Part 13 (1/2)

And the Polacks, the Swedes, the Hungarians and the What-Nots, scared stiff, screeched and jabbered, as they watched the tank-car, gaining speed with every foot it travelled, sail down the grade. And MacMurtrey, too late to do anything, stopped dead in his tracks--his face ashen. He pulled his watch, licked dry lips, and kind of whispered to himself.

”Number Three 'll be on the foot of the grade now,” whispered MacMurtrey, and licked his lips again. ”Oh, my G.o.d!”

Meanwhile, down the grade around the bend, Sammy Durgan yawned, sat up, and c.o.c.ked his ear summitwards.

”Now what the devil are them crazy foreigners yelling about!”

complained Sammy Durgan unhappily. ”'Tis always the way with them, like a cageful of screeching c.o.c.katoos, they are--but being foreigners mabbe they can't help it, 'tis their nature to yell without provocation and----”

Sammy Durgan's ear caught a very strange sound, that mingled the clack of fast-revolving wheels as they pounded the fish-plates with a roar that hissed most curiously--and then Sammy Durgan's knees went loose at the joints and wobbled under him.

Trailing a dense black canopy of smoke, wrapped in a sheet of flame that spurted even from the trucks, the oil-tank car lurched around the bend and plunged for him--and for once, Sammy Durgan thought very fast.

There was no room to let it pa.s.s--on one side was just nothing, barring a precipice; and on the rock side, no matter how hard he squeezed back from the right of way, there wasn't any room to escape that spurting flame that even in its pa.s.sing would burn him to a crisp. And with one wild squeak of terror Sammy Durgan flung himself at his handcar, and, pus.h.i.+ng first like a maniac to start it, sprang aboard. Then he began to pump.

There were a hundred yards between the bend and the scene of Sammy Durgan's siesta--only the tank-car had momentum, a whole lot of it, and Sammy Durgan had not. By the time Sammy Durgan had the handcar started the hundred yards was twenty-five, and the monster of flame and smoke behind him was travelling two feet to his one.

Sammy Durgan pumped--for his life. He got up a little better speed--but the tank-car still gained on him. Down the grade he went, the handcar rocking, swaying, lurching, and up and down on the handle, madly, frantically, desperately, wildly went Sammy Durgan's arms, shoulders and head--his hat blew off, and his red hair sort of stood straight up in the wind, and his face was like chalk.

Down he went, faster and faster, and the handcar, reeling like a drunken thing, took a curve with a vicious slew, and the off wheels hung in air for an instant while Sammy Durgan bellowed in panic, then found their base again and shot along the straight. And faster and faster behind him, on wings of fire it seemed, spitting flame tongues, vomiting its black clouds of smoke like an inferno, roaring like a mighty furnace in blast, came the tank-car. It was initial momentum and ma.s.s against Sammy Durgan's muscles on a handcar pump handle--and the race was not to Sammy Durgan.

He cast a wild glance behind, and squeaked again, and his teeth began to go like castanets, as the hot breath of the thing fanned his back.

”'Tis my finish,” wheezed and stuttered Sammy Durgan through bursting lungs and chattering teeth. ”'Tis a dead man, I am--oh, Holy Mither--'tis a dead man I am!”

Ahead and to either side swept Sammy Durgan's eyes like a hunted rat's--and they held, fascinated, on where the old spur track led off from the main line. But it was not the spur track that interested Sammy Durgan--it was that the rock wall, diverging away from his elbow, as it were, presented a wide and open s.p.a.ce.

”It's killed I am, anyway,” moaned Sammy Durgan. ”But 'tis a chance.

If--if mabbe I could jump far enough there where there's room to let it pa.s.s, I dunno--but 'tis killed, I'll be, anyway--oh, Holy Mither--but 'tis a chance--oh, Holy Mither!”

Hissing in its wind-swept flames, belching its cataract of smoke that lay behind it up the grade like a pall of death, roaring like some insensate demon, the tank-car leaped at him five yards away. And, screaming now in a paroxysm of terror that had his soul in clutch, crazed with it, blind with it, Sammy Durgan jumped--_blindly_--just before he reached the spur.

Like a stone from a catapult, Sammy Durgan went through the air, and with a sickening thud his body crashed full into the old stub switch-stand and into the switch handle, whirled around, and he ricochetted, a senseless, bleeding, shattered Sammy Durgan, three yards away.

It threw the switch. The handcar, already over it, sailed on down the main line and around the next bend, climbed up the front end of the 508 that was hauling No. 3 up the grade, smashed the headlight into battered ruin, uns.h.i.+pped the stack, and took final lodgment on the running board, its wheels clinging like tentacles to the 508's bell and sand-box; but the tank-car, with a screech of wrenching axles, a frightened, quivering stagger, took the spur, rushed like a Berserker amuck along its length, plowed up sand and gravel and dirt and rock where there were no longer any rails, and toppled over, a spent and buckled thing, on its side.

It was a flying switch that they talk of yet on the Hill Division. No.

3, suspicious of the handcar, sniffed her way cautiously around the curve, and there, pa.s.sengers, train crew, engine crew and Tommy Regan, made an excited exodus from the train--just as MacMurtrey, near mad with fear, Swedes, Hungarians and Polacks stringing out along the right of way behind him, also arrived on the scene.

Who disclaims circ.u.mstantial evidence! Regan stared at the burning oil-tank up the spur, stared at the bleeding, senseless form of Sammy Durgan--and then he yelled for a doctor.

But a medical man amongst the pa.s.sengers was already jumping for Sammy Durgan; and MacMurtrey was clawing at the master mechanic's arm, stuttering out the tale of what had happened.

”And--and if it hadn't been for Timmy O'Toole there,” stuttered MacMurtrey, flirting away the sweat that stood out in great nervous beads on his face, ”I--it makes me sick to think what would have happened when the tank struck Number Three. Something would have gone into the canon sure. Timmy O'Toole's a----”

”His name's Sammy Durgan,” said Regan, kind of absently.

”I don't give a blamed hoot what his name is!” declared MacMurtrey earnestly. ”He's a man with grit from the soles up, and a head on him to use it with. It was three-quarters of an hour ago that I sent him down, so he must have been near the top on his way back when he saw the tank-car coming--and he took the one chance there was--to try and beat it to the spur here to save Number Three; and it was so close on him, for it's a cinch he hadn't time to stop, that he had to jump for the switch with about one chance in ten for his own life--see?”

”A blind man could see it,” said Regan heavily, ”but--Sammy Durgan!”