Part 9

An instant Flannagan stood motionless as one transformed from flesh to sculptured clay--then the glass slid from his fingers and crashed into tinkling splinters on the floor. The liquor splashed his boots. Number Eighty was the eastbound Coast Express! Like one who moves in unknown places through the dark, so, then, Flannagan moved toward the door. Men looked at him in amazement, and stood aside to let him pass. Something was tugging at his heart, beating at his brain, impelling him forward; a force irresistible, that, in its first, sudden, overwhelming surge he could not understand, could not grasp, could not focus into concrete form--could only obey.

He passed out through the doors, and then for the first time a cry rang from his lips. There were no halting, stumbling, uncertain steps now. Men running down the street called to Flannagan as he sped past them. Flannagan made no answer, did not look their way; his face, strained and full of dumb anguish, was set toward the station.

He gained the platform and raced along it. Shouts came from across the yards. Up and down the spurs fluttered the fore-shortened little yard engine, coughing sparks and wheezing from her exhaust as she bustled the wrecking train together; lamps swung and twinkled like fireflies, for it was just opening spring and the dark fell early; and in front of the roundhouse, the 1014, blowing hard from her safety under a full head of steam, like a thoroughbred that scents the race, was already on the table.

With a heave of his great shoulders and a sweep of his arms, Flannagan won through the group of trainmen, shop hands, and loungers clustered around the door, and took the stairs four at a leap.

A light burned in the super's office, but the voices came from the despatchers' room. And there in the doorway Flannagan halted--halted just for a second's pause while his eyes swept the scene before him.

Regan, the master mechanic, by the window, was mouthing curses under his breath as men do in times of stress; Spence, the despatcher, white-faced, the hair straggling into his eyes, was leaning over the key under the green-shaded lamp, over the key clearing the line while the sounder clicked in his ears of ruin and of lives gone out. Harvey, the division engineer, was there, pulling savagely at a brier with empty bowl. And at the despatcher's elbow stood Carleton, a grim commander, facing tidings of disaster, his shoulders braced and bent a little forward as though to take the blow, his jaws clamped tight till the lips, compressed, were bloodless, and the chiselled lines on his face told of the bitterness in his heart.

Then Flannagan stepped forward.

"Carleton," he cried, and his words came like panting sobs, "Carleton, give me back my job."

It was no place for Flannagan.

Carleton's cup was already full to overflowing, and he swung on Flannagan like a flash. His hand lifted and pointed to the door.

"Get out of here!" he said between his teeth.

"Carleton," cried Flannagan again, and his arms went out in supplication toward the super, "Carleton, give me back my job--give it back to me for to-night--just for to-night."

"No!" the single word came from Carleton's lips like a thunder clap.

Flannagan shivered a little and shrank back.

"Just for to-night," he mumbled hoarsely. "Just for----"

"No!" Carleton's voice rang hard as flint. "I tell you, no! Get out of here!"

Harvey moved suddenly, threateningly, toward Flannagan--and, as suddenly, Flannagan, roused by the act, brushed the division engineer aside like a plaything, sprang forward, and, with a quick, fierce grip, caught Carleton's arms and pinioned them, vise-like, to his sides.

"And I tell you, yes!" his voice rose dominant with the power, the will that shook him now to the depths of his turbulent soul. As a man who knows no law, no obstacle, no restraint, as a man who would batter down the gates of hell itself to gain his end, so then was Flannagan. "I tell you, yes! I tell you, yes! _My wife and baby's in that wreck to-night?_"

Turmoil, shouts, the short, quick intermittent hiss of steam as the 1014, her cylinder cocks open, backed down to the platform, the clash of coupling cars, a jumbled medley of sounds, floated up from the yard without--but within the little room, the chattering sounder for the moment stilled, there fell a silence as of death, and no man among them moved or spoke.

Flannagan, gray-faced, gasping, his mighty grip still on Carleton, his head thrown forward close to the other's, stared into the super's face--and, for a long minute, in the twitching muscles of the big wrecker's face, in the look that man reads seldom in his fellows' eyes, Carleton drew the fearful picture, lived the awful story that the babbling wire had told. "Royal" Carleton, square man and big of heart, his voice broke.

"God help you, Flannagan--go."

No word came from Flannagan's lips--only a queer choking sound, as his hands dropped to his sides--only a queer choking sound, as he turned suddenly and jumped for the door.

On the stairs, Dorsay, the driver of the 1014, coming up for his orders, passed Flannagan.

"Bad spill, I hear," growled the engineer, as he went by. "The five hundred and five's pony truck jumped the rails on the lower curve and everything's in the ditch. Old Burke's gone out and a heap of the passengers with him. I----"

Flannagan heard no more--he was on the platform now. Coupled behind the derrick crane and the tool car were two coaches, improvised ambulances, and into these latter, instead of the tool car, the men of the wrecking gang were piling--a bad smash brought luxury for them. Shouts, cries, hubbub, a babel of voices were around him, but in his brain, repeated and repeated over and over again, lived only a phrase from the letter he had torn to pieces, stamped under heel that afternoon--the words were swimming before his eyes: "Michael, dear, we've both been wrong; I'm bringing _baby_ back on the Coast Express Friday night."

Men with little black bags brushed by him and tumbled into the rear coach--the doctors of Big Cloud to the last one of them. Dorsay came running from the station, a bit of tissue, his orders, fluttering in his hand, and sprang for the cab. 1014's exhaust burst suddenly into quick, deafening explosions, the sparks shot volleying heavenward from her short stack, the big, whirling drivers were beginning to bite--and then, through the gangway, after the engineer, into the cab swung Flannagan--Flannagan, the wrecking boss.

Spider Cut is the Eastern gateway of the Rockies, and it lies, as the crows fly, sixteen miles west of Big Cloud; but the right of way, as it twists and turns, circling and dodging the buttes that grow from mounds to foothills, makes it on the blue-prints twenty-one decimal seven. The running time of the fast fliers on this stretch is--but what of that? Dorsay that night smashed all records, and the medical men in the rear coach tell to this day how they clung for life and limb to their seats and to each other, and most of them will admit--which is admitting much--that they were frightened, white-lipped men with broken nerves.

As the wreck special, with a clash and clatter, shattered over the switches in the upper yard and nosed the main line, Stan Willard, who had the shovel end of it, with a snatch at the chain swung open the furnace door and a red glow lighted up the heavens. Dorsay turned in his seat and looked at the giant form of the wrecking boss behind him--they had told him the story in the office.

The eyes of the two men met. Flannagan's lips moved dumbly; and, with a curious, pleading motion, he gestured toward the throttle.

Dorsay opened another notch. He laughed a grim, hard laugh.

"I _know_," he shouted over the roar. "I know. Leave it to me, Flannagan."

The bark of the exhaust came quicker and quicker, swelled and rose into the full, deep-toned thunder of a single note. Notch by notch, Dorsay opened out the 1014, notch by notch, and the big mountain racer, answering like a mettlesome steed to the touch of the whip, leapt forward, ever faster, into the night.

Now the headlight played on shining steel ahead; now suddenly threw a path of light across the short, yellow stubble of a rising butte, and Dorsay checked grudgingly for an instant as they swung the curve--just for an instant--then into the straight again, with wide-flung throttle.

It was mad work, and in that reeling, dizzy cab no man spoke. The sweep of the singing wind, the wild tattoo of beating trucks, the sullen whir of flying drivers was in their ears; while behind, the derrick crane, the tool car and the coaches writhed and wriggled, swayed and lurched, tearing at their couplings, bouncing on their trucks, jerking viciously as each slue took up the axle play, rolling, pitching crazily like cockleshells tossed on an angry sea.

Now they tore through a cut, and the walls took up the deafening roar and echoed and reechoed it back in volume a thousandfold; now into the open, and the sudden contrast was like the gasping breath of an imprisoned thing escaped; now over culverts, trestles, spans, hollow, reverberating--the speed was terrific.

Over his levers, bounding on his seat, Dorsay, tense and strained, leaned far forward following the leaping headlight's glare; while staggering like a drunken man to keep his balance, the sweat standing out in glistening beads upon his grimy face, Stan Willard watched the flickering needle on the gauge, and his shovel clanged and swung; and in the corner, back of Dorsay, bent low to brace himself, thrown backward and forward with every lurch, in the fantastic, dancing light like some tigerish, outraged animal crouched to spring, Flannagan, with head drawn into his shoulders, jaws outthrust, stared over the engineer's back, stared with never a look to right or left, stared through the cab glass to the right of way ahead--stared toward Spider Cut.

Again and again, with sickening, giddy shock, wheel-base lifted from the swing, the 1014 struck the tangents, hung a breathless space, and, with a screech of crunching flanges, found the rails once more.

Again and again--but the story of that ride is the doctors' story--they tell it best. Dorsay made the run that night from Big Cloud to Spider Cut, twenty-one point seven miles, in _nineteen_ minutes.

There have been bad spills on the Hill Division, bad spills--but there have never been worse than on that Friday night when the 505 jumped the rails at the foot of the curve coming down the grade just east of Spider Cut, shot over the embankment and piled the Coast Express, mahogany sleepers and all, into splintered wreckage forty feet below the right of way.

As Dorsay checked and with screaming brake-shoes the 1014 slowed, Flannagan, with a wild cry, leaped from the cab and dashed up the track ahead of the still-moving pilot. It was light enough--the cars of the wreck nearest him, the mail and baggage cars, had caught, and, fanned by the wind into yellow flames, were blazing like a huge bonfire. Shouts arose from below; cries, anguished, piercing, from those imprisoned in the wreck; figures, those of the crew and passengers who had made their escape, were moving hither and thither, working as best they might, pulling others through shattered windows and up-canted doors, laying those who were past all knowing beside the long row of silent forms already tenderly stretched upon the edge of the embankment.

A man, with face cut and bleeding, came running toward Flannagan. It was Kingsley, conductor of Number Eighty. Flannagan jumped for him, grasped him by the shoulders and stared without a word into his face.

But Kingsley shook his head.

"I don't know, Flannagan," he choked. "She was in the first-class just ahead of the Pullmans. There's--there's no one come out of that car yet"--he turned away his head--"we couldn't get to it."

"Couldn't get to it"--Flannagan's lips repeated the phrase mechanically. Then he looked--and understood the grim significance of the words. He laughed suddenly, jarring hoarse, as it is not good to hear men laugh--and with that laugh Flannagan went into the fight.

The details of that night no one man knows. There in the shadow of the gray-walled Rockies, men, flint-hearted, calloused, rough and ready though they were, sobbed as they toiled; and while the derrick tackles creaked and moaned, axe and pick and bar swung and crashed and tore through splintering glass and ripping timber.

What men could do they did--and through the hours Flannagan led them. Tough, grizzled men, more than one dropped from sheer weariness; but ever Flannagan's great arms rose and fell, ever his mighty shoulders heaved, ever he led them on. What men could do they did--but it was graying dawn before they opened a way to the heart of the wreck--the first-class coach that once ahead of the Pullmans was _under_ them now.

Flannagan, gaunt, burned and bleeding, a madman with reeling brain, staggered toward the jagged hole that they had torn in the flooring of the car. They tried to hold him back, the man who had spurred them through the night alternately with lashing curse and piteous prayer, the man who had worked with demon strength as no three men among them had worked, the man who was tottering now at the end in mind and body, they tried to hold him back--_for mercy's sake_. But Flannagan shook them off and went--went laughing again the same fearful laugh with which he had begun the fight.

He found her there--found her with a little bundle lying in the crook of her outstretched arm. She moaned and held it toward him--but Flannagan had gone his limit, his work was done, the tension broke.

And when they worked their way to the far end of the car after him, those hard, grim-visaged followers of Flannagan, they found a man squatted on an up-ended seat, a woman beside him, death and desolation and huddled shapes around him, dandling a tiny infant in his arms, crooning a lullaby through cracked lips, crooning a lullaby--to a little one long hushed already in its last sleep.

Opinions differ. But Big Cloud to-day sides about solid with Regan.

"Flannagan?" says the master mechanic. "Flannagan's a pretty good wrecking boss, pretty good, I don't know of any better--since the Almighty had him on the carpet. He's got a plot up on the butte behind the town, he and Daisy, with a little mound on it. They go up there together every Sunday--never've known 'em to miss. A man ain't likely to fall off the right of way again as long as he does that, is he? Well, then, forget it, he's been doing that for a year now--what?"

V

THE MAN WHO SQUEALED

Back in the early days the payroll of the Hill Division was full of J. Smiths, T. Browns and H. Something-or-others--just as it is to-day. But to-day there is a difference. The years have brought a certain amount of inevitable pedigree, as it were--a certain amount of gossip, so to speak, over the back fences of Big Cloud. It's natural enough. There's a possibility, as a precedent, that one or two of the passengers on the _Mayflower_ didn't have as much blue blood when they started on the voyage as their descendants have got now--it's possible. The old hooker, from all accounts, had a pretty full passenger list, and there may have been some who secured accommodations with few questions asked, and a subsequent coat of glorified whitewash that they couldn't have got if they'd stayed at home where they were intimately known--that is, they couldn't have got the coat of glorified whitewash.

It's true that there's a few years between the landing of the _Mayflower_ and the inception of Big Cloud, but the interval doesn't count--the principle is the same. Out in the mountains on the Hill Division, "Who's Who" begins with the founding of Big Cloud--it is verbose, unprofitable and extremely bad taste to go back any farther than that--even if it were possible. There's quite a bit known about the J. Smiths, the T. Browns and the H. Something-or-others now, with the enlightenment of years upon them--but there wasn't then. There were a good many men who immigrated West to help build the road through the Rockies, and run it afterwards--for reasons of their own. There weren't any questions asked. Plain J. Smith, T. Brown or H. Something-or-other went--that was all there was to it.

He said his name was Walton--P. Walton. He was tall, hollow-cheeked, with skin of an unhealthy, colorless white, and black eyes under thin, black brows that were unnaturally bright. He dropped off at Big Cloud one afternoon--in the early days--from No. 1, the Limited from the East, climbed upstairs in the station to the super's room, and coughed out a request to Carleton for a job.

Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, the squarest man that ever held down a divisional swivel chair, looked P. Walton over for a moment before he spoke. P. Walton didn't size up much like a day's work anyway you looked at him.

"What can you do?" inquired Carleton.

"Anything," said P. Walton--and coughed.

Carleton reached for his pipe and struck a match.

"If you could," said he, sucking at the amber mouthpiece between words, "there wouldn't be any trouble about it. For instance, the construction gangs want men to----"

"I'll go--I'll do anything," cut in P. Walton eagerly. "Just give me a chance."

"Nope!" said Carleton with a grin. "I'm not hankering to break the Sixth Commandment--know what that is?"

P. Walton licked dry lips with the tip of his tongue.

"Murder," said he. "But you might as well let it come that way as any other. I'm pretty bad here"--he jerked his thumb toward his lungs--"and I'm broke here"--he turned an empty trouser's pocket inside out.

"H'm!" observed Carleton reflectively. There was something in the other that touched his sympathy, and something apart from that that appealed to him--a sort of grim, philosophical grit in the man with the infected lungs.

"I came out," said P. Walton, looking through the window, and kind of talking to himself, "because I thought it would be healthier for me out here than back East."

"I dare say," said Carleton kindly; "but not if you start in by swinging a pick. Maybe we can find something else for you to do. Ever done any railroading?"

Walton shook his head.

"No," he answered. "I've always worked on books. I'm called pretty good at figures, if you've got anything in that line."

"Clerk, eh? Well, I don't know," said Carleton slowly. "I guess, perhaps, we can give you a chance. My own clerk's doing double shift just at present; you might help him out temporarily. And if you're what you say you are, we'll find something better for you before the summer's over. Thirty dollars a month--it's not much of a stake--what do you say?"

"It's a pretty big stake for me," said P. Walton, and his face lighted up as he turned it upon Carleton.

"All right," said Carleton. "You'd better spend the rest of the afternoon then in hunting up some place to stay. And here"--he dug into his pocket and handed P. Walton two five-dollar gold pieces--"this may come in handy till you're on your feet."

"Say," said P. Walton huskily, "I----" he stopped suddenly, as the door opened and Regan, the master mechanic, came in.

"Never mind," smiled Carleton. "Report to Halstead in the next room to-morrow morning at seven o'clock."

P. Walton hesitated, as though to complete his interrupted sentence, and then, with an uncertain look at Regan, turned and walked quietly from the room.

Regan wheeled around and stared after the retreating figure. When the door had closed he looked inquiringly at Carleton.

"Touched you for a loan, eh?" he volunteered quizzically.

"No," said Carleton, still smiling; "a job. I gave him the money as an advance."

"More fool you!" said the blunt little master mechanic. "Your security's bad--he'll never live long enough to earn it. What sort of a job?"

"Helping Halstead out to begin with," replied Carleton.

"H'm!" remarked Regan. "Poor devil."

"Yes, Tommy," said Carleton. "Quite so--poor devil."

Regan, big-hearted, good-natured for all his bluntness, walked to the front window and watched P. Walton's figure disappear slowly, and a little haltingly, down the platform. The fat little master mechanic's face puckered.

"We get some queer cards out here," he said. "He looks as though he'd had a pretty hard time of it--kind of a discard in the game, I guess. Out here to die--pleasant, what? I wonder where he came from?"

"He didn't say," said Carleton dryly.

"No," said Regan; "I dare say he didn't--none of 'em do. I wonder, though, where he came from?"

And in this the division generally were in accord with Regan. They didn't ask--which was outside the ethics; and P. Walton didn't say--which was quite within his rights. But for all that, the division, with Regan, wondered. Ordinarily, they wouldn't have paid much attention to a new man one way or the other, but P. Walton was a little more than just a new man--he was a man they couldn't size up. That was the trouble. It didn't matter who any one was, or where he came from, if they could form an opinion of him--which wasn't hard to form in most instances--that would at all satisfactorily fill the bill. But P. Walton didn't bear the earmarks of a hard case "wanted" East, or show any tendency toward deep theological thought; therefore opinions were conflicting--which wasn't satisfying.

Not that P. Walton refused to mix, or held himself aloof, or anything of that kind; on the contrary, all hands came to know him pretty well--as P. Walton. As a matter of cold fact, they had more chances of knowing him than they had of knowing most new-comers; and that bothered them a little, because, somehow, they didn't seem to make anything out of their opportunities. As assistant clerk to the super, P. Walton was soon a familiar enough figure in the yards, the roundhouse and the shops, and genial enough, and pleasant enough, too; but they never got past the pure, soft-spoken, perfect English, and the kind of firm, determined swing to the jaw that no amount of emaciation could eliminate. They agreed only on one thing--on the question of therapeutics--they were unanimous on that point with Regan--P. Walton, whatever else he was, or wasn't, was out there to die. And it kind of looked to them as though P. Walton had through rights to the Terminal, and not much of any limit to speak of on his permit.

Regan put the matter up to Carleton one day in the super's office, about a month after P. Walton's advent to Big Cloud.

"I said he was a queer card the first minute I clapped eyes on him," observed the master mechanic. "And I think so now--only more so. What in blazes does a white man want to go and live in a two-room pigsty, with a family of Polacks and about eighteen kids, for?"

Carleton tamped down the dottle in his pipe with his forefinger musingly.

"How much a week, Tommy," he inquired, "is thirty dollars a month, with about a third of the time out for sick spells?"

"I'm not a mathematician," growled the little master mechanic. "About five dollars, I guess."

"It's a good guess," said Carleton quietly. "He bought new clothes you remember with the ten I gave him--and he needed them badly enough." Carleton reached into a drawer of his desk, and handed Regan an envelope that was torn open across the end. "I found this here this afternoon after the paycar left," he said.

Regan peered into the envelope, then extracted two five-dollar gold pieces and a note. He unfolded the note, and read the two lines written in a hand that looked like steel-plate engraving.

With thanks and grateful appreciation.

P. WALTON.

Regan blinked, handed the money, note, and envelope back to Carleton, and fumbled a little awkwardly with his watch chain.