This happened at a period in the history of the Hill Division when
trade was very bad, and the directors, scowling over the company’s
annual report, threw up their hands in holy horror; while from the
sacred precincts of the board-room there emanated the agonized cry:
“Economy!”
The general manager took up the slogan and dinned it into the ears of
the division superintendents.
“Operating expenses are too high,” he wrote. “They must be cut down.”
And the superintendents of divisions, painfully alive to the fact that
the G. M. was not dictating for the mere pleasure of it, intimated in
unmistakable language to the heads of departments under them that the
next quarterly reports were expected to show a marked improvement.
John Healy had charge of the roundhouse at Big Cloud, in those days, and
the morning after the lightning struck the system he came fuming back
across the yards from his interview with the superintendent, stuttering
angrily to himself. As he stamped into the running-shed his humor
a shade worse than usual the first object that caught his eye was
Speckles, squatted on the lee side of 483, dangling his legs in the pit.
That is, it would have been the lee side if Healy had come in the other
door.
“Cut down operatin’ expinses, is ut?” Healy muttered. “Begorra, I’ll
begin right now!”
And he fired Speckles on the spot.
Now, Speckles--whose name, by the way, was Dolivar Washington
Babson--had been fired on several occasions before, and if he swallowed
a little more tobacco-juice than was good for his physical comfort it
was rather as a gulp of startled surprise at Healy’s appearance than
because of any poignant regret at the misfortune that had overtaken him.
Nevertheless, he felt it incumbent on himself to expostulate.
“Git out an’ stay out!” said Healy, refusing to argue.
And Speckles got out.
For a day he kept away from the roundhouse, the length of time past
experience had taught him was required to cool the turner’s anger;
then he sauntered down again and came face to face with Healy on the
turntable.
“I came down to ask you to put me on again, Mr. Healy,” he began,
broaching the subject timidly.
“Phwat?” demanded Healy.
“I came down to ask you to put me on again, Mr. Healy,” Speckles
repeated monotonously.
“Oh, I heard you--I heard you,” said Healy, a little inconsistently. “On
ag’in, is ut? Ut’ll be a long toime, me son, mark that!”
This being quite different from Healy’s accustomed, “Well, git back to
yer job,” it began to filter vaguely through Speckles’ brain that his
name was no longer to adorn the company’s pay-sheets.
“Am I fired for good, Mr. Healy?” he faltered.
“You are!” said Healy. “Just that!” Then, relenting a little as
Speckles’ face fell: “If’twere not fer the big-bugs down yonder “--he
jerked his thumb in the general direction of the East--“I might--moind,
I don’t say I would, but I might--put you on ag’in. As ut is, we’ve
instructions to cut down the operatin’ expinses, an’ there’s an ind on
ut!”
Speckles stood for a moment in dismay as Healy went back into the
roundhouse; then he turned disconsolately away, crossed the tracks to
the platform of the station, and, seeking out a secluded corner of the
freight-house, sat down upon a packing-case to think it out.
To Speckles it was no mere matter of cutting down expenses. It was a
blasted career!
Whatever Speckles’ faults, and he was only a lad, he had one redeeming
quality, before which, in the eyes of the business he had elected to
follow, his strayings from the straight and narrow path dwindled into
insignificance--railroading was born in him.
At ten he had started in as caller for the night-crews, and, during the
five years the company had had the benefit of his valuable services in
that capacity, there was not a man on the division but sooner or later
came to know long-armed, bony, freckled-faced, red-haired Speckles--came
to know the little rascal, and like him, too.
Then Speckles had been promoted to the post of sweeper in the
roundhouse, and occasionally, under Healy’s critical inspection, to
washing out boiler-tubes. Fresh fuel thereby added to the fire of his
ambition, he began to figure how long it would be before he got to
wiping, then to firing, and after that--even Speckles’ boundless
optimism did not have the temerity to specify any particular date--the
time when he would attain his goal and get his engine.
Now, instead, at the age of sixteen, he found himself seated on a
cracker-box, his dreams for the future rudely shattered--thanks to
Healy, old Sour Face Healy!
So Speckles sighed, and as he sighed the shop whistle blew. It was
noon, and the men began to pour out of the big gates. Then Speckles,
remembering that the schools were also “letting out,” hurried down the
platform and up the main street. He would confide in Madge. Madge would
understand.
Madge Bolton was the daughter of the ticket agent at the station, and
between Mr. Bolton and Speckles there existed a standing feud, the
_casus belli_ being fifteen-year-old, blue-eyed Madge. Speckles kicked
his heels on the corner until she appeared; then he turned and fell into
step beside her, reaching a little awkwardly for her strap of books.
“Hallo, Dol!” was Madge’s greeting. She was the only person in Big Cloud
who did not call him Speckles.
“Hallo, Madge!” he returned.
Madge glanced at his face and hands. “Haven’t you been to work?” she
asked.
“Nope.”
“Why, Dol?”
“Fired,” said Speckles laconically.
“Oh, Dol, again!” she cried reproachfully. “What for?”
“‘Tain’t only the third time, and ‘twasn’t for nothin’,” said Speckles, a
bit sullenly. “I was only restin’.”
“Dolivar Babson,” she accused, “you were loafing. Oh, Dol, you’ll never
get to firing, and--and--” She hesitated and stopped, her cheeks a
little red with the hint of boy-and-girl castle-building that would have
increased her father’s ire against the luckless Speckles had he seen it.
Speckles, somewhat shamefaced, and having no excuse to offer, trudged on
in silence.
“Did you ask Mr. Healy to take you back?” she inquired, after a moment.
“He won’t,” said Speckles.
“What are you going to do, Dol?”
“I dunno.”
“Well,” said Madge, hopefully, “perhaps you could get a job in one of
the stores. I’ll ask Mr. Timmons, the grocer, if you like. I know him
pretty well.”
Speckles came to an abrupt and sudden halt, cast in Madge’s face one
look that carried with it a world of unutterable reproach, handed over
her books in silence--and fled.
He, a railroad man, go into a _store!_ And this from Madge! Madge, who,
of all others--it was too much! Speckles ate his dinner, dispirited and
crushed. Everything and everybody was against him.
His mother’s curt inquiry as to when he was going back to work did not
in any way tend to mitigate his troubles--rather, on the contrary, to
accentuate them.
“Old Sour Face won’t put me back,” he jerked out, in response to his
mother’s repeated question.
“No wonder he won’t,” said his mother sharply, “if you’re as
disrespectful as that. I’m ashamed of you, and you ought to be ashamed
of yourself.”
Speckles was too much depressed to offer any defense. He finished his
meal in silence, gulped down his cup of tea in two swallows, took his
hat, and started out.
Unconsciously he directed his steps toward the yards, and, some five
minutes later, arrived at the station. Here, about half-way down the
platform, he spotted Mat Bolton in the open doorway of the ticket
office.
As he approached, the nonchalant air with which the other leaned with
folded arms against the jamb of the door aroused Speckles’ suspicions.
To reach the seat of his meditations--the cracker-box in the freight
shed which had now become his objective point--he would be obliged to
pass Mr. Bolton. He therefore began to incline his course toward the
edge of the platform nearest the rails, so that, when he came opposite
the office door, some fifteen feet were between him and his arch enemy.
Mr. Bolton awoke from his lethargy with surprising suddenness.
“You young rascal,” he shouted, “what you been doing to my girl? I’ll
teach you to make girls cry, you little speckled-face runt, you!”
He made a dash for Speckles, but by the time he had recovered his
balance and saved himself from toppling over the edge of the platform
to the tracks, Speckles had reached the safe retreat of the freight-shed
door. And as the irate parent, after shaking his fist impotently, walked
back and disappeared within his domain, Speckles indulged in a series
of pantomimes in which his fingers and his nose played an intimate and
comprehensive part.
Perched once more on the cracker-box, Speckles again resolved himself
into a committee on ways and means. His little skirmish with Madge’s
father had exhilarated him to such an extent that his heavy and
oppressing sense of despondency had vanished, and in its place came a
renewed determination to resume, somehow or other, the railroad career
that Healy had so emphatically interrupted.
He turned over in his mind the feasibility of applying to Regan, the
master mechanic, for a job in the shops, but dismissed the idea almost
immediately on the ground that shop men were not, strictly speaking,
railroaders.
He might start in switching and braking, and work up to conductor. That,
at least, was railroading--not to be compared with engine-driving, not
by long odds, but still it was railroading. His face brightened. He
would interview Farley, the trainmaster.
Farley was in his office. Speckles had not very far to go, only a few
steps down the platform. All the offices--and Big Cloud was division
headquarters--were under the same roof.
At Speckles’ request, Farley swung around in his swivel-chair with a
quizzical expression on his face. Then he grinned.
“Want to go on with the train-crews, eh? What do you think, kid, that
I’m running a kindergarten outfit, even if some of ‘em do act like it?
How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” said Speckles, with a sinking heart.
“Sixteen, eh? Well, come back in a couple of years, and----”
But, for the second time that day, Speckles fled. He was in no mood to
stand much chaffing, and Farley, as he well knew, had a leaning that
way. Speckles halted outside the door, undecided what move to make next,
when the clicking of the instruments in the dispatcher’s room overhead
came to his ears like an inspiration.
Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Spence, who had been on the
night trick most of the years that Speckles was caller, was now chief
dispatcher. If he had any friend anywhere, it was Spence, the man at
whose elbow he had sat through those long, dark hours of the night that
beget confidences, and into whose ears he had so often poured the tales
of his cherished aims and ambitions.
Speckles covered the stairs three steps at a time, in his new-found
exuberance. Spence looked up from his key and listened as Speckles told
his story.
“So you’re Healy’s contribution to economy, eh?” he said when Speckles
had finished. “And he won’t take you back?”
“No,” said Speckles.
“Well, that’s pretty rough. But I don’t see how I can help you any,
Speckles. I haven’t any rights over Healy, you know.”
Speckles hesitated a moment and fidgeted nervously from one foot to the
other. “I know you ain’t,” he began, “but I thought maybe you’d put me
on here.”
“W-what!” ejaculated Spence. Then, smothering a laugh at the sight
of Speckles’ woebegone countenance, he demanded gravely “You mean
dispatching?”
Speckles nodded.
“No, no, Speckles, that would never do. You go back and see Healy. I’ll
do what I can for you with him.”
“‘Twon’t do no good,” said Speckles hopelessly. “I’ve asked him twice
already.”
“Well, ask him again. Look here, Speckles, it’s up to you to square
yourself with Healy, somehow or other. If you want your job very badly,
you ought to be sharp enough to find a way of getting it. Go on, now.”
So Speckles descended the stairs to the platform and irresolutely began
to cross the tracks in the direction of the running-shed. He reached the
roundhouse and skirmished cautiously along its front. No Healy was in
sight, so he dived in between two engines and made his way to the rear
of the shed. Here, by peering around the end of a tender, he could see
Healy’s cubby-hole--Healy called it an office--a bit of space about four
by six partitioned off from the back wall in the corner, with a greasy
book the engine-crews signed, and two or three others, equally greasy,
in which Healy kept tabs on things in general.
In spite of his trepidation, Speckles grinned. Healy was there, bending
over a very flimsy, spindle-legged table that he had wheedled out of the
claim-agent some months before. His brows were puckered into a ferocious
scowl, and he growled and muttered to himself, now laboring furiously
with a stubby pencil on the sheets of paper in front of him, now pausing
to bite that unoffending article almost in two in his desperation.
Healy was working on his invention. All the division knew about Healy’s
ideas on Westinghouse and “air,” and that these ideas, when perfected,
were to be patented. As to what the consensus of opinion of their value
was is neither here nor there, except that in Healy’s presence, when
referred to at all, the subject was treated with dignity and respect,
for Healy’s physical powers were beyond the ordinary, and dearest to
Healy’s heart and most sacred in his eyes was this creation of his
brain, or, to be more accurate, fancy.
Speckles sidled up to the cubby-hole, and, without any peroration, took
the plunge.
“I came to ask you to put me on again, Mr. Healy,”--he spoke rapidly, as
though he feared his courage might ooze out before he could finish.
Healy wheeled round with a grunt.
“Oh, ut’s you, is ut?” he demanded grimly.
Speckles, ready to run at the first sign of violence, acknowledged the
impeachment by nodding his head affirmatively, and smiled sheepishly
while Healy scrutinized him with a long stare from head to foot.
“Well,” said Healy, “you wait a minute an’ I’ll give you me answer.”
Speckles’ heart bounded in joyous hope. Healy very deliberately gathered
up his papers, folded them carefully, and opening the cupboard where his
coat hung--it was a hot day, and Healy was in his shirtsleeves--tucked
them into the inside pocket. Then, like a flash, he turned and reached
for the first thing in sight. It was a broom.
But, quick as he was, Speckles was quicker, and he led Healy by the
length of the pit as he dodged around the tail end of a tender and
darted out of the running-shed across the tracks to the freight-house.
Healy followed no farther than the turntable. There he halted, and
Speckles, from his retreat, saw him shake his fist and listened to the
threat that thundered across the yards:
“Show yer face around here ag’in, you young rascal, an’ I’ll bate the
loife out av you, so I will!”
Speckles betook himself to the cracker-box, and from his lips there
flowed a fluent and unrestrained expression of his opinion on things in
general, but more particularly of Healy, and more particularly still of
Healy’s invention. Then, his indignation subsiding, it was followed by
a fit of the blues; so that when, at the expiration of half an hour,
Healy, still in his shirt-sleeves, came out of the roundhouse and walked
up the tracks in the direction of the shops, Speckles, through the
freight-house door, remarked the incident in complete apathy and as one
in which he had no interest whatever.
Ten minutes later, however, his apathy vanished and he sprang to his
feet at the sound of the excited shouts of the men in the running-shed.
Some were hastily swinging the big engine doors wide open, others
were setting the table in position, while one started on a run in the
direction Healy had taken.
Another minute and the shop whistle had boomed out its warning, and as
Healy, with the man who had gone after him, came tearing down the track
like mad, Speckles saw the smoke beginning to curl up over the roof at
the back. The running-shed was afire.
With a whoop, Speckles traversed the platform, leaped to the rails, and
was hard on Healy’s heels by the time the turntable was crossed. Healy
paused but an instant. The thing to do was to get the engines out, and
Healy was the man to do it.
“Get tackle rigged on 463,” he ordered. “She’s cold, an’ we’ll have to
haul her out. Set the table fer 518; I’ll take her.”
Then he started on the jump for the cubby-hole and his precious papers.
Now, the tackle that Healy had referred to was stored in the rear of the
roundhouse in the same general direction as the cubby-hole, and as the
order had been given to no one in particular, Speckles, shouting “I’ll
get it,” started after Healy.
Some grease and waste had caught and was rolling up a nasty smoke.
Through it, even while he tugged manfully at the heavy tackle, Speckles
saw Healy run into his office, snatch his coat, rush out again, and dash
for the cab of 518, throwing the coat up on the tender. As he did so,
something fell from the pocket.
Speckles dropped the tackle and pounced upon it. It was the bundle of
papers he had seen Healy put in his coat-pocket a little while before.
It was Healy’s invention!
Speckles’ first impulse was to shout to Healy, but just then 518 glided
out of the shed, and the men in front of 463 were yelling in chorus for
the tackle, so Speckles put his tongue in his cheek and the papers in
his pocket.
It wasn’t much of a blaze, but it looked bad while it lasted. Even after
the shop-hands had got their hose-lengths connected and a stream playing
on the fire, and the engines were all in safety in the yard, the smoke
continued to roll out in clouds, with here and there a vicious tongue of
flame.
Then Healy, his duty done, bethought him of his coat on the tender of
518. And Speckles, as he heard Healy’s gasp of dismay on discovering
that his papers were gone, had an inspiration.
“Me papers! Me papers!” wailed Healy. “Fer the love av Mike, I must av
dropped thim on the flure!”
“I’ll get them for you, Mr. Healy,” said Speckles, quick as a shot.
“You’ll not!” said Healy. “I’ll have no wan risk his life fer thim, bad
as I want thim. Hey, come back, you runt!”
But Speckles was gone. Headed straight for the big, yawning doors that
vomited their smoke and flames? Oh, no, not Speckles! Hardly! Speckles
would make his attempt from the rear! And around the end of the shed and
in behind he raced.
Some of the men were fighting the fire from that side, but they were
too busy to pay any attention to Speckles. A dab of soot and dirt on his
face which he obtained by rubbing his fingers along the blackened wall,
an artistic smudge of generous proportions on the outside of the papers,
which he took from his pocket, and Speckles’ make-up was complete and
convincing.
Now, Speckles had an eye for the dramatic and an appreciation of its
value. He peered in through one of the windows. It was not nearly as bad
inside as it had been, and he decided there would be no risk and very
little discomfort in carrying out the plan that had popped into his
head.
So he climbed in through a window and dropped down to the floor on the
other side. The next minute he had dashed through the running-shed,
and emerged from a whirl of black smoke into the open in front of the
turntable, the papers waved aloft in his fist.
It was effective--decidedly effective! A cheer went up, and the men
crowded around, while Healy rushed forward and began to pump Speckles’
arm up and down like an engine-piston.
“Ut’s a hero you are, me bright jool av a lad!” he cried in his delight.
“‘Tis mesilf, John Healy, that ses ut, an’ the bhoys are me witness.
Come back to yer job in the mornin’ an’, by my sowl, Speckles, I’ll
niver fire you ag’in, niver! An’ ut’s more I’ll do--I’ll promote you.
Ut’s a wiper you are from now on, me son, an’ to blazes wid cuttin’ down
operatin’ expinses! Where did you foind the papers?”
“On the floor,” said Speckles--and he told the truth.