by T. T. Flynn
It was as he had thought. The machine shop, a great brick-walled building, holding the machine and carpenter shops, was in flames. Shadow was at the rear, behind a small building, or rather vault of brick, which had been added to the machine shop the year before to conform with new state laws relative to the storage of oils and other explosives. The walls of the building were of brick. The fire was inside. Many of the tall windows filling the brick walls were broken and vomiting smoke and bursts of sparks. The entrance was on the other side, and Shadow hastened there.
He found a motley crowd at the front of the machine shop. There were half-naked boilermakers, fresh from the sweltering fire boxes of hot engines, machinists bundled in greasy clothes, engineers and firemen, some of whom had been asleep in the bunk room and had dashed out into the night half dressed at the first alarm. And there were several men, clean and well clothed against the storm, who had just reported for work.
Kent, the four to twelve foreman, was in charge. He had managed to have a hose run from a nearby fireplug and several men were directing the stream of water through one of the front windows. The one stream was of little effect against the fire. The floor of the machine shop was of wood. There were wooden racks and benches scattered all about. In one corner a two-storied tool room and office was constructed of wood. At the other end of the building was the carpenter shop. It was filled with wooden benches, piles of shavings and wood scraps, and large racks of wood. Everything was soaked with the oil and grease drippings of years.
Both ends of the building were afire. The floor of the machine shop, the wooden tool room, and the office above it were covered with licking flames. The racks of wood in the carpenter sections were blazing and the wooden roof overhead was afire. The entire inside of the huge building was a mass of smoke, sparks, and crackling flames.
Kent, seeing that one stream was having little effect on the fire, turned to the men who clustered about the entrance.
"Let's get some more hose!" he shouted. "There's some in the roundhouse. Come on!"
A dozen men followed him, and Shadow was at their head. His thin frame was once more shaking from the cold, his feet were numb, his hands so chilled that they hurt. But the fire of his loyalty to the road blazed highly within him and he felt nothing. His hand closed on the end of the reel of hose just behind Kent's. Still limping from the blow on his knee, panting heavily from his exertions, he followed Kent back to the fire with the end of the hose. Kent stopped at the plug to which the other hose was attached. On the plug was a pipe for another hose.
There was a wrench hanging from the plug by a chain. Kent seized it and hurriedly unscrewed the cap over the second pipe. It came off, and the cold water burst forth. Shadow, who knelt before it with the end of the hose, was drenched. Kent had forgotten to shut the water off while the new hose was being attached.
Shadow leaped to one side with a howl. But in spite of his quick move he was soaked.
"Damn it!" he cried, dancing around with chattering teeth. "Whyn't you watch what you are doing? Gimme that wrench!"
He seized the wrench from Kent's fingers and shut off the water.
There was no time to argue. As soon as the stream slackened, Kent jammed the end of the new hose on the pipe and screwed the coupling tightly. Still swearing through chattering teeth, Shadow reached down, gave it the last few turns with the wrench he held, and then turned on the water once more.
The limp hose stiffened and straightened like an angry snake as the water rushed through it. One man held the nozzle of the new hose, and he grasped it carelessly. When the water reached the nozzle, it flicked from the man's hands and writhed furiously over the ground, showering water on all sides. The men scattered from the cold stream.
Shadow, wet, freezing in the icy wind, saw the nozzle flick from the man's grasp and go free. He saw the men run from the flying water. At the sight his feelings boiled over.
"Damn it!" he shouted again. "Ain't anybody got any sense?"
He charged along the line of hose, butted a man out of the way, and cast himself fully upon the writhing end He came up in a minute, gasping, spluttering, every inch of his body soaked and dripping, but with the nozzle under control. He wrestled with it in a mounting anger.
"Come here!" he bellowed at the men. "Give a hand! Are you afraid?"
Seeing the water under control, several men rushed forward and helped to hold the nozzle. Shadow led them forward until they were standing in the doorway of the burning building. The heat from the inside was uncomfortable and the swirling clouds of smoke surrounded them. The man next to Shadow shrank back and began to cough from the smoke.
"It's hot," he choked.
Shadow grinned at him. "Hot, is it?" he howled. "And so's another place. You might as well get used to it."
He deliberately took another step forward. The gale whipped through the broken windows and fanned the flames until their crackling and popping arose to a roar. The whole roof was aflame, and long trails of sparks swirled out on the skirts of the gale until they became lost in the driving snow and the night.
In such wise were things when Blanton, the master mechanic, arrived. He had gone home at five o'clock, and it had taken him some time to return from the far side of Rawlings.
The Rawlings volunteer fire department also had appeared on the scene. They could do little. Their machine was stalled in the drifts on the outskirts of the yards and there was no way to get it across the maze of tracks that surrounded the shop buildings. But they began to bring their hose and do what they could.
Blanton, with Kent, came up beside Shadow and surveyed the burning interior of the building. Blanton shook his head.
"It can't be put out," he said to Kent. "About all that we can do is see that it doesn't spread to any of the other buildings. The roof is on fire and a lot of sparks will soon be flying."
Kent nodded. "We'd better get the two lines of hose playing on the roof."
"That's best," Blanton agreed.
He turned and then stopped as a little man el bowed his way hurriedly through the onlookers and stepped up to him. It was Jones, the head storekeeper, and he was plainly excited. He pointed into the machine shop.
"The door ..."-he asked Blanton-"was the fire door to the oil room closed?"
"Did you leave it open?" Blanton demanded.
Jones gulped. "Part way," he admitted. "I meant to return and didn't bother to close it all the way. Something else came up and I went home and forgot about it until I saw the machine shop was on fire."
Blanton clutched Kent by the arm. "Was the fire door to the oil room shut after four o'clock?" he demanded.
"Fire door?" Kent started and his face paled.
"Yes, fire door! The storekeeper says it was open part way when he left at four o'clock."
Kent shook his head. "I wasn't near it, and I don't think anyone else was, either."
The storekeeper turned a frightened glance on the burning interior. "There were five boxes of dynamite put in there day before yesterday for the construction gang! And a couple of boxes of caps with them!" he shrilled. "And the whole room is stacked with drums of kerosene and paint and oil! There's a lot of box packing there! It's liable to blow up any minute!" He gave another look at the fire and turned and scuttled away.
Shadow and the two men who were helping him hold the nozzle heard the excited declaration of the storekeeper. The man across from Shadow, the machinist who had complained about the heat, paled.
"Didja hear that?" he asked hoarsely.
Shadow nodded and swerved the stream of water over to that part of the rear wall where the fire door was located.
"Looks like we got to keep plenty of water where that door is," he answered coolly.
"Plenty of water," the machinist snorted. "I'm going to put plenty of space between me and the whole dern' building."
He let go of the nozzle and emulated the example of the storekeeper. His companion, without saying a word, followed him.
Shadow wres
tled with the squirming hose and swore mightily. "Yellow!" he bawled to the world in general. "Everybody's yellow! C'mere, damn it! Give me a lift!"
The man he shouted at was Blanton, who was nearest him.
Blanton heard him, looked, recognized him and, seeing the situation, sprang from Kent's side and grasped the handle of the nozzle. Kent joined him.
Neither Blanton nor Kent made any reference to Shadow's incongruous actions. Blanton peered into the fire again, and then looked at Kent and at Shadow.
"That door's got to be closed," he stated grimly.
Kent shook his head. "It's too late now. There isri t an opening in the oil room, except some slits along the top of the wall for ventilation. The only way to reach the door is through the shop here. It can't be done now."
Blanton set his jaw. "I think I can get to it," he said. "It isn't very far to the door. Most of the fire is at the ends. Right through the middle here it's just smoke."
"You'll never make it," insisted Kent. "Why, we can't even see halfway to the back wall through the smoke. We'd better warn everyone to get out of the way. It's liable to blow up any minute."
"I'm going to try," declared Blanton stubbornly. "If that room blows up, it will damage the coal tipple and the roundhouse. Our main line service will be interrupted. We can't have that. If I can close that fire door, the machine shop will burn out harmlessly."
Before Kent could remonstrate further, Blanton stripped off his heavy overcoat, wet it in the stream of water, and, holding it before him, plunged into the burning building.
"It's suicide!" Kent cried almost tearfully. "The man's crazy! He'll never get out alive."
Shadow gave him a sour glance. "It's murder to wet a man on a night like this,' he observed. "Why shouldn't he try to shut the door? He'll save the company lots of money if he does."
"The company? What's the company beside a man's life?" demanded Kent excitedly.
Shadow squinted into the burning interior. "Shut up," he ordered gruffly. "We gotta keep some water about where he is. He'll make it if we keep him wet."
He raked the stream over the area between the entrance and the place where the fire door was located. But though Shadow spoke confidently, Kent's words soon began to bear the stamp of truth. Blanton should have made the trip in a minute, two minutes at most. One minute, two minutes, three minutes they stood gazing intently into the smoke, watching for Blanton to reappear.
Kent shook his head. "He's never coming back," he said despairingly. "He's somewhere in there burning up right now. I said it was suicide."
"Shut up that blubbering!" snapped Shadow savagely.
He looked around. They were alone. The news that the building might blow up any minute had spread and everyone had retired to a safe distance. The men on the other hose line had pulled it back with them until the stream barely reached the walls of the machine shop.
Shadow's lip curled and his faded blue eyes squinted in contempt. "Yellow!" he grated. "Everyone afraid of his skin. They wouldn't lift a finger for the company that keeps 'em alive."
"Burning," muttered Kent, and his voice barely carried over the crackling of the fire.
Shadow shivered, but it was from the cold gale playing over his wet form, not from fright. He felt strangely light-headed. Kent seemed to have receded a trifle, and, when Shadow glared at him, he seemed to quiver as a shadow does on moving curtains. "Well," said Shadow loudly, "if he's burning, we'll go in and get him and pull him out!"
"You're crazy!" cried Kent. "We'll wait another minute and then we'll get back from here. He was told not to go in. We've done all we can."
"Have we?" asked Shadow, and his throat felt dry and he could hardly speak.
"Yes," insisted Kent. "Come on, let's go back."
He pulled at the nozzle.
"No!" said Shadow, jerking at it.
He shivered and, in the next instant, was burning with heat.
"Come on," said Kent roughly. He pulled at the hose harder.
"No!" said Shadow, and his voice broke and rose to a scream as his self-control snapped. "Damn you! If you're afraid, get out! I'm going in and get him and close that door!"
He let loose of the nozzle and, without stopping to see what Kent did with it, took a deep breath and plunged into the billowing clouds of smoke and heat that swirled out of the door.
It was hot inside, hot as a great oven. Shadow felt as if he were burning up, outside and inside. His eyes were irritated by the smoke and so filled with tears that they were useless. He rubbed at them with the back of his hand, held onto the breath of pure air he had taken outside, and pressed ahead.
The machine shop was over 100 feet deep-100 feet of heat, of smoke, of sparks and embers from overhead, 100 feet of hell. A blazing ember from the burning roof dropped on the back of Shadow's outstretched hand. It seared deeply before he shook it off. Another struck his sleeve and only the wetting Kent had given him saved him from catching afire.
Suddenly his outstretched hand touched something hard and hot, but not the brick of the rear wall. It was a great driving wheel lathe. He remembered it as resting to the left of the oil-room door and some twenty feet in front of it.
His need for another breath became imperative. His heart pounded. His lungs were red hot, bursting. He could stand it no longer. He exhaled with a whistling rush. Then real torture began. What he gulped into his empty lungs was not air. Rather fiery gas, biting smoke. He coughed, choked, gulped again, and doggedly held to the right for four paces. That, he reckoned, put him almost straight in front of the fire door.
Blanton must be found. He had seen nothing of the master mechanic. But he might have passed within three feet of the man and not seen him. Blanton might be burning, even as Kent had said. The oil-soaked floor was blazing in many spots.
But the fire door came first. With it opened only a heavy wire door remained between the contents of the oil room and the fire. One-inch mesh was that wire, nothing at all to keep out the drifting sparks, the licking flames that crept nearer and nearer. Yes, close the door and then look for Blanton. Small satisfaction in searching for him and then getting blasted out of life after he was found.
Thinking so, Shadow held straight ahead with a rush. His foot stubbed into something soft. He tripped and sprawled over an inert body. It was Blanton, slumped, twisted, dead-perhaps.
Shadow, as he groped to his knees, blinded by the smoke, found that which had felled Blanton. It was a heavy block, part of a block and fall that had been suspended above and in front of the oil-room door to load and unload drums of oil from the hand trucks on which they were transported from the loading platform at the end of the building.
The rope with which the top block had been secured had been reached by the fire. It had burned through and the block had dropped on Blanton's head. Shadow's fingers were burned by the smoldering rope ends on the block even as he felt of it.
Dead. Blanton was dead. They would both be dead soon. Shadow's lungs burned, tightened. He felt weak, helpless, slipping. Air. If he could have one breath of pure air! As he knelt to feel of Blanton's heart, he found life for them both.
Blanton's heart beat-slowly, but he lived. Along the floor flowed a current of breathable air. Shadow drew it into his tortured lungs. It gave him new life and courage. He thought of the door. It must be near. Leaving Blanton for the moment, he stood up and went forward.
Within three paces he reached the back wall. It was brick he touched, and he needed the door, the wire door. He felt to the left, found nothing, and, following a sudden conviction, lunged to the right. His scorched fingers touched wire-painfully hot wire. And to the right still farther he found the handle of the fire door. He pulled and the door moved.
Before he closed the fire door tightly, Shadow peered into the oil room for signs of fire. He saw nothing. The drifting sparks had not found their mark as yet. With a heave he closed the door and latched it.
Safe. There would be no explosion on the D&R that night. Kent had said it co
uldn't be done. It had. But there was Blanton, and the journey back to the entrance of the burning building. The sparks were raining down faster. The crackling of the fire was getting louder. The heat of the blazes closing in from both ends of the building was more intense.
Shadow turned back and found Blanton. The master mechanic still lay inert He was burning, even as Kent had said. His clothes smoldered in a dozen places from the falling embers. Shadow beat at them with his hands. But the cloth was hard to put out and he made little progress. He gave it up. They would have to reach the outside quickly or they would never get there.
He put his face close to the floor and gulped the air again and again. A final deep breath and he got to his feet and grasped Blanton by the shoulders.
Blanton was large and heavy. Shadow was tall and slim and slight. The huge master mechanic was a heavy burden for him at any time. Weakened as Shadow was, it was almost too much for him. He strained and lifted and pulled. Blanton's body stirred, moved, and dragged along the floor. Thus they made the front entrance. Not in one grand rush. Not in one final sweep to victory. Rather in small stretches, with intervals for Shadow to get life from near the floor, with spaces for Shadow to beat at the rain of embers that was falling faster on both of them.
Once a creeping stream of flame barred their progress. Shadow had to pull mightily to get Blanton through before his clothes caught fire in earnest. Once there was an ominous crackling from overhead. Shadow's heart sank, for it seemed apparent that the roof was caving in. But he held on. A draft of cold air struck him. A blast of icy water beat upon his back. Pulling Blanton after him, he staggered backward into the open, and the fury of the gale enfolded them with an icy mantle.
Then there was no lack of men to run forward, to congratulate Shadow, to drag them back from the building as the roof caved in with a mighty crash and a shower of sparks and flame, to carry Blanton to his warm office, to catch Shadow Macgillicuddy as he fainted, to call a doctor for them both.
Days later Shadow came back from the spaces where he had wandered, weak, delirious, unconscious, a visitor at the borderline of life and death. Pneumonia had claimed him, and his thin, scrawny frame had offered little resistance. He was a true shadow, a human shadow when he opened his sunken, faded blue eyes and gazed sanely upon the world.