Chapter 23

At the great man's feet lies his mother's message, and as he muses with resentment and wonder that circumstances should drive him here to parley with a ragged boy on the highway of his destiny the last tatters drift away on the draft which has followed him in from the storm. 'T is a ghostly way Fate has with things neglected.

"The car line could be made to pay," begins Regan craftily, "and I might risk a few dollars to buy it in."

"Craney would sell if he was by," replies the boy.

"No matter; you can put through the deal as his manager, making all the money for yourself. Perhaps fifty dollars," says Regan, careful not to overbid and make Tim think the deal of too great importance.

There is a tone and movement to the air round Regan which electrifies his companion, and at once they are conspiring together.

"You will abandon the run; suspend the service," says Regan, deliberating; "and because your regular passengers might take hold and operate it themselves you shall drive the horse away into the woods with one trace broken and his side plastered over with clay as if he has been in an accident--having first wrecked the car."

Tim nods, his own eyes glittering red, as Regan makes plain how it is to be done. From the top of the high hill at the end of the line the car is to be turned loose with brakes unset, so that it will leave the track where it curves at the bottom.

"There it will take the plunge of thirty feet into the creek bed," he says; "and when it lies in splinters at the bottom you will be handed the money."

"And how will wrecking the car make the road belong to you?" asks Tim.

The man of power smiles at his shrewdness, and is frank with information so that he will not be tempted to ask someone else. The Barlow Suburban has an agreement with the state which is called a charter, he explains, which will be forfeited if cars are not run for a certain number of days. "So I can buy in the property from the state officials that I know," he adds, "and operate it with new cars." He does not say with steam cars, though by the foresight of old Craney the builder this is permitted by the charter.

The conspiracy is now complete and as Regans puts on his raincoat Tim makes bold to tell him: "Some day I will be boss like yourself, Mr. Regan."

"So you may," nods the other with rare good humor, and departs for his car.

And Dan can afford to be good-humored this night, having found a way of escape from difficulties which have threatened to ruin his new career at its very beginning. For a line of the P. D. building into this territory has been held up by the Great Southwest, which warns openly that it will bankrupt and destroy the town of Barlow if its competitor is granted right of way or terminals. To avoid long delay in the courts Regan himself, with the prestige of old command in this territory, has been sent to open the way. But never a friend has he found in his old headquarters town; the politicians whom he once ruled with a rod of iron are in fact rejoiced to break one of their own across the head of him. Not a loophole is left open to the P. D.

"'T is a wall of China," thinks Regan, "and what will my new directors say of a manager who cannot persuade or bribe his old fellow citizens to receive him with a new railroad in his hands?"

"Our new line will be the fortunes of Barlow," he has argued, but the citizens in control laugh at him.

"The G. S. will do better by us, with new machine shops, and even build a branch into your own territory," is the answer he has taken back to his car from the final conference this very night.

As his first repulse the man of pull-down and trample-under has not known how to take it, pacing his car like a madman who mistakes his own fits for the destruction of the world. The lanterns which beckoned from a boy at Turntable blinked now in mockery; suddenly across the yards his eye, as dark as the stormy sky, steadied to a single spark--the beam of Tim Cannon's lantern through the dingy window.

"'T is in the old freight house, leased to the Barlow Suburban!" he thought aloud. "The Barlow Suburban!" And already he was into his stormcoat and on his way to parley with the ragged boy posted like a sentry on the highway of his destiny. So Regan discovered the only unguarded gateway into Barlow.

Now the scheme is brewed and Tim settles down to count the gain in money and in the interest he will make with Regan; the old building reels and shingles whir away like bats in the gale, but he only laughs dourly, the scrawny little breast hurting and straining with the ambition to be mounting on bigger storms than this. By dawn he is as drunk with scheming as ever his old grandfather with whisky, and yet his nerves do not tremble as he goes about the business of the day, kicking Charley to his feet and hitching with a scowl to the limekiln crew.

With deliberation he drives into the sheeted rain, and his look into the gulch at the bottom of the last hill, where the wreck will presently lie, is calculating and steady. In action Tim does honor to himself and to the great men who are of his company this day; the horse is plastered with clay and stoned far out into some woods, the brake thrown off for the plunge from the crest of the hill--and then as the car starts rolling and Tim grins boldly up into the black tumbling sky a dazzle of light strikes through his plotting little brain.

And in this instant the little vagabond who has arrived at Barlow and his tremendous partnership with Dan Regan by the route leading through Molly's cottage on a stormy night--in this instant with the car rumbling on its way to wreck itself and the Suburban, Tim Cannon understands that the thing will not do at all. The tremendous partnership is not, nor ever can be.

Such a revelation has come to many an ambitious man about to commit a crime or betray a trust. Cowardice or conscience may unnerve him; or on the other hand he may be fearless and willing, and yet not able to go on, realizing suddenly the thing will not do at all. It is not destined. And then remorse or dread seizes on the coward, and disappointment on the bold who would have gone on if it had been so destined.

But divil a bit does remorse seize on Tim Cannon, being a person of no moral convictions whatever; and as for dread and disappointment--one moment he steadies his darkling blue eyes on the aspect of them, and the next is racing after the car, swinging aboard, and setting the brakes, though the wheels lock and coast on down the rails, slippery with rain. For it is not the nature of him to falter or to parley with fortune--when she declares against him he takes his loss though it be that of life or limb, and quits the game.

Y'understand that perhaps his knees quake and buckle and a yelp of terror is driven out of his bony breast--beating so high with ambition but a moment before--but the spirit does not quail as he releases the brake, sets it again slowly, carefully; the wheels revolve and begin to feel the grip of the brake shoe. Still the car seems streaking to such a wreck as will mangle him with broken rods and torn sheet steel at the bottom of the gulch. Instead, by a miracle it takes the curve with only a roar and crash of glass. Tim Cannon has held the car to the rails and the Barlow Suburban to its charter.

The storm deepens and darkens round the lonely little car and its driver, who stands erect and still with hands on the brake considering his treason to Regan's ambitions and his own. The cause does not have to be searched for.

"Sure, I had promised Craney to manage this railroad till he got back," says Tim Cannon as a matter of course.

He has it in mind to hasten and explain to Regan, but lingers a moment in musing, unusual for him when business is to be done.

"'T was a wise old dame," he says; and recalls what Molly had stated as a matter of fact. "If you promise--then 't is a duty." She had said that; and: "Through storm and hardship and fear you would go--because you promised."

"Sure!" agrees Tim, disgusted that he has not remembered this before making the deal with Regan. "I will explain to him," says Tim, "that I promised Craney."

All of a sudden a vast respect fills him--not reverence, for he has none, but a respect for this wise woman who knew what was in a man so much better than he knew himself.

Then stepping down he plunges into the depths of storm on his way back to Barlow.

The great man laughs at his tale that the job is not done.

"You are a boy of brains, and I am not surprised at the news you bring," he says. "How much is the price risen, you little robber? A hundred? Go," he says, "and finish quickly. I am not the man to haggle, be it five hundred and a job on my railroad to boot."

And as Tim shakes his head: "What now, I ask you?"

"After starting the car down to the wreck I won't let it get away from me, but catch it and set the brakes and ride it wild to the bottom."

"Why be such a fool as that?" demands Regan.

"'T is on account of promising Mr. Craney to manage the Suburban till he gets back," explains Tim.

It strikes home to Regan that this is the crisis of his life, and Tim feels his wrath as the toss of tempest. 'T would be an easy matter to kidnap the boy here an' now, and send his own agent to wreck the car, but even then the scheme is blocked. Tim must be accounted for afterward. The boy must see his passengers and tell of the accident or there will be search made for him under the wreckage, and talk in the papers, reminding the town of the Suburban's existence, and Regan's enemies that a charter is about to be forfeited.

"Hold!" says Regan to Tim at the door. "My word I'll not touch you again," and the boy drops his hands from his neck, all but wrung by a shake of the madman pacing the car. Yet his gaze lies level and clear and there is a steadiness to the bedraggled front which baffles Regan, such assurance being beyond nature in a boy.

"Whist!" he says warily, understanding somehow that nothing is to be gained here by argument or threats; "since you were fool enough to bind yourself with a promise, hold your tongue till I can find Craney."

"'T will hold," promises Tim.

Down past the terminal and out the Suburban track, bedraggled and undaunted, stalks the vagabond along the way of knowledge. Nor does he look up till coming on faithful old Charley, who has found his way back to the car and stands waiting to be hitched. Tim halts, surveying him knowingly.

"Faith, Charley, she was a wise one," he says.

From that hour he takes up the plod of duty, keening in that little minor whistle which all car drivers pick up from the wind and drumming of hoofbeats on frozen ground. And he is always on time in every weather, so that presently the lime burners relent and joke him, and Katy in pity for the outcast would pat his cheek friendlily--but never an encouragement do they receive from Tim standing at his brake and speaking sternly to Charley, meager and windbitten but unconquerable by humor or kindness as he has been by threat and danger.

All day a bright rage chars the bony breast; at evening it smolders as if having no more fuel in the wasted body. Yet Tim sits cross-legged with old sacks folded round him, staring unwaveringly into the loneliness. And from his boyhood's ashes he resurrects with terrific will and fearlessness the great things which had been born within him; in fact he craves and will have no company but them, torment him as they will. He reflects with derision that the lime burners and Katy do not understand what goes on within him. But Regan would understand! How the great things in that man would have raged if he had bound them tight and fast with a promise. Regan was not such a fool.

"Never again do I promise the duty," says Tim.

The wise old woman had warned him that what a person promises that must he do, but like a fool he had not profited by the warning.

Even in his ignorance the vagabond understands much of Molly. In his first musings on these subjects the night of Dan's coming to bargain with him for the wreck of the car he had foolishly torn up the page she had written over.

He had torn up that fragment of message because the memory of the cozy room and hearth fire had tempted his thoughts away from these hardships and loneliness; he resented Molly's smile and welcome as an attempt to lure him from the way of ambition, much as the pity of Katy and good-humor of the lime burners would do. Now he understood that Molly offered no such temptation; that to herself the fire and comforts were as nothing; far away and beyond these had dwelt her thoughts in some place as lonely and echoing as the old terminal. There in wisdom and sorrow she had pondered her duty; how to keep the promise she had made. "Dam' luck, she had," Tim Cannon swears roundly. Of course she had also been a fool to bind herself with a promise; but to die before she had found a way to keep it was harder still, somehow.

As for himself--his only duty is to manage Craney's road till he returns. After that the things within him can be let loose, and many exploits be expected of them.

"And if Craney does not come back! Sure," sneers Tim to the dark and loneliness, "I'll be no worse than the old dame who died on the job!"

One day Katy speaks of returning to town for the winter, and he tells her sternly that the road is run for her convenience and she is expected to ride on it.

And so she continues to do, without further argument about returning to town; and he is mildly interested in the journeys she makes after that, on Sunday afternoons. To the old Craney homestead she journeys and sits on the doorstep, sometimes speaking of the young man who has left his railroad to be run for her sake, and then wandered away with his coat wrong side out in search of fortune.

"Never a bit of encouragement did I give him," she will always conclude, with blushes; "but when he returns his welcome will not be the same I would offer a stranger."

Once she thanks Tim for attending his trust so faithfully, but he does not reply. It is not worth while; she could not understand--that he does this thing because it is promised and inevitable, not because he relishes it.

As Craney's orders are to arrange the Sunday schedule to Katy's convenience he sits erect on a stone, watching from a distance till she starts toward the car. The things within him burn and torment, and keep him company; he will not let them go or even quiet them by promises of what he will achieve when this duty is done and off his hands. Instead he holds them at bay, coldly.

Till one Sunday afternoon a message mutters out of the northern sky; from Regan it comes, shaking the very ground which the vagabond, as if understanding it, grips in his nervous fingers. "'T is like the guns in battle," he says, and that night strolling among the men up the yard learns that the roar is that of dynamite where the construction gangs of Regan's new line are breaching the distant hills for entrance into Great Southwest territory.

Regan is coming on, undaunted by the refusal of Barlow to let him through; day by day the iron rumor swells in the northern sky, and Tim sleeping or waking presses close after the vision of a giant of bronze with half-lidded smoldering eyes who juggles men and steel in the burning dusk beyond the construction camps.

Defiant of the winter winds, even to refusing the jacket which Katy buys for him, he shivers with the chill of exhaustion, for now he must struggle the more fiercely with ambition, night and day. Yet on he plods, keening in that strange little whistle. All this bleak stretch of his history he crosses, in a sort of delirium loading the battered old car with company of the make-believe kind whom he has watched the children in the city parks playing with long ago. The ghost of a jack-in-the-box which he had once dragged away from a playground and murdered with a stick in his den appears by night in the terminal building. It smiles forgivingly and he frowns back.

When the snow falls he marches ahead of Charley, a shovel on his shoulder, storming the drifts. A rope round his body keeps the whipping rags together, and he wears an old sack for a waistcoat. The limekiln closes down and there is no passenger left but Katy, so Tim breaks into the treasure holes in the wall to buy oats and bread. Once again the Barlow Suburban is devouring its master. And now the rumble of dynamite sinks lower and lower like the death rattle of Regan's destiny and one afternoon dies away entirely.

That night Tim sits cross-legged on his pallet by his rusty little stove, awe-stricken, as if somehow a battle waited on him. And out of that dread stillness under the northern sky Regan comes to him, streaked red with the clay of the camps.

"Craney is lost or dead," he says. "I have searched high and low; now it is up to you."

The boy listening intently agrees with Regan. "'T is too bad I promised Craney and have the duty."

"You are far from a fool," says Regan; "look out of the window here with me." And as they stare up the yards, awink with the colored lamps of the switch stands: "Do you see the giant black engines and cars, and the shops beyond with their roaring mountains of machinery; the tracks stretching thousands of miles, all swarming with trains and men? Such are the playthings of me; have you a game which can beat that? Listen." He holds up his hand, and out of the simmering dusk rises the groan of iron and steam and toil. "It is marching music like the bands of armies," says Regan. "D' you understand? You must; you can feel it! Such armies I command and will bring you up in the way of commanding if you but keep the bargain you made."

"Is it walk off the duty, you mean?" asks Tim astonished.

"But listen again, as man to man," says Regan, patient and crafty and desperate. "I have no way into Barlow, bold as I have been in building to its very walls. A few crooks who run the town keep me out. My end of track is now a mile from the Barlow limits on the north, and there as if I had given up hope I have bought land for depots and set engineers to work laying out yards, and masons raising foundations. By building in from the north I have not called my enemies' attention to the Suburban, which enters from the southeast; nobody has even thought of it as my means of breaking in. But if you will carry out the deal you made with me," says Regan, "I will own the Suburban and throw my rails from the present end of track to the Suburban right of way and into this town in a single night! Think over it well; on this spot where you sit among tumbledown walls you will raise up"--the man's tones thrilled like a prophecy--"you will raise up a station of stone and glass. The sounds in here, instead of running mice and the pawing of the old horse and your own curses on poverty, will be the footsteps of hurrying people, their laughs and cries of welcome and godspeed. Ah, Timothy," breathes Regan, "think well!"

But Timothy, wilder and gaunter than ever, sets his teeth. "'T would be walkin' off the duty."

Dan Regan grinds out the word after him. "Duty! What is this, I ask of you, but duty? The duty to thousands of people who want this road in Barlow, instead of duty to one man, Craney, who has set you to guard a thing he does not want and has deserted himself? He will never come back. Now ask what you want of me. The price, whatever it is! And where do you come by this false notion of duty?" he demands with an inspiration.

"'T was an old woman--she was the wise one," says Tim, and explains, as in confidence, about his visit to the cottage on that snowy night. "She was putting it into a message," he says, "but her hand was too old and shaky--and I did not know my letters to write it for her. She had a beginning all blotted and scratched--I brought it away, and tore it up the first night you came here. The Farthest Lantern, it was. Here is the pen she broke by stabbing into the table, she was that mad!"

The Farthest Lantern!

Remotely Dan Regan hears the word, with a little shock, as a challenge whispered in darkness; he shrugs his shoulders.

"Come, Timothy," he urges.

Now memory has seized on the word, sending it echoing through his brain; but he goes on, impatient of the start which Tim has given him, and not yet realizing how it was done.

"Will you help those crooks of Barlow against myself and all the good people of the town? Will you cheat Craney of the price of his road in case he ever comes back? Is this duty? I tell you, no!" And in a flash of afterthought: "The wise old woman herself would cry 'No' from the grave of her. I tell you as one who knows. For she was Regan's mother, and her message of the things she saw beyond the day's work at Turntable--was to me!"

With terrible fascination Tim gazes at the man racked by the old powers of pull-down and trample-under, which Tim himself holds imprisoned in Regan's breast. And as the last words drive home the vagabond answers, high and clear: "Sure, you must know then. Tell me true, Mr. Regan--'t will not be breaking the promise?"

Through the dingy panes in the corner wink the lights as did those of Turntable long ago; but they do not beckon.

"I will ditch the car now," says Tim.

"I might be mistaken----" Regan's voice is hollow; the memories of a lifetime cloud his vision. "Perhaps you would do well not to trust me," he says; the warning of a hypocrite to satisfy his startled conscience as once more his gaze lifts bold and far along the road which lies through the corner guarded by this scarecrow of a boy.

"Sure, I trust you," answers Tim in that singing voice the likes of which was never heard out of him before, and ties his tatters round him against the cold outside. The promise has been kept, the duty done, he is at last on the road with Regan.

The man holds the pen in his hand--the pen his mother had tried to write her last, her life's message with, and failed. Fearfully he gazes on this gaunt campaigner of destiny, delivering his unspoken message by deed and bearing and duty done, through storm and danger, indifferent to bribe and threat.

But now this Tim Cannon nods and is on his way like any credulous boy to clear the highway of fortune for Regan, by the wreck of the Suburban car.

"Hold!" Regan's head is bowed and he is listening. "No, I cannot pass here," he answers in thought, and in a strained, quiet voice tells Tim: "You trust me too late."

The miracle of Molly's messenger has not been worked in vain.

Light had broken in flashes from the vagabond's countenance since the great things within him were set free to join this mighty partnership. Halted now in his tracks he listens too, gloomily, wrathfully hearing in fact what Regan does not--a quickening footfall, the tug at the latch, the rumble of the door. Craney comes in.

He is almost as gaunt as Tim and covered with the grime on the road.

"What? Are you not yet swallowed up by the cursed Suburban?" he asks, astonished. "Then you will give me word of Katy O'Hare, and I am gone by the through freight. Fortune was not in the direction I took," he adds by way of explaining; "so I am beating up west and south; 't is a far search and leaves me little time between trains."

"There is time enough!" Regan has him by the arm. "You are Craney of the Suburban. Come!"

And so terrible is the grip he is fallen into that Mr. Craney is dragged out and through the dark with hardly perceptible struggle.

Tim Cannon watches them out with ghastly nonchalance; once more fortune has declared against him and he takes his loss, biding only Craney's return to throw up his job and be gone.

The night passes and a faint iron rumor drifts down from the northern sky where the P. D. construction gangs are breaking camp; then a boom of dynamite. The campaign is on again; no need of concealment now, the Suburban has passed safely into Regan's hands.