Part 2

Holman, by virtue of railroad etiquette, had climbed to the fireman’s seat and once or twice he had glanced around at the great bulk of the man behind him, at the grim, set features, at the eyes that would not meet his, and wondered at his own temerity in inviting a physical encounter. And what good had it done? Was Carleton right after all? Perhaps. And yet behind the stubbornness, the self-will, the purely physical, there must be the other side of the man. If he could only reach it--only touch it. He _had_ touched it. His appeal for the injured.

Hurley was eating up the miles as only a man at the throttle of a wrecker with clear rights could do it. A long scream from the whistle that echoed through the mountains above the pounding, deafening rush of the train brought Holman back to his immediate surroundings. Another minute and they had swung round the curve and thundered over the trestle that made the approach to the Pass.

Half a mile ahead of them up the track they saw the horror. Hurley latched in his throttle and began to check. As the brake-shoes bit into the tires, Holman slipped off his seat and faced Rafferty. There was a curious look in the other’s eyes, and Holman understood. Understood that here Rafferty was his master--and knew it. So this was the meaning of it. This was how he had touched the other’s better nature! Rafferty had cunningly seized the opportunity of placing him at an even greater disadvantage than before. For an instant he hesitated as he bit his lip, then he canceled the personal equation. “Go ahead, Rafferty,” he said quietly, answering the unspoken challenge, “you’re better up in this sort of thing than I am. You’re in charge.”

And Rafferty without a word swung himself from the cab.

To Holman the first five minutes was unnerving. It was his first bad wreck. Down East it had never been his province to go out with the crew--nor was it here, he reflected grimly, and at that moment was grateful for the veteran Rafferty. It was like some hideous nightmare to him. All along the line of burning wreckage lay the dead, their silence the more awful by contrast with the shrieks and cries of the wounded still imprisoned in the wreck. And then the feeling passed and he worked--worked like a madman.

Once a woman had caught his arm and, sobbing, dragged him toward the stateroom end of one of the Pullmans. Through the smoke and scorching heat of the flames he had fought his way in, then back with the child. The woman had thrown her arms hysterically around his neck.

It was all a mad, furious turmoil, and he gloried in it. The crunch of the ax through glass and woodwork, the wild rush into the heart of things to stagger back blinded and choked with his helpless burden. The fierce joy if life still lingered; the tender reverence if life were gone.

Up the track toward the engine there was a crash and a chorus of excited cries. He rushed in that direction. A half-dozen of the wrecking crew were grouped around the forward baggage-car. As Holman reached them, disheveled, clothes torn and scorched, face blackened with smoke and daubed with blood where glass and splinters had cut him, the men drew back aghast, staring white-faced.

“By God!” one cried. “It’s _him!_”

“Of course it’s me! Are you crazy? What’s the matter with you?”

The man pointed to the blazing car. “Some one said you was in there, and he went in after you just before she crumpled up.”

“Who?” Holman shouted.

“Rafferty.”

Holman made a dash for the car. The men held him back. “Don’t try it, sir; it’s too late to do any good.”

He shook them off, and with his arms crossed in front of his head to protect his face he half stumbled, half fell through the opening that had once been a door. The car was half over on its side. The trunks, dashed into a heap on top of each other when the car had left the track, were all that supported the burning roof timbers. Between the trunks and the edge of the car there was a little space with the floor at an angle of forty-five degrees, and along this, head down, Holman crawled blindly. The floor was already beginning to smolder, the metal-bound edges of the trunks blistered his hands as he touched them. His senses reeled, but on and on he crawled, and in his mind over and over again the one thought: “Rafferty! My God, Rafferty!”

Then his hands touched something soft, and slowly, painfully, inch by inch, he struggled back dragging Rafferty after him. Somehow he reached the door, then a confused jumble of noises and nothing more until he returned to consciousness, and to the knowledge that he was back in his room at Big Cloud with the almond-eyed factotum in attendance.

“Belly much better? Likee eat?” inquired that individual solicitously.

Holman grinned in spite of the pain. “No,” he answered; then as he closed his eyes again he muttered: “Tell Carleton I was right.”

And he was, for two days afterward Rafferty publicly abdicated. He gathered the men in the fitting-shop and mounted to the cab of an engine jacked halfway up to the ceiling as before, only on this occasion it was at noon hour and not in the company’s time. His words were few and to the point, delivered with a force and eloquence that was all his own:

“I sed he was a damned pink-faced dude, so I did. Well, I take ut back, d’ye moind? An’ fwhat’s more, I’ll flatten the face av any man fwhat sez I iver sed ut!”

II--THE LITTLE SUPER

Tommy Regan backed the big compound mogul down past the string of dark-green coaches that he had pulled for a hundred and fifty miles, took the table with a slight jolt, and came to a stop in the roundhouse. As he swung himself from the cab, Healy, the turner, came up to him.

“He’s a great lad, that av yours,” Healy began, with a shake of his head--“a great lad; but mind ye this, Tommy Regan, there’ll be trouble for me an’ you an’ him an’ the whole av us, if you don’t watch him.”

“What’s the matter this time, John?”

“Matter,” said Healy, ruefully; “there’s matter enough. The little cuss come blame near running 429 into the pit a while back, so he did.”

“Where is he now?” Regan asked, with a grin.

“Devil a bit I know. I chased him out, an’ he started for over by the shops. An’ about an hour ago your missus come down an’ said the bhoy was no-wheres to be found, an’ that you was to look for him.” Regan pulled out his watch. “Six-thirty. Well,” he said, “I’ll go over and see if Grumpy knows anything about him. Next time the kid shows up around here, John, you give him the soft side of a tommy-bar, and send him home.”

Healy scratched his head. “I will,” he said; “I’ll do ut. He’s a foine lad.”

Regan crossed the yard to the gates of the big shops. They were still unlocked, and he went through into the storekeeper’s office. Grumpy was sorting the brass time-checks. He glanced up as Regan came in.

“I suppose you’re lookin’ fer yer kid again,” he said sourly.

“That’s what I am, Steve,” Regan returned, diplomatically dispensing with the other’s nickname.

“Well, he ain’t here,” Grumpy announced, returning to his checks. “I’ve just been through the shops, an’ I’d seen him if he was.”

The engineer’s face clouded. “He must be somewhere about, Steve. John said he saw him come over here, and the wife was down to the roundhouse looking for him, so he didn’t go home. Let’s go through the shops and see if we can’t find him.”

“I don’t get no overtime fer chasin’ lost kids,” growled Grumpy.

Nevertheless, he got up and walked through the door leading into the forge-shop, which Regan held open for him. The place was gloomy and deserted. Here and there a forge-fire, dying, still glowed dully. At the end of the room the men stopped, and Grumpy, noting Regan’s growing anxiety, gave surly comfort.

“Wouldn’t likely be here, anyhow,” he said. “Fitting-shop fer him; but we’ll try the machine-shop first on the way through.”

The two men went forward, prying behind planers, drills, shapers, and lathes. The machines took grotesque shapes in the deepening twilight, and in the silence, so incongruous with the usual noisy clang and clash of his surroundings, Regan’s nervousness increased.

He hurried forward to the fitting-shop. Engines on every hand were standing over their respective pits in all stages of demolition, some on wheels, some blocked high toward the rafters, some stripped to the bare boiler-shell. Regan climbed in and out of the cabs, while Grumpy peered into the pits.

“Aw! he ain’t here,” said Grumpy in disgust, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. “I told you he wasn’t. He’s home, mabbe, by now.”

Regan shook his head. “Bunty! Ho, Bunt-_ee_” he called. And again: “Bun-_tee!_”

There was no answer, and he turned to retrace his steps when Grumpy caught him by the shoulder. The big iron door of the engine before them swung slowly back on its hinges, and from the front end there emerged a diminutive pair of shoes, topped by little short socks that had once been white, but now hung in grimy folds over the tops of the boots. A pair of sturdy, but very dirty, bare legs came gradually into view as their owner propelled himself forward on his stomach. They dangled for a moment, seeking footing on the plate beneath; then a very small boy, aged four, in an erstwhile immaculate linen sailor suit, stood upright on the foot-plate. The yellow curls were tangled with engine grease and cemented with cinders and soot. Here and there in spots upon his face the skin still retained its natural color.

Bunty paused for a moment after his exertions to regain his breath, then, still gripping a hammer in his small fist, he straddled the draw-bar, and slid down the pilot to the floor.

Grumpy burst into a guffaw.

Bunty blinked at him reprovingly, and turned to his father.

“I’s been fixin’ the ‘iger-’ed,” he announced gravely.

Regan surveyed his son grimly. “Fixing what?” he demanded.

“The ‘iger-’ed,” Bunty repeated. Then reproachfully: “Don’t know w’at a ‘iger-’ed is?”

“Oh,” said Regan, “the nigger-head, eh? Well, I guess there’s another nigger-head will get some fixing when your mother sees you, son.”

He picked the lad up in his arms, and Bunty nestled confidingly, with one arm around his father’s neck. His tired little head sank down on the paternal shoulder, and before they had reached the gates Bunty was sound asleep.

In the days that followed, Bunty found it no easy matter to elude his mother’s vigilance; but that was only the beginning of his troubles. The shop gates were always shut, and the latch was beyond his reach. Once he had found them open, and had marched boldly through, to find his way barred by the only man of whom he stood in awe. Grumpy had curtly ordered him away, and Bunty had taken to his heels and run until his small body was breathless.

The roundhouse was no better. Old John would have none of him, and Bunty marveled at the change.

He was a railroad man, and the shops were his heritage. His soul protested vigorously at the outrage that was being heaped upon him.

It took him some time to solve the problem, but at last he found the way. Each afternoon Bunty would trudge sturdily along the track for a quarter of a mile to the upper end of the shops, where the big, wide engine doors were always open. Here four spur-tracks ran into the erecting-shop, and Bunty found no difficulty in gaining admittance. Once safe among the fitting-gang, the little Super, as the men called him, would strut around with important air, inspecting the work with critical eyes.

One lesson Bunty learned. Remembering his last interview with his mother, he took good care not to be locked in the shops again. So each night when the whistle blew he fell into line with the men, and, secure in their protection, would file with them past Grumpy as they handed in their time-checks. And Grumpy, unmindful of the spur-tracks, wondered how he got there, and scowled savagely.

When Bunty was six, his father was holding down the swivel-chair in the Master Mechanic’s office of the Hill Division, and Bunty’s allegiance to the shops wavered. Not from any sense of disloyalty; but with his father’s promotion a new world opened to Bunty, and fascinated him. It was now the yard-shunter and headquarters that engaged his attention. The years, too, brought other changes to Bunty. The curls had disappeared, and his hair was cut now like his father’s. Long stockings had replaced the socks, and he wore real trousers; short ones, it is true, but real trousers none the less, with pockets in them.

When school was over, he would fly up and down the yard on the stubby little engine, and Healy, doing the shunting then and forgetting past grievances, would let Bunty sit on the driver’s seat. In time Bunty learned to pull the throttle, but the reversing-lever was too much for his small stature, and the intricacies of the “air” were still a little beyond him. But Healy swore he’d make a driver of him--and he did.

The evenings at the office Bunty loved fully as well. Headquarters were not much to boast about in those days. That was before competition forced a doubletrack system, and the train-dispatcher, with his tissue sheets, still held undisputed sway. They called them “offices” at Big Cloud out of courtesy--just the attic floor over the station, with one room to it. The floor space each man’s desk occupied was his office.

Here Bunty would sit curled up in his father’s chair and listen to the men as they talked. If it was anything about a locomotive, he understood; if it was traffic or bridges or road-bed or dispatching, he would pucker his brows perplexedly and ask innumerable questions. But most of all he held Spence, the chief dispatcher, in deep reverence.

Once, to his huge delight, Spence, holding his hand, had let him tap out an order. It is true that with the O. K. came back an inquiry as to the brand the dispatcher had been indulging in; but the sarcasm was lost on Bunty, for when Spence with a chuckle read off the reply, Bunty gravely asked if there was any answer. Spence shook his head and laughed. “No, son; I guess not,” he said. “We’ve got to maintain our dignity, you know.”

That winter, on top of the regular traffic, and that was not light, they began to push supplies from the East over the Hill Division, preparing to double track the road from the western side of the foothills as soon as spring opened up. And while the thermometer crept steadily to zero, the Hill Division sweltered.

Everybody and everything got it, the shops and the road-beds, the train crews and the rolling-stock. What little sleep Carleton, the super, got, he spent in formulating dream plans to handle the business. Those that seemed good to him when he awoke were promptly vetoed by the barons of the General Office in the far-off East.

Regan got no sleep. He raced from one end of the division to the other, and he did his best. Engine crews had to tinker anything less than a major injury for themselves: there was no room in the shops for them.

But the men on the keys got it most of all. As the days wore into months, Spence’s face grew careworn and haggard; and the irritability from overwork of the men about him added to his discomfort. Human nature needs a safety-valve, and one night near the end of January when Regan and Carleton and Spence were gathered at the office, with Bunty in his accustomed place in his father’s chair, the master mechanic cut loose.

“It’s up to you, Spence,” he cried savagely, bringing his fist down with a crash on the desk. “There ain’t a pair of wheels on the division fit to pull a hand-car. Every engine’s a cripple, and getting lamer every day. The engine ain’t built, nor never will be, that’ll stand the schedule you’re putting them on through the hills, especially through the Gap. That’s a three per cent, with the bed like an S. You can’t make time there; you’ve got to crawl. You’re pulling the stay-bolts out of my engines, that’s what you’re doing.”

Carleton, being in no angelic mood, and glad to vent his feelings, growled assent.

Spence raised his head from the keys, a red tinge of resentment on his cheeks. He picked up his pipe, packing it slowly as he looked at Regan and the super. “I’m taking all they’re sending,” he said quietly. He reached over for the train-sheet and handed it to the super. “You and Regan here are growling about the schedule. It’s your division, Carleton; but I’m not sure _you_ know just what we’re handling every twenty-four hours. It’s push them through on top of each other somehow, or tell them down-East we can’t handle them. Do you want to do that?”

“No,” said Carleton, “I don’t; and what’s more, I won’t.”

Spence nodded. “I rather figured that was your idea. Well, we’ve about all we can do without nagging one another. I’m near in now, and so are you and Regan here, both of you. I’ve got to make time, Gap or no Gap. There’s so much moving there isn’t siding enough to cross them.”

“You’re right,” said Carleton; “we can’t afford to jump each other. We’re all doing our best, and each of us knows it. How’s Number One and Two tonight?”

Spence studied for a moment before he answered: “Number One is forty minutes off, and Number Two’s an hour to the bad.”

Carleton groaned. The Imperial Limited West and East, officially known on the train-sheets as One and Two, carried both the transcontinental mail and the de-luxe passengers. Of late the East had been making pertinent suggestions to the Division Superintendent that it would be as well if those trains ran off the Hill Division with a little more regard for their established schedule. So Carleton groaned. He got up and put on his hat and coat preparatory to going home. “Look here,” he said from the doorway, “they’ll stand for ‘most anything if we don’t misuse One and Two. They’re getting mighty savage about that, and they’ll drop hard before long. You fellows have got to take care of those trains, if nothing else on the division moves. That’s orders. I’ll shoulder all kicks coming on the rest of the traffic. Good-night.”

When Bunty left the office that night and walked home with his father, he had learned that there was another side to railroading besides the building and repairing of engines, and the delivery of magic tissue sheets to train crews that told them when and where to stop, and how to thread their way through hills and plains on a single-track road, with heaps of other trains, some going one way, some another. He understood vaguely and in a hazy kind of way that somewhere, many, many miles away, were men who sat in judgment on the doings of his father and Spence and Carleton; that these men were to be obeyed, that their word was law, and that their names were President and Directors.

So Bunty, trotting beside his father, pondered these things. Being too weighty for him, he appealed: “Daddy, what’s president and directors?”

Regan’s temper being still ruffled, he answered shortly: “Fools, mostly.”

Bunty nodded gravely, and his education as a railroad man was almost complete. The rest came quickly, and the Gap did it.

The Gap! There was not a man on the division, from track-walker to superintendent, who would not jump like a nervous colt if you said “Gap!” to them offhand and short-like. A peaceful stretch of track it looked, a little crooked, as Regan said, hugging the side of the mountain at the highest point of the division. The surroundings were undeniably grand. A sheer drop of eighteen-hundred feet to the canon below, with the surrounding mountains rearing their snow-capped peaks skyward, completed a picture of which the road had electrotypes and which it used in their magazine-advertising. What the picture did not show was the two-mile drop, where the road-bed took a straight three per cent and sometimes better, to the lower levels. So when Carleton or Spence or Regan, reading their magazines, saw the picture, they shuddered, and, remembering past history and fearful of the future, turned the page hurriedly.

But to Bunty the Gap possessed the fascination of the unknown. He was wakened early the next morning by his father’s voice talking excitedly over the special wire with headquarters about the Gap and a wreck. He sat bolt upright, and listened with all his might; then he crawled noiselessly out of bed, and began to dress hastily. He heard his father speaking to his mother, and presently the front door banged. Bunty was dressed by that time and he crept downstairs and opened the door softly.

It was just turning daylight as he started on a run for the yard. It was not far to the office,--a hundred yards or so,--and Bunty reached there in record time. Across the tracks by the roundhouse they were coupling on to the wrecker; and answering hasty summons, men, running from all directions, were quickly gathering.

Bunty hesitated a minute on the platform, then he entered the station and tiptoed softly up the stairs. The office door was open, and from the top stair Bunty could see into the room. The night lamp was still burning on the dispatcher’s desk, and Spence was sitting there, working with frantic haste to clear the line. In the center of the room, the super, his father, and Flannagan, the wrecking boss, were standing.

“It’s a freight smash,” Carleton was saying to Flannagan--“east edge of the Gap. You’ll have rights through, and no limit on your permit. Tell Emmons if he doesn’t make it in better than ninety minutes he’ll talk to me afterward. By the time you get there, Number Two will be crawling up the grade. She’s pulling the Old Man’s car, and that means get her through somehow if you have to drop the wreck, over the cliff. You can back down to Riley’s to let her pass. We’ll do the patching up afterward. Understand?”

Flannagan nodded, and glanced impatiently at Spence.

The super opened and shut his watch. “Ready, Spence?” he asked shortly.

“Just a minute,” Spence answered quietly.

Bunty waited to hear no more. He turned and ran down the stairs and across the tracks as fast as his legs would carry him. He scrambled breathlessly up the steps of the tool-car and edged his way in among the men grouped near the door. He was fairly inside before they noticed him.

“Hello,” cried Allan, Bunty’s bosom friend of the fitting-gang days, “here’s the little Super! What you doin’ here, kid?”

“I’m going up to the wreck,” Bunty announced sturdily.

The men laughed.

“Well, I guess _not_ much, you’re not,” said Allan. “What do you think your father would say?”

“Nothing,” said Bunty, airily. “I just comed from the office,” he added artfully, “and I’ll tell you about the wreck if you like.”

The men grouped around him in a circle.

“It’s at the Gap,” Bunty began, sparring for time as through the window he saw Flannagan coming from the office at a run. “And it’s a freight train, and--and it’s all smashed up, and----”

The train started with a jerk that nearly took the men off their feet. At the same time Flannagan’s face appeared at the car door.

“All here, boys?” he called. Then he announced cheerfully: “The devil’s to pay up the line!”

Meanwhile, Bunty, taking advantage of the interruption, had squirmed his way through the men to the far end of the car, and the train had bumped over the switches on to the main line before they remembered him. Then it was too late. They hauled him out from behind a rampart of tools, where he had intrenched himself, and Flannagan shook his fist, half-angrily, half-playfully, in Bunty’s face.

“You little devil, what are you doing here, eh?” he demanded.

And Bunty answered as before: “I’m going up to the wreck.”

“Humph!” said Flannagan, with a grin. “Well, I guess you are, and I guess you’ll be sorry, too, when you get back and your dad gets hold of you.”

But Bunty was safe now, and he only laughed.