Chapter 17

He devised a snow-plow which combined in one monster ram about all the good material we had left, and submitted the scheme to Neighbor. Neighbor studied it, and hacked at it all he could, and brought it over to the office. It was like staking everything on the last cast of the dice, but we were in the state of mind which precedes a desperate venture. It was talked over an hour, and orders were finally given by the superintendent to rig up the double-header and get against the snow with it.

All that day and most of the night Neighbor worked twenty men on Sankey's device. By Sunday morning it was in such shape that we began to take heart. "If she don't get through, she'll sure get back again, and that's what most of 'em don't do," growled Neighbor, as he and Sankey showed the new ram to the engineers.

They had taken the 566, George Sinclair's engine, for one head, and Burns's, the 497, for the other. Behind these were Kennedy, with the 314, and Cameron, with the 296. The engines were set in pairs, headed each way, and buckled up like pack mules. Over the pilots and stacks of the head engines rose the tremendous plows, which were to tackle the worst drifts ever recorded, before or since, on the West End. The ram was designed to work both ways. Under the coal, each tender was loaded with pig-iron.

The beleaguered passengers on Number One, side-tracked in the yards, eagerly watched the preparations Sankey was making to clear the line. Every amateur on the train had his camera out taking pictures of the ram. The town, gathered in a single great mob, looked silently on, and listened to the frosty notes of the sky-scrapers as they went through their preliminary manoeuvers. Just as the final word was given by Sankey, conductor in charge, the sun burst through the fleecy clouds, and a wild cheer followed the ram out of the western yard; it was looked on as a sign of good luck to see the sun again.

Little Neeta, up on the hill, must have seen them as they pulled out. Surely she heard the choppy ice-bitten screech of the 566; for that was never forgotten, whether the service was special or regular. Besides, the head cab of the ram carried this time not only Georgie Sinclair, but her father as well. Sankey could handle a slice-bar as well as a punch, and rode on the head engine, where, if anywhere, the big chances would come. What Sankey was not capable of in the train-service we never knew, because he rose superior to every emergency that ever confronted him.

Bucking snow is principally brute force; there is very little coaxing. West of the bluffs there was a volley of sharp tooting, like code signals between a fleet of cruisers, and in just a minute the four ponderous engines, two of them in the back motion, fires white and throats bursting, steamed wildly into the canyon. Six hundred feet from the first cut, Sinclair's whistle signaled again. Burns and Cameron and Kennedy answered; and then, literally turning the monster ram loose against the dazzling mountain, the crews settled themselves for the shock.

At such a moment there is nothing to be done. If anything goes wrong, eternity is too close to consider. There came a muffled drumming on the steam-chests; a stagger and a terrific impact; and then the recoil, like the stroke of a trip-hammer. The snow shot into the air fifty feet, and the wind carried a cloud of fleecy confusion over the ram and out of the cut. The cabs were buried in white, and the great steel frames of the engines sprung like knitting-needles under the frightful force of the blow. Pausing for hardly a breath, they began the signaling again; then backed up and up and up the line; and again the massive machines were hurled screaming into the cut. "We're getting there, Georgie," cried Sankey when the rolling and lurching had stopped.

No one else could tell a thing about it, for it was snow and snow and snow; above and behind and ahead and beneath. Sinclair coughed the flakes out of his eyes and nose and mouth like a baffled collie. He looked doubtful of the claim until the mist had blown clear and the quivering monsters were again recalled for a dash. Then it was plain that Sankey's instinct was right; they were gaining.

Again they went in, lifting a very avalanche over the stacks, packing the banks of the cut with walls hard as ice. Again, as the drivers stuck, they raced in a frenzy, and into the shriek of the wind went the unearthly scrape of the overloaded safeties. Slowly and sullenly the machines were backed again. "She's doing the work, Georgie," cried Sankey. "For that kind of a cut she's as good as a rotary. Look everything over now while I go back and see how the boys are standing it. Then we'll give her one more, and give it the hardest kind."

And they did give her one more; and another. Men at Santiago put up no stouter fight than these men made that Sunday morning in the canyon of the Blackwood. Once they went in, and twice. And the second time the bumping drummed more deeply; the drivers held, pushed, panted, and gained against the white wall; heaved and stumbled ahead; and with a yell from Sinclair and Sankey and the fireman, the double-header shot her nose into the clear over the Blackwood gorge. As engine after engine flew past the divided walls each cab took up the cry; it was the wildest crowd that ever danced to victory. Through they went and half-way across the bridge before they could check their monster catapult. Then, at a half full, they shot it back again at the cut, for it worked as well one way as the other.

"The thing is done," declared Sankey, when they got into position up the line for a final shoot to clean out the eastern cut and get head for a dash across the bridge and into the west end of the canyon, where there lay another mountain of snow to split. "Look the machines over pretty close, boys," said he to the engineers. "If nothing's sprung, we'll take a full head across the gorge--the bridge will carry anything--and buck the west cut. Then after we get Number One through this afternoon, Neighbor can put his baby cabs in here and keep 'em chasing all night. But it's done snowing," he added, looking at the leaden sky.

He had the plans all figured out for the master mechanic, the shrewd, kindly old man. I think, myself, there's no man on earth like a good Indian; and, for that matter, none like a bad one. Sankey knew by a military instinct just what had to be done and how to do it. If he had lived, he was to have been assistant superintendent. That was the word that leaked from headquarters afterward. And with a volley of jokes between the cabs and a laughing and yelling between toots, down went Sankey's double-header again into the Blackwood gorge.

At the same moment, by an awful misunderstanding of orders, down came the big rotary from the west end with a dozen cars of coal behind. Mile after mile it had wormed east toward Sankey's ram, and it now burrowed through the western cut of the Blackwood, crashed through the drift Sankey was aiming for, and whirled out into the open, dead against him, at forty miles an hour. Each train, in order to make the grade and the blockade against it, was straining the cylinders.

Through the swirling snow that half hid the bridge and interposed between the rushing plows Sinclair saw them coming. He yelled. Sankey saw them a fraction of a second later, and while Sinclair struggled with the throttle and the air, Sankey gave the alarm through the whistle to the poor fellows in the blind pockets behind. But the track was at the worst. Where there was no snow there were "whiskers"; oil itself couldn't have been worse to stop on. It was the old and deadly peril of fighting blockades from both ends on a single track. The great rams of steel and fire had done their work, and with their common enemy overcome, they dashed at each other like madmen across the Blackwood gorge.

The fireman at the first cry shot out the side. Sankey yelled at Sinclair to jump. But Georgie shook his head: he never would jump. Without hesitating, Sankey picked him from the levers in his arms, planted a sure foot, and hurled him like a coal shovel through the gangway far out into the gorge. The other cabs were already empty. But the instant's delay in front cost Sankey his life. Before he himself could jump the rotary crashed into the 566. They reared like mountain lions, pitched sideways and fell headlong into the creek, fifty feet. Sankey went under them. He could have saved himself; he chose to save George. There wasn't time to do both; he had to choose, and to choose instantly. Did he, maybe, think in that flash of Neeta and of whom she needed most--of a young and a stalwart protector rather than an old and failing one? I do not know; I know only what he did. Every one who jumped got clear. Sinclair lit in ten feet of snow, and they pulled him out with a rope: he wasn't scratched. Even the bridge was not badly strained. Number One pulled over it next day.

Sankey was right; there was no more snow; not even enough to cover the dead engines that lay on the rocks. But the line was open: the fight was won.

There never was a funeral in McCloud like Sankey's. George Sinclair and Neeta followed first, and of the mourners there were as many as there were spectators. Every engine on the division carried black for thirty days.

Sankey's contrivance for fighting snow has never yet been beaten on the high line. It is perilous to go against a drift behind it: something has to give. But it gets there, as Sankey got there--always; and in time of blockade and desperation on the West End they still send out Sankey's double-header; though Sankey, as the conductors tell the children, traveling east or traveling west--Sankey isn't running any more.

VIII

AUNT MARY TELEGRAPHS

A Comedy of Everyday Life

By LLOYD E. LONERGAN

"AUNTIE left on the six-o'clock train last night. Meet her at the depot.--CLARA."

This telegram, dated New York, greeted Frank Carey when he reached his pleasant little home on Indiana Avenue, Chicago.

"Aunt Mary will be here to-night," he said to his wife, "my rich aunt from New York, you know. I am to meet her at the depot."

"When does she arrive?" fluttered pretty little Mrs. Carey, a bride of a few months. "Cannot I go with you to the depot?"

Mr. Carey said she could, then he thought for a moment, then he put his doubts into words after a second reading of the telegram.

"I wonder what road she is coming in on?" he said.

"'Twas stupid of her," replied his wife, "but call up the railroads and find out which one has a six-o'clock train from New York. Silly!"

Mr. Carey kissed his wife and remarked that she was the brightest little girl in the world, after which he gaily telephoned, listened intently to someone on the other end of the line, made numerous notes, and turned to his wife in despair.

"Bless Clara!" he said devoutly.

His wife looked surprised, so he hastily explained.

"There is a six o'clock train from New York on the Pennsylvania, also on the Lake Shore, likewise on the Michigan Central, and the Lehigh Valley, and the Grand Trunk, and the West Shore, and the B. &. O.!"

"Which one is auntie coming on?" inquired Mrs. Carey with interest.

"All of them," replied her husband wrathfully. "She is sitting on the cow-catcher of each and every train, and if I'm not there to meet her she'll disinherit me. Haven't you any sense?"

Whereupon there were tears, apologies, and finally a council of war. It was Mrs. Carey who solved the problem.

"All we have to do," she cried, "is to meet all the trains. Won't it be cute?"

Carey didn't think so, but was afraid to express himself. He simply tried to look impressed and listened.

"There are only seven trains," she continued. "Now you," counting on her fingers, "are one, and I am two and Mr. and Mrs. Haines next door, who belong to my whist club, are four; and Ella Haines is five; and I just saw Mr. What's-his-name go in to call on Ella--and he'll be six; and that horrid man on the next block who is in your lodge will have to be seven."

The "train meeters" were gathered together inside of an hour. Mrs. Carey overruled all objections and laughed away all difficulties. She told them it would be a lark, and they believed it--at the time! As none of them had met Mrs. Smith (Aunt Mary), Carey was called upon for a description.

"Aunt Mary," he said, "is of medium height, dark complexion and usually dresses in black. She is fifty-eight years old, but tells people she is under fifty. You cannot miss her." And with this they were compelled to be satisfied.

* * * * *

Ella Haines was assigned to the Pennsylvania depot and arrived late. All the New York passengers had disembarked, but an old woman was standing at the entrance and looking anxiously at the passers-by.

"Mrs. Smith?" said Ella, inquiringly.

"Thank heaven, you have come," was the joyous reply.

"Here," and she stepped to one side and revealed a little girl who was gazing out at the tracks. "I've had such a time with that brat and I'll never travel with another again. I've just got time to catch my train for St. Paul. Good-bye!" Whereupon, disregarding Ella's cries and her protestations, the woman rushed madly to the other end of the depot and disappeared through a gate which closed behind her with a slam. It was the last call for the St. Paul train.

Naturally, Ella did not know what to do. She hung around the depot for half an hour, hoping someone would claim the child. Then she put the little one in a cab and gave the Careys' address in Indiana Avenue.

* * * * *

Walter Haines went to the Lake Shore depot. One of the first passengers to emerge from the New York train was a female, who seemed to answer the general description furnished by Carey. She was breathless as if from running faster than an old woman should run. As she reached Haines, she stopped and glared at him.

"Mrs. Smith?" he inquired, lifting his hat.

The woman grabbed him by the arm. "I knew you would be here, but hurry, that man is after me!"

"What man?" asked Haines in surprise.

"Hush, we cannot talk now," was the reply. "Get a carriage and drive fast, fast; we must escape him."

"George couldn't come, he sent me. My name is Haines," said the puzzled escort.

"I don't care if your name is Beelzebub" was the impatient retort. "You get that carriage or I'll write to Roosevelt." And Mr. Haines, very much astonished, complied.

He thought as he drove away that he heard someone shouting, but was not sure; in fact, he paid no attention, for he was too busy thinking what a queer old aunt his friend Carey had.

The "horrid man who belonged to the lodge" was named Perkins. He reached the B. & O. depot half an hour ahead of time, so he went across the street and had a drink. When he returned he discovered that No. 7 was late, and so had another. Also, several more. By the time the train did arrive he was in such a mellow state that he couldn't tell a parlor car from a lake steamer--and he didn't care! He had likewise forgotten what George's aunt looked like, but that, too, was a trivial matter. So he stood at the gate, beaming blandly at every person that appeared.

"Are you Georsh's saunt?" he inquired of a tall man with white side-whiskers and garbed in ministerial black. His answer was a look of horror, but it had no effect on Perkins, who repeated his question at intervals without result. His lack of success finally drove him to tears.

"Poor Georsh!" he sobbed. "Dear old Georsh! Must have an naunt! Break hish heart if he don't have an naunt! Can't fine his naunt! Get him one myself!"

A gang of immigrants were passing at the time. Perkins grabbed one of them by the arm.

"Be nish fellow," he said persuasively, "be Georsh's aunt."

The immigrant was obdurate, but Perkins was persistent. He drew a roll of bills from his pocket and peeled off a five. This he pressed upon his new-found friend.

"Be a good aunt," he said, "be a nish aunt, and I'll give you two more like thish!"

The Italian, overcome by the sight of so much wealth, fell captive to the eloquence of Perkins. The latter was delighted. He escorted his victim to a saloon across the street and hurled six drinks into him in rapid succession. The immigrant beamed and forgot all his troubles. He lit a fifteen-cent cigar and puffed away as if he were used to it.

"Be your-a aunt," he said, "be-a anybody's aunt. You good-a feller."

This sentiment led to another round of drinks, and then the pair tumbled into a cab, singing discordantly in two languages. Perkins fortunately remembered the address of Haines, and was able to mumble it so that the hackman could understand. Therefore there was no bar to his enjoyment.

Of course they stopped en route, for Perkins was brimming over with gratitude and the cabman was included in their rejoicing. Long before they reached Indiana Avenue, everybody was drunk except the horse.

In the meantime there was all sorts of trouble in the modest residence of George Carey. The head of the household had fumed and fretted about the Michigan Central depot, and finally started home, auntless. There he met his wife, Mrs. Haines and Ella's young man with similar stories. Five minutes later a carriage drove up and Ella and her charge alighted.

"Isn't she a dear little girl?" gurgled Miss Haines, who, being petite and worried, didn't know anything else to do under the circumstances except to gurgle.

Carey gazed at the young woman with distinct disapproval for the first time in his life.

"I know the popular impression is that old ladies shrink," he said, "but Aunt Mary could never have shrunk to that size. Where did you get her and why?"

Falteringly, Miss Haines explained. Then she cried. The child, who had regarded them gravely up to this point, took it for a signal. She screamed, then she roared. Nobody could comfort her or find out who she was.

The arrival of another cab distracted their attention. The bell rang loudly. As Carey opened the door, an old woman bounded in. Her hat was on one side of her head and her eyes gleamed madly.

"Safe at last!" she cried. Then she ran upstairs, entered Mrs. Haines's room, and locked the door. Through the panels came the sound of hysterical laughter.

Walter Haines entered the house at this moment. His attitude was distinctly apologetic.

"Remarkable old lady, isn't she?" he ventured.

"Who?" asked Mr. Carey.

"Why your aunt, of course; didn't you see her come in?"

Carey choked down his wrath out of respect to the ladies, but it was hard work.

"I never saw that woman before," he remarked; "you brought her here uninvited, now you take her away."

Naturally this provoked argument. Mrs. Haines sided with her husband, Mrs. Carey flew to the aid of her worser half, Miss Haines wept, and the little girl screamed. Upstairs, the bogus Aunt Mary was still laughing.

None of the interested parties could tell afterward how long the talk continued. A louder noise outside drew them all to the front porch. In front of the house was a hansom cab drawn by a disgusted-looking horse. He looked and acted like one who had been compelled against his will to mingle with disreputable associates.

The driver descended from his seat and fell full length upon the pavement. He didn't try to get up, but chanted in a husky tone, "Hail! hail! the gang's all here!!!"

Then the door of the cab opened and Mr. Perkins appeared. Nobody could deny that he was very much the worse for wear. But Mr. Perkins bore himself like a conqueror. He advanced hastily and embraced Carey with enthusiasm. Carey recoiled.

"Dear Georsh," said Perkins. "Got you an naunt!"

Apprehensively, Carey ran to the carriage. Huddled upon the floor was an object that moved faintly. From the atmosphere Sherlock Holmes would have deduced that a whisky refinery had exploded in that cab a few hours before. The onlooker gingerly touched the object. It rolled over, then it rolled out of the cab and lay on the sidewalk beside the driver.

Perkins kept on smiling. "Your naunt," he remarked, blandly. "Couldn't get you what you wanted. Got you thish one!"

At this moment, Carey remembered that he had a telephone. He spurned his "aunt" with his foot and passed into the house. He called up Police Headquarters. His friend, Sergeant Bob O'Rourke, was on duty, which made it easier for him.

"Bob," he said, after greetings had been exchanged, "have you an alarm out for a little girl kidnapped from the Pennsylvania station?"

"Yes."

"And does anybody want a crazy woman, last seen on a Lake Shore train?"

"Yes; her keeper was here half an hour ago," was the reply. "He was taking her to Kankakee and she made a get-away. What do you know about her?"

"They are both here," was the reply. "Send the wagon, and just for good measure I'll throw in an Italian immigrant who came in over the B. & O. and a cab-driver. They are both drunk, very drunk, and please take the cab away too."

The next half hour gave Indiana Avenue residents plenty to talk about for a month. But finally the combat was over, and Carey and his friends sat down exhausted.

"But what I would like to know," remarked the head of the house, "where, oh where is Aunt Mary?"

It was a messenger-boy who brought the answer--a telegram dated Niagara Falls, current date and reading:

"Stopped over here. Isn't the view from Goat Island wonderful? Leave for Chicago on the first train. Meet me."

There was a sudden painful silence.

"Does anybody know how many trains there are from Niagara Falls?" inquired Mrs. Carey, speaking to the company generally. She didn't dare to address her husband.

"Just about as many as there are from New York," replied Haines, with a woebegone look. "But--"

"Don't finish it," returned Carey, "I am not going to ask you to try again, and I am not going to do so myself. Aunt Mary can leave her money to anybody she pleases. If I had another night like this the executors would be compelled to mail me my cheque to an asylum."

And the next evening Aunt Mary, unattended, reached her nephew's house without any trouble at all. She didn't disinherit him; in fact, she felt so sorry because of his troubles that she bought Mrs. Carey a complete spring outfit regardless of cost.

It's a good thing to have an Aunt Mary, even if she is indefinite in her telegrams.

IX

THE VENGEANCE OF THE WOLF

A Drama in Wales

By J. AQUILA KEMPSTER

IN THE great stone hall of Llangarth, Daurn-ap-Tavis, the old Welsh Wolf lay dying. Outside was the night and a sullen gale whose winds came moaning down the hills and clung about the house with little bodeful whispers that grew to long-drawn eerie wails, while pettish rain-squalls spent their spite in futile gusts on door and casement.

And through the night from time to time a horseman came, spurring hard and spitting out strange Welsh oaths at the winds that harried him. Five had passed the door since sun-down, four worthy sons and a nephew of the Wolf. They stood now booted and spurred about the old man's couch, a rough-looking crew with the mud caking them from head to foot, while the leaping flames from the log fire flung their shadows black and distorted far up among the rafters.

They hung around him sullenly, but as he looked them up and down the sick man's eyes took on a new keenness and a low, throaty laugh that was half a growl escaped him.

"Well, Cedric, man, what devil's game have you been playing of late? and, Tad, you black rascal--ah, 'twas a pity you were born to Gruffydd instead of me. Well, well, boys, the old Wolf's cornered at last, cornered at last, and Garm, Levin, Rhys--the Cadwallader's going to live and laugh, aye, he's going to live and laugh while a Tavis roasts in hell."

Garm started with a low growl, while Cedric kicked savagely at a hound that lay beside the logs.

"Aye, Ced, kick the old dog, but it won't stop the Cadwallader's laugh."