The Night Operator Part 21

"All right," said Spence, who was sitting in on the early trick.

"How's P. Walton to-night?"

"Pretty fair," said P. Walton, with a smile. "How's everything moving?"

"Slick as clockwork," Spence answered. "Everything on the dot. I'll get some of that stuff off for you now."

"Good," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "Good-night, Spence."

"'Night, old man," rejoined Spence, and picking up the first of the super's telegrams began to rattle a call on his key like the tattoo of a snare drum.

P. Walton, in possession of the information he sought--that Extra No.

34 was on time--descended the stairs to the platform, and started uptown.

"I think," he mused, as he went along, "that about as good a place as any for me when this thing breaks will be sitting with Nulty."

P. Walton noticed the light burning in Nulty's bedroom window as he reached the house; and, it being a warm night, found the front door wide open. He stepped into the hall, and from there into the bedroom.

Mrs. Nulty was sitting in a rocking-chair beside the lamp, mending away busily at a pair of Nulty's overalls--but there wasn't anybody else in the room.

"h.e.l.lo!" said P. Walton cheerily. "Where's the sick man?"

"Why, didn't you know?" said Mrs. Nulty a little anxiously, as she laid aside her work and rose from her chair. "The express company sent word this morning that if he was able they particularly wanted to have him make the run through the mountains to-night on Extra Number Thirty-four--I think there was some special s.h.i.+pment of money. He wasn't at all fit to go, and I tried to keep him home, but he wouldn't listen to me. He went up to Elk River this morning to meet Thirty-four and come back on it. I've been worrying all day about him."

P. Walton's eyes rested on the anxious face of the little woman before him, dropped to the red, hard-working hands that played nervously with the corner of her ap.r.o.n then travelled to Nulty's alarm clock that ticked raucously upon the table--it was 8.17. P. Walton smiled.

"Now, don't you worry, Mrs. Nulty," he said rea.s.suringly. "A touch of mountain fever isn't anything one way or the other--don't you worry, it'll be all right. I didn't know he was out, and I was going to sit with him for a little while, but what I really came for was to get him to lend me a revolver--there's a coyote haunting my end of the town that's kept me awake for the last two nights, and I'd like to even up the score. If Nulty hasn't taken the whole of his armament with him, perhaps you'll let me have one.

"Why, yes, of course," said Mrs. Nulty readily. "There's two there in the top bureau drawer. Take whichever one you want."

"Thanks," said P. Walton--and stepped to the bureau. He took out a revolver, slipped it into his pocket, and turned toward the door.

"Now, don't you worry, Mrs. Nulty," he said encouragingly, "because there's nothing to worry about. Tell him I dropped in, will you?--and thank you again for the revolver. Good-night, Mrs. Nulty."'

P. Walton's eyes strayed to the clock as he left the room--it was 8.19.

On the sidewalk he broke into a run, dashed around the corner and sped, with instantly protesting lungs, down Main Street, making for the railroad yards. And as he ran P. Walton did a sum in mental arithmetic, while his breath came in gasps.

If you remember Flannagan, you will remember that the distance from Spider Cut to Big Cloud was twenty-one decimal seven miles. P. Walton figured it roughly twenty-two. No. 34, on time, had already left Spider Cut at 8.17--and the wires were cut. Her running time for the twenty-two miles was twenty-nine minutes--she made Big Cloud at 8.46.

Counting Larry's estimate of seven miles to be accurate, No. 34 had fifteen miles to go from Spider Cut before they piled her in the ditch, and it would take her a little over nineteen minutes to do it. With two minutes already elapsed--_three_ now--and allowing, by shaving it close, another five before he started, P. Walton found that he was left with eleven minutes in which to cover seven miles.

It took P. Walton four of his five-minute allowance to reach the station platform; and here, for just an instant, he paused while his eyes swept the twinkling switch lights in the yards. Then he raced along the length of the platform, jumped from the upper end to the ground, and lurching a little, up the main line track to where fore-shortened, uncla.s.sed little switching engine--the 229--was grunting heavily, and stealing a momentary rest after having sent a string of flats flying down a spur under the tender guidance of a brakeman or two. And as P. Walton ran, he reached into his pocket and drew out Nulty's revolver.

There wasn't much light inside the cab--there was only the lamp over the gauges--but it was light enough to show P. Walton's glittering eyes, fever bright, the deadly white of his face, the deadly smile on his lips, and the deadly weapon in his hand, as he sprang through the gangway.

"Get out!" panted P. Walton coldly.

Neither Dalheen, the fireman, nor Mulligan, fat as a porpoise, on the right-hand side, stood upon the order of their going. Dalheen ducked, and took a flying leap through the left-hand gangway; and Mulligan, with a sort of anxious gasp that seemed as though he wished to convey to P. Walton the fact that he was hurrying all he could, squeezed himself through the right-hand gangway and sat down on the ground.

P. Walton pulled the throttle open with an unscientific jerk.

With a kind of startled scream from the hissing steam, the sparks flying from madly racing drivers as the wheel tires bit into the rails, the old 229, like a frightened thoroughbred at the vicious lash of a yokel driver, reared and plunged wildly forward. The sudden, violent start from inertia pitched P. Walton off his feet across the driver's seat, and smashed his head against the reversing lever that stood notched forward in the segment. He gained his feet again, and, his head swimming a little from the blow, looked behind him.

Yells were coming from half a dozen different directions; forms, racing along with lanterns bobbing up and down, were tearing madly for the upper end of the yard toward him; there was a blur of switch lights, red, white, purple and green--then with a wicked lurch around a curve darkness hid them, and the sweep of the wind, the roar of the pounding drivers deadened all other sounds.

P. Walton smiled--a strange, curious, wistful smile--and sat down in Mulligan's seat. His qualifications for a Brotherhood card had been exhausted when he had pulled the throttle--engine driving was not in P.

Walton's line. P. Walton smiled at the air latch, the water gla.s.s, the gauges and injectors, whose inner workings were mysteries to him--and clung to the window sill of the cab to keep his seat. He understood the throttle--in a measure--he had ridden up and down the yards in the switchers once or twice during the month that was past--that was all.

Quicker came the bark of the exhaust; quicker the speed. P. Walton's eyes were fixed through the cab gla.s.s ahead, following the headlight's glare, that silvered now the rails, and now flung its beams athwart the stubble of a b.u.t.te as the 229 swung a curve. Around him, about him, was dizzy, lurching chaos, as, like some mad thing, the little switcher reeled drunkenly through the night--now losing her wheel-base with a sickening slew on the circling track, now finding it again with a staggering quiver as she struck the tangent once more.

It was not scientific running--P. Walton never eased her, never helped her--P. Walton was not an engineer. He only knew that he must go fast to make the seven miles in eleven minutes--and he was going fast. And, mocking every formula of dynamics, the little switcher, with no single trailing coach to steady it, swinging, swaying, rocking, held the rails.

P. Walton's lips were still half parted in their strange, curious smile. A deafening roar was in his ears--the pound of beating trucks on the fish-plates; the creak and groan of axle play; the screech of crunching f.l.a.n.g.es; the whistling wind; the full-toned thunder now of the exhaust--and reverberating back and forth, flinging it from b.u.t.te to b.u.t.te, for miles around in the foothills the still night woke into a thousand answering echoes.

Meanwhile, back in Big Cloud, things were happening in the super's office. Spence, the despatcher, interrupting Carleton and Regan at their nightly pedro, came hastily into the room.

"Something's wrong," he said tersely. "I can't get anything west of here, and----" He stopped suddenly, as Mulligan, flabby white, came tumbling into the room.

"He's gone off his chump!" screamed Mulligan. "Gone delirious, or mad, or----"

"What's the matter?" Carleton was on his feet, his words cold as ice.

"Here!" gasped the engineer. "Look!" He dragged Carleton to the side window, and pointed up the track--the 229, sparks volleying skyward from her stack, was just disappearing around the first bend.

"That's--that's the two-twenty-nine!" he panted. "P. Walton's in her--drove me and Dalheen out of the cab with a revolver."

For an instant, no more than a breathing s.p.a.ce, no one spoke; then Spence's voice, with a queer sag in it, broke the silence:

"Extra Thirty-four left Spider Cut eight minutes ago."

Carleton, master always of himself, and master always of the situation, spoke before the words were hardly out of the despatcher's mouth:

"Order the wrecker out, Spence--jump! Mulligan, go down and help get the crew together." And then, as Spence and Mulligan hurried from the room, Carleton looked at the master mechanic. "Well, Tommy, what do you make of this?" he demanded grimly.

Regan, with thinned lips, was pulling viciously at his mustache.

"What do I make of it!" he growled. "A mail train in the ditch, and nothing worth speaking of left of the two-twenty-nine--that's what I make of it!"

Carleton shook his head.

"Doesn't it strike you as a rather remarkable coincidence that our wires should go out, and P. Walton should go off his head with delirium at the same moment?"

"Eh!" snapped Regan sharply. "Eh!--what do you mean?"

"I don't mean anything," Carleton answered, clipping off his words.

"It's strange, that's all--I think we'll go up with the wrecker, Tommy."

"Yes," said Regan slowly, puzzled; then, with a scowl and a tug at his mustache: "It does look queer, queerer every minute--blamed queer! I wonder who P. Walton is, and where he came from anyhow?"

"You asked me that once before," Carleton threw back over his shoulder, moving toward the door. "P. Walton never said."

And while Regan, still tugging at his mustache, followed Carleton down the stairs to the platform, and ill-omened call boys flew about the town for the wrecking crew, and the 1018, big and capable, snorting from a full head of steam, backed the tool car, a flat, and the rumbling derrick from a spur to the main line, P. Walton still sat, smiling strangely, clinging to the window sill of the laboring 229, staring out into the night through the cab gla.s.s ahead.