Held for Orders Part 15

The Operator's Story

DE MOLAY FOUR

Very able men have given their lives to the study of Monsoon's headlight; yet science, after no end of investigation, stands in its presence baffled.

The source of its illumination is believed to be understood. I say believed, because in a day when yesterday's beliefs are to-morrow's delusions I commit myself personally to no theory. Whether it is a thing living or dead; whether malign to mackerel or potent in its influence on imperfectly understood atmospheric phenomena, I do not know. I doubt whether anybody knows, except maybe Monsoon himself. I know only that on the West End, Monsoon's headlight, from every point of view, stands high, and that on one occasion it stood between Abe Monsoon and a frightful catastrophe.

There have been of late studied efforts to introduce electric headlights on the Mountain Division. But there are grizzled men in the cab who look with distrust--silent, it is true, yet distrust--on the claims put forth for them. While Monsoon's headlight does its work--as it has done even long before Monsoon followed it to the West End, and will do long after he leaves the West End--why, they say, and reasonably enough, take on new and theoretical subst.i.tutes?

While the discussion deepens and even rages in the Wickiup, Monsoon himself is silent. Brave men are modest men. Among ourselves we don't use adjectives; where Monsoon is known it is not necessary to put anything ahead of his name--except, may be, once a month on the payroll when the cross-eyed accountant adds A. or Abe or Abraham, just as he happens to be fixed for time. Monsoon's name in itself stands for a great deal. When his brother engineers, men who have grown seamy and weather-beaten in the service, put up their voices for Monsoon's headlight; or when talkative storekeepers, who servilely jump at headquarters' experiments in order to court the favor of the high, speak for electricity, Abe Monsoon himself is silent. His light is there; let them take it or leave it as they will. If the Superintendent of Motive Power should attempt to throw it out for the new-fangled arrangement, Monsoon would doubtless feel that it was not the first time Omaha had gone wrong--and, for that matter, that neither he nor anybody else had a.s.surance it would be the last. However--

The story opens on Bob Duffy. Bob, right from the start, was what I call a good-looker, and, being the oldest boy, he had more of the swing anyway. When Martin came along, his mother hadn't got over thinking about Bob. Doubtless she thought, too, of Martin; but he was kind of overshadowed. Bob began by clerking in the post-office and delivering mail to all the pretty girls. His sympathy for the girls was so great that after a while he began pa.s.sing out letters to them whether they were addressed to the girls or to somebody else. This gradually weakened his influence with the government.

Martin began work in the telegraph office; he really learned the whole thing right there at the Bend under Callahan. Began, carrying Western Unions stuck at his waist under a heavy leather belt. He wore in those days, when he had real responsibility, a formidable brown Stetson that appeared bent on swallowing his ears: it was about the time he was rising trousers and eleven. n.o.body but Sinkers ever beat Martin Duffy delivering messages, and n.o.body, bar none--Bullhead, McTerza, anybody--ever beat him eating pie. It was by eating pie that he was able to wear the belt so long--and you may take that either way. But I speak gladly of the pie, because in the usual course of events there isn't much pie in a despatcher's life. There is, by very large odds, more anxiety than pie, and I introduce the pie, not to give weight to the incidents that follow but rather to lighten them; though as Duffy has more recently admitted this was not always the effect of the pie itself.

I do not believe that Martin Duffy ever had an enemy. A right tight little chap he was, with always a good word, even under no end of pressure on the single track. There's many a struggling trainman that will look quick and grateful when any fellow far or near speaks a word about Martin Duffy. Fast as he climbed, his head never swelled. His hats rested, even after he got a key, same as the original Stetson, right on the wings of his ears. But his heart grew right along after his head stopped, and that's where he laid over some other railroad men I could mention if I had to, which I don't--not here.

About the time it looked as if Martin would make a go of it on the road, the post-office inspectors were thinking Bob would make a go of it over the road. But he was such a kid of a fellow that the postmaster convinced the detectives Bob's way of doing things was simple foolishness, which it probably was, and they merely swore him out of the service.

It was then that Martin reached out a hand to his elder brother. There were really just the two brothers; and back of them--as there is, somewhere, back of every railroad man--a mother. No father--not generally; just a mother. A quiet, sombre little woman in a shawl and a bonnet of no special shape or size--just a shawl and a bonnet, that's all. Anyhow, the Duffy boys' mother was that way, and there's a lot more like her. I don't know what gets the fathers; maybe, very often, the sc.r.a.p. But there's almost always, somewhere, a mother. So after Martin began to make a record, to help his mother and his brother both, he spoke for Bob. Callahan didn't hesitate or jolly him as he used to do with a good many. He thought the company couldn't have too many of the Duffy kind; so he said, "Yes, sure." And Bob Duffy was put at work--same thing exactly: carrying messages, reading hair-destroyers and blowing his salary on pie.

But pie acts queer. Sometimes it makes a man's head solid and his heart big; then again it makes a man's head big and his heart solid. I'm not saying anything more now except that pie certainly acts different.

Bob Duffy was taller than Martin and I would repeat, handsomer; but I can't, because Martin had absolutely no basis of beauty to start with.

He was parchment-like and palish from sitting night after night and night after night over a sounder. Never sick a day in his life; but always over the sounder until, sleeping or waking, resting or working, the current purred and purred through his great little head like a familiarity taking old tomcat. He could guess more off a wire than most men could catch after the whole thing had tumbled in.

So up and up ladder he went. Messenger, operator--up to a.s.sistant despatcher, up to a regular trick despatcher. Up to the orders and signing the J. M. C., the letters that stood for our superintendent's name and honor. Up to the trains and their movements, up to the lives, then CHIEF!--with the honor of the division all clutched in Martin Duffy's three quick right fingers on the key and his three quick left fingers on the pen at the same instant scratching orders across the clip. Talk about ambidexterity--Martin didn't know what it would be like to use one hand at a time. If Martin Duffy said right, trains went right. If he said wrong, trains went wrong. But Martin never said the wrong; he said only the right. Giddings knows; he copied for him long enough. Giddings and plenty more of them can tell all about Martin Duffy.

Bob didn't rise in the service quite so fast as Martin. He was rather for having a good time. He did more of the social act, and that pleased his mother, who, on account of her bonnet-and-shawl complexion, didn't achieve much that way. Martin, too, was proud of his brother, and as soon as Bob could handle a wire, which was very soon (for he learned things in no time) Martin got Callahan to put him up at Grant as operator.

Bob got the place because he was Martin's brother, nothing else. He held it about two months, then he resigned and went to San 'Frisco. He was a restless fellow; it was Bob up and Bob down. For a year he wandered around out there, telegraphing, then he bobbed up again in Medicine Bend out of a job. He wanted to go to work, and--well, Callahan--Martin's brother, you know--sent him up to Montair as night operator. Three months he worked steady as a clock. Then one night the despatchers at the Bend couldn't get Montair for two hours. It laid out Number Six and a Special with the General Manager and made no end of a row.

Martin said right off he ought to go. But there was the little mother up home, silent, I expect, but pleading-like. It was left largely to Martin, for the young fellow was already chief; and that was the trouble--he hated to bear down too hard; so he compromised by asking his superintendent not to fire Bob but to set him back. They sent him up as night man to Rat River, the meanest place on the whole system. That was the summer of the Templars' Conclave at San 'Frisco.

We worked the whole spring getting things up along the line, from Omaha to the Sierras, for that Conclave. Engines were overhauled, rolling stock touched up, roadbed put in shape, everything shaken from end to end. Not only were the pa.s.senger records to be smashed, but beyond that a lot of our big general officers were way-up Masons and meant that our line should get not merely the cream of the business but the cream of the advertising out of the thing. The general tenor of the instructions was to nickel-plate everything, from the catalpas to the target rods.

For three months before the Conclave date we were busy getting ready for it, and when the big day drew near on which we were to undertake the moving and the feeding of six thousand people one way on one track through the mountains, the car-tinks smoked cross-cut and the Russian sectionmen began to oil their hair.

Callahan was superintendent under Bucks, then General Manager, and Martin Duffy, Chief Despatcher, Neighbor, Superintendent of Motive Power, and Doubleday, Division Master Mechanic, and with everything b.u.t.toned up on the West End we went that Sunday morning on the firing line to take the first of the Templar Specials.

Medicine Bend had the alkali pretty well washed out of its eyes, and never before in its history had it appeared really gay. The old Wickiup was decorated till it looked like a buck rigged for a ghost dance. Right after daybreak the trains began rolling in on Harold Davis's trick.

Duffy had annulled all local freights and all through odds and evens, all stock tramps east and all westbound empties--everything that could be, had been suspended for that Sunday; and with it all there were still by five times more trains than ever before rolled through Medicine Bend in twenty-four hours.

It was like a festival day in the mountains. Even the Indians and the squaw men turned out to see the fun. There was a crowd at the depot by five o'clock, when the first train rolled up the lower gorge with St.

John's Commandery, Number Three from Buffalo; and the Pullmans were gay with bunting. The Medicine Bend crowd gave them an Indian yell and in two minutes the Knights, with their scalps in their hands as a token of surrender, were tumbling out of their sleepers into the crisp dawn. They were just like schoolboys, and when Shorty Lovelace--the local curiosity who had both feet and both hands frozen off the night he got drunk with Matt Ca.s.sidy at Goose River Junction--struck up on his mouth-organ "Put Me Off at Buffalo," they dropped seven dollars, odd, and three baggage checks into his hat while the crews were changing engines. It appeared to affect them uncommon, to see a fellow without any hands or feet play the mouth-organ and before sundown Shorty made the killing of his life.

With what he raked in that day he kept the city marshal guessing for three months--which was also pretty good for a man without any hands or feet.

All day it was that way: train after train and ovation after ovation.

The day was cool as a watermelon--August--and bright as a baby's face all through the mountains; and the Templars went up into the high pa.s.ses with all the swing and noise we could raise. Harold Davis took it all morning steady from 4 A. M. at the despatcher's key. He was used up long before noon; but he stayed, and just at twelve o'clock, while a big Templar train from Baltimore was loading its commandery in front of the Wickiup after an early dinner, and a big Templar band played a tingling two-step, Martin Duffy stuck his dry, parchment face into the platform crowd, elbowed his way unnoticed through it, climbed the Wickiup stairs, walked into the despatcher's room, and, throwing off his hat and coat, leaned over Harold Davis's shoulder and took a transfer.

Young Giddings had been sitting there in a perspiration half an hour then; he copied for Martin Duffy that day. At noon they figured to get the last Templar over the Eagle Pa.s.s with the set of the sun. When Duffy took the key he never looked his force cleaner, only he was tired; Giddings could see that. The regular man had been sick a week and Martin had been filling in. Besides that, all Sat.u.r.day, the day before, he had been spiking the line--figuring what could be annulled and what couldn't; what could be run extra and what could be put into regulars.

Callahan had just got married and was going out to the Coast on his wedding tour in Bucks's car. He had refused to look at an order after Sat.u.r.day night. Sunday morning, and from Sunday morning on, it was all against Duffy. When the Chief took the middle trick there were fourteen Templar Specials still to come with the last one just pulling out of McCloud on the plains. They were ordered to run with right of track over all eastbound trains thirty minutes apart all the way through.

A minute after Martin Duffy sat in, the conductor of the train below registered out. There was a yell pretty soon, and away went the Baltimore crowd--and they were corkers, too, those Baltimore fellows, and travelled like lords.

At five o'clock in the evening the trains in the West Division were moving just like clocks on the hour and the half--thirty minutes, thirty minutes, thirty minutes--and, as far as young Giddings could see, Duffy, after five booming hours, was fresher than when he took the chair. The little despatcher's capacity for work was something enormous; it wasn't till after supper-time, with the worst of the figuring behind him, and in the letting down of the anxiety, that Martin began to look older and his dry Indian hair began to crawl over his forehead. By that time his eyes had lost their snap, and when he motioned Giddings to the key, and got up to walk up and down the hall in the breeze, he looked like a wilted potato vine. His last batch of orders was only a little one compared with those that had gone before. But with the changes to the different crews they read about like this--

Telegraphic Train Order Number 68. Mountain Division.

Superintendent's Office, August 8, 1892.

For Medicine Bend to C. and E. of Engines 664, 738, 810, 326, and 826.

Engines 664, 738, 810, and 326 will run as four Specials, Medicine Bend to Bear Dance. Engine 826 will double-head Special 326 to summit of Eagle Pa.s.s.

First No. 80, Engine 179, will run two hours thirty minutes late Bear Dance to Medicine Bend.

Second No. 80, Engine 264, will run three hours and fifteen minutes late Bear Dance to Medicine Bend.

Third No. 80, Engine 210, will run four hours and thirty minutes late Bear Dance to Medicine Bend.

J. M. C.

D.

When young Giddings sat in, the sun was dropping between the Tetons. In the yard the car-cleaners were polis.h.i.+ng the plates on Bucks's private car and the darky cook was pulling chickens out of the refrigerator.

Duffy had thirteen Conclaves moving smoothly on the middle trick. The final one was due, and the hostlers were steaming down with the double-header to pull it over the Pa.s.s. This, the last of the Commandery trains, was to bring DE MOLAY COMMANDERY NUMBER FOUR of Pittsburg, and the orders were to couple Bucks's car on to it for the run west. De Molay--and everybody had notice--was Bucks's old commandery back in Pennsylvania, and he was going to the end of the division that night with the cronies of his youth. Little fellows they were in railroading when he rode the goat with them, but now mostly, like him, big fellows.

Half a dozen old salts had been pounding ahead at him all day over the wire. They were to join him and Mr. and Mrs. Callahan for supper in the private car, and the yellow cider lay on the thin-shaven ice and the mountain grouse curled on the grill irons when De Molay Four, Pittsburg, pulled into Medicine Bend.

We had seen a good many swell trains that day, the swellest that ever pounded _our_ fishplates, Pullmans solid, and the finest kind of people.

Boston, Was.h.i.+ngton, New York, Philadelphia sent some pretty gorgeous trains. But with at least half the town on the platform, when De Molay Four rolled in it took their breath so they couldn't yell till the Sir Knights began pouring from the vestibules and gave Medicine Bend their own lordly cheer.

Mahogany vestibules they were and extension platforms; salon lamps and nickeled handrails; buffet smoker and private diner: a royal train and a royal company; olive green from tender to tail lights--De Molay Four, Pittsburg.

Bucks's old gang spied him. Modestly back under the portico, he stood near the ticket window, and they broke through at him solid. They pulled him and hauled him and mauled him and pa.s.sed him from hand to hand. They stood him on his head and on his hands and on his feet again, and told him of something they wanted and wanted right off.

Bucks looked the least bit uncertain as he considered the opening request. It wasn't much in some ways, what they asked; in other ways it was a good deal. He laughed and bantered and joked them as long as they would stand it; then he called up to Martin Duffy, who was leaning out the despatchers' window, "We'll see how he talks," laughed Bucks in his great big way. "But, boys, it's up to the Chief. I'm not in it on the orders, you know. Martin," he called, as Duffy bent his head, "they want fifteen minutes here to stretch their legs. Say they've been roasted in the alkali all day. Can you do anything for the boys?"

The boys! Big fellows in fezes, Shriner style, and slim fellows in duck, sailor style, and bow-legged fellows in cheviot, any old style. Chaps in white flannel, and chaps in gray, and chaps in blue. Turkish whiskers and Key West cigars and Crusaders' togs--and, between them, Bucks, his head most of the time in chancery. It was the first time they had seen him since he had made our Jim Crow line into a system known from the Boston and Maine to the Mexican Central, and, bar none, run cleaner or better. The first time they had seen him since he had made a name for himself and for his road from Newport News to 'Frisco, and they meant now to kill him, dead.

You know about what it meant and about how it went, how it had to go.

What could Martin say to the man who had made him all he was and who stood, now a boy again among the boys of his boyhood, and asked for fifteen minutes--a quarter of an hour for De Molay Number Four? It threw the little Chief completely off his schedules; just fifteen minutes was more than enough to do that. All the work was done, the anxiety nearly past--Martin had risen to rest his thumping head. But fifteen minutes; once in a lifetime--Bucks asking it.

Duffy turned to big Jack Moore standing at his side ready to pull De Molay over the Pa.s.s, and spoke him low. Jack nodded; everything went with Jack, even the turn-tables that stuck with other engineers. Martin in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves leaned out the window and, looking down on the turbaned and turbulent mob, spoke so Bucks could hear.

"What is it?" demanded the most puissant commander of De Molay excitedly. "What does he say, Bucks?"

"What says the slave?" growled a second formidable crusader; "out with it!"