Part 12

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty minutes went, with Martin Duffy at intervals vainly calling. Then--as the crack opens in the field of ice, as the snow breaks in the mountain slide, as the sea gives up at last its dead, the sounder spoke--Rat River made the despatcher's call. And Martin Duffy, staring at the copper coil, pushed himself up in his chair like a man that chokes, caught smothering at his neck, and slipped wriggling to the floor.

Carhart caught him up, but Duffy's eyes stared meaningless past him. Rat River was calling him, but Martin Duffy was past the taking. Like the man next at the gun, Barnes Tracy sprang into the chair with the I, I, D. The surgeon, Giddings helping, dragged Duffy to the lounge in Callahan's room--his Chief was more to Giddings then than the fate of Special 326. But soon confused voices began to ring from where men were crowding around the despatchers' table. They echoed in to where the doctors worked over the raving Chief. And young Giddings, helping, began, too, to hear strange things from the other room.

"The moon--"

"The _moon_?"

"The MOON!"

"_What?_"

Barnes Tracy was trying to make himself heard:

"The moon, damn it! MOON! That's English, ain't it? _Moon._"

"Who's talking at Rat River?" demanded Benedict Morgan, hoarsely.

"Chick Neale, conductor of Third Eighty; their train is back at Rat River. God bless that man," stammered Barnes Tracy, wiping his forehead feverishly; "he's an old operator. He says Bob Duffy is missing--tell Martin, quick, there isn't any wreck--quick!"

"What does Neale say?" cried Doubleday with an explosion.

Tracy thought he had told them, but he hadn't. "He says his engineer, Abe Monsoon, was scared by the moon rising just as they cleared Kennel Butte," explained Tracy unsteadily. "He took it for the headlight of Special 326 and jumped from his engine. The fireman backed the train to Rat River--see?"

While Tracy talked, Mallers at the key was getting it all. "Look here," he exclaimed, "did you ever hear of such a mix-up in your life? The head brakeman of the freight was in the cab, Neale says. He and the engineer were talking about the last Conclave train, wondering where they were going to meet it, when the brakeman spied the moon coming up around Kennel Butte curve. 'There's the 326 Special!' he yelled, and lighted out the gangway. Monsoon reversed and jumped off after him so quick he knocked the fireman over in the coal. When the fireman got up--he hadn't heard a word of it all--he couldn't see anything ahead but the moon. So he stops the train and backs up for the two guys. When Neale and he picked them up they ran right back to Rat River for orders. They never got to Rock Point at all--why, they never got two miles east of Rat River."

"And where's Special 326?" cried Doubleday.

"At Rock Point, you loco. She must be there and waiting yet for Third Eighty. The stopping of the freight gave her plenty of time to make the meeting-point, don't you see, and there she is--sweating--yet. Neale is an old operator. By Heaven! Give me a man of the key against the the world. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"

"Then there isn't to be any wreck?" ventured a shy little lady homeopathic physician, who had been crimped into the fray to help do up the mangled Knights and was modestly waiting her opportunity.

"Not to-night," announced Tracy with the dignity of a man temporarily in charge of the entire division.

A yell went out of the room like a tidal wave. Doubleday and Benedict Morgan had not spoken to each other since the night of the roundhouse fire--that was two years. They turned wonder-struck to each other. Doubleday impulsively put out his hand and, before he could pull it in again, the wrecking boss grabbed it like a pay check. Carhart, who was catching the news from the rattle of young Giddings, went wild trying to repeat it to Duffy without losing it in his throat. The Chief was opening his eyes, trying to understand.

Medical men of violently differing schools, allopaths, homeopaths, osteopaths, eclectics--made their peace with a whoop. A red-headed druggist, who had rung himself in for a free ride to the horror, threw his emergency packets into the middle of the floor. The doctors caught the impulse: instrument cases were laid with solemn tenderness on the heap, and a dozen crazy men, joining hands around the pyred saws and gauze, struck up "Old Hundred."

Engineer Monsoon was a new man, who had been over the division only twice before in his life, both times in daylight. For that emergency Abe Monsoon was the man of all others, because it takes more than an ordinary moon to scare a thoroughbred West End engineer. But Monsoon and his moon headlight had between them saved De Molay Four from the scrap.

The relief arrangements and Monsoon's headlight were the fun of it, but there was more. Martin Duffy lay eleven weeks with brain fever before they could say moon again to him. Bob had skipped into the mountains in the very hour that he had disgraced himself. He has never shown up at Medicine since; but Martin is still Chief, and they think more of him on the Mountain district than ever.

Bucks got the whole thing when De Molay Four reached Rat River that night. Bucks and Callahan and Moore and Oyster and Pat Francis got it and smiled grimly. Nobody else on Special 326 even dreamed of leaving a bone that Sunday night in the Cinnamon cut. All the rest of the evening Bucks smiled just the same at the Knights and the Knightesses, and they thought him for a bachelor wonderfully entertaining.

A month later, when the old boys more or less ragged came straggling back from 'Frisco, Bucks's crowd stayed over a train, and he told his Pennsylvania cronies what they had slipped through in that delay at Rock Point.

"Just luck," laughed one of the Eastern superintendents, who wore on his watch chain an enormous Greek cross with "Our Trust is in God" engraved on it. "Just luck," he laughed, "wasn't it?"

"Maybe," murmured Bucks, looking through the Wickiup window at the Teton peaks. "That is--you might call it that--back on the Penn. Out here I guess they'd call it, Just God."

The Trainmaster's Story

OF THE OLD GUARD

I never found it very hard to get into trouble: as far back as I can remember that has come dead easy for me.

When this happened I hadn't been railroading a month and I was up with my conductor on the carpet, sweating from sheer grogginess and excitement. The job of front-end brakeman on a mountain division is no great stake for a man ordinarily, but it was one for me, just then. We knew when we went into the superintendent's office that somebody was to get fired; the only question was, who?--the train crew or the operator? Our engine crew were out of it; it was up to the conductor and to me. Had the operator displayed red signals? The conductor said, no; I said, no; the operator said, yes: but he lied. We couldn't prove it; we could only put our word against his: and what made it the worse for me, my conductor was something of a liar himself.

I stood beading in a cold sweat for I could see with half an eye it was going against us; the superintendent, an up-and-up railroad man every inch and all business, but suspicious, was leaning the operator's way the strongest kind.

There wasn't another soul in the little room as the three of us stood before the superintendent's desk except a passenger conductor, who sat behind me with his feet on the window ledge, looking out into the yard.

"Morrison's record in this office is clean," the superintendent was saying of the operator, who was doing us smooth as smokeless powder, "he has never to my knowledge lied in an investigation. But, Allbers," continued the superintendent speaking bluntly to my conductor, "you've never told a straight story about that Rat River switch matter yet. This man is a new man," he added, throwing a hard look at me. "Ordinarily I'd be inclined to take the word of two men against one, but I don't know one at all and the other has done me once. I can't see anything for it but to take Morrison's word and let you fellows both out. There wasn't any wreck, but that's not your fault; not for a minute."

"Mr. Rocksby," I protested, speaking up to the division boss in a clean funk--the prospect of losing my job that way, through a lying operator, took the heart clean out of me--"you don't know me, it is true, but I pledge you my word of honor--"

"What's your word of honor?" asked the superintendent, cutting into me like a hatchet, "I don't know any more about your word of honor than I do about you."

What could I say? There were men who did know me, but they were a long cry from the Rocky Mountains and the headquarters of the Mountain Division. I glanced about me from his face, gray as alkali, to Allbers, shuffling on the carpet, and to Morrison, as steady as a successful liar, taking my job and my reputation at one swallow; and to the passenger conductor with the glossy black whiskers; but he was looking out the window. "What do I know about your word of honor?" repeated Rocksby sharply. "Allbers, take your man and get your time."

A wave of helpless rage swept over me. The only thing I could think of, was strangling the lying operator in the hall. Then somebody spoke.

"Show your papers, you damn fool."

It came calm as sunshine and cold as a north-wester from the passenger conductor behind me, from Dave Hawk, and it pulled me into line like a bugle call. I felt my English all back at once. Everybody heard him and looked my way; again it was up to me. This time I was ready for the superintendent, or for that matter for the blooming Mountain Division. I had forgot all about my papers till Dave Hawk spoke. I put my hand, shaking, into my inside vest pocket for a piece of oilskin--it was all I had left; I was a good way from my base that year. I laid the oilskin on the superintendent's table, unfolded it jealously and took out a medal and a letter, that in spite of the carefullest wrapping was creased and sweated. But the letter was from my captain and the bit of bronze was the Cross. Rocksby picked up the letter and read it.

"Have you been in the British Army?" he asked curtly.

"Yes, sir."

He scowled a minute over Picton's scrawl, laid it down and gratified his curiosity by picking up the medal. He studied the face of the token, looked curiously at the dingy red ribbon, twirled it and saw the words on the reverse, "For Valour," and looked again at me.

"Where'd you get this?" he asked indicating the Victoria.

"In the Soudan, sir."

Dave Hawk kept right on looking out the window. Neither my conductor nor the operator seemed to know just what the row was. Nobody spoke.

"What' you doing here?" Rocksby went on.

"I came out to learn the cattle business." His brows went up easy-like. "They cleaned me out." Brows dropped gentle-like. "Then I went bad with mountain-fever," and he looked decent at me.

"You say you had your head out the cupola and saw the white signal?" he asked, sort of puzzled.

"I saw the white signal." Rocksby looked at the operator Morrison.

"We'll adjourn this thing," said he at last, "till I look into it a little further. For the present, go back to your runs."

We never heard any more of it. Allbers got out quick. I waited to pick up my stuff and turned to thank Dave Hawk; he was gone.

It wasn't the first time Dave had pulled me out of the water. About two weeks before that I had crawled one night up on the front platform of the baggage at Peace River to steal a ride to Medicine Bend on Number One. It was Dave's train. I had been kicked out of the McCloud hospital two days before without a cent, or a friend on earth outside the old country, and I hadn't a mind to bother the folks at home any more, come Conan or the devil.

The night was bitter bad, black as a Fuzzy and sleeting out of the foothills like manslaughter. When the train stopped at Rosebud for water, what with gripping the icy hand-rail and trying to keep my teeth steady on my knees I must have been a hard sight. Just as the train was ready to pull out, Dave came by and poked his lantern full in my face.

He was an older man than I, a good bit older, for I was hardly more than a kid then, only spindling tall, and so thin I couldn't tell a stomach ache from a back ache. As I sat huddled down on the lee step with my cap pulled over my head and ears, he poked his light full into my face and snapped, "Get out!"

If it had been a headlight I couldn't have been worse scared, and I found afterward he carried the brightest lamp on the division. I looked up into his face and he looked into mine. I wonder if in this life it isn't mostly in the face after all? I couldn't say anything, I was shaking in a chill as I pulled myself together and climbed down into the storm.

Yet I never saw a face harder in some ways than Dave Hawk's. His visor hid his forehead and a blackbeard covered his face till it left only his straight cold nose and a dash of olive white under the eyes. His whiskers loomed high as a Cossack's and his eyes were onyx black with just such a glitter. He knew it was no better than murder to put me off in that storm at a mountain siding: I knew it; but I didn't much care for I knew before very long I should fall off, anyway. After I crawled down he stood looking at me, and with nothing better on I stood looking at him.

"If you get up there again I'll break your neck," he promised, holding up his lantern. I was quiet; the nerve was out of me.

"Where you going?" he asked shortly.

"Medicine Ben----"

"Get into the smoker, you damn fool."

How it galvanized me. For twenty-four hours I hadn't eaten. I was just out of a hospital bed and six weeks of mountain fever, but I braced at his words like a Sioux buck. I hurried back ahead of him to the smoking car, drenched wet, and tough, I know. I looked so tough that the brakeman grabbed me the minute I opened the front door and tried to kick me out. I turned snarling then, crazy as a wolf all in a second, and somehow backed the brakeman against the water cooler with his windpipe twisted in my bony fingers like a corkscrew. The train was moving out. I had been cuffed and kicked till I would rather kill somebody than not; this seemed a fair chance for a homicide. When the poor fellow's wind went off--he wasn't much of a scrapper, I fancy--he whipped around in the aisle like a dying rooster. As he struggled in my grip there behind him in the doorway stood Dave, lantern in hand, looking on with a new face. This time he was smiling--Dave's smile meant just the parting of his lips over a row of glistening teeth; perfectly even teeth and under his black mustache whiter than ivory. It appeared to amuse him to see me killing the brakeman. The instant I saw Dave I let go and he watched the crestfallen trainman pull himself together.

"Guess you'll let him alone now, won't you?" said Dave pleasantly to my rattled assailant. "Sit down," he growled harshly at me, stringing his lantern on his arm. He walked unconcernedly down the aisle, and I dropped exhausted into the front seat facing the Baker heater. It was heavenly hot; red hot. I have loved a car heater ever since, and Baker to me, is hardly lower than the angels. My togs began to steam, my blood began to flow, the train boy gave me a wormy apple, an Irishman with a bottle of rank whiskey gave me a stinger and I wanted to live again. I curled up in the seat and in five minutes I was roasting, oh, such a heavenly roast; and dozing, Lord! what a heavenly doze, before that Baker heater. All night the forward truck beat and pounded under me: all night I woke and slept in the steaming, stinking air of the hot car. And whenever I opened my eyes I saw always the same thing, a topping tall conductor looming in the aisle, his green-hooded lamp, like a semaphore under his arm. And above, in the gloom, a bush of black beard and a pair of deep-set, shining eyes back under a peaked cap. Dave often comes back as I saw him, waking and dreaming, that night in the smoker of Number One.

* * * * *

It was breaking day when he bent over me.

"We're getting into the Bend," he said gruffly. "Got any money for breakfast?"

"I haven't a cent on God's earth." He put his hand in his pocket and pulling out a handful of loose bills shoved one into my fingers.

"I'll take it from you and gladly," I said sitting up. "But I'm not a beggar nor a tramp."

"Off track?"

"Yes. I'm going to enlist--" His teeth flashed. "That's worse than railroading, ain't it?" Something came into my head like a rocket.

"If I could get started railroading----"

"Get started easy enough."

That's how I happened to show him my Victoria. He gave me a card to the trainmaster, and next day I went to braking for Allbers, who, by the way, was the biggest liar I ever knew.

But the morning I got into Medicine Bend that first time on Number One I had another scare. I went into the lunch room for coffee and sandwiches and threw my bill at the boy. He opened it, looked at it and looked at me.

"Well," I growled, for I was impudent with luck and a hot stomach. "Good, ain't it?"

"Smallest you got?"

I nodded as if I had a pocket full. He hustled around and came back with a handful of money. I said nothing but when he spread it out before me I sat paralysed. I had just assumed that Dave had given me a dollar. Sinkers, deducting the price of two coffees and six sandwiches from the bill counted out nineteen dollars and thirty cents for me.

That change kept me running for a month, and after my first pay day I hunted up Dave to pay him back. I found him in the evening. He was sitting alone on the eating-house porch, his feet up against the rail, looking at the mountains in the sunset.

"Never mind," he said, as I held out a twenty dollar bill and tried to speak my little piece. He did not move except to wave back my hand.

"Oh, but I can't let you do that----" I protested.

"Put up your money, Tommie." He called me Tommie.

"No," he repeated putting by my hand; his face set hard, and when Dave's face did set it set stony. "Put up your money; you don't owe me anything. I stole it."

It was a queer deal out on the West End in those days. It was a case of wide open from the river to the Rockies. Everybody on the line from the directors to the car-tinks were giving the company the worst of it. The section hands hooked the ties for the maintenance, the painters drank the alcohol for the shellac, the purchasing agent had more fast horses than we had locomotives, and what made it discouraging for the conductors, the auditors stole what little money the boys did turn in.

A hard place to begin railroading the old line was then: but that's where I had to tackle the game, and in all the hard crowd I mixed with Dave Hawk was the only big man on the division. There were others there who fixed the thing up by comparing notes on their collections and turning in percentages to make their reports look right. But Dave was not a conspirator; never made a confidant of any man in his stealing or his spending, and despised their figuring. He did as he pleased and cared for no one; no superior had any terror for Dave. He had a wife somewhere back east of the river, they said, that had sold him out--that's why he was in the mountains--and he lived among free and easy men a lonely life. If anybody ever got close to him, I think maybe I did, though I was still only a freight conductor when the lightning struck the division.

It came with a clean sweep through the general offices at the River. Everybody in the auditing department, the executive heads down to general manager and a whole raft of East End conductors. It was a shake-out from top to bottom, and the bloods on our division went white and sickly very fast.

Of course it was somebody's gain. When the heads of our passenger conductors began to drop, they began setting up freight men. Rocksby had resigned a year earlier, and Haverly, his successor, an ex-despatcher and as big a knave as there was on the pay roll, let the men out right and left with the sole idea of saving his own scalp. By the time I was put up to a passenger train the old force was pretty much cleared out except Dave.

Every day almost, we looked to see him go. Everybody loved him because he was a master railroad man, and everybody except Dave himself was apprehensive about his future. He moved on just the same, calm and cold as ice-water, taking the same old chances, reckless of everything and everybody. I never knew till afterward, but the truth was Haverly with all his bluff talk was just enough afraid of Dave Hawk to want to let him alone. The matter, though, focused one day up in the old office in an unexpected way.

Haverly's own seat got so hot that bedeviled by his fears of losing it and afraid to discharge Dave, who now sailed up and down the line reckless as any pirate of the Spanish Main, he cowered, called Dave into the little room at the Wickiup and asked him to resign. In all the storm that raged on the division the old conductor alone had remained calm. Every day it was somebody's head off; every night a new alarm; Dave alone ignored it all. He was, through it all, the shining mark, the daredevil target; yet he bore a charmed life and survived every last associate. Then Haverly asked him to resign. Dave, bitter angry, faced him with black words in his throat.

"It's come to a showdown," muttered the superintendent uneasily after a minute's talking. "Do you want to resign?"

Dave eyed the mountains coldly. "No."

"You'll have to--"

"Have to?" Hawk whirled dark as a storm. "Have to? Who says so?"

The superintendent shifted the paperweight on the desk uncomfortably.

"Why should I resign?" demanded the old conductor angrily. "Resign?" He rose from his chair. "You know I'm a thief. You're a thief yourself. You helped make me one. I've carried more men for you than for anybody else on the whole division. I don't resign for anybody. Discharge me, damn you. I don't ask any odds of you."

Haverly met it sullenly, yet he didn't dare do anything. He knew Dave could ruin him any day he chose to open his mouth. What he did not know was that Dave Hawk was molded in a class of men different from his own. Even dishonor was safe in the hands of Dave Hawk.

There was no change after, except that darker, moodier, lonelier than ever, Dave moved along on his runs, the last of the Old Guard. Better railroad man than he never took a train out of division. Stress of wind or stress of weather, storm, flood or blockade, Dave Hawk's trains came and went on time or very close. So he rode, grim old privateer, with his letters of marque on the company's strongbox, and Haverly trembled night and day till that day came that fear had foretold to him. A clap of thunder struck the Wickiup and Haverly's head fell low; and Dave Hawk sailed boldly on.

I was extra passenger man when John Stanley Bucks took the West End. He came from south of our country, and we heard great things about the new superintendent and about what would happen as soon as he got into the saddle. What few of the old men in the Wickiup were left looked at Bucks just once and began to arrange their temporal affairs. His appearance bore out his reputation. Only, everybody while pretty clear in his own mind as to what he would do--that is, as to what he would have to do--wondered what Dave would do.

He and Bucks met. I couldn't for the life of me help thinking when they struck hands, this grizzled mountaineer and this contained, strong, soldierly executive who had come to command us, of another meeting, I once saw when I carried Crook out on a special and watched him at Bear Dance strike hands with the last of the big fighting chiefs of the mountain Sioux.