WHAT TOOK PLACE AT RED HILLS
The last spike in the western extension of the Sherman and Western was
driven by no less a personage than President De Reamer himself. In the
circle of well-dressed men about him stood General Carrington and a
score of department heads of the two lines. The thirty miles of track
between the La Paz and Red Hills was laid, without unusual incident,
in twenty days--a brilliant finish to what had been a record-breaking
performance.
There was to be a dinner at the Frisco Hotel. Everybody knew now that
General Carrington had promised to be there and to speak a felicitous
word or two welcoming the new C. & S. C. connection. After the
spike-driving, Mr. De Reamer, a thin, saturnine figure, could be seen
moving about through the little crowd. Once, it was observed, he and
General Carrington drew aside and talked in low, earnest tones. The
reporters were there, of course, and to these the president was
urbane. They had gathered at first about the General, but he had waved
them off with a smiling “Talk with my friend De Reamer there. He
deserves whatever credit there may be in this thing.” And next these
keen-eyed, beardless men of the press bore down in a little group on
Carhart, Tiffany, and Young Van, who were standing apart. Tiffany was
the first to see them approaching.
“Not a word, boys,” he said in a low voice.
“Why not?” asked Young Van. “I don’t know of anybody who deserves more
credit than you two.”
“Not a word,” Tiffany repeated. “It would cost me my job. Mr. De
Reamer’s crazy mad now because so much has been said about Paul here.
I don’t care to get into it,--just excuse me.”
The reporters were upon them. “Is that Mr. Tiffany?” asked one,
indicating the retreating figure.
Carhart nodded.
“Is it true, Mr. Carhart,” asked another, “that he came out and fought
under you at the La Paz?”
Carhart smiled. President De Reamer was passing with Mr. Chambers and
had paused only a few feet away. “There wasn’t any fighting at the La
Paz,” he replied.
“There is a grave there,” the questioner persisted.
“How do you know?”
“I rode out and saw it.”
“Then you should have ridden back the length of the line and you would
have found a few other graves.” The chief sobered. “You can’t keep a
thousand to two thousand men at work in the desert for months without
losing a few of them. I’m sorry that this is so, but it is.”
“Mr. Carhart,” came another abrupt question, this time from the
keenest-appearing reporter of them all, “What did you say to General
Carrington and Commodore Durfee when you saw them at the Frisco?”
Young Van looked at his chief and saw that the faintest of twinkles
was in his eyes. He glanced over his shoulder and made out that De
Reamer had paused in his conversation with Mr. Chambers, and was
listening to catch Carhart’s reply. For himself, Young Van was blazing
with anger that this man, who had in his eyes fairly dragged De Reamer
through to a successful termination of the fight, should be robbed of
what seemed to him the real reward. He had still something to learn of
the way of the world, and everything to learn of the way of Wall
Street. Then he heard Carhart replying:--
“You must ask Mr. De Reamer about that. He directs the policy of the
Sherman and Western.”
And at this the president of the melancholy visage, and with him his
vice-president, passed on out of earshot.
“Mr. Carhart,”--the reporters were still at it,--“one of your
assistants, J. B. Flint, was carried on a cot the other day to the C.
& S. C. station and put on a train. What was the matter with him?”
Carhart hesitated. Personally he cared not at all whether the facts
were or were not given to the public. He felt little pleasure in lying
about them. Engineers as a class do not lie very well. But he was
doing the work of the Sherman and Western, and the Sherman and
Western, for a mixture of reasons, wished the facts covered. And then,
somewhat to his relief, the youngest reporter in the group blundered
out the question which let him off with half a lie.
“Is it true, Mr. Carhart,” asked this reporter, “that Mr. Flint has
been really an invalid for years?”
“Yes,” Carhart replied cheerfully, “it is true.”
The party seemed to be breaking up. Tiffany caught Young Van’s eye,
and beckoned. “Come on!” he called--“the Dinner!”
“They are starting, Mr. Carhart,” said Young Van.
“Are they? All right.--That’s all, boys. You can say, with perfect
truth, that the Sherman and Western has been completed to Red Hills.”
“And that the H. D. & W. hasn’t,” cried the youngest reporter.
Carhart laughed. “The H. D. & W. will have to do its own talking,” he
replied.
“But they aren’t doing any.”
“Can’t help that,” said Carhart. “No more--no more!” And with Young
Van he walked off toward the Frisco.
* * * * *
After the dinner the party broke up. Flint and Haddon went West with
the Chicago and Southern California officials. The others, who were to
start eastward in the late evening, rode off for a shoot on the
plains. And it fell out that Carhart and Young Van, who had, from
different motives, declined the ride, were left together at the
hotel.
“What are you going to do now, Gus?” asked the chief.
Young Van hesitated, then gave way to a nervous smile. Carhart glanced
keenly at him, and observed that he had lost color and that the pupils
of his eyes were dilated. Now that the strain was over he was himself
conscious of a severe physical let-down, and he was not surprised to
learn that his assistant was completely unstrung.
Neither was he surprised to hear this hesitating yet perfectly honest
reply: “I’ve been thinking I’d start at the first saloon and drink to
the other end of town. Want to come along?”
“No,” Carhart replied, “I don’t believe I will, thanks. I meant to ask
what work you plan to take up next?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Nothing!--why so?”
“That is easy to answer.” Young Van laughed bitterly. “I have no
offers.”
“I’m surprised at that.”
“You don’t really mean that, Mr. Carhart?”
“Certainly I do.”
“Well, it’s more than I can say. If a man came along and offered me a
good position, I should feel that I ought to decline it.”
“Why?” Carhart was genuinely interested.
“Why?” Young Van rose and stood looking gloomily down at his chief.
“That’s a funny question for you to ask. You’ve been watching my work
for these months, and you’ve seen me developing new limitations in
every possible direction. All together, I’ve discovered about the
choicest crop any man ever opened up. When I started out, I thought I
might some day become an engineer. But if this job has taught me
anything, it has taught me that I’m the emptiest ass that ever tried
to lay two rails, end to end, in a reasonably straight line.” The
tremulous quality of his voice told Carhart how deeply the boy had
taken his duties to heart.
“I’ve been thinking to-day that the best thing I can do will be to
rent a few acres somewhere out on Long Island and set up to raise
chickens for the New York market: broilers, and maybe squabs--they say
there is money in squabs. I’d probably find I couldn’t even do that,
but it would be exciting for a while.”
“Let’s get out and tramp around a little, Gus,” was Carhart’s reply.
“That will do you as much good as a drunk.”
Young Van flushed at this, but followed the chief out to the long
street along which straggled the buildings that made up the
settlement. These buildings were mostly saloons, each with its harvest
of plainsmen, cowboys, laborers, and outcasts standing, sitting, or
sprawling before the door. The day was hot with the dry heat of
September, from which even the memory of moisture had long ago been
sucked out. The dust rose at every step and settled on skin and
clothing. Now and then a lounging figure rose and moved languidly in
through a saloon door. Almost the only other movement to be seen was
the heat vibration in the atmosphere. The only sound, beyond a
drawled remark now and then, and the clink of glasses, was the tinkle
of a crazy piano down the street. But the bronzed, sinewy engineers,
who had for months known no other atmosphere, stepped off in a
swinging stride, and soon were past the end of the street and out in
the open. Carhart himself was not above a sense of elation, and he
fell into reminiscence.
“There is only one thing I have regretted, Gus,” he said. “If I could
have got hold of a big Italian I know of, with about a hundred of his
men, this dinner would have taken place some days ago.”
“I didn’t suppose that the work could have gone much faster,” replied
the younger man, moodily.
“Yes, we might have saved that much time easily in the cuts.”
“Working by hand?”
“Yes. My experience with this chap was up in New Jersey. The firm I
was working for at the time was developing a big ice business up in
the lakes in the northern part of the state. It was necessary to lay
a few short lines of track to connect the different ice-houses
with the main line, and I was given charge of it. I got my
laborers--several hundred of them--from an Italian padrone in New York
City. Neither myself nor my assistants spoke their language, of
course, and, as it turned out, we didn’t think in their language
either, for after two or three days they all walked out--to a man. I
could do nothing with them. So I rang up the padrone and told him he
would have to furnish a better lot than that. ‘But,’ said he, ‘I can’t
let you have any more men.’ I asked him why not. ‘Because you don’t
know how to handle them.’ That was a surprising sort of an answer, but
I needed the laborers and I kept at him. Finally he said, ‘I’ll tell
you what I will do. I will send you the men, but you must let me send
a foreman with them, and you must agree to give all your instructions
through that foreman.’ ‘All right,’ I replied, ‘send them along. If
they do the work, I won’t bother them.’
“The next day, when I was at the office in Newark, one of my
assistants called me up and told me it would be worth my while to come
right out on the work. When I reached there, he met me and took me
down the track to a deep cut where the force was at work. The laborers
were placed just as I have placed our men lately, packed close
together on terraces; and after I had watched for a moment it dawned
on me that I had never seen Italians work so fast as those were
working. ‘How did you do it?’ I asked. The assistant grinned, and
advised me to watch the man at the top, and then I saw that a giant of
an Italian was standing on the hill above the top terrace, where he
could look down at the rows of laborers. He wore a long ulster, and
kept his hands in his pockets.
“Pretty soon a laborer down on the lowest terrace rested his pick
against his knees and stood up to stretch. ‘Watch now!’ whispered my
assistant. I looked up at the big man just in time to see him draw a
stone out of his pocket--no pebble, mind you, but a jagged piece of
road ballast--and throw it right at that laborer’s head. The fellow
simply dodged it, seized his pick, and went to work harder than ever;
and not another man stopped, even long enough to draw a good breath
during the twenty minutes I stood there. Then the whistle blew, and as
I was curious to see what would happen I waited.”
“What did happen?” asked Young Van.
“Nothing whatever, except that the laborers crowded around this
foreman and seemed proud to get a word from him.”
“But I don’t understand. What gave him such a hold over them?”
“I don’t understand it myself. But I know that if I strained things to
the breaking point, I could never get the work out of any laborers
that he got out of those Italians. With him, and them, we might have
saved a good many days in this work.”
“We might have tried the plan ourselves,” said the young man, with a
chuckle. “Only I fancy a little something would have happened if we
had tried it.”
Young Van’s dangerous mood had passed. Carhart abruptly changed the
subject. “How would you like to go up into Canada with me, Gus?” he
said.
“With you? There isn’t much doubt what to answer to that.”
“There will be some interesting things about the work--and time enough
to do them well, the way it looks now. I can’t promise you any
remarkable inducements, but you will get a little more than you have
been paid here--I won’t say more than you have earned here, for you
have not been paid what you are worth.”
A moment passed before these words could get into the consciousness of
the young man. Then--they were just entering the village on their
return--he stopped short and looked into Paul Carhart’s face. “Do you
mean that you really want me?” he asked.
Carhart tried not to smile as he said: “The choice of assistants is
in my hands, Gus, and I should find it difficult to justify myself for
taking an assistant whom I did not want--and especially for an
undertaking that is likely to last several years.”
Young Van was standing stock-still. “‘Several years,’” he repeated.
Then, “This seems to amount pretty nearly to a permanent offer?”
“Pretty nearly,” said Carhart, smiling now.
At this they resumed their pace and entered the town. Both were
absorbed--Young Van in his astonishment that he had found favor in the
eyes of his chief, Carhart in his amusement over the utter naïveté of
the boy; and neither had an eye for the groups of desperate characters
that lined the street, least of all for the particular group before
the “Acme Hotel, J. Peters, Prop.”
It could not be supposed that the coming of fifteen hundred men to Red
Hills, their pockets lined with the earnings of those last
irresistible weeks, should pass without a great effort on the part of
the local population to empty these pockets promptly and thoroughly.
If the two engineers had looked about more sharply in the course of
their walk, they would have seen more than one familiar face. It was,
indeed, a day to be remembered in Red Hills; there had been no such
wholesale contribution to local needs since the first ramshackle frame
building rose from the dust. Bartenders were busy; and deft-fingered,
impassive gentlemen from Chicago, and New Orleans, and Denver, and San
Francisco were hard at work behind green tables. All was quiet so far.
The laborers were so skilfully distributed that no green table was
without its professional gambler; and sweltering in the heat, gulping
down the ever ready fluids, they went gayly, gloomily, angrily,
defiantly on, thumbing the dirty cards and relinquishing their
earnings. All was still quiet, for the business of the day was carried
on in back rooms and on upper floors. The uproar would not begin for a
few hours yet, and would hardly reach its full strength before dark.
Among those to whom music and feminine charms, such as they were,
outweighed the delights of the green table was Charlie the cook. He
sat at an open window, upstairs, where he could look down at the
sleepy street and at the front of the Acme Hotel, opposite. At first
he had been content to make out what he could of the scene through the
cheesecloth sash curtains, but, under the mellowing influence of a
rapid succession of bottles, he had drawn the curtains, and now sat
with his knees against the sill, smiling down in a ruddy, benevolent
fashion on everybody and everything below. The parlor at his back was
filled with workmen and their companions. He had seen the engineers
walk down the street, and had smiled in genial fashion, though aware
that they had not observed him. Now he saw them returning, and he was
ready, undaunted, to greet them again.
Then something happened. The door leading to the bar of the Acme
Hotel suddenly opened, and a hulking figure of a man appeared on the
broad step. He was half drunk, and he carried a revolver in his hand.
Behind him, crowding out to see the fun, came a dozen men. Charlie saw
this, and, without in the slightest relaxing his genial smile, he drew
out one of his own revolvers and held it carelessly before him with
the muzzle resting on the window sill. Never for an instant did he
take his good-natured, bloodshot eyes from the man across the street.
The engineers were drawing rapidly nearer. Young Van was the first to
take in the situation, and he spoke in a low, quick voice, hardly
moving his lips:--
“Don’t look up or start, Mr. Carhart--but Jack Flagg is standing in
front of that hotel on the left, and he looks as if he meant to shoot.
What do you think we had better do? I am not armed.”
“Neither am I,” Carhart replied. “Don’t pay any attention to him.”
[Illustration: “Charlie had not raised his revolver,--the muzzle still
rested easily on the sill,--but it was pointing straight at Jack
Flagg’s heart.”]
That was all that was said. The two engineers swung along without a
sign of faltering. Jack Flagg slowly raised his weapon and took
deliberate aim at Paul Carhart. Still the two came on, not wholly able
to conceal their sense of the situation, but, rather, regardless of
it. On Carhart’s face there was an expression of stern contempt; Young
Van was pale and his eyes were fixed straight before him.
At this point it seemed as if the strain must break one way or the
other. The men were not ten yards apart--in another moment it would be
less than two. A little gasp of admiration came from the watching
groups. Flagg heard this, and his hand wavered, but he recovered and
took a short step forward.
Suddenly the silence was broken by a low whistle. Flagg started, and
looked around.
Again came the low whistle. This time Flagg looked up, and caught his
first sight of Charlie in the window, and hesitated. Charlie had not
raised his revolver,--the muzzle still rested easily on the sill,--but
it was pointing straight at Jack Flagg’s heart. Flagg lowered his
weapon a little way, then looked as if he wished to raise it again,
but on second thoughts this seemed hardly wise, for Charlie was
shaking his head in gentle disapproval. Then this incident, which had
shaved close to tragedy, suddenly ran off into farce. Flagg pocketed
his revolver, muttered something that nobody understood, and
disappeared through the bar-room door; and after a long breath of
mingled relief and disappointment, somebody laughed aloud.
As for Charlie, he turned, still playing with his revolver, and looked
about the room. “Why!” he exclaimed. “Why! Where’s the ladies?”
* * * * *
The engineers walked steadily up the street and turned into the hotel.
Then Young Van weakened, staggered to a chair, and sat limp and white.
“I told you,” he said breathlessly, “I told you I was--no good.”
Carhart, before replying, looked at his watch, and his hand shook as
he did so. “Brace up, Gus,” he said. “Brace up. I start East in an
hour or so, and you are coming with me, you know.”
* * * * *
THE GAME
_A TRANSCRIPT FROM REAL LIFE_
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