NEWS FROM SHADOW VALLEY
This was a day to be remembered in Rockton. Ralph passed a parade of
the wildcat strikers and their sympathizers on his way to the office.
A good many of the marchers were drunk. That was bad, for it showed
that somebody was furnishing a supply of liquor forbidden under the
prohibition régime.
“I’ve an idea,” Ralph thought to himself, “that McCarrey and Grif Falk
have a secret place to store liquor in, in that old house where Zeph
and I had our run-in with them the other night. Wish Zeph would show
up. I’d like to know what he told Mr. Adair about it.”
He saw uniformed police at the yard gates and standing at the railroad
crossing when he got downtown. But he observed none of the men in
plain clothes he knew who belonged to the railroad police. Mr. Adair
did not believe in making a show of force at a time of trouble like
this, if it could be avoided.
Extras of the evening papers soon began to appear on the street. Wild
rumors were rife. It was said that the maintenance of way men on other
divisions of the Great Northern were about to walk out.
The day shifts of men in the Rockton shops had not even come to work.
The yard crews, who were more closely affiliated with the big
Brotherhoods, were remaining at work. And yet, as Ralph could easily
sense, nothing was going right in the yard or around the offices.
The clerks in the freight offices had some kind of association with
McCarrey’s new union, and when Ralph had occasion to go down the
platform he saw these clerks buzzing like mad bees.
“If the super comes this way these fellows will get something in their
ears they won’t want to hear,” Ralph remarked to one of the platform
men. “How do you stand, Mandell?”
“I stand for my bread and butter. I’ve always got my wages regularly
and been treated decently by the road; at least, until this Hopkins
came. I’ve been here fifteen years and have seen five or six supers
come and go. I may be here fifteen more and see as many supers in
charge. If this Hopkins tells me I can’t spit on the platform, well,
then, I’ll go spit over the side. Ha! Them shopmen last night boiling
out of the shop because of a simple order like that! They’re a bunch
of dumb-bells.”
All the employees did not feel the same way, however; and that Ralph
right well knew. He believed it would not take much more to cause the
yard workers, the switchmen, the freight clerks, and other employees,
to desert their jobs.
He had very little time to give thought to this or other general
matters. That wreck in the yard the night before had balled the
service up badly.
The Midnight Flyer had got out ten minutes late and Byron Marks had
been unable to make up even that small handicap in the four hours’ run
to Hammerfest. There was a protest from the general manager about
this. It did not touch Ralph’s department, of course; but it was sent
to him in duplicate. He knew that the supervisor would be red hot.
When Marks brought his train back that day he had managed to make
time. Ralph himself had kept the tracks clear for him, and the old
fellow should have been thankful. But Mr. Hopkins met the express on
the platform as it steamed to a stop.
In that cold voice of his, and with a careful selection of words that
bit like acid on a man’s soul, the supervisor reprimanded the old
engineer before his crew and all the idlers who had gathered around.
It was an unkind thing to do; and yet, there was good reason for the
supervisor’s anger.
Ralph stood by and listened. The locomotive that drew the flyer and
this return train was practically new. It was the latest thing in a
coal-burning, Class-A locomotive. Marks had every chance, it would
seem, to make the schedule, close as it was. Another driver could have
done it, Ralph was sure.
The old engineer swung down from the cab and allowed one of his
firemen to take the machine out to the roundhouse. He had his
lunch-can and coat with him. He stood like a whipped dog and took the
tongue-lashing the supervisor gave to him. Ralph had to go away from
there. He could not listen to it. Byron Marks did not possess a proper
sense of his own position.
The young train dispatcher hoped that the old man would ask for a
substitute for the next run. But he appeared at night in season to
take the big locomotive out of the roundhouse. He had one virtue, at
least. Stubbornness.
That day had been an anxious one around divisional headquarters. Ralph
had gone home for supper as usual; but he had come right downtown
again. The strikers were holding a continuous meeting in Beeman Hall
and the police were in attendance to keep the speakers from going too
far. It was told Ralph that many yardmen, switchmen and section men
had attended the meeting and that the small unions of railroad workers
were all but disorganized.
One shop was running with a crippled crew. The supervisor certainly
was efficient himself. He could report that the wheels in that shop
were turning. Ralph saw that Mr. Hopkins was on the job this evening.
Plainclothes men, belonging to the railroad squad, were on duty about
the terminal, roundhouse, and yard.
Every hour or so some part of the planned schedule for the trains on
the division had to be scrapped. Ralph was glad he was on hand this
evening when these changes had to be made. Johnny was a good man, but
he was beginning to get rattled. And a train dispatcher who loses his
head endangers everything.
It was along in the evening and the traffic was easing up for a while
in the terminal yards when a message addressed to “Chief Dispatcher,
Rockton” came over the wire, and Johnny took it off.
“Shadow Valley,” he said. “That is where the Midnight Flyer always
loses time. What kind of country is that?”
“A wild place. The Shadow Valley Station is at this end; Oxford is at
the far end. Some fifty miles long. The Midnight Flyer stops at both
stations. Little but timber towns in between. Great tourist country in
the summer. Hullo! What’s this?”
“It’s in code, I reckon,” said Johnny, seeing Ralph’s puzzled face.
“Haven’t you got the key? It is aimed at you, all right.”
Ralph repeated the message aloud:
“What is Whitey M. doing in Shadow Valley? Wake up B.
A.—X. Y. Z.”
“That is as mysterious as a hobo Mulligan,” remarked Johnny, grinning.
“What do you know about that!” muttered Ralph, and without explaining
to his assistant he went to the telephone booth with the telegram in
his hand.
He was so well acquainted with the vagaries of Zeph Dallas’ mind that
he knew at once this was his signature. Zeph had just that twist to
his mind that, if he were sent for a pail of milk, he would try to
disguise both himself and the milk.
“There must be something doing over there at Shadow Valley,” muttered
Ralph. “And ‘Whitey M.’ means just one person, and one only. I haven’t
seen that fellow since we had the run-in with him that night in the
alley. Humph!”
He called down to the supervisor’s office. If Bob Adair was in
Rockton, Ralph believed the supervisor would know how to reach him.
Ralph knew that Mr. Hopkins was in the building. But he was surprised
to hear his voice almost immediately answer the telephone call.
The young fellow would have been even more surprised could he have
seen who was with the supervisor at this hour. A man in a long dark
coat and slouch hat had come into the supervisor’s office unannounced
not many minutes before. Mr. Hopkins had evidently been expecting him.
“Well, what do you find?” asked Hopkins, pushing his cigar box toward
the visitor and lighting a cigar himself. Somehow the supervisor did
not consider the use of tobacco an inefficient thing.
“Nothing to put our finger on as yet, Mr. Hopkins,” was the reply. “Of
course we might arrest McCarrey and his right-hand man, Falk. But we
should have to let them go again for lack of holding evidence. There
was a time—during the war—when we could have stopped them. But not
now. Now a man can fire off his mouth about as much as he likes
without getting into trouble. These fellows aim their talk at the
railroad, not at the Government.”
“You should be able to get them on some count,” declared Hopkins,
smoking energetically. “McCarrey is stirring up the strikers to make
trouble. I have had a written threat that the express passenger trains
will be stopped. You know what that would mean.”
“All bull,” said the other shortly.
“Perhaps. And perhaps not. I was hooted at by a gang as I came
downtown to-night. They will soon begin to throw missiles and break
windows.”
“Then we will have them, individually,” said the visitor, with some
satisfaction.
“Ha!” grumbled Mr. Hopkins. “Somebody lights a fire and you retrieve
the burned match. But you don’t stop the fire. The fellows you arrest
for throwing stones—or cabbages—will not be the dangerous ones.
McCarrey and Falk and those others go scot-free.”
“They are too sharp to really break the law—unless it is with their
mouths,” the other admitted.
“You should be able to round up the whole gang of trouble-instigators
and put them in jail.”
“You expect the impossible.”
“I do not know that. You have only just now come to Rockton——”
“I have had my men here. One of my helpers spotted that hide-out I
tell you about—with the help of young Ralph Fairbanks.”
“Ha! _That_ fellow?”
“The smartest boy working for the Great Northern,” declared the
visitor promptly. “That old ranch McCarrey and his men hang out in is
a storehouse for liquors, I believe—and perhaps worse. I am having the
place watched. But one of McCarrey’s closest friends has disappeared.
Would certainly like to know what has become of Whitey Malone.”
It was just at this moment that the supervisor’s telephone rang. At
this hour there were no clerks to answer the call. Mr. Hopkins excused
himself and went into the booth and closed the door.
When he came out he was red with anger and his pale blue eyes flashed.
His visitor appeared to overlook the supervisor’s disturbance. He
said:
“This Whitey Malone has been McCarrey’s messenger and dirt-carrier.
From the moment the shopmen struck, Whitey disappeared, so they tell
me. I am going to send out a general order to apprehend the fellow
wherever he is found. We will risk a little something. I understand he
is really on probation and the magistrate might send him to jail if he
appears not to be working.”
The supervisor evidently had his own matters to think of. He did not
even grunt.
“I wonder if Ralph Fairbanks knows anything about Whitey,” considered
Hopkins’ visitor aloud, and slyly watching the supervisor.
The question finally brought the latter to life. He flushed up to his
bald brow.
“_That_ fellow? He is perfectly useless. I will put a flea into the
directors’ ears about him,” Hopkins snarled, with unusual show of his
feelings.
The other got up, lazily stretched himself and nodded. “Just so.
Matter of opinion, Mr. Hopkins,” he said. “Some of us think quite well
of Ralph. You see, we have known him since he was a kid-hostler about
the roundhouse. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” returned Barton Hopkins shortly.