Part 15 (1/2)

”Well, you know now, don't you?”

”Sure!” Flannagan scowled and licked his lips. ”I'm out, thrown out, and----”

”Then, get out!” Carleton cut in sharply. ”You've had more chances than any man ever got before from me, thanks to Regan; but you've had your last, and talking won't do you any good now.”

Flannagan stepped nearer to the desk.

”Talkin'! Who's talkin'?” he flared in sudden bravado. ”Didn't I tell you I didn't read your d.a.m.ned letter? Didn't I, eh, didn't I? D'ye think I'd crawl to you or any man for a job? I'm out, am I? D'ye think I came down to ask you to take me back? I'd see you rot first!

T'h.e.l.l with the job--see!”

Few men on the Hill Division ever saw Carleton lose his temper--it wasn't Carleton's way of doing things. He didn't lose it now, but his words were like trickling drops of ice water.

”Sometimes, Flannagan,” he said, ”to make a man like you understand one has to use your language. You say you'd see me rot before you asked me for the job back again--very well. I'd rot before I gave it to you after this. Now, will you get out--or be thrown out?”

For a moment it looked as though Flannagan was going to mix it there and then. His eyes went ugly, and his fists, h.o.r.n.y and gnarled, doubled into knots, as he glared viciously at the super.

Carleton, who was afraid of no man, or any aggregation of men, his face stern-set and hard, leaned back in his swivel chair and waited.

A tense minute pa.s.sed. Then Flannagan's better sense weighed down the balance, and, without so much as a word, he turned, went out of the room, and stamped heavily down the stairs.

Goaded into it, or through unbridled, ill-advised impulse, men say rash things sometimes--afterward, both Flannagan and Carleton were to remember their own and the other's words--and the futility of them.

Nor was it to be long afterward--without warning, without so much as a premonition, quick and sudden as doom, things happen in railroading.

It was half past five when Flannagan went out of the super's office; it was but ten minutes later when, before he had decanted a drop from the bottle he had just lifted to fill his gla.s.s, he slapped the bottle back on the bar of the Blazing Star with a sudden jerk. From down the street in the direction of the yards boomed three long blasts from the shop whistle--the wrecking signal. It came again and again. Men around him began to move. Chairs from the little tables were pushed hurriedly back. The bell in the English chapel took up the alarm. It stirred the blood in Flannagan's veins, and whipped it to his cheeks in fierce excitement--it was the call to arms!

He turned from the bar--and stopped like a man stunned. There had been times in the last six months when he had not responded to that call, because, deaf to everything, he had not _heard_ it. Then, it had been his call--the call for the wrecking crew, and, first of all, for the wrecking boss; now--there was a dazed look on his face, and his lips worked queerly. It was not for him, he was barred--_out_.

Slowly he turned back to the bar, rested his foot on the rail, and, with a mirthless laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, reached for the bottle again. He poured the whisky gla.s.s full to the brim--and laughed once more and shrugged his shoulders as his fingers curled around it.

He raised the gla.s.s--and held it poised halfway to his lips.

Quick-running steps came up the street, the swinging doors of the Blazing Star burst open and a call boy shoved in his head.

”Wreckers out! Wreckers out!” he bawled. ”Number Eighty's gone to glory in Spider Cut. Everybody's killed”--and he was gone, a grimy-faced harbinger of death and disaster; gone, speeding with his summons to wherever men were gathered throughout the little town.

An instant Flannagan stood motionless as one transformed from flesh to sculptured clay--then the gla.s.s slid from his fingers and crashed into tinkling splinters on the floor. The liquor splashed his boots.

Number Eighty was the eastbound Coast Express! Like one who moves in unknown places through the dark, so, then, Flannagan moved toward the door. Men looked at him in amazement, and stood aside to let him pa.s.s.

Something was tugging at his heart, beating at his brain, impelling him forward; a force irresistible, that, in its first, sudden, overwhelming surge he could not understand, could not grasp, could not focus into concrete form--could only obey.

He pa.s.sed out through the doors, and then for the first time a cry rang from his lips. There were no halting, stumbling, uncertain steps now.

Men running down the street called to Flannagan as he sped past them.

Flannagan made no answer, did not look their way; his face, strained and full of dumb anguish, was set toward the station.

He gained the platform and raced along it. Shouts came from across the yards. Up and down the spurs fluttered the fore-shortened little yard engine, coughing sparks and wheezing from her exhaust as she bustled the wrecking train together; lamps swung and twinkled like fireflies, for it was just opening spring and the dark fell early; and in front of the roundhouse, the 1014, blowing hard from her safety under a full head of steam, like a thoroughbred that scents the race, was already on the table.

With a heave of his great shoulders and a sweep of his arms, Flannagan won through the group of trainmen, shop hands, and loungers cl.u.s.tered around the door, and took the stairs four at a leap.

A light burned in the super's office, but the voices came from the despatchers' room. And there in the doorway Flannagan halted--halted just for a second's pause while his eyes swept the scene before him.