Part 30 (2/2)

Noodles stole further forward--and then, as he reached the spot where Regan lay, he stood stock-still for a second, petrified with fear--but the next instant, screaming at the top of his voice for help, he threw himself upon Regan, pounding frantically with the flat of his hands at the master mechanic's shoulder, where the other's coat was beginning to blaze. Somehow, Noodles got this out, and then, still screaming for help, began to drag Regan away from the side of the blazing case.

But Regan was a heavy man--almost too much for Noodles. Noodles, choking with the smoke, his eyes fascinated with horror as they fixed, now on the powder kegs--whose unloading, in company with a dozen other awe-struck boys, he had watched a few days before--now on the sparkling, fizzing grains of powder upon the floor, tugged, and wriggled, and pulled at the master mechanic.

Inch by inch, Noodles won Regan to safety--and then, on his hands and knees, he went back to sweep the grains away from the edge of the kegs.

They burnt his hands as he brushed them along the floor, and he moaned with the pain between his screams for aid. It was hot in the narrow place, so narrow that the breath of flame swept his face from the case--but there was still some powder on the floor to brush back out of the way, little heaps of it. Weak, and swaying on his knees, Noodles brushed at it desperately. It seemed to spurt into his face, and he couldn't breathe any more, and he couldn't see, and his head was swirling around queerly. He staggered to his feet as there came a rush of men, and Clarihue, the turner, with the night crew of the roundhouse came racing up the shed.

”Good G.o.d, what's this!” cried Clarihue.

”It's--it's a fire,” said Noodles, with a sob--and fell into Clarihue's arms.

They told Regan about it the next day when they had got his head patched up and his arm set. Regan didn't say very much as he lay in his bed, but he asked somebody to go to Maguire's and ask old Bill to come down.

And an hour later Maguire entered the room--but he halted a good yard away from the foot of Regan's bed.

”Yez sint for me, Regan,” observed the little hostler, in noncommittal, far-away tones.

”I did, Maguire,” said Regan diplomatically. ”Things haven't been going as smooth as they might have over in the roundhouse since you left, and I want you to come back. What do you say?”

”'Tis not fwhat _I_ say,” said Maguire, and he moved no nearer to the bed. ”'Tis whether yez unsay fwhat yez said yersilf. Do yez take ut back, Regan?”

”I do,” said Regan in grave tones--but his hand reached up to help the bandages hide his grin. ”I take it all back, Maguire--every word of it.”

”Thot's all right, thin,” said the little hostler, not arrogantly, but as one justified. ”I'm sorry to see yez are sick, Regan, an' I'm glad to see yez are better--but did I not warn yez, Regan? 'Twas the wrath av G.o.d, Regan, thot's the cause av this.”

”Mabbe,” said Regan softly. ”Mabbe--but to my thinking 'twas the devil and all his works.”

”Fwhat's thot?” inquired Maguire, bending forward. ”I didn't catch fwhat yez said, Regan.”

”I said,” said Regan, choking a little, ”that Noodles is a G.o.dson any G.o.dfather would be proud to have.”

”Sure he is,” said Noodles' father cordially. ”He is thot.”

VIII

ON THE NIGHT WIRE

Tommy Regan speaks of it yet; so does Carleton; and so, for the matter of that, does the Hill Division generally--and there's a bit of a smile goes with it, too, but the smile comes through as a sort of feeble thing from the grim set of their lips. They remember it--it is one of the things they have never forgotten--Dan McGrew and the Kid, and the night the Circus Special pulled out of Big Cloud with Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan in the cab.

Neither the Kid nor McGrew were what you might call born to the Hill Division; neither of them had been brought up with it, so to speak.

The Kid came from an Eastern system--and McGrew came from G.o.d-knows-where. To pin McGrew down to anything definite or specific in that regard was something just a little beyond the ability of the Hill Division, but it was fairly evident that where railroads were there McGrew had been--he was old enough, anyway--and he knew his business. When McGrew was sober he was a wizard on the key--but McGrew's shame was drink.

McGrew dropped off at Big Cloud one day, casually, from nowhere, and asked for a job despatching. A man in those days out in the new West wasn't expected to carry around his birth certificate in his vest pocket--he made good or he didn't in the clothes he stood in, that was all there was to it. They gave him a job a.s.sisting the latest new man on the early morning trick as a sort of test, found that he was better, a long way better than the latest new man, gave him a regular despatcher's trick of his own--and thought they had a treasure.

For a month they were warranted in their belief, for all that McGrew personally appeared to be a rather rough card--and then McGrew cut loose. He went into the Blazing Star Saloon one afternoon--and he left it only when deposited outside on the sidewalk as it closed up at four o'clock on the following morning. This was the hour McGrew was supposed to sit in for his trick at the key; but McGrew was quite oblivious to all such considerations. A freight crew, just in and coming up from the yards, carried him home to his boarding house.

McGrew got his powers of locomotion back far enough by late afternoon to reach the Blazing Star again--and the performance was repeated--McGrew went the limit. He ended up with a week in the hands of little Doctor McTurk.

McTurk was scientific from the soles of his feet up, and earnestly professional all the rest of the way. When McGrew began to get a glimmering of intelligence again, McTurk went at him red-headed.

”Your heart's bad,” the little doctor flung at McGrew, and there was no fooling in his voice. ”So's your liver--cirrhosis. But mostly your heart. You'll try this just once too often--and you'll go out like a collapsed balloon, out like the snuffing of a candle wick.”

<script>