DISCIPLINE
An over-ripe cabbage may be a dangerous missile. This one exploded
almost like a bomb against the warehouse, spattering Cherry Hopkins
all over. She screamed and ran back toward Ralph Fairbanks. A harsh
voice shouted:
“Poor shot! Yer oughter smashed that Hopkins gal, Whitey.”
Ralph saw that the group of fellows behind the flagman’s shack had
scattered. One long-legged fellow was ahead and evidently in some fear
of apprehension.
“You wait right here, Miss Cherry!” the young dispatcher cried. “I’m
going to try to get that fellow.”
He dashed along the tracks and through an alley of which he knew. He
hoped to head off the fellow called “Whitey,” who he was quite sure
had thrown the cabbage.
But when he came out upon North Main Street he could not see any sign
of the hoodlum. He looked into several small stores and tenement house
halls, but the fellow had made good his escape.
When he returned by the way of Hammerby Street he saw Cherry Hopkins
trying to wipe the decayed vegetable matter off her sweater and skirt.
Her pretty hat was likewise stained. When Ralph came near enough he
saw that the girl had been crying.
No man or boy likes to see a girl weep.
Ralph hesitated, not knowing what to say to Cherry Hopkins. He had
never been more than casually acquainted with the supervisor’s
daughter; but he did admire her.
Ralph could not have failed to attract the young girl’s attention
during the three months she had spent in Rockton. In the first place,
almost everybody in the small but thriving city knew the young train
dispatcher.
In the first story about Ralph, “Ralph of the Roundhouse,” the young
fellow’s beginnings on the Great Northern were fully related. His
father had been one of the builders of the Great Northern, but through
unfortunate speculations he had died poor and left Ralph and his
mother to struggle along as best they could. In addition, Mr.
Fairbanks’ partner, Gaspar Farrington, had been dishonest, and had
Ralph and his widowed mother at his mercy.
How Ralph checkmated Farrington as well as the exciting incidents of
his career in the roundhouse is all narrated in that first volume of
the series.
In ensuing volumes the young fellow’s career as towerman, fireman,
engineer, and in the different grades of dispatcher, is told in full.
The sixth volume, “Ralph on the Army Train,” is the story of the
youth’s work in that great part which the railroaders took in the war.
By Ralph’s individual effort, a heavily loaded train of our boys bound
for the embarking port was taken through to safety in spite of a plot
to wreck the train.
He was now, some months later, back on his old job as chief dispatcher
of this division of the Great Northern. He might have had a good
position on the main line; but, in taking it, he would have had to
sacrifice some independence and, more than all, must have given up the
little home he and his mother owned in Rockton and removed the widow
from surroundings that she loved.
“My chance to get a good thing will come again,” Ralph had told Mrs.
Fairbanks. “And really, I am my own boss here. Even Barton Hopkins
can’t tell _me_ where to get off.”
For divisional supervisor Hopkins had soon become very much disliked.
He was a good railroader—no doubt of that. But he should have been a
drill-master in a military school rather than the head of a division
of a railroad at a time when almost every railroad employee felt that
he had been whipsawed between the Government and his employing
railroad.
Hopkins lacked tact; he saw nothing but the job and what he could make
of it. His god was discipline! He was upright and honest, but, as the
saying goes, he bent over backwards when he stood erect. And Ralph
Fairbanks was pretty thoroughly convinced that grave trouble was
brewing because of Mr. Hopkins’ methods.
Just at this moment, however, it was Cherry Hopkins in whose affairs
the young dispatcher was deeply interested. As she tried to wipe the
stains from her skirt and “sniffled” back her tears, Ralph approached
slowly.
“Now, Miss Cherry,” he begged, “don’t cry about it. If I could have
caught that fellow I would have handed him over to one of the road’s
policemen. It didn’t really hurt you——”
“I’m just as mad, Ralph Fairbanks, as I can be!” interrupted the girl,
with heat. “And it is always the way wherever we go. The railroad men
seem to hate us all.”
“Indeed?” rejoined Ralph thoughtfully. “Have you been troubled in
Rockton before this?”
“Of course I have. And mother, too. We have been followed on the
street, and booed and hissed. Father doesn’t mind——”
“I am quite sure he has not reported it to the chief detective of the
road, Mr. Bob Adair.”
“Father would not report such a thing. He considers it beneath
notice.”
“I’ll say that cabbage was not beneath notice!” cried Ralph. “If it
had hit you—well! Come along, Miss Cherry. Let me see you home.”
“Oh, I don’t want to trouble you, Mr. Fairbanks.”
“You know I live in your direction,” said Ralph, pleasantly. “We’ll
walk along together. And you tell me, Miss Cherry, who these fellows
are who have insulted your mother and you.”
“Oh, dear me, how do I know who they are?” cried the girl,
despairingly. “They are low fellows, of course. And many of them are
just boys—loafers. They do not even work for the Great Northern.”
“But their fathers and brothers do, I suppose?” ruminated Ralph.
“I suppose so. You see, we have to cross the railroad to do our
shopping. When we come into this district, if there is a group of
idlers hanging around they are almost sure to call after us. It is not
pleasant.”
“It should be reported. But, of course, it is your father’s business,”
said Ralph thoughtfully. “I might speak to Mr. Adair. He is a friend
of mine. But unless Mr. Hopkins sanctioned any move against the
rowdies, I am afraid——”
“I wish you would come in and talk to father about it,” Cherry cried
eagerly. “He might listen to _you_.”
“Is he at home at this hour?” asked the young dispatcher doubtfully.
“I don’t know about saying anything to him regarding a private
matter.”
“I want him to know how you drove those fellows away,” she said. “Do
come in. You know my father, don’t you?”
“Slightly. We do not come in contact much,” Ralph said slowly.
“You will like him, Mr. Fairbanks,” said the girl earnestly. “He is
really a wonderful man. Wherever he has held a position the company
has been glad of his services. He is marvelously efficient. And he is
forever planning improvements and scheming out ways of saving money
for the road. Oh, yes, they all admire him.”
“The men, too?” Ralph asked shrewdly.
“Oh! The laborers? I don’t know about that.”
“Quite an important point, I assure you,” said Ralph grimly. “No
matter how much money an official saves the road, if he doesn’t hold
the confidence and liking of the general run of railroad workers, he
is distinctly not a success.”
“Oh! Do you believe that?” she cried.
“I know it. Railroad workers are the most clannish men in the world.
If they have worked long for a particular road they are as loyal to
that road as though they owned it. And they resent any meddling with
the usual routine of affairs. You have got to handle them with gloves.
I fancy, Miss Cherry,” added Ralph somewhat grimly, “that your father
has thrown away his gloves.”
They just then came to the Hopkins house. It was one of the best
houses in the section of Rockton in which Ralph and his mother lived.
It was rather far from the railroad and the railroad tenements; so
supervisor Hopkins’ employees were not likely to be seen often.
“Come in—do,” urged Cherry, opening the gate. “There’s father at the
library window.”
The young dispatcher saw Barton Hopkins looking through the pane. He
was a man with a very high forehead, colorless complexion, a
high-arched nose upon which were set astride a pair of shell-rimmed
eyeglasses, which masked pale blue eyes. One could warm up to a chunk
of ice about as readily as one could to Mr. Barton Hopkins.
And yet, Ralph was sure, there was not a thing the matter with the
supervisor save that he was not human! He was a machine. His mental
powers were not lubricated with either charity or an interest in the
personal affairs of his fellow men.
He stared without a semblance of emotion at Ralph Fairbanks as Cherry
urged the latter into the library and introduced the young fellow.
“Oh, yes. I know Mr. Fairbanks,” said Mr. Hopkins, and looked the
visitor over as though he questioned if he might not in some way show
Ralph how to be more efficient in his job.
When Cherry explained volubly how she had been attacked by the rowdies
at the railroad crossing and Ralph had come to her assistance, Mr.
Hopkins rose and shook hands with the visitor again. But his second
handshake was exactly like the first one. Ralph thought of grasping a
dead fish!
“There are too many unemployed men hanging about the yards,” said the
supervisor in his decisive way, after Cherry had excused herself in
order to change to a clean dress. “I am about to point that out to our
police department. They should either be given a sentence to the farm
or be run out of town.”
“A good many of those idlers have been employees of the road. Their
homes are here. It is not exactly their fault that they have been
thrown out of work. And they do not understand why they should be
idle.”
“What is that to the Great Northern?” demanded the supervisor with
some hauteur. “A railroad is a corporation doing business for gain. It
is not a charitable organization.”
“It should be both,” declared Ralph earnestly. He felt that he could
oppose this man safely. Hopkins could not touch his department. “The
way the Great Northern—and this division particularly—has kept
together a loyal bunch of workmen is by caring for those workmen and
their families through dull seasons. I understand that a man has been
lopped off each section gang of late. In three cases I know that the
man discharged owned, or was paying for, his own little home. They are
up against it, for other work is not easily obtained now.”
“I have had that brought to my attention before,” answered Mr.
Hopkins, with a gesture of finality. “I repeat, it does not interest
me—or the Great Northern.”
“It is going to interest you, I fear,” said Ralph warmly.
“I do not understand you, Mr. Fairbanks.”
“The men are getting down on you,” said the young fellow bluntly. “As
you see they insult and threaten Miss Cherry and your wife. There will
be some outbreak——”
“Do you think that if I knew that to be true it would influence me in
the least?” asked Mr. Hopkins sternly.
“It would better. Your wife and daughter are likely to suffer. Of
course, the discharged men will probably not have anything to do with
it; but they cannot control their sympathizers. There is talk of a
strike. If a strike comes——”
“Suppose you let such matters be handled by your superiors, Mr.
Fairbanks,” said the supervisor coldly. “It is not in the province of
a train dispatcher.”
“Quite true,” Ralph said, rising abruptly.
Cherry had not come back into the room. He felt that he really was not
welcome here. And he feared he might be tempted to say something even
more unwise to the stiff-necked supervisor.
“You will excuse me, Mr. Hopkins. I really think your daughter and
wife are in some danger if they go downtown. Pardon me for saying so.”
“Thank you,” said Barton Hopkins without an ounce of expression in
either his voice or his countenance. “Good-day, Mr. Fairbanks.”
“Humph!” thought Ralph, as he fumbled for the knob of the front door.
“I reckon I know where I get off with Mr. Hopkins. Oh, yes!”