OVER THE BIG BRIDGE
DENIS McGuire’s successor in the little shanty down by the bridge had
shown a white light to the driver of the Midnight Express, and was up,
and out with the dawn, to show a milk-white flag to the men on the
White Mail in the morning.
Down at East St. Louis, Roadmaster McGuire and Mrs. McGuire, who, in
addition to being “the President’s mother,” continued to make herself
generally useful about the house, were crossing the big bridge in order
to be at the Union depot when the White Mail came in with the “Maid of
Erin.”
McGuire had been called early, and at dawn, when the black steed
stopped to drink at Highland, Mrs. McGuire joined him. The President
tried hard to appreciate the situation. Here was the realization of a
dream that he had not dared dream in his happiest and most hopeful
moods. He was going over the Silver Creek bridge on the White Mail and
in his own private car, and he tried to feel perfectly satisfied with
himself and the world. If he could only work himself up to feeling as
proud and important as he did the day he took charge of the mule, the
tank, and all the company’s property at West Silver Creek, he would
be glad, but it would not go. He was really a great man now, and that
enabled him to appreciate what a little bit of a hole would be left if
one great man were to be pulled out of the world.
The engine screamed. “That’s St. Jacobs,” said McGuire to his wife,
and the station was behind them. Here the President had his first
disappointment. The man who stood upon the platform in his shirt
sleeves was a stranger. The old agent was in Texas. Now the train sank
into the sag at East Silver, lifted again, as an ocean steamer lifts
her huge form over a high sea, screamed on the ridge, and then went
roaring down toward the bridge. How dwarfed and mean things looked! The
old saw-mill was gone, and only a brown heap of sawdust marked the
place. The mill-pond, into which he had taken many a run and jump from
the railroad grade, was a slimy, stagnant pool covered with green scum.
“Now look, dear!--here--there! There’s where the White Mail got mixed
up with me and the mule.”
“But where’s the bridge, dear? Show me the bridge you used to guard,
and the--”
“There, that’s it. Isn’t it little? Why, I used to fancy that was about
the biggest bridge on the road.”
“But you’re a big boy now, Tommy,” said his wife, patting him playfully
on the back, “and things look different.”
The whistle sounded again, and the “Maid of Erin” whipped round the
curve at Hagler’s tank.
There was a steady pull against the grade for a few moments, and then
the President felt the train falling into the broad bottoms and saw the
bluffs lift in their wake. He turned, and stole a look at the handsome
woman who had left a luxurious home on the Atlantic to follow him
into the West. He began now to appreciate his prize, and his other
successes grew insignificant and mean, like the bridge, and the pond,
and the mill-site. Feeling his glance, she turned her smiling face to
him, bright and beautiful as the breaking morn, and he thought then
that he had tasted what men call happiness.
With a rush and a roar, they swept up the incline, and McGuire,
glancing up and down the river, said, as a man might say in a dream:
“We’re crossing the big bridge on the White Mail.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Minor silent changes have been made to regularize hyphenation and
punctuation.
Dialect, slang and archaic spellings have been retained as typeset.