The Mountain Divide - Frank H. Spearman (english reading book .txt) 📗

The loss of the engine at Goose Creek brought an unexpected relief to Bucks. His good work in the emergency earned for him a promotion. He was ordered to report to Medicine Bend for assignment, and within a week a new man appeared at Goose Creek to relieve him.

There was little checking up to do. Less than thirty minutes gave Bucks time to answer all of his successor’s questions and pack his trunk. He might have slept till morning and taken a passenger train to Medicine Bend, but the prospect of getting away from Goose Creek at once was too tempting to dismiss. A freight train of bridge timbers pulled across the bridge just as Bucks was ready to start. Pat Francis, the doughty conductor, who, single-handed, had held Iron Hand’s braves at bay, was in charge of the train. He offered Bucks a bench and blanket in the caboose for the night, and promised to have him in Medicine 177 Bend in the morning; Bucks, nothing loath, accepted. His trunk was slung aboard and the train pulled out for Medicine Bend.

The night proved unseasonably cold. Francis built a blazing fire in the caboose stove and afterward shared his hearty supper with his guest. As the train thundered and rumbled slowly over the rough track, the conductor, while Bucks stretched out on the cushions, entertained him with stories of his experiences on the railroad frontier––not suspecting that before morning he should furnish for his listener one of the strangest of them.

Bucks curled up in his blanket late, but, in spite of unaccustomed surroundings and the pitch and lurch of the caboose, which was hardly less than the tossing of a ship in a gale, Bucks dozed while his companion and the brakeman watched. The latter, a large, heavy fellow, was a busy man, as the calls for brakes––and only hand-brakes were then known––were continual. There were no other passengers, and except for the frequent blasts of the engine whistle the night passed quietly enough.

Bucks dreamed of fighting bears with Scuffy, and found himself repeatedly rolling down precipitous mountains without landing successfully anywhere. Then he quieted into a heavy, unbroken sleep and found himself among the hills of Alleghany, hunting rabbits that were constantly changing into antelope and escaping him. Fatigued with his unceasing efforts, he woke.

A gray light, half dusk, revealed the outlines of the cab interior, as he opened his eyes, and a thundering, rumbling sound that rang in his ears and seemed everywhere about him cleared his mind and brought him back to his situation.

It was cold, and he looked at the stove. The fire was out. On the opposite side of the cab the brakeman lay on the cushions fast asleep. Outside, the thundering noises came continuously from everywhere at once. It did not occur to Bucks that the caboose was standing still. It trembled and vibrated more or less, but he noticed there was no longer any lurching and thought they had reached remarkably smooth track. They were certainly not standing still, he assured himself, as 179 he rubbed his eyes to wake up. But perhaps they might be in the yards at Medicine Bend, with other trains rolling past them.

Somewhat confused he raised the curtain of the window near him. The sky was overcast and day was breaking. He rose higher on his elbow to look more carefully. Everywhere that his eye could reach toward the horizon the earth seemed in motion, rising and falling in great waves. Was it an earthquake? He rubbed his eyes. It seemed as if everywhere thousands of heads were tossing, and from this continual tossing and trampling came the thunder and vibration. Moreover, the caboose was not moving; of this he felt sure. Amazed, and only half-awake, he concluded that the train must have left the track and dropped into a river. The uncertainty of his vision was due, he now saw, to a storm that had swept the plains. It was blowing, with a little snow, and in the midst of the snow the mysterious waves were everywhere rising and falling.

Bucks put the curtain completely aside. The sound of his feet striking the floor aroused the 180 conductor, who rose from his cushion with a start. “I’ve been asleep,” he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes. “Where are we, Bucks?”

“That is what I am trying to figure out.”

“Where is the brakeman?” demanded Francis. As he asked the question he saw the big fellow asleep in the corner. Francis shook him roughly. “That comes of depending on some one else,” he muttered to Bucks. “I went to sleep on his promise to watch for an hour––he knew I had been up all last night and told me to take a nap. You see what happened. The moment I went to sleep, he went to sleep,” exclaimed Francis in disgust. “Wake up!” he continued brusquely to the drowsy brakeman. “Where are we? What have we stopped for? What’s all this noise?” Though he asked the questions fast, he expected no answer to any of them from the confused trainman and waited for none. Instead, he threw up a curtain and looked out. “Thunder and guns! Buffaloes!” he cried, and seizing his lantern ran out of the caboose door and climbed the roof-ladder. Bucks was fast upon his heels.

The freight train stood upon a wide plain and in the midst of thousands of buffaloes travelling south. As far as their eyes could reach in all directions, the astonished railroad men beheld a sea of moving buffaloes. Without further delay Francis, followed by Bucks, started along the running boards for the head end of the train.

The conductor found his train intact; but when he reached the head end he could find neither engine, tender, nor crew. All had disappeared. Running down the ladder of the head box-car, the conductor examined the draw-bar for evidence of an accident. The coupling was apparently uninjured but the tender and engine were gone. Francis, more upset than Bucks had ever seen him, or ever afterward saw him, walked moodily back to the caboose. What humiliated him more than the strange predicament in which he found himself was that he had trusted to a subordinate and gone to sleep in his caboose while on duty.

“Serves me right,” he muttered, knitting his brows. “Brakeman,” he added sternly, “take your lantern and flags and get out behind. The 182 minute the buffaloes get across the track, go back two hundred yards and protect us. I will watch the head end. While these buffaloes are crossing they will be protection enough. Soon as it is daylight we will find out where we are.”

The snow continued falling and the buffaloes drifted south with the storm, which was squally. Every moment, as the sky and landscape lightened, Francis, whom Bucks had followed forward, expected to see the last of the moving herd. But an hour passed and a second hour without showing any gaps in the enormous fields. And the brighter the daylight grew, the more buffaloes they could see.

Francis stormed at the situation, but he could do nothing. Finally, and as hope was deserting him, he heard the distant tooting of an engine whistle. It grew louder and louder until Bucks could hear the ringing of a bell and the hissing of the open cylinder cocks of a slow-moving locomotive. Gaps could now be discerned in the great herds of buffaloes, and through the blowing snow the uncertain outlines of the backing 183 engine could dimly be seen. Francis angrily watched the approaching engine, and, as soon as it had cleared the last of the stumbling buffaloes on the track, he walked forward to meet it and greeted the engineman roughly.

“What do you mean by setting my train out here on the main track in the middle of the night?” he demanded ferociously, and those that knew Pat Francis never wanted to add to his anger when it was aroused.

“Don’t get excited,” returned Dan Baggs calmly, for it was the redoubtable Baggs who held the throttle. “I found I was getting short of water. We are just coming to Blackwood Hill and I knew I could never make Blackwood Siding with the train. So I uncoupled and ran to the Blackwood tank for water. We are all right now. Couple us up. If I hadn’t got water, we should have been hung up here till we got another engine.”

“Even so,” retorted Francis, “you needn’t have been all night about it.”

“But when we started back there were about ten million buffaloes on the track. If I had been 184 heading into them with the cow-catcher I shouldn’t have been afraid. But I had to back into them, and if I had crippled one it would have upset the tender.”

“Back her up,” commanded Francis curtly, “and pull us out of here.”

Meantime there was much excitement at the despatchers’ office in Medicine Bend over the lost train. It had been reported out of White Horse Station on time, and had not reported