Held for Orders Part 18

"What's your word of honor?" asked the superintendent, cutting into me like a hatchet, "I don't know any more about your word of honor than I do about you."

What could I say? There were men who did know me, but they were a long cry from the Rocky Mountains and the headquarters of the Mountain Division. I glanced about me from his face, gray as alkali, to Allbers, shuffling on the carpet, and to Morrison, as steady as a successful liar, taking my job and my reputation at one swallow; and to the pa.s.senger conductor with the glossy black whiskers; but he was looking out the window. "What do I know about your word of honor?" repeated Rocksby sharply. "Allbers, take your man and get your time."

A wave of helpless rage swept over me. The only thing I could think of, was strangling the lying operator in the hall. Then somebody spoke.

"Show your papers, you d.a.m.n fool."

It came calm as suns.h.i.+ne and cold as a north-wester from the pa.s.senger conductor behind me, from Dave Hawk, and it pulled me into line like a bugle call. I felt my English all back at once. Everybody heard him and looked my way; again it was up to me. This time I was ready for the superintendent, or for that matter for the blooming Mountain Division. I had forgot all about my papers till Dave Hawk spoke. I put my hand, shaking, into my inside vest pocket for a piece of oilskin--it was all I had left; I was a good way from my base that year. I laid the oilskin on the superintendent's table, unfolded it jealously and took out a medal and a letter, that in spite of the carefullest wrapping was creased and sweated. But the letter was from my captain and the bit of bronze was the Cross. Rocksby picked up the letter and read it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dave Hawk.]

"Have you been in the British Army?" he asked curtly.

"Yes, sir."

He scowled a minute over Picton's scrawl, laid it down and gratified his curiosity by picking up the medal. He studied the face of the token, looked curiously at the dingy red ribbon, twirled it and saw the words on the reverse, "For Valour," and looked again at me.

"Where'd you get this?" he asked indicating the Victoria.

"In the Soudan, sir."

Dave Hawk kept right on looking out the window. Neither my conductor nor the operator seemed to know just what the row was. n.o.body spoke.

"What' you doing here?" Rocksby went on.

"I came out to learn the cattle business." His brows went up easy-like.

"They cleaned me out." Brows dropped gentle-like. "Then I went bad with mountain-fever," and he looked decent at me.

"You say you had your head out the cupola and saw the white signal?" he asked, sort of puzzled.

"I saw the white signal." Rocksby looked at the operator Morrison.

"We'll adjourn this thing," said he at last, "till I look into it a little further. For the present, go back to your runs."

We never heard any more of it. Allbers got out quick. I waited to pick up my stuff and turned to thank Dave Hawk; he was gone.

It wasn't the first time Dave had pulled me out of the water. About two weeks before that I had crawled one night up on the front platform of the baggage at Peace River to steal a ride to Medicine Bend on Number One. It was Dave's train. I had been kicked out of the McCloud hospital two days before without a cent, or a friend on earth outside the old country, and I hadn't a mind to bother the folks at home any more, come Conan or the devil.

The night was bitter bad, black as a Fuzzy and sleeting out of the foothills like manslaughter. When the train stopped at Rosebud for water, what with gripping the icy hand-rail and trying to keep my teeth steady on my knees I must have been a hard sight. Just as the train was ready to pull out, Dave came by and poked his lantern full in my face.

He was an older man than I, a good bit older, for I was hardly more than a kid then, only spindling tall, and so thin I couldn't tell a stomach ache from a back ache. As I sat huddled down on the lee step with my cap pulled over my head and ears, he poked his light full into my face and snapped, "Get out!"

If it had been a headlight I couldn't have been worse scared, and I found afterward he carried the brightest lamp on the division. I looked up into his face and he looked into mine. I wonder if in this life it isn't mostly in the face after all? I couldn't say anything, I was shaking in a chill as I pulled myself together and climbed down into the storm.

Yet I never saw a face harder in some ways than Dave Hawk's. His visor hid his forehead and a blackbeard covered his face till it left only his straight cold nose and a dash of olive white under the eyes. His whiskers loomed high as a Cossack's and his eyes were onyx black with just such a glitter. He knew it was no better than murder to put me off in that storm at a mountain siding: I knew it; but I didn't much care for I knew before very long I should fall off, anyway. After I crawled down he stood looking at me, and with nothing better on I stood looking at him.

"If you get up there again I'll break your neck," he promised, holding up his lantern. I was quiet; the nerve was out of me.

"Where you going?" he asked shortly.

"Medicine Ben----"

"Get into the smoker, you d.a.m.n fool."

How it galvanized me. For twenty-four hours I hadn't eaten. I was just out of a hospital bed and six weeks of mountain fever, but I braced at his words like a Sioux buck. I hurried back ahead of him to the smoking car, drenched wet, and tough, I know. I looked so tough that the brakeman grabbed me the minute I opened the front door and tried to kick me out. I turned snarling then, crazy as a wolf all in a second, and somehow backed the brakeman against the water cooler with his windpipe twisted in my bony fingers like a corkscrew. The train was moving out. I had been cuffed and kicked till I would rather kill somebody than not; this seemed a fair chance for a homicide. When the poor fellow's wind went off--he wasn't much of a sc.r.a.pper, I fancy--he whipped around in the aisle like a dying rooster. As he struggled in my grip there behind him in the doorway stood Dave, lantern in hand, looking on with a new face. This time he was smiling--Dave's smile meant just the parting of his lips over a row of glistening teeth; perfectly even teeth and under his black mustache whiter than ivory. It appeared to amuse him to see me killing the brakeman. The instant I saw Dave I let go and he watched the crestfallen trainman pull himself together.

"Guess you'll let him alone now, won't you?" said Dave pleasantly to my rattled a.s.sailant. "Sit down," he growled harshly at me, stringing his lantern on his arm. He walked unconcernedly down the aisle, and I dropped exhausted into the front seat facing the Baker heater. It was heavenly hot; red hot. I have loved a car heater ever since, and Baker to me, is hardly lower than the angels. My togs began to steam, my blood began to flow, the train boy gave me a wormy apple, an Irishman with a bottle of rank whiskey gave me a stinger and I wanted to live again. I curled up in the seat and in five minutes I was roasting, oh, such a heavenly roast; and dozing, Lord! what a heavenly doze, before that Baker heater. All night the forward truck beat and pounded under me: all night I woke and slept in the steaming, stinking air of the hot car. And whenever I opened my eyes I saw always the same thing, a topping tall conductor looming in the aisle, his green-hooded lamp, like a semaph.o.r.e under his arm. And above, in the gloom, a bush of black beard and a pair of deep-set, s.h.i.+ning eyes back under a peaked cap. Dave often comes back as I saw him, waking and dreaming, that night in the smoker of Number One.

It was breaking day when he bent over me.

"We're getting into the Bend," he said gruffly. "Got any money for breakfast?"

"I haven't a cent on G.o.d's earth." He put his hand in his pocket and pulling out a handful of loose bills shoved one into my fingers.

"I'll take it from you and gladly," I said sitting up. "But I'm not a beggar nor a tramp."

"Off track?"

"Yes. I'm going to enlist--" His teeth flashed. "That's worse than railroading, ain't it?" Something came into my head like a rocket.

"If I could get started railroading----"

"Get started easy enough."

That's how I happened to show him my Victoria. He gave me a card to the trainmaster, and next day I went to braking for Allbers, who, by the way, was the biggest liar I ever knew.

But the morning I got into Medicine Bend that first time on Number One I had another scare. I went into the lunch room for coffee and sandwiches and threw my bill at the boy. He opened it, looked at it and looked at me.

"Well," I growled, for I was impudent with luck and a hot stomach.

"Good, ain't it?"

"Smallest you got?"

I nodded as if I had a pocket full. He hustled around and came back with a handful of money. I said nothing but when he spread it out before me I sat paralysed. I had just a.s.sumed that Dave had given me a dollar.

Sinkers, deducting the price of two coffees and six sandwiches from the bill counted out nineteen dollars and thirty cents for me.

That change kept me running for a month, and after my first pay day I hunted up Dave to pay him back. I found him in the evening. He was sitting alone on the eating-house porch, his feet up against the rail, looking at the mountains in the sunset.

"Never mind," he said, as I held out a twenty dollar bill and tried to speak my little piece. He did not move except to wave back my hand.

"Oh, but I can't let you do that----" I protested.

"Put up your money, Tommie." He called me Tommie.

"No," he repeated putting by my hand; his face set hard, and when Dave's face did set it set stony. "Put up your money; you don't owe me anything. I stole it."