tentatively.
The Indian detachment was crowding in pretty close on the red-headed
engineer. He blushed. "If you'll take care of my tobacco contract,
Doubleday, we'll call the other matter square. I'm not looking for a
fast run as much as I was."
"If we get the mail contract," resumed Doubleday reflectively, "and it
won't be your fault if we don't--hm?--we may need you on one of the
runs. Looks to me as if you ought to have one."
Jimmie shook his head. "I don't want one, don't mind me; just fix these
gentlemen out with some tobacco before they scalp me, will you?"
The Indians got their leaf, and Bucks got his contract, and Jimmie
Bradshaw got the pick of the runs on the Yellow Mail, and ever since
he's been kicking to get back on a freight. But they don't call him
Bradshaw any more. No man in the mountains can pace him on a run. And
when the head brave of the hunting party received the butt of tobacco on
behalf of his company, he looked at Doubleday with dignity, pointed to
the sandy engineer, and spoke freckled words in the Sioux.
That's the way it came about. Bradshaw holds the belt for the run from
Bad Axe to Medicine Bend; but he never goes any more by the name of
Bradshaw. West of McCloud, everywhere up and down the mountains, they
give him the name the Sioux gave him that day--Jimmie the Wind.
THE END