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

“I understand everything, Colonel Stanley.”

“I need not say much about what is before you. You have been sending despatchers’ orders for years yourself. You know how many lives are held every minute in the despatchers’ hand. Don’t overrate your responsibility and grow nervous over it; and don’t ever underestimate it. As long as you keep yourself fit for your work, and do the best you can, you may sleep with a clear conscience. Report to Mr. Baxter. Remember you are working with green trainmen and don’t expect too much of them.”

When Bucks signed a transfer and took his train-sheet that night at twelve o’clock, his chief anxiety was to keep the material trains going to Casement and everything eastbound was laid out in an effort to send the ties and rails west. Bucks set himself to keep pace with the good work done by the despatcher in the evening trick and for two hours kept his sheet pretty clean.

A heavy train of rails which he had been helping 309 all the way west after midnight was then at Castle Springs, and Bucks gave its crew an order to meet the eastbound passenger train at Point of Rocks. It was three o’clock when a message came from the operator at Point of Rocks, saying the rail train had passed westbound. Bucks seized a key and silencing the wires asked for the passenger train. Nothing had been seen of it. He called up Bitter Creek, the first telegraph point west of Point of Rocks with an order to hold the passenger train. But the train had already gone.

The new dispatcher sprang up from the table frantic. Then, racing again to the key, he made the operator at Castle Springs repeat the order and assure him it had been delivered. Of this there could be no question. The freight crew had ignored or forgotten it, and were now past Point of Rocks running head-on against the passenger train. If the heavens had fallen the situation would have seemed better to Bucks. A head-on collision on the first night of his promotion meant, he felt, his ruin. As he sat overwhelmed with despair, trying to collect his wits and to determine 310 what to do, the door opened and Bob Scott appeared.

The scout, with his unfailing and kindly smile, advanced and held out his hand. “Just dropped in to extend my congratulations.”

Bucks looked at him in horror, his face rigid and his eyes set. Scott paused and regarded his aspect with surprise. “Something has happened,” he said, waiting for the despatcher to speak.

“Bob!” exclaimed the boy in desperation, “No. 9 has run past her meeting order at Point of Rocks with No. 2. They will meet head-on and kill everybody. My God! what can I do?”

In the dim light of the shaded oil lamp, Bucks, looking at the scout, stood the picture of despair. Scott picked up the poker and began to stir the fire and asked only a few questions and said little. However, when Bucks told him he was going to wake Stanley, whose sleeping-room adjoined his office at the end of the hall, Scott counselled no.

“He could do nothing,” said Scott reflecting. “Let us wait a while before we do anything like 311 that,” he added, coupling himself with the despatcher in the latter’s overwhelming anxiety. “The first news of the collision will come from Bitter Creek. It will be time enough then to call Stanley. Give your orders for a wrecking crew, get a train ready, and get word to Doctor Arnold to go with it.”

Bucks, steadying himself under the kindly common-sense of his older friend, followed each suggestion promptly. Scott, who ordinarily would himself have been running around on the job, made no move to leave the room, thinking he could be of more service in remaining with the unfortunate despatcher. The yard became a scene of instant activity. And although no organization to meet emergencies of this kind had been as yet effected on the new division, the men responded intelligently and promptly with the necessary arrangements.

Everyone summoned tried to get into the dispatchers’ room to hear the story repeated. Scott took it upon himself to prevent this, and standing in the anteroom made all explanations himself. 312 He rejoined Bucks after getting rid of the crowd, and the moment the relief train reported ready the despatcher sent it out, that help might reach the scene of disaster at the earliest possible moment. Bucks, calmed somewhat but suffering intensely, paced the floor or threw himself into his chair, while Scott picked up the despatcher’s old copy of “The Last of the Mohicans,” and smoking silently sat immovable, waiting with his customary stoicism for the call that should announce the dreaded wreck.

The moments loaded with anxiety went with leaden feet while the two men sat. It seemed as if the first hour never would pass. Then the long silence of the little receiver was broken by a call for the dispatcher. Bucks sprang to answer it.

Scott watched his face as he sent his “Ay, ay.” Without understanding what the instruments clicked, he read the expressions that followed one after the other across Bucks’s countenance, as he would have read a desert trail. He noted the perplexity on the despatcher’s face when the latter tried to get the sender of the call.

“Some one is cutting in on the line,” exclaimed Bucks, mystified, as the sounder clicked. “Bob, it is Bill Dancing.”

A pause followed. “What can it mean, his sending a message to me? He is between Bitter Creek and Castle Springs. Wait a moment!”

The receiver clicked sharp and fast. Scarcely able to control his voice in his anxiety, Bucks turned to the now excited scout: “The trains met between Bitter Creek and Castle Springs. There was no collision!”

Almost collapsing with the passing of the strain, Bucks faltered in his taking. Asking Dancing again for the story, Bucks took it more coolly and repeated it to his eager listener, as it came.

“Dancing was out with two men on the line to-day, repairing between Bitter Creek and Castle Springs. He didn’t get done and camped beside the track for the night, to finish in the morning.”

“Go on,” exclaimed Scott.

“They shot a jack-rabbit–––”

“Hang the jack-rabbit,” cried Scott. “What about the trains?”

“You can’t hurry Bill Dancing, Bob,” pleaded Bucks. “You know that. Faster, Bill, faster,” he telegraphed urgently.

“You will get it faster,” returned the distant lineman far out in the mountains under the stars, as he talked calmly with the despatcher, “if you will go slower.”

Bucks strangled his impatience. Dancing resumed, and the despatcher again translated for Scott.

“They cooked the jack-rabbit for supper–––”

Scott flung his book violently across the room. “It tasted good,” continued Dancing exasperatingly. “But the night was awfully cold, so they built a big camp-fire near the curve. The freight engineer saw the fire and thought it was a locomotive head-light. Then he remembered he had run past his meeting point. He stopped his train to find out what the fire was. When he told Bill what had happened they grabbed up the burning logs, carried them down the track, and built a signal fire for No. 2. And it came along inside five minutes–––”

“And there they are!” concluded Bucks, wiping the dampness from his forehead.

The receiver continued to click. “Bill thought I would be worried and he cut in on the line right away to tell me what had happened.”

“Now give your orders to No. 2 to back up to Castle Springs and let the rail train get by. Recall your relief train,” added Scott. “And bring that freight engineer in here in the morning and let Stanley talk to him for just about five minutes.” The key rattled for a moment. Scott, going to the farthest corner of the room, picked up “The Last of the Mohicans.” “Bucks,” he murmured insinuatingly, as he sat down to look into the book again, “I want to ask you now, once for all, whether this is a true story?”

“Bob, put that book where it belongs and stop talking about it.”

Scott hitched one shoulder a bit and returned to the fire, but he was not silenced.

“That reminds me, Bucks,” he resumed after a pause, “there is another friend of yours here at 316 the door, waiting to congratulate you. Shall I let him in?”

“I don’t want any congratulations, Bob.”

“I’ll promise he doesn’t say a single word, Bucks.” As he spoke, Scott opened the hall door and whistled into the darkness. For an instant there was no response. Then a small and vague object outlined itself in the gloom, but halted questioningly on the threshold. Wagging his abbreviated tail very gently and carrying his drooping ears very low, Scuffy at length walked slowly into the room. Bucks hailed him with delight, and Scuffy bounding forward crouched at his feet.

“I can’t do a thing with him over at the ranch,” complained Scott, eying the dog with a secret admiration. “He is eating the hounds up; doesn’t give them a chance to pick a bone even after he’s done with it.”

“I’m afraid there is nothing to do with Scuffy, but to make a despatcher of him,” returned Bucks, picking him up by the forepaws. “I can see very plainly it’s going to be a dog’s life most of the time.”