McGUIRE GOES SWITCHING
PUEBLO was a tough town when the Rio Grande terminated at that point.
All the good men were going into the mountains, for Leadville was
then sweating silver that was worth more than a dollar an ounce. To
be sure there were always a few reliable men who could railroad, who
knew nothing else, and would do nothing else. There were Dan Snyder,
Steve Riley, Jud Rogers, Charlie Barnes, and Silversmith, old timers
and stayers, whose signals were always safe, and upon these men
the management depended to handle the trains and hold the “stormy”
switchmen in line. It was at this swift outpost on the edge of the
west that Tom McGuire tied up and asked Jim Williams, the “scrappy”
yardmaster, for a job, switching in the yards.
“Where ye frum?” asked Suicide Dick, the foreman, cocking his cigar
in one corner of his mouth and then blowing rings of smoke into the
twilight, as he strolled down the yard with the new man.
“The U. P.”
“Umaha?”
“Yes.”
“Know Pat Toohey?”
“No.”
“Then yer a liar, Mr. McGuire, ye never saw Umaha--gimme that glim.”
Now, McGuire had never been called a liar. He was not a liar, and he
knew it, but he gave the foreman the glim, just over the left eye.
“You dam farmer,” said Dick, and that was all he said. He put down his
white light and put up his hands.
McGuire saw that he was about to have a fight with a man whom he had
known less than ten minutes. He made his feet firm on the coarse gravel
and waited. Dick wiped his bleeding eye on his jumper sleeve and looked
for an opening. McGuire put up his hands awkwardly.
Dick smiled.
Scrappy Jim saw the men manœuvring in the twilight and signalled a
switch-engine back with a rush signal, whirling his lamp furiously
until the pony had stopped in front of the switch-shanty.
“Smatter?” demanded fighting John Jones, leaning from the cab. He did
not like the signal. It seemed to him that it carried an unnecessary
amount of “hurry up.” Without lifting his eyes to the cab, Jim stepped
aboard, and, nodding down the yard, said, “Back up. Suicide’s touchin’
up the new guy.”
Jones opened the throttle and the yard engine slid down the track
and stopped short where the trouble was. Dick heard the engine and
was glad. He liked an audience. He remembered how the yardmaster had
“touched him up” in the first hour of his first day’s work for the
company, and recalled with pride that the good showing he had made with
Jim had won promotion. McGuire had expected that the yardmaster on the
engine and the engineer would stop the fight, but he heard no word
from them. Only three suns had set since this pugilistic pair had shut
themselves up in a box car and settled their own little differences,
and they now leaned side by side from the cab window and looked with
much interest upon the argument that was about to take place.
“Here they come,” said Dick, playfully, and he reached for McGuire’s
face.
“We ride everything here. Here comes a flat fur a starter,” and he
spanked McGuire’s cheek with his open hand. “Here’s an empty box,” and
he reached for the other side, but McGuire’s arm was on his time.
“That’s right--stop ’em. Here’s a cripple for the rep track,” and he
landed lightly on McGuire’s ribs. “Here’s a couple loaded,” and he put
his right and left hard on McGuire’s chest.
The blows angered the tenderfoot. Dick was leaping and dancing about
the unfortunate stranger as a savage Sioux would leap about a scalped
Pawnee. “We’ll put this express car in on the spur,” said Dick as he
landed a stinging blow on the point of his opponent’s nose. That insult
brought the blood, and instantly all the Irish in McGuire’s make-up
came to the surface. He was desperate, but he knew he must keep cool.
The foreman began to force the fighting. He talked less now, but
fought more. McGuire contented himself with stopping the blows of his
adversary, and so saved his wind, which he had observed was a tender
point in this rare, light air. Dick was wearing himself out. His left
eye was bleeding and the blood blinded him at times. McGuire would not
wilfully take advantage of that, but the yardman kept him so busy and
mixed cuts for him to such an extent, that he had to do something.
“Here’s a gondola loaded with iron ore,” said Dick, and he made a curve
with his left, which McGuire dodged. Before the foreman could recover,
McGuire swung his right on the fellow’s left ear, and Suicide Dick
collapsed like a punctured tire.
“That must ’a been a sleeper,” said Jim, glancing at Jones.
McGuire stood puffing like a helper on a heavy grade, and waiting for
Dick to get to his feet.
The two men came from the engine and stood by the man on the ground.
Dick lifted his head and then sat up. Presently he got to his feet, and
when he could see, he picked out McGuire and offered his hand. McGuire
took it, and then Jones offered his hand, and then the yardmaster shook
the hand of the tenderfoot.
Dick walked over to a freight engine, opened the water-cock, and bathed
his bleeding face.
“Wash up,” said Williams, jerking his thumb in the direction of the
freighter, and McGuire went over and washed.
“I want to pay for that light before I go,” said McGuire, “and I owe
this man an apology for striking him with it.”
“Huh,” grunted Dick.
“Don’t git silly,” said Jim.
Dick handed his lamp, which had a frosted stripe near the top of the
globe, to McGuire, and picked up the bent and battered frame that
awhile ago had fallen across his face.
“Don’t I quit?” asked McGuire, glancing from one face to the other.
“Quit! what do you quit fur? Didn’t you win? They don’t nobody
quit--you simply change places; an’ when you lick me you’ll be
yardmaster, an’ have two stripes on yer glim, see?”
McGuire could not reply. He was utterly unable to make these men out,
and when Jones had climbed on to the engine, he stepped with the
yardmaster on to the footboard, Dick, who was tired, took a seat on the
bumper beam between them, and the little switcher trembled away down
the track to where a freight conductor was swearing loudly in front of
the switch-shanty.
When the road had been extended to Leadville young McGuire, having
attracted the notice and won the respect of the Superintendent, was
sent up to take charge of the yards. Switchmen were scarcer there than
they had been at Pueblo, for the town was wild and wide open. Those
who came to work in the yards were the toughest of the tough; men who
could not find employment east of Denver came here to railroad, ten
thousand feet above the sea. McGuire undertook to improve the service.
He put up a bulletin that said men must not fight on duty, and that all
switchmen would be expected to be sober when they reported for work;
that trainmen would be allowed but one place of residence, and that the
caller would not look further than the address given for men who were
wanted.
“All switchmen,” said Flat-wheel Finigan, from the Texas Pacific,
reading the bulletin. “Now, it’s plain to me that that ‘all’ means
‘Finigan,’” and the new bulletin was ripped ruthlessly from the wall of
the yard-house.
If McGuire discharged a man, a worse one came to fill the vacancy; and
the yardmaster became discouraged. He sent in his resignation, but no
attention was paid to it. Nobody came to relieve him, and so he worked
on, always short-handed and often alone. Winter came, and it was next
to impossible to get men to handle the company’s business. A large
force of laborers was kept constantly at work shovelling snow from the
many spurs that ran up to the mines or down to the smelters. Of course
McGuire could only offer schedule pay that was fixed at Denver, and it
was hard to get men to switch in the snow for three dollars when they
could have five for sawing wood or tending bar.
After much correspondence the yardmaster succeeded in having the pay
of switchmen raised to four dollars in the Leadville yards, and in a
little while had a reasonably sober gang chasing the three yard engines
that had been sent up to do the work of four.
Things went fairly well until the foreman got drunk one day, and had
to be discharged. The wronged man went over to the Cadillac and told
his troubles to the barkeeper. His tale was overheard by a lucky
miner who had just sold a prospect hole for ten thousand. This miner,
with the liberality of a man moved by spirits, proposed that the two
open a saloon-restaurant. He would furnish the money, the yardman the
experience, nerve, and good-will. The offer was accepted. They bought
a storeroom that had cost six hundred for sixteen, and in less than a
week from the day of his dismissal the ex-foreman posted the following
notice above his front door:--
“Wanted--Seven swift biscuit shooters, any sex, creed, or
color--Wages, six dollars a day.”
Thirty minutes later seven of McGuire’s switchmen were switching in the
“Green Café.”
Later one of the men went back and brought the foreman from the yards,
who was installed as yardmaster in the new restaurant. The manager
became the “G. M.,” and the talk was railroad talk and nothing else.
The “switch-list” was not printed, but was shown orally to each patron
as he took his seat.
“Ride ’em in, ride ’em in,” called the yardmaster to a couple of
switchmen who were pitching plates of beans through a narrow window
from the kitchen to the dining-room.
“Drop the dope down the main line;” and one of the men shot a yellow
bowl of butter on to the centre table.
“Sand on No. 1--north spur,” called the head waiter, and before he had
finished a sugar-bowl was dropped upon the first table to the right.
“Pull the pin on that load on No. 2 south,” yelled the general manager.
The yardmaster and one of the switchmen lifted a fat man from the
sawdust floor and put him in a back room to cool.
“Pancakes, warm, please,” said a man who seemed to be afraid of being
overheard.
“String o’ flats with a hot box,” called the yardmaster; and so it went
from morning till midnight, and from midnight till morning again.
In the mean time McGuire worked loyally for the company, freezing his
ears and frosting his feet. One bitter cold morning a string of empties
got away on the hill. All the switchmen, who were not switchmen at
all, but who were drawing pay under false pretensions, jumped off in
the deep snow. McGuire stayed with the train and rode them down. The
agent at Malta saw them coming round the curve up toward the town, and
saw McGuire signalling frantically for the safety switch,--a short
spur that was put there to keep runaway cars from getting out on the
main line on the time of regular trains. That was a trying moment for
the station agent. If he threw McGuire in on the spur he would be shot
down the hill with a half-dozen freight cars on top of him. If he let
him out on to the main line, he must almost surely collide with the
up-coming passenger train that had already passed Haydens and could
not be caught by wire. He knew McGuire and liked him. He was awed by
the great courage that could hold a single man on a runaway train on
such a hill at such a time. There was something fine in the make-up of
a man who could call for a switch to wreck himself to save the crew
and passengers on another train. The agent signalled the yardmaster to
get off, but McGuire shook his head. The agent turned his back, and
McGuire went out on the main line, leaning to the curve like a man
driving a fast horse on a circular course. Below the station there was
a short stretch of straight track from which the wind, blowing down
from Tennessee Pass, had swept the snow. The yardmaster, climbing from
car to car, set the brakes as tight as he could set them; but the shoes
were covered with ice, and the train, on the tangent, seemed to be
increasing its speed. Now they fell into a lot of curves. McGuire began
to guess that he could not hold them; but he could not get off now,
even if he chose to do so, for on one hand lay the Arkansas River and
on the other the rock wall of the cañon.
Far down the gulch he heard a locomotive whistle, and his heart stood
still. Presently he felt the brakes taking hold of the wheels. It
seemed incredible, but it was so. The friction of the whirling wheels
had melted the ice from the brake shoes, and now the wheels began to
smoke. The curves and reverse curves helped also, and the runaway train
began to slow down. He could easily jump now, if they failed to stop,
for they were not making twenty miles an hour; but at that moment he
heard a wild, distressing cry for brakes from a locomotive. He was
riding on the rearmost car, the head end was hidden round a sharp
curve, and now he saw the middle of his train hump up like a cat’s
back. The first car shot up over the pilot of the head engine, cut off
her stack, whistle, and one corner of her cab, but fortunately no one
was hurt.
That afternoon McGuire promoted the foreman to be yardmaster, went to
Denver and resigned “in person;” but his resignation was not accepted.