"It was a fearful night to make up a train in a hurry--as much as a man"s life was worth to work even slow in the yard a night like that.
But what limit is set to a switchman"s courage I have never known, because I"ve never known one to balk at a yardmaster"s order.
"I went to work clearing the line, and forgot all about everything outside the train-sheet till a car-tink came running in with word that a man was hurt in the yard.
"Some men get used to it; I never do. As much as I have seen of railroad life, the word that a man"s hurt always. .h.i.ts me in the same place. Slipping into an ulster, I pulled a storm-cap over my ears and hurried down stairs b.u.t.toning my coat. The arc-lights, blinded in the storm, swung wild across the long yard, and the wind sung with a scream through the telegraph wires. Stumbling ahead, the big car-tink, facing the storm, led me to where between the red and the green lamps a dozen men hovered close to the gangway of a switch engine. The man hurt lay under the forward truck of the tender.
"They had just got the wrecking train made up, and this man, running forward after setting a switch, had flipped the tender of the backing engine and slipped from the footboard. When I bent over him, I saw he was against it. He knew it, too, for the minute they shut off and got to him he kept perfectly still, asking only for a priest.
"I tried every way I could think of to get him free from the wheels.
Two of us crawled under the tender to try to figure it out. But he lay so jammed between the front wheel and the hind one, and tender trucks are so small and the wheels so close together that to save our lives we could neither pull ahead nor back the engine without further mutilating him.
"As I talked to him I took his hand and tried to explain that to free him we should have to jack up the truck. He heard, he understood, but his eyes, glittering like the eyes of a wounded animal with shock, wandered uneasily while I spoke, and when I had done, he closed them to grapple with the pain. Presently a hand touched my shoulder; the priest had come, and throwing open his coat knelt beside us. He was a spare old man--none too good a subject himself, I thought, for much exposure like that--but he did not seem to mind. He dropped on his knees and, with both hands in the snow, put his head in behind the wheel close to the man"s face. What they said to each other lasted only a moment, and all the while the boys were keying like madmen at the jacks to ease the wheel that had crushed the switchman"s thigh.
When they got the truck partly free, they lifted the injured man back a little where we could all see his face. They were ready to do more, but the priest, wiping the water and snow from the failing man"s lips and forehead, put up his fingers to check them.
"The wind, howling around the freight-cars strung about us, sucked the guarded lantern flames up into blue and green flickers in the globes; they lighted the priest"s face as he took off his hat and laid it beside him, and lighted the switchman"s eyes looking steadily up from the rail. The snow, curling and eddying across the little blaze of lamps, whitened everything alike, tender and wheel and rail, the jackscrews, the bars, and the shoulders and caps of the men. The priest bent forward again and touched the lips and the forehead of the switchman with his thumb: then straightening on his knees he paused a moment, his eyes lifted up, raised his hand and slowly signing through the blinding flakes the form of the cross, gave him the sacrament of the dying.
"I have forgotten the man"s name. I have never seen the old priest, before or since. But, sometime, a painter will turn to the railroad life. When he does, I may see from his hand such a picture as I saw at that moment--the night, the storm, the scant hair of the priest blown in the gale, the men bared about him; the hush of the death moment; the wrinkled hand raised in the last benediction."
CHAPTER V
AN EMERGENCY CALL
In the morning the Brock special bathed in sunshine lay in the Bear Dance yard. When it was learned at breakfast that during the night Morris Blood had disappeared there was a protest. He had taken a train east, Glover told them.
"But you should not have let him run away," objected Marie Brock, "we"ve barely made his acquaintance. I was going to ask him ever so many questions about mines this morning. Tell him, Mr. Glover, when you telegraph, that he has had a peremptory recall, will you? We want him for dinner to-morrow night; papa and Mr. Bucks are to join us, you know."
Mr. Brock arrived the following evening but the general manager failed them, and it was long after hope of Morris Blood had been given up that Glover brought him in with apologies for his late arrival.
The two cars were sidetracked at Cascade, the heart of the sightseeing country, and Glover had a trip laid out for the early morning on horses up Cabin Creek.
When he sat down to explain to Marie where he meant to take the party the following day Gertrude Brock had a book under the banquet lamp at the lower end of the car. The doctor and Harrison with Mrs. Whitney were gathered about Louise, who among the couch pillows was reading hands. As Morris Blood, after some talk with Mr. Brock, approached, Louise nodded to him. "We shall take no apologies for spoiling our dinner party," said she, "but you may sit down. I haven"t been able, Mr. Blood, to get your story out of my head since you told it: none of us have. Do you believe in palmistry? Now, Mr. Harrison, do sit still till I finish your hand. Oh, here"s another engagement in it! Why, Allen Harrison!"
"How many is that?" asked Gertrude, looking over.
"Three; and here is further excitement for you, Mr. Harrison----"
"How soon?" demanded Allen.
"Very soon, I should think; just as soon as you get home."
"Well timed," said Marie; she and Glover had come up. "I think that"s all, this time," concluded Louise, studying the lines carefully. "Go slow on mining for one year, remember." She looked at Morris Blood.
"Am I to have the pleasure of reading your hand?"
"There isn"t a bit of excitement in my hand, Miss Donner, no fortunes, no adventures, no engagements----"
"You mean in your life. Very good; that"s just the sort of hand I love to read. The excitement is all ahead. Really I should like to read your hand."
"If you insist," he said, putting out his left hand.
"Your right, please," smiled Louise.
"I have no right," he answered. She looked mystified, but held out her hand smilingly for his right.
"I have no right hand," he repeated, smiling, too.
None had observed before that the superintendent never offered his hand in greeting. A conscious instant fell on the group. It was barely an instant, for Glover, who heard, turned at once from an answer to Marie Brock and laying a hand on his companion"s shoulder spoke easily to Louise. "He gave his right hand for me once, Miss Donner, that"s the reason he has none. May I offer mine for him?"
He put out his own right hand as he asked, and his lightly serious words bridged the momentary embarra.s.sment.
"Oh, I can read either hand," laughed Louise, recovering and putting Glover"s hand aside. "Let me have your left, Mr. Blood--your turn presently, Mr. Glover. Be seated. Now this is the sort of hand I like," she declared, leaning forward as she looked into the left--"full of romance, Mr. Blood. Here is an affair of the heart the very first thing. Now don"t laugh, this is serious." She studied the palm a moment and glanced mischievously around her. "If I were to disclose all the delicate romances I find here," she declared with an air of mystery, "they would laugh at both of us. I"m not going to give them a chance. I give private readings, too, Mr. Blood, and you shall have a private reading at the other end or the car after a while. Now is there another "party"? Oh, to be sure; come, Mr. Glover, are all railroad men romantic? This is growing interesting--let me see your palm. Oh!"
"Now what have I done?" asked Glover as Louise, studying his palm, started. "I have changed my name--I admit that; but I have always denied killing anyone in the States. Are you going to tell the real facts? Won"t someone lend _me_ a hand for a few minutes? Or may I withdraw this entry before exposure?"
"Mr. Glover! of all the hands! I"m not surprised you were chosen to show the sights. There"s something happening in your hand every few minutes. Adventures, heart affairs, fortunes, perils--such a life-line, Mr. Glover. On my word there you are hanging by a hair--a hair--on the verge of eternity----"
Glover laughed softly.
"Oh, come, Louise," protested Mrs. Whitney. "Touch on lighter lines, please."
"Lighter lines! Why, Mr. Glover"s heart-line is a perfect canon." The laughter did not daunt her. "A perfect canon. I"ve read about hands like this, but I never saw one. No more to-night, Mr. Glover, you are too exciting."
"But about hanging on the verge--has it anything to do with a lynching, do you think, Miss Donner?" asked Glover. "The hair rope might be a lariat----"
"Mr. Glover!"--the train conductor opened the car door. "Is Mr. Glover in this car?"
"Yes."
"A message."
"May I be excused for a moment?" said Glover, rising.
"What did I tell you?" exclaimed Louise, "a telegram! Something has happened already."
CHAPTER VI
THE CAT AND THE RAT
At five o"clock that evening, snow was falling at Medicine Bend, but Callahan, as he studied the weather bulletins, found consolation in the fact that it was not raining, and resting his heels on a table littered with train-sheets he forced the draft on a shabby brier and meditated.
There were times when snow had been received with strong words at the Wickiup: but when summer fairly opened Callahan preferred snow to rain as strongly as he preferred genuine Lone Jack to the spurious compounds that flooded the Western market.
The chief element of speculation in his evening reflections was as to what was going on west of the range, for Callahan knew through cloudy experience that what happens on one side of a mountain chain is no evidence as to what is doing on the other--and by species of warm weather depravity that night something was happening west of the range.