SPLITTING THE PAW
Preceded by a track boss along the ledges where the blasting crew was
already putting down the dynamite, a man almost as large as Glover and
rigged in a storm cap and ulster made his way toward the camp
headquarters. The mountain men sprang to their feet with a greeting
for the general manager--it was Bucks.
He took Blood's welcome with a laugh, nodded to the roadmasters, and
pulling his cap from his head, turned to grasp Glover's hand.
"I hear you're going to spoil some of our scenery, Ab. I thought I'd
run up and see how much government land you were going to move without
a permit. Glad you got down so promptly. Callahan had nervous
prostration for a while last night. I told him you'd have some sort of
a trick in your bag, but I didn't suppose you would spring the side of
a mountain on us. Am I to have any coffee or not? What are you
eating, dynamite? Why, there's Ed Smith--what are you hanging back in
the dark for, Ed? Come out here and show yourself. It was like you to
lend us your men. If the boys forget it, I sha'n't."
"I'd rather see you than a hundred men," declared Glover.
"Then give me something to eat," suggested Bucks.
As he spoke the snappy, sharp reports of exploding dynamite could be
heard; they were springing the drill holes. Bucks sitting down on the
bowlder, wrapping the tails of his coat between his legs and taking
coffee from Young drank while the men talked. From the box car below,
Ed Smith's men were packing the black powder up the trail to the Paw.
When it began going into the holes, Glover went to the ledge to oversee
the charging.
In the Pittsburg train, at Sleepy Cat, an early dinner was being served
to the cañon party. They had come back enthusiastic. The scenery was
declared superb, and the uncertainty of the situation most satisfying.
The riot of the mountain stream, which plunging now unbridled from wall
to wall had scoured the deep gorge for hundreds of feet, was a moving
spectacle. The activity of the swarming laborers, preparing their one
tremendous answer to the insolence of the river, had behind it the
excitement of a game of chance. The stake, indeed, was eight solid
trains of perishable freight, and the gambler that had staked their
value and his reputation on one throw of the dice was their own
easy-mannered guide.
They discussed his chances with the indifference of spectators. Doctor
Lanning, the only one of the young people that had ever done anything
himself, was inclined to think Glover might win out. Allen Harrison
was willing to wager that trains couldn't be got across a hole like
that for another twenty-four hours.
Mrs. Whitney wondered why, if Mr. Glover were really a competent man,
he could not have held his position as chief engineer of the system,
but Doctor Lanning explained that frequently Western men of real talent
were wholly lacking in ambition and preferred a free-and-easy life to
one of constant responsibility; others, again, drank--and this
suggestion opened a discussion as to whether Western men could possibly
do more drinking than Eastern men, and transact business at all.
While the discussion proceeded there came a telegram from Glover
telling Doctor Lanning that the blast would be made about seven
o'clock. Preparations to start were completed as the company rose from
the table, and Gertrude Brock and Marie were urged to join the party.
Marie consented, but Gertrude had a new book and would not leave it,
and when the others started she joined her father and Judge Saltzer,
her father's counsellor, now with them, who were dining more leisurely
at their own table.
Bucks met the doctor and his party at the head of the cañon and took
them to the high ledge across the river, where they had been brought by
Glover in the morning. In the cañon it was already dark. Men were
eating around campfires, and in the narrow strip of eastern sky between
the walls the moon was rising. Work-trains with signal lanterns were
moving above and below the break, dumping ballast behind the track
layers. At a safe distance from the coming blast a dozen headlights
from the roundhouse were being prepared, and the car-tinks from Sleepy
Cat were rigging torches for the night.
The blasting powder in twenty-pound cans was being passed from hand to
hand to the chargers. Score after score of the compact cans of high
explosive had been packed into the scattered holes, and as if alive to
what was coming the chill air of the cañon took on the uneasiness of an
atmosphere laden with electricity. Men of the operating department
paced the bench impatiently, and trackmen working below in the flare of
scattered torches looked up oftener from their shovels to where a chain
of active figures moved on the face of the cliff. Word passed again
and again that the charging was done, but the orders came steadily from
the gloom on the ledge for more powder until the last pound the
engineer called for had been buried beneath his feet in the sleeping
rock.
After a long delay a red light swung slowly to and fro on the ledge.
From the extreme end of the cañon below the Cat's Paw came the crash of
a track-torpedo, answered almost instantly by a second, above the
break. It was the warning signal to get into the clear. There was a
buzz of rapid movement among the laborers. In twos and threes and
dozens, a ragged procession of lanterns and torches, they retreated,
foremen urging the laggards, until only a single man at each end of the
broken track kept within sight of the tiny red lantern on the ledge.
Again it swung in a circle and again the torpedoes replied, this time
all clear. The hush of a hundred voices, the silence of the bars and
shovels and picks gave back to the chill cañon its loneliness, and the
roar of the river rose undisturbed to the brooding night.
On the ledge Glover was alone. The final detail he was taking into his
own hands. The few that could still command the point saw the red
light moving, and beside it a figure vaguely outlined making its way.
When the red light paused, a spark could be seen, a sputtering blaze
would run slowly from it, hesitate, flare and die. Another and another
of the fuses were touched and passed. With quickening steps tier after
tier was covered, until those looking saw the red light flung at last
into the air. It circled high between the cañon walls in its flight
and dropped like a rocket into the Rat. A muffled report from the
lower tier was followed by a heavier and still a heavier one above. A
creeping pang shot the heart of the granite, a dreadful awakening was
upon it.
From the tier of the upmost holes came at length the terrific burst of
the heavy mines. The travail of an awful instant followed, the face of
the spur parted from its side, toppled an instant in the confusion of
its rending and with an appalling crash fell upon the river below.
With the fragments still tumbling, the nearest men started with a cheer
from their concealment. Smoke rolling white and sullen upward obscured
the moon, and the cañon air, salt and sick with gases, poured over the
high point on which the Pittsburgers stood. Below, torches were
shooting like fireflies out of the rock. From every vantage point
headlights flashed one after another unhooded on the scene, and the
song of the river mingled again with the calling of the foremen.
"That ends the fireworks," remarked Bucks to those about him. "Let us
watch a moment for Mr. Glover's signal to me. As soon as he inspects
he is to show signals on the Cat's Paw, and if it is a success we will
return at once to Sleepy Cat."
"And by the way, Mr. Bucks, I shall expect you and Mr. Glover up to the
car for my game supper. Have you arranged for him to come?"
"I have, Mrs. Whitney, thank you."
"Oh, see those pretty red lights over there now. What are they?" asked
Louise, who stood with Allen Harrison.
"The signals," exclaimed Bucks. "Three fusees. Good for Glover; that
means success. Shall we go?"
When the sightseers made their way out of the cañon material trains
working from both ends of the break were shoving their loaded flats
noisily up to the ballasting crews and the water was echoing the clang
of the spike mauls, the thud of tamping-irons, the clash of picks, the
splash of tumbling stone, and the ceaseless roll of shovels.
Foot by foot, length by length, the gap was shortened. Bribed by extra
pay, driven by the bosses, and stimulated by the emergency, the work of
the graders became an effort close to fury. Watches were already
consulted and wagers were being laid between rival foremen on the
moment a train should pass the point. Above the peaks the stars
glittered, and high in the sky the moon shot a path of clear light down
the river itself. The camp kettles steamed constantly, and coffee
strong enough to ballast eggs and primed with unusual cordials was
passed every hour among the hundreds along the track.
In the lower yard at Sleepy Cat the pilot train was being made ready
and the clatter of switching came into the cañon. From still further
came the barking exhaust of the first-train engine waiting for orders
for the cañon run.
Glover pacing the narrow bench below the camp returned again to the
operator's table, and in the light of the lantern wrote a message to
Medicine Bend. When it had been sent he upended an empty spike keg,
and sitting down before the fire, got his back against a rock and gave
himself to his thoughts. Men straggled back and forth, but none
disturbed him. Some, in turn, fed the fire, some rolled themselves in
their blankets and lay down to sleep, but his eyes were lost all the
while in the leaping blaze.
A volleying signal of the locomotive whistles roused him. He looked at
his watch and stepped to the verge of the ledge. Toward Sleepy Cat a
headlight was slowly rounding the first curve. The pilot train was
coming and below where he stood he could see green lights swinging.
The locomotive of the work-train was at the hind end and the
roadmasters standing on the first flat car were signalling. Mauls were
ringing at the last spikes when the head flat car moved cautiously out
on the new track. Car after car approached, every second one bearing a
flagman re-signalling to the cab as the train took the short curves of
the cañon and entering the gorge rolled slowly beneath the Cat's Paw
over the prostrate granite.
The trackmen parted only long enough to give way to the advancing cars.
The locomotive steamed gingerly along. In the gangway stood a small,
broad-hatted man, Morris Blood. He waved his lantern at Glover, and
Glover caught up a hand-torch to swing an answering greeting.
Down the uncertain track could be seen at reassuring intervals the
slow, green lights of the track foremen swinging all's well. The
deepening drum of the steaming engine as it entered the gorge walls,
the straining of the injectors, and the frequent hissing check of the
air as the powerful machine restrained its moving load, was music to
the tired listener above. Then, looming darkly behind the tender,
surprising the onlookers, even Glover himself, came the real train.
Not till the roadbuilders heard the heavy drop of the big cars on the
new rail joints did they realize that the first train of fruit was
already crossing the break.
Ten minutes afterward Bucks, who was with Mr. Brock in the directors'
car, had the news in a message. The manager had agreed to have Glover
present for the supper which was now waiting, and for some time
messengers and telegrams passed from the Brock Special to the cañon.
It was not until twelve o'clock that they learned definitely through
word from Morris Blood that Glover had torn his hand slightly in
handling powder and had gone to Medicine Bend to have it dressed.