as we had it. Having friends on every road in the country, they knew as
much about our business as we ourselves. The minute it was announced
that we should move the silk they were after us. It was a defiance; a
last one. If we could move freight--for we were already moving
passengers after a fashion--the strike might be well accounted beaten.
Stewart, the leader of the local contingent, together with his
followers, got after me at once.
"You don't show much sense, Reed," said he. "You fellows here are
breaking your necks to get things moving, and when this strike's over if
our boys ask for your discharge they'll get it. This road can't run
without our engineers. We're going to beat you. If you dare try to move
this stuff we'll have your scalp when it's over. You'll never get your
silk to Zanesville, I'll promise you that. And if you ditch it and make
a million dollar loss, you'll get let out anyway, my buck."
"I'm here to obey orders, Stewart," I retorted. What was the use of
more? I felt uncomfortable; but we had determined to move the silk:
there was nothing more to be said.
When I went over to the round-house and told Neighbor the decision he
said never a word, but he looked a great deal. Neighbor's task was to
supply the motive power. All that we had, uncrippled, was in the
passenger service, because passengers must be moved--must be taken care
of first of all. In order to win a strike you must have public opinion
on your side.
"Nevertheless, Neighbor," said I, after we had talked a while, "we must
move the silk also."
Neighbor studied; then he roared at his foreman.
"Send Bartholomew Mullen here." He spoke with a decision that made me
think the business was done. I had never happened, it is true, to hear
of Bartholomew Mullen in the department of motive power; but the
impression the name gave me was of a monstrous fellow; big as Neighbor,
or old man Sankey, or Dad Hamilton.
"I'll put Bartholomew ahead of it," muttered Neighbor, tightly. A boy
walked into the office.
"Mr. Garten said you wanted to see me, sir," said he, addressing the
master mechanic.
"I do, Bartholomew," responded Neighbor.
The figure in my mind's eye shrunk in a twinkling. Then it occurred to
me that it must be this boy's father who was wanted.
"You have been begging for a chance to take out an engine, Bartholomew,"
began Neighbor, coldly; and I knew it was on.
"Yes, sir."
"You want to get killed, Bartholomew."
Bartholomew smiled, as if the idea was not altogether displeasing.
"How would you like to go pilot to-morrow for McCurdy? You to take the
44 and run as first Seventy-eight. McCurdy will run as second
Seventy-eight."
"I know I could run an engine all right," ventured Bartholomew, as if
Neighbor were the only one taking the chances in giving him an engine.
"I know the track from here to Zanesville. I helped McNeff fire one
week."
"Then go home, and go to bed, and be over here at six o'clock to-morrow
morning. And sleep sound; for it may be your last chance."
It was plain that the master-mechanic hated to do it; it was simply
sheer necessity.
"He's a wiper," mused Neighbor, as Bartholomew walked springily away. "I
took him in here sweeping two years ago. He ought to be firing now, but
the union held him back; that's why he hates them. He knows more about
an engine now than half the lodge. They'd better have let him in," said
the master-mechanic, grimly. "He may be the means of breaking their
backs yet. If I give him an engine and he runs it, I'll never take him
off, union or no union, strike or no strike."
"How old is that boy?" I asked.
"Eighteen; and never a kith or a kin that I know of. Bartholomew
Mullen," mused Neighbor, as the slight figure moved across the flat,
"big name--small boy. Well, Bartholomew, you'll know something more by
to-morrow night about running an engine, or a whole lot less; that's as
it happens. If he gets killed, it's your fault, Reed."
He meant that I was calling on him for men when he absolutely couldn't
produce them.
"I heard once," he went on, "about a fellow named Bartholomew being
mixed up in a massacree. But I take it he must have been an older man
than our Bartholomew--nor his other name wasn't Mullen, neither. I
disremember just what it was; but it wasn't Mullen."
"Well, don't say I want to get the boy killed, Neighbor," I protested.
"I've plenty to answer for. I'm here to run trains--when there are any
to run; that's murder enough for me. You needn't send Bartholomew out on
my account."
"Give him a slow schedule and I'll give him orders to jump early; that's
all we can do. If the strikers don't ditch him, he'll get through,
somehow."
It stuck in my crop--the idea of putting the boy on a pilot engine to
take all the dangers ahead of that particular train; but I had a good
deal else to think of besides. From the minute the silk got into the
McCloud yards we posted double guards around. About twelve o'clock that
night we held a council of war, which ended in our running the train
into the out freight-house. The result was that by morning we had a new
train made up. It consisted of fourteen refrigerator-cars loaded with
oranges, which had come in mysteriously the night before. It was
announced that the silk would be held for the present and the oranges
rushed through. Bright and early the refrigerator-train was run down to
the ice-houses and twenty men were put to work icing the oranges. At
seven o'clock McCurdy pulled in the local passenger with engine 105. Our
plan was to cancel the local and run him right out with the oranges.
When he got in he reported the 105 had sprung a tire; it knocked our
scheme into a cocked hat.
There was a lantern-jawed conference in the round-house.
"What can you do?" asked the superintendent, in desperation.
"There's only one thing I can do. Put Bartholomew Mullen on it with the
44, and put McCurdy to bed for No. 2 to-night," responded Neighbor.
We were running first in, first out; but we took care to always have
somebody for 1 and 2 who at least knew an injector from an air-pump.
It was eight o'clock. I looked into the locomotive stalls. The
first--the only--man in sight was Bartholomew Mullen. He was very busy
polishing the 44. He had good steam on her, and the old tub was
wheezing as if she had the asthma. The 44 was old; she was homely; she
was rickety; but Bartholomew Mullen wiped her battered nose as
deferentially as if she had been a spick-span, spider-driver, tail-truck
mail-racer.
She wasn't much--the 44. But in those days Bartholomew wasn't much; and
the 44 was Bartholomew's.
"How is she steaming, Bartholomew?" I sung out; he was right in the
middle of her. Looking up, he fingered his waste modestly and blushed
through a dab of crude petroleum over his eye.
"Hundred and thirty, sir. She's a terrible free steamer, the old 44; I'm
all ready to run her out."
"Who's marked up to fire for you, Bartholomew?"
Bartholomew Mullen looked at me fraternally.
"Neighbor couldn't give me anybody but a wiper," said Bartholomew, in a
sort of a wouldn't-that-kill-you tone.
The unconscious arrogance of the boy quite knocked me, so soon had
honors changed his point of view. Last night a despised wiper; at
daybreak, an engineer; and his nose in the air at the idea of taking on
a wiper for fireman. And all so innocent.
"Would you object, Bartholomew," I suggested, gently, "to a train-master
for fireman?"
"I don't--think so, sir."
"Thank you; because I am going down to Zanesville this morning myself
and I thought I'd ride with you. Is it all right?"
"Oh yes, sir--if Neighbor doesn't care."
I smiled. He didn't know who Neighbor took orders from; but he thought,
evidently, not from me.
"Then run her down to the oranges, Bartholomew, and couple on, and we'll
order ourselves out. See?"
The 44 really looked like a baby-carriage when we got her in front of
the refrigerators. However, after the necessary preliminaries, we gave a
very sporty toot and pulled out; in a few minutes we were sailing down
the valley.
For fifty miles we bobbed along with our cargo of iced silk as easy as
old shoes; for I need hardly explain that we had packed the silk into
the refrigerators to confuse the strikers. The great risk was that they
would try to ditch us.
I was watching the track as a mouse would a cat, looking every minute
for trouble. We cleared the gumbo cut west of the Beaver at a pretty
good clip, in order to make the grade on the other side. The bridge
there is hidden in summer by a grove of hackberrys. I had just pulled
open to cool her a bit when I noticed how high the backwater was on each
side of the track. Suddenly I felt the fill going soft under the
drivers--felt the 44 wobble and slew. Bartholomew shut off hard and
threw the air as I sprang to the window. The peaceful little creek ahead
looked as angry as the Platte in April water, and the bottoms were a
lake.
Somewhere up the valley there had been a cloudburst, for overhead the
sun was bright. The Beaver was roaring over its banks and the bridge was
out. Bartholomew screamed for brakes; it looked as we were against
it--and hard.
A soft track to stop on, a torrent of storm water ahead, and ten
hundred thousand dollars' worth of silk behind--not to mention
equipment.
I yelled at Bartholomew and motioned for him to jump; my conscience is
clear on that point. The 44 was stumbling along, trying, like a drunken
man, to hang to the rotten track.
"Bartholomew!" I yelled; but he was head out and looking back at his
train, while he jerked frantically at the air lever. I understood: the
air wouldn't work; it never will on those old tubs when you need it. The
sweat pushed out on me. I was thinking of how much the silk would bring
us after a bath in the Beaver. Bartholomew stuck to his levers like a
man in a signal-tower, but every second brought us closer to open water.
Watching him, intent only on saving his first train--heedless of saving
his life--I was really a bit ashamed to jump. While I hesitated, he
somehow got the brakes to set; the old 44 bucked like a bronco.
It wasn't too soon. She checked her train nobly at the last, but I saw
nothing could keep her from the drink. I caught Bartholomew a terrific
slap and again I yelled; then, turning to the gangway, I dropped into
the soft mud on my side. The 44 hung low, and it was easy lighting.
Bartholomew sprang from his seat a second later, but his blouse caught
in the teeth of the quadrant. He stooped quick as thought, and peeled
the thing over his head. But then he was caught with his hands in the
wristbands, and the ponies of 44 tipped over the broken abutment.
Pull as he would, he couldn't get free. The pilot dipped into the
torrent slowly; but, losing her balance, the 44 kicked her heels into
the air like lightning, and shot with a frightened wheeze plump into the
creek, dragging her engineer after her.
The head car stopped on the brink. Running across the track, I looked
for Bartholomew. He wasn't there; I knew he must have gone down with his
engine.
Throwing off my gloves, I dove just as I stood, close to the tender,
which hung half submerged. I am a good bit of a fish under water, but no
self-respecting fish would be caught in that yellow mud. I realized,
too, the instant I struck the water that I should have dived on the
up-stream side. The current took me away whirling; when I came up for
air I was fifty feet below the pier. I felt it was all up with
Bartholomew as I scrambled out; but to my amazement, as I shook my eyes
open, the train crew were running forward, and there stood Bartholomew
on the track above me looking at the refrigerators. When I got to him he
explained to me how he was dragged in and had to tear the sleeves out of
his blouse under water to get free.
The surprise is, how little fuss men make about such things when they
are busy. It took only five minutes for the conductor to hunt up a coil
of wire and a sounder for me, and by the time he got forward with it
Bartholomew was half-way up a telegraph-pole to help me cut in on a live
wire. Fast as I could I rigged a pony, and began calling the McCloud
dispatcher. It was a rocky send, but after no end of pounding I got him,
and gave orders for the wrecking-gang and for one more of Neighbor's
rapidly decreasing supply of locomotives.
Bartholomew, sitting on a strip of fence which still rose above water,
looked forlorn. To lose the first engine he ever handled, in the
Beaver, was tough, and he was evidently speculating on his chances of
ever getting another. If there weren't tears in his eyes, there was
storm water certainly. But after the relief-engine had pulled what was
left of us back six miles to a siding, I made it my first business to
explain to Neighbor, nearly beside himself, that Bartholomew was not
only not at fault, but that he had actually saved the train by his
nerve.
"I'll tell you, Neighbor," I suggested, when we got straightened around,
"give us the 109 to go ahead as pilot, and run the stuff around the
river division with Foley and the 216."
"What'll you do with No. 6?" growled Neighbor. Six was the local
passenger, west.
"Annul it west of McCloud," said I, instantly. "We've got this silk on
our hands now, and I'd move it if it tied up every passenger-train on
the division. If we can get the infernal stuff through, it will
practically beat the strike. If we fail, it will beat the company."
By the time we backed to Newhall Junction, Neighbor had made up his mind
my way. Mullen and I climbed into the 109, and Foley with the 216, and
none too good a grace, coupled on to the silk, and, flying red signals,
we started again for Zanesville over the river division.
Foley was always full of mischief. He had a better engine than ours,
anyway, and he took satisfaction the rest of the afternoon in crowding
us. Every mile of the way he was on our heels. I was throwing the coal
and distinctly remember.
It was after dark when we reached the Beverly Hill, and we took it at a
lively pace. The strikers were not on our minds then; it was Foley who
bothered.
When the long parallel steel lines of the upper yards spread before us,
flashing under the arc-lights, we were away above yard speed. Running a
locomotive into one of those big yards is like shooting a rapid in a
canoe. There is a bewildering maze of tracks lighted by red and green
lamps to be watched the closest. The hazards are multiplied the minute
you pass the throat, and a yard wreck is a dreadful tangle: it makes
everybody from road-master to flagmen furious, and not even Bartholomew
wanted to face an inquiry on a yard wreck. On the other hand, he
couldn't afford to be caught by Foley, who was chasing him out of pure
caprice.
I saw the boy holding the throttle at a half and fingering the air
anxiously as we jumped through the frogs; but the roughest riding on
track so far beats the ties as a cushion that when the 109 suddenly
stuck her paws through an open switch we bounced against the roof of the
cab like footballs. I grabbed a brace with one hand and with the other
reached instinctively across to Bartholomew's side to seize the throttle
he held. But as I tried to shut him off he jerked it wide open in spite
of me, and turned with lightning in his eye.
"No!" he cried, and his voice rang hard. The 109 took the tremendous
shove at her back and leaped like a frightened horse. Away we went
across the yard, through the cinders, and over the ties. My teeth have
never been the same since. I don't belong on an engine, anyway, and
since then I have kept off. At the moment I was convinced that the
strain had been too much--that Bartholomew was stark crazy. He sat
bouncing clear to the roof and clinging to his levers like a lobster.
But his strategy was dawning on me; in fact, he was pounding it into me.
Even the shock and scare of leaving the track and tearing up the yard
had not driven from Bartholomew's noddle the most important feature of
our situation, which was, above everything, to _keep out of the way of
the silk-train_.
I felt every moment more mortified at my attempt to shut him off. I had
done the trick of the woman who grabs the reins. It was even better to
tear up the yard than to stop for Foley to smash into and scatter the
silk over the coal-chutes. Bartholomew's decision was one of the traits
which make the runner: instant perception coupled to instant resolve.
The ordinary dub thinks what he should have done to avoid disaster after
it is all over; Bartholomew thought before.
On we bumped, across frogs, through switches, over splits, and into
target rods, when--and this is the miracle of it all--the 109 got her
fore-feet on a split switch, made a contact, and, after a slew or two
like a bogged horse, she swung up sweet on the rails again, tender and
all. Bartholomew shut off with an under cut that brought us up double
and nailed her feet, with the air, right where she stood.
We had left the track, ploughed a hundred feet across the yards, and
jumped on to another track. It is the only time I ever heard of its
happening anywhere, but I was on the engine with Bartholomew Mullen when
it was done.
Foley choked his train the instant he saw our hind lights bobbing. We
climbed down and ran back. He had stopped just where we should have
stood if I had shut off. Bartholomew ran to the switch to examine it.
The contact light, green, still burned like a false beacon; and lucky it
did, for it showed the switch had been tampered with and exonerated
Bartholomew Mullen completely. The attempt of the strikers to spill the
silk right in the yards had only made the reputation of a new engineer.
Thirty minutes later the million-dollar train was turned over to the
eastern division to wrestle with, and we breathed, all of us, a good
bit easier.
Bartholomew Mullen, now a passenger runner, who ranks with Kennedy and
Jack Moore and Foley and George Sinclair himself, got a personal letter
from the general manager complimenting him on his pretty wit; and he was
good enough to say nothing whatever about mine.
We registered that night and went to supper together--Foley, Jackson,
Bartholomew, and I. Afterwards we dropped into the dispatcher's office.
Something was coming from McCloud, but the operators, to save their
lives, couldn't catch it. I listened a minute; it was Neighbor. Now
Neighbor isn't great on dispatching trains. He can make himself
understood over the poles, but his sending is like a boy's sawing
wood--sort of uneven.
However, though I am not much on running yards, I claim to be able to
take the wildest ball that was ever thrown along the wire, and the chair
was tendered me at once to catch Neighbor's extraordinary passes at the
McCloud key. They came something like this:
_To Opr._:
Tell Massacree [_that was the word that stuck them all, and I
could perceive Neighbor was talking emphatically; he had
apparently forgotten Bartholomew's last name and was trying to
connect with the one he had disremembered the night
before_]--tell Massacree [_repeated Neighbor_] that he is
al-l-l right. Tell hi-m I give 'im double mileage for to-day
all the way through. And to-morrow he gets the 109 to keep.
NEIGHB-B-OR.
Bucks
"I see a good deal of stuff in print about the engineer," said Callahan,
dejectedly. "What's the matter with the dispatcher? What's the matter
with the man who tells the engineer what to do--and just what to do? How
to do it--and exactly how to do it? With the man who sits shut in brick
walls and hung in Chinese puzzles, his ear glued to a receiver, and his
finger fast to a key, and his eye riveted on a train chart? The man who
orders and annuls and stops and starts everything within five hundred
miles of him, and holds under his thumb more lives every minute than a
brigadier does in a lifetime? For instance," asked Callahan, in his
tired way, "what's the matter with Bucks?"
* * * * *
Now, I myself never knew Bucks. He left the West End before I went on.
Bucks is second vice-president--which means the boss--of a
transcontinental line now, and a very great swell. But no man from the
West End who calls on Bucks has to wait for an audience, though bigger
men do. They talk of him out there yet. Not of General Superintendent
Bucks, which he came to be, nor of General Manager Bucks. On the West
End he is just plain Bucks; but Bucks on the West End means a whole lot.
"He saved the company $300,000 that night the Ogalalla train ran away,"
mused Callahan. Callahan himself is assistant superintendent now.
"Three hundred thousand dollars is a good deal of money, Callahan," I
objected.
"Figure it out yourself. To begin with, fifty passengers' lives--that's
$5000 apiece, isn't it?" Callahan had a cold-blooded way of figuring a
passenger's life from the company standpoint. "It would have killed
over fifty passengers if the runaway had ever struck 59. There wouldn't
have been enough left of 59 to make a decent funeral. Then the
equipment, at least $50,000. But there was a whole lot more than
$300,000 in it for Bucks."
"How so?"
"He told me once that if he hadn't saved 59 that night he would never
have signed another order anywhere on any road."
"Why?"
"Why? Because, after it was all over, he found out that his own mother
was aboard 59. Didn't you ever hear that? Well, sir, it was Christmas
Eve, and the year was 1884."
* * * * *
Christmas Eve everywhere; but on the West End it was just plain December
24th.
"High winds will prevail for ensuing twenty-four hours. Station agents
will use extra care to secure cars on sidings; brakemen must use care to
avoid being blown from moving trains."
That is about all Bucks said in his bulletins that evening; not a word
about Christmas or Merry Christmas. In fact, if Christmas had come to
McCloud that night they couldn't have held it twenty-four minutes, much
less twenty-four hours; the wind was too high. All the week, all the
day, all the night it had blown--a December wind; dry as an August noon,
bitter as powdered ice. It was in the early days of our Western
railroading, when we had only one fast train on the schedule--the St.
Louis-California Express; and only one fast engine on the division--the
101; and only one man on the whole West End--Bucks.
Bucks was assistant superintendent and master-mechanic and train-master
and chief dispatcher and storekeeper--and a bully good fellow. There
were some boys in the service; among them, Callahan. Callahan was
seventeen, with hair like a sunset, and a mind quick as an air-brake. It
was his first year at the key, and he had a night trick under Bucks.
Callahan claims it blew so hard that night that it blew most of the
color out of his hair. Sod houses had sprung up like dog-towns in the
buffalo grass during the fall. But that day homesteaders crept into
dugouts and smothered over buffalo chip fires. Horses and cattle huddled
into friendly pockets a little out of the worst of it, or froze mutely
in pitiless fence corners on the divides. Sand drove gritting down from
the Cheyenne hills like a storm of snow. Streets of the raw prairie
towns stared deserted at the sky. Even cowboys kept their ranches, and
through the gloom of noon the sun cast a coward shadow. It was a
wretched day, and the sun went down with the wind tuning into a gale,
and all the boys in bad humor--except Bucks. Not that Bucks couldn't get
mad; but it took more than a cyclone to start him.
No. 59, the California Express, was late that night. All the way up the
valley the wind caught her quartering. Really the marvel is that out
there on the plains such storms didn't blow our toy engines clear off
the rails; for that matter they might as well have taken the rails, too,
for none of them went over sixty pounds. 59 was due at eleven o'clock;
it was half-past twelve when she pulled in and on Callahan's trick. But
Bucks hung around the office until she staggered up under the streaked
moonlight, as frowsy a looking train as ever choked on alkali.
There was always a crowd down at the station to meet 59; she was the big
arrival of the day at McCloud, even if she didn't get in until eleven
o'clock at night. She brought the mail and the express and the
landseekers and the travelling men and the strangers generally; so the
McCloud livery men and hotel runners and prominent citizens and
prominent loafers and the city marshal usually came down to meet her.
But it was not so that night. The platform was bare. Not even the hardy
chief of police, who was town watch and city marshal all combined,
ventured out.