Chapter 9

"Ain't I right, though, about the foolish way people fly at their mail?" she demanded. "You might think they'd get wise after years and years of being fooled; but--no, sir! Take me day after to-morrow, when the next mail comes. I'll fall on it like I fell on this, with all my old delusions uninjured. There sure does seem to be a lot of human nature in most of us."

Then she opened the possibly interesting letter that had been put aside. The envelope, at least, was interesting, bearing as it did the stamp of a military censor for the American Expedition to France.

"You remember Squat Tyler, that long cow-puncher working for me when you were here last time?"

I remembered Squat, who was indeed a long cow-puncher--long enough to be known, also, to his intimates as Timberline.

"Well, Squat is over there in the trenches helping to make the world a pleasant place to live in. He's a good shot, too."

The lady read the letter hurriedly to herself; then regaled me with bits of it.

"The life here is very," she read. "That's all he says, at first--'The life here is very.' I should judge it might be that from what I read in the papers. Or mebbe he couldn't just think of the word. Let's see! What else? Oh, yes--about digging. He says he didn't take to digging at first, not having gone there for any common purpose, but one day he was told to dig, and while he was thinking up something to say a million guns began to go off; so he dug without saying a word. Hard and fast he says he dug. He says: 'If a badger would of been there he would of been in my way.' I'll bet! Squat wouldn't like to be shot at in all seriousness. What next? Here he says I wouldn't dream what a big outfit this here U.S. outfit is; he says it's the biggest outfit he ever worked for--not even excepting Miller & Lux. What next? Oh, yes; here he tells about getting one.

"'Last night I captured a big fat enemy; you know--a Heinie. It was as dark as a cave, but I heard one snooping close. I says to my pardner I keep hearing one snoop close; and he says forget it, because my hive is swarming or something; and I says no; I will go out there and molest that German. So I sneaked over the bank and through our barbed-wire fence that everyone puts up here, and out a little ways to where I had heard one snoop; and, sure enough--what do you think? He seen me first and knocked my gun out of my hands with the butt of his. It got me mad, because it is a new gun and I am taking fine care of it; so I clanched him'--that's what Squat says, clanched. 'And, first, he run his finger into my right eye, clear up to the knuckle it felt like; so I didn't say a word, but hauled off quick and landed a hard right on the side of his jaw and dropped him just like that. It was one peach I handed him and he slumped down like a sack of mush. I am here to tell you it was just one punch, though a dandy; but he had tried to start a fight, so it was his own fault. So I took all his weapons away and when he come alive I kicked him a few times and made him go into the U.S. trenches. He didn't turn out to be much--only a piano tuner from Milwaukee; and I wish it had of been a general I caught snooping. I certainly did molest him a-plenty, all right. Just one punch and I brought him down out of control. Ha! Ha! The life here is very different.'

"There; that must of been what he tried to say at the beginning--'The life here is very different.' I should think he'd find it so, seeing the only danger that boy was ever in here was the sleeping sickness."

Hereupon the lady removed the wrapper from a trade journal and scanned certain market quotations. They pleased her little. She said it was darned queer that the war should send every price in the world up but the price of beef, beef quotations being just where the war had found them. Not that she wanted to rob any one! Still and all, why give everyone a chance but cattle raisers? She muttered hugely of this discrimination and a moment later seemed to be knitting her remarks into a gray sock. The mutterings had gradually achieved the coherence of remarks. And I presently became aware that the uninflated price of beef was no longer their burden.

They now concerned the singular reticence of all losers of fist fights. Take Squat's German. Squat would be telling for the rest of his life how he put that Wisconsin alien out with one punch. But if I guessed the German would be telling it as often as Squat told it I was plumb foolish. He wouldn't tell it at all. Losers never do. Any one might think that parties getting licked lost their powers of speech. Not so with the winners of fights; not so at all!

At this very minute, while we sat there in that room at a quarter past eight, all over the wide world modest-seeming men were telling how they had licked the other man with one punch, or two or three at the most. It was being told in Kulanche County, Washington, and in Patagonia and Philadelphia and Africa and China, and them places; in clubs and lumber camps and Pullman cars and ships and saloons--in states that remained free of the hydrant-headed monster, Prohibition--in tents and palaces; in burning deserts and icy wastes. At that very second, in an ice hut up by the North Pole, a modest Eskimo was telling and showing his admiring wife and relatives just how he had put out another Eskimo that had come round and tried to start something. Which was another mystery, the man winning the fight being always put upon and invariably in the right. In every one of these world-wide encounters justice always prevailed and only the winner talked about it afterward.

"And lots of times," continued the lady, "this talkative winner has been set upon by as many as three others. But he licks 'em all. Sometimes he admits he had a little luck with the third man; but he gets two of the cowards easy. Why, down in Red Gap only the other night I saw a kind of a slight young man in a full-dress suit lick three big huskies that set on him. He put two out with a punch apiece and got the third after about one round of sparring. There he stood winner over all three, and hardly his hair mussed; and you wouldn't of thought in the beginning that he could lick one of the bunch. It was a good picture, all right, with this fight coming in the first reel to start things off lively. But what I want to know is why, out of these million fights that come off, you never hear a word out of a loser! I'll bet all my Liberty Bonds right now that you never yet heard a man tell about how he was licked in a fair fight."

I had to decline the wager. The most I could submit was that I had heard some plausible excuses. The lady waved her entire knitting in deprecation.

"Oh, excuses! You hear 'em a-plenty when the loser can't deny he was licked. Most losers will odd things along till they sound even. I heard a lovely excuse down in Red Gap. Hyman Leftowitz, who does business there as Abercrombie, the Quality Tailor, made a suit for Eddie Pierce that drives the depot hack, and Eddie was slow pay. So Hyman lost his native tact one night and dunned Eddie when he was walking down Fourth Street with his girl. Eddie left his girl in at the Owl Drug Store and went back and used Hyman hard; and all Hyman did was to yell 'Help!' and 'Murder!' I was in his shop for a fitting next day and Hyman's face arrested the attention much more than usual. It showed that Eddie had done something with him. So I says: 'Why didn't you fight back? What was your fists for?' And Hyman says: 'I pledge you my word I didn't know it was a fight.' Oh, excuses--sure! But that ain't what I'm getting at. You've heard the winners talk, like we all have, how they did it with the good old right hook to the jaw, or how they landed one straight left and all was over; but did you ever hear any talk from a loser without excuses, one who come out plain and said he was licked by a better man?"

We debated this briefly. We agreed that the reticence of losers is due to something basic in human nature; a determination of the noblest sort to disregard failure--that is, Ma Pettengill said you couldn't expect everything of human nature when it had its earrings in, and I agreed in as few words as would suffice. I had suddenly become aware that the woman was holding something back. The signs in her discourse are not to be mistaken. I taxed her with this. She denied it. Then she said that, even if she was holding back something, it was nothing to rave about. Just an anecdote that this here talk about fighting characters had reminded her of. She wouldn't of thought of it even now if Ben Steptoe hadn't told her last spring why he didn't lick his Cousin Ed that last time. And this here Ed Steptoe was the only honest male she had ever known. But that was because something was wrong in his head, he being a born nut. And it wasn't really worth going back over; but--well--she didn't know. Possibly. Anyway--

These Steptoe cousins come from a family back in the East that was remote kin to mine and they looked me up in Red Gap when they come out into the great boundless West to carve out a name for themselves. About fifteen years ago they come. Ben was dark and short and hulky, with his head jammed down between his shoulders. Ed was blond and like a cat, being quick. Ben had a simple but emphatic personality, seeing what he wanted and going for it, and that never being more than one thing at a time. Ed was all over the place with his own aspirations and never anything long at a time; kind of a romantic temperament, or, like they say in stories, a creature of moods. He was agent for the Home Queen sewing machine when he first come out. But that didn't mean sewing machines was his life work. He'd done a lot of things before that, like lecturing for a patent-medicine professor and canvassing for crayon portraits with a gold frame, and giving lessons in hypnotism, and owning one-half or a two-headed pig that went great at county fairs.

Ben had come along the year before Ed and got a steady job as brakeman on the railroad, over on the Coeur d'Alene Branch. He told me he was going to make railroading his life work and had started in at the bottom, which was smart of him, seeing he'd just come off a farm. They probably wouldn't of let him start in at the top. Anyway, he was holding down his job as brakeman when Ed sailed in, taking orders for the Home Queen, and taking 'em in plenty, too, being not only persuasive in his methods but a wizard on this here sewing machine. He could make it do everything but play accompaniments for songs--hemming, tucking, frilling, fancy embroidering. He knew every last little dingus that went on it; things I certainly have never learned in all my life, having other matters on my mind. He'd take a piece of silk ribbon and embroider a woman's initials on it in no time at all, leaving her dead set to have this household treasure.

But Ed had tired of sewing machines, like he had of hypnotism and the double-headed Berkshire; and he never kept at anything a minute after it quit exciting him. Ben come down to Red Gap to see his cousin and they had quite a confab about what Ed should next take up for his life work. Ben said it was railroading for his, and some day he'd be a general manager, riding round in his private car and giving orders right and left, though nothing but a humble brakeman now, and finally he talked Ed into the same exalted ambitions. Ed said he had often wanted to ride in a private car himself, and if it didn't take too long from the time you started in he might give railroading a chance to show what it could do for him. Ben said all right, come over with him and he'd get him started as brakeman, with a fine chance to work up to the top.

So, after infesting a few more houses with the Home Queen, Ed went into his new profession. He told me, the last thing, that, even if he didn't stick till he got to the top, it was, anyway, a fine chance for adventure, which was really the thing he had come west of Chicago for. He said night and day he pined for adventure.

He got his adventure right soon after the company's pay roll was adorned with his name. He'd been twisting up brakes on freight cars for ten days till the life looked tame to him, even with a private car at the end, and then all his wildest dreams of adventure was glutted in something like four minutes and thirty seconds. On this eleventh day after he'd begun at the bottom he started to let two big freight cars loaded with concentrates down the spur track, from one of the mines at Burke, having orders to put 'em where the regular train for Wallace could pick 'em up. Burke is seven miles up the canon from Wallace and the grade drops two hundred and thirty-five feet to the mile, being a masterpiece of engineering. Ed gets his two cars to the main line, all right, whistling a careless ditty. Then when they should of stopped they did not. They kept sneaking and creaking along on him. He couldn't get the brake of the forward car up very tight, and in setting the brake of the rear car, with a brakeman's stick for a lever, he broke the chain. Then his two cars really started out looking for adventure.

Ed admits that he had the thrill of his life for seven miles. I guess his wildest cravings for adventure was appeased for the time. He flattened out at the rear end of the last car and let the scenery flash by. He said afterward it looked just one blurred mess to him. His two cars dropped the sixteen hundred and forty-five feet and made the seven-mile distance in four and one-half minutes by standard railroad time. Ed was feeling fairly good, never having rode so fast in his life before, and he was hoping nothing serious would get in the way before the cars slowed up on a level somewhere. He didn't have long to hope this. His cars struck a frog at the upper end of the Wallace yard and left the track. The forward ends plowed into the ground and the rear ends swung over. Ed was shot through the air two hundred and thirty-five feet, as afterward measured by a conscientious employee of the road, and landed in a dump of sawdust by the ice house.

It seems Ben was working in the Wallace yard that day and was the first man to look things over. He put a report on the wire promptly and had a wrecking outfit there to minister to these two injured box cars, and a gang of Swedes repairing the track in no time at all. Then someone with presence of mind said they ought to look for Ed, and Ben agreed; so everybody searched and they found him in this sawdust. He looked extremely ruined and like this little adventure had effected structural modifications in him. He certainly had been brought down out of control, like Squat says, but he was still breathing; so they took him over to the Wallace Hospital on a chance that he could be put together again, like a puzzle. A doctor got to work and set a lot of bones and did much plain and fancy sewing on Ed the adventurer.

So there he was, bedfast for about three months; but, of course, he begun to enjoy his accident long before that--almost as soon as he come to, in fact. It seemed to Ed that there had never been so good an accident as that in the whole history of railroading, and he was the sole hero of it. He passed his time telling the doctor all about it, and anyone else that would drop in to listen: just how he felt when the cars started downhill; how his whole past life flashed before him and just what he was thinking about when the cars poured him off. He was remembering every second of it by the time he was able to get on crutches. He never used that old saying about making a long story short.

First thing he did when he could hobble was to take a man from the resident engineer's office out to the point where he'd left the rails and tape his flight, finding it to be two hundred and thirty-five feet. That hurt his story, because he had been estimating it at five hundred feet; but he was strictly honest and accepted the new figures like a little man.

That night Ben come in, who'd been up round Spokane mostly since the accident, and Ed told him all about it; how his flight was two hundred and thirty-five feet. And wasn't it the greatest accident that ever happened to anybody?

Ed noticed that Ben didn't seem to be excited about it the way he had ought to be. He was sympathetic enough for Ed's bone crashes, but he said it was all in the day's work for a railroad man; and he told Ed about some other accidents that was right in a class along with his and mebbe even a shade better. Ed was peeved at this; so Ben tried to soothe him. He said, yes, indeed, all hands had been lucky--especially the company. He said if them two cars hadn't happened to strike soft ground that took the wheels they'd been smashed to kindling; whereas the damage was trifling. This sounded pretty cold to Ed. He said this railroad company didn't seem to set any exaggerated value on human life. Ben said no railroad company could let mere sentiment interfere with business if it wanted to pay dividends, and most of them did. He said it was a matter of dollars and cents like any other business, and Ed had already cost 'em a lot of good hard cash for doctor's bills. Then he admitted that the accident had been a good thing for him, in a way, he being there on the spot and the first to make a report over to the superintendent at Tekoa.

"I bet you made a jim-dandy good report," says Ed, taking heart again after this sordid dollars-and-cents talk. "It was certainly a fine chance to write something exciting if a man had any imagination. You probably won't have another chance like that in all your career."

"My report pleased the Old Man all right," says Ben. "He's kind of had his eye on me ever since. He said the way I worded that report showed I wasn't one to lose my head and get hysterical, the way he had known some green hands to do."

"I'll certainly have to have a look at that report," says Ed. "Probably you did get a little bit hysterical at that seeing there was lots of excuse for it."

Ben says no, he can't remember that he was hysterical any, because the high-class railroad man must always keep his head in emergencies. Ed says, anyway he knows it must of been a corking good report, and he'll sure have a look at it when he gets to stepping again.

All the same, it begun to look to Ed like his accident wasn't being made enough of. It come over him gradually. Of course he'd got to be an old story round the hospital and people was beginning to duck when he started talking. Then, after he got on crutches he'd hobble about the fatal spot, pointing out his route to parties that would stay by him, and getting 'em to walk over two hundred and thirty-five feet to where he was picked up lifeless. And pretty soon even this outside trade fell off. And right after that he begun to meet new trainmen and others that had never heard a word about the accident and looked at him like they thought he was a liar when he told the details. He was coming to be a grouchy nuisance round Wallace. Even the doctor said he'd be glad when Ed got entirely well again.

Ed couldn't understand it. He must of thought the company should stop all trains for five minutes every day at the hour of his mix-up, or at the very least that the president of the road and the board of directors ought to come down in a special car and have their pictures taken with him; and a brass tablet should be put up on the ice house, showing where his lifeless carcass was recovered. And of course they would send him a solid gold engraved pass, good for life between all stations on all divisions. But these proper attentions was being strangely withheld. So far as Ed could see, the road had gone right on doing business as usual.

He couldn't understand it at all. It seemed like he must be dreaming. He wrote to Ben, who was still up the line, that this here fine report he had made must of got lost; anyway, it seemed like the company had never got round to reading it or they wouldn't have took things so placid. By now he was pinning all his hopes to this report of Ben's if any justice was going to be done him in this world. He'd tell parties who doubted his story that he guessed they'd believe him fast enough if they ever got an eye on Ben's report, which was made on the spot, and was so good a report, though not hysterical, that it had drawn compliments from the division superintendent.

It occurs to him one day that he ought to have a copy of this report if he is ever going to be set right before the world. He suspects crooked work by this time. He suspects mebbe the company is keeping the thing quiet on purpose, not wanting the public to know that such wonderful accidents could happen to its faithful employees. So he talks to Charlie Holzman, the conductor of Number 18, and wants to know would it be possible to sneak this report of Ben's out of the files over at Tekoa. Charlie says that wouldn't be possible, but he's going to lay over at Tekoa the very next night and he'll be glad to make a copy of the report.

Ed says he hates to keep Charlie setting up half the night writing, or mebbe all night, because Ben has told him the report was a good one. Charlie says he'll get help if necessary. Ed says get all the help necessary and he'll pay the bill, and not to leave out even the longer descriptive parts, because if it's as well written as Ben says it is he may have it printed in a little volume for sending round to his friends.

The next day Ed is sunning himself on the station platform when Number 18 steams in. He's told a lot of people that Charlie is bringing this report and he's aiming to read it aloud, just to show 'em what a man can pass through and live to tell of it. Charlie swings down and hands him one folded sheet of yellow paper. Ed says, what's the matter--couldn't he get to copy the report? Charlie says the report is all there on that sheet, every word of it. One sheet! And Ed had been expecting at least forty pages of able narrative, even without hysteria. Even before he looks at it Ed says there is crooked work somewhere.

Then he read Ben's report. It didn't fill even the one sheet--not more than half of it. It merely says: "Brakeman Steptoe had trouble holding two cars of concentrates he was letting down from the Tiger-Poorman mine at Burke. Cars ran to Wallace and left track. Steptoe thrown some distance. Right leg and arm broken; left shoulder dislocated; head cut some. Not serious."

It was unbelievable; so Ed did the simple thing and didn't believe it. Not for one minute! He says to Charlie Holzman: "Charlie, I know you're honest; and, furthermore, you are a brother Moose. You've brought me what's on file in that office; so now I know there's a conspiracy to hush my accident up. I've thought so a long time--the way people acted round here. Now I know it. Don't say a word; but I'm going to take it up with Ben at once. Good old Ben! Won't he be in a frenzy when he finds this paltry insult has been sneaked into the files in place of his report on me!" So into the station he goes and wires Ben up the line to come there at once on account of something serious.

Ben gets in that night. He thought Ed must be dying and had got a lay-off. He goes over to the hospital and is a mite disappointed to find Ed ain't even worse, but is almost well and using only one crutch.