eyes were full of soda, his ears full of sand, his mustache full of
burrs, and his whiskers full of tumble-weeds. The conductor and the
brakemen climbed sullenly down, and the baggage-man shoved open his door
and slammed a trunk out on the platform without a pretence of sympathy.
Then the outgoing crew climbed aboard, and in a hurry. The
conductor-elect ran down-stairs from the register, and pulled his cap
down hard before he pushed ahead against the wind to give the engineer
his copy of the orders as the new engine was coupled up. The fireman
pulled the canvas jealously around the cab end. The brakeman ran
hurriedly back to examine the air connections, and gave his signal to
the conductor; the conductor gave his to the engineer. There were two
short, choppy snorts from the 101, and 59 moved out stealthily, evenly,
resistlessly into the teeth of the night. In another minute, only her
red lamps gleamed up the yard. One man still on the platform watched
them recede; it was Bucks.
He came up to the dispatcher's office and sat down. Callahan wondered
why he didn't go home and to bed; but Callahan was too good a railroad
man to ask questions of a superior. Bucks might have stood on his head
on the stove, and it red-hot, without being pursued with inquiries from
Callahan. If Bucks chose to sit up out there on the frozen prairies, in
a flimsy barn of a station, and with the wind howling murder at twelve
o'clock past, and that on Chri--the twenty-fourth of December, it was
Bucks's own business.
"I kind of looked for my mother to-night," said he, after Callahan got
his orders out of the way for a minute. "Wrote she was coming out pretty
soon for a little visit."
"Where does your mother live?"
"Chicago. I sent her transportation two weeks ago. Reckon she thought
she'd better stay home for Christmas. Back in God's country they have
Christmas just about this time of year. Watch out to-night, Jim. I'm
going home. It's a wind for your life."
Callahan was making a meeting-point for two freights when the door
closed behind Bucks; he didn't even sing out "Good-night." And as for
Merry Chri--well, that had no place on the West End anyhow.
"D-i, D-i, D-i, D-i," came clicking into the room. Callahan wasn't
asleep. Once he did sleep over the key. When he told Bucks, he made sure
of his time; only he thought Bucks ought to know.
Bucks shook his head pretty hard that time. "It's awful business, Jim.
It's murder, you know. It's the penitentiary, if they should convict
you. But it's worse than that. If anything happened because you went to
sleep over the key, you'd have them on your mind all your life, don't
you know--forever. Men--and--and children. That's what I always think
about--the children. Maimed and scalded and burned. Jim, if it ever
happens again, quit dispatching; get into commercial work; mistakes
don't cost life there; don't try to handle trains. If it ever happens
with you, you'll kill yourself."
That was all he said; it was enough. And no wonder Callahan loved him.
The wind tore frantically around the station; but everything else was so
still. It was one o'clock now, and not a soul about but Callahan. D-i,
D-i, J, clicked sharp and fast. "Twelve or fourteen cars passed
here--just--now east--running a-a-a-" Callahan sprang up like a
flash--listened. What? R-u-n-n-i-n-g a-w-a-y?
It was the Jackson operator calling; Callahan jumped to the key. "What's
that?" he asked, quick as lightning could dash it.
"Twelve or fourteen cars coal passed here, fully forty miles an hour,
headed east, driven by the wi--"
That was all J could send, for Ogalalla broke in. Ogalalla is the
station just west of Jackson. And with Callahan's copper hair raising
higher at every letter, this came from Ogalalla: "Heavy gust caught
twelve coal cars on side track, sent them out on main line off down the
grade."
They were already past Jackson, eight miles away, headed east, and
running down hill. Callahan's eyes turned like hares to the train sheet.
59, going west, was due _that minute_ to leave Callendar. From Callendar
to Griffin is a twenty-miles' run. There is a station between, but in
those days no night operator. The runaway coal-train was then less than
thirty miles west of Griffin, coming down a forty-mile grade like a
cannon ball. If 59 could be stopped at Callendar, she could be laid by
in five minutes, out of the way of the certain destruction ahead of her
on the main line. Callahan seized the key, and began calling "Cn." He
pounded until the call burned into his fingers. It was an age before
Callendar answered; then Callahan's order flew:
"Hold 59. Answer quick."
And Callendar answered: "59 just pulling out of upper yard. Too late to
stop her. What's the matter?"
Callahan struck the table with his clinched fist, looked wildly about
him, then sprang from the chair, ran to the window, and threw up the
sash. The moon shone a bit through the storm of sand, but there was not
a soul in sight. There were lights in the round-house a hundred yards
across the track. He pulled a revolver--every railroad man out there
carried one those days--and, covering one of the round-house windows,
began firing. It was a risk. There was one chance, maybe, to a thousand
of his killing a night man. But there were a thousand chances to one
that a whole train-load of men and women would be killed inside of
thirty minutes if he couldn't get help. He chose a window in the
machinists' section, where he knew no one usually went at night. He
poured bullets into the unlucky casement as fast as powder could carry
them. Reloading rapidly, he watched the round-house door; and, sure
enough, almost at once, it was cautiously opened. Then he fired into
the air--one, two, three, four, five, six--and he saw a man start for
the station on the dead run. He knew, too, by the tremendous sweep of
his legs that it was Ole Anderson, the night foreman, the man of all
others he wanted.
"Ole," cried the dispatcher, waving his arms frantically as the giant
Swede leaped across the track and looked up from the platform below, "go
get Bucks. I've got a runaway train going against 59. For your life,
Ole, run!"
The big fellow was into the wind with the word. Bucks boarded four
blocks away. Callahan, slamming down the window, took the key, and began
calling Rowe. Rowe is the first station east of Jackson; it was now the
first point at which the runaway coal-train could be headed.
"R-o R-o," he rattled. The operator must have been sitting on the wire,
for he answered at once. As fast as Callahan's fingers could talk, he
told Rowe the story and gave him orders to get the night agent, who, he
knew, must be down to sell tickets for 59, and pile all the ties they
could gather across the track to derail the runaway train. Then he
began thumping for Kolar, the next station east of Rowe, and the second
ahead of the runaways. He pounded and he pounded, and when the man at
Kolar answered, Callahan could have sworn he had been asleep--just from
the way he talked. Does it seem strange? There are many strange things
about a dispatcher's senses. "Send your night man to west switch
house-track, and open for runaway train. Set brakes hard on your empties
on siding, to spill runaways if possible. Do anything and everything to
keep them from getting by you. Work quick."
Behind Kolar's O.K. came a frantic call from Rowe. "Runaways passed here
like a streak. Knocked the ties into toothpicks. Couldn't head them."
Callahan didn't wait to hear any more. He only wiped the sweat from his
face. It seemed forever before Kolar spoke again. Then it was only to
say: "Runaways went by here before night man could get to switch and
open it."
Would Bucks never come? And if he did come, what on earth could stop the
runaway train now? They were heading into the worst grade on the West
End. It averages one per cent. from Kolar to Griffin, and there we get
down off the Cheyenne Hills with a long reverse curve, and drop into the
canon of the Blackwood with a three per cent. grade. Callahan, almost
beside himself, threw open a north window to look for Bucks. Two men
were flying down Main Street towards the station. He knew them; it was
Ole and Bucks.
But Bucks! Never before or since was seen on a street of McCloud such a
figure as Bucks, in his trousers and slippers, with his night-shirt free
as he sailed down the wind. In another instant he was bounding up the
stairs. Callahan told him.
"What have you done?" he panted, throwing himself into the chair.
Callahan told him. Bucks held his head in his hands while the boy
talked. He turned to the sheet--asked quick for 59.
"She's out of Callendar. I tried hard to stop her. I didn't lose a
second; she was gone."
Barely an instant Bucks studied the sheet. Routed out of a sound sleep
after an eight-hour trick, and on such a night, by such a message--the
marvel was he could think at all, much less set a trap which should save
59. In twenty minutes from the time Bucks took the key the two trains
would be together--could he save the passenger? Callahan didn't believe
it.
A sharp, quick call brought Griffin. We had one of the brightest lads on
the whole division at Griffin. Callahan, listening, heard Griffin
answer. Bucks rattled a question. How the heart hangs on the faint,
uncertain tick of a sounder when human lives hang on it!
"Where are your section men?" asked Bucks.
"In bed at the section house."
"Who's with you?"
"Night agent. Sheriff with two cowboy prisoners waiting to take 59."
Before the last word came, Bucks was back at him:
_To Opr._:
Ask Sheriff release his prisoners to save passenger-train. Go
together to west switch house-track, open, and set it. Smash in
section tool-house, get tools. Go to point of house-track
curve, cut the rails, and point them to send runaway train from
Ogalalla over the bluff into the river.
BUCKS.
The words flew off his fingers like sparks, and another message crowded
the wire behind it:
_To Agt._:
Go to east switch, open, and set for passing-track. Flag 59,
and run her on siding. If can't get 59 into the clear, ditch
the runaways.
BUCKS.
They look old now. The ink is faded, and the paper is smoked with the
fire of fifteen winters and bleached with the sun of fifteen summers.
But to this day they hang there in their walnut frames, the original
orders, just as Bucks scratched them off. They hang there in the
dispatchers' offices in the new depot. But in their present swell
surroundings Bucks wouldn't know them. It was Harvey Reynolds who took
them off the other end of the wire--a boy in a thousand for that night
and that minute. The instant the words flashed into the room he
instructed the agent, grabbed an axe, and dashed out into the
waiting-room, where the sheriff, Ed Banks, sat with his prisoners, the
cowboys.
"Ed," cried Harvey, "there's a runaway train from Ogalalla coming down
the line in the wind. If we can't trap it here, it'll knock 59 into
kindling-wood. Turn the boys loose, Ed, and save the passenger-train.
Boys, show the man and square yourselves right now. I don't know what
you're here for; but I believe it's to save 59. Will you help?"
The three men sprang to their feet; Ed
Banks slipped the handcuffs off in a trice. "Never mind the rest of it.
Save the passenger-train first," he roared. Everybody from Ogalalla to
Omaha knew Ed Banks.
"Which way? How?" cried the cowboys, in a lather of excitement.
Harvey Reynolds, beckoning as he ran, rushed out the door and up the
track, his posse at his heels, stumbling into the gale like lunatics.
"Smash in the tool-house door," panted Harvey as they neared it.
Ed Banks seized the axe from his hands and took command as naturally as
Dewey.
"Pick up that tie and ram her," he cried, pointing to the door. "All
together--now."
Harvey and the cowboys splintered the panel in a twinkling, and Banks,
with a few clean strokes, cut an opening. The cowboys, jumping
together, ran in and began fishing for tools in the dark. One got hold
of a wrench; the other, a pick. Harvey caught up a clawbar, and Banks
grabbed a spike-maul. In a bunch they ran for the point of the curve on
the house-track. It lies there close to the verge of a limestone bluff
that looms up fifty feet above the river.
But it is one thing to order a contact opened, and another and very
different thing to open it, at two in the morning on December
twenty-fifth, by men who know no more about track-cutting than about
logarithms. Side by side and shoulder to shoulder the man of the law and
the men out of the law, the rough-riders and the railroad boy, pried and
wrenched and clawed and struggled with the steel. While Harvey and Banks
clawed at the spikes the cowboys wrestled with the nuts on the bolts of
the fish-plates. It was a baffle. The nuts wouldn't twist, the spikes
stuck like piles, sweat covered the assailants, Harvey went into a
frenzy. "Boys, we must work faster," he cried, tugging at the frosty
spikes; but flesh and blood could do no more.
"There they come--there's the runaway train--do you hear it? I'm going
to open the switch, anyhow," Harvey shouted, starting up the track.
"Save yourselves."
Heedless of the warning, Banks struggled with the plate-bolts in a
silent fury. Suddenly he sprang to his feet. "Give me the maul!" he
cried.
Raising the heavy tool like a tack-hammer he landed heavily on the bolt
nuts; once, and again; and they flew in a stream like bullets over the
bluff. The taller cowboy, bending close on his knees, raised a yell. The
plates had given. Springing to the other rail, Banks stripped the bolts
even after the mad train had shot into the gorge above them. They drove
the pick under the loosened steel, and with a pry that bent the clawbar
and a yell that reached Harvey, trembling at the switch, they tore away
the stubborn contact, and pointed the rails over the precipice.
The shriek of a locomotive whistle cut the wind. Looking east, Harvey
had been watching 59's headlight. She was pulling in on the siding. He
still held the switch open to send the runaways into the trap Bucks had
set, if the passenger-train failed to get into the clear; but there was
a minute yet--a bare sixty seconds--and Harvey had no idea of dumping
ten thousand dollars' worth of equipment into the river unless he had
to.
Suddenly, up went the safety signals from the east end. The 101 was
coughing noisily up the passing-track--the line was clear. Banks and the
cowboys, waiting breathless, saw Harvey with a determined lurch close
the main-line contact.
In the next breath the coalers, with the sweep of the gale in their
frightful velocity, smashed over the switch and on. A rattling whirl of
ballast and a dizzy clatter of noise, and before the frightened crew of
59 could see what was against them, the runaway train was passed--gone!
"I wasn't going to stop here to-night," muttered the engineer, as he
stood with the conductor over Harvey's shoulder at the operator's desk a
minute later and wiped the chill from his forehead with a piece of
waste. "We'd have met them in the canon."
Harvey was reporting to Bucks. Callahan heard it coming: "Rails cut, but
59 safe. Runaways went by here fully seventy miles an hour."
It was easy after that. Griffin is the foot of the grade; from there on,
the runaway train had a hill to climb. Bucks had held 250, the local
passenger, side-tracked at Davis, thirty miles farther east. Sped by the
wind, the runaways passed Davis, though not at half their highest speed.
An instant later, 250's engine was cut loose, and started after them
like a scared collie. Three miles east of Davis they were overhauled by
the light engine. The fireman, Donahue, crawled out of the cab window,
along the foot-rail, and down on the pilot, caught the ladder of the
first car, and, running up, crept along to the leader and began setting
brakes. Ten minutes later they were brought back in triumph to Davis.
When the multitude of orders was out of the way, Bucks wired Ed Banks to
bring his cowboys down to McCloud on 60. 60 was the east-bound passenger
due at McCloud at 5.30 A.M. It turned out that the cowboys had been
arrested for lassoing a Norwegian homesteader who had cut their wire. It
was not a heinous offence, and after it was straightened out by the
intervention of Bucks--who was the whole thing then--they were given
jobs lassoing sugar barrels in the train service. One of them, the tall
fellow, is a passenger conductor on the high line yet.
It was three o'clock that morning--the twenty-fifth of December in small
letters, on the West End--before they got things decently straightened
out: there was so much to do--orders to make and reports to take. Bucks,
still on the key in his flowing robes and tumbling hair, sent and took
them all. Then he turned the seat over to Callahan, and getting up for
the first time in two hours, dropped into another chair.
The very first thing Callahan received was a personal from Pat Francis,
at Ogalalla, conductor of 59. It was for Bucks:
Your mother is aboard 59. She was carried by McCloud in the
Denver sleeper. Sending her back to you on 60. Merry Christmas.
It came off the wire fast. Callahan, taking it, didn't think Bucks
heard; though it's probable he did hear. Anyway, Callahan threw the clip
over towards him with a laugh.
"Look there, old man. There's your mother coming, after all your
kicking--carried by on 59."
As the boy turned he saw the big dispatcher's head sink between his arms
on the table. Callahan sprang to his side; but Bucks had fainted.
Sankey's Double Header
The oldest man in the train service didn't pretend to say how long
Sankey had worked for the company.
Pat Francis was a very old conductor; but old man Sankey was a veteran
when Pat Francis began braking. Sankey ran a passenger-train when Jimmie
Brady was running--and Jimmie afterwards enlisted and was killed in the
Custer fight.
There was an odd tradition about Sankey's name. He was a tall, swarthy
fellow, and carried the blood of a Sioux chief in his veins. It was in
the time of the Black Hills excitement, when railroad men struck by the
gold fever were abandoning their trains, even at way-stations, and
striking across the divide for Clark's crossing. Men to run the trains
were hard to get, and Tom Porter, train-master, was putting in every man
he could pick up, without reference to age or color.
Porter--he died at Julesburg afterwards--was a great jollier, and he
wasn't afraid of anybody on earth.
One day a war-party of Sioux clattered into town. They tore around like
a storm, and threatened to scalp everything, even to the local tickets.
The head braves dashed in on Tom Porter, sitting in the dispatcher's
office up-stairs. The dispatcher was hiding under a loose plank in the
baggage-room floor; Tom, being bald as a sand-hill, considered himself
exempt from scalping-parties. He was working a game of solitaire when
they bore down on him, and interested them at once. That led to a
parley, which ended in Porter's hiring the whole band to brake on
freight-trains. Old man Sankey is said to have been one of that original
war-party.
Now this is merely a caboose story--told on winter nights when trainmen
get stalled in the snow drifting down from the Sioux country. But what
follows is better attested.
Sankey, to start with, had a peculiar name. An unpronounceable,
unspellable, unmanageable name. I never heard it; so I can't give it. It
was as hard to catch as an Indian cur, and that name made more trouble
on the pay-rolls than all the other names put together. Nobody at
headquarters could handle it; it was never turned in twice alike, and
they were always writing Tom Porter about the thing. Tom explained
several times that it was Sitting Bull's ambassador who was drawing that
money, and that he usually signed the pay-roll with a tomahawk. But
nobody at Omaha ever knew how to take a joke.
The first time Tom went down he was called in very solemnly to explain
again about the name; and being in a hurry, and very tired of the whole
business, Tom spluttered:
"Hang it, don't bother me any more about that name. If you can't read
it, make it Sankey, and be done with it."
They took Tom at his word. They actually did make it Sankey; and that's
how our oldest conductor came to bear the name of the famous singer. And
more I may say: good name as it was--and is--the Sioux never disgraced
it.
Probably every old traveller on the system knew Sankey. He was not only
always ready to answer questions, but, what is much more, always ready
to answer the same question twice: it is that which makes conductors
gray-headed and spoils their chances for heaven--answering the same
questions over and over again. Children were apt to be a bit startled at
first sight of Sankey--he was so dark. But he had a very quiet smile,
that always made them friends after the second trip through the
sleepers, and they sometimes ran about asking for him after he had left
the train.
Of late years--and it is this that hurts--these very same children,
grown ever so much bigger, and riding again to or from California or
Japan or Australia, will ask when they reach the West End about the
Indian conductor.
But the conductors who now run the overland trains pause at the
question, checking over the date limits on the margins of the coupon
tickets, and, handing the envelopes back, will look at the children and
say, slowly, "He isn't running any more."
* * * * *
If you have ever gone over our line to the mountains or to the coast you
may remember at McCloud, where they change engines and set the diner in
or out, the pretty little green park to the east of the depot with a row
of catalpa-trees along the platform line. It looks like a glass of
spring water.
If it happened to be Sankey's run and a regular West End day, sunny and
delightful, you would be sure to see standing under the catalpas a shy,
dark-skinned girl of fourteen or fifteen years, silently watching the
preparations for the departure of the Overland.
And after the new engine had been backed, champing down, and harnessed
to its long string of vestibuled sleepers; after the air hose had been
connected and the air valves examined; after the engineer had swung out
of his cab, filled his cups, and swung in again; after the fireman and
his helper had disposed of their slice-bar and shovel, and given the
tender a final sprinkle, and the conductor had walked leisurely
forward, compared time with the engineer, and cried, "All Abo-o-o-ard!"
Then, as your coach moved slowly ahead, you might notice under the
receding catalpas the little girl waving a parasol, or a handkerchief,
at the outgoing train--that is, at conductor Sankey; for she was his
daughter, Neeta Sankey. Her mother was Spanish, and died when Neeta was
a wee bit. Neeta and the Limited were Sankey's whole world.
When Georgie Sinclair began pulling the Limited, running west opposite
Foley, he struck up a great friendship with Sankey. Sankey, though he
was hard to start, was full of early-day stories. Georgie, it seemed,
had the faculty of getting him to talk; perhaps because when he was
pulling Sankey's train he made extraordinary efforts to keep on
time--time was a hobby with Sankey. Foley said he was so careful of it
that when he was off duty he let his watch stop just to save time.
Sankey loved to breast the winds and the floods and the snows, and if he
could get home pretty near on schedule, with everybody else late, he was
happy; and in respect of that, as Sankey used to say, Georgie Sinclair
could come nearer gratifying Sankey's ambition than any runner we had.
Even the firemen used to observe that the young engineer, always neat,
looked still neater the days that he took out Sankey's train. By-and-by
there was an introduction under the catalpas; after that it was noticed
that Georgie began wearing gloves on the engine--not kid gloves, but
yellow dogskin--and black silk shirts; he bought them in Denver.
Then--an odd way engineers have of paying compliments--when Georgie
pulled into town on No. 2, if it was Sankey's train, the big sky-scraper
would give a short, hoarse scream, a most peculiar note, just as they
drew past Sankey's house, which stood on the brow of the hill west of
the yards. Then Neeta would know that No. 2 and her father, and
naturally Mr. Sinclair, were in again, and all safe and sound.