I've heard of it. Wait a minute, Tommy." He was leaning over from his
chair and twirling the little revolving bookcase beside the desk, as he
spoke--not a large library was Carleton's, just a few technical books,
and his cherished Britannica. He pulled out a volume of the
encyclopedia, laid it upon his desk, and began to turn the leaves.
"Yes, here it is," he said, after a moment. "Listen"--and he commenced
to read rapidly:
"'The most common form of Daltonism'--that's color-blindness you know,
Tommy--'depends on the absence of the red sense. Great additions to
our knowledge of this subject, if only in confirmation of results
already deduced from theory, have been obtained in the last few years
by Holmgren, who has experimented on two persons, each of whom was
found to have _one color-blind eye_, the other being nearly normal."
"Color-blind!" spluttered the master mechanic.
"In one eye," said Carleton, sort of as though he were turning a
problem over in his mind. "That would account for it all, Tommy. As
far as I know, one doesn't go color-blind--one is born that way--and if
this is what's at the bottom of it, Owsley's been color-blind all his
life in one eye, and probably didn't know what was the matter. That
would account for his passing the tests, and would account for what
happened at Elbow Bend. It was the patch that did it--you remember
what he said--the light was white as the moon."
"And he's out!" stormed Regan. "Out for keeps--after forty years.
Say, d'ye know what this'll mean to Owsley--do you, eh, do you? It'll
be hell for him, Carleton--he thinks more of his engine than a woman
does of her child."
Carleton closed the volume and replaced it mechanically in the bookcase.
Regan's teeth met in his plug and jerked savagely at the tobacco.
"I wish to blazes you hadn't read that!" he muttered fiercely. "What's
to be done now?"
"I'm afraid there's only one thing to be done," Carleton answered
gravely. "Sentiment doesn't let us out--there's too many lives at
stake every time he takes out an engine. He'll have to try the color
test with a patch over the same eye he had it on that night. Perhaps,
after all, I'm wrong, and----"
"He's out!" said the master mechanic gruffly. "He's out--I don't need
any test to know that now. That's what's the matter, and no other
thing on earth. It's rough, damn rough, ain't it--after forty
years?"--and Regan, with a short laugh, strode to the window and stood
staring out at the choked railroad yards below him.
And Regan was right. Three weeks later, when he got out of bed, Owsley
took the color test under the queerest conditions that ever a railroad
man took it--with his right eye bandaged--and failed utterly.
But Owsley didn't quite seem to understand--and little Doctor McTurk,
the company surgeon, was badly worried, and had been all along. Owsley
was a long way from being the same Owsley he was before the accident.
Not physically--that way he was shaping up pretty well, but his head
seemed to bother him--he seemed to have lost his grip on a whole lot of
things. They gave him the test more to settle the point in their own
minds, but they knew before they gave it to him that it wasn't much use
as far as he was concerned one way or the other. There was more than a
mere matter of color wrong with Owsley now. And maybe that was the
kindest thing that could have happened to him, maybe it made it easier
for him since the colors barred him anyway from ever pulling a throttle
again--not to understand!
They tried to tell him he hadn't passed the color test--Regan tried to
tell him in a clumsy, big-hearted way, breaking it as easy as he
could--and Owsley laughed as though he were pleased--just laughed, and
with a glance at the clock and a jerky pull at his watch for
comparison, a way he had of doing, walked out of Riley's, the
trainmaster's office, and started across the tracks for the roundhouse.
Owsley's head wasn't working right--it was as though the mechanism was
running down--the memory kind of tapering off. But the 1601, his
engine--stuck. And it was train time when he walked out of Riley's
office that afternoon--the first afternoon he'd been out of bed and
Mrs. McCann's motherly hands since the night at Elbow Bend.
Perhaps you'll smile a little tolerantly at this, and perhaps you'll
say the story's "cooked." Well, perhaps! If you think that way about
it, you'll probably smile more broadly still, and with the same grounds
for a smile, before we make division and sign the train register at the
end of the run. Anyway, that afternoon, as Owsley, out for the first
time, walked a little shakily across the turntable and through the big
engine doors into the roundhouse, the 1601 was out for the first time
herself from the repair shops, and for the first time since the
accident was standing on the pit, blowing from a full head of steam,
and ready to move out and couple on for the mountain run west, as soon
as the Imperial Limited came in off the Prairie Division from the East.
Is it a coincidence to smile at? Yes? Well, then, there is more of
the same humor to come. They tell the story on the Hill Division this
way, those hard, grimy-handed men of the Rockies, in the cab, in the
caboose, in the smoker, if you get intimate enough with the conductor
or brakeman, in the roundhouse and in the section shanty--but they
never smile themselves when they tell it.
Paxley, big as two of Owsley, promoted from a local passenger run, had
been given the Imperial--and the 1601. He was standing by the
front-end, chatting with Clarihue, the turner, as Owsley came in.
Owsley didn't appear to notice either of the men--didn't answer either
of them as they greeted him cheerily. His face, that had grown white
from his illness, was tinged a little red with excitement, and his eyes
seemed trying to take in every single detail of the big mountain racer
all at once. He walked along to the gangway, his shoulders sort of
bracing further back all the time, and then with the old-time swing he
disappeared into the cab. He was out again in a minute with a
long-spouted oil can, and, just as he always did, started in for an oil
around.
Paxley and Clarihue looked at each other. And Paxley sort of fumbled
aimlessly with the peak of his cap, while Clarihue couldn't seem to get
the straps of his overalls adjusted comfortably. Brannigan, Owsley's
old fireman, joined them from the other side of the engine. None of
them spoke. Owsley went on oiling--making the round slowly, carefully,
head and shoulders hidden completely at times as he leaned in over the
rod, poking at the motion-gear. And Regan, who had followed Owsley,
coming in, got the thing in a glance--and swore fiercely deep down in
his throat.
Not much to choke strong men up and throw them into the "dead-center"?
Well, perhaps not. Just a railroad man for forty years, just an
engineer, and the best of them all--out!
Owsley finished his round, and, instead of climbing into the cab
through the opposite gangway, came back to the front-end and halted
before Jim Clarihue.
"I see you got that injector valve packed at last," said he
approvingly. "She looks cleaner under the guard-plates than I've seen
her for a long time, too. Give me the 'table, Jim."
Not one of them answered. Regan said afterward that he felt as though
there'd been a head-on smash somewhere inside of him. But Owsley
didn't seem to expect any answer. He went on down the side of the
locomotive, went in through the gangway, and the next instant the steam
came purring into the cylinders, just warming her up for a moment, as
Owsley always did before he moved out of the roundhouse.
It was Clarihue then who spoke--with a kind of catchy jerk:
"She's stiff from the shops. He ain't strong enough to hold her on the
'table."
Regan looked at Paxley--and tugged at his scraggly little brown
mustache.
"You'll have to get him out of there, Bob," he said gruffly, to hide
his emotion. "Get him out--gently."
The steam was coming now into the cylinders with a more businesslike
rush--and Paxley jumped for the cab. As he climbed in, Brannigan
followed, and in a sort of helpless way hung in the gangway behind him.
Owsley was standing up, his hand on the throttle, and evidently puzzled
a little at the stiffness of the reversing lever, that refused to budge
on the segment with what strength he had in one hand to give to it.
Paxley reached over and tried to loosen Owsley's hand on the throttle.
"Let me take her, Jake," he said.
Owsley stared at him for a moment in mingled perplexity and irritation.
"What in blazes would I let you take her for?" he snapped suddenly, and
attempted to shoulder Paxley aside. "Get out of here, and mind your
own business! Get out!" He snatched his wrist away from Paxley's
fingers and gave a jerk at the throttle--and the 1601 began to move.
The 'table wasn't set, and Paxley had no time for hesitation. More
roughly than he had any wish to do it, he brushed Owsley's hand from
the throttle and latched the throttle shut.
And then, quick as a cat, Owsley was on him.
It wasn't much of a fight--hardly a fight at all--Owsley, from three
weeks on his back, was dropping weak. But Owsley snatched up a spanner
that was lying on the seat, and smashed Paxley with it between the
eyes. Paxley was a big man physically--and a bigger man still where it
counts most and doesn't show--with the blood streaming down his face,
and half blinded, regardless of the blows that Owsley still tried to
rain upon him, he picked the engineer up in his arms like a baby, and
with Brannigan, dropping off the gangway and helping, got Owsley to the
ground.
Owsley hadn't been fit for excitement or exertion of that kind--for
_any_ kind of excitement or exertion. They took him back to his
boarding house, and Doctor McTurk screwed his eyes up over him in the
funny way he had when things looked critical, and Mrs. McCann nursed
him daytimes, and Carleton and Regan and two or three others took turns
sitting up with him nights--for a month. Then Owsley began to mend
again, and began to talk of getting back on the Limited run with the
1601--always the 1601. And most times he talked pretty straight,
too--as straight as any of the rest of them--only his memory seemed to
keep that queer sort of haze over it--up to the time of the accident it
seemed all right, but after that things blurred woefully.
Regan, Carleton and Doctor McTurk went into committee over it in the
super's office one afternoon just before Owsley was out of bed again.
"What d'ye say--h'm? What d'ye say, doc?" demanded Regan.
Doctor McTurk, scientific and professional in every inch of his little
body, lined his eyebrows up into a ferocious black streak across his
forehead, and talked medicine in medical terms into the superintendent
and the master mechanic for a good five minutes.
When he had finished, Carleton's brows were puckered, too, his face was
a little blank, and he tapped the edge of his desk with the end of his
pencil somewhat helplessly.
Regan tugged at both ends of his mustache and sputtered.
"What the blazes!" he growled. "Give it to us in plain railroading!
Has he got rights through--or hasn't he? Does he get better--or does
he not? H'm?"
"I don't know, I tell you!" retorted Doctor McTurk. "I don't know--and
that's flat. I've told you why a minute ago. I don't know whether
he'll ever be better in his head than he is now--otherwise he'll come
around all right."
"Well, what's to be done?" inquired Carleton.
"He's got to work for a living, I suppose--eh?" Doctor McTurk answered.
"And he can't run an engine any more on account of the colors, no
matter what happens. That's the state of affairs, isn't it?"
Carleton didn't answer; Regan only mumbled under his breath.
"Well then," submitted Doctor McTurk, "the best thing for him,
temporarily at least, to build him up, is fresh air and plenty of it.
Give him a job somewhere out in the open."
Carleton's eyebrows went up. He looked across at Regan questioningly.
"He wouldn't take it," said Regan slowly. "There's nothing to anything
for Owsley but the 1601."
"Wouldn't take it!" snapped the little doctor. "He's got to take it.
And if you care half what you pretend you do for him, you've got to see
that he does."
"How about construction work with McCann?" suggested Carleton. "He
likes McCann, and he's lived at their place for years now."
"Just the thing!" declared Doctor McTurk heartily. "Couldn't be
better."
Carleton looked at Regan again.
"You can handle him better than any one else, Tommy. Suppose you see
what you can do? And speaking of the 1601, how would it do to tell him
what's happened in the last month. Maybe he wouldn't think so much of
her as he does now."
"No!" exclaimed Doctor McTurk quickly. "Don't you do it!"
"No," said Regan, shaking his head. "It would make him worse. He'd
blame it on Paxley, and we'd have trouble on our hands before you could
bat an eyelash."
"Yes; perhaps you're right," agreed Carleton. "Well, then, try him on
the construction tack, Tommy."
And so Regan went that afternoon from the super's office over to Mrs.
McCann's short-order house, and up to Owsley's room.
"Well, how's Jake to-day?" he inquired, in his bluff, cheery way,
drawing a chair up beside the bed.
"I'm fine, Regan," said Owsley earnestly. "Fine! What day is this?"
"Thursday," Regan told him.
"Yes," said Owsley, "that's right--Thursday. Well, you can put me down
to take the old 1601 out Monday night. I'm figuring to get back on the
run Monday night, Regan."
Regan ran his hand through his short-cropped hair, twisted a little
uneasily in his chair--and coughed to fill in the gap.
"I wouldn't be in a hurry about it, if I were you, Jake," he said. "In
fact, that's what I came over to have a little talk with you about. We
don't think you're strong enough yet for the cab."
"Who don't?" demanded Owsley antagonistically.
"The doctor and Carleton and myself--we were just speaking about it."
"Why ain't I?" demanded Owsley again.
"Why, good Lord, Jake," said Regan patiently, "you've been sick--dashed
near two months. A man can't expect to get out of bed after a lay-off
like that and start right in again before he gets his strength back.
You know that as well as I do."
"Mabbe I do, and mabbe I don't," said Owsley, a little uncertainly.
"How'm I going to get strong?"
"Well," replied Regan, "the doc says open-air work to build you up, and
we were thinking you might like to put in a month, say, with Bill
McCann up on the Elk River work--helping him boss Polacks, for
instance."
Owsley didn't speak for a moment, he seemed to be puzzling something
out; then, still in a puzzled way:
"And then what about after the month?"
"Why then," said Regan, "then"--he reached for his hip pocket and his
plug, pulled out the plug, picked the heart-shaped tin tag off with his
thumb nail, decided not to take a bite, and put the blackstrap back in
his pocket again. "Why then," said he, "you'll--you ought to be all
right again."
Owsley sat up in bed.
"You playing straight with me, Regan?" he asked slowly.
"Sure," said Regan gruffly. "Sure, I am."
Owsley passed his hand two or three times across his eyes.
"I don't quite seem to get the signals right on what's happened," he
said. "I guess I've been pretty sick. I kind of had a feeling a
minute ago that you were trying to side-track me, but if you say you
ain't, I believe you. I ain't going to be side-tracked. When I quit
for keeps, I quit in the cab with my boots on--no way else. I'll tell
you something, Regan. When I go out, I'm going out with my hand on the
throttle, same as it's been for more'n twenty years. And me and the
old 1601, we're going out together--that's the way I want to go when
the time comes--and that's the way I'm going. I've known it for a long
time."
"How do you mean you've known it for a long time?" Regan swallowed a
lump in his throat, as he asked the question--Owsley's mind seemed to
be wandering a little.
"I dunno," said Owsley, and his hand crept to his head again. "I
dunno--I just know." Then abruptly: "I got to get strong for the old
1601, ain't I? That's right. I'll go up there--only you give me your
word I get the 1601 back after the month."
Regan's eyes, from the floor, lifted and met Owsley's steadily.
"You bet, Jake!" he said.
"Give me your hand on it," said Owsley happily.
And Regan gripped the engineer's hand.
Regan left the room a moment or two after that, and on his way
downstairs he brushed the back of his hand across his eyes.
"What the hell!" he growled to himself. "I had to lie to him, didn't
I?"
And so, on the Monday following, Owsley went up to the new Elk River
road work, and--But just a moment, we've over-run our holding orders a
bit, and we've got to back for the siding. The 1601 crosses us here.
Superstition is a queer thing, isn't it? Speaking generally, we look
on it somewhat from the viewpoint of the old adage that all men are
mortal save ourselves; that is, we can accept, with more or less
tolerant condescension, the existence of superstition in others, and,
with more or less tolerant condescension, put it down to ignorance--in
others. But we're not superstitious ourselves, so we've got to have
something better to go on than that, as far as the 1601 is concerned.
Well, the 1601 was pretty badly shaken up that night in the spill at
Elbow Bend, and when they overhauled her in the shops, while they made
her look like new, perhaps they missed something down deep in her
vitals in the doing of it; perhaps she was weakened and strained where
they didn't know she was; perhaps they didn't get clean to the bottom
of all her troubles; perhaps they made a bad job of a job that looked
all right under the fresh paint and the gold leaf. There's nothing
superstitious about that, is there? It's logical and reasonable enough
to satisfy even the most hypercritical crank amongst us
anti-superstitionists--isn't it?
But that doesn't go in the cabs, and the roundhouses, and the section
shanties on the Hill Division. You could talk and reason out there
along that line until you were blue in the face from shortness of
breath, and they'd listen to you while they wiped their hands on a hunk
of waste--they'd listen, but they've got their own notions.
It was the night at Elbow Bend that Owsley and the 1601 together first
went wrong; and both went into hospital together and came out together
to the day--the 1601 for her old run through the mountains, and Owsley
with no other idea in life possessing his sick brain than to make the
run with her. Owsley had a relapse that day--and that day, twenty
miles west of Big Cloud, the 1601 blew her cylinder head off. And from
then on, while Owsley lay in bed again at Mrs. McCann's, the 1601, when
she wasn't in the shops from an endless series of mishaps, was turning
the hair gray on a despatcher or two, and had got most of Paxley's
nerve.
But what's the use of going into all the details--there was enough
paper used up in the specification repair-sheets! Going slow up a
grade and around a curve that was protected with ninety-pound
guard-rails, her pony truck jumped the steel where a baby carriage
would have held the right of way; she broke this, she broke that, she
was always breaking something; and rare was the night that she didn't
limp into division dragging the grumbling occupants of the mahogany
sleepers after her with her schedule gone to smash. And then, finally,
putting a clincher on it all, she ended up, when she was running fifty
miles an hour, by shedding a driving wheel, and nearly killing Paxley
as the rod ripped through and through, tearing the right-hand side of
the cab into mangled wreckage--and that finished her for the Limited
run. Do you recall that Owsley, too, was finished for the Limited run?
Superstition? You can figure it any way you like--they've got their
own notions on the Hill Division.
When the 1601 came out of the shops again after that, the marks of
authority's disapprobation were heavy upon her--the gold leaf of the
passenger flyer was gone; the big figures on the tender were only
yellow paint.
Regan scowled at her as they ran her into the yards.
"Damn her!" said Regan fervently; and then, as he thought of Owsley, he
scowled deeper, and yanked at his mustache. "Say," said Regan heavily,
"it's queer, ain't it? Blamed queer--h'm--when you come to think of
it?"
And so, while the 1601, disfranchised, went to hauling extra freights,
kind of a misfit doing spare jobs, anything that turned up, no regular
run any more, Owsley, kind of a misfit, too, without any very definite
duties, because there wasn't anything very definite they dared trust
him with, went up on the Elk River work with Bill McCann, the husband
of Mrs. McCann, who kept the short-order house.
Owsley told McCann, as he had told Regan, that he was only up there
getting strong again for the 1601--and he went around on the
construction work whistling and laughing like a schoolboy, and happy as
a child--getting strong again for the 1601!
McCann couldn't see anything very much the matter with Owsley--except
that Owsley was happy. He studied the letter Regan had sent him, and
watched the engineer, and scratched at his bullet head, and blinked
fast with his gray Irish eyes.
"Faith," said McCann, "it's them that's off their chumps--not Owsley.
Hark to him singin' out there like a lark! An', bedad, ut's mesilf'll
tell 'em so!'"
And he did. He wrote his opinion in concise, forceful, misspelled
English on the back of a requisition slip, and sent it to Regan. Regan
didn't say much--just choked up a little when he read it. McCann
wasn't strong on diagnosis.
It was still early spring when Owsley went to the new loop they were
building around the main line to tap a bit of the country south, and
the chinook, blowing warm, had melted most of the snow, and the creeks,
rivers and sluices were running full--the busiest time in all the year
for the trackmen and section hands. It was a summer's job, the
loop--if luck was with them--and the orders were to push the work, the
steel was to be down before the snow flew again. That was the way it
was put up to McCann when he first moved into construction camp, a
short while before Owsley joined him.
"Then give me the stuff," said McCann. "Shoot the material along, an'
don't lave me bitin' me finger nails for the want av ut--d'ye moind?"
So the Big Cloud yards, too, had orders--standing orders to rush out
all material for the Elk River loop as fast as it came in from the East.
In a way, of course, that was how it happened--from the standing
orders. It was just the kind of work the 1601 was hanging around
waiting to do--the odd jobs--pulling the extras. Ordinarily, perhaps,
somebody would have thought of it, and maybe they wouldn't have sent
her out--maybe they would. You can't operate a railroad wholly on
sentiment--and there were ten cars of steel and as many more of ties
and conglomerate supplies helping to choke up the Big Cloud yards when
they should have been where they were needed a whole lot more--in
McCann's construction camp.
But there had been two days of bad weather in the mountains, two days
of solid rain, track troubles, and troubles generally, and what with
one thing and another, the motive-power department had been taxed to
its limit. The first chance they got in a lull of pressure, not the
storm, they sent the material west with the only spare engine that
happened to be in the roundhouse at the time--the 1601--and never
thought of Owsley. Regan might have, would have, if he had known it;
but Regan didn't know it--then. Regan wasn't handling the operating.
Perhaps, after all, they needn't have been in a belated hurry that
day--McCann and his foreigners had done nothing but hug their shanties
and listen to the rain washing the ballast away for two days and a
half, until, as it got dark on that particular day, barely a week after
Owsley had come to the work, they listened, by way of variation, to the
chime whistle of an engine that came ringing down with the wind.
McCann and Owsley shared a little shanty by themselves, and McCann was
trying to initiate Owsley into the mysteries of that grand old game so
dear to the hearts of Irishmen--the game of forty-five. But at the
first sound of the whistle, the cards dropped from Owsley's hands, and
he jumped to his feet.
"D'ye hear that! D'ye hear that!" he cried.
"An' fwhat av ut?" inquired McCann. "Ut'll be the material we'd be
hung up for, if 'twere not for the storm."
Owsley leaned across the table, his head turned a little sideways in a
curious listening attitude--leaned across the table and gripped
McCann's shoulders.