"They're pretty good men," he said shortly. "And there's no blame
coming to them for this, Mr. Campbell, if that's what you mean."
H. Herrington Campbell's fingers went tentatively to his vest pocket
for a cigar, extracted the broken remains of one--the relic of his own
collision with the back of a car seat where the smash had hurled
him--and threw it away with an icy smile.
"Blame?" expostulated H. Herrington Campbell ironically. "I don't want
to blame any one; I'm looking for some one to congratulate--on the
worst run division and the most pitiful exemplification of
near-railroading I've had any experience with in twenty years--Mr.
Regan."
For a full minute Regan did not speak. He couldn't. And then the
words came away with a roar from the bluff little master mechanic.
"By glory!" he exploded. "We don't take that kind of talk out here
even from general managers--we don't have to! That's straight enough,
ain't it? Well, I'll give you some more of it, now I've started. I
don't like you. I don't like that pained look on your face. I've been
filling up on you all morning, and you don't digest well. We don't
stand for anything as raw as that from any man on earth. And you
needn't hunt around for any greased words, as far as I'm concerned, to
do your firing with--you can have my resignation as master mechanic of
the worst run division you've seen in twenty years right now, if you
want it--h'm?"
H. Herrington Campbell was gallingly preoccupied.
"How long are we stalled here for--the rest of the night?" he inquired
irrelevantly.
Regan stared at him a moment--still apoplectic.
"I've ordered them to run the forward end of the freight to Eagle Pass,
and take you down," he said, choking a little. "There's a couple of
flats left whole that you can pile yourselves and your baggage on, and
down there they'll make up a new train for you."
"Oh, very good," said H. Herrington Campbell curtly.
And ten minutes later, the Directors' Special, metamorphosed into a
string of box cars with two flats trailing on the rear, on which the
newly elected board of the Transcontinental sat, some on their baggage,
and some with their legs hanging over the sides, pulled away from the
wreck and headed down the grade for Eagle Pass. Funny, the transition
from the luxurious leather upholstery of the observation to an angry,
chattering mob of magnates, clinging to each others' necks as they
jounced on the flooring of an old flat? Well perhaps--it depends on
how you look at it. Regan looked at it--and Regan grinned for the pure
savagery that was in him.
"But I guess," said Regan to himself, as he watched them go, "I guess
mabbe I'll be looking for that job on the Penn after all--h'm?"
Everybody talked about the Directors' Special run--naturally. And,
naturally, everybody wondered what was going to come from it. It was
an open secret that Regan had handed one to the general manager without
any candy coating on the pill, and the Hill Division sort of looked to
see the master mechanic's head fall and Regan go. But Regan did not
go; and, for that matter, nothing else happened--for a while.
Carleton came back and got the rights of it from Regan--and said
nothing to Regan about his reply to H. Herrington Campbell's letter, in
which he had stated that if they were looking for a new master mechanic
there would be a division superintendency vacant at the same time. The
day man at Mitre Peak quit railroading--without waiting for an
investigation. Old Dan MacCaffery and Billy Dawes went back to their
regular run with the 304. And the division generally settled down
again to its daily routine--and from the perspective of distance, if
the truth be told, got to grinning reminiscently at the run the Big
Bugs had had for their money.
Only the grin came too soon.
A week or so passed, pay day came and went--and the day after that a
general order from the East hit the Hill Division like a landslide.
Carleton slit the innocent-looking official manila open with his paper
knife, chucked the envelope in the wastebasket, read the communication,
read it again with gathering brows--and sent for Regan. He handed the
form to the master mechanic without a word, as the latter entered the
office.
Regan read it--read it again, as his chief had--and two hectic spots
grew bright on his cheeks. It was brief, curt, cold--for the good of
the service, safety, and operating efficiency, it stated. In a word,
on and after the first of the month the services of employees over the
age of sixty years would no longer be required. Those were early days
in railroading; not a word about pensions, not a word about half-pay;
just sixty years and--out!
The paper crackled in Regan's clenched fists; Carleton was beating a
tattoo on his teeth with the mouthpiece of his pipe--there wasn't
another sound in the office for a moment. Then Regan spoke--and his
voice broke a little.
"It's a damned shame!" he said, through his teeth. "It's that skunk
Campbell."
"How many men does it affect?" asked Carleton, looking through the
window.
"I don't know," said the little master mechanic bitterly; "but I know
one that it'll hit harder than all the rest put together--and that's
old Dan MacCaffery."
There was hurt in the super's gray eyes, as he looked at the
big-hearted little master mechanic's working face.
"I was thinking of old Dan myself," he said, in his low, quiet way.
"He hasn't a cent!" stormed Regan. "Not a cent--not a thing on earth
to fall back on. Think of it! Him and that little old missus of his,
God bless her sweet old face, that have been scrimping all these years
to pay back what that blasted kid robbed out of the bank. It ain't
right, Carleton--it ain't right--it's hell, that's what it is! Sixty
years! There ain't a better man ever pulled a latch in a cab, there
ain't a better one pulling one anywhere to-day than old Dan MacCaffery.
And--and I kind of feel as though I were to blame for this, in a way."
"To blame?" repeated Carleton.
"I put him on that run, and Riley put old Pete Chartrand on. It kind
of stuck them under Campbell's nose. The two of them together, the two
oldest men--and the blamedest luck that ever happened on a run! H'm?"
Carleton shook his head.
"I don't think it would have made any difference in the long run,
Tommy. I told you there'd be changes as soon as the new board got
settled in the saddle."
Regan tugged viciously at his scraggly brown mustache.
"Mabbe," he growled fiercely; "but Campbell's seen old Dan now, or I'd
put one over on the pup--I would that! There ain't any birth register
that I ever heard of out here in the mountains, and if Dan said he was
fifty I'd take his word for it."
"Dan wouldn't say that," said Carleton quietly, "not even to hold his
job."
"No, of course he wouldn't!" spluttered the fat little master mechanic,
belligerently inconsistent. "Who said he would? And, anyway, it
wouldn't do any good. Campbell asked him his age, and Dan told him.
And--and--oh, what's the use! I know it, I know I'm only talking,
Carleton."
Neither of them said anything for a minute; then Regan, pacing up and
down the room, spoke again:
"It's a clean sweep, eh? Train crews, engine crews, everything--there
ain't any other job for him. Over sixty is out everywhere. A white
man--one of the whitest"--Regan sort of said it to himself--"old Dan
MacCaffery. Who's to tell him?"
Carleton drew a match, with a long crackling noise, under the arm of
his chair.
"Me?" said Regan, and his voice broke again. He stopped before the
desk, and, leaning, over, stretched out his arm impulsively across it.
"I'd rather have that arm cut off than tell him, Carleton," he said
huskily. "I don't know what he'll say, I don't know what he'll do, but
I know it will break his heart, and break Mrs. MacCaffery's
heart--Carleton." He took another turn the length of the room and back
again. "But I guess it had better be me," said the little master
mechanic, more to himself than to Carleton. "I guess it had--I'd hate
to think of his getting it so's it would hurt any more than it had to,
h'm?"
And so Tommy Regan told old Dan MacCaffery--that afternoon--the day
after pay day.
Regan didn't mean to exactly, not then--he was kind of putting it off,
as it were--until next day--and fretting himself sick over it. But
that afternoon old Dan, on his way down to the roundhouse--Dan took out
the regular passenger local that left Big Cloud at 6.55 every evening,
and to spend an hour ahead of running time with the 304 was as much a
habit with Dan as breathing was--hunted Regan up in the latter's office
just before the six o'clock whistle blew. For an instant Regan thought
the engineer had somehow or other already heard the news, but a glance
at Dan's face dispelled that idea as quickly as it had come. Dan was
always smiling, but there was a smile on the wizened, puckered, honest
old face now that seemed to bubble out all over it.
"Regan," said old Dan, bursting with happy excitement, "I just had to
drop in and tell you on the way over to the roundhouse, and the missus,
she says, 'You tell Mr. Regan, Dan; he'll be rightdown glad.'"
Regan got up out of his chair. There seemed a sense of disaster coming
somehow that set him to breathing heavily.
"Sure, Dan--sure," he said weakly. "What is it?"
"Well," said Dan, "you know that--that trouble the boy got into
back--back----'
"Yes, I know," said Regan hastily.
"Well," said Dan, "it's taken a long time, a good many years, but
yesterday, you know, was pay day; and to-day, Regan, we, the missus and
me, Regan, sent the last of that money East, interest and all, the last
cent of it, cleaned it all up. Say, Regan, I feel like I was walking
on air, and you'd ought to have seen the missus sitting up there in the
cottage and smiling through the tears. 'Oh, Dan!' she says, and then
she gets up and puts her two hands on my shoulders, and I felt blamed
near like crying myself. 'We can start in now, Dan, to save up for old
age,' she says, smiling. Say, Regan, ain't it--ain't it fine? We're
going to start in now and save up for old age."
Regan didn't say a word. It came with a rush, choking him up in his
throat, and something misty in front of his eyes so he couldn't
see--and he turned his back, searching for his hat on the peg behind
his desk. He jammed his hat on his head, and jerked it low down over
his forehead.
"Ain't you--glad?" said old Dan, a sort of puzzled hurt in his eyes.
"I'll walk over a bit of the way to the roundhouse with you, Dan," said
Regan gruffly. "Come on."
They stepped out of the shops, and across a spur--old Dan, still
puzzled, striding along beside the master mechanic.
"What's the matter, Regan?" he asked reproachfully. "I thought you'd
be----"
And then Regan stopped--and his hand fell in a tight grip on the
other's shoulder.
"I got to tell you, Dan," he blurted out. "But I don't need to tell
you what I think of it. It's a damned shame! The new crowd that's
running this road don't want anybody helping 'em to do it after the
first of the month that's over sixty years of age. You're--you're out."
Old Dan didn't seem to get it for a minute; then a whiteness kind of
crept around his lips, and his eyes, from Regan, seemed to circuit in a
queer, wistful way about the yards, and fix finally on the roundhouse
in front of him; and then he lifted his peaked cap, in the way he had
of doing, and scratched near his ear where the hair was. He hit Regan
pretty hard with what he said.
"Regan," he said, "there's two weeks yet to the end of the month.
Don't tell her, Regan, and don't you let the boys tell her--there's two
weeks she don't need to worry. I'd kind of like to have her have them
two weeks."
Regan nodded--there weren't any words that would come, and he couldn't
have spoken them if there had.
"Yes," said old Dan, sort of whispering to himself, "I'd kind of like
to have her have them two weeks."
Regan cleared his throat, pulled at his mustache, swore under his
breath, and cleared his throat again.
"What'll you do, Dan--afterwards?"
Old Dan straightened up, looked at Regan--and smiled.
"I dunno," he said, shaking his head and smiling. "I dunno; but it'll
be all right. We'll get along somehow." His eyes shifted to the
roundhouse again. "I guess I'd better be getting over to the 304," he
said--and turned abruptly away.
Regan watched him go, watched the overalled figure with a slight
shoulder stoop cross the turntable, watched until the other disappeared
inside the roundhouse doors; and then he turned and walked slowly
across the tracks and uptown toward his boarding house. "Don't tell
her"--the words kept reiterating themselves insistently--"don't let the
boys tell her."
"I guess they won't," said Regan, muttering fiercely to himself. "I
guess they won't."
Nor did they. The division and Big Cloud kept the secret for those two
weeks--and they kept it for long after that. The little old lady in
the lace cap never knew--they ranked her high, those pioneering women
kind of hers in that little mountain town, those rough-and-ready
toilers who had been her husband's mates--she never knew.
But everybody else knew, and they watched old Dan as the days went by,
watched him somehow with a tight feeling in their throats, and kept
aloof a little--because they didn't know what to say--kept aloof a
little awkwardly, as it were. Not that there seemed much of any
difference in the old engineer; it was more a something that they
sensed. Old Dan came down to the roundhouse in the late afternoon an
hour before train time, just as he always did, puttered and oiled
around and coddled the 304 for an hour, just as he always did, just as
though he was always going to do it, took his train out, came back on
the early morning run, backed the 304 into the roundhouse, and trudged
up Main Street to where it began to straggle into the buttes, to where
his cottage and the little old lady were--just as he always did. And
the little old lady, with the debt paid, went about the town for those
two weeks happier-looking, younger-looking than Big Cloud had ever seen
her before. That was all.
But Regan, worrying, pulling at his mustache, put it up to little Billy
Dawes, old Dan's fireman, one day in the roundhouse near the end of the
two weeks.
"How's Dan take it in the cab, Billy?" he asked.
The little fireman rolled the hunk of greasy waste in his hands, and
swabbed at his fingers with it for a moment before he answered; then he
sent a stream of blackstrap juice viciously into the pit, and with a
savage jerk hurled the hunk of waste after it.
"By God!" he said fiercely.
Regan blinked--and waited.
"Just the same as ever he was," said Billy Dawes huskily, after a
silence. "Just the same--when he thinks you're not looking. I've seen
him sometimes when he didn't know I was looking."
Regan said: "H'm!"--kind of coughed it out, reached for his plug, as
was usual with him in times of stress, bit into it deeply, sputtered
something hurriedly about new piston rings for the left-hand head, and,
muttering to himself, left the roundhouse.
And that night old Dan MacCaffery took out the 304 and the local
passenger for the run west and the run back east--just as he always
did. And the next night, and for two nights after that he did the same.
Came then the night of the 31st.
It was the fall of the year and the dusk fell early; and by a little
after six, with the oil lamps lighted, that at best only filtered
spasmodic yellow streaks of gloom about the roundhouse, the engines
back on the pits were beginning to loom up through the murk in big,
grotesque, shadowy shapes, as Regan, crossing the turntable, paused for
a moment hesitantly. Why he was there, he didn't know. He hadn't
meant to be there. He was just a little early for his nightly game of
pedro with Carleton over in the super's office--it wasn't much more
than half past six--so he had had some time to put in--that must be
about the size of it. He hadn't meant to come. There wasn't any use
in it, none at all, nothing he could do; better, in fact, if he stayed
away--only he had left the boarding house early--and he was down there
now, standing on the turntable--and it was old Dan's last run.
"I guess," mumbled Regan, "I'll go back over to the station. Carleton
'll be along in a few minutes. I guess I will, h'm?"--only Regan
didn't. He started on again slowly over the turntable, and entered the
roundhouse.
There wasn't anybody in sight around the pit on which the 304 stood,
nobody puttering over the links and motion-gear, poking here and there
solicitously with a long-spouted oil can, as he had half, more than
half, expected to find old Dan doing; but he heard some one moving
about in the cab, and caught the flare of a torch. Regan walked down
the length of the engine, and peered into the cab. It was Billy Dawes.
"Where's Dan, Billy? Ain't he about?" inquired Regan.
The fireman came out into the gangway.
"Yes," he answered; "he's down there back of the tender by the fitters'
benches. He's looking for some washers he said he wanted for a loose
stud nut. I'll get him for you."
"No; never mind," said Regan. "I'll find him."
It was pretty dark at the rear of the roundhouse in the narrow space
between the engine tenders on the various pits and the row of
workbenches that flanked the wall, and for a moment, as Regan reached
the end of the 304's tender, he could not see any one--and then he
stopped short, as he made out old Dan's form down on the floor by the
end bench as though he were groping for something underneath it.
For a minute, two perhaps, Regan stood there motionless, watching old
Dan MacCaffery. Then he drew back, tiptoed softly away, went out
through the engine doors, and, as he crossed the tracks to the station
platform, brushed his hand hurriedly across his eyes.
Regan didn't play much of a game of pedro that night--his heart wasn't
in it. Carleton had barely dealt the first hand when Regan heard the
304 backing down and coupling on the local, and he got up from his
chair and walked to the window, and stood there watching until the
local pulled out.
Carleton didn't say anything--just dealt the cards over again, and
began once more as Regan resumed his seat.
An hour passed. Regan, fidgety and nervous, played in a desultory
fashion; Carleton, disturbed, patiently correcting the master
mechanic's mistakes. The game was a farce.
"What's the matter, Tommy?" asked Carleton gravely, as Regan made a
misdeal twice in succession.
"Nothing," said Regan shortly. "Go on, play; it's your bid."
Carleton shook his head.
"You're taking it too much to heart, Tommy," he said. "It won't do you
any good--either of you--you or Dan. He'll pull out of it somehow.
You'll see."
There was a queer look on Regan's face as he stared for an instant at
Carleton across the table, and he opened his lips as though to say
something--and closed them again in a hard line instead.
Carleton bid.
"It's yours," said Regan.
Carleton led--and then Regan, with a sweep of his hand, shot his cards
into the center of the table.
"It's no good," he said gruffly, getting up. "I can't play the blamed
game to-night, I----" He stopped suddenly and turned his head, as a
chair scraped sharply in the despatchers' room next door.
A step sounded in the hall, the super's door was flung open, and Spence
put in his head.
One glance at the despatcher, and Carleton was on his feet.
"What's the matter, Spence?" he asked, quick and hard.
Regan hadn't moved--but Regan spoke now, answering the question that
was addressed to the despatcher, and answering it in a strangely
assertive, absolute, irrefutable way.
"The local," he said. "Number Forty-seven. Dan MacCaffery's dead."
Both men stared at him in amazement--and Spence, sort of unconsciously,
nodded his head.
"Yes," said Spence, still staring at Regan. "There was some sort of
engine trouble just west of Big Eddy in the Beaver Canyon. I haven't
got the rights of it yet, only that somehow MacCaffery got his engine
stopped just in time to keep the train from going over the bridge
embankment--and went out doing it. There's no one else hurt. Dawes,
the fireman, and Conductor Neale walked back to Big Eddy. I've got
them on the wire now. Come into the other room."
Regan stepped to the door mechanically, and, with Carleton behind him,
followed Spence into the despatchers' room. There, Carleton,
tight-lipped, leaned against the table; Regan, his face like stone,
took his place at Spence's elbow, as the despatcher dropped into his
chair.
There wasn't a sound in the room for a moment save the clicking of the
sender in a quick tattoo under Spence's fingers. Then Spence picked up
a pencil and began scribbling the message on a pad, as the sounder
spoke--Billy Dawes was dictating his story to the Big Eddy operator.
"It was just west of Big Eddy, just before you get to the curve at the
approach to the Beaver Bridge," came Dawes' story, "and we were hitting
up a fast clip, but no more than usual, when we got a jolt in the cab
that spilled me into the coal and knocked Dan off his seat. It all
came so quick there wasn't time to think, but I knew we'd shed a driver
on Dan's side, and the rod was cutting the side of the cab like a knife
through cheese. I heard Dan shout something about the train going over
the embankment and into the river if we ever hit the Beaver curve, and
then he jumped for the throttle and the air. There wasn't a chance in
a million for him, but it was the only chance for every last one of the
rest of us. He made it somehow, I don't know how; it's all a blur to
me. He checked her, and then the rod caught him, and----" The sounder
broke, almost with a human sob in it, it seemed, and then went on
again: "We stopped just as the 304 turned turtle. None of the coaches
left the rails. That's all."
Regan spoke through dry lips.
"Ask him what Dan was like in the cab to-night," he said hoarsely.
Spence looked up and around at the master mechanic, as though he had
not heard aright.
"Ask him what I say," repeated Regan shortly. "What was Dan like in
the cab to-night?"
Spence bent over his key again. There was a pause before the answer
came.
"He says he hadn't seen Dan so cheerful for months," said Spence
presently.
Regan nodded, kind of curiously, kind of as though it were the answer
he expected--and then he nodded at Carleton, and the two went back to
the super's room.
Regan closed the door behind him.
Carleton dropped into his chair, his gray eyes hard and full of pain.
"I don't understand, Tommy," he said heavily. "It's almost as though
you knew it was going to happen."
Regan came across the floor and stood in front of the desk.
"I did," he said in a low way. "I think I was almost certain of it."
Carleton pulled himself forward with a jerk in his chair.
"Do you know what you are saying, Tommy?" he asked sharply.
"I'll tell you," Regan said, in the same low way. "I went over to the
roundhouse to-night before Dan took the 304 out. I didn't see Dan
anywhere about, and I asked Dawes where he was. Dawes said he had gone
back to the fitters' benches to look for some washers. I walked on
past the tender and I found him there down on the floor on his knees by
one of the benches--but he wasn't looking for any washers. He was
praying."
With a sharp exclamation, Carleton pushed back his chair, and,
standing, leaned over the desk toward Regan.
Regan swallowed a lump in his throat--and shook his head.
"He didn't see me," he said brokenly, "he didn't know I was there. He
was praying aloud. I heard what he said. It's been ringing in my head
all night, word for word, while I was trying to play with those"--he
jerked his hand toward the scattered cards on the desk between them.
"I can hear him saying it now. It's the queerest prayer I ever heard;
and I guess he prayed the way he lived--as though he was kind of
intimate with God."
"Yes?" prompted Carleton softly, as Regan paused.
Regan turned his head away as his eyes filled suddenly--and his voice
was choked.