turned and he'd started for the door so the super couldn't see it.
Toddles swallowed the lump--and got out. He hadn't expected anything
else, of course. The refusals were just as chronic as the demands. But
that didn't make each new one any easier for Toddles. It made it worse.
Toddles' heart was heavy as he stepped out into the hall, and the iron
was in his soul. He was seventeen now, and it looked as though he never
would get a chance--except to be a newsboy all his life. Toddles
swallowed another lump. He loved railroading; it was his one ambition,
his one desire. If he could ever get a chance, he'd show them! He'd show
them that he wasn't a joke, just because he was small!
Toddles turned at the head of the stairs to go down, when somebody
called his name.
"Here--Toddles! Come here!"
Toddles looked over his shoulder, hesitated, then marched in through the
open door of the dispatchers' room. Bob Donkin was alone there.
"What's your name--Toddles?" inquired Donkin, as Toddles halted before
the dispatcher's table.
Toddles froze instantly--hard. His fists doubled; there was a smile on
Donkin's face. Then his fists slowly uncurled; the smile on Donkin's
face had broadened, but there wasn't any malice in the smile.
"Christopher Hyslop Hoogan," said Toddles, unbending.
Donkin put his hand quickly to his mouth--and coughed.
"Um-m!" said he pleasantly. "Super hard on you this morning--Hoogan?"
And with the words Toddles' heart went out to the big dispatcher:
"Hoogan"--and a man-to-man tone.
"No," said Toddles cordially. "Say, I thought you were on the night
trick."
"Double-shift--short-handed," replied Donkin. "Come from New York, don't
you?"
"Yes," said Toddles.
"Mother and father down there still?"
It came quick and unexpected, and Toddles stared for a moment. Then he
walked over to the window.
"I haven't got any," he said.
There wasn't any sound for an instant, save the clicking of the
instruments; then Donkin spoke again--a little gruffly:
"When are you going to quit making a fool of yourself?"
Toddles swung from the window, hurt. Donkin, after all, was like all the
rest of them.
"Well?" prompted the dispatcher.
"You go to blazes!" said Toddles bitterly, and started for the door.
Donkin halted him.
"You're only fooling yourself, Hoogan," he said coolly. "If you wanted
what you call a real railroad job as much as you pretend you do, you'd
get one."
"Eh?" demanded Toddles defiantly; and went back to the table.
"A fellow," said Donkin, putting a little sting into his words, "never
got anywhere by going around with a chip on his shoulder fighting
everybody because they called him Toddles, and making a nuisance of
himself with the Big Fellows until they got sick of the sight of him."
It was a pretty stiff arraignment. Toddles choked over it, and the angry
blood flushed to his cheeks.
"That's all right for you!" he spluttered out hotly. "You don't look too
small for the train crews or the roundhouse, and they don't call you
Toddles so's nobody'll forget it. What'd _you_ do?"
"I'll tell you what I'd do," said Donkin quietly. "I'd make everybody
on the division wish their own name was Toddles before I was through
with them, and I'd _make_ a job for myself."
Toddles blinked helplessly.
"Getting right down to a cash fare," continued Donkin, after a moment,
as Toddles did not speak, "they're not so far wrong, either, about you
sizing up pretty small for the train crews or the roundhouse, are they?"
"No-o," admitted Toddles reluctantly; "but----"
"Then why not something where there's no handicap hanging over you?"
suggested the dispatcher--and his hand reached out and touched the
sender. "The key, for instance?"
"But I don't know anything about it," said Toddles, still helplessly.
"That's just it," returned Donkin smoothly. "You never tried to learn."
Toddles' eyes widened, and into Toddles' heart leaped a sudden joy. A
new world seemed to open out before him in which aspirations, ambitions,
longings all were a reality. A key! That _was_ real railroading, the
top-notch of railroading, too. First an operator, and then a dispatcher,
and--and--and then his face fell, and the vision faded.
"How'd I get a chance to learn?" he said miserably. "Who'd teach me?"
The smile was back on Donkin's face as he pushed his chair from the
table, stood up, and held out his hand--man-to-man fashion.
"I will," he said. "I liked your grit last night, Hoogan. And if you
want to be a railroad man, I'll make you one--before I'm through. I've
some old instruments you can have to practice with, and I've nothing to
do in my spare time. What do you say?"
Toddles didn't say anything. For the first time since Toddles' advent to
the Hill Division, there were tears in Toddles' eyes for some one else
to see.
Donkin laughed.
"All right, old man, you're on. See that you don't throw me down. And
keep your mouth shut; you'll need all your wind. It's work that counts,
and nothing else. Now chase yourself! I'll dig up the things you'll
need, and you can drop in here and get them when you come off your run
to-night."
Spare time! Bob Donkin didn't have any spare time those days! But that
was Donkin's way. Spence sick, and two men handling the dispatching
where three had handled it before, didn't leave Bob Donkin much spare
time--not much. But a boost for the kid was worth a sacrifice. Donkin
went at it as earnestly as Toddles did--and Toddles was in deadly
earnest.
When Toddles left the dispatcher's office that morning with Donkin's
promise to teach him the key, Toddles had a hazy idea that Donkin had
wings concealed somewhere under his coat and was an angel in disguise;
and at the end of two weeks he was sure of it. But at the end of a month
Bob Donkin was a god! Throw Bob Donkin down! Toddles would have sold
his soul for the dispatcher.
It wasn't easy, though; and Bob Donkin wasn't an easy-going taskmaster,
not by long odds. Donkin had a tongue, and on occasions could use it.
Short and quick in his explanations, he expected his pupil to get it
short and quick; either that, or Donkin's opinion of him. But Toddles
stuck. He'd have crawled on his knees for Donkin anywhere, and he worked
like a major--not only for his own advancement, but for what he came to
prize quite as much, if not more, Donkin's approval.
Toddles, mindful of Donkin's words, didn't fight so much as the days
went by, though he found it difficult to swear off all at once; and on
his runs he studied his Morse code, and he had the "calls" of every
station on the division off by heart right from the start. Toddles
mastered the "sending" by leaps and bounds; but the "taking" came
slower, as it does for everybody--but even at that, at the end of six
weeks, if it wasn't thrown at him too fast and hard, Toddles could get
it after a fashion.
Take it all around, Toddles felt like whistling most of the time; and,
pleased with his own progress, looked forward to starting in presently
as a full-fledged operator.
He mentioned the matter to Bob Donkin--once. Donkin picked his words and
spoke fervently. Toddles never brought the subject up again.
And so things went on. Late summer turned to early fall, and early fall
to still sharper weather, until there came the night that the operator
at Blind River muddled his orders and gave No. 73, the westbound fast
freight, her clearance against the second section of the eastbound
Limited that doomed them to meet somewhere head-on in the Glacier canyon;
the night that Toddles--but there's just a word or two that comes
before.
When it was all over, it was up to Sam Beale, the Blind River operator,
straight enough. Beale blundered. That's all there was to it; that
covers it all--he blundered. It would have finished Beale's railroad
career forever and a day--only Beale played the man, and the instant he
realized what he had done, even while the tail lights of the freight
were disappearing down the track and he couldn't stop her, he was
stammering the tale of his mistake over the wire, the sweat beads
dripping from his wrist, his face gray with horror, to Bob Donkin under
the green-shaded lamp in the dispatchers' room at Big Cloud, miles away.
Donkin got the miserable story over the chattering wire--got it before
it was half told--cut Beale out and began to pound the Gap call. And as
though it were before him in reality, that stretch of track, fifteen
miles of it, from Blind River to the Gap, unfolded itself like a grisly
panorama before his mind. There wasn't a half mile of tangent at a
single stretch in the whole of it. It swung like the writhings of a
snake, through cuts and tunnels, hugging the canyon walls, twisting this
way and that. Anywhere else there might be a chance, one in a thousand
even, that they would see each other's headlights in time--here it was
disaster quick and absolute.
Donkin's lips were set in a thin, straight line. The Gap answered him;
and the answer was like the knell of doom. He had not expected anything
else; he had only hoped against hope. The second section of the Limited
had pulled out of the Gap, eastbound, two minutes before. The two trains
were in the open against each other's orders.
In the next room, Carleton and Regan, over their pipes, were at their
nightly game of pedro. Donkin called them--and his voice sounded strange
to himself. Chairs scraped and crashed to the floor, and an instant
later the super and the master mechanic were in the room.
"What's wrong, Bob?" Carleton flung the words from him in a single
breath.
Donkin told them. But his fingers were on the key again as he talked.
There was still one chance, worse than the thousand-to-one shot; but it
was the only one. Between the Gap and Blind River, eight miles from the
Gap, seven miles from Blind River, was Cassil's Siding. But there was no
night man at Cassil's, and the little town lay a mile from the station.
It was ten o'clock--Donkin's watch lay face up on the table before
him--the day man at Cassil's went off at seven--the chance was that the
day man _might_ have come back to the station for something or other!
Not much of a chance? No--not much! It was a possibility, that was all;
and Donkin's fingers worked--the seventeen, the life and death--calling,
calling on the night trick to the day man at Cassil's Siding.
Carleton came and stood at Donkin's elbow, and Regan stood at the other;
and there was silence now, save only for the key that, under Donkin's
fingers, seemed to echo its stammering appeal about the room like the
sobbing of a human soul.
"CS--CS--CS," Donkin called; and then, "the seventeen," and then, "hold
second Number Two." And then the same thing over and over again.
And there was no answer.
It had turned cold that night and there was a fire in the little heater.
Donkin had opened the draft a little while before, and the sheet-iron
sides now began to purr red-hot. Nobody noticed it. Regan's kindly,
good-humored face had the stamp of horror in it, and he pulled at his
scraggly brown mustache, his eyes seemingly fascinated by Donkin's
fingers. Everybody's eyes, the three of them, were on Donkin's fingers
and the key. Carleton was like a man of stone, motionless, his face set
harder than face was ever carved in marble.
It grew hot in the room; but Donkin's fingers were like ice on the key,
and, strong man though he was, he faltered.
"Oh, my God!" he whispered--and never a prayer rose more fervently from
lips than those three broken words.
Again he called, and again, and again. The minutes slipped away. Still
he called--with the life and death--the "seventeen"--called and called.
And there was no answer save that echo in the room that brought the
perspiration streaming down from Regan's face, a harder light into
Carleton's eyes and a chill like death into Donkin's heart.
Suddenly Donkin pushed back his chair; and his fingers, from the key,
touched the crystal of his watch.
"The second section will have passed Cassil's now," he said in a
curious, unnatural, matter-of-fact tone. "It'll bring them together
about a mile east of there--in another minute."
And then Carleton spoke--master railroader, "Royal" Carleton, it was up
to him then, all the pity of it, the ruin, the disaster, the lives out,
all the bitterness to cope with as he could. And it was in his eyes, all
of it. But his voice was quiet. It rang quick, peremptory, his
voice--but quiet.
"Clear the line, Bob," he said. "Plug in the round-house for the
wrecker--and tell them to send uptown for the crew."
Toddles? What did Toddles have to do with this? Well, a good deal, in
one way and another. We're coming to Toddles now. You see, Toddles,
since his fracas with Hawkeye, had been put on the Elk River local run
that left Big Cloud at 9.45 in the morning for the run west, and
scheduled Big Cloud again on the return trip at 10.10 in the evening.
It had turned cold that night, after a day of rain. Pretty cold--the
thermometer can drop on occasions in the late fall in the mountains--and
by eight o'clock, where there had been rain before, there was now a thin
sheeting of ice over everything--very thin--you know the kind--rails and
telegraph wires glistening like the decorations on a Christmas
tree--very pretty--and also very nasty running on a mountain grade.
Likewise, the rain, in a way rain has, had dripped from the car roofs to
the platforms--the local did not boast any closed vestibules--and had
also been blown upon the car steps with the sweep of the wind, and,
having frozen, it stayed there. Not a very serious matter; annoying,
perhaps, but not serious, demanding a little extra caution, that was
all.
Toddles was in high fettle that night. He had been getting on famously
of late; even Bob Donkin had admitted it. Toddles, with his stack of
books and magazines, an unusually big one, for a number of the new
periodicals were out that day, was dreaming rosy dreams to himself as he
started from the door of the first-class smoker to the door of the
first-class coach. In another hour now he'd be up in the dispatcher's
room at Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with Bob Donkin. He could see
Bob Donkin there now; and he could hear the big dispatcher growl at him
in his bluff way: "Use your head--use your head--_Hoogan!_" It was
always "Hoogan," never "Toddles." "Use your head"--Donkin was
everlastingly drumming that into him; for the dispatcher used to
confront him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and
demand Toddles' instant solution. Toddles realized that Donkin was
getting to the heart of things, and that some day he, Toddles, would be
a great dispatcher--like Donkin. "Use your head, Hoogan"--that's the way
Donkin talked--"anybody can learn a key, but that doesn't make a
railroad man think quick and think _right_. Use your----"
Toddles stepped out on the platform--and walked on ice. But that wasn't
Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles was that he was walking on
air at the same time. It was treacherous running, they were nosing a
curve, and in the cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with a little
jerk at the "air." And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and with the
slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals shifted, and
they bulged ominously from the middle. Toddles grabbed at them--and his
heels went out from under him. He ricocheted down the steps, snatched
desperately at the handrail, missed it, shot out from the train, and,
head, heels, arms and body going every which way at once, rolled over
and over down the embankment. And, starting from the point of Toddles'
departure from the train, the right of way for a hundred yards was
strewn with "the latest magazines" and "new books just out to-day."
Toddles lay there, a little, curled, huddled heap, motionless in the
darkness. The tail lights of the local disappeared. No one aboard would
miss Toddles until they got into Big Cloud--and found him gone. Which is
Irish for saying that no one would attempt to keep track of a newsboy's
idiosyncrasies on a train; it would be asking too much of any train
crew; and, besides, there was no mention of it in the rules.
It was a long while before Toddles stirred; a very long while before
consciousness crept slowly back to him. Then he moved, tried to get
up--and fell back with a quick, sharp cry of pain. He lay still, then,
for a moment. His ankle hurt him frightfully, and his back, and his
shoulder, too. He put his hand to his face where something seemed to be
trickling warm--and brought it away wet. Toddles, grim little warrior,
tried to think. They hadn't been going very fast when he fell off. If
they had, he would have been killed. As it was, he was hurt, badly hurt,
and his head swam, nauseating him.
Where was he? Was he near any help? He'd have to get help somewhere,
or--or with the cold and--and everything he'd probably die out here
before morning. Toddles shouted out--again and again. Perhaps his voice
was too weak to carry very far; anyway, there was no reply.
He looked up at the top of the embankment, clamped his teeth, and
started to crawl. If he got up there, perhaps he could tell where he
was. It had taken Toddles a matter of seconds to roll down; it took him
ten minutes of untold agony to get up. Then he dashed his hand across
his eyes where the blood was, and cried a little with the surge of
relief. East, down the track, only a few yards away, the green eye of a
switch lamp winked at him.
Where there was a switch lamp there was a siding, and where there was a
siding there was promise of a station. Toddles, with the sudden uplift
upon him, got to his feet and started along the track--two steps--and
went down again. He couldn't walk, the pain was more than he could
bear--his right ankle, his left shoulder, and his back--hopping only
made it worse--it was easier to crawl.
And so Toddles crawled.
It took him a long time even to pass the switch light. The pain made him
weak, his senses seemed to trail off giddily every now and then, and
he'd find himself lying flat and still beside the track. It was a white,
drawn face that Toddles lifted up each time he started on
again--miserably white, except where the blood kept trickling from his
forehead.
And then Toddles' heart, stout as it was, seemed to snap. He had reached
the station platform, wondering vaguely why the little building that
loomed ahead was dark--and now it came to him in a flash, as he
recognized the station. It was Cassil's Siding--_and there was no night
man at Cassil's Siding!_ The switch lights were lighted before the day
man left, of course. Everything swam before Toddles' eyes. There--there
was no help here. And yet--yet perhaps--desperate hope came
again--perhaps there might be. The pain was terrible--all over him.
And--and he'd got so weak now--but it wasn't far to the door.
Toddles squirmed along the platform, and reached the door finally--only
to find it shut and fastened. And then Toddles fainted on the threshold.
When Toddles came to himself again, he thought at first that he was up
in the dispatcher's room at Big Cloud with Bob Donkin pounding away on
the battered old key they used to practice with--only there seemed to be
something the matter with the key, and it didn't sound as loud as it
usually did--it seemed to come from a long way off somehow. And then,
besides, Bob was working it faster than he had ever done before when
they were practicing. "Hold second"--second something--Toddles couldn't
make it out. Then the "seventeen"--yes, he knew that--that was the life
and death. Bob was going pretty quick, though. Then "CS--CS--CS"--Toddles'
brain fumbled a bit over that--then it came to him. CS was the call for
Cassil's Siding. _Cassil's Siding!_ Toddles' head came up with a jerk.
A little cry burst from Toddles' lips--and his brain cleared. He wasn't
at Big Cloud at all--he was at Cassil's Siding--and he was hurt--and
that was the sounder inside calling, calling frantically for Cassil's
Siding--where he was.
The life and death--_the seventeen_--it sent a thrill through Toddles'
pain-twisted spine. He wriggled to the window. It, too, was closed, of
course, but he could hear better there. The sounder was babbling madly.
"Hold second----"
He missed it again--and as, on top of it, the "seventeen" came pleading,
frantic, urgent, he wrung his hands.
"Hold second"--he got it this time--"Number Two."
Toddles' first impulse was to smash in the window and reach the key. And
then, like a dash of cold water over him, Donkin's words seemed to ring
in his ears: "Use your head."
With the "seventeen" it meant a matter of minutes, perhaps even seconds.
Why smash the window? Why waste the moment required to do it simply to
answer the call? The order stood for itself--"Hold second Number Two."
That was the second section of the Limited, east-bound. Hold her! How?
There was nothing--not a thing to stop her with. "Use your head," said
Donkin in a far-away voice to Toddles' wobbling brain.
Toddles looked up the track--west--where he had come from--to where the
switch light twinkled green at him--and, with a little sob, he started
to drag himself back along the platform. If he could throw the switch,
it would throw the light from green to red, and--and the Limited would
take the siding. But the switch was a long way off.
Toddles half fell, half bumped from the end of the platform to the right
of way. He cried to himself with low moans as he went along. He had the
heart of a fighter, and grit to the last tissue; but he needed it all
now--needed it all to stand the pain and fight the weakness that kept
swirling over him in flashes.
On he went, on his hands and knees, slithering from tie to tie--and from
one tie to the next was a great distance. The life and death, the
dispatcher's call--he seemed to hear it yet--throbbing, throbbing on the
wire.
On he went, up the track; and the green eye of the lamp, winking at him,
drew nearer. And then suddenly, clear and mellow through the mountains,
caught up and echoed far and near, came the notes of a chime whistle
ringing down the gorge.
Fear came upon Toddles then, and a great sob shook him. That was the
Limited coming now! Toddles' fingers dug into the ballast, and he
hurried--that is, in bitter pain, he tried to crawl a little faster. And
as he crawled, he kept his eyes strained up the track--she wasn't in
sight yet around the curve--not yet, anyway.
Another foot, only another foot, and he would reach the siding
switch--in time--in plenty of time. Again the sob--but now in a burst of
relief that, for the moment, made him forget his hurts. He was in time!
He flung himself at the switch lever, tugged upon it and then,
trembling, every ounce of remaining strength seeming to ooze from him,
he covered his face with his hands. It was _locked_--padlocked.
Came a rumble now--a distant roar, growing louder and louder,
reverberating down the canyon walls--louder and louder--nearer and
nearer. "Hold second Number Two. Hold second Number Two"--the
"seventeen," the life and death, pleading with him to hold Number Two.
And she was coming now, coming--and--and--the switch was locked. The
deadly nausea racked Toddles again; there was nothing to do
now--nothing. He couldn't stop her--couldn't stop her. He'd--he'd
tried--very hard--and--and he couldn't stop her now. He took his hands
from his face, and stole a glance up the track, afraid almost, with the
horror that was upon him, to look.
She hadn't swung the curve yet, but she would in a minute--and come
pounding down the stretch at fifty miles an hour, shoot by him like a
rocket to where, somewhere ahead, in some form, he did not know what,
only knew that it was there, death and ruin and----
"_Use your head!_" snapped Donkin's voice to his consciousness.
Toddles' eyes were on the light above his head. It blinked _red_ at him
as he stood on the track facing it; the green rays were shooting up and
down the line. He couldn't swing the switch--but the _lamp_ was
there--and there was the red side to show just by turning it. He
remembered then that the lamp fitted into a socket at the top of the
switch stand, and could be lifted off--if he could reach it!
It wasn't very high--for an ordinary-sized man--for an ordinary-sized
man had to get at it to trim and fill it daily--only Toddles wasn't an
ordinary-sized man. It was just nine or ten feet above the rails--just a
standard siding switch.