by Unknown
When he awoke it was beginning to get dark. Garrison had left the caboose, evidently to have a look at the stock. Dave ate some crackers and cheese, climbed to the roof, and with a lantern hanging on his arm moved forward.
Already a few of the calves, yielding to the pressure in the heavily laden cars, had tried to escape it by lying down. With his prod Dave drove back the nearest animal. Then he used the nail in the pole to twist the tails of the calves and force them to their feet. In those days of crowded cars almost the most important thing in transit was to keep the cattle on their legs to prevent any from being trampled and smothered to death.
As the night grew older both men were busier. With their lanterns and prod-poles they went from car to car relieving the pressure wherever it was greatest. The weaker animals began to give way, worn out by the heavy lurching and the jam of heavy bodies against them. They had to be defended against their own weakness.
Dave was crossing from the top of one car to another when he heard his name called. He knew the voice belonged to Garrison and he listened to make sure from which car it came. Presently he heard it a second time and localized the sound as just below him. He entered the car by the end door near the roof.
"Hello! Call me?" he asked.
"Yep. I done fell and bust my laig. Can you get me outa here?"
"Bad, is it?"
"Broken."
"I'll get some of the train hands. Will you be all right till I get back?" the young man asked.
"I reckon. Hop along lively. I'm right in the jam here."
The conductor stopped the train. With the help of the crew Dave got Garrison back to the caboose. There was no doubt that the leg was broken. It was decided to put the injured man off at the next station, send him back by the up train, and wire West that Dave would see the cattle got through all right. This was done.
Dave got no more sleep that night. He had never been busier in his life. Before morning broke half the calves were unable to keep their feet. The only thing to do was to reload.
He went to the conductor and asked for a siding. The man running the train was annoyed, but he did not say so. He played for time.
"All right. We'll come to one after a while and I'll put you on it," he promised.
Half an hour later the train rumbled merrily past a siding without stopping. Dave walked back along the roof to the caboose.
"We've just passed a siding," he told the trainman.
"Couldn't stop there. A freight behind us has orders to take that to let the Limited pass," he said glibly.
Dave suspected he was lying, but he could not prove it. He asked where the next siding was.
"A little ways down," said a brakeman.
The puncher saw his left eyelid droop in a wink to the conductor. He knew now that they were "stalling" for time. The end of their run lay only thirty miles away. They had no intention of losing two or three hours' time while the cattle were reloaded. After the train reached the division point another conductor and crew would have to wrestle with the problem.
Young Sanders felt keenly his inexperience. They were taking advantage of him because he was a boy. He did not know what to do. He had a right to insist on a siding, but it was not his business to decide which one.
The train rolled past another siding and into the yards of the division town. At once Dave hurried to the station. The conductor about to take charge of the train was talking with the one just leaving. The range-rider saw them look at him and laugh as he approached. His blood began to warm.
"I want you to run this train onto a siding," he said at once.
"You the train dispatcher?" asked the new man satirically.
"You know who I am. I'll say right now that the cattle on this train are suffering. Some won't last another hour. I'm goin' to reload."
"Are you? I guess not. This train's going out soon as we've changed engines, and that'll be in about seven minutes."
"I'll not go with it."
"Suit yourself," said the officer jauntily, and turned away to talk with the other man.
Dave walked to the dispatcher's office. The cowpuncher stated his case.
"Fix that up with the train conductor," said the dispatcher. "He can have a siding whenever he wants it."
"But he won't gimme one."
"Not my business."
"Whose business is it?"
The dispatcher got busy over his charts. Dave became aware that he was going to get no satisfaction here.
He tramped back to the platform.
"All aboard," sang out the conductor.
Dave, not knowing what else to do, swung on to the caboose as it passed. He sat down on the steps and put his brains at work. There must be a way out, if he could only find what it was. The next station was fifteen miles down the line. Before the train stopped there Dave knew exactly what he meant to do. He wrote out two messages. One was to the division superintendent. The other was to Henry B. West.
He had swung from the steps of the caboose and was in the station before the conductor.
"I want to send two telegrams," he told the agent. "Here they are all ready. Rush 'em through. I want an answer here to the one to the superintendent."
The wire to the railroad official read:
Conductor freight number 17 refuses me siding to reload stock in my charge. Cattle down and dying. Serve notice herewith I put responsibility for all loss on railroad. Will leave cars in charge of train crew.
DAVID SANDERS
Representing West Cattle Company The other message was just as direct.
Conductor refuses me siding to reload. Cattle suffering and dying. Have wired division superintendent. Will refuse responsibility and leave train unless siding given me.
DAVE SANDERS
The conductor caught the eye of the agent.
"I'll send the wires when I get time," said the latter to the cowboy.
"You'll send 'em now--right now," announced Dave.
"Say, are you the president of the road?" bristled the agent.
"You'll lose yore job within forty-eight hours if you don't send them telegrams now. I'll see to that personal." Dave leaned forward and looked at him steadily.
The conductor spoke to the agent, nodding his head insolently toward Dave. "Young-man-heap-swelled-head," he introduced him.
But the agent had had a scare. It was his job at stake, not the conductor's. He sat down sulkily and sent the messages.
The conductor read his orders and walked to the door. "Number 17 leaving. All aboard," he called back insolently.
"I'm stayin' here till I hear from the superintendent," answered Dave flatly. "You leave an' you've got them cattle to look out for. They'll be in yore care."
The conductor swaggered out and gave the signal to go. The train drew out from the station and disappeared around a curve in the track. Five minutes later it backed in again. The conductor was furious.
"Get aboard here, you hayseed, if you're goin' to ride with me!" he yelled.
Dave was sitting on the platform whittling a stick. His back was comfortably resting against a truck. Apparently he had not heard.
The conductor strode up to him and looked down at the lank boy. "Say, are you comin' or ain't you?" he shouted, as though he had been fifty yards away instead of four feet.
"Talkin' to me?" Dave looked up with amiable surprise. "Why, no, not if you're in a hurry. I'm waitin' to hear from the superintendent."
"If you think any boob can come along and hold my train up till I lose my right of way you've got another guess comin'. I ain't goin' to be sidetracked by every train on the division."
"That's the company's business, not mine. I'm interested only in my cattle."
The conductor had a reputation as a bully. He had intended to override this young fellow by weight of age, authority, and personality. That he had failed filled him with rage.
"Say, for half a cent I'd kick you into the middle of next week," he said, between clamped teeth.
The cow
puncher's steel-blue eyes met his steadily. "Do you reckon that would be quite safe?" he asked mildly.
That was a question the conductor had been asking himself. He did not know. A good many cowboys carried six-shooters tucked away on their ample persons. It was very likely this one had not set out on his long journey without one.
"You're more obstinate than a Missouri mule," the railroad man exploded. "I don't have to put up with you, and I won't!"
"No?"
The agent came out from the station waving two slips of paper. "Heard from the super," he called.
One wire was addressed to Dave, the other to the conductor. Dave read:
Am instructing conductor to put you on siding and place train crew under your orders to reload.
Beneath was the signature of the superintendent.
The conductor flushed purple as he read the orders sent by his superior.
"Well," he stormed at Dave. "What do you want? Spit it out!"
"Run me on the siding. I'm gonna take the calves out of the cars and tie 'em on the feed-racks above."
"How're you goin' to get 'em up?"
"Elbow grease."
"If you think I'll turn my crew into freight elevators because some fool cattleman didn't know how to load right--"
"Maybe you've got a kick comin'. I'll not say you haven't. But this is an emergency. I'm willin' to pay good money for the time they help me." Dave made no reference to the telegram in his hand. He was giving the conductor a chance to save his face.
"Oh, well, that's different. I'll put it up to the boys."
Three hours later the wheels were once more moving eastward. Dave had had the calves roped down to the feed-racks above the cars.
CHAPTER XI
THE NIGHT CLERK GETS BUSY PRONTO
The stars were out long before Dave's train drew into the suburbs of Denver. It crawled interminably through squalid residence sections, warehouses, and small manufactories, coming to a halt at last in a wilderness of tracks on the border of a small, narrow stream flowing sluggishly between wide banks cut in the clay.
Dave swung down from the caboose and looked round in the dim light for the stockyards engine that was to pick up his cars and run them to the unloading pens. He moved forward through the mud, searching the semi-darkness for the switch engine. It was nowhere to be seen.
He returned to the caboose. The conductor and brakemen were just leaving.
"My engine's not here. Some one must 'a' slipped up on his job, looks like. Where are the stockyards?" Sanders asked.
The conductor was a small, middle-aged man who made it his business to get along with everybody he could. He had distinctly refused to pick up his predecessor's quarrel with Dave. Now he stopped and scratched his head.
"Too bad. Can't you go uptown and 'phone out to the stockyards? Or if you want to take a street-car out there you'll have time to hop one at Stout Street. Last one goes about midnight."
In those days the telephone was not a universal necessity. Dave had never used one and did not know how to get his connection. He spent several minutes ringing up, shouting at the operator, and trying to understand what she told him. He did not shout at the girl because he was annoyed. His idea was that he would have to speak loud to have his voice carry. At last he gave up, hot and perspiring from the mental exertion.
Outside the drug-store he just had time to catch the last stockyards car. His watch told him that it was two minutes past twelve.
He stepped forty-five minutes later into an office in which sat two men with their feet on a desk. The one in his shirt-sleeves was a smug, baldish young man with clothes cut in the latest mode. He was rather heavy-set and looked flabby. The other man appeared to be a visitor.
"This the office of the Denver Terminal Stockyards Company?" asked Dave.
The clerk looked the raw Arizonan over from head to foot and back again. The judgment that he passed was indicated by the tone of his voice.
"Name's on the door, ain't it?" he asked superciliously.
"You in charge here?"
The clerk was amused, or at least took the trouble to seem so. "You might think so, mightn't you?"
"Are you in charge?" asked Dave evenly.
"Maybeso. What you want?"
"I asked you if you was runnin' this office."
"Hell, yes! What're your eyes for?"
The clerk's visitor sniggered.
"I've got a train of cattle on the edge of town," explained Dave. "The stockyards engine didn't show up."
"Consigned to us?"
"To the Denver Terminal Stockyards Company."
"Name of shipper?"
"West Cattle Company and Henry B. West."
"All right. I'll take care of 'em." The clerk turned back to his friend. His manner dismissed the cowpuncher. "And she says to me, 'I'd love to go with you, Mr. Edmonds; you dance like an angel.' Then I says--"
"When?" interrupted Dave calmly, but those who knew him might have guessed his voice was a little too gentle.
"I says, 'You're some little kidder,' and--"
"When?"
The man who danced like an angel turned halfway round, and looked at the cowboy over his shoulder. He was irritated.
"When what?" he snapped.
"When you goin' to onload my stock?"
"In the morning."
"No, sir. You'll have it done right now. That stock has been more'n two days without water."
"I'm not responsible for that."
"No, but you'll be responsible if the train ain't onloaded now," said Dave.
"It won't hurt 'em to wait till morning."
"That's where you're wrong. They're sufferin'. All of 'em are alive now, but they won't all be by mo'nin' if they ain't 'tended to."
"Guess I'll take a chance on that, since you say it's my responsibility," replied the clerk impudently.
"Not none," announced the man from Arizona. "You'll get busy pronto."
"Say, is this my business or yours?"
"Mine and yours both."
"I guess I can run it. If I need any help from you I'll ask for it. Watch me worry about your old cows. I have guys coming in here every day with hurry-up tales about how their cattle won't live unless I get a wiggle on me. I notice they all are able to take a little nourishment next day all right, all right."
Dave caught at the gate of the railing which was between him and the night clerk. He could not find the combination to open it and therefore vaulted over. He caught the clerk back of the neck by the collar and jounced him up and down hard in his chair.
"You're asleep," he explained. "I got to waken you up before you can sabe plain talk."
The clerk looked up out of a white, frightened face. "Say, don't do that. I got heart trouble," he said in a voice dry as a whisper.
"What about that onloadin' proposition?" asked the Arizonan.
"I'll see to it right away."
Presently the clerk, with a lantern in his hand, was going across to the railroad tracks in front of Dave. He had quite got over the idea that this lank youth was a safe person to make sport of.
They found the switch crew in the engine of the cab playing seven-up.
"Got a job for you. Train of cattle out at the junction," the clerk said, swinging up to the cab.
The men finished the hand and settled up, but within a few minutes the engine was running out to the freight train.
Day was breaking before Dave tumbled into bed. He had left a call with the clerk to be wakened at noon. When the bell rang, it seemed to him that he had not been asleep five minutes.
After he had eaten at the stockyards hotel he went out to have a look at his stock. He found that on the whole the cattle had stood the trip well. While he was still inspecting them a voice boomed at him a question.
"Well, young fellow, are you satisfied with all the trouble you've made me?"
He turned, to see standing before him the owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle brand. The boy's surprise fairly leaped fro
m his eyes.
"Didn't expect to see me here, I reckon," the cattleman went on. "Well, I hopped a train soon as I got yore first wire. Spill yore story, young man."