Part 7
Shanley stopped short, and, resorting to his favorite habit, blinked.
“Carleton. Get it? Carleton,” repeated the messenger, evidently by no means sure that he was thoroughly understood; and then, for a parting shot as he sailed gayly up the street: “Gee, but you’re pretty!”
Carleton! Shanley had forgotten all about Carleton for the moment. His hand instinctively went into his pocket--and then he groaned. He remembered Carleton. But worst of all, he remembered Carleton’s twenty.
There were two courses open to him. He could sneak out of town with all possible modesty and dispatch, or he could face the music. Not that Shanley debated the question--the occasion had never yet arisen when he hadn’t faced the music--he simply experienced the temptation to “crawl,” that was all.
“It looks to me,” he ruminated ruefully, “as though I was up against it for fair. Just my luck, just my blasted luck, always the same kind of luck, that’s what. ‘Tain’t my fault neither, is it? I ain’t responsible for that darned wreck--if ‘twasn’t for that I wouldn’t be here. An’ Kelly, Spider he said his name was, if ‘twasn’t for him I wouldn’t be here neither. What the blazes did _I_ have to do with it? I always have to stand for the other cuss. That’s me every time, I guess. An’ that’s logic.”
It was. Neither was there any flaw in it as at first sight might appear, for the last test of logic is its power of conviction. Shanley, from being a man with some reasonable cause for qualms of conscience, became, in his own mind, one deeply sinned against, one injured and crushed down by the load of others he was forced to bear.
He explained this to Carleton while the thought of his burning wrongs was still at white heat, and before the super had a chance to get in a word. He began as he opened the office door, continued as he crossed the room, and finished as he stood before the super’s desk.
The scowl that had settled on Carleton’s face, as he looked up at the other’s entrance, gradually gave way to a hint of humor lurking around the corners of his mouth, and he leaned back in his chair and listened with an exaggerated air of profound attention.
“Just so, just so,” said he, when Shanley finally came to a breathless halt. “Now perhaps you will allow _me_ to say a word. It may not have occurred to you that I sent for you in order that _I_ might do the talking--h’m?”
This really seemed to require no answer, so Shanley made none.
“Yesterday,” went on Carleton, “you came to me for a job, and I gave you one, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” admitted Shanley, licking his lips.
“Just so,” said Carleton mildly. “I hired you then. I fire you now. Pretty quick work, what?”
“You’re the doctor,” said Shanley evenly enough. He had, for all his logic, expected no more nor less--he was too firm a believer in his own particular and exclusive brand of luck. “You’re the doctor,” he repeated. “There’s a matter of twenty bucks------
“I was coming to that,” interrupted Carleton; “but I’m glad _you_ mentioned it. I’ll be honest enough to admit that I hardly expected you would. A man who acts as you’ve acted doesn’t generally--h’m?”
“I told you ‘twasn’t my fault,” said Shanley stubbornly.
Carleton reached for his pipe, and struck a match, surveying Shanley the while with a gaze that was half perplexed, half quizzical.
“You’re a queer card,” he remarked at last. “Why don’t you cut out the booze?”
“‘Twasn’t my fault, I tell you,” persisted Shanley. “You’re a pretty good hand with your fists, what?” said Carleton irrelevantly. “Kelly’s no slouch himself.”
Shanley blinked. It appeared that the super was as intimately posted on the events of the preceding evening as he was himself. The remark suggested an inspection of the fists in question. They were grimy and dirty, and most of the knuckles were barked; closed, they resembled a pair of miniature battering-rams.
“Pretty good,” he admitted modestly.
“H’m! About that twenty. You intend to pay it back, don’t you?”
“I’m not a thief, whatever else I am,” snapped Shanley. “Of course, I’ll pay it back. You needn’t worry.”
“When?” insisted Carleton coolly.
“When I get a job.”
“I’ll give you one,” said Carleton--“Royal” Carle-ton the boys called him, the squarest man that ever held down a division. “I’ll give you one where your fists will be kept out of mischief, and where you can’t hit the high joints quite as hard as you did last night. But I want you to understand this, Shanley, and understand it good and plenty and once for all, it’s your last chance. You made a fool of yourself last night, but you acted like a man yesterday--that’s why you’re getting a new deal. You’re going up to Glacier Canon with McCann on the construction work. You won’t find it anyways luxurious, and maybe you’ll like McCann and maybe you won’t--he’s been squealing for a white man to live with. You can help him boss Italians at one seventy-five a day, and you can go up on Twenty-nine this morning, that’ll take care of your transportation. What do you say?”
Shanley couldn’t say anything. He looked at the super and blinked; then he looked at his fists speculatively--and blinked.
Carleton was scribbling on a piece of paper.
“All right, h’m?” he said, looking up and handing over the paper. “There’s an order on Dinkelman, only get some one else to show you the way this time, and take the other side of the street going up. Understand?”
“Mr. Carleton,” Shanley blurted out, “if ever I get full again, you----”
“I will!” said Carleton grimly. “I’ll fire you so hard and fast you’ll be out of breath for a month. Don’t make any mistake about that. No man gets more than two chances with me. The next time you get drunk will finish your railroad career for keeps, I promise you that.”
“Yes,” said Shanley humbly; and then, after a moment’s nervous hesitation: “About Kelly, Mr. Carleton. I don’t want to get him in bad on this. You see, it was this way. He left early--that’s what started the fight. I called him a--a--quitter--or something like that.”
“H’m, yes; or something like that,” repeated Carleton dryly. “So I believe. I’ve had a talk with Kelly. You needn’t let the incomprehensible workings of that conscience of yours prick you any on his account. Kelly knows when to stop. His record is O. K. in this office. Kelly doesn’t get drunk. If he did, he’d be fired just as fast as you will be if it ever happens again.”
“If I’m never fired for anything but that,” exclaimed Shanley in a burst of fervent emotion, “I’ve got a job for life. I’ll prove it to you, Mr. Carleton. I’m going to make good. You see if I don’t.”
“Very well,” said Carleton. “I hope you will. That’s all, Shanley. I’ll let McCann know you’re coming.”
Shanley’s second exit from the super’s presence was different from the first. He walked out with a firm tread and squared shoulders. He was rejuvenated and buoyant. He was on his mettle--quite another matter, entirely another matter, and distinctly apart from the paltry consideration of a mere job. He had told Carleton that he would make good. Well, he would--and he did. Carleton himself said so, and Carleton wasn’t in the habit of making many breaks when it came to sizing up a man--not many. He did sometimes, but not often.
Shanley did not take the other side of the street on the way to Dinkelman’s--by no means. He deliberately passed as close to the Blazing Star saloon as he could, passed with contemptuous disregard, passed boastfully in the knowledge of his own strength. A sixteen-hundred class engine with her four pairs of forty-six-inch drivers can pull countless cars up a mountain grade steep enough to make one dizzy, but Shanley would have backed himself to win against her in a tug of war over the scant few inches that separated him from MacGuire’s dispensary as he brushed by. None of MacGuire’s for him. Not at all. Red-headed, freckle-faced, barked-knuckled, bulwarked-and-armor-cased-against-temptation Shanley dealt that morning with Mr. Dinkelman, purveyor of bargains in men’s apparel.
The dealings were liberal--on the part of both men. On Shanley’s part because he needed much; on Mr. Dinkelman’s part because it was Mr. Dinkelman’s business, and his nature, to sell much--if he could--safely. This was eminently safe. Carleton’s name in the mountains stood higher than guaranteed, gilt-edged gold bonds any time.
The business finally concluded, Shanley boarded Twenty-nine, local freight, west, and in due time, well on in the afternoon, righteously sober, straight as a string, cleaned, groomed, and resplendent in a new suit, swung off from the caboose at Glacier Canon as the train considerately slackened speed enough to give him a fighting chance for life and limb.
He landed safely, however, in the midst of a jabbering Italian labor gang, who received his sudden advent with patience and some awe. A short, squintfaced man greeted him with a grin.
“Me name’s McCann,” said he of the squint face. “This is Glacier Canon, fwhat yez see av ut. Them’s the Eyetalians. Yon’s fwhere I roost an’ by the same token, fwhere yez’ll roost, too, from now on. Above is the shack av the men. Are yez plased wid yer introduction? ‘Tis wan hell av a hole ye’ve come to. Shanley’s the name, eh? A good wan, an’ I’m proud to make the acquaintance.”
Shanley blinked as he stretched out his hand and made friends with his superior, and blinked again as he looked first one way and then another in an effort to follow and absorb the other’s graphic description of the surroundings.
The road foreman’s summary was beyond dispute. Glacier Canon was as wild a piece of track as the Hill Division boasted, which was going some. The right of way hugged the bald gray rock of the mountains that rose up at one side in a sheer sweep, and the trains crawled along for all the world like huge flies at the base of a wall. On the other side was the Glacier River with its treacherous sandy bed that had been the subject of more reports and engineers’ gray hairs than all the rest of the system put together. The construction camp lay just to the east of the Canon, and at the foot of a long, stiff, two-mile, four-per-cent grade. That was the reason the camp was there--that grade.
Locking the stable door when the horse is gone is a procedure that is very old. It did not originate with the directors of the Transcontinental--they never claimed it did. But their fixed policy, if properly presented before a court of arbitration, would have gone a long way toward establishing a clear title to it. If they had built a switchback at the foot of the grade in the first place, Extra Number Eighty-three, when she lost control of herself near the bottom coming down, would have demonstrated just as clearly the necessity for one being there as she demonstrated most forcibly what would happen when there wasn’t. All of which is by way of saying that rock or no rock, expense or no expense, the door was now to be locked, and McCann and his men were there to lock it.
McCann explained this to Shanley as he walked him around, up the track to the men’s shanties, over the work, and back again down the track to inspect the interior of the dwelling they were to share in common--a relic of deceased Extra Number Eighty-three in the shape of a truckless box-car with dinted and bulging sides--dinted one side and bulged the other, that is.
“But,” said Shanley, “I dunno what a switchback is.”
“Who expected it av ye?” inquired McCann. “An’ fwhat difference does ut make? Carleton sint word ye were green. Ye’ve no need to know. So’s ye can do as yez are told an’ make them geesers do as they are told, _an’_ can play forty-foive at night--that’s the point, the main point wid me, an’ it’s me yez av to get along wid----‘twill be all right. Since Meegan, him that was helpin’ me, tuk sick a week back, I’ve been alone. Begad, playin’ solytare is----”
“I can play forty-five,” said Shanley.
McCann’s face brightened.
“The powers be praised!” he exclaimed. “I’ll enlighten ye, then, on the matter av switchbacks, me son, so as ye’ll have an intilligent conception av the work. A switchback is a bit av a spur track that sticks out loike the quills av a porkypine at intervuls on a bad grade such as the wan forninst ye. ‘Tis run off the main line, d’ye mind, an’ up contrariwise to the dip av the grade. Whin a train comin’ down gets beyond control an’ so expresses herself by means av her whistle, she’s switched off an’ given a chance to run uphill by way av variety until she stops. An’ the same holds true if she breaks loose goin’ up. Is ut clear?”
“It is,” said Shanley. “When do I begin work?”
“In the mornin.’ ‘Tis near six now, an’ the bhoys’ll be quittin’ for the night. Forty-foive is a grand game. We’ll play ut to-night to our better acquaintance. I contind ‘tis the national game av the ould sod.”
Whether McCann’s contention is borne out by fact, or by the even more weighty consideration of public opinion, is of little importance. Shanley played forty-five with McCann that night and for many nights thereafter. He lost a figure or two off the pay check that was to come, but he won the golden opinion of the little road boss, which ethically, and in this case practically, was of far greater value.
“He’s a bright jool av a lad,” wrote McCann across the foot of a weekly report.
And Carleton, seeing it, was much gratified, for Carleton wasn’t in the habit of making many breaks when it came to sizing up a man--not many. He did sometimes, but not often. Shanley was making good. Carleton was much gratified.
Of the three weeks that followed Shanley’s advent to Glacier Canon, this story has little to do in a detailed way; but, as a whole, those three weeks are pointed, eloquent, and important--very important.
Italian laborers have many failings, but likewise they have many virtues. They are simple, demonstrative, and their capacity for adoration--of both men and things--is very great.
From Jacko, the water boy, to Pietro Maraschino, the padrone, they adored Shanley, and enthroned him as an idol in their hearts, for the very simple reason that Shanley, not being a professional slave-driver by trade, established new and heretofore undreamed-of relations with them. Shanley was very green, very ignorant, very inexperienced--he treated them like human beings. That was the long and short of it. Shanley became popular beyond the popularity of any man, before or since, who was ever called upon to handle the “foreign element” on the Hill Division.
And the work progressed. Day by day the cut bored deeper into the stubborn mountain-side; day by day the Glacier River gurgled peacefully along over its treacherous sandy bed, one of the prettiest scenic effects on the system, so pretty that the company used it in the magazines; day by day regulars and extras, freights and passengers, east and west, snorted up and down the grade, the only visitations from the outside world; night after night Shanley played forty-five with McCann in the smoky, truckless box-car.
Also the camp was dry, very dry, dryer than a sanatorium--that is, than _some_ sanatoriums. Carle-ton had been quite right. There was no opportunity for Shanley to hit the high joints quite as hard as he had that night in Big Cloud--there was no opportunity for him to hit the high joints _at all_. Shanley had not seen a bottle for three weeks. Therefore Shanley felt virtuous, which was proper.
Some events follow others as the natural, logical outcome and conclusion of preceding ones; others, again, are apparently irrelevant, and the connection is not to be explained either by logic, conclusion, or otherwise. Rain, McCann’s departure for Big Cloud, and Pietro Maraschino’s birthday are an example of this.
When it settles down for a storm in the mountains, it is, if the elements are really in earnest, torrential, and prolonged, and has the effect of tying up construction work tighter than a supreme court injunction could come anywhere near doing it.
McCann had business in Big Cloud, whether personal or pertaining to the company is of no consequence, and the day the storm set in--the morning having demonstrated that its classification was not to be considered as transient--he seized the opportunity to flag the afternoon freight eastbound. This was natural and logical, and an opportunity not to be neglected.
That this day, however, should be the anniversary of the day the padrone’s mother of blessed memory had given birth to Pietro Maraschino in sunny Naples fifty-three years before is, though apparently irrelevant, far from being so; and since its peculiar and coincident happening cannot be laid at the door of either logical, natural, scientific, or philosophical conclusions, and since it demands an explanation of some sort, it must, perforce, be attributed to the metaphysical--which is a name given to all things about which nobody knows anything.
“Yez are in charge,” said McCann grandiloquently, waving his hand to Shanley as he swung into the caboose. “Yez are in charge av the work, me son. See to ut. I trust ye.”
As the work at the moment was entirely at a standstill and bid fair to remain so until McCann’s return on the morrow, this was very good of McCann. But all men like words of appreciation, most of them whether they deserve them or not, so Shanley went back into the box-car out of the rain to ponder over the tribute McCann had paid him, and to ponder, too, over the new responsibility that had fallen to his lot.
He did not ponder very long; indeed, the freight that was transporting McCann could hardly have been out of sight over the summit of the grade, when a knock at the door was followed by the entrance of the dripping figure of the padrone.
Shanley looked up anxiously.
“Hello, Pietro,” he said nervously, for the weather wasn’t the kind that would bring a man out for nothing, and he was keenly alive to that new responsibility. “Hello, Pietro,” he repeated. “Anything wrong?”
Pietro grinned amiably, shook his head, unbuttoned his coat, and held out--a bottle.
Shanley stared in amazement, and then began to blink furiously.
“Here!” said he. “What’s this?”
“Chianti,” said Pietro, grinning harder than ever.
“Key-aunty.” Shanley screwed up his face. “What the devil is key-aunty?”
“Ver’ good wine from Italia,” said the beaming padrone.
“It is, is it? Well, it’s against the rules,” asserted Shanley with conviction. “It’s against the rules. McCann’u’d skin you alive. He would. Where’d you get it? What’s up, eh? It’s against the rules. I’m in charge.”
Pietro explained. It was his birthday. It was very bad weather. For the rest of the afternoon there would be no work. They would celebrate the birthday, Meester McCann had taken the train. As for the wine--Pietro shrugged his shoulders--his people adored wine. Unless they were very poor his people would have a little wine in their packs, perhaps. He was not quite sure where they had got it, but it was very thoughtful of them to remember his birthday. Each had presented him with a little wine. This bottle was an expression of their very great good estime of Meester Shanley. Perhaps, later, Meester Shanley would come himself to the shack.
“It’s against the rules,” blinked Shanley. “McCann ‘u’d skin you alive. Maybe I’ll drop in by and by. You can leave the bottle.”
Pietro bobbed, grinned delightedly, handed over the bottle, and backed out into the storm.
Shanley, still blinking, placed the bottle on the table, and gazed at it thoughtfully for a few minutes--and his thoughts were of Carleton.
“If ‘twere whisky,” said he, “I’d have no part of it, not a drop, not even a smell. I would not. I would not touch it. But as it is----” Shanley uncorked the bottle.
Not at all. One does _not_ get drunk on a bottle of Chianti wine. A single bottle of Chianti wine is very little. That is the trouble--it is _very_ little. After three weeks of abstinence it is very little indeed--so little that it is positively tantalizing.
The afternoon waned rapidly--and so did the Chianti. Outside, the storm instead of abating grew worse--the thunder racketing through the mountains, the lightning cutting jagged streaks in the black sky, the rain coming down in sheets that set the culverts and sluiceways running full. It was settling down for a bad night in the mountains, which, in the Rockies, is not a thing to be ignored. “’tis no wonder McCann found it lonely,” muttered Shanley, as he squeezed the last drop from the bottle. “‘Tis very lonely, indeed”--he held the bottle upside down to make sure that it was thoroughly drained--“most uncommon lonely. It is that. Maybe those Eyetalians ‘ll be thinkin’ I’m stuck up, perhaps--which I am not. It’s a queer name the stuff has, though it’s against the rules, an’ I can’t get my tongue around it, but I’ve tasted worse. For the sake of courtesy I’ll look in on the birthday party.”
He incased himself in a pair of McCann’s rubber boots, put on McCann’s rubber coat, and started out.
“An’ to think,” said he, as he sloshed and buffeted his way up the two hundred yards of track to the construction shanties, “to think that Pietro came out in cruel bad weather like this all for to present his compliments an’ ask me over! ‘Twould be ungracious to refuse the invitation; besides my presence will keep them in due bounds an’ restraint. I’ve heard that Eyetalians, being foreigners, do not practice restraint--but, being foreigners, ‘tis not to be held against them. I’m in charge, an’ I’ll see to it.”
They greeted him in the largest of the three bunk-houses. They greeted him heartily, sincerely, uproariously, and with fervor. They were unfeignedly glad to see him, and if he had not been by nature a modest man he would have understood that his popularity was above the popularity ever before accorded to a boss. Likewise, their hospitality was without stint. If there was any shortage of stock--which is a matter decidedly open to question--they denied themselves that Shanley might not feel the pinch. Shanley was lifted from the mere plane of man--he became a king.
A little Chianti is a little; much Chianti is to be reckoned with and on no account to be despised. Shanley not only became a king, he became regally, imperially, royally, and majestically drunk. Also there came at last an end to the Chianti, at which stage of the proceedings Shanley, with extravagant dignity and appropriate words--an exhortation on restraint--waddled to the door to take his departure.
It was very dark outside, very dark, except when an intermittent flash of lightning made momentary daylight. Pietro Maraschino offered Shanley one of the many lanterns that, in honor of the festive occasion, they had commandeered, without regard to color, from the tool boxes, and had strung around the shack. Further, he offered to see Shanley on his way.
The offer of assistance touched Shanley--it touched him wrong. It implied a more or less acute condition of disability, which he repudiated with a hurt expression on his face and forceful words on his tongue. He refused it; and being aggrieved, refused also the lantern Pietro held out to him. He chose one for himself instead--the one nearest to his hand. That this was red made no difference. Blue, white, red, green, or purple, it was all one to Shanley. His fuddled brain did not differentiate. A light was a light, that was all there was to that.
The short distance from the shanty door to the right of way Shanley negotiated with finesse and aplomb, and then he started down the track. This, however, was another matter.