AT MR. CARHART’S CAMP
“It takes an Irishman, a nigger, and a mule to build a railroad,” said
Tiffany.
With Young Van, he was standing in front of the headquarters tent,
which, together with the office tent for the first division, where Old
Van would hold forth, and the living and mess tents for the engineers,
was pitched on a knoll at a little distance from the track.
“The mule,” he continued, “will do the work, the nigger will drive the
mule, and the Irishman’ll boss ’em both.”
Young Van, keyed up by this sudden plunge into frontier work, was only
half listening to the flow of good-natured comment and reminiscence
from the chief engineer at his elbow. He was looking at the
steam-shrouded locomotive, and at the long line of cars stringing off
in perspective behind it. Wagons were backed in against this and the
few other trains which had come in during the day; other wagons were
crawling about the track almost as far as he could see through the
steam and the dust. Men on horseback--picturesque figures in
wide-brimmed hats and blue shirts and snug-fitting boots laced to the
knee--were riding in and out among the teams. The old track ended in
the immediate foreground, and here old Van was at work with his young
surveyors, looking up the old stakes and driving new ones to a line
set by a solemn youngster with skinny hands and a long nose.
Everywhere was noise--a babel of it--and toil and a hearty sort of
chaos. One line of wagons--laden with scrapers, “slips” and
“wheelers,” tents and camp equipage, the timbers and machinery of a
pile-driver, and a thousand and one other things--was little by little
extricating itself from the tangle, winding slowly past head-quarters,
and on toward the low-lying, blood-red sun. This was the outfit of the
second division, and Harry Scribner, riding a wiry black pony, was
leading it into corral on “mile two,” preparatory to a start in the
early morning.
From the headquarters cook tent, behind the “office,” came savory
odors. Farther down the knoll, near the big “boarding house” tents,
the giant Flagg and the equally sturdy Charlie could be seen moving
about a row of iron kettles which were swinging over an open fire. The
chaos about the trains was straightening out, and the men were
corralling the wagons, and unharnessing the mules and horses. The sun
slipped down behind the low western hills, leaving a luminous memory
in the far sky. In groups, and singly, the laborers--Mexicans,
Italians, Louisiana French, broken plainsmen from everywhere, and
negroes--came straggling by, their faces streaked with dust and sweat,
the negroes laughing and singing as they lounged and shuffled along.
Carhart, who had been dividing his attention between the unloading of
the trains and the preparations of his division engineers, came
riding up the knoll on “Texas,” his compact little roan, a horse he
had ridden and boasted about in a quiet way for nearly four years.
John Flint, thin and stooping of body, with a scrawny red mustache and
high-pitched voice, soon rode in over the grade from the farther side
of the right of way, where he was packing up his outfit for the long
haul to the La Paz River. The instrument men and their assistants
followed, one by one, and fell in line at the tin wash-basin, all
exuberant with banter and laughter and high-spirited play. And at last
the headquarters cook, a stout negro, came out in front of the mess
tent and beat his gong with mighty strokes; and Harry Scribner, who
was jogging back to camp from his corral, heard it, dug in his spurs,
and came up the long knoll on the gallop.
There was no escaping the joviality of this first evening meal in
camp. In the morning the party would break up. Scribner would ride
ahead a dozen miles to make a division camp of his own; John Flint
would be pushing out there into the sunset for the better part of a
week, across the desert, through the gray hills, and down to the
yellow La Paz. The youngsters were shy at first; but after Tiffany had
winked and said, “It’ll never do to start this dry, boys,” and had
produced a bottle from some mysterious corner, they felt easier. Even
Carhart, for the time, laid aside the burden which, like Christian, he
must carry for many days. A good many stories were told, most of them
by Tiffany, who had run the gamut of railroading, north, south, east,
and west.
“That was a great time we had up at Pittsburgh,” said he, “when I
stole the gondola cars,”--he placed the accent on the _do_,--“best
thing I ever did. That was when I was on the Almighty and Great Windy
that used to run from Pittsburg up to the New York State line. I was
acting as a sort of traffic superintendent, among other things,--we
had to do all sorts of work then; no picking and choosing and no
watching the clock for us.” He turned on the long-nosed instrument
man. “That was when you were just about a promising candidate for long
pants, my friend.”
“We had a new general manager--named MacBayne. He didn’t know anything
about railroading,--had been a telegraph operator and Durfee’s
nephew,--yes, the same old Commodore, it was,--and, getting boosted up
quick, that way, he got into that frame of mind where he wouldn’t ever
have contradicted you if you’d said he _was_ the Almighty and Great
Windy. First thing he did was to put in a system of bells to call us
to his office,--but I didn’t care such a heap. He enjoyed it so. He’d
lean back and pull a little handle, and then be too busy to talk when
one of us came running in--loved to make us stand around a spell.
Hadn’t but one eye, MacBayne hadn’t, and you never could tell for
downright certain who he was swearing at.
“The company had bought a little railroad, the P. G.--Pittsburg and
Gulf,--for four hundred and fifty thousand. Just about such a line as
our Paradise spur, only instead of the directors buying it personal,
they’d bought it for the company.
“One day my little bell tinkled, and I got up and went into the old
man’s office. He was smoking a cigar and trying to look through a
two-foot wall into Herb Williams’s pickle factory. Pretty soon he
swung his one good eye around on me and looked at me sharp. ‘Hen,’ he
said, ‘we’re in a fix. We haven’t paid but two hundred thousand on the
P.G.--and what’s more, that’s all we can pay.’
“‘Well, sir,’ said I, ‘what’s the trouble?’ It’s funny--he’s always
called me Hen, and I’ve always called him sir and Mister MacBayne. He
ain’t anybody to-day, but if I went back to Pittsburg to-morrow and
met him in Morrison’s place, he’d say, ‘Well, Hen, how’re you making
it?’ and I’d say, ‘Pretty well, Mister MacBayne.’--Ain’t it funny?
Can’t break away from it.
“I’ve just had a wire from Black,’ said he,--Black was our attorney
up at Buffalo,--‘saying that the sheriff of Erie County,’ over the
line in New York State, ‘has attached all our gon_do_la cars up there,
and won’t release ’em until we pay up. What’ll we do?’
“‘Hum!’ said I. ‘We’ve got just a hundred and twenty gon_do_las in
Buffalo to-day.’ A hundred and twenty cars was a lot to us, you
understand--just like it would be to the S. & W. Imagine what would
happen to you fellows out here if Peet had that many cars taken away
from him. So I thought a minute, and then I said, ‘Has the sheriff
chained ’em to the track, Mister MacBayne?’
“‘I don’t know about that,’ said he.
“‘Well,’ said I, ‘don’t you think it would be a good plan to find that
out first thing?’
“He looked at me sharp, then he sort o’ grinned. ‘What’re you thinking
about, Hen?’ he asked.
“I didn’t answer direct. ‘You find that out,’ I told him, ‘and let me
know what he says.’
“About an hour later the bell tinkle-winkled again. ‘No,’ he said,
when I went in his office, ‘they ain’t chained down--not yet, anyway.
Now, what’ll we do?’
“‘Why don’t you go up there?’ said I. ‘Hook your car on to No. 5’--that
was our night express for Buffalo, a long string of oil and
coal cars with a baggage car, coach, and sleeper on the end of it. It
ran over our line and into Buffalo over the Southeastern.
“‘All right, Hen,’ said he. ‘Will you go along?’
“‘Sure,’ I told him.
“On our way out we picked up Charlie Greenman too. He was
superintendent of the State Line Division--tall, thin man, very
nervous, Charlie was.
“Next morning, when we were sitting over our breakfast in the Swift
House, the old man turned his good eye on me and said, ‘Well, Hen,
what next?’ I’d brought him up there, you see, and now he was looking
for results.
“‘Well,’ said I, speaking slow and sort of thinking it over, ‘look
here, Mister MacBayne, why don’t you get a horse and buggy and look
around the city? They say it’s a pretty place. Or you could pick up a
boat, you and Charlie, and go sailing on Lake Erie. Or you might run
over and see the falls--Ever been there?’
“The old man was looking on both sides of me with those two eyes of
his. ‘What are you up to, Hen?’ he said.
“‘Nothing,’ I answered, ‘not a thing. But say, Mister MacBayne, I
forgot to bring any money. Let me have a little, will you,--about a
hundred and fifty?’
“When I said that, the old man gulped, and looked almost scared. I saw
then, just what I’d suspected, that he wouldn’t be the least use to
me. I’d ‘a’ done better to have left him behind. ‘Why, yes, Hen,’ said
he, ‘I can let you have that!’ He went out, and pretty soon he came
back with the money in a big roll of small bills.
“‘Well, good morning, gentlemen,’ said I. ‘I’ll see you at five
o’clock this afternoon.’
“I went right out to the Erie yards, where they were unloading
twenty-two of our coal cars. Jim Harvey was standing near by, and he
gave me a queer look, and asked me what I was doing in Buffalo.
“‘Doing?’ said I, ‘I’m looking after my cars. What did you suppose?
And see here, Jim, while you were about it, don’t you think you might
have put ’em together. Here you’ve got twenty-two of ’em, and there’s
forty over at the Lake Shore, and a lot more in Chaplin’s yards? There
ain’t but one of me--however do you suppose I’m going to watch ’em
all, even see that the boys keep oil in the boxes?’ ‘I don’t know
anything about that,’ said he.
“‘Well now, look here, Jim,’ said I, ‘how many more of these cars have
you got to unload?’ ‘Twelve,’ said he. ‘How soon can you get it
done--that’s my question?’ ‘Oh, I’ll finish it up to-morrow morning.’
‘Well, now, Jim,’ said I, ‘I want you to put on a couple of extra
wagons and get these cars emptied by five o’clock this afternoon. Then
I want you to get all our cars together over there in Chaplin’s yards,
where I can keep an eye on ’em!’ ‘Oh, see here,’ said he, ‘I can’t do
that, Hen. The sheriff--’
“‘Damn the sheriff,’ said I. ‘I ain’t going to hurt the sheriff. What
I want is to get my cars together where I can know what’s being done
to ’em.’
“Well, he didn’t want to do it, but some of the long green passed and
then he thought maybe he could fix me up. There was a lot of other
things I had to do that day--and a lot of other men to see. The
despatcher for the Buffalo and Southwestern was one of ’em. Then at
five o’clock, or a little before, I floated into the Swift House
office and there were MacBayne and Charlie Greenman sitting around
waiting for me. The old man had his watch in his hand. Charlie was
walking up and down, very nervous. I came up sort of offhand and
said:--
“‘Charlie, I want two of your biggest and strongest engines, and I
want ’em up in Chaplin’s yard as soon as you can get ’em there.’
“‘What,’ said he, ‘on a foreign road?’ ‘Yes,’ said I, offhand like.
Then I turned to the old man. ‘Now, Mister MacBayne,’ said I, ‘I want
you to tell Charlie here that when those engines pass out of his
division, they come absolutely under my control.’
“‘Oh, that’s all right, Hen,’ said Charlie, speaking up breathless.
“‘Yes, I know it is,’ said I, ‘but I want you to hear Mister MacBayne
say it. Remember, when those engines leave your division, they belong
to me until I see fit to bring ’em back.’
“The old man was looking queerer than ever. ‘See here, Hen,’ said he,
‘what devilment are you up to, anyway?’
“‘Nothing at all,’ said I. ‘I just want two engines. You can’t run a
railroad without engines, Mister MacBayne.’
“‘Well,’ said he, then, ‘how about me--what do you want of me?’
“‘Why, I’ll tell you,’ said I. ‘Why don’t you hook your car on to No.
6 and go back to Pittsburg to-night?’ You should have seen his good
eye light up at that. Getting out of the state suited him about as
well as anything just then, and he didn’t lose any time about it. When
he had gone, Charlie said:--
“‘Now, Hen, for heaven’s sake, tell me what you’re up to?’
“‘Not a bit of it,’ said I. ‘I don’t see what business it is of yours.
You belong back on your division.’
“‘Well, I ain’t going,’ said he. ‘I’m going wherever you go to-night.’
“‘All right,’ said I; ‘I’m going to Shelby’s vaudeville.’
“That surprised him. But he didn’t say anything more. You remember old
Shelby’s show there. I always used to go when I was in Buffalo of an
evening.
“But about 11:30, when the show was over, Charlie began to get
nervous again. ‘Well, Hen,’ he said, ‘where next?’
“‘I don’t know about you,’ said I, ‘but I’m going to stroll out to
Chaplin’s yard before I turn in, and take a look at our cars. You’d
better go to bed.’
“‘Not a bit of it,’ he broke out. ‘I’m going with you.’
“‘All right,’ said I, ‘come along. It’s a fine night.’
“Well, gentlemen, when we got out to the yards, there were our cars in
two long lines on parallel tracks, seventy on one track and fifty on
another--one thing bothered me, they were broken in four places at
street crossings--and on the two next tracks beside them were
Charlie’s two engines, steam up and headlights lighted. And, say, you
never saw anything quite like it! The boys they’d sent with the
engines weren’t anybody’s fools, and they had on about three hundred
pounds of steam apiece--blowing off there with a noise you could hear
for a mile, but the boys themselves weren’t saying a word; they were
sitting around smoking their pipes, quiet as seven Sabbaths.
“When Charlie saw this laid out right before his eyes, he took
frightened all of a sudden--his knees were going like that. He grabbed
my arm and pulled me back into the shadow.
“‘Hen, for heaven’s sake, let’s get out of here quick. This means the
penitentiary.’
“‘You can go,’ said I. ‘I didn’t invite you to the party.’
“Right beside the tracks there was a watch-box, shut up as if there
wasn’t anybody in it, but I could see the light coming out at the top.
It was going to be ticklish business, I knew that. We had to haul out
over a drawbridge, for one thing, to get out of the yards, and then
whistle for the switch over to the southwestern tracks. Had to use the
signals of the other roads, too. But I was in for it.
“‘Well, Hen,’ said Charlie, ‘if you’re going to do it, what in ----
are you standing around for now?’
“‘Got to wait for the Lake Shore Express to go through,’ said I.
“Charlie sort of groaned at this and for an hour we sat there and
waited. I tried to talk about the oil explosion down by Titusville,
but Charlie, somehow, wasn’t interested. All the while those engines
were blowing off tremendous, and the crews were sitting around just
smoking steady.
“Finally, at one o’clock, I went over to the engineer of the first
engine. ‘How many men have you got?’ said I.
“‘Four brakemen,’ he said, ‘each of us.’
“‘All right,’ said I. ‘I guess I don’t need to tell you what to do.’
“They all heard me, and say, you ought to have seen them jump up. The
engineer was up and on his engine before I got through talking; and he
just went a-flying down the yard, whistling for the switch. The four
brakemen ran back along the fifty-car string. You see they had to
couple up at those four crossings and that was the part I didn’t like
a bit. But I couldn’t help it. The engineer came a-backing down very
rapid, and bumped that front car as if he wanted to telescope it.
“Well, sir, they did it--coupled up, link and pin. The engineer was
leaning ‘way out the window, and he didn’t wait very long after
getting the signal, before he was a-hiking it down the yard, tooting
his whistle for the draw. Heaven only knows what might have happened,
but nothing did. He got over the draw all right with his fifty cars
going clickety--clickety--clickety behind him, and then I could see
his rear lights and hear him whistling for the switch over to the
southwestern tracks. Then I gave the signal for the other engine.
Charlie, all this time, was getting worse and worse. He was leaning up
against me now, just naturally hanging on to me, looking like a
somnambulist. You could hear his knees batting each other. And the
engineer of that second engine turned out to be in the same fix. He
was so excited he never waited for the signal that the cars were all
coupled up, and he started up with a terrific toot of his whistle and
a yank on the couplings, leaving thirty cars and one brakeman behind.
But I knew it would never do to call him back.
“Well, now, here is where it happened. That whistle was enough to wake
the sleeping saints. And just as the train got fairly going for the
draw, tooting all the way, the door of that watch-box burst open and
three policemen men came running out, hard as they could run. Of
course there was only one thing to do, and that’s just the thing that
Charlie Greenman didn’t do. He turned and ran in the general direction
of the Swift House as fast as those long legs of his could carry him.
Two of the officers ran after him and the other came for me. I yelled
to Charlie to stop, but he’d got to a point where he couldn’t hear
anything. The other officer came running with his night-stick in the
air, but my Scotch-Irish was rising, and I threw up my guard.
“‘Don’t you touch me,’ I yelled; ‘don’t you touch me!’
“‘Well, come along, then,’ said he.
“‘Not a bit of it,’ said I. ‘I’ve nothing to do with you.’
“‘Well, you ran,’ he yelled; ‘you ran!’
“I just looked at him. ‘Do you call this running?’ said I.
“‘Well,’ said he, ‘the other fellow ran.’
“‘All right,’ said I, ‘we’ll run after him.’ So we did. Pretty soon
they caught Charlie. And I was a bit nervous, for I didn’t know what
he might say. But he was too scared to say anything. So I turned to
the officer.
“‘Now,’ said I, ‘suppose you tell us what it is you want?’
“‘We want you,’ said one of them.
“‘No, you don’t,’ said I.
“‘Yes, we do,’ said he.
“It seemed to be getting time for some bluffing, so I hit right out.
‘Where’s your headquarters?’ said I.
“‘Right over here,’ said he.
“‘All right,’ said I, ‘that’s where we’re going, right now. We’ll see
if two railroad men can’t walk through Chaplin’s yards whenever they
feel like it.’
“And all the while we were talking I could hear that second train
a-whooping it up for the state line--clickety--clickety--whoo-oo-oo!
--clickety--clickety--getting fainter and fainter.
“There was a big captain dozing on a bench in the station house. When
he saw us come in, he climbed up behind his desk so he could look down
on us--they like to look down at you, you know.
“‘Well, Captain,’ said the officer, ‘we’ve got ’em.’
“‘Yes,’ the captain answered, looking down with a grin, ‘I think you
have.’
“‘Well now,’ said I, to the captain, ‘who have you got?’
“‘That’ll be all right,’ said he, with another grin.
“It was pretty plain that he wasn’t going to say anything. There was
something about the way he looked at us and especially about that
grin that started me thinking. I decided on bluff number two. I took
out my pass case, opened it, and spread out annual passes on the Great
Windy, the Erie, the South-eastern, and the Lake Shore. My name was
written on all of them, H. L. Tiffany, Pittsburg. The minute the
captain saw them he looked queer, and I turned to Charlie and told him
to get out his passes, which he did. For a minute the captain couldn’t
say anything; then he turned on those three officers, and you ought to
have heard what he said to them--gave ’em the whole forty-two degrees
right there, concentrated.
“‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said to us, when he’d told the officer all that
was on his mind, ‘this is pretty stupid business. I’m very sorry we’ve
put you to this trouble, and I can tell you that if there is anything
I can do to make it right, I’ll be more than glad to do it.’
“Well, there wasn’t anything in particular that I wanted just then
except to get out of Buffalo quick. But I did stop to gratify my
curiosity.
“‘Would you mind telling me, Captain,’ said I, ‘who you took us for?’
“The captain looked queer again, then he said, solemn, ‘We took you
for body snatchers.’
“‘Body snatchers!’ I looked at Charlie, and Charlie, who was beginning
to recover, looked at me.
“‘You see,’ the captain went on, ‘there’s an old building out there by
the yard, and some young surgeons and medical students have been using
it nights to cut up people in, and when the boys saw two well-dressed
young fellows hanging around there in the middle of the night, they
didn’t stop to think twice. I’m very sorry, indeed. I’ll send two of
these men over to escort you to your hotel, with your permission.’
“That didn’t please me very much, but I couldn’t decline. So we
started out, Charlie and I and the two coppers. But instead of going
to the Swift House I steered them into the Mansion House, and
dampened things up a bit. Then I got three boxes of cigars, Havana
imported. I gave one to each of the officers, and on the bottom of the
third I wrote, in pencil, ‘To the Captain, with the compliments of H.
L. Tiffany, of the A. & G. W., Pittsburg, Pa.’ I thought he might have
reason to be interested when he got his next morning’s paper in
knowing just who we were. The coppers went back, tickled to death, and
Charlie and I got out into the street.
“‘Well, Hen,’ said he, very quiet, ‘what are you going to do next?’
“‘You can do what you like, Charlie,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to take
the morning three o’clock on the Michigan Central for Toronto.’ And
Charlie, he thought maybe he’d go with me.”
Tiffany leaned back in a glow of reminiscence, and chuckled softly. Of
the others, some had pushed back their chairs, some were leaning
forward on the table. All had been, for half an hour, in the remote
state of New York with this genial railroading pirate of the old
school. Now, outside, a horse whinnied. Through the desert stillness
came the clanking and coughing of a distant train. They were back in
the gray Southwest, perhaps facing adventures of their own.
Carhart rose, for he had work to do at the headquarters tent. Young
Van took the hint, and followed his example. But the long-nosed
instrument man, the fire of a pirate soul shining out through his
countenance, leaned eagerly forward. “What happened then?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing much,” Tiffany responded. “What could happen? Charlie and
I came back from Toronto a few days later by way of Detroit.” Then his
eye lighted up again. “But I like to think,” he added, “that next
morning when that captain read about the theft of ninety gon_do_la
cars right out from under the sheriff’s nose by H. L. Tiffany, of
Pittsburg, Pa., he was smoking one of said H. L. Tiffany’s cigars.”
* * * * *
The sun was up, hot and bright. The laborers and the men of the tie
squad and the iron squad were straggling back to work. The wagons were
backing in alongside the cars. And halfway down the knoll stood
Carhart and Flint, both in easy western costume, Flint booted and
spurred, stroking the neck of his well-kept pony.
“Well, so long, Paul,” said the bridge-builder.
“Good-by,” said Carhart.
It rested with these two lean men whether an S. & W. train should
enter Red Hills before October. They both felt it, standing there at
the track-end, their backs to civilization, their faces to the desert.
“All right, sir.” Flint got into his saddle. “_All_ right, sir.” He
turned toward the waiting wagon train. “Start along, boys!” he shouted
in his thin voice.
Haddon galloped ahead with the order. The drivers took up their reins,
and settled themselves for the long journey. Like Carhart’s men, they
were a mixed lot--Mexicans, half-breeds, native Americans of a
curiously military stamp, and nondescripts--but good-natured enough;
and Flint, believing with Carhart in the value of good cooks, meant to
keep them good-natured. One by one the whips cracked; a confusion of
English, Spanish, and French cries went up; the mules plunged; the
heavy wagons, laden with derricks, timber, tools, camp supplies, and
the inevitable pile-driver, groaned forward; and the La Paz Bridge
outfit was off.
There was about the scene a sense of enterprise, of buoyant freedom,
of deeds to be done. Flint felt it, as he rode at the head of his
motley cavalcade; for he was an imaginative man. Young Van, standing
by the headquarters tent, felt it, for he was young. Tiffany, still at
breakfast, felt it so strongly that he swore most unreasoningly at the
cook. Down on the job, the humblest stake man stood motionless until
Old Van, who showed no signs of feeling anything, asked him if he
hadn’t had about enough of a sy-esta. As for Carhart, he was stirred,
but his fancy did not roam far afield. From now on those things which
would have it in their power to give him the deepest pleasure were the
sight of gang after gang lifting cross-ties, carrying them to the
grade, and dropping them into place; the sight of that growing line of
stubby yellow timbers, and the sound of the rails clanking down upon
them and of the rapid-fire sledges driving home the spikes.
* * * * *
Young Van poked his head in through the flaps.
“Well?” said the chief, looking up.
“Won’t you come down, Mr. Carhart? The boys want you to drive the
first spike.”
Carhart smiled, then pushed back his chair, and strode out and down
the slope to the grade.
“Stand back there, boys!” cried somebody.
Carhart caught up a sledge, swung it easily over his shoulder, and
brought it down with a swing.
“There,” he cried, entering into the spirit of the thing, “there,
boys! That means Red Hills or bust.”
The cheer that followed was led by the instrument man. Then Carhart,
still smiling, walked back to his office. Now the work was begun.
But Old Van, the division engineer, was scowling. He wished the chief
would quit stirring up these skylarking notions--on _his_ division,
anyway. It took just that much longer to take it out of the men--break
them so you could drive them better.