CHAPTER II
As Bucks looked through his embrasure to see if all had been served,his eye fell on the group in the corner and he heard the womansuppressing the sobbing of her little girl. He walked out into thewaiting-room to ask what the trouble was. He learned afterward thatshe was the wife of a gambler, but she told him only that she hadfollowed her husband to Medicine Bend and was now trying to get backwith her two children to her parents in Iowa. When she had ascertainedthe price of the railroad ticket she found that she lacked fivedollars of the sum needed to make up the fare. Bucks had just a littlemoney of his own, but he had counted on using that for his meals.While he was debating what to do, the elder child tugging still at themother's dress asked for something to eat, and while the mother triedto quiet it Bucks felt he could manage somehow without the price ofthe ticket better than this woman could.
"Give me what money you have," he said. "I will get you a ticket."
"But isn't the train gone?"
"No."
The black-bearded man dozing near the stove had his ears open althoughhis eyes were closed. He had heard fragments of the talk and saw theboy dig into his own pocket, as he would have expressed it, to startthe woman home. After Bucks had given her the ticket and she wastrying to thank him and to quiet again the tired child, the drowsy manrose, picked up the woman's hand-bag and told her gruffly he would puther on the train. As he started with her out into the drizzling rain,he carried her little girl, and, stopping down the platform at asheltered lunch-counter, he bought a bag of doughnuts big enough tosink a ship. He offered no money to the man at the counter, but hiscredit seemed unquestioned. In the train the seats appeared all to betaken, but the drowsy man again showed his authority by rolling atipsy fellow out of a seat and piling him up in a corner near thestove--which fortunately had no fire in it.
During all this time he had not said a word. But at the last, havingplaced the woman and the children in two seats and made themcomfortable, he asked the mother one question--her husband's name. Shetold him, and, without any comment or good-bys, he left the car andstarted through the rain uptown.
After the train pulled out, the wind shifted and the rain changedinto a snow which, driven from the mountains, thickened on the wetwindow in front of the operator's table. A message came for thenight yardmaster, and the operator, seeing the head-light of theswitch-engine which was working close by, put on his cap and steppedout to deliver the message. As he opened the waiting-room door, a manconfronted him--the bearded man who had taken the woman and childrento the train. Bucks saw under the visor of a cloth cap, a straightwhite nose, a dark eye piercingly keen, and a rather long, glossy,black beard. It was the passenger conductor, David Hawk. Withoutspeaking, Hawk held out his hand with a five-dollar bank note in it.
"What is this?" asked Bucks.
"The money you gave the woman."
Bucks, taking the bill, regarded his visitor with surprise. "Where didyou get this?"
"What's that to you?"
"But----"
"Don't ask questions," returned Hawk brusquely. "You've got yourmoney, haven't you?"
"Yes, but----"
"That's enough." And with Bucks staring at him, Hawk, without a wordor a smile, walked out of the station.
But Bill Dancing had seen the incident and was ready to answer Bucks'squestion as he turned with the money in his hand. "That is Dave Hawk,"explained Dancing. "Dave hates a sneak. The way he got the money fromthe woman's husband was probably by telling him if he didn't pay forhis wife's ticket and add enough to feed her and her babies to theriver he would blow his head off. Dave doesn't explain thingsespecially."
Bucks put the money in his pocket and started on with his message. Theyards covered the wide flat along the river. Medicine Bend was thenthe western operating point for the railroad and the distributingpoint for all material used in the advancing construction through themountains.
Not until he left the shelter of the station building did he realizethe force of the storm that was now sweeping across the flat. The windhad swung into the northwest and blew almost a gale and the snow stunghis face as he started across the dark yard. There were practically nolights at all beyond the platform except those in the roundhouse, toofar away to be seen, but the operator saw the moving head-light of theswitch-engine and hastened across the slippery tracks toward it. Thecrew were making up a material train to send west and the engine wassnorting and puffing among long strings of flat cars loaded withrails, ties, stringers, and bridge timbers.
As Bucks neared the working engine it receded from him, and followingit up he soon found his feet slipping in the wet mud and the wind attimes taking his breath. Conscious of the folly of running farther, hehalted for a moment and turning his back to the storm resolved to waittill the engine returned. He chose a spot under the lee of a box-car,and was soon rewarded by hearing a new movement from the workingengine. By the increasing noise of the open cylinder cocks heconcluded it was backing toward him. He stepped across the nearesttrack to reach a switch-stand, a car-length away, whence he thought hecould signal the engine with his lantern. He had nearly reached theswitch when his foot slipped from a rail into a frog that held himfast. Holding his lantern down, he saw how he was caught and tried tofree his heel. It seemed as if it might easily be done, but the morehe worked the faster caught he found himself. For a moment he stillmade sure he could loosen his foot. Even when he realized that thiswas not easy, he felt no alarm until he heard the switch-enginewhistle. Through the driving snow he could see that it was comingtoward him, pushing ahead of it a lead of flat cars.
Bucks was no stranger to railroad yards even then, and the realizationof his peril flashed across his mind. He renewed his efforts to loosenhis imprisoned heel. They were useless. He stood caught in the ironvice. A sweat of fear moistened his forehead. He hoped for an instantthat the moving cars were not coming on his track; but almost at oncehe saw that they were being pushed toward the very switch he wastrying to reach. Even where he stood, struggling, he was not six feetaway from the switch-stand and safety. It seemed as if he could almostreach it, as he writhed and twisted in his agony of apprehension.
He swung his lantern frantically, hoping to catch the eye of one ofthe switching crew. But the only answer was the heavy pounding of theloaded cars over the rail joints as they were pushed down upon thehelpless operator. Worst of all, while he was swinging his lanternhigh in the air, the wind sucked the flame up into the globe and itwent out and left him helpless in the dark. Like the hare caught inthe steel teeth of a trap, the boy stood in the storm facing impendingdeath.
The bitterest feelings overwhelmed him. After coming hundreds of milesand plunging into his work with the most complacent self-confidence,he stood before the close of the first day about to be snuffed out ofexistence as if he were no more than the flame of his useless lantern.A cruel sense of pain oppressed his thoughts. Each second ofrecollection seemed to cover the ground of years. The dull, heavyjolting of the slow-coming cars shook the ground. He twisted andwrithed this way and that and cried out, knowing there were none tohear him: the wind swept away his appeal upon its heedless wings; thenearest car was almost upon him. Then a strange feeling of calm cameover him. He felt that death was knocking at his heart. Hope had gone,and his lips were only moving in prayer, when a light flashed out ofthe darkness at his very side and he felt himself seized as if by agiant and wrenched away from where he stood and through the air.
He heard a quick exclamation, saw a lighted lantern fall to theground, felt a stinging pain in his right foot, and knew no more.
When he recovered consciousness, three lanterns shone in his eyes. Hewas lying in the mud near the switch with the engine crew standingover him. One of the men knelt at his side and he saw the thin, strongfeatures of a face he had seen among the railroad men, but one that heknew then he was never to forget--the face of the yardmaster,Callahan. Callahan knelt in the storm with a good-natured expression.The men about the yardmaster were less kindly.
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"Who are you, tar heels?" demanded the engineman angrily.
Resentment, which would have been quick in the operator a littleearlier, had died in the few moments in which he had faced death. Heanswered only in the quietest way:
"I am the night operator."
"The deuce you are!" exclaimed the man bending over him.
"Who are you?" demanded the operator, in turn.
"I am Callahan, the night yardmaster."
"I have an order for you to send a car of spikes on No. 7, Callahan. Iwas trying to find you when I got caught in the frog." The pain in hisfoot overcame Bucks as he spoke. Another dread was in his mind and heframed a question to which he dreaded to hear the answer. "Is my footgone?" he faltered.
The yardmaster hesitated a moment and turned to an older man at hisside wearing a heavy cap. "How about it, doctor?" he asked.
Doctor Arnold, the railway surgeon, a kindly but stern man, answeredbriefly, "We won't take it off this time. But if he is that carelessagain we will take his head off."
"How old are you, boy?" demanded Callahan.
"Seventeen."
"Well, your foot isn't hurt," he continued gruffly. "But it's onlyGod's mercy that I got here in time to pull you out of the frog."
The operator was already up. "I hope I shan't forget it," he said,putting out his hand. "Will you remember the spikes?"
"I will," responded Callahan grimly. "And I guess----"
"Say it," said the operator gamely, as the yardmaster hesitated.
"I guess you will."