Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad Life

It was nine o'clock, night, and every star blinking when Hailey looked in again at the office for the track-walkers' reports and the Railway weather bulletins. Bucks, Callahan, and Peeto sat about Duffy, who in his shirt-sleeves threw the stuff out off the sounder as it trickled in dot and dash, dot and dash over the wires. The west wire was good but east everything below Peace River was down. We had to get the eastern reports around by Omaha and the south – a good thousand miles of a loop – but bad news travels even round a Robin Hood loop.

And Wild Hat came first from the west with a stationary river and the Loup creek falling – clear – good night. And Ed Peeto struck the table heavily and swore it was well in the west. Then from the east came Prairie Portage, all the way round, with a northwest rain, a rising river, and anchor ice pounding the piers badly, track in fair shape and – and —

The wire went wrong. As Duffy knit his eyes and tugged and cussed a little the wind outside took up the message and whirled a bucket of rain against the windows. But the wires wouldn't right and stuff that no man could get tumbled in like a dictionary upside down. And Bucks and Callahan and Hailey and Peeto smoked, silent, and listened to the deepening drum of the rain on the roof.

Then Duffy wrestled mightily yet once more, and the long way came word of trouble in the Omaha yards with the river at twenty-two feet and cutting; rising at Bismarck one foot an hour.

"Hell to pay on the Missouri, of course," growled the foreman, staring single-eyed at the inoffensive bulletin. "Well, she don't run our way; let her boil, damn her."

"Keep still," exclaimed Duffy, leaning heavily on the key. "Here's something – from – the Spider."

Only the hum of the rain and the nervous break of the sounder cut the smoke that curled from the pipes. Duffy snatched a pen and ran it across a clip, and Bucks leaning over read aloud from his shoulder:

"Omaha.

"J.F.Bucks. – Trainmen from Number Seventy-Five stalled west of Rapid City – track afloat in Simpson's cut – report Spider bridge out send – "

And the current broke.

Callahan's hand closed rigidly over his pipe; Peeto sat speechless; Bucks read again at the broken message, but Hailey sprang like a man wounded and snatched the clip from his superintendent's hand.

He stared at the running words till they burnt his eyes and then, with an oath, frightful as the thunder that broke down the mountains, he dashed the clip to the floor. His eyes snapped greenish with fury and he cursed Omaha, cursed its messages and everything that came out of it. Slow at first, but bitter, then fast and faster until all the sting that poisoned his heart in his unjust discharge poured from his lips. It flooded the room like a spilling stream and no man put a word against it for they knew he stood a wronged man. Out it came – all the rage – all the heart-burning – all the bitterness – and he dropped, bent, into a chair and covered his face with his hands: only the sounder clicking iron jargon and the thunder shaking the Wickiup like a reed filled the ears about him. They watched him slowly knot his fingers and loosen them, and saw his face rise dry and hard and old out of his hands.

"Get up an engine!"

"Not – you're not going down there to-night?" stammered Bucks.

"Yes. Now. Right off. Peeto! Get out your crew!"

The foreman jumped for the door; Bucks hesitated barely an instant, then turning where he sat cut a telephone plug into the roundhouse; Callahan saw him act and leaning forward spoke low to Duffy. The despatcher snatching the train sheet began instantly clearing track for a bridge special.

In twenty minutes twenty men were running twenty ways through the storm and a live engine boomed under the Wickiup windows.

"Phil, I want you to be careful!" It was Bucks standing by the roadmaster's side at the window as they looked out into the storm. "It's a bad night." Hailey made no answer. "A wicked night," muttered Bucks as the lightning shot the yards in a blaze and a crash rolled down the gorge. But wicked as it was he could not bring himself to countermand; something forbade it. Evans the conductor of the special ran in.

"Here's your orders!" exclaimed Duffy. Evans pulling down his storm cap nodded as he took the tissue. Hailey buttoned his leather jacket and turned to Bucks.

"Good-by."

"Mind your track," said Bucks, warningly to Evans as he took Hailey's hand. "What's your permit?"

"Forty miles an hour."

"Don't stretch it. Good-bye, Phil," he added, speaking to Hailey. "I'll see you in the morning."

"In the morning," repeated Hailey. "Good-by. Nothing more in, Duffy?"

"Nothing more."

"Come on!" With the words he pushed the conductor through the door and was gone. The switch engine puffed up with the caboose. Ahead of it Ed Peeto had coupled in the pile driver. At the last minute Callahan asked to go, and as the bridge gang tumbled into the caboose, the assistant superintendent, Ed Peeto, and Hailey climbed into the engine. Denis Mullenix sat on the right and with William Durden, fireman, they pulled out, five in the cab, for the Spider Water.

From Medicine Bend to the Spider Water is a ninety mile run; down the gorge, through the foothills and into the Painted Desert that fills the jaw of the spur we intersect again west of Peace River. From the Peace to the Spider the crow flies twenty miles, but we take thirty for it; there is hardly a tangent between. Their orders set a speed limit, but from the beginning they crowded it. Hailey, moody at first, began joking and laughing the minute they got away. He sat behind Denis Mullenix on the right and poked at his ribs and taunted him with his heavy heels. After a bit he got down and threw coal for Durden, mile after mile, and crowded the boiler till the safety screamed. When Durden took the shovel Hailey put his hand on the shoulder of Callahan, who was trying to hang to big Ed Peeto on the fireman's seat.

"Callahan," he yelled in his ear, "a man's better off – " And Callahan, though he couldn't, in the pound and the roar, catch the words, nodded and laughed because Hailey fiercely laughed. Then going around to the right the roadmaster covered Denis Mullenix's fingers on the throttle latch and the air with his big hands and good-naturedly coaxed them loose, pushed the engineer back and got the whip and the reins into his own keeping. It was what he wanted, for he smiled as he drew out the bar a notch and settled himself for the run across the flat country. They were leaving the foothills, and when the lightning opened the night they could see behind through the blasting rain the great hulking pile driver nod and reel out into the Painted Desert like a drunken man; for Hailey's schedule was the wind and his limit the wide throttle.

The storm shook them with freshening fury and drove the flanges into the south rail with a grinding shriek, as they sped from the shelter of the hills. The rain fell in a sheet, and the right of way ran a river. The wind, whipping the water off the ballast, dashed it like hail against the cab glass; the segment of desert caught in the yellow of the headlight rippled and danced and swam in the storm water, and Hailey pulled again at the straining throttle and latched it wider. Callahan hung with a hand to a brace and a hand to Peeto, and every little while looked back at the caboose dancing a horn-pipe over the joints; Mullenix, working the injector, stared astonished at Hailey; but Durden grimly sprinkled new blood into the white furnace and eyed his stack.

Notch after notch Hailey drew, heedless of lurch and jump; heedless of bed or curve; heedless of track or storm; and with every spur at her cylinders the engine shook like a frantic horse. Men and monster alike lost thought of care and drunk a frenzy in the deafening whirl that Hailey opened across the swimming plain.

The Peace River hills loomed into the headlight like moving pictures; before they could think it, the desert was behind. Callahan, white-faced, climbed down, and passed from hand to hand by Durden and Mullenix got his hands on Hailey's shoulders and his lips to his ear.

"For God's sake, Phil, let up!"

Hailey nodded and choked the steam a little. Threw a hatful of air on the shoes, but more as a test than a check: the fire was in his blood and he slewed into the hills with a speed unslackened. From the rocks it is a down grade all the way to the cañon, and the wind blew them and the track pulled them and a frenzied man sat at the throttle. Just where the line crosses Peace River the track bends sharply in through the Needles to take the bridge.

The curve is a ten degree. As they struck it, the headlight shot far out upon the river – and they in the cab knew they were dead men. Instead of lighting the box of the truss the lamp lit a black and snaky flood sweeping over the abutment with yellow foam. The Peace had licked up Agnew's thirty-foot piles and his bridge was not.

Whatever could be done – and Hailey knew all – meant death to the cab. Denis Mullenix never moved; no man that knew Hailey would think of trying to supplant him even with death under the ponies. He did what a man could do. There was no chance anyway for the cab: but the caboose held twenty of his faithful men.

He checked – and with a scream from the flanges the special, shaking in the clutches of the air-brake, swung the curve.

Again, the roadmaster checked heavily. The leads of the pile driver swaying high above gravity center careened for an instant wildly to the tangent, then the monster machine, parting from the tender, took the elevation like a hurdle and shot into the trees, dragging the caboose after it. But engine and tender and five in the cab plunged head on into the Peace.

Not a man in the caboose was killed; it was as if Hailey had tempered the blow to its crew. They scrambled out of the splinters and on their feet, men and ready to do. One voice from below came to them through the storm, and they answered its calling. It was Callahan; but Durden, Mullenix, Peeto, Hailey, never called again.

At daybreak wreckers of the West End, swarming from mountain and plain, were heading for the Peace, and the McCloud gang – up – crossed the Spider on Hailey's bridge – on the bridge the coward trainmen had reported out, quaking as they did in the storm at the Spider foaming over its approaches. But Hailey's bridge stood – stands to-day.

Yet three days the Spider raged, and knew then its master, while he, three whole days sat at the bottom of the Peace clutching the engine levers in the ruins of Agnew's mistake.

And when the divers got them up, Callahan and Bucks tore big Peeto's arms from his master's body and shut his staring eye and laid him at his master's side. And only the Spider ravening at Hailey's caissons raged. But Hailey slept.

The Striker's Story

McTERZA

I would not call her common. Not that I would be afraid to, though most of the boys were more or less afraid of Mrs. Mullenix, but simply that it wouldn't be right – not in my opinion.

She kept a short order house, let that be admitted at once, but her husband was long a West End engineer. Denis Mullenix went into the Peace with Hailey and Ed Peeto and Durden the night of the big June water on the West End. The company didn't treat her just right. I was a strong company man, although I went out with the boys. But I say, and I've always said, the company did

not

 treat Mrs. Mullenix just right.

A widow, and penniless, she bought the eating-house at McCloud with the few hundreds they gave her.

There were five young Mullenixes, and they were, every one, star children, from Sinkers, who was foxy, to Kate, who was not merely fine, she was royal. Twenty, and straight, and true, with a complexion like sunrise and hair like a sunset. Kate kept the cottage going, and Mrs. Mullenix ruled personally in the eating-house and in the short order annex. Any one that has tasted a steak grilled swell in Chicago or in Denver, and tasted one broiled plain by Mrs. Mullenix in McCloud, half a block from the depot, can easily understand why the boys behaved well. As for her coffee, believe it or not, we owe most of our world-famous West End runs, not so much to the Baldwin Locomotive Works, renowned as they are, nor to Mr. George Westinghouse, prince of inventors though we rank him – but to the coffee drawn by Mrs. Mary Mullenix; honor where honor is due.

Mrs. Mullenix's coffee for many years made the boys hot: what now makes them hot is that she can't be persuaded to draw it for anybody except McTerza, and they claim that's the way he holds the Yellow Mail with the 808; but all the same McTerza is fast stuff, coffee or no coffee.

They were none of them boisterous men, those Reading engineers who took our jobs after the strike; but McTerza was an oyster, except that he couldn't be swallowed.

McTerza didn't give up very much to anybody; not even to his own chums, Foley and Sinclair. The fact is he was diffident, owing, maybe, to a hesitation in his speech. It was funny, the bit of a halt, but not so odd as his disposition, which approached that of a grizzly. He had impudence and indifference and quiet – plenty of each.

There was one place up street that was, in special and particular, headquarters for the bad men in our crowd – for we had some – Gatling's billiard hall. Foley himself never had the nerve to tackle Gatling's. But one night, all alone and come from nobody knew where, the hall stuffed with striking men who had tasted blood that very day – McTerza walked into Gatling's.

It was like a yearling strolling into a cañon full of wolves. They were so surprised at first they couldn't bite, but pretty soon they got McTerza up against a mirror and began pasting pool balls at him.

When Ed Banks arrived it was as bad as a rapid-fire gun, and he carried McTerza out the side door like a warm tapioca pudding. When the fellow got round again, though, he was just as careless as ever.

It was pretty generally understood that in the strike the short order house was with us. Mrs. Mullenix had reason to feel bitter toward the company, and it became speedily known that Mrs. Mullenix's was not a healthy place for the men who took our engines; their money was not wanted. In fact, none of the new men ever tried to get service there except McTerza. McTerza one morning dropped into the short order house.

"Coffee," said he; he always cut things short because he was afraid he would get hung up between stations in remarks. Mrs. Mullenix, sick, had to manage as she could. Kate was looking after things that day at the restaurant, and she was alone. She looked at McTerza chillingly. Kate had more than enough instinct to tell a Reading man from the Brotherhood type. She turned in silence, and she poured a cup of coffee, but from the night tank: it was the grossest indignity that could be perpetrated on a man in the short order management. She set it with little of civility and less of sugar before McTerza, and pushing her girdle down, coldly walked front, half perched on a stool, and looked listlessly out the window.

"Cool," ventured McTerza as he stirred a lump of sugar hopefully into his purchase. Kate made no comment on the observation; the thing appeared self-evident.

"Could I have a little c-c-condensed milk?" inquired McTerza presently. "This sc-sc-scream looks pretty rich," he added, stirring thoughtfully as he spoke at the pot of mustard, which was the only liquid in sight.

Kate Mullenix glared contemptuously at him, but she passed out a jug of cream – and it was cream. From the defiance on her face as she resumed her attitude she appeared to expect a protest about the cold coffee. None came. McTerza drank the stuff very slowly, blowing it carefully the while as if it was burning him up. It vexed Kate.

"How much?" asked McTerza humbly, as he swallowed the last drop before it froze to the spoon, and fished for a dime to square his account.

"Twenty-five cents." He started slightly but reached again into his pocket and without a word produced a quarter. Kate swept it into the drawer with the royal indifference of a circus faker and resumed her stool.

"C-c-could I get another c-c-cup?" asked McTerza patiently. It looked like a defiance; however she boldly poured a second cup of the cold coffee, and McTerza tackled it.

After an interval of silence he spoke again. "Do you sell tickets on c-coffee here?" She looked at him with a questioning insolence. "I mean, c-could a fellow buy a chance – or get into a raffle – on the h-h-h-hot tank?" asked McTerza, throwing a sad glance on the live coffee urn, which steamed cozily beside its silent companion.

"That tank is empty," snapped Kate Mullenix recklessly, for in spite of herself she was getting confused.

"If it is," suggested McTerza, peering gravely underneath at the jet of gas that blazed merrily, "you ought to draw your fire: you're liable to b-b-burn your c-c-crown-sheet."

"What's the matter?" demanded Kate angrily; "is your coffee cold?"

"Oh, no," he responded, shaking his head and waiting for the surprising disclaimer to sink in. "Not exactly cold. It's just dead."

"We don't serve Reading men here," retorted Kate defiantly.

"Oh, yes, you do," responded McTerza, brightening at once. "You serve them like t-t-tramps." Then after a pause: "Could I get a cigar?"

"Yes."

"How much is that kind?"

"Fifty cents," snapped Kate, glancing into the street for some friendly striker to appear.

"I want a good one."

"That's a good one."

"Fifty cents a b-b-box?"

"Fifty cents apiece."

"Give me a small one, please."

He put down a dollar bill as he took the cigar. She threw a half back on the case. At that moment in walked two of our boys, Curtis Rucker and Ben Nicholson. McTerza had a great chance to walk out, but he didn't improve it. Rucker and Ben were Reds, both of them. Ben, in fact, was an old terror at best. Curtis Rucker was a blackish, quick young fellow, fine as silk in a cab, but a devil in a strike, and what was more, a great admirer of Kate Mullenix, and the minx knew it. As McTerza bit off the end of his cigar and reached for the gas-lighter he noticed that her face lighted wonderfully.

With a smile the newcomers called for coffee, and with a smile they got it. McTerza, smoking quietly at the cigar-case, watched the steaming liquid pour from the empty tank. It was a dispiriting revelation, but he only puffed leisurely on. When Kate glanced his way, as she presently did, disdainfully, McTerza raised his finger, and pointed to the change she had thrown at him.

"What is it, sir?"

"Mistake."

The strikers pricked up their ears.

"There isn't any mistake, sir. I told you the cigars were fifty cents each," replied Kate Mullenix. Rucker pushed back his coffee, and sliding off his stool walked forward.

"Change isn't right," persisted McTerza, looking at Kate Mullenix.

"Why not?"

"You forgot to take out twenty-five cents more for that last cup of c-c-coffee," stammered the Reading man. Kate took up the coin and handed a quarter back from the register.

"That's right," put in Rucker promptly, "make the scabs p-p-pay for what they g-g-get. They're sp-p-p-pending our money." The hesitating Reading man appeared for the first time aware of an enemy; interested for the first time in the abuse that had been continually heaped on him since he came to town: it appeared at last to reach him. He returned Rucker's glare.

"You call me a scab, do you?" he said at last and with the stutter all out. "I belong to a labor order that counts thousands to your hundreds. Your scabs came in and took our throttles on the Reading – why shouldn't we pull your latches out here? Your strike is beat, my buck, and Reading men beat it. You had better look for a job on a threshing machine."

Rucker jumped for McTerza, and they mixed like clouds in a cyclone. For a minute it was a whirlwind, and nothing could be made of it; but when they could be seen McTerza had the best man in our camp pinned under a table with his throat in one hand like the latch of a throttle. Nicholson at the same moment raising an oak stool smashed it over McTerza's head. The fellow went flat as a dead man, but he must have pulled up quick, for when Neighbor, rushing in, whirled Nicholson into the street, the Reading man already had his feet, and a corner to work from. Reed, the trainmaster, was right behind the big master mechanic. Rucker was up, but saw he was outnumbered.

"Hurt, Mac?" asked Reed, running toward the Reading man. The blow had certainly dazed him; his eyes rolled seasick for a minute, then he stared straight ahead.

"Look out," he muttered, pointing over Reed's shoulder at Kate Mullenix, "she's going to faint." The trainmaster turned, but Kate was over before her brother Sinkers could reach her as he ran in. Rucker moved towards the door. As he passed McTerza he sputtered villanously, but Neighbor's huge bulk was between the two men.

"Never mind," retorted McTerza; "next time I get you I'll ram a billiard c-c-c-cue down your throat."

It was the first intimation our fighting men had that the Reading fellow could do business, and the affair caused McTerza to be inspected with some interest from behind screens and cracker boxes as he sauntered up and down the street. When the boys asked him what he was going to do about his treatment in the short order house he seemed indifferent; but the indifference, as our boys were beginning to find out, covered live coals; for when he was pressed he threw the gauntlet at the whole lodge of us, by saying that before he got through he would close the short order house up. That threat made him a marked man. The Reading men were hated; McTerza was slated for the very worst of it. Everybody on both sides understood that – except McTerza himself. He never understood anything, for that matter, till it was on him, and he dropped back into his indifference and recklessness almost at once. He even tried the short order house again. That time Mrs. Mullenix herself was in the saddle. There were things in life which even McTerza didn't hanker after tackling more than once, and one was a second interview with Mrs. Mullenix. But the fellow must have made an impression on even the redoubtable Mrs. Mary, for she privately asked Neighbor, as one might of an honorable adversary, for peace' sake to keep that man away from her restaurant; so McTerza was banned. He took his revenge by sauntering in and out of Gatling's, until Gatling himself went gray-headed with the fear that another riot would be brought on his place.

Oddly enough, McTerza had one friend in the Mullenix family. On the strike question, like many other McCloud families, the house of Mullenix was divided against itself. All held for the engineers except the youngest member, Sinkers. Sinkers was telegraph messenger, and was strictly a company man in spite of everything. He naturally saw a great deal of the new men, but Sinkers never took the slightest interest in McTerza till he handled Rucker; after that Sinkers cultivated him. Sinkers would listen just as long as McTerza would stutter, and they became fast friends long before the yard riots.

The day the carload of detectives was imported the fight was on. Scattering collisions breaking here and there into open fights showed the feeling, but it wasn't till Little Russia went out that things looked rocky for the company property at McCloud. Little Russia had become a pretty big Russia at the time of the strike. The Russians, planted at Benkleton you might say by Shockley, had spread up and down the line like tumbleweeds, and their first cousins, the Polacks, worked the company coal mines. At McCloud they were as hard a crowd after dark as you would find on the steppes. The Polacks, four hundred of them, struck while the engineers were out, and the fat went into the fire with a flash.

The night of the trouble took even us by surprise, and the company was wholly unprepared. The engineers in the worst of the heat were accused of the rioting, but we had no more to do with it than homesteaders. Our boys are Americans, and we don't fight with torches and kerosene. We don't have to; they're not our weapons. The company imported the Polacks, let them settle their own accounts with them, said our fellows, and I called it right. Admitting that some of our Reds got out to mix in it, we couldn't in sense be held for that.

It was Neighbor, the craftiest old fox on the staff of the division, who told the depot people in the afternoon that something was coming, and thinking back afterward of the bunches of the low-browed fellows dotting the bench and the bottoms in front of their dugouts, lowering at the guards who patrolled the railroad yards, it was strange no one else saw it. They had been out three weeks, and after no end of gabbling turned silent. Men that talk are not so dangerous; it's when they quit talking.

Neighbor was a man of a thousand to act on his apprehension. All the afternoon he had the switch engines shunting cars about the roundhouse; the minute the arc lights went on the result could be seen. The old man had long lines of furniture vans, box cars, gondolas, and dead Pullmans strung around the big house like parapets. Whatever anybody else thought, Neighbor was ready. Even old John Boxer, his head blacksmith, who operated an amateur battery for salutes and celebrations, had his gun overhauled: the roundhouse was looking for trouble.

It was barely eight o'clock that night when a group of us on Main Street saw the depot lights go out, and pretty soon telephone messages began coming in to Gatling's from the company plant up the river for the sheriff; the Polacks were wrecking the dynamos. The arc lights covering the yards were on a different circuit, but it didn't take the whiskered fellows long to find that out. Half an hour later the city plant was attacked; no one was looking for trouble there, and the great system of arcs lighting the yard for miles died like fireflies. We knew then, everybody knew, that the Polacks meant business.

Not a man was in sight when the blaze sputtered blue, red, and black out; but in five minutes a dozen torches were moving up on the in-freight house like coyotes. We could hear the crash of the big oak doors clear down on Main Street. There, again, the company was weak; they hadn't a picket out at either of the freight houses. There wasn't so much as a sneeze till they beat the doors in; then there was a cry; the women were taking a hand, and it was a loot with a big L. The plunder maddened them like brandy. Neighbor, who feared not the Polacks nor the devil, made a sortie with a dozen men from his stockade, for that was what the roundhouse defenses looked like, to try to save the building. It wasn't in men to do it. The gutting was done and the kerosene burning yellow before he was half-way across, and the mob, running then in a wavering black line from the flames that licked the high windows, were making for the storehouse. The fellows were certainly up to everything good, for in plundering the freight house first they gave their women the chance to lay in supplies for months. Neighbor saw in a minute there was nothing left for him to protect at the east end, and before he could cut off the constantly lengthening line of rioters, they were between him and the long storehou