Part 3

A little cry burst from Toddles' lips--and his brain, cleared. He wasn't at Big Cloud at all--he was at Cassil's Siding--and he was hurt--and that was the sounder inside calling, calling frantically for Cassil's Siding---where he was.

The life and death--_the seventeen_--it sent a thrill through Toddles' pain-twisted spine. He wriggled to the window. It, too, was closed, of course, but he could hear better there. The sounder was babbling madly.

"Hold second----"

He missed it again--and as, on top of it, the "seventeen" came pleading, frantic, urgent, he wrung his hands.

"Hold second"--he got it this time--"Number Two."

Toddles' first impulse was to smash in the window and reach the key. And then, like a dash of cold water over him, Donkin's words seemed to ring in his ears: "Use your head."

With the "seventeen" it meant a matter of minutes, perhaps even seconds. Why smash the window? Why waste the moment required to do it simply to answer the call? The order stood for itself--"Hold second Number Two." That was the second section of the Limited, east-bound. Hold her! How? There was nothing--not a thing to stop her with. "Use your head," said Donkin in a far-away voice to Toddles' wobbling brain.

Toddles looked up the track--west--where he had come from--to where the switch light twinkled green at him--and, with a little sob, he started to drag himself back along the platform. If he could throw the switch, it would throw the light from green to red, and--and the Limited would take the siding. But the switch was a long way off.

Toddles half fell, half bumped from the end of the platform to the right of way. He cried to himself with low moans as he went along. He had the heart of a fighter, and grit to the last tissue; but he needed it all now--needed it all to stand the pain and fight the weakness that kept swirling over him in flashes.

On he went, on his hands and knees, slithering from tie to tie---and from one tie to the next was a great distance. The life and death, the despatcher's call--he seemed to hear it yet--throbbing, throbbing on the wire.

On he went, up the track; and the green eye of the lamp, winking at him, drew nearer. And then suddenly, clear and mellow through the mountains, caught up and echoed far and near, came the notes of a chime whistle ringing down the gorge.

Fear came upon Toddles then, and a great sob shook him. That was the Limited coming now! Toddles' fingers dug into the ballast, and he hurried--that is, in bitter pain, he tried to crawl a little faster. And as he crawled, he kept his eyes strained up the track--she wasn't in sight yet around the curve--not yet, anyway.

Another foot, only another foot, and he would reach the siding switch--in time--in plenty of time. Again the sob--but now in a burst of relief that, for the moment, made him forget his hurts. He was in time!

He flung himself at the switch lever, tugged upon it--and then, trembling, every ounce of remaining strength seeming to ooze from him, he covered his face with his hands. It was _locked_--padlocked.

Came a rumble now--a distant roar, growing louder and louder, reverberating down the canyon walls--louder and louder--nearer and nearer. "Hold second Number Two. Hold second Number Two"--the "seventeen," the life and death, pleading with him to hold Number Two. And she was coming now, coming--and--and--the switch was locked. The deadly nausea racked Toddles again; there was nothing to do now--nothing. He couldn't stop her--couldn't stop her. He'd--he'd tried--very hard--and--and he couldn't stop her now. He took his hands from his face, and stole a glance up the track, afraid almost, with the horror that was upon him, to look. She hadn't swung the curve yet, but she would in a minute--and come pounding down the stretch at fifty miles an hour, shoot by him like a rocket to where, somewhere ahead, in some form, he did not know what, only knew that it was there, death and ruin and----

"_Use your head!_" snapped Donkin's voice to his consciousness.

Toddles' eyes were on the light above his head. It blinked _red_ at him as he stood on the track facing it; the green rays were shooting up and down the line. He couldn't swing the switch--but the _lamp_ was there--and there was the red side to show just by turning it. He remembered then that the lamp fitted into a socket at the top of the switch stand, and could be lifted off--if he could reach it!

It wasn't very high--for an ordinary-sized man--for an ordinary-sized man had to get at it to trim and fill it daily--only Toddles wasn't an ordinary-sized man. It was just nine or ten feet above the rails--just a standard siding switch.

Toddles gritted his teeth, and climbed upon the base of the switch--and nearly fainted as his ankle swung against the rod. A foot above the base was a footrest for a man to stand on and reach up for the lamp, and Toddles drew himself up and got his foot on it--and then at his full height the tips of his fingers only just touched the bottom of the lamp. Toddles cried aloud, and the tears streamed down his face now. Oh, if he weren't hurt--if he could only shin up another foot--but--but it was all he could do to hang there where he was.

_What was that_! He turned his head. Up the track, sweeping in a great circle as it swung the curve, a headlight's glare cut through the night--and Toddles "shinned" the foot. He tugged and tore at the lamp, tugged and tore at it, loosened it, lifted it from its socket, sprawled and wriggled with it to the ground--and turned the red side of the lamp against second Number Two.

The quick, short blasts of a whistle answered, then the crunch and grind and scream of biting brake-shoes--and the big mountain racer, the 1012, pulling the second section of the Limited that night, stopped with its pilot nosing a diminutive figure in a torn and silver-buttoned uniform, whose hair was clotted red, and whose face was covered with blood and dirt.

Masters, the engineer, and Pete Leroy, his fireman, swung from the gangways; Kelly, the conductor, came running up from the forward coach.

Kelly shoved his lamp into Toddles' face--and whistled low under his breath.

"Toddles!" he gasped; and then, quick as a steel trap: "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," said Toddles weakly. "There's--there's something wrong. Get into the clear--on the siding."

"Something wrong," repeated Kelly, "and you don't----"

But Masters cut the conductor short with a grab at the other's arm that was like the shutting of a vise--and then bolted for his engine like a gopher for its hole. From, down the track came the heavy, grumbling roar of a freight. Everybody flew then, and there was quick work done in the next half minute--and none too quickly done--the Limited was no more than on the siding when the fast freight rolled her long string of flats, boxes and gondolas thundering by.

And while she passed, Toddles, on the platform, stammered out his story to Kelly.

Kelly didn't say anything--then. With the express messenger and a brakeman carrying Toddles, Kelly kicked in the station door, and set his lamp down on the operator's table.

"Hold me up," whispered Toddles--and, while they held him, he made the despatcher's call.

Big Cloud answered him on the instant. Haltingly, Toddles reported the second section "in" and the freight "out"--only he did it very slowly, and he couldn't think very much more, for things were going black. He got an order for the Limited to run to Blind River and told Kelly, and got the "complete"--and then Big Cloud asked who was on the wire, and Toddles answered that in a mechanical sort of a way without quite knowing what he was doing--and went limp in Kelly's arms.

And as Toddles answered, back in Big Cloud, Regan, the sweat still standing out in great beads on his forehead, fierce now in the revulsion of relief, glared over Donkin's left shoulder, as Donkin's left hand scribbled on a pad what was coming over the wire.

Regan glared fiercely--then he spluttered:

"Who in hell's Christopher Hyslop Hoogan--h'm?"

Donkin's lips had a queer smile on them.

"Toddles," he said.

Regan sat down heavily in his chair.

"_What?_" demanded the super.

"Toddles," said Donkin. "I've been trying to drum a little railroading into him--on the key."

Regan wiped his face. He looked helplessly from Donkin to the super, and then back again at Donkin.

"But--but what's he doing at Cassil's Siding? How'd he get there--h'm? H'm? How'd he get there?"

"I don't know," said Donkin, his fingers rattling the Cassil's Siding call again. "He doesn't answer any more. We'll have to wait for the story till they make Blind River, I guess."

And so they waited. And presently at Blind River, Kelly, dictating to the operator--not Beale, Beale's day man--told the story. It lost nothing in the telling--Kelly wasn't that kind of a man--he told them what Toddles had done, and he left nothing out; and he added that they had Toddles on a mattress in the baggage car, with a doctor they had discovered amongst the passengers looking after him.

At the end, Carleton tamped down the dottle in the bowl of his pipe thoughtfully with his forefinger--and glanced at Donkin.

"Got along far enough to take a station key somewhere?" he inquired casually. "He's made a pretty good job of it as the night operator at Cassil's."

Donkin was smiling.

"Not yet," he said.

"No?" Carleton's eyebrows went up. "Well, let him come in here with you, then, till he has; and when you say he's ready, we'll see what we can do. I guess it's coming to him; and I guess"--he shifted his glance to the master mechanic--"I guess we'll go down and meet Number Two when she comes in, Tommy."

Regan grinned.

"With our hats in our hands," said the big-hearted master mechanic.

Donkin shook his head.

"Don't you do it," he said. "I don't want him to get a swelled head."

Carleton stared; and Regan's hand, reaching into his back pocket for his chewing, stopped midway.

Donkin was still smiling.

"I'm going to make a railroad man out of Toddles," he said.

II

OWSLEY AND THE 1601

His name was Owsley--Jake Owsley--and he was a railroad man before ever he came to Big Cloud and the Hill Division--before ever the Hill Division was even advanced to the blue-print stage, before steel had ever spider-webbed the stubborn Rockies, before the Herculean task of bridging a continent was more than a thought in even the most ambitious minds.

Owsley was an engineer, and he came from the East, when they broke ground at Big Cloud for a start toward the western goal through the mighty range, a comparatively young man--thirty, or thereabouts. Then, inch by inch and foot by foot, Owsley, with his ballast cars and his boxes and his flats bumping material behind him, followed the construction gangs as they burrowed and blasted and trestled their way along--day in, day out, month in, month out, until the years went by, and they were through the Rockies, with the Coast and the blue of the Pacific in sight.

First over every bridge and culvert, first through every cut, first through every tunnel shorn in the bitter gray rock of the mountain sides, the pilot of Owsley's engine nosed its way; and, when the rough of the work was over, and in the hysteria of celebration, the toll of lives, the hardships and the cost were forgotten for the moment, and the directors and their guests crowded the cab and perched on running boards and footplates till you couldn't see the bunting they'd draped the engine with, and the mahogany coaches behind looked like the striped sticks of candy the kids buy on account of more bunting, and then some, and the local band they'd brought along from Big Cloud got the mouthpieces of their trombones and cornets mixed up with the necks of champagne bottles, and the Indian braves squatted gravely at different points along the trackside and thought their white brothers had gone mad, Owsley was at the throttle for the first through run over the division--it was Owsley's due.

Then other years went by, and the steel was shaken down into the permanent right of way that is an engineering marvel to-day, and Owsley still held a throttle on a through run--just kept growing a little older, that was all--but one of the best of them, for all that--steadier than the younger men, wise in experience, and with a love for his engine that was like the love of a man for a woman.

It's a strange thing, perhaps, a love like that; but, strange or not, there was never an engineer worth his salt who hasn't had it--some more than others, of course--as some men's love for a woman is deeper than others. With Owsley it came pretty near being the whole thing, and it was queer enough to see him when they'd change his engine to give him a newer and more improved type for a running mate. He'd refuse point-blank at first to be separated from the obsolete engine, that was either carded for some local jerk-water, mixed-freight run, or for a construction job somewhere.

"Leave her with me," he'd say to Regan, the master mechanic. "Leave me with her. You can give my run to some one else, Regan, d'ye mind? It's little I care for the swell run; me and the old girl sticks. I'll have nothing else."

But the bluff, fat, big-hearted, good-natured, little master mechanic, knew his man--and he knew an engineer when he saw one. Regan would no more have thought of letting Owsley get away from the Imperial's throttle than he would have thought of putting call boys in the cabs to run his engines.

"H'm!" he would say, blinking fast at Owsley. "Feel that way, do you? Well, then, mabbe it's about time you quit altogether. I didn't offer you your choice, did I? You take the Imperial with what I give you to take her with--or take nothing. Think it over!"

And Owsley, perforce, had to "think it over"--and, perforce, he stayed on the limited run.

Came then the day when changes in engine types were not so frequent, and a fair maximum in machine-design efficiency had been obtained--and Owsley came to love, more than he had ever loved any engine before, his big, powerful, 1600-class racer, with its four pairs of massive drivers, that took the curves with the grace of a circling bird, that laughed in glee at anything lower than a three per cent grade, and tackled the "fives" with no more than a grunt of disdain--Owsley and the 1601, right from the start, clipped fifty-five minutes off the running time of the Imperial Limited through the Rockies, where before it had been nip and tuck to make the old schedule anywhere near the dot.

For three years it was Owsley and the 1601; for three years east and west through the mountains--and a smile in the roundhouse at him as he nursed and cuddled and groomed his big flyer, in from a run. Not now--they don't smile now about it. It was Owsley and the 1601 for three years--and at the end it was still Owsley and the 1601. The two are coupled together--they never speak of one on the Hill Division without the other--Owsley and the 1601.

Owsley! One of the old guard who answered the roll call at the birth of the Hill Division! Forty years a railroader--call boy at ten--twenty years of service, counting the construction period, on the Hill Division! Straight and upright as a young sapling at fifty-odd, with a swing through the gangway that the younger men tried to imitate; hair short-cropped, a little grizzled; gray, steady eyes; a beard whose color, once brown, was nondescript, kind of shading tawny and gray in streaks; a slim, little man, overalled and jumpered, with greasy, peaked cap--and, wifeless, without kith or kin save his engine, the star boarder at Mrs. McCann's short-order house. Liked by everybody, known by everybody on the division down to the last Polack construction hand, quiet, no bluster about him, full of good-humored fun, ready to take his part or do his share in anything going, from a lodge minstrel show to sitting up all night and playing trained nurse to anybody that needed one--that was Owsley.

Oh, you, in your millions, who ride in trains by day and night, do you ever give a thought to the men into whose keeping you hand your lives? Does it ever occur to you that they are not just part of the equipment of iron and wood and steel and rolling things to be accepted callously, as bought and paid for with the strip of ticket that you hold, animate only that you may voice your grumblings and your discontent at some delay that saves you probably from being hurled into eternity while you chafe impatiently and childishly at something you know nothing about--that they, like you, are human too, with hopes achieved and aspirations shattered, and plans and interests in life? Have you ever thought that there was a human side to railroading, and that--but we were speaking of Owsley, Jake Owsley, perhaps you'll understand a little better farther on along the right of way.

Elbow Bend, were it not for the insurmountable obstacles that Dame Nature had seen fit to place there--the bed of the Glacier River on one side and a sheer rock base of mountain on the other--would have been a black mark against the record of the engineering corps who built the station. Speaking generally, it's not good railroad practice to put a station on a curve--when it can be helped. Elbow Bend, the whole of it, main line and siding, made a curve--that's how it got its name. And yet, in a way, it wasn't the curve that was to blame; though, too, in a way, it was--Owsley had a patched eye that night from a bit of steel that had got into it in the afternoon, nothing much, but a patch on it to keep the cold and the sweep of the wind out.

It was the eastbound run, and, to make up for the loss of time a slow order over new construction work back a dozen miles or so had cost him, the 1601 was hitting a pretty fast clip as he whistled for Elbow Bend. Owsley checked just a little as he nosed the curve--the Imperial Limited made no stop at Elbow Bend--and then, as the 1601 sort of got her footing, so to speak, on the long bend, he opened her out again, and the storm of exhausts from her short, stubby stack went echoing through the mountains like the play of artillery.

The light of the west-end siding switch flashed by like a scintillating gem in the darkness. Brannigan, Owsley's fireman, pulled his door, shooting the cab and the heavens full of leaping, fiery red, and swung to the tender for a shovelful of coal. Owsley, crouched a little forward in his seat, his body braced against the cant of the mogul on the curve, was "feeling" the throttle with careful hand, as he peered ahead through the cab glass. Came the station lights; the black bulk of a locomotive, cascading steam from her safety, on the siding; and then the thundering reverberation as the 1601 began to sweep past a long, curving line of boxes, flats and gondolas, the end of which Owsley could not see--for the curve.

Owsley relaxed a little. That was right--Extra No. 49, west, was to cross him at Elbow Bend--and she was on the siding as she should be. His headlight, streaming out at a tangent to the curve, played its ray kaleidoscopically along the sides of the string of freights, now edging the roof of a box car, now opening a hole to the gray rock of the cut when a flat or two intervened--and then, sudden, quick as doom, with a yell from his fireman ringing in his ears, Owsley, his jaws clamping like a steel trap, flung his arm forward, jamming the throttle shut, while with the other hand he grabbed at the "air."

Owsley had seen it, too--as quick as Brannigan--a figure, arms waving frantically, for a fleeting second strangely silhouetted in the dancing headlight's glare on the roof of one of the box cars. A wild shout from the man, fluttering, indistinguishable, reached them as they roared by--then the grind and scream of brake-shoes as the "air" went on--the answering shudder vibrating through the cab of the big racer--the meeting clash of buffer plates echoing down the length of the train behind--and a queer obstructing blackness dead ahead ere the headlight, tardy in its sweep, could point the way--but Owsley knew now--too late.

Brannigan screamed in his ear.

"She ain't in the clear!" he screamed. "It's a swipe! She ain't in the clear!" he screamed again--and took a flying leap through the off-side gangway.

Owsley never turned his head--only held there, grim-faced, tight-lipped, facing what was to come--facing it with clear head, quick brain, doing what he could to lessen the disaster, as forty years had schooled him to face emergency. Owsley--for forty years with his record, until that moment, as clean and unsmirched as the day he started as a kid calling train crews back in the little division town on the Penn in the far East! Strange it should come to Owsley, the one man of all you'd never think it would! It's hard to understand the running orders of the Great Trainmaster sometimes--isn't it? And sometimes it doesn't help much to realize that we never will understand this side of the Great Divide--does it?

The headlight caught it now--seemed to gloat upon it in a flood of blazing, insolent light--the rear cars of the freight crawling frantically from the main line to the siding--then the pitiful yellow from the cupola of the caboose, the light from below filtering up through the windows. It seared into Owsley's brain lightning quick, but vivid in every detail in a horrible, fascinating way. It was a second, the fraction of a second since Brannigan had jumped--it might have been an hour.

The front of the caboose seemed to leap suddenly at the 1601, seemed to rise up in the air and hurl itself at the straining engine as though in impotent fury at unwarranted attack. There was a terrific crash, the groan and rend of timber, the sickening grind and crunch as the van went to matchwood--the debris hurtling along the running boards, shattering the cab glass in flying splinters--and Owsley dropped where he stood--like a log. And the pony truck caught the tongue of the open switch, and, with a vicious, nasty lurch, the 1601 wrenched herself loose from her string of coaches, staggered like a lost and drunken soul a few yards along the ties--and turned turtle in the ditch.

It was a bad spill, but it might have been worse, a great deal worse--a box car and the van for the junk heap, and the 1601 for the shops to repair fractures--and nobody hurt except Owsley.

But they couldn't make head or tail of the cause of it. Everybody went on the carpet for it--and still it was a mystery. The main line was clear at the west end of the siding, and the switch was right; everybody was agreed on that, and it showed that way on the face of it--and that was as it should have been. The operator at Elbow Bend swore that he had shown his red, and that it was showing when the Limited swept by. He said he knew it was going to be a close shave whether the freight, a little late and crowding the Limited's running time, would be clear of the main line without delaying the express, and he had shown his red before ever he had heard her whistle--his red was showing. The engine crew and the train crew of Extra No. 49, west, backed the operator up--the red was showing.

Brannigan, the fireman, didn't count as a witness. The only light he'd seen at all was the west-end switch light, the curve had hidden anything ahead until after he'd pulled his door and turned to the tender for coal, and by then they were past the station. And Owsley, pretty badly smashed up, and in bed down in Mrs. McCann's short-order house, talked kind of queer when he got around to where he could talk at all. They asked him what color light the station semaphore was showing, and Owsley said white--white as the moon. That's what he said--white as the moon. And they weren't quite sure he understood what they were driving at.