Consternation
THE end of steel, as railhead is called, on this particular bit of
track, was at the junction of a small river with a large one, which
necessitated the building of an extra long bridge to take the track
across the river valley into the country of low rolling hills which lay
beyond.
The building of the bridge naturally delayed progress, so, meantime,
quite a considerable town had grown up. There were stores of sorts, and
a hotel, so-called, which was kept by a dour-faced Scot and his smiling
Irish wife.
The huts of the construction workers were made of any odd materials that
came handy; indeed, some of them were mere holes scraped from the face
of the cliff-like banks of the river and fronted with boards, sheets of
tin, or any other building material which came to hand. But the whole
place hummed with work and endeavour; there was no room for idleness or
even leisure. From dawn to dark, or, to use a colloquialism, from kin to
k’int, everyone toiled to the utmost of their strength; since the more
work they did the more money they earned, and to earn money was with
most of them the sole end and aim of their existence.
The place was all astir when, in the first faint light of dawn, the long
freight train from Rownton rolled and rocked over the last half-mile of
unfinished track, finally coming to a stand in the middle of the crazy
collection of dwellings which, after the manner of such places, had the
impudence to consider itself a full-fledged town.
It had been expected from the previous evening, and quite a crowd had
gathered, since it would bring a mail bag, newspapers, and all those
other attributes of civilization for which the dweller in the wilderness
hungers; so when the engine was sighted coming round a bend in the
track, there was something like a rush to be the first to greet the
arrivals. Foremost among these was a big man wearing the uniform of the
Mounted Police. Mike Walford was a splendid specimen of a man, and he
towered over his fellows like a pine tree of the forest might tower
above the scrub growing at its base.
“Hulloa! Here, I say, have you got my wife on board?” he shouted, in a
voice that matched the rest of him, as with much squealing and groaning
of couplings the long freighter came to a standstill.
“We’ve got two passengers on board this trip. At this rate we shall soon
need to hitch a pullman on at the end of every freighter,” said the
brakeman, with a pretended groan of dismay at this addition to his work.
There was an instant rush to follow the brakeman along to the rear of
the train, which, owing to the curve in the track, was not visible from
the engine; but, sweeping the others to the right and left of him, Mike
Walford strode to the side of the brakeman and led the way.
“My word, what a train! The last car, did you say? Why, man, it is a
wagon loaded with ties! You surely did not put a couple of women to ride
all night in a place like that!” exclaimed Mike, with anger in his tone.
“They are in a box car of bedding—a little stuffy, but downright warm
and comfortable,” explained the brakeman, and then suddenly he stopped,
and a cold horror crept into his eyes. “The car is gone—broke away it
must have done; and yet I know that it was safe when we cleared out of
Wastover.”
Mike Walford turned on him savagely. “How was it that you didn’t take
more care? And I thought that it was the place of the brakeman to ride
in the rear of his train?”
“It ain’t no use to do that when there are as many cars as we have got
here, so I ride in the middle, then I can see her tail as she twists
round the curves, and yet I’m not too far away to call to the driver if
I want to,” said the brakeman, on the defensive now, for it was a
serious thing to drop a wagon _en route_ and not to know that it was
gone. Then he started to run back towards the engine, while Mike
Walford, with dismay in his heart, started to run by his side, and the
crowd coming along in the rear ran also.
If the brakeman had looked dismayed, it was nothing to the consternation
displayed by the engine driver, who was prompt to locate the place at
which the disaster must have occurred.
“You remember the job we had with her when we came over the Wastover
bridge?” he said, with a jerk of his head towards the long train of
freight wagons that comprised the “her” of which he spoke. “I thought at
one time that we should have had to leave half the train behind and come
on with the first part, for there is a bit of up-grade directly the
bridge is past, and this old puffer had its work cut out to pull her
along; so it must have been when we were starting and stopping, starting
and stopping, that the couplers of the last car broke. How many wagons
is missing, Jim?”
But Jim, who was the brakeman, declared that he had been too scared to
count. The thing which mattered most was that the box car with the
passengers was not there.
“Uncouple that old engine of yours and set off back as hard as you can
go, and don’t waste any more time in talking about it,” said Mike
Walford sternly. “You’ll take me with you too, if you please.”
“That is what we are going to do, just as soon as we can get her
unhooked from the wagons; but we shall have to break up a bit before the
engine can get past,” answered the driver, as he began to shout to the
brakeman, who in his turn shouted back, while the stoker had to turn
shunter for the time being; so half an hour was wasted in endless
starting and stopping, pulling up and setting back, in order that the
wagons might be out of the way, to allow the engine to slip back on to
the main rails.
If Mike Walford raged up and down silently abusing the men for their
slowness, he might surely be forgiven, since he knew the country so
well, and all his fears pointed to the car having broken away on the
bridge; and Wastover bridge was not a very safe place to be stranded
upon with the wind blowing a gale as it was this morning.
The crowd looked on for the most part with a sort of fascinated
curiosity. No one could quite make up his mind to go back to work while
the engine was puffing and panting to and fro, and Mike Walford was
raging up and down like a wild beast escaped from his cage. There was an
element of tragedy peeping through his unrestrained anxiety, for, as a
rule, he was one of the most unemotional sort of men, as some of them
knew to their cost.
At last the engine had a clear track, and was able to slide out
backwards on to the main track, to go in search of the car that had
broken away. But before he boarded her to go with the train-men, Mike
Walford held up his hand and called for volunteers.
“I want half a dozen men who are prepared to risk their lives, and to
lose them, if need be,” he said, his strong voice echoing clear and
steady over the silent crowd. “I know what that bridge at Wastover is
like when the wind is blowing only half a gale, and this morning it is
more than that. If the car broke away on the bridge, something will have
happened to it before we can get back there; so I want six men who can
dig, and who are willing to risk their lives for the sake of saving
life.”
Thirty men rushed forward. Thirty more would have followed, if there had
been the slightest chance of their being able to go. But of the first
lot Mike hastily chose six who happened to have shovels in their hands,
and the last man thus picked was Edgar Bradgate.
“Hold, Bradgate, you mustn’t go; remember, man, how long you have been
ill, and you can’t swim, either,” objected a clerk of works, as Bradgate
swung himself aboard the crazy tender, which rocked behind the
locomotive.
“There are other things to do besides swimming, and I’m not afraid to
risk my life, or to lose it either, if need should be. Besides, Mike is
my friend, and I’m proud to be chosen to help him now,” replied Edgar
Bradgate, with a haughty upward fling of his head, which might have gone
against him with the clerk had the fellow not been sufficiently a
gentleman to recognize another gentleman when he saw one.
“Well, go along with you then; all the luck comes to some people!”
growled the clerk, in such deep chagrin at not having been chosen for
the purpose of risking his life, that it would have been comic if only
it had not been so intensely tragic.
Directly the engine and tender had slid out of sight round the bend,
everyone hurried off to work again, for they could do no good by hanging
about there staring at the empty track; while the need to earn money was
acute, and the necessity to toil so urgent, that nothing in the nature
of delay could be excused.
The volunteers rode on the tender with the brakeman, but Mike Walford
was on the engine itself, prepared to help stoke if need be, and also
determined to see that the driver got every ounce of speed possible out
of the crazy old engine.
The rocking was truly awful as the engine tore its way along the
half-made track, and the marvel was that those men, who had come out to
risk their lives if it were necessary, did not lose them on the way to
the scene of action.
It was fifteen miles to Wastover bridge, and the engine did it in
something over an hour, though it had taken the train more than three
hours to crawl its weary way up to Brocken Ridge. But every minute of
that backward journey was a peril so great, that nothing but the danger
of the two in the box car could have justified the risk being taken.
“There is no car on the bridge,” said Mike, as they came in sight of the
towering trestles which carried the railway track across the Wastover
river.
“Then it’s below the bridge that we’ll have to look for it!” groaned the
driver, “for I’m sure that is the only place where it could have broken
away. Jim went the length of the train before we cleared out of Wastover
town, and the car was all right then, and being downgrade until the
bridge, there would be no pull on the couplers, can’t you see?”
Mike nodded, and now his gaze went searching along that bewildering
network of bars and crossbars, almost as if he expected to find the
missing car stuck somewhere halfway down. In reality he was trying to
see the water, but could not as yet, because the valley was so narrow
and deep that the river was not visible until they were close on to the
bridge.
“What is that?” cried Mike, in a tone of horror, as with slackened speed
the engine went slowly out on to the bridge, and every man of them all
was craning his head downwards to get a better view of the river,
swollen now with melting snows.
“It is the car! Holy Mary, have mercy on the women!” groaned the driver,
who was a good Catholic when he remembered to be anything at all, and
then he put his head down on the side of the cab and burst into tears
like a woman. But Mike Walford gave him a fierce push and bade him
reverse his engine.
“Slip back to the bank, man, and stop. I’m going down there to find my
wife, and you can do your howling while I am gone,” he said, with brutal
sternness, which was the only way he had of hiding his own pain.
“You’ll never be for swimming out in such a current?” objected the
driver. “It will be murder and sooicide all in one, for where you go the
boys will be sure to follow.”
“If my wife is down there I am going to get her out, dead or alive,”
replied Mike; and there was that in his tone which made the other feel
that he dared say no more.
The engine retreated slowly to where the land, rising in an embankment,
gave it a little shelter from the wind. There it stopped, and the little
band of volunteers scrambled down and, falling into line behind their
leader, made their way down the steep slope to the water’s edge.
“I will swim out first with a rope,” said Mike, who had a serviceable
hatchet slung at his waist; “then one of you can follow when I’ve got
the rope fixed, and we will chop an opening at the end of the car that
is out of water, and pray God we are not too late!”
There was a murmur which sounded like “Amen”, and then the men scrambled
downwards for a few moments in silence.
“Help! Help! Help!” It was a girl’s voice, hoarse and strained,
shrieking against the roaring of the wind. The heads of the men jerked
upwards with a sudden flash of hope, for the sound had come from above.
“There they are—two of them!” yelled out one of the volunteers.
“Hurrah!”
“Hurrah! Hurrah!” chorused the others, as, breaking into a run, they
scrambled across the rough slope to the trestling, up which they swarmed
like a set of monkeys.