THE MISUNDERSTANDING
No attempt was made to minimize the truth that the blow to the
division was a staggering one. The loss of Smoky Creek Bridge put
almost a thousand miles of the mountain division out of business.
Perishable freight and time freight were diverted to other lines.
Passengers were transferred; lunches were served to them in the deep
valley, and they were supplied by an ingenuous advertising department
with pictures of the historic bridge as it had long stood, and their
addresses were taken with the promise of a picture of the ruins. Smoky
Creek Bridge had long been famous in mountain song and story. For one
generation of Western railroad men it had stood as a monument to the
earliest effort to conquer the Rockies with a railroad. Built long
before the days of steel, this high and slender link in the first
transcontinental line had for thirty years served faithfully at its
danger-post, only to fall in the end at the hands of a bridge
assassin; nor has the mystery of its fate ever completely been solved,
though it is believed to lie with Murray Sinclair in the Frenchman
hills. The engineering department and the operating department united
in a tremendous effort to bring about a resumption of traffic.
Glover's men, pulled off construction, were sent forward in
trainloads. Dancing's linemen strung arc-lights along the creek until
the canyon twinkled at night like a mountain village, and men in three
shifts worked elbow to elbow unceasingly to run the switchbacks down
to the creek-bed. There, by cribbing across the bottom, they got in a
temporary line.
Train movement was thrown into a spectacle of confusion. Upon the
incessant and well-ordered activities of the road the burning of the
bridge fell like the heel of a heavy boot on an ant-hill; but the
railroad men like ants rose to the emergency, and, where the possible
failed, achieved the impossible.
McCloud spent his days at the creek and his nights at Medicine Bend
with his assistant and his chief despatcher, advising, counselling,
studying out trouble reports, and steadying wherever he could the
weakened lines of his operating forces. He was getting his first taste
of the trials of the hardest-worked and poorest-paid man in the
operating department of a railroad--the division superintendent.
To these were added personal annoyances. A trainload of Duck Bar
steers, shipped by Lance Dunning from the Crawling Stone Ranch, had
been caught west of the bridge the very night of the fire. They had
been loaded at Tipton and shipped to catch a good market, and under
extravagant promises from the live-stock agent of a quick run to
Chicago. When Lance Dunning learned that his cattle had been caught
west of the break and would have to be unloaded, he swore up a horse
in hot haste and started for Medicine Bend. McCloud, who had not
closed his eyes for sixty hours, had just got into Medicine Bend from
Smoky Creek and was sitting at his desk buried in a mass of papers,
but he ordered the cattleman admitted. He was, in fact, eager to meet
the manager of the big ranch and the cousin of Dicksie. Lance Dunning
stood above six feet in height, and was a handsome man, in spite of
the hard lines around his eyes, as he walked in; but neither his
manner nor his expression was amiable.
"Are you Mr. McCloud? I've been here three times this afternoon to see
you," said he, ignoring McCloud's answer and a proffered chair. "This
is your office, isn't it?"
McCloud, a little surprised, answered again and civilly: "It certainly
is; but I have been at Smoky Creek for two or three days."
"What have you done with my cattle?"
"The Duck Bar train was run back to Point of Rocks and the cattle were
unloaded at the yard."
Lance Dunning spoke with increasing harshness: "By whose order was
that done? Why wasn't I notified? Have they had feed or water?"
"All the stock caught west of the bridge was sent back for feed and
water by my orders. It has all been taken care of. You should have
been notified, certainly; it is the business of the stock agent to see
to that. Let me inquire about it while you are here, Mr. Dunning,"
suggested McCloud, ringing for his clerk.
Dunning lost no time in expressing himself. "I don't want my cattle
held at Point of Rocks!" he said angrily. "Your Point of Rocks yards
are infected. My cattle shouldn't have been sent there."
"Oh, no! The old yards where they had a touch of fever were burned off
the face of the earth a year ago. The new yards are perfectly
sanitary. The loss of the bridge has crippled us, you know. Your
cattle are being well cared for, Mr. Dunning, and if you doubt it you
may go up and give our men any orders you like in the matter at our
expense."
"You're taking altogether too much on yourself when you run my stock
over the country in this way," exclaimed Dunning, refusing to be
placated.
"How am I to get to Point of Rocks--walk there?"
"Not at all," returned McCloud, ringing up his clerk and asking for a
pass, which was brought back in a moment and handed to Dunning. "The
cattle," continued McCloud, "can be run down, unloaded, and driven
around the break to-morrow--with the loss of only two days."
"And in the meantime I lose my market."
"It is too bad, certainly, but I suppose it will be several days
before we can get a line across Smoky Creek."
"Why weren't the cattle sent through that way yesterday? What have
they been held at Point of Rocks for? I call the thing badly
managed."
"We couldn't get the empty cars up from Piedmont for the transfer
until to-day; empties are very scarce everywhere now."
"There always have been empties here when they were wanted until
lately. There's been no head or tail to anything on this division for
six months."
"I'm sorry that you have that impression."
"That impression is very general," declared the stockman, with an
oath, "and if you keep on discharging the only men on this division
that are competent to handle a break like this, it is likely to
continue!"
"Just a moment!" McCloud's finger rose pointedly. "My failure to
please you in caring for your stock in an emergency may be properly a
matter for comment; your opinion as to the way I am running this
division is, of course, your own: but don't attempt to criticise the
retention or discharge of any man on my payroll!"
Dunning strode toward him. "I'm a shipper on this line; when it suits
me to criticise you or your methods, or anybody else's, I expect to do
so," he retorted in high tones.
"But you cannot tell me how to run my business!" thundered McCloud,
leaning over the table in front of him.
As the two men glared at each other Rooney Lee opened the door. His
surprise at the situation amounted to consternation. He shuffled to
the corner of the room, and while McCloud and Dunning engaged hotly
again, Rooney, from the corner, threw a shot of his own into the
quarrel. "On time!" he roared.
The angry men turned. "What's on time?" asked McCloud curtly.
"Number One; she's in and changing engines. I told them you were going
West," declared Rooney in so deep tones that his fiction would never
have been suspected. If his cue had been, "My lord, the conductor
waits," it could not have been rung in more opportunely.
Dunning, to emphasize, without a further word, his disgust for the
situation and his contempt for the management, tore into scraps the
pass that had been given him, threw the scraps on the floor, took a
cigar from his pocket and lighted it; insolence could do no more.
McCloud looked over at the despatcher. "No, I am not going West,
Rooney. But if you will be good enough to stay here and find out from
this man just how this railroad ought to be run, I will go to bed. He
can tell you; the microbe seems to be working in his mind right now,"
said McCloud, slamming down the roll-top of his desk. And with Lance
Dunning glaring at him, somewhat speechless, he put on his hat and
walked out of the room.
It was but one of many disagreeable incidents due to the loss of the
bridge. Complications arising from the tie-up followed him at every
turn. It seemed as if he could not get away from trouble following
trouble. After forty hours further of toil, relieved by four hours of
sleep, McCloud found himself, rather dead than alive, back at Medicine
Bend and in the little dining-room at Marion's. Coming in at the
cottage door on Fort Street, he dropped into a chair. The cottage
rooms were empty. He heard Marion's voice in the front shop; she was
engaged with a customer. Putting his head on the table to wait a
moment, nature asserted itself and McCloud fell asleep. He woke
hearing a voice that he had heard in dreams. Perhaps no other voice
could have wakened him, for he slept for a few minutes a death-like
sleep. At all events, Dicksie Dunning was in the front room and
McCloud heard her. She was talking with Marion about the burning of
Smoky Creek Bridge.
"Every one is talking about it yet," Dicksie was saying. "If I had
lost my best friend I couldn't have felt worse; you know, my father
built it. I rode over there the day of the fire, and down into the
creek, so I could look up where it stood. I never realized before how
high and how long it was; and when I remembered how proud father
always was of his work there--Cousin Lance has often told me--I sat
down right on the ground and cried. Really, the ruins were the most
pathetic thing you ever saw, Marion, with great clouds of smoke
rolling up from the canyon that day; the place looked so lonely when I
rode away that every time I turned to look back my eyes filled with
tears. Poor daddy! I am almost glad he didn't live to see it. How
times have changed in railroading, haven't they? Mr. Sinclair was over
just the other night, and he said if they kept using this new coal in
the engines they would burn up everything on the division. Do you
know, I have been waiting in town three or four hours now for Cousin
Lance? I feel almost like a tramp. He is coming from the West with the
stock train. It was due here hours ago, but they never seem to know
when anything is to get here the way things are run on the railroad
now. I want to give Cousin Lance some mail before he goes through."
"The passenger trains crossed the creek over the switchbacks hours
ago, and they say the emergency grades are first-rate," said Marion
Sinclair, on the defensive. "The stock trains must have followed right
along. Your cousin is sure to be here pretty soon. Probably Mr.
McCloud will know which train he is on, and Mr. Lee telephoned that
Mr. McCloud would be over here at three o'clock for his dinner. He
ought to be here now."
"Oh, dear, then I must go!"
"But he can probably tell you just when your cousin will be in."
"I wouldn't meet him for worlds!"
"You wouldn't? Why, Mr. McCloud is delightful."
"Oh, not for worlds, Marion! You know he is discharging all the best
of the older men, the men that have made the road everything it is,
and of course we can't help sympathizing with them over our way. For
my part, I think it is terrible, after a man has given all of his life
to building up a railroad, that he should be thrown out to starve in
that way by new managers, Marion."
McCloud felt himself shrinking within his weary clothes. Resentment
seemed to have died. He felt too exhausted to undertake controversy,
even if it were to be thought of, and it was not.
Nothing further was needed to complete his humiliation. He picked up
his hat and with the thought of getting out as quietly as he had come
in. In rising he swept a tumbler at his elbow from the table. The
glass broke on the floor, and Marion exclaimed, "What is that?" and
started for the dining-room.
It was too late to get away. McCloud stepped to the portieres of the
trimming-room door and pushed them aside. Marion stood with a hat in
her hand, and Dicksie, sitting at the table, was looking directly at
the intruder as he appeared in the doorway. She saw in him her
pleasant acquaintance of the wreck at Smoky Creek, whose name she had
not learned. In her surprise she rose to her feet, and Marion spoke
quickly: "Oh, Mr. McCloud, is it you? I did not hear you come in."
Dicksie's face, which had lighted, became a spectacle of confusion
after she heard the name. McCloud, conscious of the awkwardness of
his position and the disorder of his garb, said the worst thing at
once: "I fear I am inadvertently overhearing your conversation."
He looked at Dicksie as he spoke, chiefly because he could not help
it, and this made matters hopeless.
She flushed more deeply. "I cannot conceive why our conversation
should invite a listener."
Her words did not, of course, help to steady him. "I tried to get
away," he stammered, "when I realized I was a part of it."
"In any event," she exclaimed hastily, "if you are Mr. McCloud I think
it unpardonable to do anything like that!"
"I am Mr. McCloud, though I should rather be anybody else; and I am
sorry that I was unable to help hearing what was said; I----"
"Marion, will you be kind enough to give me my gloves?" said Dicksie,
holding out her hand.
Marion, having tried once or twice to intervene, stood between the
firing-lines in helpless amazement. Her exclamations were lost; the
two before her gave no heed to ordinary intervention.
McCloud flushed at being cut off, but he bowed. "Of course," he said,
"if you will listen to no explanation I can only withdraw."
[Illustration: HELEN HOLMES AS MARION SINCLAIR IN THE PHOTO-PLAY
PRODUCTION OF "WHISPERING SMITH." (C) _American Mutual Studio_.]
He went back, dinnerless, to work all night; but the switchbacks were
doing capitally, and all night long, trains were rolling through
Medicine Bend from the West in an endless string. In the morning the
yard was nearly cleared of westbound tonnage. Moreover, the mail in
the morning brought compensation. A letter came from Glover telling
him not to worry himself to death over the tie-up, and one came from
Bucks telling him to make ready for the building of the Crawling Stone
Line.
McCloud told Rooney Lee that if anybody asked for him to report him
dead, and going to bed slept twenty-four hours.