one on the Hill Division would have picked out for a marrying man; and,
equally true the other way round, about the last man they would have
picked out as one a pretty girl would want to marry. With her, maybe,
it was the strength of the man, since they say that comes first with
women; with him, maybe, it was just the trim little brown-eyed,
brown-haired figure that could ride with the grace of a fairy. Anyway,
the only thing about it that didn't surprise any one was the fact that,
when it came, it came as sudden and quick as a head-on smash around a
ninety-degree curve. That was Flannagan's way, for Flannagan, if he
was nothing else, was impulsive.
That night Flannagan cursed the circus; the next day he saw Daisy
MacQueen riding in the street parade and--but this isn't the story of
Flannagan's courtship, not but that the courtship of any man like
Flannagan would be worth the telling--only there are other things.
At first, Big Cloud winked and chuckled slyly to itself; and then, when
the circus left and Flannagan got a week off and left with it, it
guffawed outright--but when, at the end of that week, Flannagan brought
back Mrs. Flannagan, _nee_ Daisy MacQueen, Big Cloud stuck its tongue
in its cheek, wagged its head and waited developments.
This is the story of the developments.
Maybe that same impulsiveness of Flannagan's, that could be blind and
bullheaded, coupled with a passion that was like a devil's when
aroused, was to blame; maybe the women of Big Cloud, following the lead
of Mrs. MacAloon, the engineer's wife and the leader of society
circles, who shook her fiery red head and turned up her Celtic nose
disdainfully at Daisy MacQueen, had something to do with it; maybe
Daisy herself had a little pride--but what's the use of speculating?
It all goes back to the same beginning--opinions differ.
Tongues wagged; Flannagan listened--that's the gist of it. But, once
for all, let it be said and understood that Daisy MacQueen was as
straight as they make them. She hadn't been brought up the way Mrs.
MacAloon and her coterie had, and she liked to laugh, liked to play,
liked to live, and not exist in a humdrum way ever over washtubs and a
cook stove--though, all credit to her who hadn't been used to them, she
never shirked one nor the other. The women's ideas about circuses and
circus performers were, putting it mildly, puritanical; but the men
liked Daisy MacQueen--and took no pains to hide it. They clustered
around her, and, before long, she ruled them all imperially with a nod
of her pretty head; and, as a result, the women's ideas from
puritanical became more so--which is human nature, Big Cloud or
anywhere else.
At first, Flannagan was proud of the little wife he had brought to Big
Cloud--proud of her for the very attitude adopted toward her by his
mates; but, as the months went by, gradually the wagging tongues got in
their work, gradually Flannagan began to listen, and the jealousy that
was his by nature above the jealousy of most men commenced to smolder
into flame. Just a rankling jealousy, directed against no one in
particular--just jealousy. Things up at the little house off Main
Street where the Flannagans lived weren't as harmonious as they had
been.
In the beginning, Daisy, not treating the matter seriously, answered
Flannagan with a laugh; finally, she answered him not at all. And that
stage, unfortunately far from unique in other homes than Flannagan's
the world over, was reached where only some one act, word or deed was
needed to bring matters to a head.
Perhaps, after all, there was poetic justice in Flannagan's cursing of
the circus, for it was the circus that supplied that one thing needed.
Not that the circus came back to town--it didn't--but a certain round,
little, ferret-eyed, short, pompadour-haired, waxed-mustached, perfumed
Signor Ferraringi, the ringmaster, did.
Ferraringi was a scoundrel--what he got he deserved, there was never
any doubt about that; but that night Flannagan, when he walked into the
house, saw only Ferraringi on his knees before Daisy, heard only
impassioned, flowery words, and, in the blind fury that transformed him
from man to beast, the scorn, contempt and horror in Daisy's eyes, the
significance of the rigid little figure with tight-clenched hands, was
lost. Ferraringi had been in love with Daisy. Flannagan knew that,
and his seething brain remembered that. The circus people had told him
so; Daisy had told him so; Ferraringi had told him so with a snarl and
a threat--and he had laughed--_then_.
One instant Flannagan hung upon the threshold. He was not a pretty
sight. Back from a wreck, he was still in his overalls, and these were
smeared with blood--four carloads of steers had gone into premature
shambles in the ditch. One instant Flannagan hung there, his face
working convulsively--and then he jumped. His left hand locked into
the collar of the ringmaster's coat, his arm straightened like the
tautening chains of his own derrick crane, and, as the other came off
his knees and upright from the yank, Flannagan's right swung a terrific
full-arm smash that, landing a little above the jaw, plastered one side
of that tonsorial work of art, the waxed and curled mustache, flat into
Ferraringi's cheek.
Ferraringi's answer, as he wriggled free, was a torrent of
malediction--and a blinding flash. Daisy screamed. The shot missed,
but the powder singed Flannagan's face.
It was the only shot that Ferraringi fired! With a roar, high-pitched
like the maddened trumpeting of an elephant amuck, Flannagan with a
single blow sent the revolver sailing ceiling high--then his arms, like
steel piston rods, worked in and out, and his fists drummed an awful,
merciless tattoo upon the ringmaster.
The smoke from the shot filled the room with pungent odor. Chairs and
furniture, overturned, broken, crashed to the floor. Daisy, wild-eyed,
with parted lips, dumb with terror, crouched against the wall, her
hands clasped to her breast--but before Flannagan's eyes all was
red--_red_.
A battered, bruised, reeling, staggering form before him curled up
suddenly and slid in a heap at his feet. Flannagan, with groping hands
and twitching fingers, reached for it--and then, with a rush, other
forms, many of them, came between him and what was on the floor.
It was very good for Ferraringi, very good, for that was all that saved
him--Flannagan was seeing only red.
The neighbors lifted the stunned ringmaster, limp as rags, to his feet.
Flannagan brushed his great fist once across his eyes in a half-dazed
way, and glared at the roomful of people. Suddenly, he heaved forward,
pushing those nearest him violently toward the door.
"Get out of here!" he bellowed hoarsely. "Get out, curse you, d'ye
hear! Get out!"
There were men in that little crowd, men besides the three or four
women, Mrs. MacAloon amongst them; men not reckoned overfaint of spirit
in Big Cloud by those who knew, but _they_ knew Flannagan, and they
went--went, half carrying, half dragging the ringmaster, oiled and
perfumed now in a fashion grimly different than before.
"Get out!" roared Flannagan again to hurry them, and, as the last one
disappeared, he whirled on Daisy. "And you, too!" he snarled. "Get
out!"
Terrified, shaken by the scene as she was, his words, their
implication, their injustice, whipped her into scorn and anger.
White-lipped, she stared at him for an instant.
"You dare," she burst out, "you dare to----"
"_Get out!_" Flannagan's voice in his passion was a thick, stumbling,
guttural whisper. "Get out! Go back to your circus--go where you
like! Get out!" His hand dove into his pocket, and its contents,
bills and coins, what there was of them, he flung upon the table. "Get
out--as far as all I've got will take you!"
Daisy MacQueen was proud--perhaps, though, not above the pride of other
women. The blood was hot in her cheeks; her big, brown eyes had a
light in them near to that light with which she had faced Ferraringi
but a short time before; her breath came in short, hard, little gasps.
For a full minute she did not speak--and then the words came cold as
death.
"Some day--some day, Michael Flannagan, you'll get what you deserve."
"That's what I'm gettin' now--what I deserve," he flung back; then,
halting in the doorway: "You understand, eh? Get out! I'm lettin' you
down easy. Get out of Big Cloud! Get out before I'm back. Number
Fifteen 'll be in in an hour--you'd better take her."
Flannagan stepped out on the street. A curious little group had
collected two houses down in front of Mrs. MacAloon's. Flannagan
glanced at them, muttered a curse; and then, head down between his
shoulders, clenched fists rammed in his pockets, he headed in the other
direction toward Main Street. Five minutes later, he pushed the
swinging doors of the Blazing Star open, and walked down the length of
the room to where Pete MacGuire, the proprietor, lounged across the bar.
"Pete"--he jerked out his words hoarsely--"next Tuesday's pay day--is
my face good till then?"
MacGuire looked at him curiously. The news of the fracas had not yet
reached the Blazing Star.
"Why, sure," said he. "Sure it is, Flannagan, if you want it.
What's----"
"Then let 'em come my way," Flannagan rapped out, with a savage laugh;
"an' let 'em come--_fast_."
Flannagan was the wrecking boss. A hard man, Regan had called him, and
he was--a product of the wild, rough, pioneering life, one of those men
who had followed the grim-faced, bearded corps of engineers as they
pitted their strength against the sullen gray of the mighty Rockies
from the eastern foothills to the plains of the Sierras, fighting every
inch of their way with indomitable perseverance and daring over chasms
and gorges, through tunnels and cuts, in curves and levels and grades,
against obstacles that tried their souls, against death itself, taping
the thin steel lines they left behind them with their own blood. Hard?
Yes, Flannagan was hard. Un-cultured, rough, primal, he undoubtedly
was. A brute man, perhaps, full of the elemental--fiery, hot-headed,
his passions alone swayed him. That side of Flannagan, the years, in
the very environment in which he had lived them, had developed to the
full--the other side had been untouched. What Flannagan did that night
another might not have done--or he might. The judging of men is a
grave business best let alone.
Flannagan let go his hold then; not at once, but gradually. That night
spent in the Blazing Star was the first of others, others that followed
insidiously, each closer upon the former's heels. Daisy had gone--had
gone that night--where, he did not know, and told himself he did not
care. He grew moody, sullen, uncompanionable. Big Cloud took
sides--the women for Flannagan; the men for the wife. Flannagan hated
the women, avoided the men--and went to the Blazing Star.
There was only one result--the inevitable one. Regan, kindly for all
his gruffness, understanding in a way, stood between Flannagan and the
super and warned Flannagan oftener than most men were warned on the
Hill Division. Nor were his warnings altogether without effect.
Flannagan would steady up--temporarily--maybe for a week--than off
again. Steady up just long enough to keep putting off and postponing
the final reckoning. And then one day, some six months after Daisy
Flannagan had gone away, the master mechanic warned him for the last
time.
"I'm through with you, Flannagan," he said. "Understand that? I'm out
from under, and next time you'll talk to Carleton--and what he'll have
to say won't take long--about two seconds. You know Carleton, don't
you? Well, then--what?"
It was just a week to a day after that that Flannagan cut loose and
wild again. He made a night and a day of it, and then another. After
that, though by that time Flannagan was quite unaware of the fact, some
of the boys got him home, dumped him on his bed and left him to his
reflections--which were a blank.
Flannagan slept it off, and it took about eighteen hours to do it.
When he came to himself he was in a humor that, far from being happy,
was atrocious; likewise, there were bodily ailments--Flannagan's head
was bad, and felt as though a gang of boiler-makers, working against
time, were driving rivets in it. He procured himself a bracer and went
back to bed. This resulted in a decidedly improved physical condition,
but when he arose late in the afternoon any improvement there might
have been in his mental state was speedily dissipated--Flannagan found
a letter shoved under his door, postmarked the day before, and with it
an official manila envelope from the super's office.
He opened the letter and read it--read it again while his jaws worked
and the red surged in a passion into his face; then, with an oath, he
tore it savagely into shreds, flung the bits on the floor and stamped
upon them viciously with his heavy nail-heeled boot.
The official manila he did not open at all. A guess was enough for
that--a curt request to present himself in the super's office,
probably. Flannagan glared at it, then grabbed his hat, and started
down for the station. There was no idea of shirking it; Flannagan
wasn't that kind at any time, and just now his mood, if anything,
spurred him on rather than held him back. Flannagan welcomed the
prospect of a row about anything with anybody at that moment--if only a
war of words.
Carleton's office was upstairs over the ticket office and next to the
despatchers' room then, for the station did duty for headquarters and
everything else--not now, it's changed now, and there's a rather
imposing gray-stone structure where the old wooden shack used to be;
but, no matter, that's the way it was then, for those were the early
days when the road was young and in the making.
Flannagan reached the station, climbed the stairs, and pushed
Carleton's door open with little ceremony.
"You want to see me?" he demanded gruffly, as he stepped inside.
Carleton, sitting at his desk, looked up and eyed the wrecking boss
coolly for a minute.
"No, Flannagan," he said curtly. "I don't."
"Then what in blazes d'ye send for me for?" Flannagan flung out in a
growl.
"See here, Flannagan," snapped Carleton, "I've no time to talk to you.
You can read, can't you? You're out!"
Flannagan blinked.
"Was that what was in the letter?"
"It was--just that," said Carleton grimly.
"Hell!" Flannagan's short laugh held a jeering note of contempt. "I
didn't open it--or mabbe I'd have known, eh?"
Carleton's eyes narrowed.
"Well, you know now, don't you?"
"Sure!" Flannagan scowled and licked his lips. "I'm out, thrown out,
and----"
"Then, get out!" Carleton cut in sharply. "You've had more chances
than any man ever got before from me, thanks to Regan; but you've had
your last, and talking won't do you any good now."
Flannagan stepped nearer to the desk.
"Talkin'! Who's talkin'?" he flared in sudden bravado. "Didn't I tell
you I didn't read your damned letter? Didn't I, eh, didn't I? D'ye
think I'd crawl to you or any man for a job? I'm out, am I? D'ye
think I came down to ask you to take me back? I'd see you rot first!
T'hell with the job--see!"
Few men on the Hill Division ever saw Carleton lose his temper--it
wasn't Carleton's way of doing things. He didn't lose it now, but his
words were like trickling drops of ice water.
"Sometimes, Flannagan," he said, "to make a man like you understand one
has to use your language. You say you'd see me rot before you asked me
for the job back again--very well. I'd rot before I gave it to you
after this. Now, will you get out--or be thrown out?"
For a moment it looked as though Flannagan was going to mix it there
and then. His eyes went ugly, and his fists, horny and gnarled,
doubled into knots, as he glared viciously at the super.
Carleton, who was afraid of no man, or any aggregation of men, his face
stern-set and hard, leaned back in his swivel chair and waited.
A tense minute passed. Then Flannagan's better sense weighed down the
balance, and, without so much as a word, he turned, went out of the
room, and stamped heavily down the stairs.
Goaded into it, or through unbridled, ill-advised impulse, men say rash
things sometimes--afterward, both Flannagan and Carleton were to
remember their own and the other's words--and the futility of them.
Nor was it to be long afterward--without warning, without so much as a
premonition, quick and sudden as doom, things happen in railroading.
It was half past five when Flannagan went out of the super's office; it
was but ten minutes later when, before he had decanted a drop from the
bottle he had just lifted to fill his glass, he slapped the bottle back
on the bar of the Blazing Star with a sudden jerk. From down the
street in the direction of the yards boomed three long blasts from the
shop whistle--the wrecking signal. It came again and again. Men
around him began to move. Chairs from the little tables were pushed
hurriedly back. The bell in the English chapel took up the alarm. It
stirred the blood in Flannagan's veins, and whipped it to his cheeks in
fierce excitement--it was the call to arms!
He turned from the bar--and stopped like a man stunned. There had been
times in the last six months when he had not responded to that call,
because, deaf to everything, he had not _heard_ it. Then, it had been
his call--the call for the wrecking crew, and, first of all, for the
wrecking boss; now--there was a dazed look on his face, and his lips
worked queerly. It was not for him, he was barred--_out_.
Slowly he turned back to the bar, rested his foot on the rail, and,
with a mirthless laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, reached for the
bottle again. He poured the whisky glass full to the brim--and laughed
once more and shrugged his shoulders as his fingers curled around it.
He raised the glass--and held it poised halfway to his lips.
Quick-running steps came up the street, the swinging doors of the
Blazing Star burst open and a call boy shoved in his head.
"Wreckers out! Wreckers out!" he bawled. "Number Eighty's gone to
glory in Spider Cut. Everybody's killed"--and he was gone, a
grimy-faced harbinger of death and disaster; gone, speeding with his
summons to wherever men were gathered throughout the little town.
An instant Flannagan stood motionless as one transformed from flesh to
sculptured clay--then the glass slid from his fingers and crashed into
tinkling splinters on the floor. The liquor splashed his boots.
Number Eighty was the eastbound Coast Express! Like one who moves in
unknown places through the dark, so, then, Flannagan moved toward the
door. Men looked at him in amazement, and stood aside to let him pass.
Something was tugging at his heart, beating at his brain, impelling him
forward; a force irresistible, that, in its first, sudden, overwhelming
surge he could not understand, could not grasp, could not focus into
concrete form--could only obey.
He passed out through the doors, and then for the first time a cry rang
from his lips. There were no halting, stumbling, uncertain steps now.
Men running down the street called to Flannagan as he sped past them.
Flannagan made no answer, did not look their way; his face, strained
and full of dumb anguish, was set toward the station.
He gained the platform and raced along it. Shouts came from across the
yards. Up and down the spurs fluttered the fore-shortened little yard
engine, coughing sparks and wheezing from her exhaust as she bustled
the wrecking train together; lamps swung and twinkled like fireflies,
for it was just opening spring and the dark fell early; and in front of
the roundhouse, the 1014, blowing hard from her safety under a full
head of steam, like a thoroughbred that scents the race, was already on
the table.
With a heave of his great shoulders and a sweep of his arms, Flannagan
won through the group of trainmen, shop hands, and loungers clustered
around the door, and took the stairs four at a leap.
A light burned in the super's office, but the voices came from the
despatchers' room. And there in the doorway Flannagan halted--halted
just for a second's pause while his eyes swept the scene before him.
Regan, the master mechanic, by the window, was mouthing curses under
his breath as men do in times of stress; Spence, the despatcher,
white-faced, the hair straggling into his eyes, was leaning over the
key under the green-shaded lamp, over the key clearing the line while
the sounder clicked in his ears of ruin and of lives gone out. Harvey,
the division engineer, was there, pulling savagely at a brier with
empty bowl. And at the despatcher's elbow stood Carleton, a grim
commander, facing tidings of disaster, his shoulders braced and bent a
little forward as though to take the blow, his jaws clamped tight till
the lips, compressed, were bloodless, and the chiselled lines on his
face told of the bitterness in his heart.
Then Flannagan stepped forward.
"Carleton," he cried, and his words came like panting sobs, "Carleton,
give me back my job."
It was no place for Flannagan.
Carleton's cup was already full to overflowing, and he swung on
Flannagan like a flash. His hand lifted and pointed to the door.
"Get out of here!" he said between his teeth.
"Carleton," cried Flannagan again, and his arms went out in
supplication toward the super, "Carleton, give me back my job--give it
back to me for to-night--just for to-night."
"No!" the single word came from Carleton's lips like a thunder clap.
Flannagan shivered a little and shrank back.
"Just for to-night," he mumbled hoarsely. "Just for----"
"No!" Carleton's voice rang hard as flint. "I tell you, no! Get out
of here!"
Harvey moved suddenly, threateningly, toward Flannagan--and, as
suddenly, Flannagan, roused by the act, brushed the division engineer
aside like a plaything, sprang forward, and, with a quick, fierce grip,
caught Carleton's arms and pinioned them, vise-like, to his sides.
"And I tell you, yes!" his voice rose dominant with the power, the will
that shook him now to the depths of his turbulent soul. As a man who
knows no law, no obstacle, no restraint, as a man who would batter down
the gates of hell itself to gain his end, so then was Flannagan. "I
tell you, yes! I tell you, yes! _My wife and baby's in that wreck
to-night?_"
Turmoil, shouts, the short, quick intermittent hiss of steam as the
1014, her cylinder cocks open, backed down to the platform, the clash
of coupling cars, a jumbled medley of sounds, floated up from the yard
without--but within the little room, the chattering sounder for the
moment stilled, there fell a silence as of death, and no man among them
moved or spoke.
Flannagan, gray-faced, gasping, his mighty grip still on Carleton, his
head thrown forward close to the other's, stared into the super's
face--and, for a long minute, in the twitching muscles of the big
wrecker's face, in the look that man reads seldom in his fellows' eyes,
Carleton drew the fearful picture, lived the awful story that the
babbling wire had told. "Royal" Carleton, square man and big of heart,
his voice broke.
"God help you, Flannagan--go."
No word came from Flannagan's lips--only a queer choking sound, as his
hands dropped to his sides--only a queer choking sound, as he turned
suddenly and jumped for the door.
On the stairs, Dorsay, the driver of the 1014, coming up for his
orders, passed Flannagan.
"Bad spill, I hear," growled the engineer, as he went by. "The five
hundred and five's pony truck jumped the rails on the lower curve and
everything's in the ditch. Old Burke's gone out and a heap of the
passengers with him. I----"
Flannagan heard no more--he was on the platform now. Coupled behind
the derrick crane and the tool car were two coaches, improvised
ambulances, and into these latter, instead of the tool car, the men of
the wrecking gang were piling--a bad smash brought luxury for them.
Shouts, cries, hubbub, a babel of voices were around him, but in his
brain, repeated and repeated over and over again, lived only a phrase
from the letter he had torn to pieces, stamped under heel that
afternoon--the words were swimming before his eyes: "Michael, dear,
we've both been wrong; I'm bringing _baby_ back on the Coast Express
Friday night."