GEORGE McCLOUD
McCloud was an exception to every tradition that goes to make up a
mountain railroad man. He was from New England, with a mild voice and
a hand that roughened very slowly. McCloud was a classmate of Morris
Blood's at the Boston "Tech," and the acquaintance begun there
continued after the two left school, with a scattering fire of letters
between the mountains and New England, as few and as far between as
men's letters usually scatter after an ardent school acquaintance.
There were just two boys in the McCloud family--John and George. One
had always been intended for the church, the other for science.
Somehow the boys got mixed in their cradles, or, what is the same
matter, in their assignments, and John got into the church. For
George, who ought to have been a clergyman, nothing was left but a
long engineering course for which, after he got it, he appeared to
have no use. However, it seemed a little late to shift the life
alignments. John had the pulpit and appeared disposed to keep it, and
George was left, like a New England farm, to wonder what had become of
himself.
It is, nevertheless, odd how matters come about. John McCloud, a
prosperous young clergyman, stopped on a California trip at Medicine
Bend to see brother George's classmate and something of a real Western
town. He saw nothing sensational--it was there, but he did not see
it--but he found both hospitality and gentlemen, and, if surprised,
was too well-bred to admit it. His one-day stop ran on to several
days. He was a guest at the Medicine Bend Club, where he found men who
had not forgotten the Harvard Greek plays. He rode in private cars and
ate antelope steak grilled by Glover's own darky boy, who had roasted
buffalo hump for the Grand Duke Alexis as far back as 1871, and still
hashed his browned potatoes in ragtime; and with the sun breaking
clear over the frosty table-lands, a ravenous appetite, and a day's
shooting in prospect, the rhythm had a particularly cheerful sound.
John was asked to occupy a Medicine Bend pulpit, and before Sunday the
fame of his laugh and his marksmanship had spread so far that Henry
Markover, the Yale cowboy, rode in thirty-two miles to hear him
preach. In leaving, John McCloud, in a seventh heaven of enthusiasm
over the high country, asked Morris Blood why he could not find
something for George out there; and Blood, not even knowing the boy
wanted to come, wrote for him, and asked Bucks to give him a job.
Possibly, being over-solicitous, George was nervous when he talked to
Bucks; possibly the impression left by his big, strong, bluff brother
John made against the boy; at all events, Bucks, after he talked with
George, shook his head. "I could make a first-class railroad man out
of the preacher, Morris, but not out of the brother. Yes, I've talked
with him. He can't do anything but figure elevations, and, by heaven,
we can't feed our own engineers here now." So George found himself
stranded in the mountains.
Morris Blood was cut up over it, but George McCloud took it quietly.
"I'm no worse off here than I was back there, Morris." Blood, at that,
plucked up courage to ask George to take a job in the Cold Springs
mines, and George jumped at it. It was impossible to get a white man
to live at Cold Springs after he could save money enough to get away,
so George was welcomed as assistant superintendent at the Number Eight
Mine, with no salary to speak of and all the work.
In one year everybody had forgotten him. Western men, on the average,
show a higher heart temperature than Eastern men, but they are
tolerably busy people and have their own troubles. "Be patient,"
Morris Blood had said to him. "Sometime there will be more railroad
work in these mountains; then, perhaps, your darned engineering may
come into play. I wish you knew how to sell cigars."
Meantime, McCloud stuck to the mine, and insensibly replaced his
Eastern tissue with Western. In New England he had been carefully
moulded by several generations of gentlemen, but never baked hard. The
mountains put the crust on him. For one thing, the sun and wind, best
of all hemlocks, tanned his white skin into a tough all-American
leather, seasoned his muscles into rawhide sinews, and, without
burdening him with an extra ounce of flesh, sprinkled the red through
his blood till, though thin, he looked apoplectic.
Insensibly, too, something else came about. George McCloud developed
the rarest of all gifts of temperament, even among men of action--the
ability to handle men. In Cold Springs, indeed, it was a case either
of handling or of being handled. McCloud got along with his men and,
with the tough element among them, usually through persuasion; but he
proved, too, that he could inspire confidence even with a club.
One day, coming down "special" from Bear Dance, Gordon Smith, who bore
the nickname Whispering Smith, rode with President Bucks in the
privacy of his car. The day had been long, and the alkali lay light on
the desert. The business in hand had been canvassed, and the troubles
put aside for chicken, coffee, and cigars, when Smith, who did not
smoke, told the story of something he had seen the day before at Cold
Springs that pleased him.
The men in the Number Eight Mine had determined to get rid of some
Italians, and after a good deal of rowing had started in to catch one
of them and hang him. They had chosen a time when McCloud, the
assistant superintendent of the mine, was down with mountain fever. It
was he who had put the Italians into the mine. He had already defended
them from injury, and would be likely, it was known, to do so again if
he were able. On this day a mob had been chasing the Dagos, and had at
length captured one. They were running him down street to a telegraph
pole when the assistant superintendent appeared in scant attire and
stopped them. Taking advantage of the momentary confusion, he hustled
their victim into the only place of refuge at hand, a billiard hall.
The mob rushed the hall. In the farthest corner the unlucky Italian,
bleeding like a bullock and insane with fright, knelt, clinging to
McCloud's shaky knees. In trying to make the back door the two had
been cut off, and the sick boss had got into a corner behind a
pool-table to make his stand. In his pocket he had a pistol, knowing
that to use it meant death to him as well as to the wretch he was
trying to save. Fifty men were yelling in the room. They had rope,
hatchets, a sprinkling of guns, and whiskey enough to burn the town,
and in the corner behind a pool-table stood the mining boss with
mountain fever, the Dago, and a broken billiard-cue.
Bucks took the cigar from his mouth, leaned forward in his chair, and
stretched his heavy chin out of his neck as if the situation now
promised a story. The leader, Smith continued, was the mine
blacksmith, a strapping Welshman, from whom McCloud had taken the
Italian in the street. The blacksmith had a revolver, and was crazy
with liquor. McCloud singled him out in the crowd, pointed a finger at
him, got the attention of the men, and lashed him across the table
with his tongue until the blacksmith opened fire on him with his
revolver, McCloud all the while shaking his finger at him and abusing
him like a pickpocket. "The crowd couldn't believe its eyes," Gordon
Smith concluded, "and McCloud was pushing for the blacksmith with his
cue when Kennedy and I squirmed through to the front and relieved the
tension. McCloud wasn't hit."
"What is that mining man's name?" asked Bucks, reaching for a message
clip.
"McCloud."
"First name?" continued Bucks mechanically.
"George."
Bucks looked at his companion in surprise. Then he spoke, and a
feeling of self-abasement was reflected in his words. "George
McCloud," he echoed. "Did you say George? Why, I must know that man. I
turned him down once for a job. He looked so peaceable I thought he
was too soft for us." The president laid down his cigar with a gesture
of disgust. "And yet there really are people along this line that
think I'm clever. I haven't judgment enough to operate a trolley car.
It's a shame to take the money they give me for running this system,
Gordon. Hanged if I didn't think that fellow was too soft." He called
the flagman over. "Tell Whitmyer we will stay at Cold Springs
to-night."
"I thought you were going through to Medicine Bend," suggested Smith
as the trainman disappeared.
"McCloud," repeated Bucks, taking up his cigar and throwing back his
head in a cloud of smoke.
"Yes," assented his companion; "but I am going through to Medicine
Bend, Mr. Bucks."
"Do."
"How am I to do it?"
"Take the car and send it back to-morrow on Number Three."
"Thank you, if you won't need it to-night."
"I sha'n't. I am going to stay at Cold Springs to-night and hunt up
McCloud."
"But that man is in bed in a very bad way; you can't see him. He is
going to die."
"No, he isn't. I am going to hunt him up and have him taken care of."
That night Bucks, in the twilight, was sitting by McCloud's bed,
smoking and looking him over. "Don't mind me," he said when he entered
the room, lifted the ill-smelling lamp from the table, and, without
taking time to blow it out, pitched it through the open window. "I
heard you were sick, and just looked in to see how they were taking
care of you. Wilcox," he added, turning to the nurse he had brought
in--a barber who wanted to be a railroad man, and had agreed to step
into the breach and nurse McCloud--"have a box of miner's candles sent
up from the roundhouse. We have some down there; if not, buy a box and
send me the bill."
McCloud, who after the rioting had crawled back to bed with a
temperature of 105 degrees, knew the barber, but felt sure that a
lunatic had wandered in with him, and immediately bent his feeble
mental energies on plans for getting rid of a dangerous man. When
Bucks sat down by him and continued talking at the nurse, McCloud
caught nothing of what was said until Bucks turned quietly toward him.
"They tell me, McCloud, you have the fever."
The sick man, staring with sunken eyes, rose half on his elbow in
astonishment to look again at his visitor, but Bucks eased him back
with an admonition to guard his strength. McCloud's temperature had
already risen with the excitement of seeing a man throw his lamp out
of the window. Bucks, meantime, working carefully to seem unconcerned
and incensing McCloud with great clouds of smoke, tried to discuss his
case with him as he had already done with the mine surgeon. McCloud,
thinking it best to humor a crazy man, responded quietly. "The doctor
said yesterday," he explained, "it was mountain fever, and he wants to
put me into an ice-pack."
Bucks objected vigorously to the ice-pack.
"The doctor tells me that it is the latest treatment for that class of
fevers in the Prussian army," answered McCloud feebly, but getting
interested in spite of himself.
"That's a good thing, no doubt, for the Prussian army," replied Bucks,
"but, McCloud, in the first place, you are not a Dutchman; in the
second, you have not got mountain fever--not in my judgment."
McCloud, confident now that he had an insane man on his hands, held
his peace.
"Not a symptom of mountain fever," continued Bucks calmly; "you have
what looks to me like gastritis, but the homeopaths," he added, "have
a better name for it. Is it stomatitis, McCloud? I forget."
The sick man, confounded by such learning, determined to try one
question, and, if he was at fault, to drag his gun from under his
pillow and sell his life as dearly as possible. Summoning his waning
strength, he looked hard at Bucks. "Just let me ask you one question.
I never saw you before. Are you a doctor?"
"No, I'm a railroad man; my name is Bucks." McCloud rose half up in
bed with amazement. "They'll kill you if you lie here a week,"
continued Bucks. "In just a week. Now I'll tell you my plan. I'll take
you down in the morning in my car to Medicine Bend; this barber will
go with us. There in the hospital you can get everything you need, and
I can make you comfortable. What do you say?"
McCloud looked at his benefactor solemnly, but if hope flickered for
an instant in his eyes it soon died. Bucks said afterward that he
looked like a cold-storage squab, just pinfeathers and legs. "Shave
him clean," said he, "and you could have counted his teeth through his
cheeks."
The sick man turned his face to the wall. "It's kind enough," he
muttered, "but I guess it's too late."
Bucks did not speak for some time. Twilight had faded above the hills,
and only the candle lighted the room. Then the master of mountain men,
grizzled and brown, turned his eyes again to the bed. McCloud was
staring at the ceiling.
"We have a town of your name down on the plains, McCloud," said Bucks,
blowing away the cigar smoke after the long silence. "It is one of our
division points, and a good one."
"I know the town," responded McCloud. "It was named after one of our
family."
"I guess not."
"It was, though," said McCloud wearily.
"I think," returned Bucks, "you must be mistaken. The man that town
was named after belonged to the fighting McClouds."
"That is my family."
"Then where is your fight? When I propose to put you into my car and
pull you out of this, why do you say it is too late? It is never too
late."
McCloud made no answer, and Bucks ran on: "For a man that worked out
as well as you did yesterday in a trial heat with a billiard-cue, I
should say you could turn a handspring or two yet if you had to. For
that matter, if you don't want to be moved, I can run a spur in here
to your door in three hours in the morning. By taking out the
side-wall we can back the car right up to the bed. Why not? Or we can
stick a few hydraulic jacks under the sills, raise the house, and push
your bed right on the observation platform." He got McCloud to
laughing, and lighted a fresh cigar. A framed photograph hung on one
of the bare walls of the room, and it caught the eye of the railroad
man. He walked close to it, disinfected it with smoke, brushed the
dust from the glass, and examined the print. "That looks like old Van
Dyne College campus, hanged if it doesn't!"
McCloud was watching him. "It is a photograph of the campus."
"McCloud, are you a Van Dyne man?"
"I did my college work there before I went to Boston."
Bucks stood motionless. "Poor little old Van Dyne! Why, my brother Sam
taught at Van Dyne. No, you would not have known him; he's dead. Never
before west of the Missouri River have I seen a Van Dyne man. You are
the first." He shook his head as he sat down again. "It is crowded out
now: no money, no prestige, half-starved professors with their elbows
out, the president working like a dog all the week and preaching
somewhere every Sunday to earn five dollars. But, by Heaven, they
turned out men! Did you know Bug Robinson?" he asked suddenly.
"He gave me my degree."
"Old Bug! He was Sam's closest friend, McCloud. It's good to see him
getting the recognition he deserves, isn't it? Do you know, I send him
an annual every year? Yes, sir! And one year I had the whole blooming
faculty out here on a fossil expedition; but, by Heaven, McCloud, some
of them looked more like megatheriums than what they dug up did."
"I heard about that expedition."
"I never got to college. I had to hustle. I'll get out of here before
I tire you. Wilcox will be here all night, and my China boy is making
some broth for you now. You'll feel better in the morning."
Ten weeks later McCloud was sent from Medicine Bend up on the Short
Line as trainmaster, and on the Short Line he learned railroading.
"That's how I came here," said George McCloud to Farrell Kennedy a
long time afterward, at Medicine Bend. "I had shrivelled and starved
three years out there in the desert. I lived with those cattle
underground till I had forgotten my own people, my own name, my own
face--and Bucks came along one day with Whispering Smith and dragged
me out of my coffin. They had it ordered, and it being a small size
and 'onhandy,' as the undertaker said, I paid for it and told him to
store it for me. Well, do you think I ever could forget either of
those men, Farrell?"
McCloud's fortunes thus threw him first into the operating department
of the mountain lines, but his heart was in the grades and the curves.
To him the interest in the trainwork was the work of the locomotives
toiling with the heavy loads up the canyons and across the uneven
plateaus and through the deep gorges of the inner range, where the
panting exhaust, choked between sheer granite walls, roared in a
mighty protest against the burden put by the steep grades on the
patient machines.
In all the group of young men then on the mountain division, obscure
and unknown at the time, but destined within so few years to be
scattered far and wide as constructionists with records made in the
rebuilding operations through the Rocky Mountains, none was less
likely to attract attention than McCloud. Bucks, who, indeed, could
hardly be reckoned so much of the company as its head, was a man of
commanding proportions physically. Like Glover, Bucks was a giant in
stature, and the two men, when together, could nowhere escape notice;
they looked, in a word, their part, fitted to cope with the tremendous
undertakings that had fallen to their lot. Callahan, the chess-player
on the Overland lines, the man who could hold large combinations of
traffic movement constantly in his head and by intuition reach the
result of a given problem before other men could work it out, was,
like Morris Blood, the master of tonnage, of middle age. But McCloud,
when he went to the mountain division, in youthfulness of features was
boyish, and when he left he was still a boy, bronzed, but young of
face in spite of a lifetime's pressure and worry crowded into three
years. He himself counted this physical make-up as a disadvantage. "It
has embroiled me in no end of trouble, because I couldn't convince men
I was in earnest until I made good in some hard way," he complained
once to Whispering Smith. "I never could acquire even a successful
habit of swearing, so I had to learn to fight."
When, one day in Boney Street in Medicine Bend, he threw open the door
of Marion Sinclair's shop, flung his hat sailing along the showcase
with his war-cry, and called to her in the back rooms, she thought he
had merely run in to say he was in town.
"How do you do? What do you think? You're going to have an old boarder
back," he cried. "I'm coming to Medicine Bend, superintendent of the
division!"
"Mr. McCloud!" Marion Sinclair clasped her hands and dropped into a
chair. "Have they made you superintendent already?"
"Well, I like that! Do you want them to wait till I'm gray-headed?"
Marion threw her hands to her own head. "Oh, don't say anything
about gray hairs. My head won't bear inspection. But I can't get over
this promotion coming so soon--this whole big division! Well, I
congratulate you very sincerely----"
"Oh, but that isn't it! I suppose anybody will congratulate me. But
where am I to board? Have you a cook? You know how I went from bad to
worse after you left Cold Springs. May I have my meals here with you
as I used to there?"
"Why, I suppose you can, yes, if you can stand the cooking. I have an
apprentice, Mr. Dancing's daughter, who does pretty well. She lives
here with me, and is learning the business. But I sha'n't take as much
as you used to pay me, for I'm doing so much better down here."
"Let me run that end of it, will you? I shall be doing better down
here myself."
They laughed as they bantered. Marion Sinclair wore gold spectacles,
but they did not hide the delightful good-nature in her eyes. On the
third finger of her slender left hand she wore, too, a gold band that
explained the gray in her hair at twenty-six.
This was the wife of Murray Sinclair, whom he had brought to the
mountains from her far-away Wisconsin home. Within a year he had
broken her heart so far as it lay in him to do it, but he could not
break her charm nor her spirit. She was too proud to go back, when
forced to leave him, and had set about earning her own living in the
country to which she had come as a bride. She put on spectacles, she
mutilated her heavy brown hair and to escape notice and secure the
obscurity that she craved, her name, Marion, became, over the door of
her millinery shop and in her business, only "M. Sinclair."
Cold Springs, where Sinclair had first brought her when he had
headquarters there as foreman of bridges, had proved a hopeless place
for the millinery business--at least, in the way that Marion ran it.
The women that had husbands had no money to buy hats with, and the
women without husbands wore gaudy headgear, and were of the kind that
made Marion's heart creep when they opened the shop door. What was
worse, they were inclined to joke with her, as if there must be a
community of interest between a deserted woman and women who had
deserted womanhood. To this business Marion would not cater, and in
consequence her millinery affairs sometimes approached collapse. She
could, however, cook extraordinarily well, and, with the aid of a
servant-maid, could always provide for a boarder or two--perhaps a
railroad man or a mine superintendent to whom she could serve meals,
and who, like all mountain men, were more than generous in their
accounting with women. Among these standbys of hers was McCloud.
McCloud had always been her friend, and when she left Cold Springs and
moved to Medicine Bend to set up her little shop in Boney Street near
Fort, she had lost him. Yet somehow, to compensate Marion for other
cruel things in the mountains, Providence seemed to raise up a new
friend for her wherever she went. In Medicine Bend she did not know a
soul, but almost the first customer that walked into her shop--and she
was a customer worth while--was Dicksie Dunning of the Crawling
Stone.