THE CAT AND THE RAT
At five o'clock that evening, snow was falling at Medicine Bend, but
Callahan, as he studied the weather bulletins, found consolation in the
fact that it was not raining, and resting his heels on a table littered
with train-sheets he forced the draft on a shabby brier and meditated.
There were times when snow had been received with strong words at the
Wickiup: but when summer fairly opened Callahan preferred snow to rain
as strongly as he preferred genuine Lone Jack to the spurious compounds
that flooded the Western market.
The chief element of speculation in his evening reflections was as to
what was going on west of the range, for Callahan knew through cloudy
experience that what happens on one side of a mountain chain is no
evidence as to what is doing on the other--and by species of warm
weather depravity that night something was happening west of the range.
"It is curious," mused Callahan, as Morrison, the head operator, handed
him some McCloud messages--"curious, that we get nothing from Sleepy
Cat."
Sleepy Cat, it should be explained, is a new town on the West End; not
only that, but a division town, and though one may know something about
the Mountain Division he may yet be puzzled at Callahan's mention of
Sleepy Cat. When gold was found in the Pilot range and camps grew up
and down Devil's Gap like mushrooms, a branch was run from Sleepy Cat
through the Pilot country, and the tortoise-like way station became at
once a place of importance. It takes its name from the neighboring
mountain around the base of which winds the swift Rat River. At Sleepy
Cat town the main line leaves the Rat, and if a tenderfoot brakeman ask
a reservation buck why the mountain is called Sleepy Cat the Indian
will answer, always the same, "It lets the Rat run away."
"Now it's possible," suggested Hughie Morrison, looking vaguely at the
stove, "that the wires are down."
"Nonsense," objected Callahan.
"It is raining at Soda Sink," persisted Morrison, mildly.
"What?" demanded the general superintendent, pulling his pipe from his
mouth. Hughie Morrison kept cool. His straight, black hair lay
boyishly smooth across his brow. There was no guile in his expression
even though he had stunned Callahan, which was precisely what he had
intended. "It is raining at Soda Sink," he repeated.
Now there is no day in the mountains that goes back of the awful
tradition concerning rain at Soda Sink. Before Tom Porter, first
manager; before Brodie, who built the bridges; before Sikes, longest in
the cab; before Pat Francis, oldest of conductors, runs that tradition
about rain at the Sink--which is desert absolute--where it never does
rain and never should. When it rains at Soda Sink, this say the
Medicine men, the Cat will fall on the Rat. It is Indian talk as old
as the foothills.
Of course no railroad man ever gave much heed to Indian talk; how, for
instance, could a mountain fall on a river? Yet so the legend ran, and
there being one superstitious man on the force at Medicine Bend one man
remembered it--Hughie Morrison.
Callahan studied the bulletin to which the operator called his
attention and resumed his pipe sceptically, but he did make a
suggestion. "See if you can't get Sleepy Cat, Hughie, and find out
whether that is so."
Morris Blood was away with the Pittsburgers and Callahan had foolishly
consented to look after his desk for a few days. At the moment that
Morrison took hold of the key Giddings opened the door from the
despatchers' room. "Mr. Callahan, there's a message coming from
Francis, conductor of Number Two. They've had a cloudburst on Dry
Dollar Creek," he said, excitedly; "twenty feet of water came down Rat
Cañon at five o'clock. The track's under four feet in the cañon."
As a pebble striking an anthill stirs into angry life a thousand
startled workers, so a mountain washout startles a division and
concentrates upon a single point the very last reserve of its
activities and energies.
For thirty minutes the wires sung with Callahan's messages. When his
special for a run to the Rat Cañon was ready all the extra yardmen and
both roadmasters were in the caboose; behind them fumed a second
section with orders to pick up along the way every section man as they
followed. It was hard on eight o'clock when Callahan stepped aboard.
They double-headed for the pass, and not till they pulled up with their
pony truck facing the water at the mouth of the big cañon did they ease
their pace.
In the darkness they could only grope. Smith Young, roadmaster of the
Pilot branch, an old mountain boy, had gone down from Sleepy Cat before
dark, and crawling over the rocks in the dusk had worked his way along
the cañon walls to the scene of the disaster.
Just below where Dry Dollar Creek breaks into the Rat the cañon is
choked on one side by a granite wall two hundred feet high. On the
other, a sheer spur of Sleepy Cat Mountain is thrust out like a paw
against the river. It was there that the wall of water out of Dry
Dollar had struck the track and scoured it to the bedrock. Ties,
steel, ballast, riprap, roadbed, were gone, and where the heavy
construction had run below the paw of Sleepy Cat the river was churning
in a channel ten feet deep.
The best news Young had was that Agnew, the division engineer who
happened to be at Sleepy Cat, had made the inspection with him and had
already returned to order in men and material for daybreak.
Leaving the roadmasters to care for their incoming forces, Callahan,
with Smith Young's men for guides, took the footpath on the south side
to the head of the cañon, where, above the break, an engine was waiting
to run him to Sleepy Cat. When he reached the station Agnew was up at
the material yard, and Callahan sat down in his shirt sleeves to take
reports on train movements. The despatchers were annulling, holding
the freights and distributing passenger trains at eating stations. But
an hour's work at the head-breaking problem left the division, Callahan
thought, in worse shape than when the planning began, and he got up
from the keg in a mental whirl when Duffy at Medicine Bend sent a body
blow in a long message supplementary to his first report.
"Bear Dance reports the fruit extras making a very fast run. First
train of eighteen cars has just pulled in: there are seven more of
these fruit extras following close, should arrive at Sleepy Cat at four
A.M."
Callahan turned from the message with his hand in his hair. Of all bad
luck this was the worst. The California fruit trains, not due for
twenty-four hours, coming in a day ahead of time with the Mountain
Division tied up by the worst washout it had ever seen. In a heat he
walked out of the operators' office to find Agnew; the two men met near
the water tank.
"Hello, Agnew. This puts us against it, doesn't it? How soon can you
give us a track?" asked Callahan, feverishly.
Agnew was the only man on the division that was always calm. He was
thorough, practical, and after he had cut his mountain teeth in the
Peace River disaster, a hardheaded man at his work.
"It will take forty-eight hours after I get my material here----"
"Forty-eight hours!" echoed Callahan. "Why, man, we shall have eight
trains of California fruit here by four o'clock."
"I'm on my way to order in the filling, now," said Agnew, "and I shall
push things to the limit, Mr. Callahan."
"Limit, yes, your limit--but what about my limit? Forty-eight hours'
delay will put every car of that fruit into market rotten. I've got to
have some kind of a track through there--any kind on earth will do--but
I've got to have it by to-morrow night."
"To-morrow night?"
"To-morrow night."
Agnew looked at him as a sympathizing man looks at a lunatic, and
calmly shook his head. "I can't get rock here till to-morrow morning.
What is the use talking impossibilities?"
Callahan ground his heel in the ballast. Agnew only asked him if he
realized what a hole there was to fill. "It's no use dumping gravel in
there," he explained patiently, "the river will carry it out faster
than flat cars can carry it in."
Callahan waved his hand. "I've got to have track there by to-morrow
night."
"I've got to dump a hundred cars of rock in there before we shall have
anything to lay track on; and I've got to pick the rock up all the way
from here to Goose River."
They walked together to the station.
When the night grew too dark for Callahan he had but one higher
thought--Bucks. Bucks was five hundred miles away at McCloud, but he
already had the particulars and was waiting at a key ready to take up
the trouble of his favorite division. Callahan at the wire in Sleepy
Cat told his story, and Bucks at the other end listened and asked
questions. He listened to every detail of the disaster, to the cold
hard figures of Agnew's estimates--which nothing could alter, jot or
tittle--and to Callahan's despairing question as to how he could
possibly save the unlooked-for avalanche of fruit.
For some time after the returns were in, Bucks was silent; silent so
long that the copper-haired man twisted in his chair, looked vacantly
around the office and chewed a cigar into strings. Then the sounder at
his hand clicked. He recognized Bucks sending in the three words
lightly spelled on his ear and jumped from his seat. Just three words
Bucks had sent and signed off. What galvanized Callahan was that the
words were so simple, so all-covering, and so easy. "Why didn't _I_
think of that?" groaned Callahan, mentally.
Then he reflected that he was nothing but a redheaded Irishman, anyway,
while Bucks was a genius. It never showed more clearly, Callahan
thought, than when he received the three words, "Send for Glover."