The Best Short Stories of 1919 Part 43

"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; n.o.body 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 gla.s.s. 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 G.o.dspeed. 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 pa.s.s 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 partners.h.i.+p.

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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed safely into Regan's hands.

The red coal in the rusty stove crumbles, the lantern smokes out.

"I was just too late; 't is little I know," thinks Tim Cannon.

A burly battered man enters the door and leads out the horse; the gang at his heels attack the old building with pick and bar; to a ripping of s.h.i.+ngles the dawn twinkles through; the battle which the outcast had halted so long is pa.s.sing over his body.

The battered man shakes the iron bar in his hand, pointing it significantly at walls and roof tumbling about; Tim looks at him scornfully, and the gang tear at the flooring with picks and axes.

Why it is so, I cannot say, who make no pretense of sorcery, but 't is certain that the mice linger and spiders swing low from the rafters with presentiment of tragedy as Tim Cannon stands his last guard in the corner of the doomed old terminal. Twice he catches glimpses of Regan without, compelling this storm of men and steel.

The floor is now torn up to his very feet; the far end of the building, roof and walls, has been scattered like chaff. Indifferently Tim watches the battered man point to him with the iron bar and waits calmly to be dragged away by the gang.

Mr. Craney running lightly along the last remaining girder to Tim's corner presses some folded bills and a paper into his hand.

"Salary and honorable discharge," he explains; "and invitation to the wed----"

And his voice being smothered by a great crash within and without he signals with his hands that not a moment is to be lost in saving themselves alive.

Above all the uproar is a shriller yell, a rush of staggering men past the end of the terminal, a heavy clang of steel; fighting. "Regan is crossing the Great Southwest main!" shrieks Mr. Craney over his shoulder.

In fact the P. D. frog for the main-line crossing is set in only after a sharp skirmish with a G. S. force rushed up to prevent it. And then Regan, threatened with police and military by his gathering enemies, pa.s.ses them the court order obtained during the night. By this order they are enjoined from tearing up the frog, even before it has been laid down! Such is the forethought of genius.

Regan's special, ordered out since midnight, stands drumming up the line, and Tim lurking in his corner sees the signal he gives as he crosses the track. The special glides down between them, and once more the vagabond watches through the flying dust clouds the flash of Regan's car, signaling farewell.

Now he is free to pick and choose where he will, but Tim Cannon girds his rags with fierce regret; the great things within him cling to this spot; he cannot break away, and he curses in a cold agony of disappointment.

"I was too late. Never again will I promise the duty."

"You gang boss!" crashes a voice behind him; "breach me the wall at the corner."

And the battered man and his crew fly at it with pick and bar.

With twisted face and hand clenched on his breast the boy stares at Regan, who has just sent his car home without boarding it at all.

"My path lies through this corner; last night you blocked it; to-day I will pa.s.s."

'T is a poor sort of triumph over the vagabond, whose body straightens and stiffens proudly.

"Which I never could do with you on guard! Come; first through the breach, Timothy! 'T is your right. Now we are through--catch stride here in fortune's highway. You are on duty with Dan Regan!"

This queer sentimental thing the man does in honor of his mother's messenger, and never again through all the years is the spell broken which draws the man of pull-down and trample-under away and upward to the things which the pretty colleen of long agone saw beyond the day's work at Turntable. 'T is little we know.