fair warning. I know you now, Fitzpatrick, and the next time I see you,
look out," and without more ado Siclone walked out of the shop greatly
to the relief of the barber, if not of Fitz.
Fitzpatrick may have wiped a little sweat from his face; but he said
nothing--only walked down to the round-house and took out the 313 as
usual for his run.
A week passed before the two men met again. One night Siclone with a
crowd of the strikers ran into half a dozen of the new men, Fitzpatrick
among them, and there was a riot. It was Siclone's time to carry out his
intention, for Fitzpatrick would have scorned to try to get away. No
tree ever breasted a tornado more sturdily than the Irish engineer
withstood Siclone; but when Ed Banks got there with his wrecking crew
and straightened things out, Fitzpatrick was picked up for dead. That
night Siclone disappeared.
Warrants were gotten out and searchers put after him; yet nobody could
or would apprehend him. It was generally understood that the sudden
disappearance was one of Siclone's freaks. If the ex-cowboy had so
determined he would not have hidden to keep out of anybody's way. I have
sometimes pondered whether shame hadn't something to do with it. His
tremendous physical strength was fit for so much better things than
beating other men that maybe he, himself, sort of realized it after the
storm had passed.
Down east of the depot grounds at McCloud stands, or stood, a great
barnlike hotel, built in boom days, and long a favorite resting-place
for invalids and travellers en route to California by easy stages. It
was nicknamed the barracks. Many railroad men boarded there, and the new
engineers liked it because it was close to the round-house and away from
the strikers.
Fitzpatrick, without a whine or a complaint, was put to bed in the
barracks, and Holmes Kay, one of our staff surgeons, was given charge of
the case; a trained nurse was provided besides. Nobody thought the
injured man would live. But after every care was given him, we turned
our attention to the troublesome task of operating the road.
The 313, whether it happened so, or whether Neighbor thought it well to
drop the disputed machine temporarily, was not taken out again for three
weeks. She was looked on as a hoodoo, and nobody wanted her. Foley
refused point-blank one day to take her, claiming that he had troubles
of his own. Then, one day, something happened to McTerza's engine; we
were stranded for a locomotive, and the 313 was brought out for McTerza;
he didn't like it a bit.
Meantime nothing had been seen or heard of Siclone. That, in fact, was
the reason Neighbor urged for using his engine; but it seemed as if
every time the 313 went out it brought out Siclone, not to speak of
worse things.
That morning about three o'clock the unlucky engine was coupled on to
the White Flyer. The night boy at the barracks always got up a hot lunch
for the incoming and outgoing crews on the mail run, and that morning
when he was through he forgot to turn off the lamp under his
coffee-tank. It overheated the counter, and in a few minutes the
wood-work was ablaze. If the frightened boy had emptied the coffee on
the counter he could have put the fire out; but instead he ran out to
give the alarm, and started up-stairs to arouse the guests.
There were at least fifty people asleep in the house, travelling and
railway men. Being a wooden building it was a quick prey, and in an
incredibly short time the flames were leaping through the second-story
windows.
When I got down men were jumping in every direction from the burning
hotel. Railroaders swarmed around, busy with schemes for getting the
people out, for none are more quick-witted in time of panic. Short as
the opportunity was there were many pretty rescues, until the flames,
shooting up, cut off the stairs, and left the helpers nothing for it but
to stand and watch the destruction of the long, rambling building. Half
a dozen of us looked from the dispatchers' offices in the second story
of the depot. We had agreed that the people were all out, when Foley
below gave a cry and pointed to the south gable. Away up under the eaves
at the third-story window we saw a face--it was Fitzpatrick.
Everybody had forgotten Fitzpatrick and his nurse. Behind, as the flames
lighted the opening, we could see the nurse struggling to get him to the
window. It was plain that the engineer was in no condition to help
himself; the two men were in deadly peril; a great cry went up.
The crowd swarmed like ants around to the south end; a dozen men called
for ladders; but there were no ladders. They called for volunteers to go
in after the two men; but the stairs were long since a furnace. There
were men in plenty to take any kind of chance, however slight, but no
chance offered.
The nurse ran to and from the window, seeking a loop-hole for escape.
Fitzpatrick dragged himself higher on the casement to get out of the
smoke which rolled over him in choking bursts, and looked down on the
crowd. They begged him to jump--held out their arms frantically. The two
men again side by side waved a hand; it looked like a farewell. There
was no calling from them, no appeal. The nurse would not desert his
charge, and we saw it all.
Suddenly there was a cry below, keener than the confused shouting of
the crowd, and one running forward parted the men at the front and,
clearing the fence, jumped into the yard under the burning gable.
Before people recognized him a lariat was swinging over his head--it was
Siclone Clark. The rope left his arm like a slung-shot and flew straight
at Fitzpatrick. Not seeing, or confused, he missed it, and the rope,
with a groan from the crowd, settled back. The agile cowboy caught it
again into a loop and shot it upward, that time fairly over
Fitzpatrick's head.
"Make fast!" roared Siclone. Fitzpatrick shouted back, and the two men
above drew taut. Hand over hand Siclone Clark crept up, like a monkey,
bracing his feet against the smoking clapboards, edging away from the
vomiting windows, swinging on the single strand of horse-hair, and
followed by a hundred prayers unsaid.
Men who didn't know what tears were tried to cry out to keep the choking
from their throats. It seemed an age before he covered the last five
feet, and the men above caught frantically at his hands.
Drawing himself over the casement, he was lost with them a moment;
then, from behind a burst of smoke, they saw him rigging a maverick
saddle on Fitzpatrick; saw Fitzpatrick lifted by Clark and the nurse
over the sill, lowered like a wooden tie, whirling and swinging, down
into twenty arms below. Before the trainmen had got the engineer loose,
the nurse, following, slid like a cat down the incline; but not an
instant too soon. A tongue of flame lit the gable from below and licked
the horse-hair up into a curling, frizzling thread; and Siclone stood
alone in the upper casement.
It seemed for the moment he stood there the crowd would go mad. The
shock and the shouting seemed to confuse him; it may have been the hot
air took his breath. They yelled to him to jump; but he swayed
uncertainly. Once, an instant after that, he was seen to look down; then
he drew back from the casement. I never saw him again.
The flames wrapped the building in a yellow fury; by daylight the big
barracks were a smouldering pile of ruins. So little water was thrown
that it was nearly nightfall before we could get into the wreck. The
tragedy had blotted out the feud between the strikers and the new men.
Side by side they worked, as side by side Siclone and Fitzpatrick had
stood in the morning, striving to uncover the mystery of the missing
man. Next day twice as many men were in the ruins.
Fitzpatrick, while we were searching, called continually for Siclone
Clark. We didn't tell him the truth; indeed, we didn't know it; nor do
we yet know it. Every brace, every beam, every brick was taken from the
charred pile. Every foot of cinders, every handful of ashes sifted; but
of a human being the searchers found never a trace. Not a bone, not a
key, not a knife, not a button which could be identified as his. Like
the smoke which swallowed him up, he had disappeared completely and
forever.
* * * * *
Is he alive? I cannot tell.
But this I know.
Years afterwards Sidney Blair, head of our engineering department, was
running a line, looking then, as we are looking yet, for a coast outlet.
He took only a flying camp with him, travelling in the lightest kind of
order, camping often with the cattlemen he ran across.
One night, away down in the Panhandle, they fell in with an outfit
driving a bunch of steers up the Yellow Grass trail. Blair noted that
the foreman was a character. A man of few words, but of great muscular
strength; and, moreover, frightfully scarred.
He was silent and inclined to be morose at first, but after he learned
Blair was from McCloud he unbent a bit, and after a time began asking
questions which indicated a surprising familiarity with the northern
country and with our road. In particular, this man asked what had become
of Bucks, and, when told what a big railroad man he had grown, asserted,
with a sudden bitterness and without in any way leading up to it, that
with Bucks on the West End there never would have been a strike.
Sitting at their camp-fire while their crews mingled, Blair noticed in
the flicker of the blaze how seamed the throat and breast of the
cattleman were; even his sinewy forearms were drawn out of shape. He
asked, too, whether Blair recollected the night the barracks burned; but
Blair at that time was east of the river, and so explained, though he
related to the cowboy incidents of the fire which he had heard, among
others the story of Fitzpatrick and Siclone Clark.
"And Fitzpatrick is alive and Siclone is dead," said Blair, in
conclusion. But the cowboy disputed him.
"You mean Clark is alive and Fitzpatrick is dead," said he.
"No," contended Sidney, "Fitzpatrick is running an engine up there now.
I saw him within three months." But the cowboy was loath to conviction.
Next morning their trails forked. The foreman seemed disinclined to part
from the surveyors, and while the bunch was starting he rode a long way
with Blair, talking in a random way. Then, suddenly wheeling, he waved a
good-bye with his heavy Stetson and, galloping hard, was soon lost to
the north in the ruts of the Yellow Grass.
When Blair came in he told Neighbor and me about it. Blair had never
seen Siclone Clark, and so was no judge as to his identity; but Neighbor
believes yet that Blair camped that night way down in the Panhandle
with no other than the cowboy engineer.
Once again, that only two years ago, something came back to us.
Holmes Kay, one of our staff of surgeons, the man, in fact, who took
care of Fitzpatrick, enlisted in Illinois and went with the First to
Cuba. They got in front of Santiago just after the hard fighting of July
1st, and Holmes was detailed for hospital work among Roosevelt's men,
who had suffered severely the day before.
One of the wounded, a sergeant, had sustained a gunshot wound in the
jaw, and in the confusion had received scant attention. Kay took hold of
him. He was a cowboy, like most of the rough-riders, and after his jaw
was dressed Kay made some remark about the hot fire they had been
through before the block-house.
"I've been through a hotter before I ever saw Cuba," answered the
rough-rider, as well as he could through his bandages. The remark
directed Kay's attention to the condition of his breast and neck, which
were a mass of scars.
"Where are you from?" asked Holmes.
"Everywhere."
"Where did you get burned that way?"
"Out on the plains."
"How?"
But the poor fellow went off into a delirium, and to the surgeon's
amazement began repeating train orders. Kay was paralyzed at the way he
talked our lingo--and a cowboy. When he left the wounded man for the
night he resolved to question him more closely the next day; but the
next day orders came to rejoin his regiment at the trenches. The
surrender shifted things about, and Kay, though he made repeated
inquiry, never saw the man again.
Neighbor, when he heard the story, was only confirmed in his belief that
the rough-rider was Siclone Clark. I give you the tales as they came to
me, and for what you may make of them.
I myself believe that if Siclone Clark is still alive he will one day
yet come back to where he was best known and, in spite of his faults,
best liked. They talk of him out there as they do of old man Sankey.
I say I believe if he lives he will one day come back. The day he does
will be a great day in McCloud. On that day Fitzpatrick will have to
take down the little tablet which he placed in the brick facade of the
hotel which now stands on the site of the old barracks. For, as that
tablet now stands, it is sacred to the memory of Siclone Clark.
THE END
BY FREDERIC REMINGTON
SUNDOWN LEFLARE.
Short Stories. Illustrations by the Author.
Sundown Leflare is not idealized in Mr. Remington's handling of him. He
is presented just as he is, with his good-humor and shrewdness and
indomitable pluck, and also with all his superstition and his knavery.
But he is a very realistic, very human character, and one whom we would
see and read more of hereafter.--_Boston Journal._
CROOKED TRAILS.
Illustrated by the Author.
Mr. Remington as author and artist presents a perfect
combination.--_Philadelphia Telegraph._
Picture and text go to form a whole which the reader could not well
grasp were it not for the supplementary quality of each in its bearing
upon the other.--_Albany Journal._
PONY TRACKS.
Illustrated by the Author.
This is a spicy account of real experiences among Indians and cowboys on
the plains and in the mountains, and will be read with a great deal of
interest by all who are fond of an adventurous life. No better
illustrated book of frontier adventure has been published.--_Boston
Journal._
BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
A YEAR FROM A REPORTER'S NOTE-BOOK.
Illustrated by R. CATON WOODVILLE, T. de THULSTRUP, and FREDERIC
REMINGTON, and from Photographs taken by the Author.
THREE GRINGOS IN VENEZUELA AND CENTRAL AMERICA.
Illustrated.
ABOUT PARIS.
Illustrated by C. D. GIBSON.
THE PRINCESS ALINE.
Illustrated by C. D. GIBSON.
THE EXILES, AND OTHER STORIES.
Illustrated.
VAN BIBBER, AND OTHERS.
Illustrated by C. D. GIBSON
THE WEST FROM A CAR-WINDOW.
Illustrated by FREDERIC REMINGTON.
OUR ENGLISH COUSINS.
Illustrated.
THE RULERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.
Illustrated.
Mr. Davis has eyes to see, is not a bit afraid to tell what he sees, and
is essentially good natured.... Mr. Davis's faculty of appreciation and
enjoyment is fresh and strong: he makes vivid pictures.--_Outlook_, N.
Y.
Richard Harding Davis never writes a short story that he does not prove
himself a master of the art.--_Chicago Times._
BY JOHN FOX, Jr.
A MOUNTAIN EUROPA.
With Portrait.
The story is well worth careful reading for its literary art
and its truth to a phase of little-known American life.--_Omaha
Bee_.
THE KENTUCKIANS.
A Novel. Illustrated by W. T. SMEDLEY.
This, Mr. Fox's first long story, sets him well in view, and
distinguishes him as at once original and sound. He takes the
right view of the story-writer's function and the wholesale
view of what the art of fiction can rightfully
attempt.--_Independent_, N. Y.
"HELL FER SARTAIN," and Other Stories.
Mr. Fox has made a great success of his pictures of the rude
life and primitive passions of the people of the mountains of
West Virginia and Kentucky. His sketches are short but graphic;
he paints his scenes and his hill people in terse and simple
phrases and makes them genuinely picturesque, giving us
glimpses of life that are distinctively American.--_Detroit
Free Press_.
A CUMBERLAND VENDETTA, and Other Stories.
Illustrated.
These stories are tempestuously alive, and sweep the
heart-strings with a master-hand.--_Watchman_, Boston.
BY FRANK R. STOCKTON
THE ASSOCIATE HERMITS.
A Novel. Illustrated by A. B. FROST.
If there is a more droll or more delightful writer now living
than Mr. Frank R. Stockton we should be slow to make his
acquaintance, on the ground that the limit of safety might be
passed.... Mr. Stockton's humor asserts itself admirably, and
the story is altogether enjoyable.--_Independent_, N. Y.
The interest never flags, and there is nothing intermittent
about the sparkling humor.--_Philadelphia Press_.
THE GREAT STONE OF SARDIS.
A Novel. Illustrated by PETER NEWELL.
The scene of Mr. Stockton's novel is laid in the twentieth
century, which is imagined as the culmination of our era of
science and invention. The main episodes are a journey to the
centre of the earth by means of a pit bored by an automatic
cartridge, and a journey to the North Pole beneath the ice of
the Polar Seas. These adventures Mr. Stockton describes with
such simplicity and conviction that the reader is apt to take
the story in all seriousness until he suddenly runs into some
gigantic pleasantry of the kind that was unknown before Mr.
Stockton began writing, and realizes that the novel is a grave
and elaborate bit of fooling, based upon the scientific fads of
the day. The book is richly illustrated by Peter Newell, the
one artist of modern times who is suited to interpret Mr.
Stockton's characters and situations.