ordering Donohue to tell the junction man to set his signals at "clear"
for the train, and at "stop" for the 416. It was only a make-shift. In
the natural order of things the engineer of the special would make the
Bauxite stop anyway, signal or no signal, since it is a nation-wide
railroad rule that no train shall pass a junction without stopping.
Past that the boss grabbed up an official time-card and began to study
it hurriedly and to jot down figures. I wondered if he wasn't
tempted--just the least little bit in the world, you know.
Here was a thing shaping itself up--a thing for which he wasn't in the
least responsible--and if it should work out to the catastrophe that
nobody seemed to be able to prevent, the chief of the grafters, and
probably a number of his nearest backers, would be wiped off the books;
and Collingwood's death, which, in all human probability, was equally
certain, would set Mrs. Sheila free.
He must be thinking of it, I argued; he couldn't be a human man and not
be thinking of it. But he never stopped his hasty figuring for a single
instant until he broke off to bark out at Kirgan, who was standing by:
"Quick, Mart! I want a light engine, and somebody to run it! Jump for
it, man!"
Kirgan, big and slow-motioned at most times, was off like a shot. Then
the boss hurried back down the hall to his own offices, and again I
tagged him. The old major was standing at a window with his hands behind
him, and Mrs. Sheila was sitting just as we had left her, with the big
terror still in her eyes and her face as white as a sheet.
"We can't stop him without throwing a switch in front of him, and that
would mean death to him and his two enginemen," said the boss, talking
straight at the major, and as if he were trying to ignore Mrs. Sheila.
"I'm going to take a long chance and run down the line to meet them.
There's a bare possibility that I can contrive to get between the train
and the engine, and if I can----"
Mrs. Sheila was on her feet and she had her hands clasped as if she were
going to make a prayer to the boss. And it was pretty nearly that.
"Take me!" she begged; "oh, _please_ take me. It's my _right_ to go!"
Kirgan had found an engine somewhere in the yard and was backing it up
to the station platform. We could hear it. I saw that the chief was
going to turn Mrs. Sheila down--which was, of course, exactly the right
thing to do. But just then the major shoved in.
"Sheila knows what she's talking about, Graham," he said quietly. "When
you-all find Howie, you'll have a madman on your hands--and she's the
only one who can control him at such times--God pity her! Take us both,
suh."
I suppose Mr. Norcross thought there wasn't any time to stand there
arguing about it.
"As you will," he snapped at the major; and then to me: "Break for it,
Jimmie, and tell Kirgan to get a car--any car--the first one he can
find!"
I broke, and came pretty near breaking my blessed neck tumbling down the
stairs. Kirgan had found his engine and had picked up a yard man to fire
it. I told him what was wanted, and in less than no time he had pulled
out an empty day-coach from the washing track. While he was backing in
with it, Mr. Norcross came down the platform with the major and Mrs.
Sheila. He let the major help Mrs. Sheila up the steps of the coach and
ran forward to call out to Kirgan:
"Donohue is clearing for you, and there'll be nothing in the way. Run
regardless to Timber Mountain 'Y.' You have six minutes on the special's
time to that point, if you run like the devil!" And then, as he was
climbing to the cab, he ripped out at me: "Jimmie, you go back and stay
with them in the car. Hurry or you'll be left!"
XXX
Under the Wide and Starry Sky
I sure had to be quick about obeying that "get-aboard" order of Mr.
Norcross's. Kirgan had jerked the throttle open the minute the word was
given. I missed the forward end of the car, and when the other end came
along my grab at the hand-rod slammed me head over heels up the steps.
Kirgan was holding his whistle valve open, and the guarding strikers in
the yard gave us room and a clear track. By the time we had passed the
"limit" switches we were going like a blue streak, and I could hardly
keep my balance on the back platform of the day-coach.
You can guess that I didn't stay out there very long. The night was
clear as a bell and pretty coolish, with the stars burning like white
diamonds in the black inverted bowl of the sky. It was mighty pretty
scenery, but just the same, after Kirgan had fairly struck his gait on
the long western tangent, I clawed my way inside. It was a lot too
blustery and unsafe on that back platform.
The major and Mrs. Sheila were sitting together, near the middle of the
car. I staggered up and took the seat just ahead of them, and the major
asked me if Mr. Norcross was on the engine. I told him he was, and that
ended it. What with the rattle and bang of the coach, the howling of the
speed-made wind in the ventilators, and the shrill scream of the
spinning wheels, there wasn't any room for talk during the whole of that
breath-taking race to the old "Y" in the hills beyond Banta.
Knowing, from what Mr. Norcross had said, the point at which we were
going to side-track and wait for the special and the wild engine, I grew
sort of nervous and worked-up after we had crashed through the Banta
yard and the day-coach began to sway and lurch around the hill curves.
What if the special had been making better time than the boss had
counted upon? In that case, we'd probably hit her in a head-ender
somewhere on one of those very curves. And with the time we were making,
and the time she'd be making, there wouldn't be enough left of either
train to be worth picking up.
A mile or so short of the "Y" siding I went up ahead and handed myself
out to the forward platform to see if I couldn't get a squint past the
storming engine. I got it now and then, on the swing of the curves, but
there was nothing in sight. Just the same, it was mighty scary, and I
took a relief breath so deep that it nearly made me sick at my stomach
when I finally realized that Kirgan had shut off and was slowing for the
stop at the farther switch of the old "Y."
What was done at the switch was done swiftly, as men work when they have
the fear of death gripping at them. If the special should come up while
we were making the back-in, the result would be just about the same as
it would have been if we had met it on the curves.
The jerking tug of the self-preservation instinct is pretty strong,
sometimes, and I tumbled off the steps of the car as it was backing in
around the western curve of the "Y." Our picked-up fireman was at the
switch, setting it again for the main line. With our own engine silent,
I could hear a faint sound like the far-away fluttering of a
safety-valve. We were not ten seconds too soon. The special was coming.
Mr. Norcross, who was still in the engine cab, shot an order at Kirgan.
"Fling your coat over the headlight, and then be ready to snatch it and
get off!" he shouted. "If they see it as they come up, it may stop
them!" Then, catching a glimpse of me on the ground: "Break the coupling
on the coach, Jimmie--quick!"
As I jumped to obey I understood what was to be done. The fireman at
the switch was to let the special go by, and then the boss--just the
boss alone on the engine--was to be let out on the main track to put
himself between the chaser and the chased. It was a hair-raising
proposition, but perhaps--just perhaps--not quite so suicidal as it
looked. With skilful handling the interposed engine might possibly be
kept out of the way by backing, and its warning headlight shining full
into the eyes of the men in the 416's cab would surely be enough to stop
them--if anything would.
I got the coupling broken on the car to set our engine free before the
distant flutter noise had grown to anything more than a humming like
that of an overhead swarm of angry bees. Kirgan was standing on the
front end, with his coat thrown over the headlight, ready to jerk it off
and jump when he got the word. Out at the switch, our fireman was
keeping out of sight so that the engineer of the special shouldn't see
him, and maybe get rattled and stop. As usual, the boss had covered
every little detail in his instructions, and had remembered that the
sight of a man standing at a switch in a lonesome place like this might
give an engineer a fit of "nerves" and make him shut off steam.
I had just finished uncoupling the day-coach and the boss was easing our
engine ahead a bit to make sure that she was loose, when the car-door
opened behind me and the major and Mrs. Sheila came out in the front
vestibule. It was Mrs. Sheila who spoke to me, and her voice had
borrowed some of the big terror that I had seen in her eyes while she
was sitting in the office at Portal City.
"Where--whereabouts are we, Jimmie?" she asked.
I didn't get a chance to tell her. Before I could open my mouth the
black shadows of the crooked valley beyond the switch were shot through
with the white, shimmering glow of a headlight beam, and a second later
the special flicked into view on the curve of approach.
When we first saw it, the engine was working steam, and she was running
like a streak of lightning. But as we looked, there was a short, sharp
whistle yelp, the brakes gripped the wheels, the one-car train, with
fire grinding from every brake-shoe, came to a jerking stop a short
car-length on our side of the switch, and a man dropped from the engine
step to go sprinting to the rear. And it was plain that neither the
engineer nor the man who was running back saw our outfit waiting on the
leg of the old "Y."
Kirgan was the first one to understand. With a shout of warning, he
jumped and ran toward the stopped train, yelling at the engineer for
God's sake to pull out and go on. Back in the hills beyond the curve of
approach another hoarse murmur was jarring upon the air, and the
special's fireman, who was the man we had seen jump off and go running
back, and who, of course, didn't know that we had our man there, was
apparently trying to reach the switch behind his train to throw it
against the following engine to shoot it off on the "Y."
By this time the boss was off of our engine and racing across the angle
of the "Y" only a little way behind Kirgan. He realized that his plan
was smashed by the stopping of the special, and that the very
catastrophe we had come out to try to prevent was due to happen right
there and then. Whatever our man waiting at the switch might do, there
was bound to be a collision. If he left the points set for the main
line, the wild engine would crash into the rear end of the stopped
special; and if he did the other thing, our engine and coach standing on
the "Y" would get it.
"Get the people out of that car!" I heard the boss bellow, but even as
he said it the pop-valve of the stopped engine went off with a roar,
filling the shut-in valley with clamorings that nothing could drown.
Two minutes, two little minutes more, and the sleep-sodden bunch of men
in the special's car might have been roused and turned out and saved.
But the minutes were not given us. While the racing fireman was still a
few feet short of the switch the throwing of which would have saved the
one-car train only to let the madman's engine in on our engine and
coach, and our man--already at the switch--was too scared to know which
horn of the dilemma to choose, the end came. There was the flash of
another headlight on the curve, another whistle shriek, and I turned to
help the Major take Mrs. Sheila off our car and run with her, against
the horrible chance that we might get it instead of the special.
But we didn't get it. Ten seconds later the chasing engine had crashed
headlong into the standing train, burying itself clear up to the tender
in the heart of the old wooden sleeper, rolling the whole business over
on its side in the ditch, and setting the wreckage afire as suddenly as
if the old Pullman had been a fagot of pitch-pine kindlings and only
waiting for the match.
If I could write down any real description of the way things stacked up
there in that lonesome valley for the little bunch of us who stood
aghast at the awful horror, I guess I wouldn't need to be hammering the
keys of a typewriter in a railroad office. But never mind; no soldier
sees any more of a battle than the part he is in. There were seven of us
men, including the engineer and fireman of the special, who were able to
jump in and try to do something, and, looking back at it now, it seems
as if we all did what we could.
That wasn't much. About half of the people in the sleeping-car--six by
actual count, as we learned afterward--were killed outright in the crash
or so badly hurt that they died pretty soon afterward; and the fire was
so quick and so hot that after we had got the wounded ones out we
couldn't get all of the bodies of the others.
As you'd imagine, the boss was the head and front of that fierce rescue
fight. He had stripped off his coat, and he kept on diving into the
burning wreck after another and yet another of the victims until it
seemed as if he couldn't possibly do it one more time and come out
alive. He didn't seem to remember that these very men were the ones who
had been trying to ruin him--that at least once they had set a trap for
him and tried to kill him. He was too big for that.
After we had got out all the victims we could reach, there was still one
more left who wasn't dead; we could hear him above the hissing of the
steam and the crackling of the flames, screaming and begging us to break
in the side of the car and kill him before the fire got to him. Kirgan
had found an axe in the emergency box of our day-coach, and was chopping
away like a madman.
The minute he got a hole big enough, the big master-mechanic dropped
his axe and climbed down into the choking hell where the screams were
coming from. Our fireman picked up the axe and ran around to the other
side of the wreck where Jones, the engineer of the special, and his
fireman were trying to break into the crushed cab of the 416.
The old major, the boss, and I stood by to help Kirgan, and the minute
his head came up through the chopped hole we saw that he needed help. He
had pried the screaming man loose, somehow, and was trying to drag him
up out of the smoking furnace. It was done, amongst us, some way or
other. Kirgan had wrapped the man up in a Pullman blanket to keep the
fire from getting at him any worse than it already had, and as we were
taking him out the blanket slipped aside from his face and I saw who it
was that the master-mechanic had risked his life for. It was Hatch,
himself, and he died in our arms, the major's and mine, while we were
carrying him out to where Mrs. Sheila was tearing one of the Pullman
sheets that I had got hold of into strips to make bandages for the
wounded.
With the chance of saving maybe another one or two, we couldn't stay to
help the brave little woman who was trying to be doctor and nurse to
half a dozen poor wretches at once. But she took time to ask me one
single breathless question:
"Have they found him yet?--you know the one I mean, Jimmie?"
"No," I said. "They're digging away at that side now," and then I ran
back to jump in again.
Though the fire was now licking at everything in sight, Kirgan, who had
taken the axe from our fireman, had managed to cut some of the car
timbers out of the way so that we could see down into the tangle of
things where the cab of the 416 ought to have been. There wasn't much
left of the cab. The water-gauge was broken, along with everything else,
but in spite of the reek of smoke and steam we could see that Hogan and
his fireman were not there. But down under the coal that had shifted
forward at the impact of the collision we could make out the other
man--the murder-maniac--lying on his back, black in the face and
gasping.
That was enough for the boss. It looked like certain death for anybody
to crawl down into that hissing steam-bath, but he did it, wriggling
through the hole that Kirgan had chopped, while two or three of us ran
to the little creek that trickled down on the far side of the "Y" and
brought back soaking Pullman blankets to try to delay the encroaching
fire and smother the steam-jets.
I couldn't see very well what the boss was doing; the smoke and steam
were so blinding. But when I did get a glimpse I saw that he was digging
frantically with his bare hands at the shifted coal, and that he had
succeeded in freeing the head and shoulders of the buried man, who was
still alive enough to choke and gasp in the furnace-like heat.
Kirgan stood it as long as he could--until the licking flames were about
to drive us all away.
"You'll be burnt alive--come up out of that!" he yelled to the boss; but
I knew it wouldn't do any good. With Collingwood still buried down there
and still with the breath of life in him, the boss was going to stay and
keep on trying to dig him out, even if he, himself, got burned to a
crisp doing it. Loving Mrs. Sheila the way he did, he couldn't do any
less.
It was awful, those next two or three minutes. We were all running
frantically back and forth, now, between the wreck and the creek,
soaking the blankets and doing our level best to beat the fire back and
keep it from cutting off the only way there was for the boss to climb
out. But we could only fight gaspingly on the surface of things, as you
might say. Down underneath, the fire was working around in front and
behind in spite of all we could do. Some of it had got to the coal, and
the heavy sulphurous smoke was oozing up to make us all choke and
strangle.
Honestly, you couldn't have told that the boss was a white man when he
crawled up out of that pit of death, tugging and lifting the crushed
and broken body of the madman, and making us take it out before he would
come out himself. We got them both away from the fire as quickly as we
could and around to the other side of things, Kirgan and Jones carrying
Collingwood.
The poor little lady we had left alone with the rescued ones had done
all she could, and she was waiting for us. When we put Collingwood down,
she sat down on the ground and took his head in her lap and cried over
him just like his mother might have, and when the boss knelt down beside
her I heard what he said: "That's right, little woman; that's just as it
should be. Death wipes out all scores. I did my best--you must always
believe that I did my best."
She choked again at that, and said: "There is no hope?" and he said:
"I'm afraid not. He was dying when I got to him."
I tried to swallow the big lump in my throat and turned away, and so did
everybody else but the major, who went around and knelt down on the
other side of Mrs. Sheila. The wreck was blazing now like a mighty
bonfire, lighting up the pine-clad hills all around and snapping and
growling like some savage monster gloating over its prey. In the red
glow we saw a man limping up the track from the west, and Kirgan and I
went to meet him. It was Hogan, the missing engineer of the 416.
He told us what there was to tell, which wasn't very different from the
way we'd been putting it up. They--Hogan and his fireman--hadn't
suspected that they were carrying a maniac until after they had passed
Bauxite and Collingwood had told them both that what he wanted to do was
to overtake the special and smash it. Then there had been a fight on the
engine, but Collingwood had a gun and he had threatened to kill them
both if they didn't keep on.
"I kep' her goin'," said the Irishman, "thinkin' maybe Jonesy'd keep out
of my way, or that at the lasht I'd get a chanst to shut the 'Sixteen
off an' give her the brake. He kep' me fr'm doin' it, and whin I saw the
tail-lights, I pushed Johnnie Shovel off an' wint afther him because
there was nawthin' else to do. Johnnie's back yondher a piece, wid a
broken leg."
Just then Jones, the special's engineer, came up, and he pieced out
Hogan's story. The wire to Bauxite had warned him that a crazy man was
chasing him and overrunning stop-signals. He had thought to side-track
the chaser at the old "Y" and that was what he had stopped for.
Thereupon the three of us went after the crippled fireman, and when we
got back to the "Y" with him it was all over. Collingwood had died with
his head in Mrs. Sheila's lap, and the boss, fagged out and half dead as
he must have been, was up and at work, getting the wreck victims into
our day-coach, which had been backed up and taken around to the other
leg of the "Y" to head for Portal City.
When it came time for us to move Collingwood, Mrs. Sheila pulled her
veil down and walked behind the body, with the good old major locking
his arm in hers, and that choking lump came again in my throat when I
remembered what Collingwood had said to the boss the night he came to
our office: "Sheila made her wedding journey with me once, when she was
just eighteen. The next time she rides with me it will be at my
funeral."
I guess there's no use stretching the agony out by telling about that
mournful ride back to Portal City with the dead and wounded. We left the
wreck blazing and roaring in the shut-in valley at the gulch mouth
because there wasn't anything else to do; Kirgan and Jones and one of
the firemen handled the engine and pulled out, while the rest of us rode
in the day-coach and did what we could for the suffering.
At Banta we made a stop long enough to let the boss send a wire to
Portal City, turning out the doctors and the ambulances--and the
undertakers; and though it was after three o'clock in the morning when
we pulled in, it seemed as if the whole town had got the word and was
down at the station to meet us.
I couldn't see Mrs. Sheila's face when the major helped her off at the
platform; her veil was still down. But I did hear her low-spoken word to
the boss, whispered while they were carrying Collingwood and Hatch, and
two of the others who were past help, out to the waiting string of
dead-wagons.
"I shall go East with the body to-morrow--to-day, I mean--if the
strikers will let you run a train, and Cousin Basil will go with me. We
may never meet again, Graham, and for that reason I must say what I have
to say now. Your opportunity has come. The man who could do the most to
defeat you is dead, and the strike will do the rest. If I were you, I
should neither eat nor sleep until I had thought of some way to take the
railroad out of the hands of those who have proved that they are not
worthy to own it."
I didn't know, just then, how much or little attention Mr. Norcross was
paying to this mighty good, clear-headed bit of business advice. What he
said went back to that saying of hers that they might never meet again.
"We must meet again--sometime and somewhere," he said. And then: "I did
my best: God knows I did my best, Sheila. I would have given my own
life gladly if the giving would have saved Collingwood's. Don't you
believe that?"
"I shall always believe that you are one of God's own gentlemen,
Graham," she said, soft and low; and then the major came to take her
away.
XXXI
P. S. L. Comes Home
I didn't get more than five hours' sleep after the excitement was all
over, and we had ourselves driven, Mr. Norcross and I, up to the club.
But by nine o'clock the next morning, as soon as I'd swallowed a hurried
bite of breakfast in the grill-room I swiped a camp-stool and a magazine
out of the lounge and trotted up-stairs to plant myself before the
boss's door, determined that nobody should disturb him until he was good
and ready to get up.
He turned out a little before twelve, looking sort of haggard and drawn,
of course, and having some pretty bad burns on the side of his neck and
on the backs of both hands. But he was all there, as usual, and he laid
a good, brotherly hand on my shoulder when he saw what I was doing.
"They don't make many of them like you, Jimmie," he said. And then:
"Have you any news?"
I had, a little, and I gave it to him. Fred May had come tip-toeing up
into my sentry corridor about ten o'clock to tell me that Mr. Perkins
had arranged with the strikers to have a special go east with the major
and Mrs. Sheila and Collingwood's body to catch the Overland at
Sedgwick; and I told the boss this, and that the train had been gone for
an hour or more.
Also, I gave him a sealed package that a strange boy had brought up just
a little while after May went away. We took the elevator to the
grill-room for something to eat, and at table Mr. Norcross opened the
package. It contained a bunch of affidavits, eleven of them in all, and
there was no letter or anything to tell where they had come from.
He handed the papers over to me, after he had seen what they were, and
told me to take care of them, and, when the waiter was bringing our
bite--or rather after he had brought it and was gone--he sort of frowned
across the table at me and said: "Do you know what it means--this
surrender of those bribe affidavits, Jimmie?"