division engineer to resident and assistant-chief on the Devil's Slide
tunnel, Carleton sent for Regan.
"Tommy," said he, as the master mechanic entered his office, "did you
see Harvey?"
"No," said Regan. "I didn't know he was in town."
"He said he didn't think he'd have time to see you," said Carleton; "I
guess he's gone back on Number Seven. But I told him I'd put it up to
you, anyway. He says he's along now where he is handling about half a
dozen dump trains, but that what he has been given to pull them with,
as near as he can figure out, is the prehistoric junk of the iron age."
"I saw the engines when they went through," Regan chuckled. "All the
master mechanics on the system cleaned up on him. I sent him the old
Two-twenty-three myself. Harvey's telling the truth so far. What's
next?"
"Well," Carleton smiled, "he says the string and tin rivets they're put
together with come off so fast he can't keep more than half of them in
commission at once. He wants a good fitter sent up there on a
permanent job. What do you say?"
"Say?" Regan fairly shouted. "Why, I say, God bless that man!"
"H'm?" inquired Carleton.
"Beezer," said Regan breathlessly. "Tell him he can have Beezer--wire
him I'll send up Beezer. He wants a good fitter, does he? Well,
Beezer's the best fitter on the pay roll, and that's straight. I
always liked Harvey--glad to do him a good turn--Harvey gets the best."
Carleton crammed the dottle down in the bowl of his pipe with his
forefinger, and looked at Regan quizzically.
"I've heard something about it," said he. "What's the matter with
Beezer?"
"Packing loose around his dome cover, and the steam spurts out through
the cracked joint all over you every time you go near him," said Regan.
"He's had me crazy for a month. He's got it into his nut that he could
beat any engineer on the division at his own game, thinks the game's a
cinch and is sour on his own. That's about all--but it's enough. Say,
you wire Harvey that I'll send him Beezer."
Carleton grinned.
"Suppose Beezer doesn't want to go?" he suggested.
"He'll go," said Regan grimly. "According to the neighbors, his home
life at present ain't a perennial dream of delight, and he'll beat it
as joyful as a live fly yanked off the sheet of fly paper it's been
stuck on; besides, he's getting to be a regular spitfire around the
yards. You leave it to me--he'll go."
And Beezer went.
You know the Devil's Slide. Everybody knows it; and everybody has seen
it scores of times, even if they've never been within a thousand miles
of the Rockies--the road carried it for years on the back covers of the
magazines printed in colors. The Transcontinental's publicity man was
a live one, he played it up hard, and as a bit of scenic effect it was
worth all he put into it--there was nothing on the continent to touch
it. But what's the use?--you've seen it hundreds of times. Big
letters on top:
"INCOMPARABLE GRANDEUR OF THE ROCKIES", and underneath: "A SCENE ON THE
LINE OF THE TRANSCONTINENTAL--THE COAST TO COAST ROUTE."
There wasn't anything the matter with the electrotypes, either--nature
backed up those "ads" to the last detail, and threw in a whole lot more
for good measure--even a pessimist didn't hold a good enough hand to
call the raise and had to drop out. Pugsley, the advertising man, was
an awful liar, and what he said may not be strictly true, but he
claimed the road paid their dividends for one quarter through the sale
to a junk and paper-dealer of the letters they got from delighted
tourists telling how far short anything he could say came to being up
to the reality. Anyway, Pugsley and the passenger-agent's department
were the only ones who weren't enthusiastic about the double-loop
tunnel--it spoiled the scenic effect.
This is Beezer's story. Beezer has "rights" through to the terminal,
and pictures of scenery however interesting, and a description of how
Harvey bored his holes into the mountain sides however instructive,
should naturally be relegated to the sidings; but there's just a word
or two necessary before Beezer pulls out into the clear.
One thing the electrotypes didn't show was the approach to the Devil's
Slide. It came along the bottoms fairly straight and level, the track
did, for some five miles from the Bend, until about a mile from the
summit where it hit a long, stiff, heavy climb, that took the breath
out of the best-type engine that Regan, representing the motive-power
department, had to offer. And here, the last few hundred yards were
taken with long-interval, snorting roars from the exhaust, that echoed
up and down the valley, and back and forward from the hills like a
thousand thunders, or the play of a park of artillery, and the pace was
a crawl--you could get out and walk if you wanted to. That was the
approach of the Devil's Slide--on a westbound run, you understand?
Then, once over the summit, the Devil's Slide stretched out ahead, and
in its two reeling, drunken, zigzag miles dropped from where it made
you dizzy to lean out of the cab window and see the Glacier River
swirling below, to where the right of way in a friendly, intimate
fashion hugged the Glacier again at its own bed level. How much of a
drop in that two miles? Grade percentages and dry figures don't mean
very much, do they? Take it another way. It dropped so hard and fast
that that's what the directors were spending three million dollars
for--to divide that drop by two! It just _dropped_--not an incline,
not by any means--just a drop. However----
When it was all over the cause of it figured out something like
this--we'll get to the effect and Beezer in a second. Engine 1016 with
Number One, the Imperial Limited, westbound, and with MacAllister in
the cab, blew out a staybolt one afternoon about two miles west of the
Bend. And quicker than you could wink, the cab was all live steam and
boiling water. The fireman screamed and jumped. MacAllister, blinded
and scalded, his hands literally torn from the throttle and "air"
before he could latch in, fell back half unconscious to the floor,
wriggled to the gangway and flung himself out. He sobbed like a
broken-hearted child afterwards when he told his story.
"I left her," he said. "I couldn't help it. The agony wasn't human--I
couldn't stand it. I was already past knowing what I was doing; but
the thought went through my mind that the pressure'd be down, and she'd
stop herself before she got up the mile climb to the summit. That's
the last I remember."
Dave Kinlock, the conductor, testified that he hadn't noticed anything
wrong until after they were over the summit--they'd come along the
bottoms at a stiff clip, as they always did, to get a start up the long
grade. They had slackened up almost to a standstill, as usual, when
they topped the summit; then they commenced to go down the Slide, and
were speeding up before he realized it. He put on the emergency brakes
then, but they wouldn't work. Why? It was never explained. Whether
the angle-cock had never been properly thrown into its socket and had
worked loose and shut off the "air" from the coaches, or whether--and
queerer things than that have happened in railroading--it just plain
went wrong, no one ever knew. They found the trouble there, that was
all. The emergency wouldn't work; and that was all that Dave Kinlock
knew then.
Now, Beezer had been out on the construction work about two weeks when
this happened, about two of the busiest weeks Beezer had ever put in in
his life. Harvey hadn't drawn the long bow any in describing what the
master mechanics had put over on him to haul his dump carts with. They
were engines of the vintage of James Watt, and Beezer's task in keeping
them within the semblance of even a very low coefficient of efficiency
was no sinecure. Harvey had six of these monstrosities, and, as he had
started his work at both ends at once, with a cutting at the eastern
base of the Devil's Slide and another at the summit, he divided them up
three to each camp; and it kept Beezer about as busy as a one-handed
paper-hanger with the hives, running up and down answering "first-aid"
hurry calls from first one and then the other.
The way Beezer negotiated his mileage was simple. He'd swing the cab
or pilot of the first train along in the direction, up or down, that he
wanted to go--and that's how he happened to be standing that afternoon
on the track opposite the upper construction camp about a hundred yards
below the summit, when Number One climbed up the approach, poked her
nose over the top of the grade, crawling like a snail that's worn out
with exertion, and then began to gather speed a little, toboggan-like,
as she started down the Devil's Slide toward him.
Beezer gave a look at her and rubbed his eyes. There wasn't anything
to be seen back of the oncoming big mountain racer's cab but a
swirling, white, vapory cloud. It was breezing pretty stiff through
the hills that day, and his first thought was that she was blowing from
a full head, and the wind was playing tricks with the escaping steam.
With the next look he gulped hard--the steam was coming from the
cab--not the dome. It was the 1016, MacAllister's engine, and when he
happened to go up or down on her he always chose the pilot instead of
the cab--Beezer never forced his society on any man. But this time he
let the pilot go by him--there was something wrong, and badly wrong at
that. The cab glass showed all misty white inside, and there was no
sign of MacAllister. The drivers were spinning, and the exhaust,
indicating a wide-flung throttle, was quickening into a rattle of
sharp, resonant barks as the cab came abreast of him.
Beezer jumped for the gangway, caught the rail with one hand, clung
there an instant, and then the tools in his other hand dropped to the
ground, as, with a choking gasp, he covered his face, and fell back to
the ground himself.
By the time he got his wits about him again the tender had gone by.
Then Beezer started to run, and his face was as white as the steam he
had stuck his head into in the empty cab. He dashed along beside the
track, along past the tender, past the gangway, past the thundering
drivers, and with every foot the 1016 and the Imperial Limited, Number
One, westbound, was hitting up the pace. When he got level with the
cylinder, it was as if he had come to a halt, though his lungs were
bursting, and he was straining with every pound that was in him. He
was barely gaining by the matter of inches, and in about another minute
he was due to lose by feet. But he nosed in over the tape in a dead
heat, flung himself sideways, and, with his fingers clutching at the
drawbar, landed, panting and pretty well all in, on the pilot. A
minute it took him to get his breath and balance, then he crawled to
the footplate, swung to the steam chest and from there to the running
board.
Here, for the first time, Beezer got a view of things and a somewhat
more comprehensive realization of what he was up against, and his heart
went into his mouth and his mouth went dry. Far down below him in a
sheer drop to the base of the canyon wall wound the Glacier like a
silver thread; in front, a gray, sullen mass of rock loomed up dead
ahead, the right of way swerving sharply to the right as it skirted it
in a breath-taking curve; and with every second the 1016 and her
trailing string of coaches was plunging faster and faster down the
grade. The wind was already singing in his ears. There was a sudden
lurch, a shock, as she struck the curve. Beezer flung his arms around
the handrail and hung on grimly. She righted, found her wheel base
again, and darted like an arrow along the opening tangent.
Beezer's face was whiter now than death itself. There were curves
without number ahead, curves to which that first was but child's play,
that even at their present speed would hurl them from the track and
send them crashing in splinters through the hideous depths into the
valley below. It was stop her, or death; death, sure, certain,
absolute and quick, for himself and every man, woman and child, from
colonist coach to the solid-mahogany, brass-railed Pullmans and
observation cars that rocked behind him.
There was no getting into the cab through the gangway; his one glance
had told him that. There was only one other way, little better than a
chance, and he had taken it. Blue-lipped with fear--that glance into
the nothingness almost below his feet had shaken his nerve and turned
him sick and dizzy--Beezer, like a man clinging to a crag, edged along
the running board, gained the rear end, and, holding on tightly with
both hands, lifted his foot, and with a kick shattered the front
cab-glass; another kick and the window frame gave way, and, backing in
feet first, Beezer began to lower himself into the cab.
Meanwhile, white-faced men stood at Spence's elbow in the despatchers'
office at Big Cloud. Some section hands had followed Number One out of
the Bend in a handcar, and had found MacAllister and his fireman about
two hundred yards apart on opposite sides of the right of way. Both
were unconscious. The section hands had picked them up, pumped madly
back to the Bend, and made their report.
Carleton, leaning over Spence, never moved, only the muscles of his jaw
twitched; Regan, as he always did in times of stress, swore to himself
in a grumbling undertone. There was no other sound in the room save
the incessant click of the sender, as Spence frantically called the
construction camp at the summit of the Slide; there was a chance, one
in a thousand, that the section hands had got back to the Bend before
Number One had reached the top of the grade.
Then, suddenly, the sounder broke, and Spence began to spell off the
words.
"Number One passed here five minutes ago."
Regan went down into a chair, and covered his face with his hands.
"Wild," he whispered, and his whisper was like an awe-stricken sob.
"Running wild on the Devil's Slide. _No one in the cab_. Oh, my God!"
There was a look on Carleton's face no words could describe--it was
gray, gray with a sickness that was a sickness of his soul; but his
words came crisp and clear, cold as steel, and without a tremor.
"Clear the line, Spence. Get out the wrecking crew, and send the
callers for the doctors--that's all that's left for us to do."
But while Big Cloud was making grim preparations for disaster, Beezer
in no less grim a way was averting it, and his salvation, together with
that of every soul aboard the train, came, in a measure at least, from
the very source wherein lay their danger--the speed. That, and the
fact that the pressure MacAllister had thought would drop before the
summit was reached, was at last exhausting itself. The cab was less
dense, and the speed whipping the wind through the now open window
helped a whole lot more, but it was still a swirling mass of vapor.
Beezer lowered himself in, his foot touched the segment, and then found
the floor. The 1016 was rocking like a storm-tossed liner. Again
there came the sickening, deadly slew as she struck a curve, the
nauseating pause as she hung in air with whirring drivers. Beezer shut
his eyes and waited. There was a lurch, another and another, fast and
quick like a dog shaking itself from a cold plunge--she was still on
the right of way.
Beezer wriggled over on his back now, and, with head hanging out over
the running board, groped with his hands for the levers. Around his
legs something warm and tight seemed to clinch and wrap itself. He
edged forward a little farther--his hand closed on the throttle and
flung it in--a fierce, agonizing pain shot through his arm as something
spurted upon it, withering it, blistering it. The fingers of his other
hand were clasped on the air latch and he began to check--then, unable
to endure it longer, he threw it wide. There was a terrific jolt, a
shock that keeled him over on his side as the brake-shoes locked, the
angry grind and crunch of the wheel tires, and the screech of skidding
drivers.
He dragged himself out and crouched again on the running board. Behind
him, like a wriggling snake, the coaches swayed and writhed crazily,
swinging from side to side in drunken, reeling arcs. A deafening roar
of beating flanges and pounding trucks was in his ears--and shriller,
more piercing, the screams of the brake-shoes as they bit and held. He
turned his head and looked down the right of way, and his eyes held
there, riveted and fascinated. Two hundred yards ahead was the worst
twist on the Slide, where the jutting cliff of Old Piebald Mountain
stuck out over the precipice, and the track hugged around it in a
circle like a fly crawling around a wall.
Beezer groaned and shut his eyes again. They say that in the presence
of expected death sometimes one thinks of a whole lot of things.
Engineer Beezer, in charge of Number One, the Imperial Limited, did
then; but mostly he was contrasting up the relative merits of a
workbench and a throttle, and there wasn't any doubt in Beezer's mind
about which he'd take if he ever got the chance to take anything again.
When he opened his eyes Old Piebald Mountain was still ahead of
him--about ten feet ahead of him--and the pony truck was on the curve.
But they had stopped, and Dave Kinlock and a couple of mail clerks were
trying to tear his hands away from the death grip he'd got on the
handrail. It was a weak and shaken Beezer, a Beezer about as flabby as
a sack of flour, that they finally lifted down off the running board.
There was nothing small about Regan--there never was. He came down on
the wrecking train, and, when he had had a look at the 1016 and had
heard Kinlock's story, he went back up to the construction camp, where
Beezer had been outfitted with leg and arm bandages.
"Beezer," said he, "I didn't say all horse doctors wouldn't make
jockeys--what? You can have an engine any time you want one."
Beezer shook his head slowly.
"No," said he thoughtfully; "I guess I don't want one."
Regan's jaw dropped, and his fat little face puckered up as he stared
at Beezer.
"Don't want one!" he gasped. "Don't want one! After howling for one
for three months, now that you can have it, you don't want it! Say,
Beezer, what's the matter with you--h'm?"
But there wasn't anything the matter with Beezer. He was just getting
convalescent, that's all. There's a whole lot of men like Beezer.
X
THE RAT RIVER SPECIAL
This is Martin Bradley's story; an excerpt, if you will, from the pages
of railroading where strange and grim things are, where death and
laughter lock arms in the winking of an eye, and are written down as
though akin. There have been better men than Martin Bradley--and
worse. Measure him as you will, that is one matter; in the last
analysis frailty is a human heritage, and that is another. On the Hill
Division they called him a game man.
Bradley was a fireman, a silent, taciturn chap. Not sullen or
surly--don't get that idea--more quiet than anything else, never much
of anything to say. When a laugh was going around Bradley could
appreciate the fun, and did; only his laugh seemed tempered somehow by
something behind it all. Not a wet blanket, not by any means--they
didn't understand him then, perhaps, didn't pretend to--he never
invited a confidence or gave one--but the boys would crowd up and make
room for Bradley any time, as they dragged at their pipes and swopped
yarns in the murk of the roundhouse at the midnight lunch hour, about
the time Bradley used to stroll in, snapping his fingers together
softly in that curious, absent-minded way he had of doing--for Bradley
was firing for Smithers then on the 582, that took the local freight,
west, out of Big Cloud in the small morning hours.
Well set-up, jumper tucked in his overalls, the straps over husky
shoulders, thick through the chest, medium height, stocky almost,
steady black eyes, a clean-shaven, serious face, the black hair
grizzled a little and threading gray--that was Martin Bradley. A bit
old to be still firing, perhaps, but he had had to take his turn for
promotion with the rest of the men when he came to the Hill Division.
He'd have gone up in time, way up, to the best on the division,
probably, for Regan had him slated for an engine even then, only----But
we'll come to that in a moment; there's just a word or two to "clear"
the line before we have "rights" through to the terminal.
Big Cloud in those days, which was shortly after the line was laid
through the Rockies, and the East and West were finally linked after
the stress of toil and hardship and bitter struggle was over, was a
pretty hard burg, pretty hard--a whole lot harder than it is to-day.
There was still a big transient population of about every nationality
on earth, for the road, just because they could operate it, wasn't
finished by a good deal, and construction camps were more numerous than
stations. Bridge gangs were still at work; temporary trestles were
being replaced with ones more permanent; there were cuts through the
gray of the mountain rock to be trimmed and barbered with dynamite; and
there were grades and approaches and endless things to struggle over;
and--well, Big Cloud was still the Mecca of the gamblers, the dive
keepers, and the purveyors of "red-eye," who had flocked there to feed
like vultures on the harvest of pay checks that were circling around.
It was a pretty hard place, Big Cloud--everything wide open--not much
of any law there in the far West in the shadow of the Rockies. It's
different to-day, of course; but that's the way it was then, when
Martin Bradley was firing on the Transcontinental.
Bradley from the first boarded with the MacQuigans. That's how,
probably, he came to think more of young Reddy MacQuigan, who was a
wiper in the roundhouse, than he did of any of the rest of the railroad
crowd. Perhaps not altogether for young Reddy's sake; perhaps on
account of Mrs. MacQuigan, and particularly on account of old John
MacQuigan--who wasn't any good on earth--a sodden parasite on the
household when he was drunk, and an ugly brute when there wasn't any
money forthcoming from the products of Mrs. MacQuigan's ubiquitous
washtubs to get drunk with. For old John MacQuigan, between whom and
Bradley there existed an armed truce, each regarding the other mutually
as a necessary evil, had no job--for two reasons: first, because he
didn't want one; and, second, because no one would have given him one
if he had. Mrs. MacQuigan, a patient, faded-out little woman, tireless
because she had to be tireless, shouldered the burden, and hid her
shame as best she could from her neighbors. Reddy? No; he didn't help
out much--then. Reddy used to stray a little from the straight and
narrow himself--far enough so that it was pretty generally conceded
that Reddy held his job in the roundhouse on account of his mother, who
did Regan's washing; and, as a matter of cold fact, that was about the
truth of it; and, as a matter of cold fact, too, that was why the
big-hearted master mechanic liked Martin Bradley.
"I dunno," Regan used to say, twiddling his thumbs over his fat paunch,
"I dunno; it's about the last place _I'd_ want to board, with that
drunken pickings from the scrap heap around. The only decent thing old
John 'll ever do will be to die--h'm? About a week of it would finish
me. Bradley? Yes; he's hung on there quite a spell. Pretty good man,
Martin. I dunno what Mrs. MacQuigan would do without him. Guess
that's why he stays. I'm going to give Martin an engine one of these
days. That'll help out some. When? When his turn comes. First
chance I get. I can't poison anybody off to make room for him--can I?"
And now just a single word more, while we're getting back the
"complete," to say that this had been going on for two or three years;
Martin Bradley boarding at the MacQuigans' and firing the 582; young
Reddy wiping in the roundhouse, and on the ragged edge of dismissal
every time the pay car came along; Mrs. MacQuigan at her washtubs; old
John leading his disreputable, gin-soaked life; Tommy Regan between the
devil of discipline and the deep blue sea of soft-heartedness anent the
MacQuigans' son and heir--and we're off, the tissue buttoned in our
reefer--off with a clean-swept track.