switch lights in the Big Cloud yards were already beginning to twinkle
red and white and green, as Martin Bradley, from the pay car platform,
his pay check in his pocket, swung himself to the ground and pushed his
way through a group of men clustered beside the car. He had caught
sight of Regan across the spur going into the roundhouse a moment
before, and he wanted a word with the master mechanic--nothing very
important--a requisition for an extra allowance of waste. And then,
amongst the crowd, he caught sight of some one else, and smiled a
little grimly. Old John MacQuigan, as he always did on pay days, was
hovering about first one, and then another, playing good fellow and
trying to ring himself in on the invitations that would be going around
presently when the whistle blew.
Bradley, his smile thinning a little as old John, catching sight of him
in turn, sidled off, passed through the group, crossed the
turntable--and halted abruptly, just outside the big engine doors, as
Regan's voice came to him in an angry growl.
"Now mind what I say, Reddy! Once more, and you're through--for keeps.
And that's my last word. Understand?"
"Well, you needn't jump a fellow before he's done anything!" It was
Reddy MacQuigan, answering sullenly.
There was silence for a moment; then Regan's voice again, pretty cold
and even now.
"I dunno," he said. "I figure you must have been brought into the
world for something, but I dunno what it is. You're not to blame for
your father; but if I let a mother of mine, and nearing sixty years,
slave out the little time she's got left, I'd want to crawl out
somewhere amongst the buttes and make coyote meat of myself. Jump you
before you've done anything--eh!" The little master mechanic's voice
rose suddenly. "I saw you sneak uptown an hour ago when you left the
pay car--one drink for a start--h'm! Well, you put another on top of
it, and it'll be for a--finish! I'd do a lot for that fine old lady of
a mother of yours, and that's why I've taken the trouble to come over
here and warn you what'll happen if you put in the night you're heading
for. 'Tisn't because I can't run the roundhouse without you, my
bucko--mind that!"
Bradley was snapping his fingers in his queer, nervous way. Reddy
MacQuigan made no answer; at least, Bradley did not hear any, but he
heard Regan moving toward the door. He had no wish to talk to the
master mechanic any more, not just at that moment anyhow, so he
crunched through the engine cinders to another door, entering the
roundhouse as Regan went out on the turntable and headed across the
tracks for the station.
Two pits away, Reddy MacQuigan, with a black scowl on his face, leaned
against the steam chest of the 1004. Bradley, pretending not to see
him, swung through the gangway and into the cab of the 582. There, for
half an hour, he busied himself in an aimless fashion; but with an eye
out for the young wiper, as the latter moved about the roundhouse.
The whistle was blowing and Reddy was pulling off his overalls, as
Bradley swung out of his cab again; and he was shading a match from the
wind over the bowl of his pipe just across the turntable, as Reddy came
out. He tossed away the match, puffed, and nodded at MacQuigan.
"Hello, Reddy," he said in his quiet way, and fell into step with the
boy.
MacQuigan didn't answer. Bradley never spoke much, anyhow. They
crossed the tracks and started up Main Street in silence. Here, the
railroaders, in groups and twos and threes, filled the street; some
hurrying homeward; others dropping in through the swinging doors, not
infrequently located along the right of way, where gasoline lamps
flared out over the gambling hells, and the crash of tin-pan pianos,
mingled with laughter and shouting, came rolling out from the
dance-hall entrances.
Bradley, with his eyes in front of him, walked along silently. Upon
MacQuigan's young face had settled the black scowl again; and it grew
blacker as he glanced, now and then, at the man beside him. Behind
them came a knot of his cronies--and some one called his name.
MacQuigan halted suddenly.
"Well, so long, Martin," he said gruffly. "I'll be up a little later."
Bradley's hand went out and linked in the other's arm.
"Better come on home, Reddy," he said, with one of his rare smiles.
"Later," Reddy flung out.
"Better make it now," said Bradley quietly.
The group behind had come up with them now, and, crowding into Faro
Dave's place, paused a moment in the entrance to absorb the situation.
"Be a good boy, Reddy, and do as you're told," one of them sang out.
Reddy whirled on Bradley, the hot blood flushing his face.
"I wish you'd mind your own blasted business!" he flared. "I'm blamed
good and sick of you tagging me. This isn't the first time. You make
me weary! The trouble with you is that you don't know anything but the
everlasting grouch you carry around. You're a funeral! You're a
tight-wad. Everybody says so. Nobody ever heard of you spending a
cent. Go on--beat it--leave me alone!"
Bradley's face whitened a little, but the smile was still on his lips.
"Better draw your fire, Reddy; there's no need of getting hot," he
said. "Come on home; you know what'll happen if you don't; and you
know what Regan told you back there in the roundhouse."
"So you heard that, eh?" Reddy shot at him. "I thought you did; and
you thought you'd fool me by hanging around there, playing innocent, to
walk home with me, eh?"
"I wasn't trying to fool you," Bradley answered; and his hand went now
to the wiper's shoulder.
"Let go!" snarled Reddy. "I'll go home when I feel like it!"
Bradley's hand closed a little tighter.
"Don't make a fool of yourself, Reddy," he said gravely. "You'll----"
And that was all. MacQuigan wasn't much more than a boy, not much more
than that, and hot-headed--and his chums were looking on. He freed
himself from Bradley's hold--with a smash of his fist in Bradley's face.
Fight? No; there wasn't any fight. There was a laugh--from old John
MacQuigan, who had been trailing the young bloods up the street. And
as Bradley, after staggering back from the unexpected blow, recovered
himself, Reddy MacQuigan, followed by old John, was disappearing into
Faro Dave's "El Dorado" in front of him.
Bradley went home alone.
Supper was ready--it was always ready, as everything else was where
little old Mrs. MacQuigan was concerned; and there were four plates on
the red-checkered tablecloth--as there always were--even on pay day!
Bradley sat down, with Mrs. MacQuigan opposite him.
Not much to look at--Mrs. MacQuigan. A thin, sparse little woman in a
home-made black alpaca dress; the gray hair, thinning, brushed smooth
across her forehead; wrinkles in the patient face, a good many of them;
a hint of wistfulness in the black eyes, that weren't as bright as they
used to be; not very pretty hands, they were red and lumpy around the
knuckles. Not much to look at--just a little old woman, brave as God
Almighty makes them--just Mrs. MacQuigan.
Bradley, uneasy, glancing at her furtively now and again, ate savagely,
without relish. There wasn't much said; nothing at all about old John
and young Reddy. Mrs. MacQuigan never asked a question--it was pay day.
There wasn't much said until after the meal was over, and Bradley had
lighted his pipe and pushed back his chair; with Mrs. MacQuigan
lingering at the table, kind of wistfully it seemed, kind of listening,
kind of hanging back from putting away the dishes and taking the two
empty plates off the table--and then she smiled over at Bradley as
though there wasn't anything on her mind at all.
"Faith, Martin," she said, "sure I don't know at all, at all, what I'd
be doing not seeing you around the house; but it's wondered I have
often enough you've not picked out some nice girl and made a home of
your own."
The words in their suddenness came to Bradley with a shock; and, his
face strained, he stared queerly at Mrs. MacQuigan.
A little startled, Mrs. MacQuigan half rose from her chair.
"What is it, Martin?" she asked tremulously.
For a moment more, Bradley stared at her. Strange that she should have
spoken like that to-night when there seemed more than ever a sort of
grim analogy between her life and his, that seemed like a bond to-night
drawing them closer--that seemed, somehow, to urge him to pour out his
heart to her--there was motherliness in the sweet old face that seemed
to draw him out of himself as no one else had for more years than he
cared to remember--as even she never had before.
"What is it, Martin?" she asked again.
And then Bradley smiled.
"I've picked her out," he said, in a low voice. "I'm waiting for a
little girl that's promised some day to keep house for me."
"Oh, Martin!" cried Mrs. MacQuigan excitedly. "And--and you never said
a word!"
Bradley's hand dove into his inside pocket and came out with a
photograph--and the smile on his face now was full of pride.
"Here's her picture," he said.
"Wait, Martin--wait till I get my spectacles!" exclaimed Mrs.
MacQuigan, all in a flutter; and, rising, she hurried over to the
little shelf in the corner. Then, adjusting the steel bows over her
ears, with little pats to smooth down her hair, she picked up the
photograph and stared at it--at the picture of a little tot of eight or
nine, at a merry, happy little face that smiled at her roguishly.
"She's ten now, God bless her!" said Bradley simply. "That was taken
two years ago--so I haven't so long to wait, you see."
"Why--why, Martin," stammered Mrs. MacQuigan, "sure you never said you
was married. And the wife, Martin, poor boy, she's--she's dead?"
Bradley picked up the photograph and replaced it in his pocket--but the
smile now was gone.
"No--I don't know--I never heard," he said. He walked over to the
window, pulled the shade and stared out, his back to Mrs. MacQuigan.
"She ditched me. I was on the Penn then--doing well. I had my engine
at twenty-five. I went bad for a bit. I'd have gone all the way if it
hadn't been for the kiddie. I'd have had more to answer for than I'd
want to have, blood, perhaps, if I'd stayed, so I pulled up stakes and
came out here." He turned again and came back from the window. "I
couldn't bring the kiddie, of course; it was no place for her. And I
couldn't leave her where she was to grow up with that in her life, for
she was too young then, thank God, to understand; so I'm giving her the
best my money'll buy in a girl's school back East, and"--his voice
broke a little--"and that's the little girl I'm waiting for, to make a
home for me--some time."
Mrs. MacQuigan's hands fumbled a little as she took off her spectacles
and laid them down--fumbled a little as she laid them on Bradley's
sleeve.
"God be good to you, Martin," she whispered, and, picking up some
dishes, went hurriedly from the room.
Bradley went back again and stood by the window, looking out, snapping
his fingers softly with that trick of his when any emotion was upon
him. Strange that he should have told his story to Mrs. MacQuigan
to-night! And yet he was glad he had told her; she probably would
never refer to it again--just understand. Yes; he was glad he had told
her. He hadn't intended to, of course. It had come almost
spontaneously, almost as though for some reason it was _meant_ that he
should tell her, and----
Bradley's eyes fixed on a small boy's figure that came suddenly
streaking across the road and flung itself at the MacQuigans' little
front gate; then the gate swung, and the boy came rushing up the yard.
Bradley thought he recognized the figure as one of the call boys, and a
call boy running like that was always and ever a harbinger of trouble.
Instinctively he glanced back into the room. Mrs. MacQuigan was out in
the kitchen. Bradley stepped quickly into the hall, and reached the
front door as the boy began to pound a tattoo with his fists on the
panels.
Bradley jerked the door open.
"What's wrong?" he demanded tersely.
The light from the hall was on the boy now--and his eyes were popping.
"Say," he panted, in a scared way, "say, one of Reddy's friends sent
me. There's a wild row on at Faro Dave's. Reddy's raisin' the roof,
an'----"
Bradley's hand closed over the youngster's mouth. In answer to the
knock, Mrs. MacQuigan was hurrying down the hall.
"What's the matter, Martin?" she questioned nervously, looking from
Bradley to the boy and back again to Bradley.
"Nothing," said Bradley reassuringly. "I'm wanted down at the
roundhouse to go out with a special." He gave the boy a significant
push gatewards. "Go on, bub," he said. "I'll be right along."
Bradley went back into the house, picked up his cap, and, with a cheery
good-night to Mrs. MacQuigan, started out again. He walked briskly to
the gate and along past the picket fence--Mrs. MacQuigan had the shade
drawn back, and was watching him from the window--and then, hidden by
the Coussirats' cottage next door, he broke into a run.
It wasn't far--distances weren't great in Big Cloud in those days,
aren't now, for that matter--and in less than two minutes Bradley had
Faro Dave's "El Dorado" in sight down Main Street--and his face set
hard. He wasn't the only one that was running; men were racing from
every direction; some coming up the street; others, he passed, who
shouted at him, and to whom he paid no attention. In a subconscious
way he counted a dozen figures dart in through the swinging doors of
the "El Dorado" from the street--news of a row travels fast.
Bradley burst through the doors, still on the run--and brought up at a
dead halt against a solidly packed mass of humanity; Polacks and Swedes
and Hungarians from the construction gangs; a scattering of railroad
men in the rear; and more than a sprinkling of the harder element
gathered from all over town, the hangers-on, the sharpers, and the card
men, the leeches, the ilk of Faro Dave who ran the place, and who
seemed to be intent on maintaining a blockade at the far end of the
barroom.
The place was jammed, everybody craning their necks toward the door of
the back room, where Faro Dave ran his stud, faro and roulette layouts;
and from there, over the shuffling feet of the crowding men in the bar,
came a snarl of voices--amongst them, Reddy's, screaming out in drunken
fury, incoherently.
Bradley, without ceremony, pushed into the crowd, and the foreigners
made way for him the best they could. Then he commenced to shoulder
through the sort of self-constituted guard of sympathizers with the
house. One of these tried to block his way more effectually.
"You'd better keep your hands off, whoever you are," the man threw at
him. "The young fool's been putting the place on the rough ever since
he came in here. All Dave wants to do is put him out of the back door,
and----"
"Thash the boy, Reddy! Don't lesh him bluff you--saw him change cards
m'self. Damn thief--damn cheat--thash the boy, Reddy!" It was old
John MacQuigan's voice, from the other room, high-pitched,
clutter-tongued, drunken.
Then a voice, cold, with a sneer, and a ring in the sneer that there
was no mistaking--Faro Dave's voice:
"You make a move, and I'll drop you quicker'n----"
Bradley's arms swept out with a quick, fierce movement, hurling the man
who tried to block him out of the way; and, fighting now, ramming with
body and shoulders, throwing those in front of him to right and left,
he half fell, half flung himself finally through the doorway into the
room beyond--too late.
"Thash the boy, Reddy!"--it was old John's maudlin voice again. "Thash
the----"
The picture seared itself into Bradley's brain, lightning-quick,
instantaneous, but vivid in every detail, as he ran: The little group
of men, three or four, who had been sitting at the game probably,
seeking cover in the far corner; Reddy MacQuigan, swaying a little,
standing before a somewhat flimsy green-baized card table; old John,
too far gone to stand upright alone, leaning against the wall behind
Reddy; Faro Dave, an ugly white in his face, an uglier revolver in his
hand, standing, facing Reddy across the table; the quick forward lunge
from Reddy, the crash of the table as the boy hurled it to the floor
and flung himself toward the gambler; the roar of a revolver shot, the
flash of the short-tongued flame; a choking scream; another shot, the
tinkle of glass as the bullet shattered the ceiling lamp; then
blackness--all but a dull glow filtering in through the barroom door,
that for the first instant in the sudden contrast gave no light at all.
Bradley, before he could recover himself, pitched over a tangled mass
of wrecked tables--over that and a man's body. Somebody ran through
the room, and the back door slammed. There were shouts now, and
yells--a chorus of them from the barroom. Some one bawled for a light.
Bradley got to his knees, and, reaching to raise the boy, wounded or
killed as he believed, found his throat suddenly caught in a vicious
grasp--and Reddy's snarling laugh was in his ears.
"Let go!" Bradley choked. "Let go, Reddy. It's me--Martin."
Reddy's hands fell.
"Martin, eh?" he said thickly. "Thought it was--hic--that----"
Reddy's voice sort of trailed off. They were bringing lamps into the
room now, holding them up high to get a comprehensive view of
things--and the light fell on the farther wall. Reddy was staring at
it, his eyes slowly dilating, his jaw beginning to hang weakly.
Bradley glanced over his shoulder. Old John, as though he had slid
down the wall, as though his feet had slipped out from under him, sat
on the floor, legs straight out in front of him, shoulders against the
wall and sagged a little to one side, a sort of ironic jeer on the
blotched features, a little red stream trickling down from his right
temple--dead.
Not a pretty sight? No--perhaps not. But old John never was a pretty
sight. He'd gone out the way he'd lived--that's all.
It was Martin Bradley who reached him first, and the crowd hung back
while he bent over the other, hung back and made way for Reddy, who
came unsteadily across the room--not from drink now, the boy's
gait--the drink was out of him--he was weak. There was horror in the
young wiper's eyes, and a white, awful misery in his face.
A silence fell. Not a man spoke. They looked from father to son. The
room was filling up now--but they came on tiptoe. Gamblers, most of
them, and pretty rough, pretty hard cases, and life held light--but in
that room that night they only looked from father to son, the oaths
gone from their lips, sobered, their faces sort of gray and stunned.
Bradley, from bending over the dead man, straightened up.
Reddy MacQuigan, with little jabs of his tongue, wet his lips.
"The old man's gone, ain't he?" he said in a queer, lifeless way.
"Yes," said Bradley simply.
MacQuigan looked around the circle sort of mechanically, sort of
unseeingly--then at the form on the floor. Then he spoke again, almost
as though he were talking to himself.
"Might just as well have been me that fired the shot," he whispered,
nodding his head. "I'm to blame--ain't I? An' I guess--I guess I've
finished the old lady, too." He looked around the circle again, then
his hands kind of wriggled up to his temples--and before Bradley could
spring to catch him, he went down in a heap on the floor.
MacQuigan wasn't much more than a boy, not much more than that--but old
enough in another way. What he went through that night and in the days
that followed was between MacQuigan and his God. Life makes strange
meeting points sometimes, and sometimes the running orders are hard to
understand, and sometimes it looks like disaster quick and absolute,
with everything in the ditch, and the right of way a tangled ruin--and
yet when morning breaks there is no call for the wrecking crew, and it
comes to you deep down inside somewhere that it's the Great Despatcher
who's been sitting in on the night trick.
Reddy MacQuigan went back to the roundhouse a different MacQuigan than
he had left it--sort of older, quieter, more serious--and the days went
by, a month or two of them.
Regan, with a sort of inward satisfaction and some complacency, tugged
at his scraggly brown mustache, and summed it up pretty well.
"Did I not say," said Regan, "that the only decent thing old John would
ever do would be to die? H'm? Well, then, I was right, wasn't I?
Look at young Reddy! Straight as a string--and taking care of the old
lady now. No; I ain't getting my shirts starched the way Mrs.
MacQuigan used to starch them--but no matter. Mrs. MacQuigan isn't
taking in washing any more, God bless her! I guess Reddy got it handed
to him pretty straight on the carpet that night. I'll have him pulling
a throttle one of these days--what?"
Bradley? Yes; this is Martin Bradley's story--not Reddy MacQuigan's.
But Reddy had his part in it--had running orders to make one more of
those strange meeting points fixed by the Great Despatcher that we were
speaking about a minute ago.
It was three months to the day from old John MacQuigan's death that
Bradley, in from a run, found a letter waiting for him up at Mrs.
MacQuigan's--and went down under it like a felled ox! Not the big
thing to do? Well, perhaps not--all that he cared for in life,
everything that he lived for, everything that had kept him straight
since his trouble years ago, snatched from him without a moment's
warning--that was all. Another man might not have lost his grip--or he
might. Bradley lost his--for a little while--but they call him to-day
a game man on the Hill Division.
White-faced, not quite understanding himself, in a queer sort of
groping way, Bradley, in his flood of bitter misery, told Mrs.
MacQuigan, who had watched him open the letter--told her that his
little housekeeper, as he had come to call the kiddie, was dead. Not
even a chance to see her--an accident--the letter from the lawyers who
did his business, transmitting the news received from the school
authorities who knew only the lawyers as the principals--a letter,
trying to break the news in a softer way than a telegram would have
done, since Bradley was too far away to get back East in time, anyhow.
And Mrs. MacQuigan put her arms around him, and, understanding as only
her mother's heart could understand, tried to comfort him, while the
tears rained down the sweet old face. But Bradley's eyes were dry.
With his elbows on the table, holding his chin in his hands, his face
like stone, he stared at the letter he had spread out on the red
checkered cloth--stared for a long time at that, and at the little
photograph he had taken from his pocket.
"Martin, boy," pleaded Mrs. MacQuigan, and her hand brushed back the
hair from his forehead, "Martin, boy, don't take it like that."
And then Bradley turned and looked at her--not a word--only a bitter
laugh--and picked up his letter and the picture and went out.
Bradley went up on the 582 with the local freight, west, that night,
and there was a dare-devil laugh in his heart and a mechanical sense of
existence in his soul. And in the cab that night, deep in the
mountains, Bradley lost his grip. It seemed to sweep him in a sudden,
overwhelming surge; and, with the door swung wide, the cab leaping into
fiery red, the sweat beads trickling down his face that was white in a
curious way where the skin showed through for all the grime and
perspiration, he lurched and snatched at his engineer's arm.
"Life's a hell of a thing, ain't it, Smithers?" he bawled over the roar
of the train and the swirl of the wind, wagging his head and shaking
imperatively at Smithers' arm.
Smithers, a fussy little man, with more nerves than are good for an
engineer, turned, stared, caught a something in the fireman's face--and
tried to edge a little farther over on his seat. In the red,
flickering glare, Bradley's eyes had a look in them that wasn't sane,
and his figure, swaying with the heave of the cab, seemed to shoot back
and forth uncannily, grotesquely, in and out of the shadows.
"Martin, for God's sake, Martin," gasped the engineer, "what's wrong
with you?"
"You heard what I said," shouted Bradley, a sullen note in his voice,
gripping the engineer's arm still harder. "That's what it is, ain't
it? Why don't you answer?"
Smithers, frightened now, stared mutely. The headlight shot suddenly
from the glittering ribbons of steel far out into nothingness, flinging
a filmy ray across a canyon's valley, and mechanically Smithers checked
a little as they swung the curve. Then, with a deafening roar of
thunder racketing through the mountains, they swept into a cut, the
rock walls towering high on either side--and over the din Bradley's
voice screamed again--and again he shook Smithers' arm.