Part 19

“Vait!” cried Dutchy imperiously, as the head of the column reached him. “You, yess; you, no. Vat iss it?” He was sorting the sheep from the goats, allowing the passengers to enter, pushing the railroaders ruthlessly to one side.

“You, yess; you, no. You, yess; you--oh! py golly!”

He had caught sight of Thornley, and, swinging suddenly, struck out viciously in that direction with the rolling-pin. Being obliged, however, to maintain his position in the doorway, the strategic key to the situation, the jab fell short by two or three inches, barely missing Thornley’s nose.

Thornley fell back instinctively.

“Look here, you old ass!” he yelled angrily, “we’ve had about enough of this. It’s past a joke. The company’s got a lien on that joint of yours, and we’ll close it up so tight you’ll never open it again--d’ye hear?”

Dutchy stopped short in the monotonous, “You, yess; you, no,” on which he had recommenced, and his paunch began to shake.

“Yah!” he cried. “Dot iss a joke. Oh, py golly, _lean!_ Dot iss ven you ge-starving get, yah? Ho, ho! Ha, ha!”

In Dutch’s burst of merriment first one and then another joined, until even Thornley, his good nature getting the better of him, roared with the rest at his own expense.

But if this apparent return to good humor on Dutchy’s part inspired any hope in the minds of the railroad men that he had relented and that former friendly relations were to be resumed, they were doomed to disappointment, for Dutchy stolidly continued to allow the passengers to go in and as stolidly barred the entrance to the others.

Then they gave it up, and bought out the slender stock of canned goods and biscuits from the shelves of the general store.

They messed in the baggage-room and they swallowed their scanty portions to the tune of “Die Wacht am Rhein,” bellowed out by a strong and sonorous voice, through the partition, on the other side of which, laid out in tempting confusion, as they were painfully aware, was plenty.

What they had, however, did little more than whet their appetites, and by three o’clock some of the men were talking of carrying the position by storm, helping themselves, and doing a few fancy stunts with Dutchy.

“We can’t have any row,” said Thornley, pulling at his mustache and staring at MacDonald. “What had we better do? The boys’ll be pulling the old shack down around his ears. He’ll fight like blazes, and some one’ll get hurt. And then the company’ll want to know what’s what. Say, the old geeser has got us where he wants us, sure--eh, what?”

MacDonald nodded.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” Thornley went on impressively, “there’s some one besides Dutchy in this. They’ve been giving him a steer, and _I_‘d give a few to know who it is. It’s mighty queer Dutchy would wake up so suddenly to the fact that he was a joke. Then, there isn’t enough to that rebate josh to make him so sore. Some one’s been stringing him good and plenty. What had we better do?”

“I don’t know,” MacDonald answered. “Let’s go and see if we can’t talk him over.”

At the sight of Thornley and the dispatcher heading for the lunch-room, the trainmen and station-hands fell in behind them.

MacDonald halted a few paces from the door.

“You boys, stay here,” he directed. “Let me see what I can do.”

Thornley and the men halted obediently, while MacDonald went on and knocked at the door. There was no response.

“Dut--Mr. Damrosch!” he called. “It’s MacDonald. I want to talk to you.”

This time his knock was answered, and so suddenly as to cause him to jump back in surprise.

“Veil, vat iss it?” demanded Dutchy, scowling belligerently.

“We’re--we’re--” stammered MacDonald, his confidence a little shaken at the proprietor’s attitude. Then, desperately: “Oh, I say, confound it all, Dutchy, we’re hungry.”

“So!” Dutchy’s exclamation was a world of innocent astonishment and kindly interest.

“Yes,” went on MacDonald, diplomatically. “You bet we are. It’s been a good joke, but you’ve had the best end of it. Let’s call it quits, there’s a good fellow, and--and give us all a handout.”

Dutchy listened attentively to the appeal.

“I, a fool iss no longer yet, don’d it?” he queried softly.

“You most decidedly are not,” MacDonald assured him.

“You vill for repates no longer ask, yet?” persisted Mr. Damrosch.

“Not on your life!” replied the dispatcher earnestly, beginning to see daylight. “That’s all off. We’ll apologize, too, if you like. I promise you, we are quite willing to apologize.”

“Veil, den,” announced Mr. Damrosch, “ve vill aggravate”--and he slammed the door in MacDonald’s face.

“Oh, hold on, Dutchy!” cried MacDonald piteously, for he was very hungry. “What did you say?”

“Vat I said iss dot ve vill aggravate!” shouted Dutchy from the other side of the door. “Dot iss English, don’d it? Aggravate!”

“He means arbitrate,” prompted Thornley from the platform.

“Oh, all right!” said MacDonald. “We’ll agree to that, Dutchy. Come on----open up!”

“I vill not mit you aggra--arra--_do it_--hang dot vord!” Dutchy asserted decisively, but again opening the door. “But mit Mister Brett I vill do it.”

“But Mr. Brett isn’t here, you know that,” retorted MacDonald, beginning to get exasperated. “And, what’s more, he won’t be back until the day after tomorrow. I guess you know that, too, don’t you?”

Dutchy smiled a patient, chiding smile. “Dot iss too bad,” he remarked regretfully. “But dot Thornley a pig iss, und you--oh, py golly! you--I could not you pelief. Ve vill vait for Mister Brett.”

He was closing the door again, when MacDonald put his foot against the jamb and, leaning toward Dutchy, said quickly, in an undertone:

“Look here, Dutchy, you’re going too far. If I couldn’t see any farther than you, I’d wear glasses. Now’s the time to make your deal. I’ll help you--see? You can get anything out of the boys now, but you push them too far and they’ll pull the whole outfit down over your ears. You say what you want, and I’ll get it for you.”

Dutchy looked meditatively into MacDonald’s face, and shook his head with a sad smile of wisdom.

“I could not you pelief,” he repeated.

“You don’t have to. You don’t have to believe anybody. Whatever you want us to do we’ll do before you let us in to eat. You can’t lose. What do you say?”

Mr. Damrosch scratched his head pensively, without taking his eyes off the dispatcher. After a minute he tapped MacDonald on the shoulder.

“Veil,” he announced, “I vill tell you. Listen.”

MacDonald listened--incredulously. Then he whistled a low, long-drawn-out note of consternation.

“Well, you’ve got a nerve!” he gasped. “What do you think, eh? The boys’ll never--” He stopped suddenly, a smile came over his face, and he chuckled softly to himself. “Dutchy, you’re great! It’ll be meat for the boys to make Thornley stand for it. That’s what you want to do--make Thornley stand for it. Will the boys make him? Oh, will they! Give them the chance. That’s the way to handle it. I told you I’d help you. Now, make your _spiel_” MacDonald turned to the group on the platform. “Dutchy’ll arbitrate!” he cried.

At this the men began to push forward, but Dutchy stopped them. “Vait as you iss! Ven der--der--hang dot word--iss, den iss it. Vait!”

They waited, and Dutchy began to count on his fingers. “Dere iss sixteen dot breakfasted didn’d,” he began. “Dot--iss--iss--”

“Average ‘em up at a quarter apiece,” prompted MacDonald in a whisper. “That makes four dollars.”

“Iss four dollars--yess,” went on Dutchy. “Veil, I vant dot. Dere iss der crews dot in-came und out-vent und didn’d eat ven der door vas closed. Dot iss two dollars--yess? Veil, I vant dot.”

The men came to, and a roar of derision rent the air, in the face of which even Dutchy was a little shaken.

“Stand pat,” encouraged MacDonald. “You’ve got them coming and going.”

Dutchy held up his hand for silence. “Dere iss der sixteen over again yet dot dinnered didn’d. Dot iss four dollars--yess? Veil, I vant dot. Dot iss four und two and four. Dot iss ten dollars--don’d it? Veil, I vant dot, und den you come in--yess, one py one--for a quarter py each.”

Then, amid the storm of abuse and jeers that greeted Dutchy’s ultimatum, MacDonald, with a final injunction to the proprietor to stand by his guns, turned and joined Thornley and the men.

“Veil, py golly!” screamed Dutchy above the din. “Vat iss it? Who was der commencer of dot joke dot iss ten dollars to pay? It iss dot Thornley!”

“Why, you wretched old thief,” yelled Thornley, “Do you think we’re going to pay you for grub we didn’t get, because you wouldn’t let us have it, and then pay you for it again when you do dole it out? We’ll see you further, first.”

“It vas agreed in front of der--hang dot word!--py der--”

“Agreed nothing!” snorted Thornley.

“Dot you vill for repates no longer ask, yet, don’d it? Veil, der price ten dollars iss. Dere iss no repate. Oh, py golly, Mister Thornley, dot vas an oxpensive joke--yess? Dot vas your joke, und I shusht thought me dot I hope you will pay dot yourself.”

Thornley paid. With no good grace, but because, as MacDonald had said they would, the men made him. Disgruntled and angry, he led the file into the restaurant, placing ten dollars and twenty-five cents in Dutchy’s hand before he crossed the threshold.

Behind him followed MacDonald and the grinning line of men, each contributing their quarters--in advance--for the first square meal they had had that day.

“Eat vat you like,” said Dutchy magnanimously.

Thornley glared. “Eat vat you like! Eat vat you like!” he mimicked savagely. “I like your colossal generosity at my expense!”

For a long time there was no other noise save the rattle of dishes and the busy clatter of knives, forks, and spoons. Then Thornley beckoned to Dutchy.

“Veil, vat iss it?” inquired the proprietor from behind the counter.

“Who put you on to this?” demanded Thornley. “I’ve had to stand for it, and I’d like to know. I would that!”

MacDonald, sitting beside Thornley, noticed, with some misgivings, a peculiar expression sweep over Dutchy’s face, but to his relief the proprietor’s only reply was a grunt, as he answered a call for more coffee.

“By the hokey, I’ll bet it was that red-haired Taggart!” exclaimed Thornley suddenly, turning to the dispatcher.

MacDonald buried his face in his cup, ostensibly to drain the last drop, then he set it down quickly and jerked his watch from his pocket.

“Holy Moses!” he ejaculated, and fled from the room.

An hour later, as Thornley was again sitting with his feet on MacDonald’s desk, Dutchy stuck his head into the room and beckoned to the dispatcher. MacDonald walked across the floor and joined him. Dutchy pulled him out of the room and closed the door.

“Dere iss one thing dot I forgotted did,” announced Mr. Damrosch.

“What’s that?” inquired MacDonald.

“Dere iss five doughnuts dot iss paid for not.”

“Oh!” said MacDonald.

“Dot vas der time you told dot it vas Thornley--yess? Dot vas von dollar py each. Veil, I vant dot--yess?”

“Really!” laughed MacDonald. “Well, I guess _not!_”

“Dot--vas--der--time”--Dutchy was raising his voice, each word growing louder and more distinct than the preceding one. Thornley’s chair inside creaked ominously. MacDonald glanced furtively toward the door, and his face grew red--“you--told--dot----”

With a hasty movement, MacDonald clapped one hand over Dutchy’s mouth, and with the other thrust a five-dollar bill into his fingers.

“Get out!” he choked, and shoved Dutchy violently toward the stairs.

At the bottom, Dutchy halted, turned and looked up with a grin.

“Py golly,” said he, “I shusht thought me dot I like jokes pretty good, and I hope dot----”

“Oh, shut up!” said MacDonald.

XIV--SPECKLES

This happened at a period in the history of the Hill Division when trade was very bad, and the directors, scowling over the company’s annual report, threw up their hands in holy horror; while from the sacred precincts of the board-room there emanated the agonized cry:

“Economy!”

The general manager took up the slogan and dinned it into the ears of the division superintendents.

“Operating expenses are too high,” he wrote. “They must be cut down.” And the superintendents of divisions, painfully alive to the fact that the G. M. was not dictating for the mere pleasure of it, intimated in unmistakable language to the heads of departments under them that the next quarterly reports were expected to show a marked improvement.

John Healy had charge of the roundhouse at Big Cloud, in those days, and the morning after the lightning struck the system he came fuming back across the yards from his interview with the superintendent, stuttering angrily to himself. As he stamped into the running-shed his humor a shade worse than usual the first object that caught his eye was Speckles, squatted on the lee side of 483, dangling his legs in the pit.

That is, it would have been the lee side if Healy had come in the other door.

“Cut down operatin’ expinses, is ut?” Healy muttered. “Begorra, I’ll begin right now!”

And he fired Speckles on the spot.

Now, Speckles--whose name, by the way, was Dolivar Washington Babson--had been fired on several occasions before, and if he swallowed a little more tobacco-juice than was good for his physical comfort it was rather as a gulp of startled surprise at Healy’s appearance than because of any poignant regret at the misfortune that had overtaken him. Nevertheless, he felt it incumbent on himself to expostulate.

“Git out an’ stay out!” said Healy, refusing to argue.

And Speckles got out.

For a day he kept away from the roundhouse, the length of time past experience had taught him was required to cool the turner’s anger; then he sauntered down again and came face to face with Healy on the turntable.

“I came down to ask you to put me on again, Mr. Healy,” he began, broaching the subject timidly.

“Phwat?” demanded Healy.

“I came down to ask you to put me on again, Mr. Healy,” Speckles repeated monotonously.

“Oh, I heard you--I heard you,” said Healy, a little inconsistently. “On ag’in, is ut? Ut’ll be a long toime, me son, mark that!”

This being quite different from Healy’s accustomed, “Well, git back to yer job,” it began to filter vaguely through Speckles’ brain that his name was no longer to adorn the company’s pay-sheets.

“Am I fired for good, Mr. Healy?” he faltered.

“You are!” said Healy. “Just that!” Then, relenting a little as Speckles’ face fell: “If’twere not fer the big-bugs down yonder “--he jerked his thumb in the general direction of the East--“I might--moind, I don’t say I would, but I might--put you on ag’in. As ut is, we’ve instructions to cut down the operatin’ expinses, an’ there’s an ind on ut!”

Speckles stood for a moment in dismay as Healy went back into the roundhouse; then he turned disconsolately away, crossed the tracks to the platform of the station, and, seeking out a secluded corner of the freight-house, sat down upon a packing-case to think it out.

To Speckles it was no mere matter of cutting down expenses. It was a blasted career!

Whatever Speckles’ faults, and he was only a lad, he had one redeeming quality, before which, in the eyes of the business he had elected to follow, his strayings from the straight and narrow path dwindled into insignificance--railroading was born in him.

At ten he had started in as caller for the night-crews, and, during the five years the company had had the benefit of his valuable services in that capacity, there was not a man on the division but sooner or later came to know long-armed, bony, freckled-faced, red-haired Speckles--came to know the little rascal, and like him, too.

Then Speckles had been promoted to the post of sweeper in the roundhouse, and occasionally, under Healy’s critical inspection, to washing out boiler-tubes. Fresh fuel thereby added to the fire of his ambition, he began to figure how long it would be before he got to wiping, then to firing, and after that--even Speckles’ boundless optimism did not have the temerity to specify any particular date--the time when he would attain his goal and get his engine.

Now, instead, at the age of sixteen, he found himself seated on a cracker-box, his dreams for the future rudely shattered--thanks to Healy, old Sour Face Healy!

So Speckles sighed, and as he sighed the shop whistle blew. It was noon, and the men began to pour out of the big gates. Then Speckles, remembering that the schools were also “letting out,” hurried down the platform and up the main street. He would confide in Madge. Madge would understand.

Madge Bolton was the daughter of the ticket agent at the station, and between Mr. Bolton and Speckles there existed a standing feud, the _casus belli_ being fifteen-year-old, blue-eyed Madge. Speckles kicked his heels on the corner until she appeared; then he turned and fell into step beside her, reaching a little awkwardly for her strap of books.

“Hallo, Dol!” was Madge’s greeting. She was the only person in Big Cloud who did not call him Speckles.

“Hallo, Madge!” he returned.

Madge glanced at his face and hands. “Haven’t you been to work?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Why, Dol?”

“Fired,” said Speckles laconically.

“Oh, Dol, again!” she cried reproachfully. “What for?”

“‘Tain’t only the third time, and ‘twasn’t for nothin’,” said Speckles, a bit sullenly. “I was only restin’.”

“Dolivar Babson,” she accused, “you were loafing. Oh, Dol, you’ll never get to firing, and--and--” She hesitated and stopped, her cheeks a little red with the hint of boy-and-girl castle-building that would have increased her father’s ire against the luckless Speckles had he seen it.

Speckles, somewhat shamefaced, and having no excuse to offer, trudged on in silence.

“Did you ask Mr. Healy to take you back?” she inquired, after a moment.

“He won’t,” said Speckles.

“What are you going to do, Dol?”

“I dunno.”

“Well,” said Madge, hopefully, “perhaps you could get a job in one of the stores. I’ll ask Mr. Timmons, the grocer, if you like. I know him pretty well.”

Speckles came to an abrupt and sudden halt, cast in Madge’s face one look that carried with it a world of unutterable reproach, handed over her books in silence--and fled.

He, a railroad man, go into a _store!_ And this from Madge! Madge, who, of all others--it was too much! Speckles ate his dinner, dispirited and crushed. Everything and everybody was against him.

His mother’s curt inquiry as to when he was going back to work did not in any way tend to mitigate his troubles--rather, on the contrary, to accentuate them.

“Old Sour Face won’t put me back,” he jerked out, in response to his mother’s repeated question.

“No wonder he won’t,” said his mother sharply, “if you’re as disrespectful as that. I’m ashamed of you, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Speckles was too much depressed to offer any defense. He finished his meal in silence, gulped down his cup of tea in two swallows, took his hat, and started out.

Unconsciously he directed his steps toward the yards, and, some five minutes later, arrived at the station. Here, about half-way down the platform, he spotted Mat Bolton in the open doorway of the ticket office.

As he approached, the nonchalant air with which the other leaned with folded arms against the jamb of the door aroused Speckles’ suspicions. To reach the seat of his meditations--the cracker-box in the freight shed which had now become his objective point--he would be obliged to pass Mr. Bolton. He therefore began to incline his course toward the edge of the platform nearest the rails, so that, when he came opposite the office door, some fifteen feet were between him and his arch enemy.

Mr. Bolton awoke from his lethargy with surprising suddenness.

“You young rascal,” he shouted, “what you been doing to my girl? I’ll teach you to make girls cry, you little speckled-face runt, you!”

He made a dash for Speckles, but by the time he had recovered his balance and saved himself from toppling over the edge of the platform to the tracks, Speckles had reached the safe retreat of the freight-shed door. And as the irate parent, after shaking his fist impotently, walked back and disappeared within his domain, Speckles indulged in a series of pantomimes in which his fingers and his nose played an intimate and comprehensive part.

Perched once more on the cracker-box, Speckles again resolved himself into a committee on ways and means. His little skirmish with Madge’s father had exhilarated him to such an extent that his heavy and oppressing sense of despondency had vanished, and in its place came a renewed determination to resume, somehow or other, the railroad career that Healy had so emphatically interrupted.

He turned over in his mind the feasibility of applying to Regan, the master mechanic, for a job in the shops, but dismissed the idea almost immediately on the ground that shop men were not, strictly speaking, railroaders.

He might start in switching and braking, and work up to conductor. That, at least, was railroading--not to be compared with engine-driving, not by long odds, but still it was railroading. His face brightened. He would interview Farley, the trainmaster.

Farley was in his office. Speckles had not very far to go, only a few steps down the platform. All the offices--and Big Cloud was division headquarters--were under the same roof.

At Speckles’ request, Farley swung around in his swivel-chair with a quizzical expression on his face. Then he grinned.

“Want to go on with the train-crews, eh? What do you think, kid, that I’m running a kindergarten outfit, even if some of ‘em do act like it? How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” said Speckles, with a sinking heart.

“Sixteen, eh? Well, come back in a couple of years, and----”

But, for the second time that day, Speckles fled. He was in no mood to stand much chaffing, and Farley, as he well knew, had a leaning that way. Speckles halted outside the door, undecided what move to make next, when the clicking of the instruments in the dispatcher’s room overhead came to his ears like an inspiration.

Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Spence, who had been on the night trick most of the years that Speckles was caller, was now chief dispatcher. If he had any friend anywhere, it was Spence, the man at whose elbow he had sat through those long, dark hours of the night that beget confidences, and into whose ears he had so often poured the tales of his cherished aims and ambitions.

Speckles covered the stairs three steps at a time, in his new-found exuberance. Spence looked up from his key and listened as Speckles told his story.

“So you’re Healy’s contribution to economy, eh?” he said when Speckles had finished. “And he won’t take you back?”

“No,” said Speckles.

“Well, that’s pretty rough. But I don’t see how I can help you any, Speckles. I haven’t any rights over Healy, you know.”

Speckles hesitated a moment and fidgeted nervously from one foot to the other. “I know you ain’t,” he began, “but I thought maybe you’d put me on here.”

“W-what!” ejaculated Spence. Then, smothering a laugh at the sight of Speckles’ woebegone countenance, he demanded gravely “You mean dispatching?”

Speckles nodded.

“No, no, Speckles, that would never do. You go back and see Healy. I’ll do what I can for you with him.”

“‘Twon’t do no good,” said Speckles hopelessly. “I’ve asked him twice already.”

“Well, ask him again. Look here, Speckles, it’s up to you to square yourself with Healy, somehow or other. If you want your job very badly, you ought to be sharp enough to find a way of getting it. Go on, now.”