XVIII
AT SILVER SWITCH
Like that of other railroad officials, whose duties constrain them tospend much time in transit, Lidgerwood's desk-work went with him up anddown and around and about on the two divisions, and before leaving hisoffice in the Crow's Nest to go down to the waiting special, he hadthrust a bunch of letters and papers into his pocket to be groundthrough the business-mill on the run to Little Butte.
It was his surreptitious transference of the rubber-banded bunch ofletters to the oblivion of the closed service-car desk, observed by MissBrewster, that gave the president's daughter an opportunity to makepartial amends for having turned his business trip into a car-party.Before the special was well out of the Angels yard she was commandingsilence, and laying down the law for the others, particularizing CarolynDoty, though only by way of a transfixing eye.
"Listen a moment, all of you," she called. "We mustn't forget that thisisn't a planned excursion for us; it's a business trip for Mr.Lidgerwood, and we are here by our own invitation. We must makeourselves small, accordingly, and not bother him. _Savez vous?_"
Van Lew laughed, spread his long arms, and swept them all out toward therear platform. But Miss Eleanor escaped at the door and went back toLidgerwood.
"There, now!" she whispered, "don't ever say that I can't do the reallyhandsome thing when I try. Can you manage to work at all, with thesechatterers on the car?"
She was steadying herself against the swing of the car, with one shapelyhand on the edge of the desk, and he covered it with one of his own.
"Yes, I can work," he asserted. "The one thing impossible is not to loveyou, Eleanor. It's hard enough when you are unkind; you mustn't make itharder by being what you used always to be to me."
"What a lover you are when you forget to be self-conscious!" she saidsoftly; none the less she freed the imprisoned hand with a hasty littlejerk. Then she went on with playful austerity: "Now you are to doexactly what you were meaning to do when you didn't know we were comingwith you. I'll make them all stay away from you just as long as I can."
She kept her promise so well that for an industrious hour Lidgerwoodscarcely realized that he was not alone. For the greater part of theinterval the sight-seers were out on the rear platform, listening toMiss Brewster's stories of the Red Desert. When she had repeated all shehad ever heard, she began to invent; and she was in the midst of one ofthe most blood-curdling of the inventions when Lidgerwood, having workedthrough his bunch of papers, opened the door and joined the platformparty. Miss Brewster's animation died out and her voice trailed awayinto--"and that's all; I don't know the rest of it."
Lidgerwood's laugh was as hearty as Van Lew's or the collegian's.
"Please go on," he teased. Then quoting her: "'And after they had shotup all the peaceable people in the town, they fell to killing eachother, and'--Don't let me spoil the dramatic conclusion."
"You are the dramatic conclusion to that story," retorted Miss Brewster,reproachfully. Whereupon she immediately wrenched the conversation asideinto a new channel by asking how far it was to the canyon portal.
"Only a mile or two now," was Lidgerwood's rejoinder. "Williams hasbeen making good time." And two minutes later the one-car train, withthe foaming torrent of the Timanyoni for its pathfinder, plunged betweenthe narrow walls of the upper canyon, and the race down the grade of thecrooked water-trail through the heart of the mountains began.
There was little chance for speech, even if the overawing grandeurs ofthe stupendous crevice, seen in their most impressive presentment asalternating vistas of stark, moonlighted crags and gulches and depths ofblackest shadow, had encouraged it. The hiss and whistle of theair-brakes, the harsh, sustained note of the shrieking wheel-flangesshearing the inner edges of the railheads on the curves, and thestuttering roar of the 266's safety-valve were continuous; a deafeningmedley of sounds multiplied a hundred-fold by the demoniac laughter ofthe echoes.
Miss Carolyn clung to the platform hand-rail, and once Lidgerwoodthought he surprised Van Lew with his arm about her; thought it, andimmediately concluded that he was mistaken. Miriam Holcombe had theopposite corner of the platform, and Jefferis was making it his businessto see to it that she was not entirely crushed by the grandeurs.
Miss Brewster, steadying herself by the knob of the closed door, wasnot overawed; she had seen Rocky Mountain canyons at their best andtheir worst, many times before. But excitement, and the relaxing of theconventional leash that accompanies it, roused the spirit of daringmockery which was never wholly beyond call in Miss Brewster's mentalprocesses. With her lips to Lidgerwood's ear she said: "Tell me, Howard;how soon should a chaperon begin to make a diversion? I'm only anapprentice, you know. Does it occur to you that these young persons needto be shocked into a better appreciation of the conventions?"
There was a small Pintsch globe in the hollow of the "umbrella roof,"with its single burner turned down to a mere pea of light. Lidgerwood'sanswer was to reach up and flood the platform with a sudden glow ofartificial radiance. The chorus of protest was immediate andreproachful.
"Oh, Mr. Lidgerwood! don't spoil the perfect moonlight that way!" criedMiss Doty, and the others echoed the beseeching.
"You'll get used to it in a minute," asserted Lidgerwood, ingood-natured sarcasm. "It is so dark here in the canyon that I'm afraidsome of you might fall overboard or get hit by the rocks, or something."
"The idea!" scoffed Miss Carolyn. Then, petulantly, to Van Lew: "We mayas well go in. There is nothing more to be seen out here."
Lidgerwood looked to Eleanor for his cue, or at least for a whiff ofmoral support. But she turned traitor.
"You can do the meanest things in the name of solicitude, Howard," shebegan; but before she could finish he had reached up and turned the gasoff with a snap, saying, "All right; anything to please the children."After which, however, he spoke authoritatively to Van Lew and Jefferis."Don't let your responsibilities lean out over the railing, you two.There are places below here where the rocks barely give a train room topass."
"_I'm_ not leaning out," said Miss Brewster, as if she resented hiscare-taking. Then, for his ear alone: "But I shall if I want to."
"Not while I am here to prevent you."
"But you couldn't prevent me, you know."
"Yes, I could."
"How?"
The special was rushing through the darkest of the high-walled clefts inthe lower part of the canyon. "This way," he said, his love suddenlybreaking bounds, and he took her in his arms.
She freed herself quickly, breathless and indignantly reproachful.
"I am ashamed for you!" she panted. And then, with carefully calculatedmalice: "What if Herbert had been looking?"
"I shouldn't care if all the world had been looking," was the stubbornrejoinder. Then, passionately: "Tell me one thing before we go anyfarther, Eleanor: have you given him the right to call me out?"
"How can you doubt it?" she said; but now she was laughing at him again.
There was safety only in flight, and he fled; back to his desk and thework thereon. He was wading dismally through a thick mass ofcorrespondence, relating to a cattleman's claim for stock killed, andthinking of nothing so little as the type-written words, when the roarof the echoing canyon walls died away, and the train came to a stand atTimanyoni, the first telegraph station in the shut-in valley between themountain ranges. A minute or two later the wheels began to revolveagain, and Bradford came in.
"More maverick railroading," he said disgustedly. "Timanyoni had his redlight out, and when I asked for orders he said he hadn't any--thoughtmaybe we'd want to ask for 'em ourselves, being as we was running wild."
"So he thoughtfully stopped us to give us the chance!" snappedLidgerwood in wrathful scorn. "What did you do?"
"Oh, as long as he had done it, I had him call up the Angels despatcherto find out where we were at. We're on 204's time, you know--ought tohave met her here."
"Why didn't we?" asked the superintendent, taking the t
ime-card from itspigeon-hole and glancing at Train 204's schedule.
"She was late out of Red Butte; broke something and had to stop and tieit up; lost a half-hour makin' her get-away."
"Then we reach Little Butte before 204 gets there--is that it?"
"That's about the way the night despatcher has it ciphered out. He gavethe Timanyoni plug operator hot stuff for holdin' us up."
Lidgerwood shook his head. The artless simplicity of Red-Butte-Westernmethods, or unmethods, was dying hard, inexcusably hard.
"Does the night despatcher happen to know just where 204 is, at thispresent moment?" he inquired with gentle irony.
Bradford laughed.
"I'd be willing to bet a piebald pinto against a no-account yaller dogthat he don't. But I reckon he won't be likely to let her get pastLittle Butte, comin' this way, when he has let us get by Timanyonigoin' t'other way."
"That's all right, Andy; that is the way you would have a right tofigure it out if you were running a special on a normally healthyrailroad--you'd be justified in running to your next telegraph station,regardless. But the Red Butte Western is an abnormally unhealthyrailroad, and you'd better feel your way--pretty carefully, too. FromPoint-of-Rocks you can see well down toward Little Butte. Tell Williamsto watch for 204's headlight, and if he sees it, to take the siding atSilver Switch, the old Wire-Silver spur."
Bradford nodded, and when Lidgerwood reimmersed himself in thecattleman's claim papers, went forward to share Williams's watch in thecab of the 266.
Twenty minutes farther on, the train slowed again, made a momentarystop, and began to screech and grind heavily around a sharp curve.Lidgerwood looked out of the window at his right. The moon had gonebehind a huge hill, a lantern was pricking a point in the shadows somelittle distance from the track, and the tumultuous river was no longersweeping parallel with the embankment. He shut his desk and went to therear platform, projecting himself into the group of sight-seers just asthe train stopped for the second time.
"Where are we now?" asked Miss Brewster, looking up at the dark mass ofthe hill whose forested ramparts loomed black in the near foreground.
"At Silver Switch," replied Lidgerwood; and when the bobbing lanterncame nearer he called to the bearer of it. "What is it, Bradford?"
"The passenger, I reckon," was the answer. "Williams thought he saw itas we came around Point-o'-Rocks, and he was afraid the despatcher hadgot balled up some and let 'em get past Little Butte without ameet-order."
For a moment the group on the railed platform was silent, and in thelittle interval a low, humming sound made itself felt rather than heard;a shuddering murmur, coming from all points of the compass at once, asit seemed, and filling the still night air with its vibrations.
"Williams was right!" rejoined the superintended sharply. "She'scoming!" And even as he spoke, the white glare of an electric headlightburst into full view on the shelf-like cutting along the northern faceof the great hill, pricking out the smallest details of the waitingspecial, the closed switch, and the gleaming lines of the rails.
With this powerful spot-light to project its cone of dazzlingbrilliance upon the scene, the watchers on the railed platform of thesuperintendent's service-car saw every detail in the swift outworking ofthe tragic spectacle for which the hill-facing curve was thestage-setting.
When the oncoming passenger-train was within three or four hundred yardsof the spur track switch and racing toward it at full speed, a man, whoseemed to the onlookers to rise up out of the ground in the train'spath, ran down the track to meet the uprushing headlight, waving hisarms frantically in the stop signal. For an instant that seemed an age,the passenger engineer made no sign. Then came a short, sharpwhistle-scream, a spewing of sparks from rail-head and tire at the clipof the emergency brakes, a crash as of the ripping asunder of themechanical soul and body, and a wrecked train lay tilted at an angle offorty-five degrees against the bank of the hill-side cutting.
It was a moment for action rather than for words, and when he clearedthe platform hand-rail and dropped, running, Lidgerwood was only thefraction of a second ahead of Van Lew and Jefferis. With Bradfordswinging his lantern for Williams and his fireman to come on, the fourmen were at the wreck before the cries of fright and agony had brokenout upon the awful stillness following the crash.
There was quick work and heart-breaking to be done, and, for the firstfew critical minutes, a terrible lack of hands to do it. Cranford, theengineer, was still in his cab, pinned down by the coal which hadshifted forward at the shock of the sudden stop. In the wreck of thetender, the iron-work of which was rammed into shapeless crumplings bythe upreared trucks of the baggage-car, lay the fireman, past humanhelp, as a hasty side-swing of Bradford's lantern showed.
The baggage-car, riding high upon the crushed tender, was body-whole,but the smoker, day-coach, and sleeper were all more or less shattered,with the smoking-car already beginning to blaze from the broken lamps.It was a crisis to call out the best in any gift of leadership, andLidgerwood's genius for swift and effective organization came out strongunder the hammer-blow of the occasion.
"Stay here with Bradford and Jefferis, and get that engineer out!" hecalled to Van Lew. Then, with arms outspread, he charged down upon thetrain's company, escaping as it could through the broken windows of thecars. "This way, every man of you!" he yelled, his shout dominating theclamor of cries, crashing glass, and hissing steam. "The fire's whatwe've got to fight! Line up down to the river, and pass water inanything you can get hold of! Here, Groner"--to the train conductor, whowas picking himself up out of the ditch into which the shock had thrownhim--"send somebody to the Pullman for blankets. Jump for it, man,before this fire gets headway!"
Luckily, there were by this time plenty of willing hands to help. TheTimanyoni is a man's country, and there were few women in the train'spassenger list. Quickly a line was formed to the near-by margin of theriver, and water, in hats, in buckets improvised out of pieces of tintorn from the wrecked car-roofs, in saturated coats, cushion covers, andPullman blankets, hissed upon the fire, beat it down, and presentlyextinguished it.
Then the work of extricating the imprisoned ones began, light for itbeing obtained by the backing of Williams's engine to the main lineabove the switch so that the headlight played upon the scene.
Lidgerwood was fairly in the thick of the rescue work when MissBrewster, walking down the track from the service-car and bringing thetwo young women who were afraid to be left behind, launched herself andher companions into the midst of the nerve-racking horror.
"Give us something to do," she commanded, when he would have sent themback; and he changed his mind and set them at work binding up wounds andcaring for the injured quite as if they had been trained nurses sentfrom heaven at the opportune moment.
In a very little time the length and breadth of the disaster were fullyknown, and its consequences alleviated, so far as they might be with themeans at hand. There were three killed outright in the smoker, two inthe half-filled day-coach, and none in the sleeper; six in all,including the fireman pinned beneath the wreck of the tender. Cranford,the engineer, was dug out of his coal-covered grave by Van Lew andJefferis, badly burned and bruised, but still living; and there were ascore of other woundings, more or less dreadful.
Red Butte was the nearest point from which a relief-train could be sent,and Lidgerwood promptly cut the telegraph wire, connected his pocket setof instruments, and sent in the call for help. That done he transferredthe pocket relay to the other end of the cut wire, and called up thenight despatcher at Angels. Fortunately, McCloskey and Dawson were justin with the two wrecking-trains from the Crosswater Hills, and thesuperintendent ordered Dawson to come out immediately with his trainand a fresh crew, if it could be obtained.
Dawson took the wire and replied in person. His crew was good foranother tussle, he said, and his train was still in readiness. He wouldstart west at once, or the moment the despatcher could clear for him,and would be at Silver Switch as soon as the interveni
ng miles wouldpermit.
Eleanor Brewster and her guests were grouped beside Lidgerwood when hedisconnected the pocket set from the cut wire, and temporarily repairedthe break. The service-car had been turned into a make-shift hospitalfor the wounded, and the car-party was homeless.
"We are all waiting to say how sorry we are that we insisted on comingand thus adding to your responsibilities, Howard," said the president'sdaughter, and now there was no trace of mockery in her voice.
His answer was entirely sympathetic and grateful.
"I'm only sorry that you have been obliged to see and take part in sucha frightful horror, that's all. As for your being in the way--it's quitethe other thing. Cranford owes his life to Mr. Van Lew and Jefferis; andas for you three," including Eleanor and the two young women, "yourwork is beyond any praise of mine. I'm anxious now merely because Idon't know what to do with you while we wait for the relief-train tocome."
"Ignore us completely," said Eleanor promptly. "We are going over tothat little level place by the side-track and make us a camp-fire. Wewere just waiting to be comfortably forgiven for having burdened youwith a pleasure party at such a time."
"We couldn't foresee this, any of us," he made haste to say. "Now, ifyou'll do what you suggested--go and build a fire to wait by?--I hope itwon't be very long."
Freed of the more crushing responsibilities, Lidgerwood found Bradfordand Groner, and with the two conductors went down the track to the pointof derailment to make the technical investigation of causes.
Ordinarily, the mere fact of a destructive derailment leaves little tobe discovered when the cause is sought afterward. But, singularlyenough, the curved track was torn up only on the side toward the hill;the outer rail was still in place, and the cross-ties, deeply bedded inthe hard gravel of the cutting, showed only the surface mutilation ofthe grinding wheels.
"Broken flange under the 215, I'll bet," said Groner, holding hislantern down to the gashed ties. But Bradford denied it.
"No," he contradicted: "Cranford was able to talk a little after wetoted him back to the service-car. He says it was a broken rail; says hesaw it and saw the man that was flaggin' him down, all in good time togive her the air before he hit it."
"What man was that?" asked Groner, whose point of view had not been thatof an onlooker.
Lidgerwood answered for himself and Bradford.
"That is one of the things we'd like to know, Groner. Just before thesmash a man, whom none of us recognized, ran down the track and tried togive Cranford the stop signal."
They had been walking on down the line, looking for the actual point ofderailment. When it was found, it proved Cranford's assertion--in part.There was a gap in the rail on the river side of the line, but it wasnot a fracture. At one of the joints the fish-plates were missing, andthe rail-ends were sprung apart sidewise sufficiently to let the wheelflanges pass through. Groner went down on his hands and knees with thelantern held low, and made another discovery.
"This ain't no happen-so, Mr. Lidgerwood," he said, when he got up. "Thespikes are pulled!"
Lidgerwood said nothing. There are discoveries which are beyond speech.But he stooped to examine for himself. Groner was right. For a distanceof eight or ten feet the rail had been loosened, and the spikes weregone out of the corresponding cross-ties. After it was loosened, therail had been sprung aside, and the bit of rock inserted between theparted ends to keep them from springing together was still in place.
Lidgerwood's eyes were bloodshot when he rose and said:
"I'd like to ask you two men, as men, what devil out of hell would set atrap like this for a train-load of unoffending passengers?"
Bradford's slow drawl dispelled a little of the mystery.
"It wasn't meant for Groner and his passenger-wagons, I reckon. In thenatural run of things, it was the 266 and the service-car that oughtto've hit this thing first--204 bein' supposed to be a half-hour off herschedule. It was aimed for us, all right enough. And it wasn't meant tothrow us into the hill, neither. If we'd hit it goin' west, we'd be inthe river. That's why it was sprung out instead of in."
Lidgerwood's right hand, balled into a fist, smote the air, and hisoutburst was a fierce imprecation. In the midst of it Groner said,"Listen!" and a moment later a man, walking rapidly up the track fromthe direction of Little Butte station, came into the small circle oflantern-light. Groner threw the light on the new-comer, revealing ahaggard face--the face of the owner of the Wire-Silver mine.
"Heavens and earth, Mr. Lidgerwood--this is awful!" he exclaimed. "Iheard of it by 'phone, and hurried over to do what I could. My men ofthe night-shift are on the way, walking up the track, and the entireWire-Silver outfit is at your disposal."
"I am afraid you are a little late, Mr. Flemister," was Lidgerwood'srejoinder, unreasoning antagonism making the words sound crisp andungrateful. "Half an hour ago----"
"Yes, certainly; Goodloe should have 'phoned me, if he knew," cut in themine-owner. "Anybody hurt?"
"Half of the number involved, and six dead," said the superintendentsoberly; then the four of them walked slowly and in silence up the tracktoward the two camp-fires, where the unhurt survivors and theservice-car's guests were fighting the chill of the high-mountainmidnight.
The Taming of Red Butte Western Page 18