The Night Operator Part 10

"Yez are apes!" he yelled, dancing frantically up and down. "Yez are oorang-ootangs! An' yez talk like a cageful av monkeys! Yez look loike men, but yez are not! Yez are annything that has no brains!

Have I not told yez till me throat's cracked doin' ut thot yez are not rayquired to lift the whole dombed right av way to put in a single measly tie? Is ut a hump loike a camel's back yez are try in' to make in the rail? Here! Dig--_here_!"--the little section boss, with wrathful precision, indicated the exact spot with the toe of his boot.

He returned to his seat, and regarded Sammy Durgan helplessly.

"'Tis a new lot," said he sadly, "an' the worst, bar none, that iver I had."

"But an Irishman, and one that can talk your own tongue, you won't hire when he's out of a job," insinuated Sammy Durgan reproachfully.

The section boss scrubbed reflectively at his chin whiskers.

"An' how's Mrs. Durgan?" he asked, with some cordiality.

"She's bad," said Sammy Durgan, suddenly mournful and shaking his head.

"She's worse than ever she's been, Donovan. I felt bad at leaving her last night, Donovan--I did that. But what could I do? 'Twas a job I had to get, Donovan, bad as I felt at leaving her, Donovan."

"Sure now, is thot so?" said the little section boss sympathetically.

"'Tis cruel harrd luck yez have, Durgan. But yez'll moind I've not much in the way av jobs--'tis a desolate bit av country, an' mostly track-walkin' at a dollar-tin a day."

"Donovan," said Sammy Durgan from a full heart, "the day'll come, Donovan, when I'll keep the gra.s.s green on your grave for this. I knew you'd not throw an old friend down."

"'Tis glad I am to do ut," said Donovan, waving his hand royally. "An'

yez can start in at wance."

And Sammy Durgan started. And for a week Sammy Durgan a.s.siduously tramped his allotted mileage out and back to the section shanty each day--and for a week Sammy Durgan and trouble were asunder.

Trouble? Where, from what possible source, could there be any trouble?

Not a soul for miles around the section shanty, just mountains and track and cuts and fills, and nothing on earth for Sammy Durgan to do but keep a paternal eye generally on the roadbed. Trouble? It even got monotonous for Sammy Durgan himself.

"'Tis not," confided Sammy Durgan to himself one morning, after a week of this, that found him plodding along the track some two miles east of the section shanty, "'tis not precisely the job I'd like, for it's a chance I'm looking for to show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em, and there'll be no chance here--but temporarily it'll do. 'Tis not much of a job, and beneath me at that, but have I not heard that them as are faithful in little will some day be handed much? There'll be no one to say"--he glanced carefully around him in all directions--"that Sammy Durgan was not a good track-walker."

Sammy Durgan sat down on the edge of the embankment, extracted a black cutty from his pocket, charged it with very black tobacco, lit it, tamped the top of the bowl with a calloused forefinger, and from another pocket extracted a newspaper--one of a bundle that the train crew of No. 7 thoughtfully heaved at the section shanty door each morning on their way up the line.

It was a warm, bright morning; one of those comfortable summer mornings with just enough heat to lift a little simmering haze from the rails, and just enough sun to make a man feel leisurely, so to speak. Sammy Durgan, the cutty drawing well, wormed a comfortable and inviting hollow in the gravel of the embankment, propped his back against an obliging tie, and opened his paper.

"Track-walking," said Sammy Durgan, "is not much of a job, and 'tis not what I'm looking for, but there are worse jobs."

Somebody had read the paper before Sammy Durgan, hence the sheet that first presented itself to his view was a page of cla.s.sified advertis.e.m.e.nts. His eye roved down the column of "Situations Vacant"--and held on one of them.

MEN WANTED for grading work at The Gap. Apply at Engineers' Office, Big Cloud, or to T. H. MacMurtrey, foreman, at The Gap.

Sammy Durgan pursed his lips.

"There's no telling," said Sammy Durgan thoughtfully, "when I'll be looking for a new job, so I'll bear it in mind. Not that they'd give me a job at the office, for they would not; but by the name of him this T. H. MacMurtrey 'll be a new man and unknown to me, which is quite another matter--and I'll keep it in mind."

Sammy Durgan turned the sheet absently--and then, forgetful of the obliging tie that propped his back, he sat bolt upright with a jerk.

"For the love of Mike!" observed Sammy Durgan breathlessly, with his eyes glued to the paper.

It leaped right out at him in the biggest type the Big Cloud _Daily Sentinel_ had to offer, which, if it had its limitations, was not to be despised, since it had acquired a second-hand font or two from a metropolitan daily east that made no pretense at being modest in such matters.

Sammy Durgan's eyes began to pop, and his leathery face to screw up.

GHASTLY RAILROAD TRAGEDY

UNKNOWN MAN MURDERED IN STATEROOM OF EASTBOUND FLYER

_No Clue to a.s.sa.s.sin_

Sammy Durgan's eyes bored into the fine print of the "story." If the style was a trifle provincial and harrowing, Sammy Durgan was not fastidious enough to be disturbed thereby--it was intensely vivid.

Sammy Durgan's mouth was half open, as he read.

One of the most atrocious, daring and b.l.o.o.d.y murders in the annals of the country's crime was perpetrated last night in a compartment of the sleeping car on No. 12, the eastbound through express. It is a baffling mystery, though suspicion is directed against a pa.s.senger who gave his name as Samuel Starke of New York. The details, gathered by the _Sentinel_ staff from Conductor Hurley, and Clements, the porter, on the arrival of the train at Big Cloud, are as follows:

The car was a new-type compartment car, with the compartment doors opening off the corridor that runs along one side of the length of the car. As the train was pa.s.sing Dam River, Clements, the porter, at the forward end of the car, thought he heard two revolver shots from somewhere in the rear. Clements says he thought at first he had been mistaken, for the train was travelling fast and making a great uproar, and he did not at once make any effort to investigate. Then he heard a compartment door open, and he started down the corridor. Starke was standing in the doorway of B compartment where the murdered man was, and Starke yelled at Clements. "Here, porter, quick!" is what Clements says Starke said to him: "There's a man been shot in here! My compartment's next to this, you know, and I heard two shots and rushed in."

It was a horrible and unnerving sight that greeted the porter's eyes.

Mr. Clements was still visibly affected by it as he talked to the _Sentinel_ reporter in Big Cloud. The unknown murdered man lay pitifully huddled on the floor, lifeless and dead, a great bullet wound in one temple and another along the side of his neck that must have severed the jugular vein. It was as though blood had rained upon the victim. He was literally covered with it. He was already past aid, being quite dead. Conductor Hurley was quickly summoned. But investigation only deepened the mystery. Suicide was out of the question because there was no weapon to be found. Mr. Starke, at his own request, was searched, but had no revolver. Mr. Starke, however, has been held by the police.

The _Sentinel_, without wis.h.i.+ng to infringe upon the sphere of the authorities or cast aspersions upon their ac.u.men, but in the simple furtherance of justice, offers the suggestion that, as the compartment window was open, the a.s.sa.s.sin, whoever he was, hurled the revolver out of the window after committing his dastardly and unspeakable crime; and the _Sentinel_ hereby offers _Twenty-five Dollars Reward_ for the recovery of the revolver. Lawlessness and crime, we had fondly believed, was stamped out of the West, and we raise our voice in protest against the return of desperadoes, bandits, and train robbers, and we solemnly warn all those of that caliber that they will not be tolerated in the new West, and we call upon all public-spirited citizens in whose veins red blood flows to rise up and put them down with an iron and merciless----

There were still three columns. Sammy Durgan read them voraciously.

At the end, he sucked hard on the black cutty. The black cutty was out.

"To think of the likes of that!" muttered Sammy Durgan heavily, as he dug for a match. "The fellow that wrote the piece--'twill be that little squint-eyed runt Labatt--is not the fool I thought him. It's right, he is; what with murders and desperadoes no man's life's safe--it is not! And to think of it right on this same railroad! And who knows"--Sammy Durgan rose with sudden haste--"but 'twas right on this same spot where I am this blessed minute, for the paper says it was close to Dam River, that the poor devil was shot dead and foully killed! And--" The match flamed over the bowl of the cutty, but Sammy Durgan's attention was not on it.

Sammy Durgan, in a sort of strained way, descended the embankment. The match burned his fingers, and Sammy Durgan dropped it. Sammy Durgan rubbed his eyes--yes, it was still glistening away there in the sunlight. He stooped, and from the gra.s.s, trembling a little with excitement, picked up a heavy-calibered, nickel-trimmed revolver.

"Holy Christmas!" whispered Sammy Durgan, blinking fast. "'Tis the same! There's no doubt of it--'tis the same that done the b.l.o.o.d.y deed!

And 'tis the first bit of luck I've had since I was born! Twenty-five dollars reward!" He said it over very softly again: "Twenty-five dollars reward!"

Sammy Durgan returned to the track, and resumed his way along it; though, as far as his services to the road were concerned, he might just as well have remained where he was. Sammy Durgan's thoughts were not of loosened spikes and erring fishplates, and neither were his eyes intent on their discovery--his mind, thanks to Labatt, of the Big Cloud _Daily Sentinel_, teemed with scenes of violence vividly portrayed, midnight murders, corpses in grotesque att.i.tudes on gore-bespattered compartment floors, desperadoes of all descriptions, train bandits and train robbers in masks holding up trains.

"'Tis true," said Sammy Durgan to himself. "'Tis a lawless country, these same Rockies. I mind 'twas only a year ago that Black Dempsey and his gang tried to wreck Number Two in the Cut near Coyote Bend--I mind it well."

Sammy Durgan walked on down the track. At intervals he took the revolver from his pocket and put it back again, as though to a.s.sure himself beyond peradventure of doubt that it was in his possession.

"Twenty-five dollars reward!" communed Sammy Durgan, grown arrogant with wealth. "'Tis near a month's pay at a dollar-ten--and all for the picking of it up. I called it luck--but it is not luck. An ordinary track-walker would have walked it by and not seen it. 'Tis what you get for keeping your eyes about you, and besides the twenty-five 'tis promotion, too, mabbe I'll get. 'Twill show 'em that there's track-walkers _and_ track-walkers. I'll say to Regan: 'Regan,' I'll say, 'you've said hard words to me, Regan, but I ask you, Regan, how many track-walkers would have brought a b.l.o.o.d.y murderer to justice by keeping their eyes about them in the faithful performance of their duty, Regan? 'Tis but the chance I ask. 'Tis the man in an emergency that counts, and if ever I get a chance at an emergency I'll show you.'

And Regan'll say: 'Sammy,' he'll say, 'you----'"

Sammy Durgan paused in his engrossing soliloquy as the roar of an approaching train fell on his ears, and he scrambled quickly down from the right of way to the bottom of the embankment. Just ahead of him was a short, narrow, high-walled rock cut, and at the farther end the track swerved sharply to the right, side-stepping, as it were, the twist of the Dam River that swung in, steep-banked, to the right of way.

"I'll wait here," said Sammy Durgan, "'till she's through the cut."