by Zane Grey
“Of course, there’s an unpleasant side of it. I don’t want to seem to draw it too rosy. I imagine you’ve heard Blackburn’s story, haven’t you—the lap-order at Rosebud? I helped carry Blackburn out of that room”—Duffy pointed very coldly toward Morris Blood’s door—“the morning we put him in his coffin. But, hang it, Bud, a death like that is better than going to the insane asylum, isn’t it, eh? A short trick and a merry one, my boy, for a despatcher, say I; no insane asylum for me.”
It calmed Budwiser, as the boys began to call him, for a time only. He renewed his application and was at length relieved of his comfortable station and ordered into the Wickiup as despatcher’s assistant.
For a time every dream was realized—the work was put on him by degrees, things ran smoothly, and his despatcher, Garry O’Neill, soon reported him all right. A month later Bud was notified that a despatcher’s trick would shortly be assigned to him, and to the boys from the branch who asked after him he sent word that in a few days he would be showing them how to do business on the main line.
The chance came even sooner. O’Neill went hunting the following day, overslept, came down without supper and could not get a quiet minute till long after midnight. Heavy stock trains crowded down over the short line. The main line, in addition to the regular traffic, had been pounded all night with government stores and ammunition, westbound. From the coast a passenger special, looked for in the afternoon, had just come into the division at Bear Dance. Garry laid out his sheet with the precision of a campaigner, provided for everything, and at three o’clock he gave Bud a transfer and ran down to get a cup of coffee. Bud sat into the chair for the first time with the responsibility of a full-fledged despatcher.
For five minutes no business confronted him, then from the extreme end of his territory Cambridge station called for orders for an extra, fast freight, west, Engine 81, and Bud wrote his first train order. He ordered Extra 81 to meet Number 50, a local and accommodation, at Sumter, and signed Morris Blood’s initials with a flourish. When the trains had gone he looked over his sheet calmly until he noticed, with fainting horror, that he had forgotten Special 833, east, making a very fast run and headed for Cambridge, with no orders about Extra 81. Special 833 was the passenger train from the coast.
The sheet swam and the yellow lamp at his elbow turned green and black. The door of the operator’s room opened with a bang. Bud, trembling, hoped it might be O’Neill, and staggered to the archway. It was only Glover, but Glover saw the boy’s face. “What’s the matter?”
Bud looked back into the room he was leaving. Glover stepped through the railing gate and caught the boy by the shoulder. “What’s the matter, my lad?”
He shook and questioned, but from the dazed operator he could get only one word, “O’Neill,” and stepping to the hall door Glover called out “O’Neill!”
It has been said that Glover’s voice would carry in a mountain storm from side to side of the Medicine Bend yard. That night the very last rafter in the Wickiup gables rang with his cry. He called only once, for O’Neill came bounding up the long stairs three steps at a time.
“Look to your train sheet, Garry,” said Glover, peremptorily. “This boy is scared to death. There’s trouble somewhere.”
He supported the operator to a chair, and O’Neill ran to the inner room. The moment his eye covered the order book he saw what had happened. “Extra 81 is against a passenger special,” exclaimed O’Neill, huskily, seizing the key. “There’s the order—Extra 81 from Cambridge to meet Number 50 at Sumter and Special 833 has orders to Cambridge, and nothing against Extra 81. If I can’t catch the freight at Red Desert we’re in for it—wake up Morris Blood, quick, he’s in there asleep.”
Blood, working late in his office, had rolled himself in a blanket on the lounge in Callahan’s old room, and unfortunately Morris Blood was the soundest sleeper on the division. Glover called him, shook him, caught him by the arm, lifted him to a sitting position, talked hurriedly to him—he knew what resource and power lay under the thick curling hair if he could only rouse the tired man from his dreamless sleep. Even Blood’s own efforts to rouse himself were almost at once apparent. His eyes opened, glared helplessly, sank back and closed in stupor. Glover grew desperate, and lifting Morris to his feet, dragged him half way across the dark room.
O’Neill, rattling the key, was looking on from the table like a drowning man. “Leave your key and steady him here against the door-jamb, Garry,” cried Glover; “by the Eternal, I’ll wake him.” He sprang to the big water-cooler, cast away the top, seized the tank like a bucket, and dashed a full stream of ice-water into Morris Blood’s face.
“Great God, what’s the matter? Who is this? Glover? What? Give me a towel, somebody.”
The spell was broken. Glover explained, O’Neill ran back to the key, and Blood in another moment bent dripping over the nervous despatcher.
The superintendent’s mind working faster now than the magic current before him, listened, cast up, recollected, considered, decided for and against every chance. At that moment Red Desert answered. No breath interrupted the faint clicks that reported on Extra 81. O’Neill looked up in agony as the sounder spelled the words: “Extra 81 went by at 3.05.” The superintendent and the despatcher looked at the clock; it read 3.09.
O’Neill clutched the order book, but Glover looked at Morris Blood. With the water trickling from his hair down his wrinkled face, beading his mustache, and dripping from his chin he stood, haggard with sleep, leaning over O’Neill’s shoulder. A towel stuffed into his left hand was clasped forgotten at his waist. From the east room, operators, their instruments silenced, were tiptoeing into the archway. Above the little group at the table the clock ticked. O’Neill, in a frenzy, half rose out of his chair, but Morris Blood, putting his hand on the despatcher’s shoulder, forced him back.
“They’re gone,” cried the frantic man; “let me out of here.”
“No, Garry.”
“They’re gone.”
“Not yet, Garry. Try Fort Rucker for the Special.”
“There’s no night man at Fort Rucker.”
“But Burling, the day man, sleeps upstairs—”
“He goes up to Bear Dance to lodge.”
“This isn’t lodge night,” said Blood.
“For God’s sake, how can you get him upstairs, anyway?” trembled O’Neill.
“On cold nights he sleeps downstairs by the ticket-office stove. I spent a night with him once and slept on his cot. If he is in the ticket-office you may be able to wake him—he may be awake. The Special can’t pass there for ten minutes yet. Don’t stare at me. Call Rucker, hard.”
O’Neill seized the key and tried to sound the Rucker call. Again and again he attempted it and sent wild. The man that could hold a hundred trains in his head without a slip for eight hours at a stretch sat distracted.
“Let me help you, Garry,” suggested Blood, in an undertone. The despatcher turned shaking from his chair and his superintendent slipped behind him into it. His crippled right hand glided instantly over the key, and the Rucker call, even, sharp, and compelling, followed by the quick, clear nineteen—the call that gags and binds the whole division—the despatchers’ call—clicked from his fingers.
Persistently, and with unfailing patience, the men hovering at his back, Blood drummed at the key for the slender chance that remained of stopping the passenger train. The trial became one of endurance. Like an incantation, the call rang through the silence of the room until it wracked the listeners, but the man at the key, quietly wiping his face and head, and with the towel in his left hand mopping out his collar, never faltered, never broke, minute after minute, until after a score of fruitless waits an answer broke his sending with the “I, I, Ru!”
As the reply flew from his fingers Morris Blood’s eyes darted to the clock; it was 3.17. “Stop Sp
ecial 833, east, quick.”
“You’ve got them?” asked Glover, from the counter.
“If they’re not by,” muttered Blood.
“Red light out,” reported Rucker; then three dreadful minutes and it came, “Special 833 taking water; O’Brien wants orders.”
And the order went, “Siding, quick, and meet Extra 81, west, at Rucker,” and the superintendent rose from the chair.
“It’s all over, boys,” said he, turning to the operators. “Remember, no man ever got to a railroad presidency by talking; but many men have by keeping their mouths shut. Lay Cawkins on the lounge in my room. Duffy said that boy would never do.”
“What was Burling doing, Morris,” asked Glover, sitting down by the stove.
“Ask him, Garry,” suggested Blood. They waited for the answer.
“Were you asleep on your cot?” asked the despatcher, getting Rucker again.
“If that fellow woke on my call, I’ll make a despatcher of him,” declared Morris Blood, with a thrill of fine pride.
“No,” answered Rucker, “I slept upstairs tonight.”
The two men at the stove stared at one another. “How did you hear your call?” asked the despatcher. Again their ears were on edge.
And Rucker answered, “I always come down once in the night to put coal on the fire.”
“Another illusion destroyed,” smiled Morris Blood. “Hang him, I’ll promote him, anyway, for attending to his fire.”
“But you couldn’t do that again in a thousand years, Mr. Blood,” ventured a young and enthusiastic operator who had helped to lay out poor Bud Cawkins.
The mountain man looked at him coldly. “I sha’n’t want to do that again in a thousand years. In the railroad life it always comes different, every time. Go to your key.”
“I’m glad we got that particular train out of trouble,” he added, turning to Glover when they were alone.
“What train?”
“That Special 833 is the Brock special. You didn’t know it? We’ve been looking for them from the coast for two days.”
CHAPTER XIII
BACK TO THE MOUNTAINS
The sudden appearance of Mr. Brock at any time and at any point where he had interests would surprise only those that did not know him. On the coast the party had broken up, Louise Donner going into Colorado with friends, and Harrison returning to Pittsburg.
Planning originally to recross the mountains by a southern route, and to give himself as much of a pleasure trip as he ever took, Mr. Brock changed all his plans at the last moment—a move at which he was masterly—and wired Bucks to meet him at Bear Dance for the return trip. Doctor Lanning, moreover, had advised that Marie spend some further time in the mountains, where her gain in health had been decided.
Among the features the general manager particularly wished Mr. Brock to see before leaving the mountain country was the Crab Valley dam and irrigation canal, and the second day after the president’s special entered the division it was side-tracked at a way station near Sleepy Cat for an inspection of the undertaking. The trip to the canal was by stage with four horses, and the ladies had been asked to go.
The morning was so exhilarating and the ride so fast that when the head horses dipped over the easy divide flanking the line of the canal on the south, and the brake closed on the lumbering wheels, the visitors were surprised to discover almost at their feet a swarming army of men and horses scraping in the dusty bed of a long cut. There the heavy work was to be seen, and to give his party an idea of its magnitude, Bucks had ordered the stage driven directly through the cut itself. With Mr. Brock he sat up near the driver. Back of them were Doctor Lanning and Gertrude Brock; within rode Mrs. Whitney and Marie.
As the stage, getting down the high bank, lurched carefully along the scraper ways of the yellow bed, shovellers, drivers, and water-boys looked curiously at the unusual sight, and patient mules nosed meekly the alert, nervous horses that dragged the stage along the uneven way.
At the lower end of the cut a more formidable barrier interposed. A pocket of gravel on the eastern bank had slipped, engulfing a steam shovel, and a gang of men were busy about it. On a level overlooking the scene, in corduroy jackets and broad hats, stood two engineers. At times one of them gave directions to a foreman whose gang was digging the shovel out. His companion, perceiving the approach of the stage, signalled the driver sharply, and the leaders were swung to the right of the shovellers so that the stage was brought out on a level some distance away.
Bucks first recognized the taller of the two men. “There’s Glover,” he exclaimed. “Hello!” he called across the canal bed. “I didn’t look for you here.” Glover lifted his hat and walked over to the stage.
“I came up last night to see Ed Smith about running his flume under Horse Creek bridge. They cross us, you know, in the cañon there,” said he, in his slow, steady way. “Just as we got on the ponies to ride down, this slide occurred—”
“Glad you couldn’t get away. We want to see Ed Smith,” returned Bucks, getting down. The women were already greeting Glover, and avoiding Gertrude’s eye while he included her in his salutation to all, he tried to answer several questions at once. Smith, the engineer in charge of the canal, was talking with Bucks and Mr. Brock. On top of the stage Doctor Lanning was trying to persuade Gertrude not to get down; but she insisted.
“Mr. Glover will help me, I am sure,” she said, looking directly at the evading Glover, who was absorbed in his talk with her sister. “I should advise you not to alight, Miss Brock,” said he, unable to ignore her request. “You will sink into this dusty clay—”
“I don’t mind that, but unless you will give me your hand,” she interrupted, putting her boot on the foot rest to descend, “I shall certainly break my neck.” When he promptly advanced she took both of his offered hands with a laugh at her recklessness and dropped lightly beside him. “May I go over where you stood?” she asked at once.
“I shouldn’t,” he ventured.
“But I can’t see what they are doing.” She walked capriciously ahead, and Glover reluctantly followed. “Why shouldn’t you?” she questioned, waiting for him to come to her side.
“It isn’t safe.”
“Why did you stand there?”
He answered with entire composure. “What would be perfectly safe for me might be very dangerous for you.”
She looked full at him. “How truly you speak.”
Yet she did not stop, though at each step her feet sunk into the loosened soil.
“Pray, don’t go farther,” said Glover.
“I want to see the men digging.”
“Then won’t you come around here?”
“But may I not walk over to that car?”
“This way is more passable.”
“Then why did you make the driver turn away from that side?”
“You have good eyes, Miss Brock.”
“Pray, what is the matter with that man lying behind the car?”
Glover looked fairly at her at last. “A shoveller was hurt when the gravel slipped a few minutes ago. When the warning came he did not understand and got caught.”
“Oh, let us get Doctor Lanning; something can be done for him.”
“No. It is too late.”
Horror checked her. “Dead?”
“Yes. I did not want you to know this. Your sister is easily shocked—”
She paused a moment. “You are very thoughtful of Marie. Have you a sister?”
“I haven’t. Why do you ask?”
“Who taught you thoughtfulness?” she asked, gravely. He stood disconcerted. “I find consideration common among Western men,” she went on, generalizing prettily; “our men don’t have it. Does a life so rough and terrible as this give men the consideration that we
expect elsewhere and do not find? Ah, that poor shoveller. Isn’t it horrible to die so? Did everyone else escape?”
“They are ready to start, I think,” he suggested, uneasily.
“Oh, are they?”
“You are coming to see us?” called Marie, leaning from the top, while Glover paused behind her sister, when they had reached the stage. He stood with his hat in his hand. The dazzling sun made copper of the swarthy brown of his lower face and brought out the white of his forehead where the hair crisped wet in the heat of the morning. Gertrude Brock, after she had gained her seat with his help, looked down while he talked; looked at the top of his head, and listening vaguely to Marie, noted his long, bony hand as it clung to the window strap—the hand of the most audacious man she had ever met in her life—who had made an avowal to her on the observation platform of her father’s own car—and she mused at the explosion that would have followed had she ever breathed a syllable of the circumstance to her own fiery papa.
But she had told no one—least of all, the young man that had asked her before she left Pittsburg to marry him and was now writing her every other day—Allen Harrison. Indeed, what could be more ridiculously embarrassing than to be assailed so unexpectedly? She had no mind to make herself anyone’s laughing-stock by speaking of it. One thing, however, she had vaguely determined—since Glover had frightened her she would retaliate at least a little before she returned to the quiet of Fifth Avenue.