AGAIN THE REAPER
AT the suggestion of the section boss, the agent asked the roadmaster
to put Jimmie Connor on the bridge as watchman, and give little Jack,
his brother, the mule and the tank.
After that, instead of the bent form of the old man, the widow saw her
boy coming up from the bridge of a morning when the White Mail had gone
by.
Everyone was kind to the boys and gave them encouragement.
Conductor Wise, who went up on the Midnight Express and came down
on the White Mail, sent a dog to be company for the young watchman.
Charley Cope, who fired the Highland Accommodation, gave little Jack
a long whip, and the foreman of the bridge gang built a platform so
that he could stand, or sit in the centre of the “horse power” like the
driver of a threshing machine.
But with all this kindness, the greatest measure of help and comfort,
encouragement and amusement, came from little Tommy McGuire.
Round-faced, freckled, happy, careless, “onry,” the neighbors called
him. He found some paint one day that the painters had left when they
painted the section house, painted the white calf red and striped the
goat like the zebra, whose life-sized likeness adorned the blacksmith
shop.
The agent, who was something of a philosopher, always argued that
Tommy McGuire was not as bad as he was painted. He was not wicked, but
curious, Heidelberg said. When he put precisely the same sized can to
Jimmie Connor’s dog that he put to his own dog, it was not to punish
the brutes, but merely to see which would get home first, and settle a
dispute of long standing.
When he took his red spaniel under his naked arm and dived from the top
of the bridge when the river was running bank full, it was merely to
see which could stay under water longest, himself or the dog. And so,
behind all of his mischief, the agent was able to see a motive. It
was the boy’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge that made him want to
explore everything, from the cave in the bluff to the crow’s nest in
the top of the tallest sycamore.
It may be that the Connor boys were no better because of his visits,
but they were happier; he was company for them and made them forget. He
awed them with his wonderful feats of climbing, diving, swimming, and
jumping. When Jimmie, the watchman, would shrink back and hold his cap
as the cars roared past, Tommy McGuire would stand close to the rail
and laugh in the face of the screaming steed. Once, just to see how
it would feel, he hung from the bridge by his legs while the Midnight
Express went by.
One morning Mrs. Connor saw Jimmie swinging down from the cab of a
freight engine. His feet slipped from the iron step, he fell, and his
mother put her hands over her eyes and screamed. In a moment he was
on his feet again, waving his cap encouragingly to his mother and
signalling to the engine crew to go ahead. But he was not unhurt. When
they removed his trousers they found that the flange of a tank wheel
had sliced the whole calf off one of his legs right down to the bone.
While the rest were busy with the wounded boy, Tommy McGuire went down
to the tank to break the news to little Jack. “Don’t you be afraid,”
said he to the pale boy who was two years his senior, “if anything
happens to Jimmie I’ll take care uv you. Dad says I’m no good, mother
says I’m sassy, Mis’ Dutton says I’m ‘onry’ and the priest says I’m
‘incourageable,’ and I guess they’re all about right, but you know me,
Jack, eh? old man! an’ you know I’ll do what I say.”
There were tears in the eyes of the pump boy when Tommy took his two
hands, gave him a jerk forward, let him go and hit him a hard jab in
the ribs, and then, as he turned, gave him a kick that looked worse
than it was.
“An’ I’ve got a frien’ Jack me boy, ’at can git us anythin’ from a push
car to a private train--that’s Mr. Heidelberg--he’s me frien’.”
Ten days from the day the accident occurred, they cut Jimmie’s leg
off, but it was too late. He never revived, and before the bewildered
children and the grief-sick mother could realize what had happened,
they had crossed his helpless hands over his youthful breast and
lighted the candles.
That night McGuire and his men came and “waked” Jimmie, as they had
waked his father only a few short months before.
U. P. Burns came with his black pipe and his black bottle and smoked
and drank and sang “come-all-ye” songs.