SMOKY CREEK BRIDGE
It was not alone that a defiance makes a bad dinner sauce: there was
more than this for McCloud to feed on. He was forced to confess to
himself as he walked back to the Wickiup that the most annoying
feature of the incident was the least important, namely, that his only
enemy in the country should be intrusted with commissions from the
Stone Ranch and be carrying packages for Dicksie Dunning. It was
Sinclair's trick to do things for people, and to make himself so
useful that they must like first his obligingness and afterward
himself. Sinclair, McCloud knew, was close in many ways to Lance
Dunning. It was said to have been his influence that won Dunning's
consent to sell a right of way across the ranch for the new Crawling
Stone Line. But McCloud felt it useless to disguise the fact to
himself that he now had a second keen interest in the Crawling Stone
country--not alone a dream of a line, but a dream of a girl. Sitting
moodily in his office, with his feet on the desk, a few nights after
his encounter with Sinclair, he recalled her nod as she said good-by.
It had seemed the least bit encouraging, and he meditated anew on the
only twenty minutes of real pleasurable excitement he had ever felt in
his life, the twenty minutes with Dicksie Dunning at Smoky Creek. Her
intimates, he had heard, called her Dicksie, and he was vaguely
envying her intimates when the night despatcher, Rooney Lee, opened
the door and disturbed his reflections.
"How is Number One, Rooney?" called McCloud, as if nothing but the
thought of a train movement ever entered his head.
Rooney Lee paused. In his hand he held a message. Rooney's cheeks were
hollow and his sunken eyes were large. His face, which was singularly
a night face, would shock a stranger, but any man on the division
would have given his life for Rooney. The simple fellow had but two
living interests--his train-sheets and his chewing tobacco. Sometimes
I think that every railroad man earns his salary--even the president.
But Rooney was a Past Worthy Master in that unnumbered lodge of
railroad slaves who do killing work and have left, when they die, only
a little tobacco to show for it. It was on Rooney's account that
McCloud's order banishing cuspidors from his office had been
rescinded. A few evenings of agony on the despatcher's part when in
consultation with his chief, the mournful wandering of his
uncomplaining eyes, his struggle to raise an obstinate window before
he could answer a question, would have moved a heart harder than
McCloud's. The cuspidor had been restored to one corner of the large
room, and to this corner Rooney, like a man with a jaw full of
birdshot, always walked first. When he turned back to face his chief
his face had lost its haunted expression, and he answered with solemn
cheer, "On time," or "Fourteen minutes late," as the case might be.
This night his face showed something out of the ordinary, and he faced
McCloud with evident uneasiness. "Holy smoke, Mr. McCloud, here's a
ripper! We've lost Smoky Creek Bridge."
"Lost Smoky Creek Bridge?" echoed McCloud, rising in amazement.
"Burned to-night. Seventy-seven was flagged by the man at the pump
station."
"That's a tie-up for your life!" exclaimed McCloud, reaching for the
message. "How could it catch fire? Is it burned up?"
"I can't get anything on that yet; this came from Canby. I'll have a
good wire in a few minutes and get it all for you."
"Have Phil Hailey and Hyde notified, Rooney, and Reed and Brill Young,
and get up a train. Smoky Creek Bridge! By heavens, we are ripped up
the back now! What can we do there, Rooney?" He was talking to
himself. "There isn't a thing for it on God's earth but switchbacks
and five-per-cent. grades down to the bottom of the creek and cribbing
across it till the new line is ready. Wire Callahan and Morris Blood,
and get everything you can for me before we start."
Ten hours later and many hundreds of miles from the mountain division,
President Bucks and a companion were riding in the peace of a June
morning down the beautiful Mohawk Valley with an earlier and
illustrious railroad man, William C. Brown. The three men were at
breakfast in Brown's car. A message was brought in for Bucks. He read
it and passed it to his companion, Whispering Smith, who sat at
Brown's left hand. The message was from Callahan with the news of the
burning of Smoky Creek Bridge. Details were few, because no one on the
West End could suggest a plausible cause for the fire.
"What do you think of it, Gordon?" demanded Bucks bluntly.
Whispering Smith seemed at all times bordering on good-natured
surprise, and in that normal condition he read Callahan's message.
Everything surprised Whispering Smith, even his salary; but an
important consequence was that nothing excited him. He seemed to
accommodate himself to the unexpected through habitual surprise. It
showed markedly in his eyes, which were bright and quite wide open,
and, save for his eyes, no feature about him would fix itself in the
memory. His round, pleasant face, his heavy brown mustache, the medium
build that concealed under its commonplace symmetry an unusual
strength, his slightly rounding shoulders bespeaking a not too serious
estimate of himself--every characteristic, even to his unobtrusive
suit and black hat, made him distinctly an ordinary man--one to be met
in the street to-day and passed, and forgotten to-morrow.
He was laughing under Bucks's scrutiny when he handed the message
back. "Why, I don't know a thing about it, not a thing; but taking a
long shot and speaking by and far, I should say it looks something
like first blood for Sinclair," he suggested, and to change the
subject lifted his cup of coffee.
"Then it looks like you for the mountains to-night instead of for
Weber and Fields's," retorted Bucks, reaching for a cigar. "Brown, why
have you never learned to smoke?"