"Packard, Frank L - The Night Operator" - читать интересную книгу автора (Packard Frank L)
The night operator (1919) by Frank L. Packard
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The night operator
By
Frank L. Packard
(1877-1942)
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From The night operator (1919)
CONTAINING THESE STORIES:—
- The night operator
- Owsley and the 1601
- The apotheosis of Sammy Durgan
- The wrecking boss
- The man who squealed
- The age limit
- "The devil and all his works"
- On the night wire
- The other fellow's job
- The Rat river special
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TODDLES, in the beginning, wasn't
exactly a railroad man — for several
reasons. First, he wasn't a man at all; second, he wasn't, strictly
speaking, on the company's pay roll; third, which is apparently
irrelevant, everybody said he was a bad one; and fourth — because
Hawkeye nicknamed him Toddles.
Toddles had another name — Christopher Hyslop Hoogan — but Big Cloud
never lay awake at nights losing any sleep over that. On the first
run that Christopher Hyslop Hoogan ever made, Hawkeye looked him over
for a minute, said, "Toddles," short-like — and, short-like, that
settled the matter so far as the Hill Division was concerned. His
name was Toddles.
Piecemeal, Toddles wouldn't convey anything to you to speak of.
You'd have to see Toddles coming down the aisle of a car to get him
at all — and then the chances are you'd turn around after he'd gone by
and stare at him, and it would be even money that you'd call him back
and fish for a dime to buy something by way of excuse. Toddles got
a good deal of business that way. Toddles had a uniform and a
regular run all right, but he wasn't what he passionately longed to
be — a legitimate, dyed-in-the-wool railroader. His paycheck, plus
commissions, came from the News Company down East that had the
railroad concession. Toddles was a newsboy. In his blue uniform and
silver buttons, Toddles used to stack up about the height of the back
of the car seats as he hawked his wares along the aisles; and the
only thing that was big about him was his head, which looked as
though it had got a whopping big lead on his body — and didn't intend
to let the body cut the lead down any. This meant a big cap, and, as
Toddles used to tilt the vizor forward, the tip of his nose, bar his
mouth which was generous, was about all one got of his face. Cap,
buttons, magazines and peanuts, that was Toddles — all except his
voice. Toddles had a voice that would make you jump if you were
nervous the minute he opened the car door, and if you weren't nervous
you would be before he had reached the other end of the aisle — it
began low down somewhere on high G and went through you shrill as an
east wind, and ended like the shriek of a brake-shoe with everything
the Westinghouse equipment had to offer cutting loose on a quick stop
Hawkeye? That was what Toddles called his beady-eyed conductor in
retaliation. Hawkeye used to nag Toddles every chance he got, and,
being Toddles' conductor, Hawkeye got a good many chances. In a
word, Hawkeye, carrying the punch on the local passenger, that
happened to be the run Toddles was given when the News Company sent
him out from the East, used to think he got a good deal of fun out of
Toddles — only his idea of fun and Toddles' idea of fun were as
divergent as the poles, that was all.
Toddles, however, wasn't anybody's fool, not by several degrees —
not even Hawkeye's. Toddles hated Hawkeye like poison; and his hate,
apart from daily annoyances, was deep-seated. It was Hawkeye who had
dubbed him "Toddles." And Toddles repudiated the name with his
heart, his soul — and his fists.
Toddles wasn't anybody's fool, whatever the division thought, and
he was right down to the basic root of things from the start.
Coupled with the stunted growth that nature in a miserly mood had
doled out to him, none knew better than himself that the name of
"Toddles," keeping that nature stuff patently before everybody's
eyes, damned him in his aspirations for a bona fide railroad career.
Other boys got a job and got their feet on the ladder as call-boys,
or in the roundhouse; Toddles got — a grin. Toddles pestered
everybody for a job. He pestered Carleton, the super. He pestered
Tommy Regan, the master mechanic. Every time that he saw anybody in
authority Toddles
spoke up for a job, he was in deadly earnest
— and got a grin. Toddles with a basket of unripe fruit and stale
chocolates and his "best-seller" voice was one thing; but Toddles as
anything else was just — Toddles.
Toddles repudiated the name, and did it forcefully
Not that he couldn't take his share of a bit of guying
but because he felt that he was face to face with a vital
factor in the career he longed for — so he fought. And
if nature had been niggardly in one respect, she had been
generous in others; Toddles, for all his size, possessed
the heart of a lion and the strength of a young ox, and
he used both, with black and bloody effect, on the eyes
and noses of the call-boys and younger element who
called him Toddles. He fought it all along the line —
at the drop of the hat — at a whisper of "Toddles." There
wasn't a day went by that Toddles wasn't in a row; and
the women, the mothers of the defeated warriors whose
eyes were puffed and whose noses trickled crimson, denounced him in
virulent language over their washtubs and the back fences of Big
Cloud. You see, they didn't understand him, so they called him a
"bad one," and, being from the East and not one of themselves, "a New
York gutter snipe."
But, for all that, the name stuck. Up and down through the Rockies
it was — Toddles. Toddles, with the idea of getting a lay-over on a
siding, even went to the extent of signing himself in full —
Christopher Hyslop Hoogan — very time his signature was in order; but
the official documents in which he was concerned, being of a private
nature between himself and the News Company, did not, in the very
nature of things, have much effect on the Hill Division. Certainly
the big fellows never knew he had any name but Toddles — and cared
less. But they knew him as Toddles, all right! All of them did,
every last one of them! Toddles was everlastingly and eternally
bothering them for a job. Any kind of a job, no matter what, just so
it was real railroading, and so a fellow could line up with everybody
else when the paycar came along, and look forward to being something
some day.
Toddles, with time, of course, grew older, up to about seventeen or
so, but he didn't grow any bigger — not enough to make it noticeable!
Even Toddles' voice wouldn't break — it was his young heart that did
all the breaking there was done. Not that he ever showed it. No one
ever saw a tear in the boy's eyes. It was clenched fists for
Toddles, clenched fists and passionate attack. And therein, while
Toddles had grasped the basic truth that his nickname militated
against his ambitions, he erred in another direction that was equally
fundamental, if not more so.
And here, it was Bob Donkin, the night despatcher, as white a man
as his record after years of train-handling was white, a railroad man
from the ground up if there ever was one, and one of the best, who
set Toddles — But we'll come to that presently. We've got our
"clearance" now, and we're off with "rights" through.
No. 83, Hawkeye's train — and Toddles' — scheduled Big Cloud on the
eastbound run at 9.05; and, on the night the story opens, they were
about an hour away from the little mountain town that was the
divisional point, as Toddles, his basket of edibles in the crook of
his arm, halted in the forward end of the second-class smoker to
examine again the fistful of change that he dug out of his pants
pocket with his free hand.
Toddles was in an unusually bad humor; and he scowled. With
exceeding deftness he separated one of the coins from the others,
using his fingers like the teeth of a rake, and dropped the rest back
jingling into his pocket. The coin that remained he put into his
mouth, and bit on it — hard. His scowl deepened. Somebody had
presented Toddles with a lead quarter.
It wasn't so much the quarter, though Toddles' salary wasn't so big
as some people's who would have felt worse over it, it was his amour
propre that was touched — deeply. It wasn't often that any one could
put so bald a thing as lead money across on Toddles. Toddles' mind
harked back along the aisles of the cars behind him. He had only
made two sales that round, and he had changed a quarter each time —
for the pretty girl with the big picture hat, who had giggled at him
when she bought a package of chewing gum; and the man with the
three-carat diamond tie-pin in the parlor car, a little more than on the
edge of inebriety, who had got on at the last stop, and who had
bought a cigar from him.
Toddles thought it over for a bit; decided he wouldn't have a fuss
with a girl anyway, balked at a parlor car fracas with a drunk,
dropped the coin back into his pocket, and went on into the
combination baggage and express car. Here, just inside the door, was
Toddles', or, rather, the News Company's chest. Toddles lifted the
lid; and then his eyes shifted slowly and travelled up the car.
Things were certainly going badly with Toddles that night.
There were four men in the car: Bob Donkin, coming back from a
holiday trip somewhere up the line; MacNicoll, the baggage-master;
Nulty, the express messenger — and Hawkeye. Toddles' inventory of the
contents of the chest had been hurried — but intimate. A small bunch
of six bananas was gone, and Hawkeye was munching them unconcernedly.
It wasn't the first time the big, hulking, six-foot conductor had
pilfered the boy's chest, not by many — and never paid for the
pilfering. That was Hawkeye's idea of a joke.
Hawkeye was talking to Nulty, elaborately simulating ignorance of
Toddles' presence — and he was talking about Toddles.
"Sure," said Hawkeye, his mouth full of banana, "he'll be a great
railroad man some day! He's the stuff they're made of! You can see
it sticking out all over him! He's only selling peanuts now till he
grows up and ——"
Toddles put down his basket and planted himself before the
conductor.
"You pay for those bananas," said Toddles in a low voice — which was
high.
"When'll he grow up?" continued Hawkeye, peeling more fruit. "I
don't know — you've got me. The first time I saw him two years ago,
I'm hanged if he wasn't bigger than he is now — guess he grows
backwards. Have a banana?" He offered one to Nulty, who refused it.
"You pay for those bananas, you big stiff!" squealed Toddles
belligerently.
Hawkeye turned his head slowly and turned his little beady, black
eyes on Toddles, then he turned with a wink to the others, and for
the first time in two years offered payment. He fished into his
pocket and handed Toddles a twenty-dollar bill — there always was a
mean streak in Hawkeye, more or less of a bully, none too well liked,
and whose name on the payroll, by the way, was Reynolds.
"Take fifteen cents out of that," he said, with no idea that the
boy could change the bill.
For a moment Toddles glared at the yellow-back, then a thrill of
unholy glee came to Toddles. He could just about make it, business
all around had been pretty good that day, particularly on the run
west in the morning.
Hawkeye went on with the exposition of his idea of humor at
Toddles' expense; and Toddles went back to his chest and his reserve
funds. Toddles counted out eighteen dollars in bills, made a neat
pile of four quarters — the lead one on the bottom — another neat pile
of the odd change, and returned to Hawkeye. The lead quarter
wouldn't go very far toward liquidating Hawkeye's long-standing
indebtedness — but it would help some.
Hawkeye counted the bills carefully, and crammed them into his
pocket. Toddles dropped the neat little pile of quarters into
Hawkeye's hand — they counted themselves — and Hawkeye put those in his
pocket. Toddles counted out the odd change piece by piece, and as
Hawkeye put that in his pocket — Toddles put his fingers to his nose.
Queer, isn't it — the way things happen? Think of a man's whole
life, aspirations, hopes, ambitions, everything, pivoting on — a lead
quarter! But then they say that opportunity knocks once at the door
of every man; and, if that be true, let it be remarked in passing
that Toddles wasn't deaf!
Hawkeye, making Toddles a target for a parting gibe, took up his
lantern and started through the train to pick up the fares from the
last stop. In due course he halted before the inebriated one with
the glittering tie-pin in the smoking compartment of the parlor car.
"Ticket, please," said Hawkeye.
"Too busy to buysh ticket," the man informed him, with heavy
confidence. "Whash fare Loon Dam to Big Cloud?"
"One-fifty," said Hawkeye curtly.
The man produced a roll of bills, and from the roll extracted a
two-dollar note.
Hawkeye handed him back two quarters, and started to punch a
cash-fare slip. He looked up to find the man holding out one of the
quarters insistently, if somewhat unsteadily.
"What's the matter?" demanded Hawkeye brusquely.
"Bad," said the man.
A drummer grinned; and an elderly gentleman, from his magazine,
looked up inquiringly over his spectacles.
"Bad!" Hawkeye brought his elbow sharply around to focus his lamp
on the coin; then he leaned over and rang it on the window sill — only
it wouldn't ring. It was indubitably bad. Hawkeye, however, was
dealing with a drunk — and Hawkeye always did have a mean streak in
him.
"It's perfectly good," he asserted gruffly.
The man rolled an eye at the conductor that mingled a sudden
shrewdness and anger, and appealed to his fellow travellers. The
verdict was against Hawkeye, and Hawkeye ungraciously pocketed the
lead piece and handed over another quarter.
"Shay," observed the inebriated one insolently, "shay, conductor,
I don't like you. You thought I was — hic! — s'drunk I wouldn't know —
eh? Thash where you fooled yerself!"
"What do you mean?" Hawkeye bridled virtuously for the benefit of
the drummer and the old gentleman with the spectacles.
And then the other began to laugh immoderately.
"Same ol' quarter," said he. "Same — hic! — ol' quarter back again.
Great system — peanut boy — conductor — hic! Pass it off on one — other
passes it off on some one else. Just passed it off on — hic! — peanut
boy for a joke. Goin' to give him a dollar when he comes back."
"Oh, you did, did you!" snapped Hawkeye ominously. "And you mean
to insinuate that I deliberately tried to ——"
"Sure!" declared the man heartily.
"You're a liar!" announced Hawkeye, spluttering mad. "And what's
more, since it came from you, you'll take it back!" He dug into his
pocket for the ubiquitous lead piece.
"Not — hic! — on your life!" said the man earnestly. "You hang onto
it, old top. I didn't pass it off on you."
"Haw!" exploded the drummer suddenly. "Haw — haw, haw!"
And the elderly gentleman smiled.
Hawkeye's face went red, and then purple.
"Go 'way!" said the man petulantly. "I don't like you. Go 'way!
Go an' tell peanuts I — hic! — got a dollar for him."
And Hawkeye went — but Toddles never got the dollar. Hawkeye went
out of the smoking compartment of the parlor car with the lead
quarter in his pocket — because he couldn't do anything else — which
didn't soothe his feelings any — and he went out mad enough to bite
himself. The drummer's guffaw followed him, and he thought he even
caught a chuckle from the elderly party with the magazine and
spectacles.
Hawkeye was mad; and he was quite well aware, painfully well aware
that he had looked like a fool, which is about one of the meanest
feelings there is to feel; and, as he made his way forward through
the train, he grew madder still. That change was the change from his
twenty-dollar bill. He had not needed to be told that the lead
quarter had come from Toddles. The only question at all in doubt was
whether or not Toddles had put the counterfeit coin over on him
knowingly and with malice aforethought. Hawkeye, however, had an
intuition deep down inside of him that there wasn't any doubt even
about that, and as he opened the door of the baggage car his
intuition was vindicated. There was a grin on the faces of Nulty,
MacNicoll and Bob Donkin that disappeared with suspicious celerity at
sight of him as he came through the door.
There was no hesitation then on Hawkeye's part. Toddles, equipped
for another excursion through the train with a stack of magazines and
books that almost hid him, received a sudden and vicious clout on the
side of the ear.
"You'd try your tricks on me, would you?" Hawkeye snarled. "Lead
quarters — eh?" Another clout. "I'll teach you, you blasted little
runt!"
And with the clouts, the stack of carefully balanced periodicals
went flying over the floor; and with the clouts, the nagging, and the
hectoring, and the bullying, that had rankled for close on two years
in Toddles' turbulent soul, rose in a sudden all-possessing sweep of
fury. Toddles was a fighter — with the heart of a fighter. And
Toddles' cause was just. He couldn't reach the conductor's face — so
he went for Hawkeye's legs. And the screams of rage from his
high-pitched voice, as he shot himself forward, sounded like a
cageful of Australian cockatoos on the rampage.
Toddles was small, pitifully small for his age; but he wasn't an
infant in arms — not for a minute. And in action Toddles was as near
to a wild cat as anything else that comes handy by way of
illustration. Two legs and one arm he twined and twisted around
Hawkeye's legs; and the other arm, with a hard and knotty fist on the
end of it, caught the conductor a wicked jab in the region of the
bottom button of the vest. The brass button peeled the skin off
Toddles' knuckles, but the jab doubled the conductor forward, and
coincident with Hawkeye's winded grunt, the lantern in his hand
sailed ceilingwards, crashed into the center lamps in the roof of the
car, and down in a shower of tinkling glass, dripping oil and burning
wicks, came the wreckage to the floor.
There was a yell from Nulty; but Toddles hung on like grim death.
Hawkeye was bawling fluent profanity and seeing red. Toddles heard
one and sensed the other — and he clung grimly on. He was all doubled
up around Hawkeye's knees, and in that position Hawkeye couldn't get
at him very well; and, besides, Toddles had his own plan of battle.
He was waiting for an extra heavy lurch of the car.
It came. Toddles' muscles strained legs and arms and back in
concert, and for an instant across the car they tottered, Hawkeye
staggering in a desperate attempt to maintain his equilibrium — and
then down — speaking generally, on a heterogeneous pile of express
parcels; concretely, with an eloquent squnch, on a crate of eggs,
thirty dozen of them, at forty cents a dozen.
Toddles, over his rage, experienced a sickening sense of disaster,
but still he clung; he didn't dare let go. Hawkeye's fists, both in
an effort to recover himself and in an endeavor to reach Toddles,
were going like a windmill; and Hawkeye's threats were something
terrifying to listen to. And now they rolled over, and Toddles was
underneath; and then they rolled over again; and then a hand locked
on Toddles' collar, and he was yanked, terrier-fashion, to his feet.
His face white and determined, his fists doubled, Toddles waited
for Hawkeye to get up — the word "run" wasn't in Toddles' vocabulary.
He hadn't long to wait.
Hawkeye lunged up, draped in the broken crate — a sight. The road
always prided itself on the natty uniforms of its train crews, but
Hawkeye wasn't dressed in uniform then — mostly egg yolks. He made a
dash for Toddles, but he never reached the boy. Bob Donkin was
between them.
"Cut it out!" said Donkin coldly, as he pushed Toddles behind him.
"You asked for it, Reynolds, and you got it. Now cut it out!"
And Hawkeye "cut it out." It was pretty generally understood that
Bob Donkin never talked much for show, and Bob Donkin was bigger than
Toddles, a whole lot bigger, as big as Hawkeye himself. Hawkeye "cut
it out."
Funny, the egg part of it? Well, perhaps. But the fire wasn't.
True, they got it out with the help of the hand extinguishers before
it did any serious damage, for Nulty had gone at it on the jump; but
while it lasted the burning oil on the car floor looked dangerous.
Anyway, it was bad enough so that they couldn't hide it when they got
into Big Cloud — and Hawkeye and Toddles went on the carpet for it the
next morning in the super's office.
Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, reached for a match, and, to keep his
lips straight, clamped them firmly on the amber mouthpiece of his
brier, and stumpy, big-paunched Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who
was sitting in a chair by the window, reached hurriedly into his back
pocket for his chewing and looked out of the window to hide a grin,
as the two came in and ranged themselves in front of the super's
desk — Hawkeye, six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds, with Toddles
trailing him, mostly cap and buttons and no weight at all.
Carleton didn't ask many questions — he'd asked them before — of Bob
Donkin — and the despatcher hadn't gone out of his way to invest the
conductor with any glorified halo. Carleton, always a strict
disciplinarian, said what he had to say and said it quietly; but he
meant to let the conductor have the worst of it, and he did — in a way
that was all Carleton's own. Two years' picking on a youngster
didn't appeal to Carleton, no matter who the youngster was. Before
he was half through he had the big conductor squirming. Hawkeye was
looking for something else — besides a galling and matter-of-fact
impartiality that accepted himself and Toddles as being on exactly
the same plane and level.
"There's a case of eggs," said Carleton at the end. "You can
divide up the damage between you. And I'm going to change your runs,
unless you've got some good reason to give me why I shouldn't?"
He waited for an answer.
Hawkeye, towering, sullen, his eyes resting bitterly on Regan,
having caught the master mechanic's grin, said nothing; Toddles,
whose head barely showed over the top of Carleton's desk, and the
whole of him sizing up about big enough to go into the conductor's
pocket, was equally silent — Toddles was thinking of something else.
"Very good," said Carleton suavely, as he surveyed the ridiculous
incongruity before him. "I'll change your runs, then. I can't have
you two men brawling and prize-fighting every trip."
There was a sudden sound from the window, as though Regan had got
some of his blackstrap juice down the wrong way.
Hawkeye's face went black as thunder.
Carleton's face was like a sphinx
"That'll do, then," he said. "You can go, both of you."
Hawkeye stamped out of the room and down the stairs. But Toddles
stayed.
"Please, Mr. Carleton, won't you give me a job on ——" Toddles
stopped.
So had Regan's chuckle. Toddles, the irrepressible was at it
again — and Toddles after a job, any kind of a job, was something that
Regan's experience had taught him to fly from without standing on the
order of his flight. Regan hurried from the room.
Toddles watched him go — kind of speculatively, kind of
reproachfully. Then he turned to Carleton.
"Please give me a job, Mr. Carleton," he pleaded. "Give me a job,
won't you?"
It was only yesterday on the platform that Toddles had waylaid the
super with the same demand — and about every day before that as far
back as Carleton could remember. It was hopelessly chronic.
Anything convincing or appealing about it had gone long ago — Toddles
said it parrot-fashion now. Carleton took refuge in severity.
"See here, young man," he said grimly, "you were brought into this
office for a reprimand and not to apply for a job! You can thank
your stars and Bob Donkin you haven't lost the one you've got. Now,
get out!"
"I'd make good if you gave me one," said Toddles earnestly.
"Honest, I would, Mr. Carleton."
"Get out!" said the super, not altogether unkindly. "I'm busy."
Toddles swallowed a lump in his throat — but not until after his
head was turned and he'd started for the door so the super couldn't
see it. Toddles swallowed the lump — and got out. He hadn't expected
anything else, of course. The refusals were just as chronic as the
demands. But that didn't make each new one any easier for Toddles.
It made it worse.
Toddles' heart was heavy as he stepped out into the hall, and the
iron was in his soul. He was seventeen now, and it looked as though
he never would get a chance — except to be a newsboy all his life.
Toddles swallowed another lump. He loved railroading; it was his one
ambition, his one desire. If he could ever get a chance, he'd show
them! He'd show them that he wasn't a joke, just because he was
small!
Toddles turned at the head of the stairs to go down, when somebody
called his name.
"Here — Toddles! Come here!"
Toddles looked over his shoulder, hesitated, then marched in
through the open door of the despatchers' room. Bob Donkin was alone
there.
"What's your name — Toddles?" inquired Donkin, as Toddles halted
before the despatcher's table.
Toddles froze instantly — hard. His fists doubled; there was a
smile on Donkin's face. Then his fists slowly uncurled; the smile on
Donkin's face had broadened, but there wasn't any malice in the
smile.
"Christopher Hyslop Hoogan," said Toddles, unbending.
Donkin put his hand quickly to his mouth — and coughed.
"Um-m!" said he pleasantly. "Super hard on you this morning —
Hoogan?"
And with the words Toddles' heart went out to the big despatcher:
"Hoogan" — and a man-to-man tone.
"No," said Toddles cordially. "Say, I thought you were on the
night trick."
"Double-shift — short-handed," replied Donkin. "Come from New York,
don't you?"
"Yes," said Toddles.
"Mother and father down there still?"
It came quick and unexpected, and Toddles stared for a moment.
Then he walked over to the window.
"I haven't got any," he said.
There wasn't any sound for an instant, save the clicking of the
instruments; then Donkin spoke again — a little gruffly:
"When are you going to quit making an ass of yourself?"
Toddles swung from the window, hurt. Donkin, after all, was like
all the rest of them.
"Well?" prompted the despatcher.
"You go to blazes!" said Toddles bitterly, and started for the
door.
Donkin halted him.
"You're only fooling yourself, Hoogan," he said coolly. "If you
wanted what you call a real railroad job as much as you pretend you
do, you'd get one."
"Eh?" demanded Toddles defiantly; and went back to the table.
"A fellow," said Donkin, putting a little sting into his words,
"never got anywhere by going around with a chip on his shoulder
fighting everybody because they called him Toddles, and making a
nuisance of himself with the Big Fellows until they got sick of the
sight of him."
It was a pretty stiff arraignment. Toddles choked over it, and the
angry blood flushed to his cheeks.
"That's all right for you!" he spluttered out hotly. "You don't
look too small for the train crews or the roundhouse, and they don't
call you Toddles so's nobody 'll forget it. What'd you do?"
"I'll tell you what I'd do," said Donkin quietly. "I'd make
everybody on the division wish their own name was Toddles before I
was through with them, and I'd make a job for myself."
Toddles blinked helplessly.
"Getting right down to a cash fare," continued Donkin, after a
moment, as Toddles did not speak, "they're not so far wrong, either,
about you sizing up pretty small for the train crews or the
roundhouse, are they?"
"No-o," admitted Toddles reluctantly; "but ——"
"Then why not something where there's no handicap hanging over
you?" suggested the despatcher — and his hand reached out and touched
the sender. "The key, for instance?"
"But I don't know anything about it," said Toddles, still
helplessly.
"That's just it," returned Donkin smoothly. "You never tried to
learn."
Toddles' eyes widened, and into Toddles' heart leaped a sudden joy.
A new world seemed to open out before him in which aspirations,
ambitions, longings all were a reality. A key! That was real
railroading, the top-notch of railroading, too. First an operator,
and then a despatcher, and — and — and then his face fell, and the
vision faded.
"How'd I get a chance to learn?" he said miserably. "Who'd teach
me?"
The smile was back on Donkin's face as he pushed his chair from the
table, stood up, and held out his hand — man-to-man fashion.
"I will," he said. "I liked your grit last night, Hoogan. And if
you want to be a railroad man, I'll make you one — before I'm through.
I've some old instruments you can have to practise with, and I've
nothing to do in my spare time. What do you say?"
Toddles didn't say anything. For the first time since Toddles'
advent to the Hill Division, there were tears in Toddles' eyes for
some one else to see.
Donkin laughed.
"All right, old man, you're on. See that you don't throw me down.
And keep your mouth shut; you'll need all your wind. It's work that
counts, and nothing else. Now chase yourself! I'll dig up the
things you'll need, and you can drop in here and get them when you
come off your run to-night."
Spare time! Bob Donkin didn't have any spare time those days! But
that was Donkin's way. Spence sick, and two men handling the
despatching where three had handled it before, didn't leave Bob
Donkin much spare time — not much. But a boost for the kid was worth
a sacrifice. Donkin went at it as earnestly as Toddles did — and
Toddles was in deadly earnest.
When Toddles left the despatcher's office that morning with
Donkin's promise to teach him the key, Toddles had a hazy idea that
Donkin had wings concealed somewhere under his coat and was an angel
in disguise; and at the end of two weeks he was sure of it. But at
the end of a month Bob Donkin was a god! Throw Bob Donkin down!
Toddles would have sold his soul for the despatcher.
It wasn't easy, though; and Bob Donkin wasn't an easy-going
taskmaster, not by long odds. Donkin had a tongue, and on occasions
could use it. Short and quick in his explanations, he expected his
pupil to get it short and quick; either that, or Donkin's opinion of
him. But Toddles stuck. He'd have crawled on his knees for Donkin
anywhere, and he worked like a major — not only for his own
advancement, but for what he came to prize quite as much, if not
more, Donkin's approval.
Toddles, mindful of Donkin's words, didn't fight so much as the
days went by, though he found it difficult to swear off all at once;
and on his runs he studied his Morse code, and he had the "calls" of
every station on the division off by heart right from the start.
Toddles mastered the "sending" by leaps and bounds; but the "taking"
came slower, as it does for everybody — but even at that, at the end
of six weeks, if it wasn't thrown at him too fast and hard, Toddles could get it after a fashion.
Take it all around, Toddles felt like whistling most of the time;
and, pleased with his own progress, looked forward to starting in
presently as a full-fledged operator. He mentioned the matter to Bob
Donkin — once. Donkin picked his words and spoke fervently. Toddles
never brought the subject up again.
And so things went on. Late summer turned to early fall, and early
fall to still sharper weather, until there came the night that the
operator at Blind River muddled his orders and gave No. 73, the
westbound fast freight, her clearance against the second section of
the eastbound Limited that doomed them to meet somewhere head-on in
the Glacier Cañon; the night that Toddles — but there's just a word or
two that comes before.
When it was all over, it was up to Sam Beale, the Blind River
operator, straight enough. Beale blundered. That's all there was to
it; that covers it all — he blundered. It would have finished Beale's
railroad career forever and a day — only Beale played the man, and the
instant he realized what he had done, even while the tail lights of
the freight were disappearing down the track and he couldn't stop
her, he was stammering the tale of his mistake over the wire, the
sweat beads dripping from his wrist, his face gray with horror, to
Bob Donkin under the green-shaded lamp in the despatchers' room at
Big Cloud, miles away.
Donkin got the miserable story over the chattering wire — got it
before it was half told — cut Beale out and began to pound the Gap
call. And as though it were before him in reality, that stretch of
track, fifteen miles of it, from Blind River to the Gap, unfolded
itself like a grisly panorama before his mind. There wasn't a half
mile of tangent at a single stretch in the whole of it. It swung
like the writhings of a snake, through cuts and tunnels, hugging the
canon walls, twisting this way and that. Anywhere else there might
be a chance, one in a thousand even, that they would see each other's
headlights in time — here it was disaster quick and absolute.
Donkin's lips were set in a thin, straight line. The Gap answered
him; and the answer was like the knell of doom. He had not expected
anything else; he had only hoped against hope. The second section of
the Limited had pulled out of the Gap, eastbound, two minutes before.
The two trains were in the open against each other's orders.
In the next room, Carleton and Regan, over their pipes, were at
their nightly game of pedro. Donkin called them — and his voice
sounded strange to himself. Chairs scraped and crashed to the floor,
and an instant later the super and the master mechanic were in the
room.
"What's wrong, Bob?" Carleton flung the words from him in a single
breath.
Donkin told them. But his fingers were on the key again as he
talked. There was still one chance, worse than the thousand-to-one
shot; but it was the only one Between the Gap and Blind River, eight
miles from the Gap, seven miles from Blind River, was Cassil's
Siding. But there was no night man at Cassil's, and the little town
lay a mile from the station. It was ten o'clock — Donkin's watch lay
face up on the table before him — the day man at Cassil's went off at
seven — the chance was that the day man might have come back to the
station for something or other!
Not much of a chance? No — not much! It was a possibility, that
was all; and Donkin's fingers worked — the seventeen, the life and
death — calling, calling on the night trick to the day man at Cassil's
Siding.
Carleton came and stood at Donkin's elbow, and Regan stood at the
other; and there was silence now, save only for the key that, under
Donkin's fingers, seemed to echo its stammering appeal about the room
like the sobbing of a human soul.
"CS — CS — CS," Donkin called; and then, "the seventeen," and then,
"hold second Number Two." And then the same thing over and over
again.
And there was no answer.
It had turned cold that night and there was a fire in the
little heater. Donkin had opened the draft a little while
before, and the sheet-iron sides now began to pur red-hot.
Nobody noticed it. Regan's kindly, good-humored face had the
stamp of horror in it, and he pulled at his scraggly brown
mustache, his eyes seemingly fascinated by Donkin's fingers.
Everybody's eyes, the three of them, were on Donkin's fingers
and the key. Carleton was like a man of stone, motionless,
his face set harder than face was ever carved in marble.
It grew hot in the room; but Donkin's fingers were like ice
on the key, and, strong man though he was, he faltered.
"Oh, my God!" he whispered — and never a prayer rose more
fervently from lips than those three broken words.
Again he called, and again, and again. The minutes slipped
away. Still he called — with the life and death — the
"seventeen" — called and called. And there was no answer save
that echo in the room that brought the perspiration streaming
now from Regan's face, a harder light into Carleton's eyes,
and a chill like death into Donkin's heart.
Suddenly Donkin pushed back his chair; and his fingers,
from the key, touched the crystal of his watch.
"The second section will have passed Cassil's now," he said
in a curious, unnatural, matter-of-fact tone. "It'll bring
them together about a mile east of there — in another minute."
And then Carleton spoke — master railroader, "Royal"
Carleton, it was up to him then, all the pity of it, the
ruin, the disaster, the lives out, all the bitterness to cope
with as he could. And it was in his eyes, all of it. But
his voice was quiet. It rang quick, peremptory, his voice —
but quiet.
"Clear the line, Bob," he said. "Plug in the roundhouse
for the wrecker — and tell them to send uptown for the crew."
Toddles? What did Toddles have to do with this?
Well, a good deal, in one way and another. We're coming to
Toddles now. You see, Toddles, since his fracas with
Hawkeye, had been put on the Elk River local run that left
Big Cloud at 9.45 in the morning for the run west, and
scheduled Big Cloud again on the return trip at 10.10 in the
evening.
It had turned cold that night, after a day of rain. Pretty
cold — the thermometer can drop on occasions in the late fall
in the mountains — and by eight o'clock, where there had been
rain before, there was now a thin sheeting of ice over
everything — very thin — you know the kind — rails and telegraph
wires glistening like the decorations on a Christmas tree —
very pretty — and also very nasty running on a mountain grade.
Likewise, the rain, in a way rain has, had dripped from the
car roofs to the platforms — the local did not boast any
closed vestibules — and had also been blown upon the car steps
with the sweep of the wind, and, having frozen, it stayed
there. Not a very serious matter; annoying, perhaps, but not
serious, demanding a little extra caution, that was all.
Toddles was in high fettle that night. He had been getting
on famously of late; even Bob Donkin had admitted it.
Toddles, with his stack of books and magazines, an unusually
big one, for a number of the new periodicals were out that
day, was dreaming rosy dreams to himself as he started from
the door of the first-class smoker to the door of the
first-class coach. In another hour now he'd be up in the
despatcher's room at Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with
Bob Donkin. He could see Bob Donkin there now; and he could
hear the big despatcher growl at him in his bluff way: "Use
your head — use your head — Hoogan!" It was always "Hoogan,"
never "Toddles." "Use your head" — Donkin was everlastingly
drumming that into him; for the despatcher used to confront
him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and
demand Toddles' instant solution. Toddles realized that
Donkin was getting to the heart of things, and that some day
he, Toddles, would be a great despatcher — like Donkin. "Use
your head, Hoogan" — that's the way Donkin talked — "anybody
can learn a key, but that doesn't make a railroad man out of
him. It's the man when trouble comes who can think quick and
think right. Use your ——"
Toddles stepped out on the platform — and walked on ice.
But that wasn't Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles
was that he was walking on air at the same time. It was
treacherous running, they were nosing a curve, and in the
cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with a little jerk at
the "air." And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and with the
slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals
shifted, and they bulged ominously from the middle. Toddles
grabbed at them — and his heels went out from under him. He
ricochetted down the steps, snatched desperately at the
handrail, missed it, shot out from the train, and, head,
heels, arms and body going every which way at once, rolled
over and over down the embankment. And, starting from the
point of Toddles' departure from the train, the right of way
for a hundred yards was strewn with "the latest magazines"
and "new books just out to-day."
Toddles lay there, a little, curled, huddled heap,
motionless in the darkness. The tail lights of the local
disappeared. No one aboard would miss Toddles until they got
into Big Cloud — and found him gone. Which is Irish for
saying that no one would attempt to keep track of a newsboy's
idiosyncrasies on a train; it would be asking too much of any
train crew; and, besides, there was no mention of it in the
rules.
It was a long while before Toddles stirred; a very long
while before consciousness crept slowly back to him. Then he
moved, tried to get up — and fell back with a quick, sharp cry
of pain. He lay still, then, for a moment. His ankle hurt
him frightfully, and his back, and his shoulder, too. He put
his hand to his face where something seemed to be trickling
warm — and brought it away wet. Toddles, grim little warrior,
tried to think. They hadn't been going very fast when he
fell off. If they had, he would have been killed. As it
was, he was hurt, badly hurt, and his head swam, nauseating
him.
Where was he? Was he near any help? He'd have to get help
somewhere, or — or with the cold and — and everything he'd
probably die out here before morning. Toddles shouted out —
again and again. Perhaps his voice was too weak to carry
very far; anyway, there was no reply.
He looked up at the top of the embankment, clamped his
teeth, and started to crawl. If he got up there, perhaps he
could tell where he was. It had taken Toddles a matter of
seconds to roll down; it took him ten minutes of untold agony
to get up. Then he dashed his hand across his eyes where the
blood was, and cried a little with the surge of relief.
East, down the track, only a few yards away, the green eye of
a switch lamp winked at him.
Where there was a switch lamp there was a siding, and where
there was a siding there was promise of a station. Toddles,
with the sudden uplift upon him, got to his feet and started
along the track — two steps — and went down again. He couldn't
walk, the pain was more than he could bear — his right ankle,
his left shoulder, and his back — hopping only made it worse —
it was easier to crawl.
And so Toddles crawled.
It took him a long time even to pass the switch light. The
pain made him weak, his senses seemed to trail off giddily
every now and then, and he'd find himself lying flat and
still beside the track. It was a white, drawn face that
Toddles lifted up each time he started on again — miserably
white, except where the blood kept trickling from his
forehead.
And then Toddles' heart, stout as it was, seemed to snap.
He had reached the station platform, wondering vaguely why
the little building that loomed ahead was dark — and now it
came to him in a flash, as he recognized the station. It was
Cassil's Siding and there was no night man at Cassil's
Siding! The switch lights were lit before the day man left,
of course. Everything swam before Toddles' eyes. There —
there was no help here. And yet — yet perhaps — desperate hope
came again — perhaps there might be. The pain was terrible —
all over him. And — and he'd got so weak now — but it wasn't
far to the door.
Toddles squirmed along the platform, and reached the door
finally — only to find it shut and fastened. And then Toddles
fainted on the threshold.
When Toddles came to himself again, he thought at first
that he was up in the despatcher's room at Big Cloud with Bob
Donkin pounding away on the battered old key they used to
practise with — only there seemed to be something the matter
with the key, and it didn't sound as loud as it usually did —
it seemed to come from a long way off somehow. And then,
besides, Bob was working it faster than he had ever done
before when they were practising. "Hold second" — second
something — Toddles couldn't make it out. Then the
"seventeen" — yes, he knew that — that was the life and death.
Bob was going pretty quick, though. Then "CS — CS — CS" —
Toddles' brain fumbled a bit over that — then it came to him.
CS was the call for Cassil's Siding. Cassil's Siding!
Toddles' head came up with a jerk.
A little cry burst from Toddles' lips — and his brain
cleared. He wasn't at Big Cloud at all — he was at Cassil's
Siding — and he was hurt — and that was the sounder inside
calling, calling frantically for Cassil's Siding — where he
was.
The life and death — the seventeen — it sent a
thrill through Toddles' pain-twisted spine. He wriggled to the window.
It, too, was closed, of course, but he could hear better there.
The sounder was babbling madly.
"Hold second ——"
He missed it again — and as, on top of it, the "seventeen"
came pleading, frantic, urgent, he wrung his hands.
"Hold second" — he got it this time — "Number Two."
Toddles' first impulse was to smash in the window and reach
the key. And then, like a dash of cold water over him,
Donkin's words seemed to ring in his ears: "Use your head."
With the "seventeen" it meant a matter of minutes, perhaps
even seconds. Why smash the window? Why waste the moment
required to do it simply to answer the call? The order stood
for itself — "Hold second Number Two." That was the second
section of the Limited, eastbound. Hold her! How? There
was nothing — not a thing to stop her with. "Use your head,"
said Donkin in a far-away voice to Toddles' wobbling brain.
Toddles looked up the track west — where he had come from —
to where the switch light twinkled green at him and with a
little sob, he started to drag himself back along the
platform. If he could throw the switch, it would throw the
light from green to red, and — and the Limited would take the
siding. But the switch was a long way off.
Toddles half fell, half bumped from the end of the platform
to the right of way. He cried to himself with low moans as
he went along. He had the heart of a fighter, and grit to
the last tissue; but he needed it all now — needed it all to
stand the pain and fight the weakness that kept swirling over
him in flashes.
On he went, on his hands and knees, slithering from tie to
tie — and from one tie to the next was a great distance. The
life and death, the despatcher's call — he seemed to hear it
yet — throbbing, throbbing on the wire.
On he went, up the track; and the green eye of the lamp,
winking at him, drew nearer. And then suddenly, clear and
mellow through the mountains, caught up and echoed far and
near, came the notes of a chime whistle ringing down the
gorge.
Fear came upon Toddles then, and a great sob shook him.
That was the Limited coming now! Toddles' fingers dug into
the ballast, and he hurried — that is, in bitter pain, he
tried to crawl a little faster. And as he crawled, he kept
his eyes strained up the track — she wasn't in sight yet
around the curve — not yet, anyway.
Another foot, only another foot, and he would reach the
siding switch — in time — in plenty of time. Again the sob —
but now in a burst of relief that, for the moment, made him
forget his hurts. He was in time!
He flung himself at the switch lever, tugged upon it — and
then, trembling, every ounce of remaining strength seeming to
ooze from him, he covered his face with his hands. It was
locked — padlocked.
Came a rumble now — a distant roar. Growing louder and
louder, reverberating down the canon walls — louder and
louder — nearer and nearer. "Hold second Number Two. Hold
second Number Two" — the "seventeen," the life and death,
pleading with him to hold Number Two. And she was coming
now, coming — and — and — the switch was locked. The deadly
nausea racked Toddles again; there was nothing to do now —
nothing. He couldn't stop her — couldn't stop her. He'd —
he'd tried — very hard — and — and he couldn't stop her now.
He took his hands from his face, and stole a glance up the
track, afraid almost, with the horror that was upon him, to
look. She hadn't swung the curve yet, but she would in a
minute — and come pounding down the stretch at fifty miles an
hour, shoot by him like a rocket to where, somewhere ahead,
in some form, he did not know what, only knew that it was
there, death and ruin and ——
"Use your head!" snapped Donkin's voice to his
consciousness.
Toddles' eyes were on the light above his head. It blinked
red at him as he stood on the track facing it; the green rays
were shooting up and down the line. He couldn't swing the
switch — but the lamp was there — and there was the red side to
show just by turning it. He remembered then that the lamp
fitted into a socket at the top of the switch stand, and
could be lifted off — if he could reach it!
It wasn't very high — for an ordinary-sized man — for an
ordinary-sized man had to get at it to trim and fill it
daily — only Toddles wasn't an ordinary-sized man. It was
just nine or ten feet above the rails — just a standard siding
switch.
Toddles gritted his teeth, and climbed upon the base of the
switch — and nearly fainted as his ankle swung against the
rod. A foot above the base was a footrest for a man to stand
on and reach up for the lamp, and Toddles drew himself up and
got his foot on it — and then at his full height the tips of
his fingers only just touched the bottom of the lamp.
Toddles cried aloud, and the tears streamed down his face
now. Oh, if he weren't hurt — if he could only shin up
another foot — but — but it was all he could do to hang there
where he was.
What was that! He turned his head. Up the track, sweeping
in a great circle as it swung the curve, a headlight's glare
cut through the night — and Toddles "shinned" the foot. He
tugged and tore at the lamp, tugged and tore at it, loosened
it, lifted it from its socket, sprawled and wriggled with it
to the ground — and turned the red side of the lamp against
second Number Two.
The quick, short blasts of a whistle answered, then the
crunch and grind and scream of biting brake-shoes — and the
big mountain racer, the 1012, pulling the second section of
the Limited that night, stopped with its pilot nosing a
diminutive figure in a torn and silver-buttoned uniform,
whose hair was clotted red, and whose face was covered with
blood and dirt.
Masters, the engineer, and Pete Leroy, his fireman, swung
from the gangways; Kelly, the conductor, came running up from
the forward coach.
Kelly shoved his lamp into Toddles' face — and whistled low
under his breath.
"Toddles!" he gasped; and then, quick as a steel trap:
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know," said Toddles weakly. "There's — there's
something wrong. Get into the clear — on the siding."
"Something wrong," repeated Kelly, "and you don't ——"
But Masters cut the conductor short with a grab at the
other's arm that was like the shutting of a vise — and then
bolted for his engine like a gopher for its hole. From down
the track came the heavy, grumbling roar of a freight.
Everybody flew then, and there was quick work done in the
next half minute — and none too quickly done the Limited was
no more than on the siding when the fast freight rolled her
long string of flats, boxes and gondolas thundering by.
And while she passed, Toddles, on the platform, stammered
out his story to Kelly.
Kelly didn't say anything — then. With the express
messenger and a brakeman carrying Toddles, Kelly kicked in
the station door, and set his lamp down on the operator's
table.
"Hold me up," whispered Toddles — and, while they held him,
he made the despatcher's call.
Big Cloud answered him on the instant. Haltingly, Toddles
reported the second section "in" and the freight "out" — only
he did it very slowly, and he couldn't think very much more,
for things were going black. He got an order for the Limited
to run to Blind River and told Kelly, and got the "complete"
— and then Big Cloud asked who was on the wire, and Toddles
answered that in a mechanical sort of a way without quite
knowing what he was doing — and went limp in Kelly's arms.
And as Toddles answered, back in Big Cloud, Regan, the
sweat still standing out in great beads on his forehead,
fierce now in the revulsion of relief, glared over Donkin's
left shoulder, as Donkin's left hand scribbled on a pad what
was coming over the wire.
Regan glared fiercely — then he spluttered:
"Who in hell's Christopher Hyslop Hoogan — h'm?"
Donkin's lips had a queer smile on them.
"Toddles," he said.
Regan sat down heavily in his chair.
"What?" demanded the super.
"Toddles," said Donkin. "I've been trying to drum a little
railroading into him — on the key."
Regan wiped his face. He looked helplessly from Donkin to
the super, and then back again at Donkin.
"But — but what's he doing at Cassil's Siding? How'd he get
there — h'm? H'm? How'd he get there?"
"I don't know," said Donkin, his fingers rattling the
Cassil's Siding call again. "He doesn't answer any more.
We'll have to wait for the story till they make Blind River,
I guess."
And so they waited. And presently at Blind River, Kelly,
dictating to the operator — not Beale, Beale's day man — told
the story. It lost nothing in the telling — Kelly wasn't that
kind of a man — he told them what Toddles had done, and he
left nothing out; and he added that they had Toddles on a
mattress in the baggage car, with a doctor they had
discovered amongst the passengers looking after him.
At the end, Carleton tamped down the dottle in the bowl of
his pipe thoughtfully with his forefinger — and glanced at
Donkin.
"Got along far enough to take a station key somewhere?" he
inquired casually. "He's made a pretty good job of it as the
night operator at Cassil's."
Donkin was smiling.
"Not yet," he said.
"No?" Carleton's eyebrows went up. "Well, let him come in
here with you, then, till he has; and when you say he's
ready, we'll see what we can do. I guess it's coming to him;
and I guess" — he shifted his glance to the master mechanic —
"I guess we'll go down and meet Number Two when she comes in,
Tommy."
Regan grinned.
"With our hats in our hands," said the big-hearted master
mechanic.
Donkin shook his head.
"Don't you do it," he said. "I don't want him to get a
swelled head."
Carleton stared; and Regan's hand, reaching into his back
pocket for his chewing, stopped midway.
Donkin was still smiling.
"I'm going to make a railroad-man out of Toddles," he said.
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(End.)
The night operator (1919) by Frank L. Packard
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The night operator
By
Frank L. Packard
(1877-1942)
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From The night operator (1919)
CONTAINING THESE STORIES:—
- The night operator
- Owsley and the 1601
- The apotheosis of Sammy Durgan
- The wrecking boss
- The man who squealed
- The age limit
- "The devil and all his works"
- On the night wire
- The other fellow's job
- The Rat river special
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TODDLES, in the beginning, wasn't
exactly a railroad man — for several
reasons. First, he wasn't a man at all; second, he wasn't, strictly
speaking, on the company's pay roll; third, which is apparently
irrelevant, everybody said he was a bad one; and fourth — because
Hawkeye nicknamed him Toddles.
Toddles had another name — Christopher Hyslop Hoogan — but Big Cloud
never lay awake at nights losing any sleep over that. On the first
run that Christopher Hyslop Hoogan ever made, Hawkeye looked him over
for a minute, said, "Toddles," short-like — and, short-like, that
settled the matter so far as the Hill Division was concerned. His
name was Toddles.
Piecemeal, Toddles wouldn't convey anything to you to speak of.
You'd have to see Toddles coming down the aisle of a car to get him
at all — and then the chances are you'd turn around after he'd gone by
and stare at him, and it would be even money that you'd call him back
and fish for a dime to buy something by way of excuse. Toddles got
a good deal of business that way. Toddles had a uniform and a
regular run all right, but he wasn't what he passionately longed to
be — a legitimate, dyed-in-the-wool railroader. His paycheck, plus
commissions, came from the News Company down East that had the
railroad concession. Toddles was a newsboy. In his blue uniform and
silver buttons, Toddles used to stack up about the height of the back
of the car seats as he hawked his wares along the aisles; and the
only thing that was big about him was his head, which looked as
though it had got a whopping big lead on his body — and didn't intend
to let the body cut the lead down any. This meant a big cap, and, as
Toddles used to tilt the vizor forward, the tip of his nose, bar his
mouth which was generous, was about all one got of his face. Cap,
buttons, magazines and peanuts, that was Toddles — all except his
voice. Toddles had a voice that would make you jump if you were
nervous the minute he opened the car door, and if you weren't nervous
you would be before he had reached the other end of the aisle — it
began low down somewhere on high G and went through you shrill as an
east wind, and ended like the shriek of a brake-shoe with everything
the Westinghouse equipment had to offer cutting loose on a quick stop
Hawkeye? That was what Toddles called his beady-eyed conductor in
retaliation. Hawkeye used to nag Toddles every chance he got, and,
being Toddles' conductor, Hawkeye got a good many chances. In a
word, Hawkeye, carrying the punch on the local passenger, that
happened to be the run Toddles was given when the News Company sent
him out from the East, used to think he got a good deal of fun out of
Toddles — only his idea of fun and Toddles' idea of fun were as
divergent as the poles, that was all.
Toddles, however, wasn't anybody's fool, not by several degrees —
not even Hawkeye's. Toddles hated Hawkeye like poison; and his hate,
apart from daily annoyances, was deep-seated. It was Hawkeye who had
dubbed him "Toddles." And Toddles repudiated the name with his
heart, his soul — and his fists.
Toddles wasn't anybody's fool, whatever the division thought, and
he was right down to the basic root of things from the start.
Coupled with the stunted growth that nature in a miserly mood had
doled out to him, none knew better than himself that the name of
"Toddles," keeping that nature stuff patently before everybody's
eyes, damned him in his aspirations for a bona fide railroad career.
Other boys got a job and got their feet on the ladder as call-boys,
or in the roundhouse; Toddles got — a grin. Toddles pestered
everybody for a job. He pestered Carleton, the super. He pestered
Tommy Regan, the master mechanic. Every time that he saw anybody in
authority Toddles
spoke up for a job, he was in deadly earnest
— and got a grin. Toddles with a basket of unripe fruit and stale
chocolates and his "best-seller" voice was one thing; but Toddles as
anything else was just — Toddles.
Toddles repudiated the name, and did it forcefully
Not that he couldn't take his share of a bit of guying
but because he felt that he was face to face with a vital
factor in the career he longed for — so he fought. And
if nature had been niggardly in one respect, she had been
generous in others; Toddles, for all his size, possessed
the heart of a lion and the strength of a young ox, and
he used both, with black and bloody effect, on the eyes
and noses of the call-boys and younger element who
called him Toddles. He fought it all along the line —
at the drop of the hat — at a whisper of "Toddles." There
wasn't a day went by that Toddles wasn't in a row; and
the women, the mothers of the defeated warriors whose
eyes were puffed and whose noses trickled crimson, denounced him in
virulent language over their washtubs and the back fences of Big
Cloud. You see, they didn't understand him, so they called him a
"bad one," and, being from the East and not one of themselves, "a New
York gutter snipe."
But, for all that, the name stuck. Up and down through the Rockies
it was — Toddles. Toddles, with the idea of getting a lay-over on a
siding, even went to the extent of signing himself in full —
Christopher Hyslop Hoogan — very time his signature was in order; but
the official documents in which he was concerned, being of a private
nature between himself and the News Company, did not, in the very
nature of things, have much effect on the Hill Division. Certainly
the big fellows never knew he had any name but Toddles — and cared
less. But they knew him as Toddles, all right! All of them did,
every last one of them! Toddles was everlastingly and eternally
bothering them for a job. Any kind of a job, no matter what, just so
it was real railroading, and so a fellow could line up with everybody
else when the paycar came along, and look forward to being something
some day.
Toddles, with time, of course, grew older, up to about seventeen or
so, but he didn't grow any bigger — not enough to make it noticeable!
Even Toddles' voice wouldn't break — it was his young heart that did
all the breaking there was done. Not that he ever showed it. No one
ever saw a tear in the boy's eyes. It was clenched fists for
Toddles, clenched fists and passionate attack. And therein, while
Toddles had grasped the basic truth that his nickname militated
against his ambitions, he erred in another direction that was equally
fundamental, if not more so.
And here, it was Bob Donkin, the night despatcher, as white a man
as his record after years of train-handling was white, a railroad man
from the ground up if there ever was one, and one of the best, who
set Toddles — But we'll come to that presently. We've got our
"clearance" now, and we're off with "rights" through.
No. 83, Hawkeye's train — and Toddles' — scheduled Big Cloud on the
eastbound run at 9.05; and, on the night the story opens, they were
about an hour away from the little mountain town that was the
divisional point, as Toddles, his basket of edibles in the crook of
his arm, halted in the forward end of the second-class smoker to
examine again the fistful of change that he dug out of his pants
pocket with his free hand.
Toddles was in an unusually bad humor; and he scowled. With
exceeding deftness he separated one of the coins from the others,
using his fingers like the teeth of a rake, and dropped the rest back
jingling into his pocket. The coin that remained he put into his
mouth, and bit on it — hard. His scowl deepened. Somebody had
presented Toddles with a lead quarter.
It wasn't so much the quarter, though Toddles' salary wasn't so big
as some people's who would have felt worse over it, it was his amour
propre that was touched — deeply. It wasn't often that any one could
put so bald a thing as lead money across on Toddles. Toddles' mind
harked back along the aisles of the cars behind him. He had only
made two sales that round, and he had changed a quarter each time —
for the pretty girl with the big picture hat, who had giggled at him
when she bought a package of chewing gum; and the man with the
three-carat diamond tie-pin in the parlor car, a little more than on the
edge of inebriety, who had got on at the last stop, and who had
bought a cigar from him.
Toddles thought it over for a bit; decided he wouldn't have a fuss
with a girl anyway, balked at a parlor car fracas with a drunk,
dropped the coin back into his pocket, and went on into the
combination baggage and express car. Here, just inside the door, was
Toddles', or, rather, the News Company's chest. Toddles lifted the
lid; and then his eyes shifted slowly and travelled up the car.
Things were certainly going badly with Toddles that night.
There were four men in the car: Bob Donkin, coming back from a
holiday trip somewhere up the line; MacNicoll, the baggage-master;
Nulty, the express messenger — and Hawkeye. Toddles' inventory of the
contents of the chest had been hurried — but intimate. A small bunch
of six bananas was gone, and Hawkeye was munching them unconcernedly.
It wasn't the first time the big, hulking, six-foot conductor had
pilfered the boy's chest, not by many — and never paid for the
pilfering. That was Hawkeye's idea of a joke.
Hawkeye was talking to Nulty, elaborately simulating ignorance of
Toddles' presence — and he was talking about Toddles.
"Sure," said Hawkeye, his mouth full of banana, "he'll be a great
railroad man some day! He's the stuff they're made of! You can see
it sticking out all over him! He's only selling peanuts now till he
grows up and ——"
Toddles put down his basket and planted himself before the
conductor.
"You pay for those bananas," said Toddles in a low voice — which was
high.
"When'll he grow up?" continued Hawkeye, peeling more fruit. "I
don't know — you've got me. The first time I saw him two years ago,
I'm hanged if he wasn't bigger than he is now — guess he grows
backwards. Have a banana?" He offered one to Nulty, who refused it.
"You pay for those bananas, you big stiff!" squealed Toddles
belligerently.
Hawkeye turned his head slowly and turned his little beady, black
eyes on Toddles, then he turned with a wink to the others, and for
the first time in two years offered payment. He fished into his
pocket and handed Toddles a twenty-dollar bill — there always was a
mean streak in Hawkeye, more or less of a bully, none too well liked,
and whose name on the payroll, by the way, was Reynolds.
"Take fifteen cents out of that," he said, with no idea that the
boy could change the bill.
For a moment Toddles glared at the yellow-back, then a thrill of
unholy glee came to Toddles. He could just about make it, business
all around had been pretty good that day, particularly on the run
west in the morning.
Hawkeye went on with the exposition of his idea of humor at
Toddles' expense; and Toddles went back to his chest and his reserve
funds. Toddles counted out eighteen dollars in bills, made a neat
pile of four quarters — the lead one on the bottom — another neat pile
of the odd change, and returned to Hawkeye. The lead quarter
wouldn't go very far toward liquidating Hawkeye's long-standing
indebtedness — but it would help some.
Hawkeye counted the bills carefully, and crammed them into his
pocket. Toddles dropped the neat little pile of quarters into
Hawkeye's hand — they counted themselves — and Hawkeye put those in his
pocket. Toddles counted out the odd change piece by piece, and as
Hawkeye put that in his pocket — Toddles put his fingers to his nose.
Queer, isn't it — the way things happen? Think of a man's whole
life, aspirations, hopes, ambitions, everything, pivoting on — a lead
quarter! But then they say that opportunity knocks once at the door
of every man; and, if that be true, let it be remarked in passing
that Toddles wasn't deaf!
Hawkeye, making Toddles a target for a parting gibe, took up his
lantern and started through the train to pick up the fares from the
last stop. In due course he halted before the inebriated one with
the glittering tie-pin in the smoking compartment of the parlor car.
"Ticket, please," said Hawkeye.
"Too busy to buysh ticket," the man informed him, with heavy
confidence. "Whash fare Loon Dam to Big Cloud?"
"One-fifty," said Hawkeye curtly.
The man produced a roll of bills, and from the roll extracted a
two-dollar note.
Hawkeye handed him back two quarters, and started to punch a
cash-fare slip. He looked up to find the man holding out one of the
quarters insistently, if somewhat unsteadily.
"What's the matter?" demanded Hawkeye brusquely.
"Bad," said the man.
A drummer grinned; and an elderly gentleman, from his magazine,
looked up inquiringly over his spectacles.
"Bad!" Hawkeye brought his elbow sharply around to focus his lamp
on the coin; then he leaned over and rang it on the window sill — only
it wouldn't ring. It was indubitably bad. Hawkeye, however, was
dealing with a drunk — and Hawkeye always did have a mean streak in
him.
"It's perfectly good," he asserted gruffly.
The man rolled an eye at the conductor that mingled a sudden
shrewdness and anger, and appealed to his fellow travellers. The
verdict was against Hawkeye, and Hawkeye ungraciously pocketed the
lead piece and handed over another quarter.
"Shay," observed the inebriated one insolently, "shay, conductor,
I don't like you. You thought I was — hic! — s'drunk I wouldn't know —
eh? Thash where you fooled yerself!"
"What do you mean?" Hawkeye bridled virtuously for the benefit of
the drummer and the old gentleman with the spectacles.
And then the other began to laugh immoderately.
"Same ol' quarter," said he. "Same — hic! — ol' quarter back again.
Great system — peanut boy — conductor — hic! Pass it off on one — other
passes it off on some one else. Just passed it off on — hic! — peanut
boy for a joke. Goin' to give him a dollar when he comes back."
"Oh, you did, did you!" snapped Hawkeye ominously. "And you mean
to insinuate that I deliberately tried to ——"
"Sure!" declared the man heartily.
"You're a liar!" announced Hawkeye, spluttering mad. "And what's
more, since it came from you, you'll take it back!" He dug into his
pocket for the ubiquitous lead piece.
"Not — hic! — on your life!" said the man earnestly. "You hang onto
it, old top. I didn't pass it off on you."
"Haw!" exploded the drummer suddenly. "Haw — haw, haw!"
And the elderly gentleman smiled.
Hawkeye's face went red, and then purple.
"Go 'way!" said the man petulantly. "I don't like you. Go 'way!
Go an' tell peanuts I — hic! — got a dollar for him."
And Hawkeye went — but Toddles never got the dollar. Hawkeye went
out of the smoking compartment of the parlor car with the lead
quarter in his pocket — because he couldn't do anything else — which
didn't soothe his feelings any — and he went out mad enough to bite
himself. The drummer's guffaw followed him, and he thought he even
caught a chuckle from the elderly party with the magazine and
spectacles.
Hawkeye was mad; and he was quite well aware, painfully well aware
that he had looked like a fool, which is about one of the meanest
feelings there is to feel; and, as he made his way forward through
the train, he grew madder still. That change was the change from his
twenty-dollar bill. He had not needed to be told that the lead
quarter had come from Toddles. The only question at all in doubt was
whether or not Toddles had put the counterfeit coin over on him
knowingly and with malice aforethought. Hawkeye, however, had an
intuition deep down inside of him that there wasn't any doubt even
about that, and as he opened the door of the baggage car his
intuition was vindicated. There was a grin on the faces of Nulty,
MacNicoll and Bob Donkin that disappeared with suspicious celerity at
sight of him as he came through the door.
There was no hesitation then on Hawkeye's part. Toddles, equipped
for another excursion through the train with a stack of magazines and
books that almost hid him, received a sudden and vicious clout on the
side of the ear.
"You'd try your tricks on me, would you?" Hawkeye snarled. "Lead
quarters — eh?" Another clout. "I'll teach you, you blasted little
runt!"
And with the clouts, the stack of carefully balanced periodicals
went flying over the floor; and with the clouts, the nagging, and the
hectoring, and the bullying, that had rankled for close on two years
in Toddles' turbulent soul, rose in a sudden all-possessing sweep of
fury. Toddles was a fighter — with the heart of a fighter. And
Toddles' cause was just. He couldn't reach the conductor's face — so
he went for Hawkeye's legs. And the screams of rage from his
high-pitched voice, as he shot himself forward, sounded like a
cageful of Australian cockatoos on the rampage.
Toddles was small, pitifully small for his age; but he wasn't an
infant in arms — not for a minute. And in action Toddles was as near
to a wild cat as anything else that comes handy by way of
illustration. Two legs and one arm he twined and twisted around
Hawkeye's legs; and the other arm, with a hard and knotty fist on the
end of it, caught the conductor a wicked jab in the region of the
bottom button of the vest. The brass button peeled the skin off
Toddles' knuckles, but the jab doubled the conductor forward, and
coincident with Hawkeye's winded grunt, the lantern in his hand
sailed ceilingwards, crashed into the center lamps in the roof of the
car, and down in a shower of tinkling glass, dripping oil and burning
wicks, came the wreckage to the floor.
There was a yell from Nulty; but Toddles hung on like grim death.
Hawkeye was bawling fluent profanity and seeing red. Toddles heard
one and sensed the other — and he clung grimly on. He was all doubled
up around Hawkeye's knees, and in that position Hawkeye couldn't get
at him very well; and, besides, Toddles had his own plan of battle.
He was waiting for an extra heavy lurch of the car.
It came. Toddles' muscles strained legs and arms and back in
concert, and for an instant across the car they tottered, Hawkeye
staggering in a desperate attempt to maintain his equilibrium — and
then down — speaking generally, on a heterogeneous pile of express
parcels; concretely, with an eloquent squnch, on a crate of eggs,
thirty dozen of them, at forty cents a dozen.
Toddles, over his rage, experienced a sickening sense of disaster,
but still he clung; he didn't dare let go. Hawkeye's fists, both in
an effort to recover himself and in an endeavor to reach Toddles,
were going like a windmill; and Hawkeye's threats were something
terrifying to listen to. And now they rolled over, and Toddles was
underneath; and then they rolled over again; and then a hand locked
on Toddles' collar, and he was yanked, terrier-fashion, to his feet.
His face white and determined, his fists doubled, Toddles waited
for Hawkeye to get up — the word "run" wasn't in Toddles' vocabulary.
He hadn't long to wait.
Hawkeye lunged up, draped in the broken crate — a sight. The road
always prided itself on the natty uniforms of its train crews, but
Hawkeye wasn't dressed in uniform then — mostly egg yolks. He made a
dash for Toddles, but he never reached the boy. Bob Donkin was
between them.
"Cut it out!" said Donkin coldly, as he pushed Toddles behind him.
"You asked for it, Reynolds, and you got it. Now cut it out!"
And Hawkeye "cut it out." It was pretty generally understood that
Bob Donkin never talked much for show, and Bob Donkin was bigger than
Toddles, a whole lot bigger, as big as Hawkeye himself. Hawkeye "cut
it out."
Funny, the egg part of it? Well, perhaps. But the fire wasn't.
True, they got it out with the help of the hand extinguishers before
it did any serious damage, for Nulty had gone at it on the jump; but
while it lasted the burning oil on the car floor looked dangerous.
Anyway, it was bad enough so that they couldn't hide it when they got
into Big Cloud — and Hawkeye and Toddles went on the carpet for it the
next morning in the super's office.
Carleton, "Royal" Carleton, reached for a match, and, to keep his
lips straight, clamped them firmly on the amber mouthpiece of his
brier, and stumpy, big-paunched Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who
was sitting in a chair by the window, reached hurriedly into his back
pocket for his chewing and looked out of the window to hide a grin,
as the two came in and ranged themselves in front of the super's
desk — Hawkeye, six feet and a hundred and ninety pounds, with Toddles
trailing him, mostly cap and buttons and no weight at all.
Carleton didn't ask many questions — he'd asked them before — of Bob
Donkin — and the despatcher hadn't gone out of his way to invest the
conductor with any glorified halo. Carleton, always a strict
disciplinarian, said what he had to say and said it quietly; but he
meant to let the conductor have the worst of it, and he did — in a way
that was all Carleton's own. Two years' picking on a youngster
didn't appeal to Carleton, no matter who the youngster was. Before
he was half through he had the big conductor squirming. Hawkeye was
looking for something else — besides a galling and matter-of-fact
impartiality that accepted himself and Toddles as being on exactly
the same plane and level.
"There's a case of eggs," said Carleton at the end. "You can
divide up the damage between you. And I'm going to change your runs,
unless you've got some good reason to give me why I shouldn't?"
He waited for an answer.
Hawkeye, towering, sullen, his eyes resting bitterly on Regan,
having caught the master mechanic's grin, said nothing; Toddles,
whose head barely showed over the top of Carleton's desk, and the
whole of him sizing up about big enough to go into the conductor's
pocket, was equally silent — Toddles was thinking of something else.
"Very good," said Carleton suavely, as he surveyed the ridiculous
incongruity before him. "I'll change your runs, then. I can't have
you two men brawling and prize-fighting every trip."
There was a sudden sound from the window, as though Regan had got
some of his blackstrap juice down the wrong way.
Hawkeye's face went black as thunder.
Carleton's face was like a sphinx
"That'll do, then," he said. "You can go, both of you."
Hawkeye stamped out of the room and down the stairs. But Toddles
stayed.
"Please, Mr. Carleton, won't you give me a job on ——" Toddles
stopped.
So had Regan's chuckle. Toddles, the irrepressible was at it
again — and Toddles after a job, any kind of a job, was something that
Regan's experience had taught him to fly from without standing on the
order of his flight. Regan hurried from the room.
Toddles watched him go — kind of speculatively, kind of
reproachfully. Then he turned to Carleton.
"Please give me a job, Mr. Carleton," he pleaded. "Give me a job,
won't you?"
It was only yesterday on the platform that Toddles had waylaid the
super with the same demand — and about every day before that as far
back as Carleton could remember. It was hopelessly chronic.
Anything convincing or appealing about it had gone long ago — Toddles
said it parrot-fashion now. Carleton took refuge in severity.
"See here, young man," he said grimly, "you were brought into this
office for a reprimand and not to apply for a job! You can thank
your stars and Bob Donkin you haven't lost the one you've got. Now,
get out!"
"I'd make good if you gave me one," said Toddles earnestly.
"Honest, I would, Mr. Carleton."
"Get out!" said the super, not altogether unkindly. "I'm busy."
Toddles swallowed a lump in his throat — but not until after his
head was turned and he'd started for the door so the super couldn't
see it. Toddles swallowed the lump — and got out. He hadn't expected
anything else, of course. The refusals were just as chronic as the
demands. But that didn't make each new one any easier for Toddles.
It made it worse.
Toddles' heart was heavy as he stepped out into the hall, and the
iron was in his soul. He was seventeen now, and it looked as though
he never would get a chance — except to be a newsboy all his life.
Toddles swallowed another lump. He loved railroading; it was his one
ambition, his one desire. If he could ever get a chance, he'd show
them! He'd show them that he wasn't a joke, just because he was
small!
Toddles turned at the head of the stairs to go down, when somebody
called his name.
"Here — Toddles! Come here!"
Toddles looked over his shoulder, hesitated, then marched in
through the open door of the despatchers' room. Bob Donkin was alone
there.
"What's your name — Toddles?" inquired Donkin, as Toddles halted
before the despatcher's table.
Toddles froze instantly — hard. His fists doubled; there was a
smile on Donkin's face. Then his fists slowly uncurled; the smile on
Donkin's face had broadened, but there wasn't any malice in the
smile.
"Christopher Hyslop Hoogan," said Toddles, unbending.
Donkin put his hand quickly to his mouth — and coughed.
"Um-m!" said he pleasantly. "Super hard on you this morning —
Hoogan?"
And with the words Toddles' heart went out to the big despatcher:
"Hoogan" — and a man-to-man tone.
"No," said Toddles cordially. "Say, I thought you were on the
night trick."
"Double-shift — short-handed," replied Donkin. "Come from New York,
don't you?"
"Yes," said Toddles.
"Mother and father down there still?"
It came quick and unexpected, and Toddles stared for a moment.
Then he walked over to the window.
"I haven't got any," he said.
There wasn't any sound for an instant, save the clicking of the
instruments; then Donkin spoke again — a little gruffly:
"When are you going to quit making an ass of yourself?"
Toddles swung from the window, hurt. Donkin, after all, was like
all the rest of them.
"Well?" prompted the despatcher.
"You go to blazes!" said Toddles bitterly, and started for the
door.
Donkin halted him.
"You're only fooling yourself, Hoogan," he said coolly. "If you
wanted what you call a real railroad job as much as you pretend you
do, you'd get one."
"Eh?" demanded Toddles defiantly; and went back to the table.
"A fellow," said Donkin, putting a little sting into his words,
"never got anywhere by going around with a chip on his shoulder
fighting everybody because they called him Toddles, and making a
nuisance of himself with the Big Fellows until they got sick of the
sight of him."
It was a pretty stiff arraignment. Toddles choked over it, and the
angry blood flushed to his cheeks.
"That's all right for you!" he spluttered out hotly. "You don't
look too small for the train crews or the roundhouse, and they don't
call you Toddles so's nobody 'll forget it. What'd you do?"
"I'll tell you what I'd do," said Donkin quietly. "I'd make
everybody on the division wish their own name was Toddles before I
was through with them, and I'd make a job for myself."
Toddles blinked helplessly.
"Getting right down to a cash fare," continued Donkin, after a
moment, as Toddles did not speak, "they're not so far wrong, either,
about you sizing up pretty small for the train crews or the
roundhouse, are they?"
"No-o," admitted Toddles reluctantly; "but ——"
"Then why not something where there's no handicap hanging over
you?" suggested the despatcher — and his hand reached out and touched
the sender. "The key, for instance?"
"But I don't know anything about it," said Toddles, still
helplessly.
"That's just it," returned Donkin smoothly. "You never tried to
learn."
Toddles' eyes widened, and into Toddles' heart leaped a sudden joy.
A new world seemed to open out before him in which aspirations,
ambitions, longings all were a reality. A key! That was real
railroading, the top-notch of railroading, too. First an operator,
and then a despatcher, and — and — and then his face fell, and the
vision faded.
"How'd I get a chance to learn?" he said miserably. "Who'd teach
me?"
The smile was back on Donkin's face as he pushed his chair from the
table, stood up, and held out his hand — man-to-man fashion.
"I will," he said. "I liked your grit last night, Hoogan. And if
you want to be a railroad man, I'll make you one — before I'm through.
I've some old instruments you can have to practise with, and I've
nothing to do in my spare time. What do you say?"
Toddles didn't say anything. For the first time since Toddles'
advent to the Hill Division, there were tears in Toddles' eyes for
some one else to see.
Donkin laughed.
"All right, old man, you're on. See that you don't throw me down.
And keep your mouth shut; you'll need all your wind. It's work that
counts, and nothing else. Now chase yourself! I'll dig up the
things you'll need, and you can drop in here and get them when you
come off your run to-night."
Spare time! Bob Donkin didn't have any spare time those days! But
that was Donkin's way. Spence sick, and two men handling the
despatching where three had handled it before, didn't leave Bob
Donkin much spare time — not much. But a boost for the kid was worth
a sacrifice. Donkin went at it as earnestly as Toddles did — and
Toddles was in deadly earnest.
When Toddles left the despatcher's office that morning with
Donkin's promise to teach him the key, Toddles had a hazy idea that
Donkin had wings concealed somewhere under his coat and was an angel
in disguise; and at the end of two weeks he was sure of it. But at
the end of a month Bob Donkin was a god! Throw Bob Donkin down!
Toddles would have sold his soul for the despatcher.
It wasn't easy, though; and Bob Donkin wasn't an easy-going
taskmaster, not by long odds. Donkin had a tongue, and on occasions
could use it. Short and quick in his explanations, he expected his
pupil to get it short and quick; either that, or Donkin's opinion of
him. But Toddles stuck. He'd have crawled on his knees for Donkin
anywhere, and he worked like a major — not only for his own
advancement, but for what he came to prize quite as much, if not
more, Donkin's approval.
Toddles, mindful of Donkin's words, didn't fight so much as the
days went by, though he found it difficult to swear off all at once;
and on his runs he studied his Morse code, and he had the "calls" of
every station on the division off by heart right from the start.
Toddles mastered the "sending" by leaps and bounds; but the "taking"
came slower, as it does for everybody — but even at that, at the end
of six weeks, if it wasn't thrown at him too fast and hard, Toddles could get it after a fashion.
Take it all around, Toddles felt like whistling most of the time;
and, pleased with his own progress, looked forward to starting in
presently as a full-fledged operator. He mentioned the matter to Bob
Donkin — once. Donkin picked his words and spoke fervently. Toddles
never brought the subject up again.
And so things went on. Late summer turned to early fall, and early
fall to still sharper weather, until there came the night that the
operator at Blind River muddled his orders and gave No. 73, the
westbound fast freight, her clearance against the second section of
the eastbound Limited that doomed them to meet somewhere head-on in
the Glacier Cañon; the night that Toddles — but there's just a word or
two that comes before.
When it was all over, it was up to Sam Beale, the Blind River
operator, straight enough. Beale blundered. That's all there was to
it; that covers it all — he blundered. It would have finished Beale's
railroad career forever and a day — only Beale played the man, and the
instant he realized what he had done, even while the tail lights of
the freight were disappearing down the track and he couldn't stop
her, he was stammering the tale of his mistake over the wire, the
sweat beads dripping from his wrist, his face gray with horror, to
Bob Donkin under the green-shaded lamp in the despatchers' room at
Big Cloud, miles away.
Donkin got the miserable story over the chattering wire — got it
before it was half told — cut Beale out and began to pound the Gap
call. And as though it were before him in reality, that stretch of
track, fifteen miles of it, from Blind River to the Gap, unfolded
itself like a grisly panorama before his mind. There wasn't a half
mile of tangent at a single stretch in the whole of it. It swung
like the writhings of a snake, through cuts and tunnels, hugging the
canon walls, twisting this way and that. Anywhere else there might
be a chance, one in a thousand even, that they would see each other's
headlights in time — here it was disaster quick and absolute.
Donkin's lips were set in a thin, straight line. The Gap answered
him; and the answer was like the knell of doom. He had not expected
anything else; he had only hoped against hope. The second section of
the Limited had pulled out of the Gap, eastbound, two minutes before.
The two trains were in the open against each other's orders.
In the next room, Carleton and Regan, over their pipes, were at
their nightly game of pedro. Donkin called them — and his voice
sounded strange to himself. Chairs scraped and crashed to the floor,
and an instant later the super and the master mechanic were in the
room.
"What's wrong, Bob?" Carleton flung the words from him in a single
breath.
Donkin told them. But his fingers were on the key again as he
talked. There was still one chance, worse than the thousand-to-one
shot; but it was the only one Between the Gap and Blind River, eight
miles from the Gap, seven miles from Blind River, was Cassil's
Siding. But there was no night man at Cassil's, and the little town
lay a mile from the station. It was ten o'clock — Donkin's watch lay
face up on the table before him — the day man at Cassil's went off at
seven — the chance was that the day man might have come back to the
station for something or other!
Not much of a chance? No — not much! It was a possibility, that
was all; and Donkin's fingers worked — the seventeen, the life and
death — calling, calling on the night trick to the day man at Cassil's
Siding.
Carleton came and stood at Donkin's elbow, and Regan stood at the
other; and there was silence now, save only for the key that, under
Donkin's fingers, seemed to echo its stammering appeal about the room
like the sobbing of a human soul.
"CS — CS — CS," Donkin called; and then, "the seventeen," and then,
"hold second Number Two." And then the same thing over and over
again.
And there was no answer.
It had turned cold that night and there was a fire in the
little heater. Donkin had opened the draft a little while
before, and the sheet-iron sides now began to pur red-hot.
Nobody noticed it. Regan's kindly, good-humored face had the
stamp of horror in it, and he pulled at his scraggly brown
mustache, his eyes seemingly fascinated by Donkin's fingers.
Everybody's eyes, the three of them, were on Donkin's fingers
and the key. Carleton was like a man of stone, motionless,
his face set harder than face was ever carved in marble.
It grew hot in the room; but Donkin's fingers were like ice
on the key, and, strong man though he was, he faltered.
"Oh, my God!" he whispered — and never a prayer rose more
fervently from lips than those three broken words.
Again he called, and again, and again. The minutes slipped
away. Still he called — with the life and death — the
"seventeen" — called and called. And there was no answer save
that echo in the room that brought the perspiration streaming
now from Regan's face, a harder light into Carleton's eyes,
and a chill like death into Donkin's heart.
Suddenly Donkin pushed back his chair; and his fingers,
from the key, touched the crystal of his watch.
"The second section will have passed Cassil's now," he said
in a curious, unnatural, matter-of-fact tone. "It'll bring
them together about a mile east of there — in another minute."
And then Carleton spoke — master railroader, "Royal"
Carleton, it was up to him then, all the pity of it, the
ruin, the disaster, the lives out, all the bitterness to cope
with as he could. And it was in his eyes, all of it. But
his voice was quiet. It rang quick, peremptory, his voice —
but quiet.
"Clear the line, Bob," he said. "Plug in the roundhouse
for the wrecker — and tell them to send uptown for the crew."
Toddles? What did Toddles have to do with this?
Well, a good deal, in one way and another. We're coming to
Toddles now. You see, Toddles, since his fracas with
Hawkeye, had been put on the Elk River local run that left
Big Cloud at 9.45 in the morning for the run west, and
scheduled Big Cloud again on the return trip at 10.10 in the
evening.
It had turned cold that night, after a day of rain. Pretty
cold — the thermometer can drop on occasions in the late fall
in the mountains — and by eight o'clock, where there had been
rain before, there was now a thin sheeting of ice over
everything — very thin — you know the kind — rails and telegraph
wires glistening like the decorations on a Christmas tree —
very pretty — and also very nasty running on a mountain grade.
Likewise, the rain, in a way rain has, had dripped from the
car roofs to the platforms — the local did not boast any
closed vestibules — and had also been blown upon the car steps
with the sweep of the wind, and, having frozen, it stayed
there. Not a very serious matter; annoying, perhaps, but not
serious, demanding a little extra caution, that was all.
Toddles was in high fettle that night. He had been getting
on famously of late; even Bob Donkin had admitted it.
Toddles, with his stack of books and magazines, an unusually
big one, for a number of the new periodicals were out that
day, was dreaming rosy dreams to himself as he started from
the door of the first-class smoker to the door of the
first-class coach. In another hour now he'd be up in the
despatcher's room at Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with
Bob Donkin. He could see Bob Donkin there now; and he could
hear the big despatcher growl at him in his bluff way: "Use
your head — use your head — Hoogan!" It was always "Hoogan,"
never "Toddles." "Use your head" — Donkin was everlastingly
drumming that into him; for the despatcher used to confront
him suddenly with imaginary and hair-raising emergencies, and
demand Toddles' instant solution. Toddles realized that
Donkin was getting to the heart of things, and that some day
he, Toddles, would be a great despatcher — like Donkin. "Use
your head, Hoogan" — that's the way Donkin talked — "anybody
can learn a key, but that doesn't make a railroad man out of
him. It's the man when trouble comes who can think quick and
think right. Use your ——"
Toddles stepped out on the platform — and walked on ice.
But that wasn't Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles
was that he was walking on air at the same time. It was
treacherous running, they were nosing a curve, and in the
cab, Kinneard, at the throttle, checked with a little jerk at
the "air." And with the jerk, Toddles slipped; and with the
slip, the center of gravity of the stack of periodicals
shifted, and they bulged ominously from the middle. Toddles
grabbed at them — and his heels went out from under him. He
ricochetted down the steps, snatched desperately at the
handrail, missed it, shot out from the train, and, head,
heels, arms and body going every which way at once, rolled
over and over down the embankment. And, starting from the
point of Toddles' departure from the train, the right of way
for a hundred yards was strewn with "the latest magazines"
and "new books just out to-day."
Toddles lay there, a little, curled, huddled heap,
motionless in the darkness. The tail lights of the local
disappeared. No one aboard would miss Toddles until they got
into Big Cloud — and found him gone. Which is Irish for
saying that no one would attempt to keep track of a newsboy's
idiosyncrasies on a train; it would be asking too much of any
train crew; and, besides, there was no mention of it in the
rules.
It was a long while before Toddles stirred; a very long
while before consciousness crept slowly back to him. Then he
moved, tried to get up — and fell back with a quick, sharp cry
of pain. He lay still, then, for a moment. His ankle hurt
him frightfully, and his back, and his shoulder, too. He put
his hand to his face where something seemed to be trickling
warm — and brought it away wet. Toddles, grim little warrior,
tried to think. They hadn't been going very fast when he
fell off. If they had, he would have been killed. As it
was, he was hurt, badly hurt, and his head swam, nauseating
him.
Where was he? Was he near any help? He'd have to get help
somewhere, or — or with the cold and — and everything he'd
probably die out here before morning. Toddles shouted out —
again and again. Perhaps his voice was too weak to carry
very far; anyway, there was no reply.
He looked up at the top of the embankment, clamped his
teeth, and started to crawl. If he got up there, perhaps he
could tell where he was. It had taken Toddles a matter of
seconds to roll down; it took him ten minutes of untold agony
to get up. Then he dashed his hand across his eyes where the
blood was, and cried a little with the surge of relief.
East, down the track, only a few yards away, the green eye of
a switch lamp winked at him.
Where there was a switch lamp there was a siding, and where
there was a siding there was promise of a station. Toddles,
with the sudden uplift upon him, got to his feet and started
along the track — two steps — and went down again. He couldn't
walk, the pain was more than he could bear — his right ankle,
his left shoulder, and his back — hopping only made it worse —
it was easier to crawl.
And so Toddles crawled.
It took him a long time even to pass the switch light. The
pain made him weak, his senses seemed to trail off giddily
every now and then, and he'd find himself lying flat and
still beside the track. It was a white, drawn face that
Toddles lifted up each time he started on again — miserably
white, except where the blood kept trickling from his
forehead.
And then Toddles' heart, stout as it was, seemed to snap.
He had reached the station platform, wondering vaguely why
the little building that loomed ahead was dark — and now it
came to him in a flash, as he recognized the station. It was
Cassil's Siding and there was no night man at Cassil's
Siding! The switch lights were lit before the day man left,
of course. Everything swam before Toddles' eyes. There —
there was no help here. And yet — yet perhaps — desperate hope
came again — perhaps there might be. The pain was terrible —
all over him. And — and he'd got so weak now — but it wasn't
far to the door.
Toddles squirmed along the platform, and reached the door
finally — only to find it shut and fastened. And then Toddles
fainted on the threshold.
When Toddles came to himself again, he thought at first
that he was up in the despatcher's room at Big Cloud with Bob
Donkin pounding away on the battered old key they used to
practise with — only there seemed to be something the matter
with the key, and it didn't sound as loud as it usually did —
it seemed to come from a long way off somehow. And then,
besides, Bob was working it faster than he had ever done
before when they were practising. "Hold second" — second
something — Toddles couldn't make it out. Then the
"seventeen" — yes, he knew that — that was the life and death.
Bob was going pretty quick, though. Then "CS — CS — CS" —
Toddles' brain fumbled a bit over that — then it came to him.
CS was the call for Cassil's Siding. Cassil's Siding!
Toddles' head came up with a jerk.
A little cry burst from Toddles' lips — and his brain
cleared. He wasn't at Big Cloud at all — he was at Cassil's
Siding — and he was hurt — and that was the sounder inside
calling, calling frantically for Cassil's Siding — where he
was.
The life and death — the seventeen — it sent a
thrill through Toddles' pain-twisted spine. He wriggled to the window.
It, too, was closed, of course, but he could hear better there.
The sounder was babbling madly.
"Hold second ——"
He missed it again — and as, on top of it, the "seventeen"
came pleading, frantic, urgent, he wrung his hands.
"Hold second" — he got it this time — "Number Two."
Toddles' first impulse was to smash in the window and reach
the key. And then, like a dash of cold water over him,
Donkin's words seemed to ring in his ears: "Use your head."
With the "seventeen" it meant a matter of minutes, perhaps
even seconds. Why smash the window? Why waste the moment
required to do it simply to answer the call? The order stood
for itself — "Hold second Number Two." That was the second
section of the Limited, eastbound. Hold her! How? There
was nothing — not a thing to stop her with. "Use your head,"
said Donkin in a far-away voice to Toddles' wobbling brain.
Toddles looked up the track west — where he had come from —
to where the switch light twinkled green at him and with a
little sob, he started to drag himself back along the
platform. If he could throw the switch, it would throw the
light from green to red, and — and the Limited would take the
siding. But the switch was a long way off.
Toddles half fell, half bumped from the end of the platform
to the right of way. He cried to himself with low moans as
he went along. He had the heart of a fighter, and grit to
the last tissue; but he needed it all now — needed it all to
stand the pain and fight the weakness that kept swirling over
him in flashes.
On he went, on his hands and knees, slithering from tie to
tie — and from one tie to the next was a great distance. The
life and death, the despatcher's call — he seemed to hear it
yet — throbbing, throbbing on the wire.
On he went, up the track; and the green eye of the lamp,
winking at him, drew nearer. And then suddenly, clear and
mellow through the mountains, caught up and echoed far and
near, came the notes of a chime whistle ringing down the
gorge.
Fear came upon Toddles then, and a great sob shook him.
That was the Limited coming now! Toddles' fingers dug into
the ballast, and he hurried — that is, in bitter pain, he
tried to crawl a little faster. And as he crawled, he kept
his eyes strained up the track — she wasn't in sight yet
around the curve — not yet, anyway.
Another foot, only another foot, and he would reach the
siding switch — in time — in plenty of time. Again the sob —
but now in a burst of relief that, for the moment, made him
forget his hurts. He was in time!
He flung himself at the switch lever, tugged upon it — and
then, trembling, every ounce of remaining strength seeming to
ooze from him, he covered his face with his hands. It was
locked — padlocked.
Came a rumble now — a distant roar. Growing louder and
louder, reverberating down the canon walls — louder and
louder — nearer and nearer. "Hold second Number Two. Hold
second Number Two" — the "seventeen," the life and death,
pleading with him to hold Number Two. And she was coming
now, coming — and — and — the switch was locked. The deadly
nausea racked Toddles again; there was nothing to do now —
nothing. He couldn't stop her — couldn't stop her. He'd —
he'd tried — very hard — and — and he couldn't stop her now.
He took his hands from his face, and stole a glance up the
track, afraid almost, with the horror that was upon him, to
look. She hadn't swung the curve yet, but she would in a
minute — and come pounding down the stretch at fifty miles an
hour, shoot by him like a rocket to where, somewhere ahead,
in some form, he did not know what, only knew that it was
there, death and ruin and ——
"Use your head!" snapped Donkin's voice to his
consciousness.
Toddles' eyes were on the light above his head. It blinked
red at him as he stood on the track facing it; the green rays
were shooting up and down the line. He couldn't swing the
switch — but the lamp was there — and there was the red side to
show just by turning it. He remembered then that the lamp
fitted into a socket at the top of the switch stand, and
could be lifted off — if he could reach it!
It wasn't very high — for an ordinary-sized man — for an
ordinary-sized man had to get at it to trim and fill it
daily — only Toddles wasn't an ordinary-sized man. It was
just nine or ten feet above the rails — just a standard siding
switch.
Toddles gritted his teeth, and climbed upon the base of the
switch — and nearly fainted as his ankle swung against the
rod. A foot above the base was a footrest for a man to stand
on and reach up for the lamp, and Toddles drew himself up and
got his foot on it — and then at his full height the tips of
his fingers only just touched the bottom of the lamp.
Toddles cried aloud, and the tears streamed down his face
now. Oh, if he weren't hurt — if he could only shin up
another foot — but — but it was all he could do to hang there
where he was.
What was that! He turned his head. Up the track, sweeping
in a great circle as it swung the curve, a headlight's glare
cut through the night — and Toddles "shinned" the foot. He
tugged and tore at the lamp, tugged and tore at it, loosened
it, lifted it from its socket, sprawled and wriggled with it
to the ground — and turned the red side of the lamp against
second Number Two.
The quick, short blasts of a whistle answered, then the
crunch and grind and scream of biting brake-shoes — and the
big mountain racer, the 1012, pulling the second section of
the Limited that night, stopped with its pilot nosing a
diminutive figure in a torn and silver-buttoned uniform,
whose hair was clotted red, and whose face was covered with
blood and dirt.
Masters, the engineer, and Pete Leroy, his fireman, swung
from the gangways; Kelly, the conductor, came running up from
the forward coach.
Kelly shoved his lamp into Toddles' face — and whistled low
under his breath.
"Toddles!" he gasped; and then, quick as a steel trap:
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know," said Toddles weakly. "There's — there's
something wrong. Get into the clear — on the siding."
"Something wrong," repeated Kelly, "and you don't ——"
But Masters cut the conductor short with a grab at the
other's arm that was like the shutting of a vise — and then
bolted for his engine like a gopher for its hole. From down
the track came the heavy, grumbling roar of a freight.
Everybody flew then, and there was quick work done in the
next half minute — and none too quickly done the Limited was
no more than on the siding when the fast freight rolled her
long string of flats, boxes and gondolas thundering by.
And while she passed, Toddles, on the platform, stammered
out his story to Kelly.
Kelly didn't say anything — then. With the express
messenger and a brakeman carrying Toddles, Kelly kicked in
the station door, and set his lamp down on the operator's
table.
"Hold me up," whispered Toddles — and, while they held him,
he made the despatcher's call.
Big Cloud answered him on the instant. Haltingly, Toddles
reported the second section "in" and the freight "out" — only
he did it very slowly, and he couldn't think very much more,
for things were going black. He got an order for the Limited
to run to Blind River and told Kelly, and got the "complete"
— and then Big Cloud asked who was on the wire, and Toddles
answered that in a mechanical sort of a way without quite
knowing what he was doing — and went limp in Kelly's arms.
And as Toddles answered, back in Big Cloud, Regan, the
sweat still standing out in great beads on his forehead,
fierce now in the revulsion of relief, glared over Donkin's
left shoulder, as Donkin's left hand scribbled on a pad what
was coming over the wire.
Regan glared fiercely — then he spluttered:
"Who in hell's Christopher Hyslop Hoogan — h'm?"
Donkin's lips had a queer smile on them.
"Toddles," he said.
Regan sat down heavily in his chair.
"What?" demanded the super.
"Toddles," said Donkin. "I've been trying to drum a little
railroading into him — on the key."
Regan wiped his face. He looked helplessly from Donkin to
the super, and then back again at Donkin.
"But — but what's he doing at Cassil's Siding? How'd he get
there — h'm? H'm? How'd he get there?"
"I don't know," said Donkin, his fingers rattling the
Cassil's Siding call again. "He doesn't answer any more.
We'll have to wait for the story till they make Blind River,
I guess."
And so they waited. And presently at Blind River, Kelly,
dictating to the operator — not Beale, Beale's day man — told
the story. It lost nothing in the telling — Kelly wasn't that
kind of a man — he told them what Toddles had done, and he
left nothing out; and he added that they had Toddles on a
mattress in the baggage car, with a doctor they had
discovered amongst the passengers looking after him.
At the end, Carleton tamped down the dottle in the bowl of
his pipe thoughtfully with his forefinger — and glanced at
Donkin.
"Got along far enough to take a station key somewhere?" he
inquired casually. "He's made a pretty good job of it as the
night operator at Cassil's."
Donkin was smiling.
"Not yet," he said.
"No?" Carleton's eyebrows went up. "Well, let him come in
here with you, then, till he has; and when you say he's
ready, we'll see what we can do. I guess it's coming to him;
and I guess" — he shifted his glance to the master mechanic —
"I guess we'll go down and meet Number Two when she comes in,
Tommy."
Regan grinned.
"With our hats in our hands," said the big-hearted master
mechanic.
Donkin shook his head.
"Don't you do it," he said. "I don't want him to get a
swelled head."
Carleton stared; and Regan's hand, reaching into his back
pocket for his chewing, stopped midway.
Donkin was still smiling.
"I'm going to make a railroad-man out of Toddles," he said.
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(End.)
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