The Mountain Divide

  CHAPTER XV

  He found Baxter needing a man in the office, and Bucks was asked tosubstitute until Collins, the despatcher who was ill, could take histrick again. This brought Bucks where he was glad to be, directlyunder Stanley's eye, but it brought also new responsibilities, andopened his mind to the difficulties of operating a new and alreadyover-taxed line in the far West, where reliable men and availableequipment were constantly at a premium.

  The problem of getting and keeping good men was the hardest thatconfronted the operating department, and the demoralization of therailroad men from the life in Medicine Bend grew steadily worse as thenew town attracted additional parasites. When Bucks, after his return,took his first walk after supper up Front Street, he was not surprisedat this. Medicine Bend was more than ten times as noisy, and if itwere possible to add any vice to its viciousness this, too, it wouldseem, had been done.

  As was his custom, he walked to the extreme end of Front Street andturning started back for the station, when he encountered Baxter, thechief despatcher. Baxter saw Bucks first and spoke.

  "I thought you were taking your sleep at this time," returned Bucks,greeting him.

  "So I should be," he replied, "but we are in trouble. Dan Baggs is totake out the passenger train to-night, and no one can find him. He issomewhere up here in one of these dives and has forgotten all abouthis engine. It is enough to set a man crazy to have to run trains withsuch cattle. Bucks, suppose you take one side of the street while Itake the other, and help me hunt him up."

  "What shall we do?"

  "Look in every door all the way down-street till we find him. If wedon't get the fellow on his engine, there will be no train out tillmidnight. Say nothing to anybody and answer no questions; just findhim."

  Baxter started down the right-hand side of the long street and Buckstook the left-hand side. It was queer business for Bucks, and thesights that met him at every turn were enough to startle one stouterthan he. He controlled his disgust and ignored the questions sometimeshurled at him by drunken men and women, intent only on getting his eyeon the irresponsible Baggs.

  Half-way down toward the square he reached a dance hall. The doorswere spread wide open and from within came a din of bad music,singing, and noise of every kind.

  Bucks entered the place with some trepidation. In the rear of thelarge room was a raised platform extending the entire width of it. Atone end of the platform stood a piano which a man pounded incessantlyand fiercely. Other performers were singing and dancing to entertain amotley and disorderly audience seated in a still more disorderly arraybefore them.

  At the right of the room a long bar stretched from the street back asfar as the stage, and standing in front of this, boisterous groups ofmen were smoking and drinking, or wrangling in tipsy fashion. Theopposite side of the big room was given over to gambling devices ofevery sort, and this space was filled with men sitting about smalltables and others sitting and standing along one side of long tables,at each of which one man was dealing cards, singly, out of a metalcase held in his hand. Other men clustered about revolving wheelswhere, oblivious of everything going on around them, they watched withfeverish anxiety a ball thrown periodically into the disc by the manoperating the wheel.

  Bucks walked slowly down the room the full length of the bar, scanningeach group of men as he passed. He crossed the room behind the chairswhere the audience of the singers and dancers sat. He noticed, when hereached this, the difference in the faces he was scrutinizing. At thegambling tables the men saw and heard nothing of what went on aboutthem. He walked patiently on his quest from group to group, unobservedby those about him, but without catching a sight of the elusiveengineman. As he reached the end of the gambling-room, he hesitatedfor a moment and had finished his quest when, drawn by curiosity, hestopped for an instant to watch the scene about the roulette wheels.

  Almost instantly he heard a sharp voice behind him. "What are youdoing here?"

  Bucks, surprised, turned to find himself confronted by the black-beardedpassenger conductor, David Hawk. Baxter's admonition to say nothingof what he was doing confused Bucks for an instant, and he stammeredsome evasive answer.

  Hawk, blunt and stern in word and manner, followed the evasion upsharply: "Don't you know this is no place for you?" and before Buckscould answer, Hawk had fixed him with his piercing eyes.

  "You want to hang around a gambling-table, do you? You want to watchhow it is done and try it yourself sometime? You want to see how muchsmarter you can play the game than these sheep-heads you arewatching?

  "Don't talk to me," he exclaimed sternly as Bucks tried to explain."I've seen boys in these places before. I know where they end. If Iever catch you in a gambling-den again I'll throw you neck and heelsinto the river."

  The words fell upon Bucks like a cloud-burst. Before he could return aword or catch his breath Hawk strode away.

  As Bucks stood collecting his wits, Baggs, the man for whom he waslooking, passed directly before his eyes. Bucks sprang forward, caughtBaggs by the arm, and led him toward the door, as he gave him Baxter'smessage. Baggs, listening somewhat sheepishly, made no objection togoing down to take his train and walked through the front door withBucks out into the street.

  As they did this, a red-faced man who was standing on the doorstepseized Bucks's sleeve and attempted to jerk him across the sidewalk.Bucks shook himself free and turned on his assailant. He needed nointroduction to the hard cheeks, one of which was split by a deepscar. It was Perry, Rebstock's crony, whom Stanley had driven out ofSellersville on the Spider Water.

  "What are you doing around here interfering with my business?" hedemanded of Bucks harshly. "I've watched you spying around. The nexttime I catch you trying to pull a customer out of my place, I'll knockyour head off."

  Bucks eyed the bully with gathering wrath. He was already upsetmentally, and taken so suddenly and unawares lost his temper and hiscaution. "If you do, it will be the last head you knock off inMedicine Bend," he retorted. "When I find trainmen in your joint thatare needed on their runs, I'll pull them out every time. The safestthing you can do is to keep quiet. If the railroad men ever getstarted after you, you red-faced bully, they'll run you and your wholetribe into the river again."

  It was a foolish defiance and might have cost him his life, thoughBucks knew he was well within the truth in what he said. Among therailroad men the feeling against the gamblers was constantly growingin bitterness. Perry instantly attempted to draw a revolver, when aman who had been watching the scene unobserved stepped close enoughbetween him and Bucks to catch Perry's eye. It was Dave Hawk again.What he had just heard had explained things to him and he stood nowgrimly laughing at the enraged gambler.

  "Good for the boy," he exclaimed. "Want to get strung up, do you,Perry? Fire that gun just once and the vigilantes will have a ropearound your neck in five minutes."

  Perry, though furious, realized the truth of what Hawk said. He poureda torrent of abuse upon Bucks, but made no further effort to use hisgun. The dreaded word "vigilantes" had struck terror to the heart of aman who had once been in their hands and escaped only by an accident.

  "You know what he said is so, don't you?" laughed Hawk savagely."What? You don't?" he demanded, as Perry tried to face him down."You'll be lucky, when that time comes, if you don't get your heelstangled up with a telegraph pole before you reach the river,"concluded Hawk tauntingly.

  "Let him keep away from me if he doesn't want trouble," snarled thediscomfited gambler, eying Bucks threateningly. But he was plainlyout-faced, and retreated, grumbling, toward the dance-hall steps.

  Dan Baggs, at the first sign of hostilities, had fled. Bucks, afraidof losing him, now followed, leaving Hawk still abusing the gambler,but when he overtook the engineman he found he was going, as he hadpromised, straight to the roundhouse.

  It was almost time for the night trick. Bucks hastened upstairs to thedespatchers' office and reported to Baxter, who had returned ahead ofhim and was elated at Bucks's success. Before th
e young substitutetook up his train-sheet, he told the chief despatcher of how strangelythe conductor, Dave Hawk, had talked to him.

  "He has a reason for it," responded Baxter briefly.

  "What reason?"

  "There is as good a railroad man as ever lived," said Baxter,referring to the black-bearded conductor. "He is the master of us allin the handling of trains. He could be anything anybody is on thisline to-day that he might want to be but for one thing. If he hadn'truined his own life, Dave Hawk could be superintendent here. He knowswhereof he speaks, Bucks."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean he is a gambler. Did you hear the shooting after I leftyou?"

  "No, what was it?"

  "It must have been while you were in Perry's. Not five minutes afterwe parted, a saloon-keeper shot a woman down right in front of me; Iwas standing less than ten feet from her when she fell," said thedespatcher, recounting the incident. "But I was too late to protecther; and I should probably have been shot myself if I had tried to."

  "Was the brute arrested?"

  "Arrested! Who arrests anybody in this town?"

  "How long is this sort of thing going on?" asked Bucks, sitting downand signing a transfer.

  "How long!" echoed the despatcher, taking up his hat to go to hisroom. "I don't know how long. But when their time comes--God help thatcrowd up Front Street!"