'You know how it is, God. I wouldn't take that way myself unless You
fixed it up for me, because it wouldn't be right unless You did it.
But I hope, God, You'll think that's the best way out of it. You see,
there ain't nothing left as it is, but if we fixed it that way there'd
be the fraternal insurance to take care of the missus, and she wouldn't
never know. And then, You see, God, I guess my work is all done,
and--and I'd kind of like to quit while I was still on the pay
roll--I'd kind of like to finish that way, and to-night's the last
chance. You understand, God, don't You?'"
Regan's lips were quivering as he stopped.
There was silence for a moment, then Carleton looked up from the
blotter on his desk.
"Tommy," he said in his big, quiet way, as his hand touched Regan's
sleeve, "tell me why you didn't stop him, then, from going out
to-night?"
Regan didn't answer at once. He went over to the window and stared out
at the twinkling switch lights in the yards below--he was still staring
out of the window as he spoke.
"He didn't put it up to me," said Regan. "He put it up to God."
VII
"THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS"
Maguire was a little, washed-out, kind of toil-bent hostler in the
roundhouse--and he married old. How old? Nobody knew--not even old
Bill himself--fifty something. Mrs. Maguire presented him with a son
in due course, and the son's name was Patrick Burke Maguire--but the
Hill Division, being both terse and graphic by nature and education,
called him "Noodles."
Noodles wasn't even a pretty baby. Tommy Regan, who was roped in to
line up at the baptismal font and act as godfather because old Bill was
a boiler-washer in the roundhouse, which was reason enough for the
big-hearted master mechanic, said that Noodles was the ugliest and most
forbidding looking specimen of progeny he had ever seen outside a
zoological garden. Of course, be it understood, Regan wasn't a family
man, and god-fathering wasn't a job in Regan's line, so when he got
outside the church and the perspiration had stopped trickling nervously
down the small of his back and he'd got a piece of blackstrap clamped
firmly home between his teeth, he told old Bill, by way of a grim sort
of revenge for the unhappy position his good nature had led him into,
that the offspring was the dead spit of its father--and he
congratulated Noodles.
The irony, of course, was lost. The boiler-washer walked on air for a
week. He told the roundhouse what Regan had said--and the roundhouse
laughed. Bill thought the roundhouse thought he was lying, but that
didn't dampen his spirits any. It wasn't everybody could get the
master mechanic of the division to stand up with _their_ kids!
Everybody was happy--except Noodles. Noodles, just about then,
developed colic.
Noodles got over the colic, got over the measles, the mumps, the
whooping cough, and the scarlet fever--that may not have been the order
of their coming or their going, but he got over them all. And when he
was twelve he got over the smallpox; but he never got over his
ugliness--the smallpox kind of put a stop-order on any lurking tendency
there might have been in that direction. Also, when he was twelve, he
got over all the schooling the boiler-washer's limited means would
span, which wasn't a university course; and he started in railroading
as a call boy.
There was nothing organically bad about Noodles, except his
exterior--which wasn't his fault. One can't be blamed for hair of a
motley red, ubiquitous freckles wherever the smallpox had left room for
them, no particular colored eyes, a little round knob of uptilted nose,
and a mouth that made even the calloused Dutchy at the lunch counter
feel a little mean inwardly when he compared it with the mathematically
cut slab of contract pie, eight slabs to the pie plate, and so much so
that he went to the extent of--no, he never gave Noodles an extra
piece--but he went to the extent of surreptitiously pocketing Noodles'
nickel as though he were obtaining money under false pretenses--which
was a good deal for Dutchy to do--and just shows.
There was nothing _organically_ bad about Noodles--not a thing.
Noodles' troubles, and they came thick and fast with the inauguration
of his railroad career, lay in quite another direction--his
irrepressible tendency to practical jokes, coupled with a lack of the
sense of the general fitness of things, consequences and results, and
an absence of even a bowing acquaintance with responsibility that was
appalling.
The first night Noodles went on duty as call boy, armed with a nickel
thriller--that being only half the price of a regular dime novel--and
visions of the presidency of the road being offered him before he was
much older, Spence was sitting in on the early night trick. There was
a lot of stuff moving through the mountains that night, and the train
sheet was heavy. And even Spence, counted one of the best despatchers
that ever held down a key on the Hill Division, was hard put to it,
both to keep his crowding sections from treading on each other's heels,
and to jockey the east and westbounds past each other without letting
their pilots get tangled up head-on. It was no night or no place for
foolishness--a despatcher's office never is, for that matter.
Noodles curled himself up in a chair behind the despatcher--and started
in on the thriller. His first call was for the crews of No. 72, the
local freight east, at 8.35, and there was nothing to do until then
unless Spence should happen to want him for something. The thriller
was quite up to the mark, even "thriller" than usual, but Noodles left
the hero at the end of the first chapter securely bound to the
mill-wheel with the villain rushing to open the gate in the dam--and
his eyes strayed around the room.
It wasn't altogether the novelty of his surroundings--no phase of
railroading was altogether a novelty to any Big Cloud youngster--there
was just a sort of newness in his own position that interfered with any
protracted or serious effort along literary lines. From a circuit of
the room, his eyes went to the fly-specked, green-shaded lamp on the
despatcher's table, then from the lamp to the despatcher's back--and
fixed on the despatcher's back.
His eyes held there quite a long time--then his fingers went stealthily
to the lapel of his coat. Spence had a habit when hurried or anxious
of half rising from his chair, as though to give emphasis to his orders
every time he touched the key. Spence was both hurried and anxious
that night and the key was busy. In the somewhat dim light, Spence, to
Noodles' fancy, assumed the aspect of an animated jumping jack.
Deftly, through long experience, Noodles coiled his pin with a wicked
upshoot to the center of attack, cautiously lowered his own chair,
which had been tilted back against the wall, to the more stable
position of four legs on the floor, leaned forward, and laid the pin at
a strategic point on the seat of Spence's chair. Two minutes later,
kicked bodily down the stairs, Noodles was surveying the Big Cloud
yards by moonlight from the perspective of the station platform.
Noodles' career as a call boy had been brief--and it was ended. Old
Bill, the boiler-washer, came to the rescue. He explained to Regan who
the godfather of the boy was and what bearing that had on the case, and
how he'd larruped the boy for what he'd done, and how the boy hadn't
meant anything by it--and could the boy have another chance?
Regan said, "Yes," and said it shortly, more because he was busy at the
time and wanted to get rid of Old Bill than from any predisposition
toward Noodles. Noodles wasn't predisposing any way you looked at him,
and Regan had a good look at his godson now for about the first time
since he'd sponsored him, and he didn't like Noodles'
looks--particularly. But Regan, not taking too serious a view of the
matter, said yes, and put Noodles at work over in the roundhouse under
the eye of his father.
Here, for a month, in one way or another, Noodles succeeded in making
things lively, and himself cordially disliked by about everybody in the
shops, the roundhouse, and the Big Cloud yards generally. And there
was a hint or two thrown out, that reached Regan's ears, that old Bill
had known what he was doing when he got one of the "big fellows" as
godfather for as ugly a blasted little nuisance as the Hill Division
had known for many a long day. Regan got to scowling every time he saw
Noodles' unhandsome countenance, and he took pains on more than one
occasion to give a bit of blunt advice to both Noodles and Noodles'
father--which the former received somewhat ungraciously, and the latter
with trepidation.
And then one night as it grew dark, just before six o'clock, while Bill
and the turner and the wipers were washing up and trying to put in the
time before the whistle blew, Noodles dropped into the turntable pit
and wedged the turntable bearings with iron wedgings. Half an hour
later, when the night crew came to swing it for the 1016, blowing hard
from a full head of steam and ready to go out and couple on to No. 1
for the westbound run, they couldn't move it. It took them a few
minutes before they could find out what the matter was, and another few
to undo the matter when they did find out--and No. 1 went out five
minutes late.
Nobody asked who did it--it wasn't necessary. They just said
"Noodles," and waited to see what Noodles' godfather would do about it.
They did not have long to wait. The Limited five minutes late out of
division and the delay up to the motive-power department, which was
Regan's department, would have been enough to bring the offender,
whoever he might be, on the carpet with scant ceremony even if it had
been an _accident_. Regan was boiling mad.
Noodles didn't show up the next day. Deep in Noodles' consciousness
was a feeling that his nickel thriller and a certain spot he knew up
behind the butte, where many a pleasant afternoon had been passed when
he should have been at school, was more conducive to peace and
quietness than the center of railroad activities--also Noodles ached
bodily from his father's attentions.
Old Bill, too, kept conveniently out of sight down in a pit somewhere
every time the master mechanic showed his nose inside the roundhouse
during the morning--but by afternoon, counting the edge of Regan's
wrath to have worn smooth, he followed Regan out over the turntable
after one of the master mechanic's visits.
"Regan," he blurted out anxiously, "about the bhoy, now."
"Well?" snapped Regan, whirling about.
The monosyllable was cold enough in its uncompromise to stagger the
little hostler, and drive all thoughts of the carefully rehearsed
oration he had prepared from his head. He scratched aimlessly at the
half circle of gray billy-goat beard under his chin, and blinked
helplessly at the master mechanic. Noodles lacked much, and in Noodles
was much to be desired perhaps--but Noodles, for all that, had his
place in the Irish heart that beat under the greasy jumper.
"He's the only wan we've got, Regan," stammered the harassed roundhouse
man appealingly.
"It's a wonder, then, you've not holes in the knees of your overalls
giving thanks for it," declared Regan grimly. "That's enough,
Bill--and we've had enough of Noodles. Keep him away from here."
"Ah, sure now, Regan," begged the little hostler piteously, "yez don't
mean ut. The bhoy's all right, Regan--'tis but spirit he has. Regan,
listen here now, I've larruped him good for fwhat he's done--an' 'twas
no more than a joke."
"A joke!" Regan choked; then brusquely: "That'll do, Bill. I've said
my last word, and I'm busy this afternoon. Noodles is out--for keeps."
"Ah, Regan, listen here"--Noodles' father caught the master mechanic's
arm, as the latter turned away. "Regan, sure, ut's the bhoy's
godfather yez are."
The fat little master mechanic's face went suddenly red--this was the
last straw--_Noodles' godfather_! Regan had been catching more
whispers than he had liked lately anent godfathers and godfathering.
His eyes puckered up and he wheeled on the boiler-washer--but the hot
words on the tip of his tongue died unborn. There was something in the
dejected droop of the other's figure, something in the blue eyes
growing watery with age that made him change his mind--old Bill wasn't
a young man. As far back as the big-hearted, good-natured master
mechanic could remember, he remembered old Bill--in the roundhouse.
Always the same job, day after day, year after year--boiler-washing,
tinkering around at odd jobs--not much good at anything else--church
every Sunday in shiny black coat, and peaked-faced Mrs. Maguire in the
same threadbare, shiny black dress--not that Regan ever went to church,
but he used to see them going there--church every Sunday, Maguire was
long on church, and week days just boiler-washing and tinkering around
at odd jobs--a dollar-sixty a day. Regan's pucker subsided, and he
reached out his hand to the boiler-washer's shoulder--and he grinned to
kind of take the sting out of his words.
"Well, Bill," he said, "as far as that goes, I renounce the honor."
"Raynownce ut!" The boiler-washer's eyes opened wide, and his face was
strained as though he had not heard aright. "Raynownce ut! Ut's an
Irish Protystant yez are, Regan, the same as me an' the missus, an' did
yez not say the words in the church!"
"I did," admitted Regan; "though I've forgotten what they were. It was
well enough, no doubt, for a kid in swaddling clothes--but it's some
time since then." Then, with finality: "Go back to your work, Bill--I
can't talk to you any more this afternoon."
"Raynownce ut!" The words reached Regan as he turned away and started
across the tracks toward the platform, and in their tones was something
akin to stunned awe that caused him to chuckle. "Raynownce ut!--an'
yez said the words forninst the priest!"
Regan's chuckle, however, was not of long duration, either literally or
metaphorically. During the rest of the afternoon the boiler-washer's
words got to swinging through Regan's brain until they became an
obsession, and somewhere down inside of him began to grow an
uncomfortable foreboding that there might be something more to the
godfathering business than he had imagined. He tackled Carleton about
it before the whistle blew.
"Carleton," said he, walking into the super's office, and picking up a
ruler from the other's desk, "don't laugh, or I'll jam this ruler down
your throat. If you can answer a straight question, answer
it--otherwise, let it go. What's a godfather, anyhow?"
Carleton grinned.
"You ought to know, Tommy," he said.
"I was running without a permit and off schedule at the time, and I was
nervous," said Regan. "What happened, or what the goings-on were, I
don't know. What is it?"
Carleton shook his head gravely.
"I'm afraid not, Tommy," he said. "You're in the wrong shop.
Information bureau's downstairs to the right of the ticket office."
"Thanks!" said Regan.
And that was all the help he got from Carleton--then. But that night
over their usual game of pedro in the super's office, it was a little
different. Carleton, as he pulled the cards out of the desk drawer and
tossed them on the table, pulled a small book from his pocket and
tossed it to Regan.
"What's this?" inquired the master mechanic.
"It's not to your credit to ask--it's a prayer book," Carleton informed
him. "Be careful of it--I borrowed it."
"You didn't need to say so," said Regan softly.
"Page two hundred and eight," suggested Carleton. "See if that's what
you were looking for, Tommy."
Regan thumbed the leaves, found the place and began to read--and a
sickly sort of pallor began to spread over his face.
"'You are his sureties that he will renounce the devil and all his
works,'" he mumbled weakly.
"Yes," said Carleton cheerfully. "There's some _little_ responsibility
there, you see. But don't skip the parenthesis; get it all,
Tommy--'_until he come of age to take it upon himself_.'"
Regan didn't say a word--nor was the smile he essayed an enthusiastic
success. He read the "articles" over again word by word, pointing the
lines with his pudgy forefinger.
"Well," inquired Carleton, "what do you make of the running orders,
Tommy?"
"The devil and all his works!"--it came away from Regan now with a rush
from his overburdened soul. "D'ye mean to say that--that"--Regan
choked a little--"that I'm responsible for that brick-topped,
monkey-faced kid?"
"'Until he come of age,'" Carleton amplified pleasantly.
Regan's Celtic temper rose.
"I'll see him hung first!" he roared suddenly. "'Twas no more than to
please Maguire that I stood up with the ugly imp! And mabbe I said
what's here and mabbe I didn't, but in any event 'tis no more than a
matter of form to be repeated parrot-fashion--and it means nothing."
"Oh, well," said the super slyly, "if you feel that way about it, don't
let it bother you."
"It will not bother _me_!" said Regan defiantly, with a scowl.
But it did.
Regan slept that night with an army corps of red-headed, pocked, and
freckled-faced little devils to plague his rest--and their name was
Noodles. His thoughts were unpleasantly more on Noodles than his razor
when he shaved the next morning, and the result was an unsightly gash
across his chin--and when he made his first inspection of the
roundhouse an hour later he was in a temper to be envied by no man.
His irritability was not soothed by the sight of Maguire, who rose
suddenly in front of him from an engine pit as he came in.
"Regan," said the old fellow, "about the bhoy----"
"Maguire," said Regan, in a low, fervent voice, "you bother me about
that again and I'll fire you, too!"
"Wait, Regan." There was a quaver in the little hostler's voice, and
he appeared to stand his ground only by the aid of some previously
arrived at, painful resolution that rose superior to his nervousness.
"Wait, Regan--mabbe yez'll not have to. I talked ut over wid the
missus last night. I've worked well for yez, Regan, all these
years--all these years, Regan, I've worked for yez here in the
roun'house--an' I've worked well, though ut's mesilf that ses ut."
"That's nothing to do with it," snapped the master mechanic.
"Mabbe ut has, an' mabbe ut hasn't." The watery-blue eyes sought the
toes of their owner's grease-smeared, thickly-patched brogans. "I
talked ut over wid the missus. Sure now, Regan, yez weren't thinkin'
fwhat yez said, an' yez didn't mean fwhat yez said yisterday about
raynowncin' the word ye'd passed. Yez'll take ut back, Regan?"
"Take it back? I'll be damned if I do!" said Regan earnestly.
The little hostler's body stiffened, the watery-blue eyes lifted and
held steadily on the master mechanic, and for the first time in his
lowly life he raised a hand to his superior--Maguire pointed a
forefinger, that shook a little, at Regan.
"'Tis blasphymus yez are, Regan!" he said in a thin voice. "An' 'tis
no blasphymay I mean, God forbid, fwhen I say yez'll be damned if yez
don't. Before a priest, Regan, an' in the church av God, Regan, yez
swore fwhat yez swore--an' 'tis the wrath av God, Regan, yez'll bring
down on your head. Mind that, Regan! Fire me, is ut?" The little
hostler's voice rose suddenly. "All these years I've worked well for
yez, Regan, but I'll work no more for a man as 'ud do a thing loike
thot--an' the missus ses the same. Poor we may be, but rayspect for
oursilves we have. Yez'll niver fire me, Regan--I fire mesilf. I'm
through this minute!"
Regan glared disdainfully.
"Have you been drinking, Maguire?" he inquired caustically.
Noodles' father did not answer. He brushed past the master mechanic,
walked through the big engine doors, and halted just outside on the
cinders.
"'Tis forsworn yez are, Regan," he said heavily. "Yez may make light
av ut now, but the day'll come, Regan, fwhen yez'll find out 'tis no
light matter. 'Tis the wrath av God, Regan, 'll pay yez for ut, yez
can mark my words."
Regan stared after the old man, his eyes puckered, his face a little
red; stared after the bent form in the old worn overalls as it picked
its way across the tracks--and gave vent to his feelings by
expectorating a goodly stream of blackstrap juice savagely into the
engine pit at his side. This did not help very much, and for the rest
of the morning, while he inwardly anathematized Noodles, Noodles'
father and the whole Noodles family collectively, he made things both
uncomfortable and lively for those who were unfortunate enough to be
within reach of his displeasure.
"The wrath of God!" communed Regan angrily. "I always said Noodles
took after his father, both by disposition and looks! It'll be a long
time before the old man gets another job--a long time."
And therein Regan was right. It _was_ a long time--quite a long
time--measured by the elasticity of the boiler-washer's purse, which
wasn't very elastic on the savings from a dollar-sixty a day.
Old Bill Maguire, perhaps, was the only one who hadn't got quite the
proper angle on the "rights" he carried--which were worse than those of
a mixed local when the rails were humming under a stress of through
traffic and the despatchers were biting their nails to the quick trying
to take care of it. Not, possibly, that it would have made any
difference to the little worn-out hostler if he had; for, whether from
principle, having deep-seated awe for the church and its tenets that
forbade even a tacit endorsement of what he considered Regan's
sacrilege, or because of the public slight put upon his family--the
roundhouse hadn't failed to hear his first conversation with Regan, and
hadn't failed to let him know that they had--or maybe from a mixture of
the two, Maguire was beyond question in deadly earnest. But if old
Bill hadn't got his signals right, and was reading green and white when
it should have been red, the rest of the Hill Division wasn't by any
means color blind; it was pretty generally understood that for several
years back all that stood between Maguire and the scrap heap--was
Regan. Not on account of any jolly business about godfather or
godfathering, but because that was Regan's way--old Bill puttered
around the roundhouse on suffrance, thanks to Regan, and didn't know
it, though everybody else did, barring patient little Mrs. Maguire and
Noodles, who didn't count anyhow.
Nor did the little hostler even now pass the color test.
Short-tongued, a hard, grimy lot, just what their rough and ready life
made them, they might have been, those railroaders of the Rockies, but
their hearts were always right. In the yards, in the trainmaster's
office, in the roadmaster's office they pointed Maguire to the quiet
times, to the extra crews laid off, to the spare men back to their old
ratings, to the section gangs pared down to a minimum, and advised him
to ask Regan for his job back again--they never told him he couldn't do
a man's work any more.
"Ask Regan!" stuttered the old boiler-washer, and the gray billy-goat
beard under his chin, as he threw his head up, stuck out straight like
a belligerent _chevaux de frise_. "Niver! Mind thot, now!
Niver--till he takes back fwhat he said--not av I starrve for ut!"
Regan, during the first few days, the brunt of his temper worn off,
experienced a certain relief, that was no little relief--he was rid,
and well rid, of the Noodles combination. But at the end of about a
week, the bluff, big-hearted master mechanic began to suck in his under
lip at moments when he was alone, as the stories of old Bill's futile
efforts after a job, and old Bill's rather pitiful defiance began to
sift in to him. Regan began to have visions of the little three-room
shack way up in the waste fields at the end of Main Street. A
dollar-sixty a day wasn't much to come and go on, even when the
dollar-sixty was coming regularly every pay day--and when it wasn't,
the cost of food and rent didn't go down any.
Regan got to thinking a good deal about the faded little old drudge of
a woman that was Mrs. Maguire, and the bare floors as he remembered
them even in the palmy days of Noodles' birth when he had attended the
celebration, bare, but scrubbed to a spotless white. She hadn't been
very young then, and not any too strong, and that was twelve years ago.
And he got to thinking a good deal about old Bill himself--not much
good any more, but good enough for a dollar-sixty a day from a company
he'd served for many a long year--in the roundhouse. There had never
been over much of what even an optimistic imagination could call luxury
in the Maguire's home, and the realization got kind of deep under the
worried master mechanic's skin that things were down now to pretty near
a case of bread to fill their mouths.