WHISPERING SMITH
CHAPTER I
THE WRECKING BOSS
News of the wreck at Smoky Creek reached Medicine Bend from Point ofRocks at five o'clock. Sinclair, in person, was overseeing the makingup of his wrecking train, and the yard, usually quiet at that hour ofthe morning, was alive with the hurry of men and engines. In thetrainmaster's room of the weather-beaten headquarters building,nicknamed by railroad men "The Wickiup," early comers--sleepy-faced,keen-eyed trainmen--lounged on the tables and in chairs discussing thereports from Point of Rocks, and among them crew-callers andmessengers moved in and out. From the door of the big operators' room,pushed at intervals abruptly open, burst a blaze of light and thecurrent crash of many keys; within, behind glass screens, alert,smooth-faced boys in shirt sleeves rained calls over the wires or bentwith flying pens above clips, taking incoming messages. At one end ofthe room, heedless of the strain on the division, press despatches andcablegrams clicked in monotonous relay over commercial wires; while atthe other, operators were taking from the despatchers' room the trainorders and the hurried dispositions made for the wreck emergency byAnderson, the assistant superintendent. At a table in the alcove thechief operator was trying to reach the division superintendent,McCloud, at Sleepy Cat; at his elbow, his best man was ringing theinsistent calls of the despatcher and clearing the line for Sinclairand the wrecking gang. Two minutes after the wrecking train reportedready they had their orders and were pulling out of the upper yard,with right of way over everything to Point of Rocks.
The wreck had occurred just west of the creek. A fast east-boundfreight train, double-headed, had left the track on the long curvearound the hill, and when the wrecking train backed through Ten ShedCut the sun streamed over the heaps of jammed and twisted cars strungall the way from the point of the curve to the foot of Smoky Hill. Thecrew of the train that lay in the ditch walked slowly up the track towhere the wreckers had pulled up, and the freight conductor asked forSinclair. Men rigging the derrick pointed to the hind car. Theconductor, swinging up the caboose steps, made his way inside amongthe men that were passing out tools. The air within was bluish-thickwith tobacco smoke, but through the haze the freightman saw facinghim, in the far corner of the den-like interior, a man seated behindan old dining-car table, finishing his breakfast; one glimpse wasenough to identify the dark beard of Sinclair, foreman of the bridgesand boss of the wrecking gang.
Beside him stood a steaming coffee-tank, and in his right hand he heldan enormous tin cup that he was about to raise to his mouth when hesaw the freight conductor. With a laugh, Sinclair threw up his lefthand and beckoned him over. Then he shook his hair just a little,tossed back his head, opened an unusual mouth, drained the cup at agulp, and cursing the freightman fraternally, exclaimed, "How manycars have you ditched this time?"
The trainman, a sober-faced fellow, answered dryly, "All I had."
"Running too fast, eh?" glared Sinclair.
With the box cars piled forty feet high on the track, the conductorwas too old a hand to begin a controversy. "Our time's fast," was allhe said.
Sinclair rose and exclaimed, "Come on!" And the two, leaving the car,started up the track. The wrecking boss paid no attention to hiscompanion as they forged ahead, but where the train had hit the curvehe scanned the track as he would a blue print. "They'll have yourscalp for this," he declared abruptly.
"I reckon they will."
"What's your name?"
"Stevens."
"Looks like all day for you, doesn't it? No matter; I guess I can helpyou out."
Where the merchandise cars lay, below the switch, the train crew knewthat a tramp had been caught. At intervals they heard groans under thewreckage, which was piled high there. Sinclair stopped at the derrick,and the freight conductor went on to where his brakeman had enlistedtwo of Sinclair's giants to help get out the tramp. A brake beam hadcrushed the man's legs, and the pallor of his face showed that he washurt internally, but he was conscious and moaned softly. The men hadstarted to carry him to the way car when Sinclair came up, asked whatthey were doing, and ordered them back to the wreck. They hastily laidthe tramp down. "But he wants water," protested a brakeman who waswalking behind, carrying his arm in a sling.
"Water!" bawled Sinclair. "Have my men got nothing to do but carry atramp to water? Get ahead there and help unload those refrigerators.He'll find water fast enough. Let the damned hobo crawl down to thecreek after it."
The tramp was too far gone for resentment; he had fainted when theylaid him down, and his half-glazed eyes, staring at the sky, gave noevidence that he heard anything.
The sun rose hot, for in the Red Desert sky there is rarely a cloud.Sinclair took the little hill nearest the switch to bellow his ordersfrom, running down among the men whenever necessary to help carry themout. Within thirty minutes, though apparently no impression had beenmade on the great heaps of wrenched and splintered equipment, Sinclairhad the job in hand.
Work such as this was the man's genius. In handling a wreck Sinclairwas a marvel among mountain men. He was tall but not stout, withflashing brown eyes and a strength always equal to that of the bestman in his crew. But his inspiration lay in destruction, and the morecomplete the better. There were no futile moves under Sinclair's quickeyes, no useless pulling and hauling, no false grappling; but like araven at a feast, every time his derrick-beak plucked at the wreck hebrought something worth while away. Whether he was righting a tender,rerailing an engine, tearing out a car-body, or swinging a set oftrucks into the clear, Sinclair, men said, had luck, and no confusionin day or night was great enough to drown his heavy tones or blur hisrapid thinking.
Just below where the wrecking boss stood lay the tramp. The sunscorched his drawn face, but he made no effort to turn from it.Sometimes he opened his eyes, but Sinclair was not a promising sourceof help, and no one that might have helped dared venture withinspeaking distance of the injured man. When the heat and the pain atlast extorted a groan and an appeal, Sinclair turned. "Damn you, ain'tyou dead yet? What? Water?" He pointed to a butt standing in the shadeof a car that had been thrown out near the switch. "There's water; goget it!" The cracking of a box car as the derrick wrenched it from thewreck was engaging the attention of the boss, and as he saw thegrapple slip he yelled to his men and pointed to the chains.
The tramp lay still a long time. At last he began to drag himselftoward the butt. In the glare of the sun timbers strained and snapped,and men with bars and axes chopped and wrenched at the massive framesand twisted iron on the track. The wrecking gang moved like ants inand out of the shapeless debris, and at intervals, as the sun rosehigher, the tramp dragged himself nearer the butt. He lay on theburning sand like a crippled insect, crawling, and waiting forstrength to crawl. To him there was no railroad and no wreck, but onlythe blinding sun, the hot sand, the torture of thirst, and somewherewater, if he could reach it.
The freight conductor, Stevens, afraid of no man, had come up tospeak to Sinclair, and Sinclair, with a smile, laid a cordial handon his shoulder. "Stevens, it's all right. I'll get you out of this.Come here." He led the conductor down the track where they had walkedin the morning. He pointed to flange-marks on the ties. "Seethere--there's where the first wheels left the track, and they left onthe inside of the curve; a thin flange under the first refrigeratorbroke. I've got the wheel itself back there for evidence. They can'ttalk fast running against that. Damn a private car-line, anyway!Give me a cigar--haven't got any? Great guns, man, there's a caseof Key Wests open up ahead; go fill your pockets and your grip. Don'tbe bashful; you've got friends on the division if you are Irish, eh?"
"Sure, only I don't smoke," said Stevens, with diplomacy.
"Well, you drink, don't you? There's a barrel of brandy open at theswitch."
The brandy-cask stood up-ended near the water-butt, and the men dippedout of both with cups. They were working now half naked at the wreck.The sun hung in a cloudless sky, the air was still, and along theright of way huge wrecking fires added
to the scorching heat. Ten feetfrom the water-butt lay a flattened mass of rags. Crusted in smoke andblood and dirt, crushed by a vise of beams and wheels out of humansemblance, and left now an aimless, twitching thing, the trampclutched at Stevens's foot as he passed. "Water!"
"Hello, old boy, how the devil did you get here?" exclaimed Stevens,retreating in alarm.
"Water!"
Stevens stepped to the butt and filled a cup. The tramp's eyes wereclosed. Stevens poured the water over his face; then he lifted theman's head and put a cupful to his lips.
"Is that hobo alive yet?" asked Sinclair, coming back smoking a cigar."What does he want now? Water? Don't waste any time on him."
"It's bad luck refusing water," muttered Stevens, holding the cup.
"He'll be dead in a minute," growled Sinclair.
The sound of his voice roused the failing man to a fury. He opened hisbloodshot eyes, and with the dregs of an ebbing vitality cursedSinclair with a frenzy that made Stevens draw back. If Sinclair wasstartled he gave no sign. "Go to hell!" he exclaimed harshly.
With a ghastly effort the man made his retort. He held up hisblood-soaked fingers. "I'm going all right--I know that," he gasped,with a curse, "but I'll come back for you!"
Sinclair, unshaken, stood his ground. He repeated his imprecation moreviolently; but Stevens, swallowing, stole out of hearing. As hedisappeared, a train whistled in the west.