Part 4

In the few hours left before dawn that morning, there wasn’t time to give much attention to the cause. There was enough else to think of, enough to give every last man on the division from car tink to superintendent all, and more, than they could handle--the investigation could come later. But it never came.

There was no need for one. How did they find out? It came like the crack of doom, and Breen got it--got it--and it seemed to burst the floodgates of his memory open, seemed to touch that dormant chord, and he knew, knew as he knew that he had a God, what he had done.

They found the order that made the meeting point Elktail tucked in Mooney’s jumper when, after they got the crane at work, they hauled him out from under his engine. Who was Mooney? Engineer of the freight. They found him before they did any of his train crew, or his fireman either, for that matter. Dead? Yes. I’m a dispatcher, look at it from the other side if you want to, it’s only fair. That bit of tissue cleared Mooney, of course--but it sent him to his death. Yes, I know, good God, don’t you think I _know_ what it means--to slip?

It was just before Davis, Breen’s relief, came on for the morning trick, in fact Davis was in the room, when Breen got the report. He scribbled it on a pad, word by word as it came in, for Carleton to see. For a minute it didn’t seem to mean anything to him, and then, as I say, he got it. I never saw such a look on a man’s face before, and I pray God I never may again. He seemed to wither up, blasted as the oak is blasted by a lightning stroke. The horror, the despair, the agony in his eyes are beyond any words of mine to describe, and you wouldn’t want to hear it if I could tell you. He held out his arms pitifully like a pleading child. His lips moved, but he had to try over and over again before any sound came from them. There was no thought of throwing the blame on anybody else. Breen wasn’t that kind. Oh, yes, he could have done it. He could have put the blunder on the night man at the Gap where Mooney received his Elktail holding order, and Breen’s order book would have left it an open question as to which of the two had made the mistake--would probably have let him out and damned the other. You say from the way he acted he didn’t think of that and therefore the temptation didn’t come to him. Yes, I know what you mean. Not so much to Breen’s credit, what? Well, I don’t know, it depends on the way you look at it. I’d rather believe the thought didn’t come because the man’s soul was too _clean_. It was clean them--no matter what he did afterward.

There have been death scenes of dispatchers before, many of them--there will be others in the days to come, many of them. So long as there are railroads and so long as men are frail as men, lacking the infallibility of a higher power, just so long will they be inevitable. But no death scene of a dispatcher’s career was ever as this one was. Breen was his own judge, his own jury, his own executioner. Do you think I could ever forget his words? He pointed his hand toward the window that faced the western stretch of track, toward the foothills, toward the mighty peaks of the Rockies that towered beyond them, and the life, the being of the man was in his voice. They came slowly, those words, wrenched from a broken heart, torn from a shuddering soul.

“I wish to God that it were me in their stead. Christ be merciful! I did it, Carleton. I don’t know how. I did it.”

No one answered him. No one spoke. For a moment that seemed like all eternity there was silence, then Breen, his arms still held out before him, walked across the room as a blind man walks in his own utter darkness, walked to the door and passed out--alone. Those few steps across the room--alone! I’ve thought of that pretty often since--they seemed so horribly, grimly, significantly in keeping with what there was of life left for the stricken man--_alone_. It’s a pretty hard word, that, sometimes, and sometimes it brings the tears.

I don’t know how I let him go like that. I was too stunned to move I guess, but I reached him at the foot of the stairs as he stepped out onto the platform. There wasn’t anything I could say, was there? What would you have said?

No man knew better than Breen himself what this would mean to him. He was wrecked, wrecked worse than that other wreck, for his was a living death. There weren’t any grand jurys or things of that kind out here then, not that it would have made any difference to Breen if there had been. You can’t put any more water in a pail when it’s already full, can you? You can’t add to the maximum, can you? don’t you think Breen’s punishment was beyond the reach of man or men to add to, or, for that matter, to abate by so much as the smallest fraction? It was, God knows it was--all except one final twinge, that I believe now settled him, though I’ll say here that whatever it did to Breen it’s not for me to judge her. Who am I, that I should? It is between her and her Maker. I’ll come to that in a minute.

Yes, Breen knew well enough what it meant to him, but his thoughts that morning as we walked up the street weren’t, I know right well, on himself--he was thinking of those others. And I, well, I was thinking of Breen. Wouldn’t you? I told you I owed Breen everything I had in the world. Neither of us said a word all the way up to his boarding-house. It was almost as though I wasn’t with him for all the attention he paid to me. But he knew I was there just the same. I like to think of that. I wasn’t very old then--I’m not offering that as an excuse, for I’m not ashamed to admit that I was near to tears--if I’d been older perhaps I could have said or done something to help. As it was, all I could do was to turn that one black thought over and over and over again in my mind. Breen’s living death, death, death, death. That’s the way it hit me, the way it caught me, and the word clung and repeated itself as I kept step beside him.

He was dead, dead to hope, ambition, future, everything, as dead as though he lay outstretched before me in his coffin. It seemed as if I could see him that way. And then, don’t ask me why, I don’t know, I only know such things happen, come upon you unconsciously, suddenly, there flashed into my mind that bit of verse from the Bible, you know it--“if a man die, shall he live again?” I must have said it out loud without knowing it, for he whirled upon me quick as lightning, placed his two hands upon my shoulders, and stared with a startled gaze into my eyes. I say startled. It was, but there was more. There seemed for a second a gleam of hope awakened, hungry, oh, how hungry, pitiful in its yearning, and then the uselessness, the futility of that hope crushed it back, stamped it out, and the light in his eyes grew dull and died away.

We had halted at the door of his boarding-house and I made as though to go upstairs with him to his room, but he stopped me.

“Not now, Charlie, boy,” he said, shaking his head and trying to smile; “not now. I want to be alone.”

And so I left him.

Alone! _He wanted to be alone_. Were ever words more full of cruel mockery! It seems hard to understand sometimes, doesn’t it? And we get to questioning things we’d far better leave alone. I know at first I used to wonder why Almighty God ever let Breen make that slip. He could have stopped it, couldn’t He? But that’s riot right. We’re running on train orders from the Great Dispatcher, and the finite can’t span the infinite.

Maybe you’ll think it queer that I left Breen like that, let him go to his room alone. You’re thinking that in his condition he might do himself harm--end it all, to put it bluntly. Well, that thought didn’t come to me then, it did afterward, but not then. Why? It must have been just the innate consciousness that he wouldn’t do that sort of thing. Some men face things one way, some face them another. It’s a question of individuality and temperament. I don’t think Breen could have done anything like that, I know he seemed so far apart from it in my mind that, as I say, the thought didn’t come to me. He was too big a man, big enough to have faced what was before him, faced conditions, faced the men, though God knows they treated him like skulking coyote, if it had not been for her. I want to stand right on this. Breen would never have done what he did if she had $cted differently. That much I know. But, I want to say it again, I’ve no right to judge her.

Perhaps you’ve read that story of Kipling’s about the Black Tyrone Regiment that saw their dead? Well, Breen, as I told you, at the beginning, wasn’t popular, and the boys had seen their dead. Do you understand? Pariah, outcast, what you like, they made him, all except pity they gave him, and I say he would have taken it all, accepted it all, only there are some things too heavy for a man to bear, aren’t there? Load limit, the engineers call it when they build their bridge. Well, there’s a load limit on the heart and brain and soul of a man just as there is on a bridge; and while one, strained beyond the breaking point, goes crashing in a horrid mass of twisted wreckage to the bottom of the canon, to the bottom of the gorge, into the rushing, boiling waters of the river beneath, the other crashes, a damned soul, to the bottom of hell. Kitty Mooney had seen her dead. Kitty Mooney, the engineer’s sister! And Breen loved her, was going to marry her. That’s all.

How do I know? How do you know? Perhaps it was grief, perhaps it was hysteria, perhaps it was according to the light God gave her and she couldn’t understand, perhaps it was only wild, unreasoning, frantic passion. I don’t know. I only know she called him--a _murderer_. She couldn’t have loved him, you say. Perhaps no, perhaps yes. Does it make any difference? Breen thought she did, and Breen loved _her_. I don’t know. I only know that where he looked for a ray of mercy, _her_ mercy, to light the blackened depths, for the touch, _her_ touch, that would have held him back from the brink, for the word of comfort, _her_ word, that would have bid him stand like a gallant soldier facing untold odds, he received, instead, a condemnation more terrible than any that had gone before, and a bleeding heart dried bitter as gall, a patient, grief-stricken man became a vicious snapping wolf, and “Angel” Breen--a devil.

Would I have been a stronger man than Breen? Would you? Would I have done differently than Kitty Mooney did if I had been in her place? Would you? We don’t know, do we? No one knows. God keep us from ever knowing. The poor devil in the gutters, the wretched, ruined lives of women who have lost their grip and drunk the dregs, the human, stranded, battered wrecks we see around us, were once like you and me. We don’t know, do we? God pity them! God keep us from the sneer! Our strength has never been measured. It may be no greater than theirs. To-morrow it may be you or I.

It was pretty lawless out here in those days. We had the riff-raff of the East, and worse; and there was nothing to restrain them, nothing much to keep them in check, and they did about as they liked. They brought the touch into the picture of the West that the West hasn’t lived down yet, and I’m not sure ever will. The brawling, gambling, gun-handling type, the thief, the desperado, the bad man, rotten bad, bad to the core. They’ve been stamped out now most of them, but it was different then. _They_ didn’t turn a cold shoulder to Breen. Why should they? They were outcasts and pariahs, too, weren’t they? And Breen, well, I guess you understand as well as I do, and you know as I know that when a man like that goes he goes the limit. There’s no middle course for some men, they’re not made that way.

Whatever holds them for good, or whatever holds them for bad, it holds them all, either way, all, body, mind and spirit, all. And that is true in spite of the fact that, often enough, there’s some one thing, it may be a little thing, it may be a big thing, but some one thing that the worst of us balk at, can’t do. It’s not morality, it’s not conscience, a man gets way beyond all that; it’s a memory of the past perhaps, a something bred in him from babyhood. I don’t know. You can’t treat human nature like a specimen on the glass slide under a microscope. There is no specimen. As there are millions of people, so is each one in some way different from the other. You can’t classify, you can’t tabulate the different kinks into a list and learn it by heart, can you? The man who says he knows human nature says he is as wise as the God who made him, and that man is a poor fool. That’s right, isn’t it? And so I say that, strange as it may seem, in the worst of us, fall as low as we will, there’s generally some one thing our soul, what’s left of it, revolts at doing. Breen was a railroad man. Railroading was in his blood. I want you to get that. It was part of him. Any man that’s worth his salt in this business is that way. It’s in the blood or it isn’t; you’re a railroad man or you’re not.

Breen disappeared from Big Cloud and I didn’t see him from the day Kitty Mooney turned him from her door until the night--but I’m coming to that--that’s the end. There’s a word or two that goes before--so that you’ll understand. He disappeared from Big Cloud, but he didn’t leave the mountains. Maybe back of it all, an almost impossible theory if you like, but I can understand it, a something in him wouldn’t let him run away. He did run away, you say. Yes, but there’s the queer brain kink again. Perhaps he temporized. You temporize. I temporize. We try to fool and delude sometimes, snatch at loopholes, snatch at straws, to bolster up our self-respect, don’t we? That’s what I mean when I say it’s possible he couldn’t run away. He clung to the straw, the loophole, that running away was measured in _miles_. I don’t say that was it, for I don’t know. It’s possible. We heard of him from time to time as the months went by, and the things we heard weren’t pleasant things to hear. He drifted from bad to worse, until that something that he couldn’t do brought him to a halt--brought the end.

Don’t ask me when Breen threw in his lot with Black Dempsey and the band of fiends that called him leader--the ugliest, soul-blackened set of fiends that ever polluted the West, and that’s using pretty strong language. Don’t ask me how Breen got to Big Cloud that night away from the others waiting to begin their hellish work. Don’t ask me. I don’t know. _Why_ he did it--is different. That, I can tell you. What they wanted him to do, to have a part in, was that one thing I was speaking about, the one thing he couldn’t do. Breen was a railroad man, railroading was in his blood, that’s all--but it’s everything--railroading was in his blood. As for the rest, maybe he didn’t know what they were really up to until the last moment, and then stole away from them. Maybe they found it out, suspected him, and some of them followed him, tried to stop him, tried to keep him from reaching here. But what’s the use of speculating? I never knew, I never will know. Breen can’t tell me, can he? And all that I can tell you is what I saw and heard that night.

I had the night trick then--Breen’s job--they gave me Breen’s job. It seemed somehow at first like sacrilege to take it--as though I was robbing him of it, taking it away from him, wronging, stripping, impoverishing the man to whom I owed even the knowledge that made me fit, that made it possible, to hold down a key--his key. Of course, that was only sensitiveness, but you understand, don’t you? It caught me hard when I first “sat in,” but gradually the feeling wore off; not that I ever forgot, I haven’t yet for that matter, only time blunts the sharp edges, and routine, habit, and custom do the rest. I don’t need to tell you that I remember that night. Remember it!

That was before this station was built, and in those days we had an old wooden shack here that did duty for freight house, station, division headquarters, and everything else all rolled into one. The dispatcher’s room was upstairs.

Things were moving slick as a whistle that night. No extra traffic, no road troubles, in--out, in--out, all along the line the trains were running like clockwork from one end of the division to the other. If there was anything on my mind at all it was the Limited, Number Two, eastbound. We were handling a good deal of gold in those days, there was a lot of it being shipped East then--is still, from the Klondyke now, you know--and we were getting a fair share of the business away from the southern competition. We hadn’t had any trouble, weren’t looking for any, but it was pretty generally understood that all shipments of that kind were to get special attention. Number Two was carrying an extra express car with a consignment for the mint that night, so, naturally, I had kept my eye on her more closely than usual all the way through the mountains from the time I got her from the Pacific Division. At the time I’m speaking about, four o’clock in the morning, I was almost clear of her, for she wasn’t much west of Coyote Bend, fifteen miles from here, and she had rights all the way in. Half an hour more at the most, and she would be off my hands and up to the dispatchers of the Prairie Division. She had held her schedule to the tick every foot of the way, and all I was waiting for was the call from Coyote Bend that would report her in and out again into the clear for Big Cloud. Coyote Bend is the first station west of here, you understand? There’s nothing between. She was due at Coyote at 4.05, and I want you to remember this--I said it before, but I want to repeat it. I want you to get it _hard_--she had run to the second all through the night.

My watch was open on the table before me, and I watched the minute hand creep round the dial. 4.03, 4.04, 4.05, 4.06, 4.07, 4.08. I was alone in the office. The night caller had gone out perhaps ten minutes before to call the train crew of the five o’clock local. There wasn’t anything to be nervous about. I don’t put it down to that. Three minutes wasn’t anything. Perhaps it was just impatience, fretfulness. You know how it is when you’re waiting for something to happen, and I was expecting the sounder to break every second with that report from Coyote Bend, Anyway, put it down to what you like, though I didn’t want a drink particularly I pushed back my chair, got up, and walked over to the water cooler. The dispatcher’s table was on the east side of the room, the door opened on the south side, and the water cooler was over in the opposite corner. I’m explaining this so that you’ll understand that the door was _between_ the water cooler and the table. That old shack was rough and ready, and I’ve wondered more than once what ever kept it from falling to pieces. It didn’t take more than a breath of wind to set every window-sash in the outfit rattling like a corps of snare drums. That’s why, I guess, I didn’t hear any one coming up the stairs. It was blowing pretty hard that night. But I heard the door open. I thought it was the caller back again, and I wondered how he’d made his rounds in such quick time. With the tumbler half up to my lips I turned around--then the glass slipped from my fingers and crashed into slivers on the floor. My mouth went dry, my heart seemed to stop. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. It was Breen--“Angel” Breen!

I saw him start at the noise of the splintering glass, but he didn’t look at me. He clung swaying to the door jamb for an instant, his face chalky white, then he reeled across the room--_and dropped into his old chair_. I saw him glance at my watch and his face seemed to go whiter than before, then he snatched at the train sheet and a smile--no, it wasn’t exactly a smile, you couldn’t call it that, his whole face seemed to change, light up, and his lips moved--I know now in a prayer of gratitude. You understand, don’t you? He knew the time-card, knew that Number Two, after he had seen my watch, should have been _out_ of Coyote Bend four, perhaps five, minutes before, but the train sheet showed her: still unreported. His fingers closed on the key and he began to make the Coyote Bend call. Over and over, quick, sharp, clear, incisive, with all the old masterful touch of his sending Breen was rattling the call--cc,cx--cc,cx--cc,cx--cc,cx.

And then I found my voice.

“God in Heaven, Breen!” I stammered, and started toward him. “You! What------”

The sounder broke. Coyote Bend answered. And on the instant Breen flashed this order over the wire.

“Hold Number Two. Hold Number Two”--twice the sender spelled out the words.

Then Coyote Bend repeated the order, and Breen gave back the O. K.

“Breen!” I shouted. “What are you doing? Are you crazy! What are you doing here? Speak, man, what----”

He had straightened in his chair, and a sort of low, catchy gasp came from his lips. It seemed as though it took all his power, all his strength, to lift his eyes to mine. I sprang for the key, but he jerked himself suddenly forward and pushed me desperately away. And then he called me by the old name, not much above a whisper, I could hardly catch the words, and I didn’t understand, didn’t know, that the man before me was a wounded, _dying man_. My brain was whirling, full of that other night, full of the days and months that had followed. I couldn’t think. I----

“Charlie--boy, it’s all right. Black Dempsey in the Cut. I was afraid I was too late--too late. They shot--me--here”--he was tearing with his fingers at his waistcoat.

And then I understood--too late. As I reached for him, he swayed forward and toppled over, a huddled heap, over the key, over the order book, over the train sheet that once had taken his life and now had given it back to him--dead.

What is there to say? Whatever he may have done, however far he may have fallen, back of it all, through it all, bigger than himself, stronger than any other bond was the railroading that was in his blood. Breen was a railroad man.

I don’t know why, do I? You don’t know why, after Number Two had run to schedule all that night, it happened just when it did. It might have happened at some other time--but it didn’t. Luck or chance if you like, more than that if you’d rather think of it in another way, but just a few miles west of Coyote Bend something went wrong in the cab of Number Two. Nothing much, I don’t remember now what it was, don’t know that I ever knew, nothing much. Just enough to hold her back a few minutes, the few minutes that let Breen sit in again on the night dispatcher’s trick, sit in again at the key, hold down his old job once more before he quit railroading forever with the order that he gave his life to send, to keep Number Two from rushing to death and destruction against the rocks and boulders Black Dempsey and his gang had piled across the track in the Cut five miles east of Coyote Bend.

I don’t know. “If a man die, shall he live again?” I leave it to you. I only know that they think a lot of him out here, think a lot of Breen, “Angel” Breen--now.

IV--SPITZER

Spitzer was just naturally born diffident. Sometimes that sort of thing wears off as one grows older, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, it is worse than the most virulent disease--it had been virulent with Spitzer for all of his twenty-two years.