Part 31 (1/2)

McGrew blinked at him.

”I've heard that before,” said he indifferently.

”Indeed!” snapped the irascible little doctor.

”Yes,” said McGrew, ”quite a few times. This ain't my maiden trip.

You fellows make me tired! I'm a pretty good man yet, ain't I? And I'm likely to be when you're dead. I've got my job to worry about now, and that's enough to worry about. Got any idea of what Carleton's said about it?”

”You keep this up,” said McTurk sharply, refusing to sidestep the point, as, bag in hand, he moved toward the door, ”and it won't interest you much what Carleton or anybody else says--mark my words, my man.”

It was Tommy Regan, fat-paunched, big-hearted, good-natured, who stepped into the breach. There was only one place on this wide earth in Carleton's eyes for a railroad man who drank when he should have been on duty--and that was a six-foot trench, three feet deep. In Carleton's mind, from the moment he heard of it, McGrew was out. But Regan saved McGrew; and the matter was settled, as many a matter had been settled before, over the nightly game of pedro between the superintendent and the master mechanic, upstairs in the super's office over the station. Incidentally, they played pedro because there wasn't anything else to do nights--Big Cloud in those days wasn't boasting a grand-opera house, and the ”movies” were still things of the future.

”He's a pretty rough case, I guess; but give him a chance,” said Regan.

”A chance!” exclaimed Carleton, with a hard smile. ”Give a despatcher who drinks a chance--to send a trainload or two of souls into eternity, and about a hundred thousand dollars' worth of rolling stock to the junk heap while he's boozing over the key!”

”No,” said Regan. ”A chance--to make good.”

Carleton laid down his hand, and stared across the table at the master mechanic.

”Go on, Tommy,” he prompted grimly. ”What's the answer?”

”Well,” said Regan, ”he's a past master on the key, we know that--that counts for something. What's the matter with sending him somewhere up the line where he can't get a drink if he goes to blazes for it? It might make a man of him, and save the company a good operator at the same time--we're not long on operators.”

”H'm!” observed Carleton, with a wry grin, picking up his cards again one by one. ”I suppose you've some such place as Angel Forks, for instance, in mind, Tommy?”

”Yes,” said Regan. ”I was thinking _of_ Angel Forks.”

”I'd rather be fired,” submitted Carleton dryly.

”Well,” demanded Regan, ”what do you say? Can he have it?”

”Oh, yes,” agreed Carleton, smiling. ”He can have _that_--after I've talked to him. We're pretty short of operators, as you say. Perhaps it will work out. It will as long as he sticks, I guess--if he'll take it at all.”

”He'll take it,” said Regan, ”and be glad to get it. What do you bid?”

McGrew had been at Angel Forks--night man there--for perhaps the matter of a month, when the Kid came to Big Cloud fresh from a key on the Penn. They called him the Kid because he looked it--he wasn't past the stage of where he had to shave more than once a week. The Kid, they dubbed him on the spot, but his name was Charlie Keene; a thin, wiry little chap, with black hair and a bright, snappy, quick look in his eyes and face. He was pretty good on the key, too; not a master like McGrew, he hadn't had the experience, but pretty good for all that--he could ”send” with the best of them, and there wasn't much to complain about in his ”taking,” either.

The day man at Angel Forks didn't drink--at least his way-bill didn't read that way--and they gave him promotion in the shape of a station farther along the line that sized up a little less tomb-like, a little less like a buried-alive sepulcher than Angel Forks did. And the Kid, naturally, being young and new to the system, had to start at the bottom--they sent him up to Angel Forks on the morning way freight the day after he arrived in Big Cloud.

There was something about the Kid that got the train crew of the way freight right from the start. They liked a man a whole lot and pretty sudden in their rough-and-ready way, those railroaders of the Rockies in those days, or they didn't like him well enough to say a good word for him at his funeral; that's the way it went--and the caboose was swearing by the Kid by the time they were halfway to Angel Forks, where he s.h.i.+fted from the caboose to the cab for the rest of the run.

Against the rules--riding in the cab? Well, perhaps it is--if you're not a railroad man. It depends. Who was going to say anything about it? It was Fatty Hogan himself, poking a long-spouted oil can into the entrails of the 428, while the train crew were throwing out tinned biscuits and canned meats and contract pie for the lunch counter at Elk River, who invited him, anyhow.

That's how the Kid came to get acquainted with Hogan, and Hogan's mate, Bull Coussirat, who was handling the shovel end of it. Coussirat was an artist in his way--apart from the shovel--and he started in to guy the Kid. He drew a shuddering picture of the desolation and the general lack of what made life worth living at Angel Forks, which wasn't exaggerated because you couldn't exaggerate Angel Forks much in that particular respect; and he told the Kid about Dan McGrew and how headquarters--it wasn't any secret--had turned Angel Forks into what he called a booze-fighter's sanatorium. But he didn't break through the Kid's optimism or ambition much of any to speak of.

By the time the way freight whistled for Angel Forks, the Kid had Bull Coussirat's seat, and Coussirat was doing the listening, while Hogan was leaning toward them to catch what he could of what was going on over the roar and pound of the 428. There was better pay, and, what counted most, better chances for a man who was willing to work for them out in the West than there was in the East, the Kid told them with a quiet, modest sincerity--and that was why he had come out there. He was looking for a train despatcher's key some day after he had got through station operating, and after that--well, something better still.

There wasn't any jolly business or blowhard about the Kid. He meant what he said--he was going up. And as far as McGrew was concerned, he'd get along with McGrew. McGrew, or any other man, wouldn't hold him back from the goal he had his eyes set upon and his mind made up to work for. There was perhaps a little more of the youthful enthusiasm in it that looked more buoyantly on the future than hard-headed experience would; but it was sincere, and they liked him for it--who wouldn't? Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan in the days to come had reason to remember that talk in the cab.