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Title: The last spike, and other railroad stories

Author: Cy Warman

Release date: January 22, 2006 [eBook #17572]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Ted Garvin, Josephine
        Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
        http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAST SPIKE, AND OTHER RAILROAD STORIES ***




Produced by Melissa Er-Raqabi, Ted Garvin, Josephine
Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net











THE

LAST SPIKE

AND OTHER

RAILROAD STORIES

BY

CY WARMAN

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1906


_Copyright, 1906_,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published February, 1906

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.




CONTENTS


                                           PAGE

THE LAST SPIKE                               1

THE BELLE OF ATHABASCA                      31

PATHFINDING IN THE NORTHWEST                49

THE CURÉ'S CHRISTMAS GIFT                   61

THE MYSTERIOUS SIGNAL                       85

CHASING THE WHITE MAIL                     107

OPPRESSING THE OPPRESSOR                   119

THE IRON HORSE AND THE TROLLEY             135

IN THE BLACK CAÑON                         151

JACK RAMSEY'S REASON                       165

THE GREAT WRECK ON THE PÈRE MARQUETTE      181

THE STORY OF AN ENGLISHMAN                 193

ON THE LIMITED                             211

THE CONQUEST OF ALASKA                     219

NUMBER THREE                               237

THE STUFF THAT STANDS                      253

THE MILWAUKEE RUN                          273




THE LAST SPIKE


"Then there is nothing against him but his poverty?"

"And general appearance."

"He's the handsomest man in America."

"Yes, that is against him, and the fact that he is always _in_ America.
He appears to be afraid to get out."

"He's the bravest boy in the world," she replied, her face still to the
window. "He risked his life to drag me from under the ice," she added,
with a girl's loyalty to her hero and a woman's pride in the man she
loves.

"Well, I must own he has nerve," her father added, "or he never would
have accepted my conditions."

"And what where these conditions, pray?" the young woman asked, turning
and facing her father, who sat watching her every move and gesture.

"First of all, he must do something; and do it off his own bat. His old
father spent his last dollar to educate this young rascal, to equip him
for the battle of life, and his sole achievement is a curve that nobody
can find. Now I insist he shall do something, and I have given him five
years for the work."

"Five years!" she gasped, as she lost herself in a big chair.

"He is to have time to forget you, and you are to have ample opportunity
to forget him, which you will doubtless do, for you are not to meet or
communicate with each other during this period of probation."

"Did he promise this?"

"Upon his honor."

"And if he break that promise?"

"Ah, then he would be without honor, and you would not marry him." A
moment's silence followed, broken by a long, deep sigh that ended in
little quivering waves, like the faint ripples that reach the
shore,--the whispered echoes of the sobbing sea.

"O father, it is cruel! _cruel! cruel!_" she cried, raising a tearful
face to him.

"It is justice, stern justice; to you, my dear, to myself, and this fine
young fellow who has stolen your heart. Let him show himself worthy of
you, and you have my blessing and my fortune."

"Is he going soon?"

"He is gone."

The young woman knelt by her father's chair and bowed her head upon his
knee, quivering with grief.

This stern man, who had humped himself and made a million, put a hand on
her head and said:

"Ma-Mary"--and then choked up.


II

The tent boy put a small white card down on General Dodge's desk one
morning, upon which was printed:

    J. BRADFORD, C.E.

The General, who was at that time chief engineer in charge of the
construction of the first Pacific Railroad, turned the bit of pasteboard
over. It seemed so short and simple. He ran his eyes over a printed
list, alphabetically arranged, of directors, promoters, statesmen,
capitalists, and others who were in the habit of signing "letters of
recommendation" for young men who wanted to do something and begin well
up the ladder.

There were no Bradfords. Burgess and Blodgett were the only B's, and the
General was glad. His desk was constantly littered with the "letters" of
tenderfeet, and his office-tent filled with their portmanteaus, holding
dress suits and fine linen.

Here was a curiosity--a man with no press notices, no character, only
one initial and two chasers.

"Show him in," said the General, addressing the one luxury his hogan
held. A few moments later the chief engineer was looking into the eye of
a young man, who returned the look and asked frankly, and without
embarrassment, for work with the engineers.

"Impossible, young man--full up," was the brief answer.

"Now," thought the General, "he'll begin to beat his breast and haul out
his 'pull.'" The young man only smiled sadly, and said, "I'm sorry. I
saw an 'ad' for men in the _Bee_ yesterday, and hoped to be in time," he
added, rising.

"Men! Yes, we want men to drive mules and stakes, to grade, lay track,
and fight Indians--but engineers? We've got 'em to use for cross-ties."

"I am able and willing to do any of these things--except the
Indians--and I'll tackle that if nothing else offers."

"There's a man for you," said the General to his assistant as Bradford
went out with a note to Jack Casement, who was handling the graders,
teamsters, and Indian fighters. "No influential friends, no baggage, no
character, just a man, able to stand alone--a real man in corduroys and
flannels."

Coming up to the gang, Bradford singled out the man who was swearing
loudest and delivered the note. "Fall in," said the straw boss, and
Bradford got busy. He could handle one end of a thirty-foot rail with
ease, and before night, without exciting the other workmen or making any
show of superiority, he had quietly, almost unconsciously, become the
leader of the track-laying gang. The foreman called Casement's
attention to the new man, and Casement watched him for five minutes.

Two days later a big teamster, having found a bottle of fire-water,
became separated from his reasoning faculties, crowded under an old
dump-cart, and fell asleep.

"Say, young fellow," said the foreman, panting up the grade to where
Bradford was placing a rail, "can you skin mules?"

"I can drive a team, if that's what you mean," was the reply.

"How many?"

"Well," said Bradford, with his quiet smile, "when I was a boy I used to
drive six on the Montpelier stage."

So he took the eight-mule team and amazed the multitude by hauling
heavier loads than any other team, because he knew how to handle his
whip and lines, and because he was careful and determined to succeed.
Whatever he did he did it with both hands, backed up by all the
enthusiasm of youth and the unconscious strength of an absolutely
faultless physique, and directed by a remarkably clear brain. When the
timekeeper got killed, Bradford took his place, for he could "read
writin'," an accomplishment rare among the laborers. When the bookkeeper
got drunk he kept the books, working overtime at night.

In the rush and roar of the fight General Dodge had forgotten the young
man in corduroys until General Casement called his attention to the
young man's work. The engineers wanted Bradford, and Casement had
kicked, and, fearing defeat, had appealed to the chief. They sent for
Bradford. Yes, he was an engineer, he said, and when he said it they
knew it was true. He was quite willing to remain in the store department
until he could be relieved, but, naturally, he would prefer field work.

He got it, and at once. Also, he got some Indian fighting. In less than
a year he was assigned to the task of locating a section of the line
west of the Platte. Coming in on a construction train to make his first
report, the train was held up, robbed, and burned by a band of Sioux.
Bradford and the train crew were rescued by General Dodge himself, who
happened to be following them with his "arsenal" car, and who heard at
Plumb Creek of the fight and of the last stand that Bradford and his
handful of men were making in the way car, which they had detached and
pushed back from the burning train. Such cool heroism as Bradford
displayed here could not escape the notice of so trained an Indian
fighter as General Dodge. Bradford was not only complimented, but was
invited into the General's private car. The General's admiration for the
young pathfinder grew as he received a detailed and comprehensive report
of the work being done out on the pathless plains. He knew the worth of
this work, because he knew the country, for he had spent whole months
together exploring it while in command of that territory, where he had
been purposely placed by General Sherman, without whose encouragement
the West could not have been known at that time, and without whose help
as commander-in-chief of the United States army the road could not have
been built.

As the pathfinders neared the Rockies the troops had to guard them
constantly. The engineers reconnoitered, surveyed, located, and built
inside the picket lines. The men marched to work to the tap of the drum,
stacked arms on the dump, and were ready at a moment's notice to fall
in and fight. Many of the graders were old soldiers, and a little fight
only rested them. Indeed there was more military air about this work
than had been or has since been about the building of a railroad in this
country. It was one big battle, from the first stake west of Omaha to
the last spike at Promontory--a battle that lasted five long years; and
if the men had marked the graves of those who fell in that fierce fight
their monuments, properly distributed, might have served as mile-posts
on the great overland route to-day. But the mounds were unmarked, most
of them, and many there were who had no mounds, and whose home names
were never known even to their comrades. If this thing had been done on
British soil, and all the heroic deeds had been recorded and rewarded, a
small foundry could have been kept busy beating out V.C.'s. They could
not know, these silent heroes fighting far out in the wilderness, what a
glorious country they were conquering--what an empire they were opening
for all the people of the land. Occasionally there came to the men at
the front old, worn newspapers, telling wild stories of the failure of
the enterprise. At other times they heard of changes in the Board of
Directors, the election of a new President, tales of jobs and looting,
but they concerned themselves only with the work in hand. No breath of
scandal ever reached these pioneer trail-makers, or, if it did, it
failed to find a lodging-place, but blew by. Ample opportunity they had
to plunder, to sell supplies to the Indians or the Mormons, but no one
of the men who did the actual work of bridging the continent has ever
been accused of a selfish or dishonest act.

During his second winter of service Bradford slept away out in the
Rockies, studying the snowslides and drifts. For three winters they did
this, and in summer they set stakes, keeping one eye out for Indians and
the other for wash-outs, and when, after untold hardships, privation,
and youth-destroying labor, they had located a piece of road, out of the
path of the slide and the washout, a well-groomed son of a politician
would come up from the Capital, and, in the capacity of Government
expert, condemn it all. Then strong men would eat their whiskers and the
weaker ones would grow blasphemous and curse the country that afforded
no facilities for sorrow-drowning.

Once, at the end of a long, hard winter, when spring and the Sioux came,
they found Bradford and a handful of helpers just breaking camp in a
sheltered hollow in the hills. Hiding in the crags, the warriors waited
until Bradford went out alone to try to shoot a deer, and incidentally
to sound a drift, and then they surrounded him. He fought until his gun
was unloaded, and then emptied his revolver; but ever dodging and
crouching from tree to rock, the red men, whose country he and his
companions had invaded, came nearer and nearer. In a little while the
fight was hand to hand. There was not the faintest show for escape; to
be taken alive was to be tortured to death, so he fought on, clubbing
his revolver until a well-directed blow from a war club caught the gun,
sent it whirling through the top of a nearby cedar, and left the
pathfinder empty-handed. The chief sprang forward and lifted his hatchet
that had caused more than one paleface to bite the dust. For the
faintest fraction of a second it stood poised above Bradford's head,
then out shot the engineer's strong right arm, and the Indian lay flat
six feet away.

For a moment the warriors seemed helpless with mingled awe and
admiration, but when Bradford stooped to grab his empty rifle they came
out of their trance. A dull blow, a sense of whirling round swiftly, a
sudden sunset, stars--darkness, and all pain had gone!


III

When Bradford came to they were fixing him for the fun. His back was
against a tree, his feet pinioned, and his elbows held secure by a
rawhide rope. He knew what it meant. He knew by the look of joy on the
freshly smeared faces at his waking, by the pitch-pine wood that had
been brought up, and by the fagots at his feet. The big chief who had
felt his fist came up, grinning, and jabbed a buckhorn cactus against
the engineer's thigh, and when the latter tried to move out of reach
they all grunted and danced with delight. They had been uneasy lest the
white man might not wake.

The sun, sailing westward in a burnished sea of blue, seemed to stand
still for a moment and then dropped down behind the range, as if to
escape from the hellish scene. The shadows served only to increase the
gloom in the heart of the captive. Glancing over his shoulder toward the
east, he observed that his captors had brought him down near to the edge
of the plain. Having satisfied themselves that their victim had plenty
of life left in him, the Indians began to arrange the fuel. With the
return of consciousness came an inexpressible longing to live. Suddenly
his iron will asserted itself, and appealing to his great strength,
surged until the rawhide ropes were buried in his flesh. Not for a
moment while he stood on his feet and fought them on the morning of that
day had hope entirely deserted him. Four years of hardship, of
privation, and adventure had so strengthened his courage that to give up
was to die.

Presently, when he had exhausted his strength and sat quietly, the
Indians went on with the preliminaries. The gold in the west grew
deeper, the shadows in the foothills darker, as the moments sped.
Swiftly the captive's mind ran over the events of the past four years.
This was his first failure, and this was the end of it all--of the
years of working and waiting.

Clenching his fists, he lifted his hot face to the dumb sky, but no
sound escaped from his parched and parted lips. Suddenly a light shone
on the semicircle of feather-framed faces in front of him, and he heard
the familiar crackling of burning boughs. Glancing toward the ground he
saw that the fagots were on fire. He felt the hot breath of flame, and
then for the first time realized what torture meant. Again he surged,
and surged again, the cedars crackled, the red fiends danced. Another
effort, the rawhide parted and he stood erect. With both hands freed he
felt new strength, new hope. He tried to free himself from the pyre, but
his feet were fettered, and he fell among his captors. Two or three of
them seized him, but he shook them off and stood up again.

But it was useless. From every side the Indians rushed upon him and bore
him to the ground. Still he fought and struggled, and as he fought the
air seemed full of strange, wild sounds, of shouts and shots and
hoof-beating on the dry, hard earth. He seemed to see, as through a
veil, scores of Indians, Indians afoot and on horseback, naked Indians
and Indians in soldier clothes. Once he thought he saw a white face
gleam just as he got to his feet, but at that moment the big chief stood
before him, his battle-axe uplifted. The engineer's head was whirling.
Instinctively he tried to use the strong right arm, but it had lost its
cunning. The roar of battle grew apace, the axe descended, the left arm
went up and took the blow of the handle, but the edge of the weapon
reached over and split the white man's chin. As he fell heavily to the
earth the light went out again.

       *       *       *       *       *

Save for the stars that stood above him it was still dark when Bradford
woke. He felt blankets beneath him, and asked in a whisper: "Who's
here?"

"Major North, me call him," said the Pawnee scout, who was watching over
the wounded man.

A moment later the gallant Major was leaning over Bradford, encouraging
him, assuring him that he was all right, but warning him of the danger
of making the least bit of noise.


IV

With all his strength and pluck, it took time for Bradford to
recuperate. His next work was in Washington, where, with notes and maps,
his strong personality and logical arguments, he caused the Government
to overrule an expert who wanted to change an important piece of road,
and who had arbitrarily fixed the meeting of the mountains and plains
far up in the foothills.[1]

When Bradford returned to the West he found that the whole country had
suddenly taken a great and growing interest in the transcontinental
line. Many of the leading newspapers had dug up their old war
correspondents and sent them out to the front.

These gifted prevaricators found the plain, unvarnished story of each
day's work as much as they cared to send in at night, for the builders
were now putting down four and five miles of road every working day.
Such road building the world had never seen, and news of it now ran
round the earth. At night these tireless story-tellers listened to the
strange tales told by the trail-makers, then stole away to their tents
and wrote them out for the people at home, while the heroes of the
stories slept.

The track-layers were now climbing up over the crest of the continent,
the locaters were dropping down the Pacific slope, with the prowling
pathfinders peeping over into the Utah Valley. Before the road reached
Salt Lake City the builders were made aware of the presence, power, and
opposition of Brigham Young. The head of the church had decreed that the
road must pass to the south of the lake, and as the Central Pacific had
surveyed a line that way, and General Dodge had declared in favor of the
northern route, the Mormons threw their powerful influence to the
Southern. The Union Pacific was boycotted, and all good Mormons
forbidden to aid the road in any way.

Here, again, the chief engineer brought Bradford's diplomacy to bear on
Brigham and won him over.

While the Union Pacific was building west, the Central Pacific had been
building east, and here, in the Salt Lake basin, the advance forces of
the two companies met. The United States Congress directed that the
rails should be joined wherever the two came together, but the bonus
($32,000 to the mile) left a good margin to the builders in the valley,
so, instead of joining the rails, the pathfinders only said "Howdy do!"
and then "Good-bye!" and kept going. The graders followed close upon the
heels of the engineers, so that by the time the track-layers met the two
grades paralleled each other for a distance of two hundred miles. When
the rails actually met, the Government compelled the two roads to couple
up. It had been a friendly contest that left no bad blood. Indeed they
were all willing to stop, for the iron trail was open from the Atlantic
to the Pacific.


V

The tenth day of May, 1869, was the date fixed for the driving of the
last spike and the official opening of the line. Special trains,
carrying prominent railway and Government officials, were hurrying out
from the East, while up from the Golden Gate came another train
bringing the flower of 'Frisco to witness, and some of them to take an
active part in, the celebration. The day was like twenty-nine other May
days that month in the Salt Lake Valley, fair and warm, but with a cool
breeze blowing over the sagebrush. The dusty army of trail-makers had
been resting for two days, waiting for the people to come in clean store
clothes, to make speeches, to eat and drink, and drive the golden spike.
Some Chinese laborers had opened a temporary laundry near the camp, and
were coining money washing faded blue overalls for their white comrades.
Many of the engineers and foremen had dressed up that morning, and a few
had fished out a white shirt. Judah and Strawbridge, of the Central, had
little chips of straw hats that had been harvested in the summer of '65.
Here and there you saw a sombrero, the wide hat of the cowboy, and the
big, soft, shapeless head cover of the Mormon, with a little bunch of
whiskers on his chin. General Dodge came from his arsenal car, that
stood on an improvised spur, in a bright, new uniform. Of the special
trains, that of Governor Stanford was first to arrive, with its
straight-stacked locomotive and Celestial servants. Then the U.P. engine
panted up, with its burnished bands and balloon stack, that reminded you
of the skirts the women wore, save that it funnelled down. When the
ladies began to jump down, the cayuses of the cowboys began to snort and
side-step, for they had seen nothing like these tents the women stood up
in.

Elaborate arrangements had been made for transmitting the news of the
celebration to the world. All the important telegraph offices of the
country were connected with Promontory, Utah, that day, so that the blow
of the hammer driving the last spike was communicated by the click of
the instrument to every office reached by the wires. From the Atlantic
to the Pacific the people were rejoicing and celebrating the event, but
the worn heroes who had dreamed it over and over for five years, while
they lay in their blankets with only the dry, hard earth beneath them,
seemed unable to realize that the work was really done and that they
could now go home, those who had homes to go to, eat soft bread, and
sleep between sheets.

Out under an awning, made by stretching a blanket between a couple of
dump-carts, Bradford lay, reading a 'Frisco paper that had come by
Governor Stanford's special; but even that failed to hold his thoughts.
His heart was away out on the Atlantic coast, and he would be hurrying
that way on the morrow, the guest of the chief engineer. He had lost his
mother when a boy, and his father just a year previous to his
banishment, but he had never lost faith in the one woman he had loved,
and he had loved her all his life, for they had been playmates. Now all
this fuss about driving the last spike was of no importance to him. The
one thing he longed for, lived for, was to get back to "God's country."
He heard the speeches by Governor Stanford for the Central, and General
Dodge for the Union Pacific; heard the prayer offered up by the Rev. Dr.
Todd, of Pittsfield; heard the General dictate to the operator:

"All ready," and presently the operator sang out the reply from the far
East:

"All ready here!" and then the silver hammer began beating the golden
spike into the laurel tie, which bore a silver plate, upon which was
engraved:

          "The Last Tie
  Laid in the Completion of the Pacific
            Railroads.
          May 10, 1869."

After the ceremony there was handshaking among the men and some kissing
among the women, as the two parties--one from either coast--mingled, and
then the General's tent boy came under the blanket to call Bradford, for
the General wanted him at once. Somehow Bradford's mind flew back to his
first meeting with this boy. He caught the boy by the arms, held him
off, and looked at him. "Say, boy," he asked, "have I changed as much as
you have? Why, only the other day you were a freckled beauty in
high-water trousers. You're a man now, with whiskers and a busted lip.
Say, have I changed, too?"

"Naw; you're just the same," said the boy. "Come now, the Gen's
waitin'."

"Judge Manning," said General Dodge, in his strong, clear voice, "you
have been calling us 'heroes'; now I want to introduce the one hero of
all this heroic band--the man who has given of muscle and brain all that
a magnificent and brilliant young man could give, and who deserves the
first place on the roll of honor among the great engineers of our time."

As the General pronounced the Judge's name Bradford involuntarily
clenched his fists and stepped back. The Judge turned slowly, looking
all the while at the General, thrilled by his eloquent earnestness, and
catching something of the General's admiration for so eminent a man.

"Mr. Bradford," the General concluded, "this is Judge Manning, of
Boston, who came to our rescue financially and helped us to complete
this great work to which you have so bravely and loyally contributed."

"Mr. _Bradford_, did you say?"

"Well, yes. He's only Jim Bradford out here, where we are in a hurry,
but he'll be Mr. Bradford in Boston, and the biggest man in town when he
gets back."

All nervousness had gone from Bradford, and he looked steadily into the
strong face before him.

"Jim Bradford," the millionnaire repeated, still holding the engineer's
hand.

"Yes, Judge Manning, I'm Jim Bradford," said the bearded pathfinder,
trying to smile and appear natural.

Suddenly realizing that some explanation was due the General, the Judge
turned and said, but without releasing the engineer's hand: "Why, I know
this young man--knew his father. We were friends from boyhood."

Slowly he returned his glance to Bradford. "Will you come into my car in
an hour from now?" he asked.

"Thank you," said Bradford, nodding, and with a quick, simultaneous
pressure of hands, the two men parted.


VI

Bradford has often since felt grateful to the Judge for that five years'
sentence, but never has he forgotten the happy thought that prompted the
capitalist to give him this last hour, in which to get into a fresh suit
and have his beard trimmed. Bradford wore a beard always now, not
because a handsome beard makes a handsome man handsomer, but because it
covered and hid the hideous scar in his chin that had been carved there
by the Sioux chief.

When the black porter bowed and showed Bradford into Mr. Manning's
private car, the pleasure of their late meeting and the Judge's kindly
greeting vanished instantly. It was all submerged and swept away,
obliterated and forgotten in the great wave of inexpressible joy that
now filled and thrilled his throbbing heart, for it was Mary Manning who
came forward to greet him. For nearly an hour she and her father had
been listening to the wonderful story of the last five years of the
engineer's life. When the wily General caught the drift of the young
lady's mind, and had been informed of the conditional engagement of the
young people, he left nothing unsaid that would add to the fame and
glory of the trail-maker. With radiant face she heard of his heroism,
tireless industry, and wonderful engineering feats; but when the
narrator came to tell how he had been captured and held and tortured by
the Indians, she slipped her trembling hand into the hand of her
father, and when he saw her hot tears falling he lifted the hand and
kissed it, leaving upon it tears of his own.

The Judge now produced his cigar case, and the General, bowing to the
young lady, followed the great financier to the other end of the car,
leaving Mary alone, for they had seen Bradford coming up the track.

The dew of her sweet sorrow was still upon her face when Bradford
entered, but the sunshine of her smile soon dried it up. The hands he
reached for escaped him. They were about his face; then their great joy
and the tears it brought blinded them, and the wild beating of their
happy hearts drowned their voices so that they could neither see nor
hear, and neither has ever been able to say just what happened.

On the day following this happy meeting, when the consolidated special
was rolling east-ward, while the Judge and the General smoked in the
latter's car, the tent boy brought a telegram back to the happy pair. It
was delivered to Miss Manning, and she read it aloud:

                         "WASHINGTON, May 11, 1869.

  "GENERAL G.M. DODGE:

"In common with millions I sat yesterday and heard the mystic taps of
the telegraph battery announce the nailing of the last spike in the
Great Pacific Road. All honor to you, to Durant, to Jack and Dan
Casement, to Reed and the thousands of brave followers who have wrought
out this glorious problem, spite of changes, storms, and even doubts of
the incredulous, and all the obstacles you have now happily surmounted!

                                 "W.T. SHERMAN,

                                 "_General_."

"Well!" she exclaimed, letting her hands and the telegram fall in her
lap, "he doesn't even mention my hero."

"Oh, yes, he does, my dear," said Bradford, laughing. "I'm one of the
'thousands of brave followers.'"

Then they both laughed and forgot it, for they were too happy to bother
with trifles.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The subsidy from the Government was $16,000 a mile on the
plains, and $48,000 a mile in the mountains.]




THE BELLE OF ATHABASCA


Athabasca Belle did not burst upon Smith the Silent all at once, like a
rainbow or a sunrise in the desert. He would never say she had been
thrust upon him. She was acquired, he said, in an unguarded moment.

The trouble began when Smith was pathfinding on the upper Athabasca for
the new transcontinental. Among his other assets Smith had two camp
kettles. One was marked with the three initials of the new line, which,
at that time, existed only on writing material, empty pots, and equally
empty parliamentary perorations. The other was not marked at all. It was
the personal property of Jaquis, who cooked for Smith and his outfit.
The Belle was a fine looking Cree--tall, strong, _magnifique_. Jaquis
warmed to her from the start, but the Belle was not for Jaquis, himself
a Siwash three to one. She scarcely looked at him, and answered him
only when he asked if she'd _encore_ the pork and beans. But she looked
at Smith. She would sit by the hour, her elbow on her knee and her chin
in her hand, watching him wistfully, while he drew crazy, crooked lines
or pictured mountains with rivers running between them--all of which,
from the Belle's point of view, was not only a waste of time, but had
absolutely nothing to do with the case.

The Belle and her brown mother came to the camp of the Silent first one
glorious morn in the moon of August, with a basket of wild berries and a
pair of beaded moccasins. Smith bought both--the berries for Jaquis, out
of which he built strange pies, and the moccasins for himself. He called
them his night slippers, but as a matter of fact there was no night on
the Athabasca at that time. The day was divided into three shifts, one
long and two short ones,--daylight, dusk, and dawn. So it was daylight
when the Belle first fixed her large dark eyes upon the strong, handsome
face of Smith the Silent, as he sat on his camp stool, bent above a map
he was making. Belle's mother, being old in years and unafraid, came
close, looked at the picture for a moment, and exclaimed: "Him Jasper
Lake," pointing up the Athabasca.

"You know Jasper Lake?" asked the engineer, glancing up for the first
time.

"_Oui_," said the old woman (Belle's step-father was half French); "know
'im ver' well."

Smith looked her over as a matter of habit, for he allowed no man or
woman to get by him with the least bit of information concerning the
country through which his imaginary line lay. Then he glanced at Belle
for fully five seconds, then back to his blue print. Nobody but a
he-nun, or a man already wedded to the woods, could do that, but to the
credit of the camp it will go down that the chief was the only man in
the outfit who failed to feel her presence. As for Jaquis, the alloyed
Siwash, he carried the scar of that first meeting for six months, and
may, for aught I know, take it with him to his little swinging grave.
Even Smith remembers to this day how she looked, standing there on her
two trim ankles, that disappeared into her hand-turned sandals or faded
in the flute and fringe of her fawn skin skirt. Her full bosom rose and
fell, and you could count the beat of her wild heart in the throb of
her throat. Her cheeks showed a faint flush of red through the dark
olive,--the flush of health and youth,--her nostrils dilated, like those
of an Ontario high-jumper, as she drank life from the dewy morn, while
her eye danced with the joy of being alive. Jaquis sized and summed her
up in the one word "magnific." But in that moment, when she caught the
keen, piercing eye of the engineer, the Belle had a stroke that comes
sooner or later to all these wild creatures of the wilderness, but comes
to most people but once in a lifetime. She never forgot the gleam of
that one glance, though the Silent one was innocent enough.

It was during the days that followed, when she sat and watched him at
his work, or followed him for hours in the mountain fastnesses, that the
Belle of Athabasca lost her heart.

When he came upon a bit of wild scenery and stopped to photograph it,
the Belle stood back of him, watching his every movement, and when he
passed on she followed, keeping always out of sight.

The Belle's mother haunted him. As often as he broke camp and climbed a
little higher upstream, the brown mother moved also, and with her the
Belle.

"What does this old woman want?" asked the engineer of Jaquis one
evening when, returning to his tent, he found the fat Cree and her
daughter camping on his trail.

"She want that pot," said Jaquis.

"Then for the love of We-sec-e-gea, god of the Crees," said Smith, "give
it into her hands and bid her begone."

Jaquis did as directed, and the old Indian went away, but she left the
girl.

The next day Smith started on a reconnoissance that would occupy three
or four days. As he never knew himself when he would return, he never
took the trouble to inform Jaquis, the tail of the family.

After breakfast the Belle went over to her mother's. She would have
lunched with her mother from the much coveted kettle, but the Belle's
mother told her that she should return to the camp of the white man, who
was now her lord and master. So the Belle went back and lunched with
Jaquis, who otherwise must have lunched alone. Jaquis tried to keep her,
and wooed her in his half-wild way; but to her sensitive soul he was
repulsive. Moreover, she felt that in some mysterious manner her mother
had transferred her, together with her love and allegiance, to Smith the
Silent, and to him she must be true. Therefore she returned to the Cree
camp.

As the sinking sun neared the crest of the Rockies, the young Indian
walked back to the engineer's camp. As she strode along the new trail
she plucked wildflowers by the wayside and gathered leaves and wove them
into vari-colored wreaths, swinging along with the easy grace of a wild
deer.

Now some women would say she had not much to make her happy, but she was
happy nevertheless. She loved a man--to her the noblest, most god-like
creature of his kind,--and she was happy in abandoning herself to him.
She had lived in this love so long, had felt and seen it grow from
nothing to something formidable, then to something fine, until now it
filled her and thrilled her; it overspread everything, outran her
thoughts, brought the far-off mountains nearer, shortened the trail
between her camp and his, gave a new glow to the sunset, a new glory to
the dawn and a fresher fragrance to the wildflowers; the leaves
whispered to her, the birds came, nearer and sang sweeter; in short it
was her life--the sunshine of her soul. And that's the way a wild woman
loves.

And she was to see him soon. Perhaps he would speak to her, or smile on
her. If only he gave a passing glance she would be glad and content to
know that he was near. Alas, he came not at all. She watched with the
stars through the short night, slept at dawn, and woke to find Jaquis
preparing the morning meal. She thought to question Jaquis, but her
interest in the engineer, and the growing conviction that his own star
sank as his master's rose, rendered him unsafe as a companion to a young
bride whose husband was in the hills and unconscious of the fact that he
was wedded to anything save the wilderness and his work.

Jaquis not only refused to tell her where the engineer was operating,
but promised to strangle her if she mentioned his master's name again.

At last the long day died, the sunset was less golden, and the stars
sang sadder than they sang the day before. She watched the west, into
which he had gone and out of which she hoped he might return to her.
Another round of dusk and dawn and there came another day, with its
hours that hung like ages. When she sighed her mother scolded and Jaquis
swore. When at last night came to curtain the hills, she stole out under
the stars and walked and walked until the next day dawned. A lone wolf
howled to his kith, but they were not hungry and refused to answer his
call. Often, in the dark, she fancied she heard faint, feline footsteps
behind her. Once a big black bear blocked her trail, staring at her with
lifted muzzle wet with dew and stained with berry juice. She did not
faint nor scream nor stay her steps, but strode on. Now nearer and
nearer came the muffled footsteps behind her. The black bear backed from
the trail and kept backing, pivoting slowly, like a locomotive on a
turntable, and as she passed on, stood staring after her, his small eyes
blinking in babylike bewilderment. And so through the dusk and dark and
dawn this love-mad maiden walked the wilderness, innocent of arms, and
with no one near to protect her save the little barefooted bowman whom
the white man calls the God of Love.

Meanwhile away to the west, high in the hills, where the Findlay flowing
into the Pine makes the Peace, then cutting through the crest of the
continent makes a path for the Peace, Smith and his little army,
isolated, remote, with no cable connecting them with the great cities of
civilization, out of touch with the telegraph, away from the war
correspondent, with only the music of God's rills for a regimental band,
were battling bravely in a war that can end only with the conquest of a
wilderness. Ah, these be the great generals--these unheralded heroes
who, while the smoke of slaughter smudges the skies and shadows the sun,
wage a war in which they kill only time and space, and in the end,
without despoiling the rest of the world, win homes for the homeless.
These are the heroes of the Anglo-Saxon race.

       *       *       *       *       *

Finding no trace of the trail-makers, the Belle faced the rising sun and
sought the camp of the Crees.

The mysterious shadow with the muffled tread, that had followed her
from the engineer's camp, shrank back into the bush as she passed down
the trail. That was Jaquis. He watched her as she strode by him,
uncertain as to whether he loved or hated her, for well he knew why she
walked the wilderness all night alone. Now the Gitche in his unhappy
heart made him long to lift her in his arms and carry her to camp, and
then the bad god, Mitche, would assert himself and say to the savage
that was in him, "Go, kill her. She despises her race and flings herself
at the white man's feet." And so, impelled by passion and stayed by
love, he followed her. The white man within him made him ashamed of his
skulking, and the Indian that was in him guided him around her and home
by a shorter trail.

That night the engineers returned, and when Smith saw the Cree in the
camp he jumped on Jaquis furiously.

"Why do you keep this woman here?" he demanded.

"I--keep? Me?" quoth Jaquis, blinking as bewildered as the black bear
had blinked at the Belle.

"Who but you?--you heathen!" hissed the engineer.

Now Jaquis, calling up the ghosts of his dead sires, asserted that it
was the engineer himself who was "keeping" the Cree. "You bought
her--she's yours," said Jaquis, in the presence of the company.

"You ill-bred ----" Smith choked, and reached for a tent prop. The next
moment his hand was at the Indian's throat. With a quick twist of his
collar band he shut off the Siwash's wind, choking him to the earth.

"What do you mean?" he demanded, and Jaquis, coughing, put up his hands.
"I meant no lie," said he. "Did you not give to her mother the camp
kettle? She has it, marked G.T.P."

"And what of that?"

"_Voilà_," said Jaquis, "because of that she gave to you the Belle of
Athabasca."

Smith dropped his stick, releasing the Indian.

"I did not mean she is sold to you. She is trade--trade for the empty
pot, the Belle--the beautiful. From yesterday to this day she followed
you, far, very far, to the foot of the Grande Côte, and nothing harmed
her. The mountain lion looked on her in terror, the timber wolf took to
the hills, the black bear backed from the trail and let her pass in
peace," said Jaquis, with glowing enthusiasm. It was the first time he
had talked of her, save to the stars and to We-sec-e-gea, and he glowed
and grew eloquent in praise of her.

"You take her," said Smith, with one finger levelled at the head of the
cook, "to the camp of the Crees. Say to her mother that your master is
much obliged for the beautiful gift, but he's too busy to get married
and too poor to support a wife."

       *       *       *       *       *

From the uttermost rim of the ring of light that came from the
flickering fire la Belle the beautiful heard and saw all that had passed
between the two men. She did not throw herself at the feet of the white
man. Being a wild woman she did not weep nor cry out with the pain of
his words, that cut like cold steel into her heart. She leaned against
an aspen tree, stroking her throat with her left hand, swallowing with
difficulty. Slowly from her girdle she drew a tiny hunting-knife, her
one weapon, and toyed with it. She put the hilt to the tree, the point
to her bare breast, and breathed a prayer to We-sec-e-gea, god of the
Crees. She had only to throw the weight of her beautiful body on the
blade, sink without a moan to the moss, and pass, leaving the camp
undisturbed.

Smith marked the faintest hint of sarcasm in the half smile of the
Indian as he turned away.

"Come here," he cried. Jaquis approached cautiously. "Now, you skulking
son of a Siwash, this is to be skin for skin. If any harm comes to that
young Cree you go to your little hammock in the hemlocks--you
understand?"

"_Oui, Monsieur_," said Jaquis.

"Very well, then; remember--skin for skin."

Now to the Belle, watching from her shelter in the darkness, there was
something splendid in this. To hear her praises sung by the Siwash, then
to have the fair god, who had heard that story, champion her, to take
the place of her protector, was all new to her. "Ah, good God," she
sighed; "it is better, a thousand times better, to love and lose him
than to waste one's life, never knowing this sweet agony."

She felt in a vague way that she was soaring above the world and its
woes. At times, in the wild tumult of her tempestuous soul, she seemed
to be borne beyond it all, through beautiful worlds. Love, for her, had
taken on great white wings, and as he wafted her out of the wilderness
and into her heaven, his talons tore into her heart and hurt like hell,
yet she could rejoice because of the exquisite pleasure that surpassed
the pain.

"Sweet We-sec-e-gea," she sighed, "good god of my dead, I thank thee for
the gift of this great love that stays the steel when my aching heart
yearns for it. I shall not destroy myself and distress him, disturbing
him in his great work, whatever it is; but live--live and love him, even
though he send me away."

She kissed the burnished blade and returned it to her belt.

When Jaquis, circling the camp, failed to find her, he guessed that she
was gone, and hurried after her along the dim, starlit trail. When he
had overtaken her, they walked on together. Jaquis tried now to renew
his acquaintance with the handsome Cree and to make love to her. She
heard him in absolute silence. Finally, as they were nearing the Cree
camp, he taunted her with having been rejected by the white man.

"And my shame is yours," said she softly. "I love him; he sends me away.
You love me; I send you from me--it is the same."

Jaquis, quieted by this simple statement, said good-night and returned
to the tents, where the pathfinders were sleeping peacefully under the
stars.

And over in the Cree camp the Belle of Athabasca, upon her bed of
boughs, slept the sleep of the innocent, dreaming sweet dreams of her
fair god, and through them ran a low, weird song of love, and in her
dream Love came down like a beautiful bird and bore her out of this life
and its littleness, and though his talons tore at her heart and hurt,
yet was she happy because of the exquisite pleasure that surpassed all
pain.




PATHFINDING IN THE NORTHWEST


It was summer when my friend Smith, whose real name is Jones, heard that
the new transcontinental line would build by the way of Peace River Pass
to the Pacific. He immediately applied, counting something, no doubt, on
his ten years of field work in Washington, Oregon, and other western
states, and five years pathfinding in Canada.

The summer died; the hills and rills and the rivers slept, but while
they slept word came to my friend Smith the Silent, and he hurriedly
packed his sleds and set out.

His orders were, like the orders of Admiral Dewey, to do certain
things--not merely to try. He was to go out into the northern night
called winter, feel his way up the Athabasca, over the Smoky, follow the
Peace River, and find the pass through the Rockies.

If the simple story of that winter campaign could be written out it
would be finer than fiction. But it will never be. Only Smith the
Silent knows, and he won't tell.

Sometimes, over the pipe, he forgets and gives me glimpses into the
winter camp, with the sun going out like a candle: the hastily made camp
with the half-breed spotting the dry wood against the coming moment when
night would drop over the forest like a curtain over a stage; the
"lean-to" between the burning logs, where he dozes or dreams, barely
beyond the reach of the flames; the silence all about, Jaquis pulling at
his pipe, and the huskies sleeping in the snow like German babies under
the eiderdown. Sometimes, out of the love of bygone days, he tells of
long toilsome journeys with the sun hiding behind clouds out of which an
avalanche of snow falls, with nothing but the needle to tell where he
hides; of hungry dogs and half starved horses, and lakes and rivers
fifty and a hundred miles out of the way.

Once, he told me, he sent an engineer over a low range to spy out a
pass. By the maps and other data they figured that he would be gone
three days, but a week went by and no word from the pathfinder. Ten days
and no news. On the thirteenth day, when Smith was preparing to go in
search of the wanderer, the running gear of the man and the framework of
the dogs came into camp. He was able to smile and say to Smith that he
had been ten days without food, save a little tea. For the dogs he had
had nothing.

A few days rest and they were on the trail again, or on the "go" rather;
and you might know that disciple of Smith the Silent six months or six
years before he would, unless you worked him, refer to that ten days'
fast. They think no more of that than a Jap does of dying. It's all in
the day's work.

Suddenly, Smith said, the sun swung north, the days grew longer. The sun
grew hot and the snow melted on the south hills; the hushed rivers,
rending their icy bonds, went roaring down to the Lakes and out towards
the Arctic Ocean. And lo, suddenly, like the falling of an Arctic night,
the momentary spring passed and it was summer time.

Then it was that Smith came into Edmonton to make his first report, and
here we met for the first time for many snows.

Joyously, as a boy kicks the cover off on circus morning, this Northland
flings aside her winter wraps and stands forth in her glorious garb of
summer. The brooklets murmur, the rivers sing, and by their banks and
along the lakes waterfowl frolic, and overhead glad birds, that seem to
have dropped from the sky, sing joyfully the almost endless song of
summer. At the end of the long day, when the sun, as if to make up for
its absence, lingers, loath to leave us in the twilight, beneath their
wings the song-birds hide their heads, then wake and sing, for the sun
is swinging up over the horizon where the pink sky, for an hour, has
shown the narrow door through which the day is dawning.

The dogs and sleds have been left behind and now, with Jaquis the
half-breed "boy" leading, followed closely by Smith the Silent, we go
deeper and deeper each day into the pathless wilderness.

To be sure it is not all bush, all forest. At times we cross wide
reaches of wild prairie lands. Sometimes great lakes lie immediately in
front of us, compelling us to change our course. Now we come to a wide
river and raft our outfit over, swimming our horses. Weeks go by and we
begin to get glimpses of the Rockies rising above the forest, and we
push on. The streams become narrower as we ascend, but swifter and more
dangerous.

We do not travel constantly now, as we have been doing. Sometimes we
keep our camp for two or three days. The climbing is hard, for Smith
must get to the top of every peak in sight, and so I find it "good
hunting" about the camp.

Jaquis is a fairly good cook, and what he lacks we make up with good
appetites, for we live almost constantly out under the sun and stars.

Pathfinders always lay up on Sunday, and sometimes, the day being long,
Smith steals out to the river and comes back with a mountain trout as
long as a yardstick.

The scenery is beyond description. Now we pass over the shoulder of a
mountain with a river a thousand feet below. Sometimes we trail for
hours along the shore of a limpid lake that seems to run away to the
foot of the Rockies.

Far away we get glimpses of the crest of the continent, where the Peace
River gashes it as if it had been cleft by the sword of the Almighty;
and near the Rockies, on either bank, grand battlements rise that seem
to guard the pass as the Sultan's fortresses frown down on the
Dardanelles.

Now we follow a narrow trail that was not a trail until we passed. A
careless pack-horse, carrying our blankets, slips from the path and goes
rolling and tumbling down the mountain side. A thousand feet below lies
an arm of the Athabasca. Down, down, and over and over the pack-horse
goes, and finally fetches up on a ledge five hundred feet below the
trail. "By damn," says Jaquis, "dere is won bronco bust, eh?"

Smith and Jaquis go down to cut the cinches and save the pack, and lo,
up jumps our cayuse, and when he is repacked he takes the trail as good
as new. The pack and the low bush save his life.

In any other country, to other men, this would be exciting, but it's all
in the day's work with Smith and Jaquis.

The pack-pony that had been down the mountain is put in the lead
now--that is, in the lead of the pack animals; for he has learned his
lesson, he will be careful. And yet we are to have other experiences
along this same river.

Suddenly, down a side cañon, a mountain stream rushes, plunging into the
Athabasca, joyfully, like a sea-bather into the surf. Jaquis calls this
side-stream "the mill-tail o' hell." Smith the Silent prepares to cross.
It's all very simple. All you need is a stout pole, a steady nerve, and
an utter disregard for the hereafter.

When Smith is safe on the other shore we drive the horses into the
stream. They shudder and shrink from the ice-cold water, but Jaquis and
I urge them, and in they plunge. My, what a struggle! Their wet feet on
the slippery boulders in the bottom of the stream, the swift current
constantly tripping them--it was thrilling to see and must have been
agony for the animals.

Midway, where the current was strongest, a mouse-colored cayuse carrying
a tent lost his feet. The turbulent tide slammed him up on top of a
great rock, barely hidden beneath the water, and he got to his feet like
a cat that has fallen upon the edge of an eave-trough. Trembling, the
cayuse called to Smith, and Smith, running downstream, called back,
urging the animal to leave the refuge and swim for it. The pack-horse
perched on the rock gazes wistfully at the shore. The waters, breaking
against his resting-place, wash up to his trembling knees. About him the
wild river roars, and just below leaps over a ten-foot fall into the
Athabasca.

All the other horses, having crossed safely, shake the water from their
dripping sides and begin cropping the tender grass. We could have heard
that horse's heart beat if we could have hushed the river's roar.

Smith called again, the cayuse turned slightly, and whether he leaped
deliberately or his feet slipped on the slippery stones, forcing him to
leap, we could not say, but he plunged suddenly into the stream,
uttering a cry that echoed up the cañon and over the river like the cry
of a lost soul.

The cruel current caught him, lifted him, and plunged him over the drop,
and he was lost instantly in the froth and foam of the falls.

Far down, at a bend of the Athabasca, something white could be seen
drifting towards the shore. That night Smith the Silent made an entry in
his little red book marked "Grand Trunk Pacific," and tented under the
stars.




THE CURÉ'S CHRISTMAS GIFT

  "A country that is bad or good,
  Precisely as your claim pans out;
  A land that's much misunderstood,
  Misjudged, maligned and lied about."


When the pathfinders for the New National Highway pushed open the side
door and peeped through to the Pacific they not only discovered a short
cut to Yokohama, but opened to the world a new country, revealing the
last remnant of the Last West.

Edmonton is the outfiling point, of course, but Little Slave Lake is the
real gateway to the wilderness. Here we were to make our first stop (we
were merely exploring), and from this point our first portage was to the
Peace River, at Chinook, where we would get into touch once more with
the Hudson's Bay Company.

Jim Cromwell, the free trader who was in command of Little Slave, made
us welcome, introducing us _ensemble_ to his friend, a former H.B.
factor, to the Yankee who was looking for a timber limit, to the
"Literary Cuss," as he called the young man in corduroys and a wide
white hat, who was endeavoring to get past "tradition," that has damned
this Dominion both in fiction and in fact for two hundred years, and do
something that had in it the real color of the country.

At this point the free trader paused to assemble the Missourian. This
iron-gray individual shook himself out, came forward, and gripped our
hands, one after another.

The free trader would not allow us to make camp that night. We were
sentenced to sup and lodge with him, furnishing our own bedding, of
course, but baking his bread.

The smell of cooking coffee and the odor of frying fish came to us from
the kitchen, and floating over from somewhere the low, musical, well
modulated voice of Cromwell, conversing in Cree, as he moved about among
his mute and apparently inoffensive camp servants.

The day died hard. The sun was still shining at 9 P.M. At ten
it was twilight, and in the dusk we sat listening to tales of the far
North, totally unlike the tales we read in the story-books. Smith the
Silent, who was in charge of our party, was interested in the country,
of course, its physical condition, its timber, its coal, and its mineral
possibilities. He asked about its mountains and streams, its possible
and impossible passes; but the "Literary Cuss" and I were drinking
deeply of weird stories that were being told quite incautiously by the
free trader, the old factor, and by the Missourian. We were like
children, this young author and I, sitting for the first time in a
theatre. The flickering camp fire that we had kindled in the open served
as a footlight, while the Gitch Lamp, still gleaming in the west,
glanced through the trees and lit up the faces of the three great actors
who were entertaining us without money and without price. The Missourian
was the star. He had been reared in the lap of luxury, had run away from
college where he had been installed by a rich uncle, his guardian, and
jumped down to South America. He had ridden with the Texas Rangers and
with President Diaz's Regulators, had served as a scout on the plains
and worked with the Mounted Police, but was now "retired."

All of which we learned not from him directly, but from the stories he
told and from his bosom friend, the free trader, whose guests we were,
and whose word, for the moment at least, we respected.

The camp fire burned down to a bed of coals, the Gitch Lamp went out. In
the west, now, there was only a glow of gold, but no man moved.

Smith the Pathfinder and our host the free trader bent over a map. "But
isn't this map correct?" Smith would ask, and when in doubt Jim would
call the Missourian. "No," said the latter, "you can't float down that
river because it flows the other way, and that range of mountains is two
hundred miles out."

Gradually we became aware that all this vast wilderness, to the world
unknown, was an open book to this quiet man who had followed the buffalo
from the Rio Grande to the Athabasca where he turned, made a last stand,
and then went down.

When the rest had retired the free trader and I sat talking of the Last
West, of the new trail my friends were blazing, and of the wonderfully
interesting individual whom we called the Missourian.

"He had a prospecting pard," said Jim, "whom he idolized. This man,
whose name was Ramsey, Jack Ramsey, went out in '97 between the Coast
Range and the Rockies, and now this sentimental old pioneer says he will
never leave the Peace River until he finds Ramsey's bones.

"You see," Cromwell continued, "friendship here and what goes for
friendship outside are vastly different. The matter of devoting one's
life to a friend or to a duty, real or fancied, is only a trifle to
these men who abide in the wilderness. I know of a Chinaman and a Cree
who lived and died the most devoted friends. You see the Missourian
hovering about the last camping-place of his companion. Behold the
factor! He has left the Hudson Bay Company after thirty years because he
has lost his life's best friend, a man who spoke another language, whose
religion was not the brand upon which the factor had been brought up in
England; yet they were friends."

The camp fire had gone out. In the south we saw the first faint flush
of dawn as Cromwell, knocking the ashes from his pipe, advised me to go
to bed. "You get the old factor to tell you the story of his friend the
curé, and of the curé's Christmas gift," Cromwell called back, and I
made a point of getting the story, bit by bit, from the florid factor
himself, and you shall read it as it has lingered in my memory.

When the new curé came to Chinook on the Upper Peace River, he carried a
small hand-satchel, his blankets, and a crucifix. His face was drawn,
his eyes hungry, his frame wasted, but his smile was the smile of a man
at peace with the world. The West--the vast, undiscovered Canadian
West--jarred on the sensitive nerves of this Paris-bred priest. And yet,
when he crossed the line that marks what we are pleased to call
"civilization," and had reached the heart of the real Northwest, where
the people were unspoiled, natural, and honest, where a handful of Royal
Northwest Mounted Police kept order in an empire that covers a quarter
of a continent, he became deeply interested in this new world, in the
people, in the imperial prairies, the mountains, and the great wide
rivers that were racing down to the northern sea.

The factor at the Hudson's Bay post, whose whole life since he had left
college in England had been passed on the Peace River, at York Factory,
and other far northern stations over which waved the Hudson's Bay
banner, warmed to the new curé from their first meeting, and the curé
warmed to him. Each seemed to find in the other a companion that neither
had been able to find among the few friends of his own faith.

And so, through the long evenings of the northern winter, they sat in
the curé's cabin study or by the factor's fire, and talked of the things
which they found interesting, including politics, literature, art, and
Indians. Despite the great gulf that rolled between the two creeds in
which they had been cradled, they found that they were in accord three
times in five--a fair average for men of strong minds and inherent
prejudices. At first the curé was anxious to get at the real work of
"civilizing" the natives.

"Yes," the factor would say, blowing the smoke upward, "the Indian
should be civilized--slowly--the slower the better."

The curé would pretend to look surprised as he relit his pipe. Once the
curé asked the factor why he was so indifferent to the welfare of the
Crees, who were the real producers, without whose furs there would be no
trade, no post, no job for the ruddy-faced factor. The priest was
surprised that the factor should appear to fail to appreciate the
importance of the trapper.

"I do," said the factor.

"Then why do you not help us to lift him to the light?"

"I like him," was the laconic reply.

"Then why don't you talk to him of his soul?"

"Haven't the nerve," said the factor, shaking his head and blowing more
smoke.

The curé shrugged his shoulders.

"I say," said the florid factor, facing the pale priest. "Did you see me
decorating the old chief, Dunraven, yesterday?"

"Yes, I presume you were giving him a _pour boire_ in advance to secure
the greater catch of furs next season," said the priest, with his usual
sad yet always pleasant smile.

"A very poor guess for one so wise," said the factor. "_Attendez_," he
continued. "This post used to be closed always in winter. The tent doors
were tied fast on the inside, after which the man who tied them would
crawl out under the edge of the canvas. When winter came, the snow,
banked about, held the tent tightly down, and the Hudson's Bay business
was bottled at this point until the springless summer came to wake the
sleeping world.

"Last winter was a hard winter. The snow was deep and game scarce. One
day a Cree Indian found himself in need of tea and tobacco, and more in
need of a new pair of trousers. Passing the main tent one day, he was
sorely tempted. Dimly, through the parchment pane, he could see great
stacks of English tweeds, piles of tobacco, and boxes of tea, but the
tent was closed. He was sorely tried. He was hungry--hungry for a horn
of tea and a twist of the weed, and cold, too. Ah, _bon père_, it is
hard to withstand cold and hunger with only a canvas between one and the
comforts of life!"

"_Oui, Monsieur!_" said the curé, warmly, touched by the pathos of the
tale.

"The Indian walked away (we know that by his footprints), but returned
to the tent. The hunger and the cold had conquered. He took his
hunting-knife and slit the deerskin window and stepped inside. Then he
approached the pile of tweed trousers and selected a large pair, putting
down from the bunch of furs he had on his arms to the value of eight
skins--the price his father and grandfather had paid. He visited the
tobacco pile and helped himself, leaving four skins on the tobacco. When
he had taken tea he had all his heart desired, and having still a number
of skins left, he hung them upon a hook overhead and went away.

"When summer dawned and a clerk came to open the post, he saw the slit
in the window, and upon entering the tent saw the eight skins on the
stack of tweeds, the four skins on the tobacco, and the others on the
chest, and understood.

"Presently he saw the skins which the Indian had hung upon the hook,
took them down, counted them carefully, appraised them, and made an
entry in the Receiving Book, in which he credited
'Indian-cut-the-window, 37 skins.'

"Yesterday Dunraven came to the post and confessed.

"It was to reward him for his honesty that I gave him the fur coat and
looped the big brass baggage check in his buttonhole. _Voilà!_"

The curé crossed his legs and then recrossed them, tossed his head from
side to side, drummed upon the closed book which lay in his lap, and
showed in any number of ways, peculiar to nervous people, his amazement
at the story and his admiration for the Indian.

"Little things like that," said the factor, filling his pipe, "make me
timid when talking to a Cree about 'being good.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

When summer came, and with it the smell of flowers and the music of
running streams, the factor and his friend the curé used to take long
tramps up into the highlands, but the curé's state of health was a
handicap to him. The factor saw the telltale flush in the priest's face
and knew that the "White Plague" had marked him; yet he never allowed
the curé to know that he knew. That summer a little river steamer was
sent up from Athabasca Lake by the Chief Commissioner who sat in the
big office at Winnipeg, and upon this the factor and his friend took
many an excursion up and down the Peace. The friendship that had grown
up between the factor and the new curé formed the one slender bridge
that connected the Anglican and the Catholic camps. Even the "heathen
Crees" marvelled that these white men, praying to the same God, should
dwell so far apart. Wing You, who had wandered over from Ramsay's Camp
on the Pine River, explained it all to Dunraven: "Flenchman and
Englishman," said Wing. "No ketchem same Glod. You--Clee," continued the
wise Oriental, "an' Englishman good flend--ketchem same Josh; you call
'im We-sec-e-gea, white man call 'im God."

And so, having the same God, only called by different names, the Crees
trusted the factor, and the factor trusted the Crees. Their business
intercourse was on the basis of skin for skin, furs being the recognized
coin of the country.

"Why do you not pay them in cash, take cash in turn, and let them have
something to rattle?" asked the curé one day.

"They won't have it," said the factor. "Silver Skin, brother to
Dunraven, followed a party of prospectors out to Edmonton last fall and
tried it. He bought a pair of gloves, a red handkerchief, and a pound of
tobacco, and emptied his pockets on the counter, so that the clerk in
the shop might take out the price of the goods. According to his own
statement, the Indian put down $37.80. He took up just six-thirty-five.
When the Cree came back to God's country he showed me what he had left
and asked me to check him up. When I had told him the truth, he walked
to the edge of the river and sowed the six-thirty-five broadcast on the
broad bosom of the Peace."

And so, little by little, the patient priest got the factor's
view-point, and learned the great secret of the centuries of success
that has attended the Hudson's Bay Company in the far North.

And little by little the two men, without preaching, revealed to the
Indians and the Oriental the mystery of Life--vegetable life at
first--of death and life beyond. They showed them the miracle of the
wheat.

On the first day of June they put into a tiny grave a grain of wheat.
They told the Blind Ones that the berry would suffer death, decay, but
out of that grave would spring fresh new flags that would grow and blow,
fanned by the balmy chinook winds, and wet by the dews of heaven.

On the first day of September they harvested seventy-two stalks and
threshed from the seventy-two stalks seven thousand two hundred grains
of wheat. They showed all this to the Blind Ones and they saw. The curé
explained that we, too, would go down and die, but live again in another
life, in a fairer world.

The Cree accepted it all in absolute silence, but the Oriental, with his
large imagination, exclaimed, pointing to the tiny heap of golden grain:
"Me ketchem die, me sleep, byme by me wake up in China--seven
thousand--heap good." The curé was about to explain when the factor put
up a warning finger. "Don't cut it too fine, father," said he. "They're
getting on very well."

That was a happy summer for the two men, working together in the garden
in the cool dawn and chatting in the long twilight that lingers on the
Peace until 11 P.M. Alas! as the summer waned the factor saw
that his friend was failing fast. He could walk but a short distance now
without resting, and when the red rose of the Upper Athabasca caught the
first cold kiss of Jack Frost, the good priest took to his bed. Wing
You, the accomplished cook, did all he could to tempt him to eat and
grow strong again. Dunraven watched from day to day for an opportunity
to "do something"; but in vain. The faithful factor made daily visits to
the bedside of his sick friend. As the priest, who was still in the
springtime of his life, drew nearer to the door of death, he talked
constantly of his beloved mother in far-off France--a thing unusual for
a priest, who is supposed to burn his bridges when he leaves the world
for the church.

Often when he talked thus, the factor wanted to ask his mother's name
and learn where she lived, but always refrained.

Late in the autumn the factor was called to Edmonton for a general
conference of all the factors in the employ of the Honorable Company of
gentlemen adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay. With a heavy heart he
said good-bye to the failing priest.

When he had come within fifty miles of Chinook, on the return trip, he
was wakened at midnight by Dunraven, who had come out to ask him to
hurry up as the curé was dying, but wanted to speak to the factor first.

Without a word the Englishman got up and started forward, Dunraven
leading on the second lap of his "century."

It was past midnight again when the _voyageurs_ arrived at the river.
There was a dim light in the curé's cabin, to which Dunraven led them,
and where the Catholic bishop and an Irish priest were on watch. "So
glad to see you," said the bishop. "There is something he wants from
your place, but he will not tell Wing. Speak to him, please."

"Ah, _Monsieur_, I'm glad that you are come--I'm weary and want to be
off."

"The long _traverse_, eh?"

"_Oui, Monsieur_--_le grand voyage_."

"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked the Englishman. The dying
priest made a movement as if hunting for something. The bishop, to
assist, stepped quickly to his side. The patient gave up the quest of
whatever he was after and looked languidly at the factor. "What is it,
my son?" asked the bishop, bending low. "What would you have the factor
fetch from his house?"

"Just a small bit of cheese," said the sick man, sighing wearily.

"Now, that's odd," mused the factor, as he went off on his strange
errand.

When the Englishman returned to the cabin, the bishop and the priest
stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Upon a bench on the narrow
veranda Dunraven sat, resting after his hundred-mile tramp, and on the
opposite side of the threshold Wing You lay sleeping in his blankets, so
as to be in easy call if he were wanted.

When the two friends were alone, the sick man signalled, and the factor
drew near.

"I have a great favor--a very great favor to ask of you," the priest
began, "and then I'm off. Ah, _mon Dieu!_" he panted. "It has been hard
to hold out. Jesus has been kind."

"It's damned tough at your time, old fellow," said the factor, huskily.

"It's not my time, but His."

"Yes--well I shall be over by and by."

"And those faithful dogs--Dunraven and Wing--thank them for--"

"Sure! If _I_ can pass," the factor broke in, a little confused.

"Thank them for me--for their kindnesses--and care. Tell them to
remember the sermon of the wheat. And now, good friend," said the
priest, summoning all his strength, "_attendez_!"

He drew a thin, white hand from beneath the cover, carrying a tiny
crucifix. "I want you to send this to my beloved mother by registered
post; send it yourself, please, so that she may have it before the end
of the year. This will be my last Christmas gift to her. And the one
that comes from her to me--that is for you, to keep in remembrance of
me. And write to her--oh, so gently tell her--Jesus--help me," he
gasped, sitting upright. "She lives in Rue ---- O Mary, Mother of Jesus,"
he cried, clutching at the collar of his gown; and then he fell back
upon his bed, and his soul swept skyward like a toy balloon when the
thin thread snaps.

When the autumn sun smiled down on Chinook and the autumn wind sighed in
by the door and out by the open window where the dead priest lay, Wing
and Dunraven sat on the rude bench in the little veranda, going over it
all, each in his own tongue, but uttering never a word, yet each to the
other expressing the silence of his soul.

The factor, in the seclusion of his bachelor home, held the little cross
up and examined it critically. "To be sent to his mother, she lives in
Rue ---- Ah, if I could have been but a day sooner; yet the bishop must
know," he added, putting the crucifix carefully away.

The good people in the other world, beyond the high wall that separated
the two Christian Tribes, had been having shivers over the factor and
his fondness for the Romans; but when he volunteered to assist at the
funeral of his dead friend, _his_ people were shocked. In that scant
settlement there were not nearly enough priests to perform, properly,
the funeral services, so the factor fell in, mingling his deep full
voice with the voices of the bishop and the Irish brother, and grieving
even as they grieved.

And the Blind Ones, Wing and Dunraven, came also, paying a last tearless
tribute to the noble dead.

When it was all over and the post had settled down to routine, the
factor found in his mail, one morning, a long letter from the Chief
Commissioner at Winnipeg. It told the factor that he was in bad repute,
that the English Church bishop had been grieved, shocked, and
scandalized through seeing the hitherto respectable factor going over to
the Catholics. Not only had he fraternized with them, but had actually
taken part in their religious ceremonies. And to crown it all, he had
carried, a respectable Cree and the Chinese cook along with him.

The factor's placid face took on a deep hue, but only for a moment. He
filled his pipe, poking the tobacco down hard with his thumb. Then he
took the Commissioner's letter, twisted it up, touched it to the tiny
fire that blazed in the grate, and lighted his pipe. He smoked in
silence for a few moments and then said to himself, being alone, "Huh!"

"Ah, that from the bishop reminds me," said the factor. "I must run
over and see the other one."

When the factor had related to the French-Canadian bishop what had
passed between the dead curé and himself, the bishop seemed greatly
annoyed. "Why, man, he had no mother!"

"The devil he didn't--I beg pardon--I say he asked me to send this to
his mother. He started to tell me where she lived and then the call
came. It was the dying request of a dear friend. I beg of you tell me
his mother's name, that I may keep my word."

"It is impossible, my son. When he came into the church he left the
world. He was bound by the law of the church to give up father, mother,
sister, brother--all."

"The church be--do you mean to say--"

"Peace, my son, you do not understand," said the bishop, lifting the
little cross which he had taken gently from the factor at the beginning
of the interview.

Now the factor was not in the habit of having his requests ignored and
his judgment questioned.

"Do you mean to say you will _not_ give me the name and address of the
dead man's mother?"

"It's absolutely impossible. Moreover, I am shocked to learn that our
late brother could so far forget his duty at the very door of death. No,
son, a thousand times no," said the bishop.

"Then give me the crucifix!" demanded the factor, fiercely.

"That, too, is impossible; that is the property of the church."

"Well," said the factor, filling his pipe again and gazing into the
flickering fire, "they're all about the same. And they're all right,
too, I presume--all but Wing and Dunraven and me."




THE MYSTERIOUS SIGNAL


As Waterloo lingered in the memory of the conquered Corsican, so
Ashtabula was burned into the brain of Bradish. Out of that awful wreck
he crawled, widowed and childless. For a long time he did not realize,
for his head was hurt in that frightful crash.

By the time he was fit to leave the hospital they had told him, little
by little, that all his people had perished.

He made his way to the West, where he had a good home and houses to rent
and a hole in the hillside that was just then being changed from a
prospect to a mine.

The townspeople, who had heard of the disaster, waited for him to speak
of it--but he never did. The neighbors nodded, and he nodded to them and
passed on about his business. The old servant came and asked if she
should open the house, and he nodded. The man-servant--the woman's
husband--came also, and to him Bradish nodded; and at noon he had
luncheon alone in the fine new house that had just been completed a year
before the catastrophe.

About once a week Bradish would board the midnight express, ride down
the line for a few hundred miles, and double back.

When he went away they knew he had gone, and when he came back they knew
he had returned and that was as much as his house-keeper, his agent, or
the foreman at the mines could tell you.

One would have thought that the haunting memory of Ashtabula would have
kept him at home for the rest of his life; but he seemed to travel for
the sake of the ride only, or for no reason, as a deaf man walks on the
railroad-track.

Gradually he extended his trips, taking the Midland over into Utah; and
once or twice he had been seen on the rear end of the California Limited
as it dropped down the western water-shed of Raton Range.

One night, when the Limited was lapping up the landscape and the Desert
was rushing in under her pilot and streaking out below the last sleeper
like tape from a ticker, the danger signal sounded in the engine cab,
the air went on full, the passengers braced themselves against the seats
in front of them, or held their breath in their berths as the train came
to a dead stop.

The conductor and the head man hurried forward shouting, "What's the
matter?" to the engineer.

The driver, leaning from his lofty window, asked angrily, "What in
thunder's the matter with you? I got a stop signal from behind."

"You'd better lay off and have a good sleep," said the conductor.

"I'll put you to sleep for a minute if you ever hint that I was not
awake coming down Cañon Diablo," shouted the engineer, releasing his
brakes. As the long, heavy train glided by, the trainmen swung up like
sailors, and away went the Limited over the long bridge, five minutes to
the bad.

A month later the same thing happened on the East end. The engineer was
signalled and stopped on a curve with the point of his pilot on a high
bridge.

This time the captain and the engineer were not so brittle of temper.
They discussed the matter, calling on the fireman, who had heard
nothing, being busy in the coal-tank.

The head brakeman, crossing himself, said it was the "unseen hand" that
had been stopping the Limited on the Desert. It might be a warning, he
said, and walked briskly out on the bridge looking for dynamite, ghosts,
and things.

When he had reached the other end of the bridge, he gave the go-ahead
signal and the train pulled out. As they had lost seven minutes, it was
necessary for the conductor to report "cause of delay;" and that was the
first hint the officials of any of the Western lines had of the "unseen
hand."

Presently trainmen, swapping yarns at division stations, heard of the
mysterious signal on other roads.

The Columbia Limited, over on the Short Line, was choked with her head
over Snake River, at the very edge of Pendleton. When they had pulled in
and a fresh crew had taken the train on, the in-coming captain and his
daring driver argued over the incident and they each got ten days,--not
for the delay, but because they could not see to sign the call-book next
morning and were not fit to be seen by other people.

The next train stopped was the International Limited on the Grand Trunk,
then the Sunset by the South Coast.

The strange phenomenon became so general that officials lost patience.
One road issued an order to the effect that any engineer who heard
signals when there were no signals should get thirty days for the first
and his time for the second offence.

Within a week from the appearance of the unusual and unusually offensive
bulletin, "Baldy" Hooten heard the stop signal as he neared a little
Junction town where his line crossed another on an overhead bridge.

When the signal sounded, the fireman glanced over at the driver, who
dived through the window up to his hip pockets.

When the engine had crashed over the bridge, the driver pulled himself
into the cab again, and once more the signal. The fireman, amazed,
stared at the engineer. The latter jerked the throttle wide open; seeing
which, the stoker dropped to the deck and began feeding the hungry
furnace. Ten minutes later the Limited screamed for a regular stop, ten
miles down the line. As the driver dropped to the ground and began
touching the pins and links with the back of his bare hand, to see if
they were all cool, the head brakeman trotted forward whispering
hoarsely, "The ol' man's aboard."

The driver waved him aside with his flaring torch, and up trotted the
blue-and-gold conductor with his little silver white-light with a
frosted flue. "Why didn't you stop at Pee-Wee Junction?" he hissed.

"Is Pee-Wee a stop station?"

"On signal."

"I didn't see no sign."

"_I_ pulled the bell."

"Go on now, you ghost-dancer," said the engineer.

"You idiot!" gasped the exasperated conductor. "Don't you know the old
man's on, that he wanted to stop at Pee-Wee to meet the G.M. this
morning, that a whole engineering outfit will be idle there for half a
day, and you'll get the guillotine?"

"Whew, you have _shore_ got 'em."

"Isn't your bell working?" asked a big man who had joined the group
under the cab window.

"I think so, sir," said the driver, as he recognized the superintendent.
"Johnny, try that cab bell," he shouted, and the fire-boy sounded the
big brass gong.

"Why didn't you take it at Pee-Wee?" asked the old man, holding his
temper beautifully.

The driver lifted his torch and stared almost rudely into the face of
the official in front of him. "Why, Mr. Skidum," said he slowly, "I
didn't hear no signal."

The superintendent was blocked.

As he turned and followed the conductor into the telegraph office, the
driver, gloating in his high tower of a cab, watched him.

"He's an old darling," said he to the fire-boy, "and I'm ready to die
for him any day; but I can't stop for him in the face of bulletin 13.
Thirty days for the first offence, and then fire," he quoted, as he
opened the throttle and steamed away, four minutes late.

The old man drummed on the counter-top in the telegraph office, and then
picked up a pad and wrote a wire to his assistant:--

"Cancel general order No. 13."

The night man slipped out in the dawn and called the day man who was the
station master, explaining that the old man was at the station and
evidently unhappy.

The agent came on unusually early and endeavored to arrange for a light
engine to carry the superintendent back to the Junction.

At the end of three hours they had a freight engine that had left its
train on a siding thirty miles away and rolled up to rescue the stranded
superintendent.

Now, every railway man knows that when one thing goes wrong on a
railroad, two more mishaps are sure to follow; so, when the rescuing
crew heard over the wire that the train they had left on a siding,
having been butted by another train heading in, had started back down
grade, spilled over at the lower switch, and blocked the main line, they
began to expect something to happen at home.

However, the driver had to go when the old man was in the cab and the
G.M. with a whole army of engineers and workmen waiting for him at
Pee-Wee; so he rattled over the switches and swung out on the main line
like a man who was not afraid.

Two miles up the road the light engine, screaming through a cut,
encountered a flock of sheep, wallowed through them, left the track, and
slammed the four men on board up against the side of the cut.

Not a bone was broken, though all of them were sore shaken, the engineer
being unconscious when picked up.

"Go back and report," said the old man to the conductor. "You look after
the engineer," to the fireman.

"Will you flag west, sir?" asked the conductor.

"Yes,--I'll flag into Pee-Wee," said the old man, limping down the line.

To be sure, the superintendent was an intelligent man and not the least
bit superstitious; but he couldn't help, as he limped along, connecting
these disasters, remotely at least, with general order No. 13.

In time the "unseen signal" came to be talked of by the officials as
well as by train and enginemen. It came up finally at the annual
convention of General Passenger Agents at Chicago and was discussed by
the engineers at Atlanta, but was always ridiculed by the eastern
element.

"I helped build the U.P.," said a Buffalo man, "and I want to tell you
high-liners you can't drink squirrel-whiskey at timber-line without
seein' things nights."

That ended the discussion.

Probably no road in the country suffered from the evil effects of the
mysterious signal as did the Inter-Mountain Air Line.

The regular spotters failed to find out, and the management sent to
Chicago for a real live detective who would not be predisposed to accept
the "mystery" as such, but would do his utmost to find the cause of a
phenomenon that was not only interrupting traffic but demoralizing the
whole service.

As the express trains were almost invariably stopped at night, the
expert travelled at night and slept by day. Months passed with only two
or three "signals." These happened to be on the train opposed to the
one in which the detective was travelling at that moment. They brought
out another man, and on his first trip, taken merely to "learn the
road," the train was stopped in broad daylight. This time the stop
proved to be a lucky one; for, as the engineer let off the air and
slipped round a curve in a cañon, he found a rock as big as a box car
resting on the track.

The detective was unable to say who sounded the signal. The train crew
were overawed. They would not even discuss the matter.

With a watchman, unknown to the trainmen, on every train, the officials
hoped now to solve the mystery in a very short time.

The old engineer, McNally, who had found the rock in the cañon, had
boasted in the lodge-room, in the round-house and out, that if ever he
got the "ghost-sign," he'd let her go. Of course he was off his guard
this time. He had not expected the "spook-stop" in open day. And right
glad he was, too, that he stopped _that_ day.

A fortnight later McNally, on the night run, was going down Crooked
Creek Cañon watching the fireworks in the heavens. A black cloud hung
on a high peak, and where its sable skirts trailed along the range the
lightning leaped and flashed in sheets and chains. Above the roar of
wheels he could hear the splash, and once in a while he could feel the
spray, of new-made cataracts as the water rushed down the mountain side,
choking the culverts.

At Crag View there was, at that time, a high wooden trestle stilted up
on spliced spruce piles with the bark on.

It used to creak and crack under the engine when it was new. McNally was
nearing it now. It lay, however, just below a deep rock cut that had
been made in a mountain crag and beyond a sharp curve.

McNally leaned from his cab window, and when the lightning flashed, saw
that the cut was clear of rock and released the brakes slightly to allow
the long train to slip through the reverse curve at the bridge. Curves
cramp a train, and a smooth runner likes to feel them glide smoothly.

As the black locomotive poked her nose through the cut, the engineer
leaned out again; but the after-effect of the flash of lightning left
the world in inky blackness.

Back in a darkened corner of the drawing-room of the rearmost sleeper
the sleuth snored with both eyes and ears open.

Suddenly he saw a man, fully dressed, leap from a lower berth in the
last section and make a grab for the bell-rope. The man missed the rope;
and before he could leap again the detective landed on the back of his
neck, bearing him down. At that moment the conductor came through; and
when he saw the detective pull a pair of bracelets from his hip-pocket,
he guessed that the man underneath must be wanted, and joined in the
scuffle. In a moment the man was handcuffed, for he really offered no
resistance. As they released him he rose, and they squashed him into a
seat opposite the section from which he had leaped a moment before. The
man looked not at his captors, who still held him, but pressed his face
against the window. He saw the posts of the snow-shed passing, sprang
up, flung the two men from him as a Newfoundland would free himself from
a couple of kittens, lifted his manacled hands, leaped toward the
ceiling, and bore down on the signal-rope.

The conductor, in the excitement, yelled at the man, bringing the rear
brakeman from the smoking-room, followed by the black boy bearing a
shoe-brush.

Once more they bore the bad man down, and then the conductor grabbed the
rope and signalled the engineer ahead.

Men leaped from their berths, and women showed white faces between the
closely drawn curtains.

Once more the conductor pulled the bell, but the train stood still.

One of the passengers picked up the man's hand-grip that had fallen from
his berth, and found that the card held in the leather tag read:

  "JOHN BRADISH."

"Go forward," shouted the conductor to the rear brakeman, "and get 'em
out of here,--tell McNally we've got the ghost."

The detective released his hold on his captive, and the man sank limp in
the corner seat.

The company's surgeon, who happened to be on the car, came over and
examined the prisoner. The man had collapsed completely.

When the doctor had revived the handcuffed passenger and got him to sit
up and speak, the porter, wild-eyed, burst in and shouted: "De bridge is
gone."

A death-like hush held the occupants of the car.

"De hangin' bridge is sho' gone," repeated the panting porter, "an' de
engine, wi' McNally in de cab's crouchin' on de bank, like a black cat
on a well-cu'b. De watah's roahin' in de deep gorge, and if she drap she
gwine drag--"

The doctor clapped his hand over the frightened darky's mouth, and the
detective butted him out to the smoking-room.

The conductor explained that the porter was crazy, and so averted a
panic.

The detective came back and faced the doctor. "Take off the irons," said
the surgeon, and the detective unlocked the handcuffs.

Now the doctor, in his suave, sympathetic way, began to question
Bradish; and Bradish began to unravel the mystery, pausing now and again
to rest, for the ordeal through which he had just passed had been a
great mental and nervous strain.

He began by relating the Ashtabula accident that had left him wifeless
and childless, and, as the story progressed, seemed to find infinite
relief in relating the sad tale of his lonely life. It was like a
confession. Moreover, he had kept the secret so long locked in his
troubled breast that it was good to pour it out.

The doctor sat directly in front of the narrator, the detective beside
him, while interested passengers hung over the backs of seats and
blocked the narrow aisle. Women, with faces still blanched, sat up in
bed listening breathlessly to the strange story of John Bradish.

Shortly after returning to their old home, he related, he was awakened
one night by the voice of his wife calling in agonized tones, "John!
John!" precisely as she had cried to him through the smoke and steam and
twisted débris at Ashtabula. He leaped from his bed, heard a mighty
roar, saw a great light flash on his window, and the midnight express
crashed by.

To be sure it was only a dream, he said to himself, intensified by the
roar of the approaching train; and yet he could sleep no more that
night. Try as he would, he could not forget it; and soon he realized
that a growing desire to travel was coming upon him. In two or three
days' time this desire had become irresistible. He boarded the midnight
train and took a ride. But this did not cure him. In fact, the more he
travelled the more he wanted to travel. Soon after this he discovered
that he had acquired another habit. He wanted to stop the train. Against
these inclinations he had struggled, but to no purpose. Once, when he
felt that he must take a trip, he undressed and went to bed. He fell
asleep, and slept soundly until he heard the whistle of the midnight
train. Instantly he was out of bed, and by the time they had changed
engines he was at the station ready to go.

The mania for stopping trains had been equally irresistible. He would
bite his lips, his fingers, but he would also stop the train.

The moment the mischief (for such it was, in nearly every instance) was
done, he would suffer greatly in dread of being found out. But to-night,
as on the occasion of the daylight stop in the cañon, he had no warning,
no opportunity to check himself, nor any desire to do so. In each
instance he had heard, dozing in the day-coach and sleeping soundly in
his berth, the voice cry: "John! John!" and instantly his brain was
ablaze with the light of burning wreckage. In the cañon he had only
felt, indefinitely, the danger ahead; but to-night he saw the bridge
swept away, and the dark gorge that yawned in front of them. Instantly
upon hearing the cry that woke him, he saw it all.

"When I realized that the train was still moving, that my first effort
to stop had failed, I flung these strong men from me with the greatest
ease. I'm sure I should have burst those steel bands that bound my
wrists if it had been necessary.

"Thank God it's all over. I feel now that I am cured,--that I can settle
down contented."

The man drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead,
keeping his face to the window for a long time.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the conductor went forward, he found that it was as the porter had
pictured. The high bridge had been carried away by a water-spout; and on
the edge of the opening the engine trembled, her pilot pointing out
over the black abyss.

McNally, having driven his fireman from the deck, stood in the cab
gripping the air-lever and watching the pump. At that time we used what
is technically known as "straight air"; so that if the pump stopped the
air played out.

The conductor ordered the passengers to leave the train.

The rain had ceased, but the lightning was still playing about the
summit of the range, and when it flashed, those who had gone forward saw
McNally standing at his open window, looking as grand and heroic as the
captain on the bridge of his sinking ship.

A nervous and somewhat thoughtless person came close under the cab to
ask the engineer why he didn't back up.

There was no answer. McNally thought it must be obvious to a man with
the intelligence of an oyster, that to release the brakes would be to
let the heavy train shove him over the bank, even if his engine had the
power to back up, which she had not.

The trainmen were working quietly, but very effectively, unloading. The
day coaches had been emptied, the hand-brakes set, and all the wheels
blocked with links and pins and stones, when the link between the engine
and the mail-car snapped and the engine moved forward.

McNally heard the snap and felt her going, leaped from the window,
caught and held a scrub cedar that grew in a rock crevice, and saw his
black steed plunge down the dark cañon, a sheer two thousand feet.

McNally had been holding her in the back motion with steam in her
cylinders; and now, when she leaped out into space, her throttle flew
wide, a knot in the whistle-rope caught in the throttle, opening the
whistle-valve as well. Down, down she plunged,--her wheels whirling in
mid-air, a solid stream of fire escaping from her quivering stack, and
from her throat a shriek that almost froze the blood in the veins of the
onlookers. Fainter and farther came the cry, until at last the wild
waters caught her, held her, hushed her, and smothered out her life.




CHASING THE WHITE MAIL


Over the walnuts and wine, as they say in Fifth Avenue, the gray-haired
gentleman and I lingered long after the last of the diners had left the
café car. One by one the lights were lowered. Some of the table-stewards
had removed their duck and donned their street clothes. The shades were
closely drawn, so that people could not peep in when the train was
standing. The chief steward was swinging his punch on his finger and
yawning. My venerable friend, who was a veritable author's angel, was a
retired railway president with plenty of time to talk.

"We had, on the Vandalia," he began after lighting a fresh cigar, "a
dare-devil driver named Hubbard--'Yank' Hubbard they called him. He was
a first-class mechanic, sober and industrious, but notoriously reckless,
though he had never had a wreck. The Superintendent of Motive Power had
selected him for the post of master-mechanic at Effingham, but I had
held him up on account of his bad reputation as a wild rider.

"We had been having a lot of trouble with California fruit
trains,--delays, wrecks, cars looted while in the ditch,--and I had made
the delay of a fruit train almost a capital offence. The bulletin was, I
presume, rather severe, and the enginemen and conductors were not taking
it very well.

"One night the White Mail was standing at the station at East St. Louis
(that was before the first bridge was built) loading to leave. My car
was on behind, and I was walking up and down having a good smoke. As I
turned near the engine, I stopped to watch the driver of the White Mail
pour oil in the shallow holes on the link-lifters without wasting a
drop. He was on the opposite side of the engine, and I could see only
his flitting, flickering torch and the dipping, bobbing spout of his
oiler.

"A man, manifestly another engineer, came up. The Mail driver lifted his
torch and said, 'Hello, Yank,' to which the new-comer made no direct
response. He seemed to have something on his mind. 'What are you out
on?' asked the engineer, glancing at the other's overalls. 'Fast
freight--perishable--must make time--no excuse will be taken,' he
snapped, quoting and misquoting from my severe circular. 'Who's in that
Kaskaskia?' he asked, stepping up close to the man with the torch.

"'The ol' man,' said the engineer.

"'No! ol' man, eh? Well! I'll give him a canter for his currency this
trip,' said Yank, gloating. 'I'll follow him like a scandal; I'll stay
with him this night like the odor of a hot box. Say, Jimmie,' he
laughed, 'when that tintype of yours begins to lay down on you, just
bear in mind that my pilot is under the ol' man's rear brake-beam, and
that the headlight of the 99 is haunting him.'

"'Don't get gay, now,' said the engineer of the White Mail.

"'Oh, I'll make him think California fruit is not all that's perishable
on the road to-night,' said Yank, hurrying away to the round-house.

"Just as we were about to pull out, our engineer, who was brother to
Yank, found a broken frame and was obliged to go to the house for
another locomotive. We were an hour late when we left that night,
carrying signals for the fast freight. As we left the limits of the
yard, Hubbard's headlight swung out on the main line, picked up two
slender shafts of silver, and shot them under our rear end. The first
eight or ten miles were nearly level. I sat and watched the headlight of
the fast freight. He seemed to be keeping his interval until we hit the
hill at Collinsville. There was hard pounding then for him for five or
six miles. Just as the Kaskaskia dropped from the ridge between the east
and west Silver Creek, the haunting light swept round the curve at
Hagler's tank. I thought he must surely take water here; but he plunged
on down the hill, coming to the surface a few minutes later on the high
prairie east of Saint Jacobs.

"Highland, thirty miles out, was our first stop. We took water there;
and before we could get away from the tank, Hubbard had his twin shafts
of silver under my car. We got a good start here, but our catch engine
proved to be badly coaled and a poor steamer. Up to this time she had
done fairly well, but after the first two hours she began to lose.
Seeing no more of the freight train, I turned in, not a little pleased
to think that Mr. Yank's headlight would not haunt me again that trip. I
fell asleep, but woke again when the train stopped, probably at
Vandalia. I had just begun to doze again when our engine let out a
frightful scream for brakes. I knew what that meant,--Hubbard was behind
us. I let my shade go up, and saw the light of the freight train shining
past me and lighting up the water-tank. I was getting a bit nervous,
when I felt our train pulling out.

"Of course Hubbard had to water again; but as he had only fifteen loads,
and a bigger tank, he could go as far as the Mail could without
stopping. Moreover, we were bound to stop at county seats; and as often
as we did so we had the life scared out of us, for there was not an
air-brake freight car on the system at that time. What a night that must
have been for the freight crew! They were on top constantly, but I
believe the beggars enjoyed it all. Any conductor but Jim Lawn would
have stopped and reported the engineer at the first telegraph station.
Still, I have always had an idea that the train-master was tacitly in
the conspiracy, for his bulletin had been a hot one delivered orally by
the Superintendent, whom I had seen personally.

"Well, along about midnight Hubbard's headlight got so close, and kept
so close, that I could not sleep. His brother, who was pulling the Mail,
avoided whistling him down; for when he did he only showed that there
_was_ danger, and published his bad brother's recklessness. The result
was that when the Mail screamed I invariably braced myself. I don't
believe I should have stood it, only I felt it would all be over in
another hour; for we should lose Yank at Effingham, the end of the
freight's division. It happened, however, that there was no one to
relieve him, or no engine rather; and Yank went through to Terre Haute.
I was sorry, but I hated to show the white feather. I knew our fresh
engine would lose him, with his tired fireman and dirty fire. Once or
twice I saw his lamp, but at Longpoint we lost him for good. I went to
bed again, but I could not sleep. I used to boast that I could sleep in
a boiler-maker's shop; but the long dread of that fellow's pilot had
unnerved me. I had wild, distressing dreams.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The next morning, when I got to my office, I found a column of news cut
from a morning paper. It had the usual scare-head, and began by
announcing that the White Mail, with General Manager Blank's car
Kaskaskia, came in on time, carrying signals for a freight train. The
second section had not arrived, 'as we go to press.' I think I swore
softly at that point. Then I read on, for there was a lot more. It
seemed, the paper stated, that a gang of highwaymen had planned to rob
the Mail at Longpoint, which had come to be regarded as a regular robber
station. One of the robbers, being familiar with train rules, saw the
signal lights on the Mail and mistook it for a special, which is often
run as first section of a fast train, and they let it pass. They flagged
the freight train, and one of the robbers, who was doubtless new at the
business, caught the passing engine and climbed into the cab. The
engineer, seeing the man's masked face at his elbow, struck it a fearful
blow with his great fist. The amateur desperado sank to the floor, his
big, murderous gun rattling on the iron plate of the coal-deck. Yank,
the engineer, grabbed the gun, whistled off-brakes, and opened the
throttle. The sudden lurch forward proved too much for a weak link, and
the train parted, leaving the rest of the robbers and the train crew to
fight it out. As soon as the engineer discovered that the train had
parted, he slowed down and stopped.

"When he had picketed the highwayman out on the tank-deck with a piece
of bell-cord, one end of which was fixed to the fellow's left foot and
the other to the whistle lever, Yank set his fireman, with a white light
and the robber's gun, on the rear car and flagged back to the rescue.
The robbers, seeing the blunder they had made, took a few parting shots
at the trainmen on the top of the train, mounted their horses, and rode
away.

"When the train had coupled up again, they pulled on up to the next
station, where the conductor reported the cause of delay, and from which
station the account of the attempted robbery had been wired.

"I put the paper down and walked over to a window that overlooked the
yards. The second section of the White Mail was coming in. As the engine
rolled past, Yank looked up; and there was a devilish grin on his black
face. The fireman was sitting on the fireman's seat, the gun across his
lap. A young fellow, wearing a long black coat, a bell-rope, and a
scared look, was sweeping up the deck.

"When I returned to my desk, the Superintendent of Motive Power was
standing near it. When I sat down, he spread a paper before me. I
glanced at it and recognized Yank Hubbard's appointment to the post of
master-mechanic at Effingham.

"I dipped a pen in the ink-well and wrote across it in red, 'O--K.'"




OPPRESSING THE OPPRESSOR


"Is this the President's office?"

"Yes, sir."

"Can I see the President?"

"Yes,--I'm the President."

The visitor placed one big boot in a chair, hung his soft hat on his
knee, dropped his elbow on the hat, let his chin fall in the hollow of
his hand, and waited.

The President of the Santa Fé, leaning over a flat-topped table, wrote
leisurely. When he had finished, he turned a kindly face to the visitor
and asked what could be done.

"My name's Jones."

"Yes?"

"I presume you know about me,--Buffalo Jones, of Garden City."

"Well," began the President, "I know a lot of Joneses, but where is
Garden City?"

"Down the road a piece, 'bout half-way between Wakefield and Turner's
Tank. I want you folks to put in a switch there,--that's what I've come
about. I'd like to have it in this week."

"Anybody living at Garden City?"

"Yes, all that's there's livin'."

"About how many?"

"One and a half when I'm away,--Swede and Injin."

The President of the Santa Fé smiled and rolled his lead pencil between
the palms of his hands. Mr. Jones watched him and pitied him, as one
watches and pities a child who is fooling with firearms. "He don't know
I'm loaded," thought Jones.

"Well," said the President, "when you get your town started so that
there will be some prospect of getting a little business, we shall be
only too glad to put in a spur for you."

Jones had been looking out through an open window, watching the
law-makers of Kansas going up the wide steps of the State House. The
fellows from the farm climbed, the town fellows ran up the steps.

"Spur!" said Jones, wheeling around from the window and walking toward
the President's desk, "I don't want no spur; I want a side track
that'll hold fifty cars, and I want it this week,--see?"

"Now look here, Mr. Jones, this is sheer nonsense. We get wind at
Wakefield and water at Turner's Tank; now, what excuse is there for
putting in a siding half-way between these places?"

Again Mr. Jones, rubbing the point of his chin with the ball of his
thumb, gave the President a pitying glance.

"Say!" said Jones, resting the points of his long fingers on the table,
"I'm goin' to build a town. You're goin' to build a side track. I've
already set aside ten acres of land for you, for depot and yards. This
land will cost you fifty dollars per, _now_. If I have to come back
about this side track, it'll cost you a hundred. Now, Mr. President, I
wish you good-mornin'."

At the door Jones paused and looked back. "Any time this week will do;
good-mornin'."

The President smiled and turned to his desk. Presently he smiled again;
then he forgot all about Mr. Jones and the new town, and went on with
his work.

Mr. Jones went down and out and over to the House to watch the men make
laws.

       *       *       *       *       *

In nearly every community, about every capital, State or National, you
will find men who are capable of being influenced. This is especially
true of new communities through which a railway is being built. It has
always been so, and will be, so long as time expires. I mean the time of
an annual pass. It is not surprising, then, that in Kansas at that time,
the Grasshopper period,--before prohibition, Mrs. Nation, and religious
dailies,--the company had its friends, and that Mr. Jones, an honest
farmer with money to spend, had his.

Two or three days after the interview with Mr. Jones, the President's
"friend" came over to the railroad building. He came in quietly and
seated himself near the President, as a doctor enters a sick-room or a
lawyer a prison cell. "I know you don't want me," he seemed to say, "but
you need me."

When his victim had put down his pen, the politician asked, "Have you
seen Buffalo Jones?"

The President said he had seen the gentleman.

"I think it would be a good scheme to give him what he wants," said the
Honorable member of the State legislature.

But the President could not agree with his friend; and at the end of
half an hour, the Honorable member went away not altogether satisfied.
He did not relish the idea of the President trying to run the road
without his assistance. One of the chief excuses for his presence on
earth and in the State legislature was "to take care of the road." Now,
he had gotten up early in order to see the President without being seen,
and the President had waved him aside. "Well," he said, "I'll let Jones
have the field to-day."

       *       *       *       *       *

Two days later, when the President opened his desk, he found a brief
note from his confidential assistant,--not the Honorable one, but an
ordinary man who worked for the company for a stated salary. The note
read:--

"If Buffalo Jones calls to-day please see him.--I am leaving town.
G.O.M."

But Buffalo did not call.

Presently the General Manager came in, and when he was leaving the room
he turned and asked, "Have you seen Jones?"

"Yes," said the President of the Santa Fé, "I've seen Jones."

The General Manager was glad, for that took the matter from his hands
and took the responsibility from his drooping shoulders.

About the time the President got his mind fixed upon the affairs of the
road again, Colonel Holiday came in. Like the Honorable gentleman, he
too entered by the private door unannounced; for he was the Father of
the Santa Fé. Placing his high hat top side down on the table, the
Colonel folded his hands over the golden head of his cane and inquired
of the President if he had seen Jones.

The President assured the Colonel, who in addition to being the Father
of the road was a director.

The Colonel picked up his hat and went out, feeling considerable relief:
for _his_ friend in the State Senate had informed him at the Ananias
Club on the previous evening, that Jones was going to make trouble for
the road. The Colonel knew that a good, virtuous man with money to spend
could make trouble for anything or anybody, working quietly and
unobtrusively among the equally virtuous members of the State
legislature. The Colonel had been a member of that august body.

In a little while the General Manager came back; and with him came
O'Marity, the road-master.

"I thought you said you had seen Jones," the General Manager began.

Now the President, who was never known to be really angry, wheeled on
his revolving chair.

"I--_have_--seen Jones."

"Well, O'Marity says Jones has not been 'seen.' His friend, who comes
down from Atchison every Sunday night on O'Marity's hand-car, has been
good enough to tell O'Marity just what has been going on in the House.
There must be some mistake. It seems to me that if this man Jones had
been seen properly, he would subside. What's the matter with your
friend--Ah, here comes the Honorable gentleman now."

The President beckoned with his index finger and his friend came in.
Looking him in the eye, the President asked in a stage whisper: "Have
you--seen--Jones?"

"No, sir," said the Honorable gentleman. "I had no authority to see
him."

"It's damphunny," said O'Marity, "if the President 'ave seen 'im, 'e
don't quit."

"I certainly saw a man called Jones,--Buffalo Jones of Garden City. He
wanted a side track put in half-way between Wakefield and Turner's
Tank."

"And you told him, 'Certainly, we'll do it at once,'" said the General
Manager.

"No," the President replied, "I told him we would not do it at once,
because there was no business or prospect of business to justify the
expense."

"Ah--h," said the Manager.

O'Marity whistled softly.

The Honorable gentleman smiled, and looked out through the open window
to where the members of the State legislature were going up the broad
steps to the State House.

"Mr. Rong," the Manager began, "it is all a horrible mistake. You have
never 'seen' Jones. Not in the sense that we mean. When you see a
politician or a man who herds with politicians, he is supposed to be
yours,--you are supposed to have acquired a sort of interest in him,--an
interest that is valued so long as the individual is in sight. You are
entitled to his support and influence, up to, and including the date on
which your influence expires." All the time the Manager kept jerking his
thumb toward the window that held the Honorable gentleman, using the
President's friend as a living example of what he was trying to explain.

"Is Jones a member?"

"No, Mr. Rong, but he controls a few members. It is easier, you
understand, to acquire a drove of steers by buying a bunch than by
picking them up here and there, one at a time."

"I protest," said the Honorable member, "against the reference to
members of the legislature as 'cattle.'"

Neither of the railway men appeared to hear the protest.

"I think I understand now," said the President. "And I wish, Robson, you
would take this matter in hand. I confess that I have no stomach for
such work."

"Very well," said the Manager. "Please instruct your--your--" and he
jerked his thumb toward the Honorable gentleman--"your _friend_ to send
Jones to my office."

The Honorable gentleman went white and then flushed red, but he waited
for no further orders. As he strode towards the door, Robson, with a
smooth, unruffled brow, but with a cold smile playing over his handsome
face, with mock courtesy and a wide sweep of his open hand, waved the
visitor through the open door.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Mr. Jones wishes to see you," said the chief clerk.

"Oh, certainly--show Mr. Jones--Ah, good-morning, Mr. Jones, glad to see
you. How's Garden City? Going to let us in on the ground floor, Mr. Rong
tells me. Here, now, fire up; take this big chair and tell me all about
your new town."

Jones took a cigar cautiously from the box. When the Manager offered him
a match he lighted up gingerly, as though he expected the thing to blow
up.

"Now, Mr. Jones, as I understand it, you want a side track put in at
once. The matter of depot and other buildings will wait, but I want you
to promise to let us have at least ten acres of ground. Perhaps it would
be better to transfer that to us at once. I'll see" (the Manager pressed
a button). "Send the chief engineer to me, George," as the chief clerk
looked in.

All this time Jones smoked little short puffs, eyeing the Manager and
his own cigar. When the chief engineer came in he was introduced to Mr.
Jones, the man who was going to give Kansas the highest boom she had
ever had.

While Jones stood in open-mouthed amazement, the Manager instructed the
engineer to go to Garden City when it would suit Mr. Jones, lay out a
siding that would hold fifty loads, and complete the job at the earliest
possible moment.

"By the way, Mr. Jones, have you got transportation over our line?"

Mr. Jones managed to gasp the one word, "No."

"Buz-z-zz," went the bell. "George, make out an annual for Mr.
Jones,--Comp. G.M."

Jones steadied himself by resting an elbow on the top of the Manager's
desk. The chief engineer was writing in a little note-book.

"Now, Mr. Jones--ah, your cigar's out!--how much is this ten acres to
cost us?--a thousand dollars, I believe you told Mr. Rong."

"Yes, I did tell him that; but if this is straight and no jolly, it
ain't goin' to cost you a cent."

"Well, that's a _great_ deal better than most towns treat us," said the
Manager. "Now, Mr. Jones, you will have to excuse me; I have some
business with the President. Don't fail to look in on me when you come
to town; and rest assured that the Santa Fé will leave nothing undone
that might help your enterprise."

With a hearty handshake the Manager, usually a little frigid and remote,
passed out, leaving Mr. Jones to the tender mercies of the chief
engineer.

Up to this point there is nothing unusual in this story. The remarkable
part is the fact that the building of a side track in an open plain
turned out to be good business. In a year's time there was a neat
station and more sidings. The town boomed with a rapidity that amazed
even the boomers. To be sure, it had its relapses; but still, if you
look from the window as the California Limited crashes by, you will see
a pretty little town when you reach the point on the time-table called

        "Garden City."




THE IRON HORSE AND THE TROLLEY


I

Two prospectors had three claims in a new camp in British Columbia, but
they had not the $7.50 to pay for having them recorded. They told their
story to Colonel Topping, author of "The Yellowstone Park," and the
Colonel advanced the necessary amount. In time the prospectors returned
$5.00 of the loan, and gave the Colonel one of the claims for the
balance, but more for his kindness to them; for they reckoned it a bully
good prospect. Because they considered it the best claim in the camp,
they called it Le Roi. Subsequently the Colonel sold this "King," that
had cost him $2.50, for $30,000.00.

The new owners of Le Roi stocked the claim; and for the following two or
three years, when a man owed a debt that he was unwilling to pay, he
paid it in Le Roi stock. If he felt like backing a doubtful horse, he
put up a handful of mining stock to punish the winner. There is in the
history of this interesting mine a story of a man swapping a lot of Le
Roi stock for a burro. The former owner of the donkey took the stock and
the man it came from into court, declaring that the paper was worthless,
and that he had been buncoed. As late as 1894, a man who ran a
restaurant offered 40,000 shares of Le Roi stock for four barrels of
Canadian whiskey; but the whiskey man would not trade that way.

In the meantime, however, men were working in the mine; and now they
began to ship ore. It was worth $27.00 a ton, and the stock became
valuable. Scattered over the Northwest were 500,000 shares that were
worth $500,000.00. Nearly all the men who had put money into the
enterprise were Yankees,--mining men from Spokane, just over the border.
These men began now to pick up all the stray shares that could be found;
and in a little while eight-tenths of the shares were held by men living
south of the line. At Northport, in Washington, they built one of the
finest smelters in the Northwest, hauled their ore over there, and
smelted it. The ore was rich in gold and copper. They put in a 300
horse-power hoisting-engine and a 40-drill air-compressor,--the largest
in Canada,--taking all the money for these improvements out of the mine.
The thing was a success, and news of it ran down to Chicago. A party of
men with money started for the new gold fields, but as they were buying
tickets three men rushed in and took tickets for Seattle. These were
mining men; and those who had bought only to British Columbia cashed in,
asked for transportation to the coast, and followed the crowd to the
Klondike.

In that way Le Roi for the moment was forgotten.


II

The Lieutenant-Governor of the Northwest Territories, who had been a
journalist and had a nose for news, heard of the new camp. All the while
men were rushing to the Klondike, for it is the nature of man to go from
home for a thing that he might secure under his own vine.

The Governor visited the new camp. A man named Ross Thompson had staked
out a town at the foot of Le Roi dump and called it Rossland. The
Governor put men to work quietly in the mine and then went back to his
plank palace at Regina, capital of the Northwest Territories,--to a
capital that looked for all the world like a Kansas frontier town that
had just ceased to be the county seat. Here for months he waited,
watching the "Imperial Limited" cross the prairie, receiving delegations
of half-breeds and an occasional report from one of the common miners in
Le Roi. If a capitalist came seeking a soft place to invest, the
Governor pointed to the West-bound Limited and whispered in the
stranger's ear. To all letters of inquiry coming from Ottawa or
England,--letters from men who wanted to be told where to dig for
gold,--he answered, "Klondike."

By and by the Governor went to Rossland again. The mine, of which he
owned not a single share of stock, was still producing. When he left
Rossland he knew all about the lower workings, the value and extent of
the ore body.

By this time nearly all the Le Roi shares were held by Spokane people.
The Governor, having arranged with a wealthy English syndicate, was in
a position to buy the mine; but the owners did not seem anxious to sell.
Eventually, however, when he was able to offer them an average of $7.50
for shares that had cost the holders but from ten to sixty cents a
share, about half of them were willing to sell; the balance were not.
Now the Governor cared nothing for this "balance" so long as he could
secure a majority,--a controlling interest in the mine,--for the English
would have it in no other way. A few thousand scattering shares he had
already picked up, and now, from the faction who were willing to sell,
he secured an option on 242,000 shares, which, together with the odd
shares already secured, would put his friends in control of the
property.

As news of the proposed sale got out, the gorge that was yawning between
the two factions grew wider.

Finally, when the day arrived for the transfer to be made, the faction
opposed to the sale prepared to make trouble for those who were selling,
to prevent the moving of the seal of the company to Canada--in short, to
stop the sale. They did not go with guns to the secretary and keeper of
the seal and say, "Bide where ye be"; but they went into court and swore
out warrants for the arrest of the secretary and those of the directors
who favored the sale, charging them with conspiracy.

It was midnight in Spokane.

A black locomotive, hitched to a dark day-coach, stood in front of the
Great Northern station. The dim light of the gauge lamp showed two
nodding figures in the cab. Out on the platform a man walked up and
down, keeping an eye on the engine, that was to cost him a cool $1000.00
for a hundred-mile run. Presently a man with his coat-collar about his
ears stepped up into the gangway, shook the driver, and asked him where
he was going.

"Goin' to sleep."

The man would not be denied, however, and when he became too pressing,
the driver got up and explained that the cab of his engine was his
castle, and made a move with his right foot.

"Hold," cried his tormentor, "do you know that you are about to lay
violent hands upon an officer o' the law?"

"No," said the engineer, "but I'll lay a violent foot up agin the
crown-sheet o' your trousers if you don't jump."

The man jumped.

Now the chief despatcher came from the station, stole along the shadow
side of the car, and spoke to the man who had ordered the train.

A deputy sheriff climbed up on the rear end of the special, tried the
door, shaded his eyes, and endeavored to look into the car.

"Have you the running orders?" asked the man who was paying for the
entertainment.

"Yes."

"Let her go, then."

All this was in a low whisper; and now the despatcher climbed up on the
fireman's side and pressed a bit of crumpled tissue-paper into the
driver's hand.

"Pull out over the switches slowly, and when you are clear of the yards
read your orders an' fly."

The driver opened the throttle gently, the big wheels began to revolve,
and the next moment the sheriff and one of his deputies boarded the
engine. They demanded to know where that train was bound for.

"The train," said the driver, tugging at the throttle, "is back there at
the station. I'm goin' to the round-house."

When the sheriff, glancing back, saw that the coach had been cut off, he
swung himself down.

"They've gi'n it up," said the deputy.

"I reckon--what's that?" said the sheriff. It was the wild, long whistle
of the lone black engine just leaving the yards. The two officers faced
each other and stood listening to the flutter of the straight stack of
the black racer as she responded to the touch of the erstwhile drowsy
driver, who was at that moment laughing at the high sheriff, and who
would return to tell of it, and gloat in the streets of Spokane.

The sheriff knew that three of the men for whom he held warrants were at
Hillier, seven miles on the way to Canada. This engine, then, had been
sent to pick them up and bear them away over the border. An electric
line paralleled the steam way to Hillier, and now the sheriff boarded a
trolley and set sail to capture the engine, leaving one deputy to guard
the special car.

By the time the engineer got the water worked out of his cylinders, the
trolley was creeping up beside his tank. He saw the flash from the wire
above as the car, nodding and dipping like a light boat in the wake of a
ferry, shot beneath the cross-wires, and knew instantly that she was
after him.

An electric car would not be ploughing through the gloom at that rate,
without a ray of light, merely for the fun of the thing. A smile of
contempt curled the lip of the driver as he cut the reverse-lever back
to the first notch, put on the injector, and opened the throttle yet a
little wider.

The two machines were running almost neck and neck now. The trolley
cried, hissed, and spat fire in her mad effort to pass the locomotive. A
few stray sparks went out of the engine-stack, and fell upon the roof of
the racing car. At intervals of half a minute the fireman opened the
furnace door; and by the flare of light from the white-hot fire-box the
engine-driver could see the men on the teetering trolley,--the
motor-man, the conductor, the sheriff, and his deputy.

Slowly now the black flier began to slip away from the electric machine.

The driver, smiling across the glare of the furnace door at his silent,
sooty companion, touched the throttle again; and the great engine drew
away from the trolley, as a jack-rabbit who has been fooling with a
yellow dog passes swiftly out of reach of his silly yelp.

Now the men on the trolley heard the wild, triumphant scream of the iron
horse whistling for Hillier. The three directors of Le Roi had been
warned by wire, and were waiting, ready to board the engine.

The big wheels had scarcely stopped revolving when the men began to get
on. They had barely begun to turn again when the trolley dashed into
Hillier. The sheriff leaped to the ground and came running for the
engine. The wheels slipped; and each passing second brought the mighty
hand of the law, now outstretched, still nearer to the tail of the tank.
She was moving now, but the sheriff was doing better. Ten feet separated
the pursued and the pursuer. She slipped again, and the sheriff caught
the corner of the engine-tank. By this time the driver had got the sand
running; and now, as the wheels held the rail, the big engine bounded
forward, almost shaking the sheriff loose. With each turn of the wheels
the speed was increasing. The sheriff held on; and in three or four
seconds he was taking only about two steps between telegraph poles, and
then--he let go.


III

While the locomotive and the trolley were racing across the country the
Governor, who was engineering it all, invested another thousand. He
ordered another engine, and when she backed onto the coach the deputy
sheriff told the driver that he must not leave the station. The engineer
held his torch high above his head, looked the deputy over, and then
went on oiling his engine. In the meantime the Governor had stored his
friends away in the dark coach, including the secretary with the
company's great seal. Now the deputy became uneasy.

He dared not leave the train to send a wire to his chief at Hillier, for
the sheriff had said, "Keep your eye on the car."

The despatcher, whose only interest in the matter was to run the trains
and earn money for his employer, having given written and verbal orders
to the engineer, watched his chance and, when the sheriff was pounding
on the rear door, dodged in at the front, signalling with the bell-rope
to the driver to go. Frantically now the deputy beat upon the rear door
of the car, but the men within only laughed as the wheels rattled over
the last switch and left the lights of Spokane far behind.

Away they went over a new and crooked track, the sand and cinders
sucking in round the tail of the train to torment the luckless deputy.
Away over hills and rills, past Hillier, where the sheriff still stood
staring down the darkness after the vanishing engine; over switches and
through the Seven Devils, while the unhappy deputy hung to the rear
railing with one hand and crossed himself.

Each passing moment brought the racing train still nearer the
border,--to that invisible line that marks the end of Yankeeland and the
beginning of the British possessions. The sheriff knew this and beat
loudly upon the car door with an iron gun. The Governor let the sash
fall at the top of the door and spoke, or rather yelled, to the deputy.

To the Governor's amazement, the sheriff pushed the bottle aside. Dry
and dusty as he was, he would not drink. He was too mad to swallow. He
poked his head into the dark coach and ordered the whole party to
surrender.

"Just say what you want," said a voice in the gloom, "and we'll pass it
out to you."

The sheriff became busy with some curves and reverse curves now, and
made no reply.

Presently the Governor came to the window in the rear door again and
called up the sheriff.

"We are now nearing the border," he said to the man on the platform.
"They won't know you over there. Here you stand for law and order, and I
respect you, though I don't care to meet you personally; but over the
border you'll only stand for your sentence,--two years for carrying a
cannon on your hip,--and then they'll take you away to prison."

The sheriff made no answer.

"Now we're going to slow down at the line to about twenty miles an hour,
more or less; and if you'll take a little friendly advice, you'll fall
off."

The train was still running at a furious pace. The whistle sounded,--one
long, wild scream,--and the speed of the train slackened.

"Here you are," the Governor called, and the sheriff stood on the lower
step.

The door opened and the Governor stepped out on the platform, followed
by his companions.

"I arrest you," the sheriff shouted, "all of you."

"But you can't,--you're in British Columbia," the men laughed.

"Let go, now," said the Governor, and a moment later the deputy picked
himself up and limped back over the border.




IN THE BLACK CAÑON


One Christmas, at least, will live long in the memory of the men and
women who hung up their stockings at La Veta Hotel in Gunnison in 18--.
Ah, those were the best days of Colorado. Then folks were brave and true
to the traditions of Red Hoss Mountain, when "money flowed like liquor,"
and coal strikes didn't matter, for the people all had something to
burn.

The Yankee proprietor of the dining-stations on this mountain line had
made them as famous almost as the Harvey houses on the Santa Fé were;
which praise is pardonable, since the Limited train with its café car
has closed them all.

But the best of the bunch was La Veta, and the presiding genius was Nora
O'Neal, the lady manager. Many an R. & W. excursionist reading this
story will recall her smile, her great gray eyes, her heaps of dark
brown hair, and the mountain trout that her tables held.

It will be remembered that at that time the main lines of the Rio Grande
lay by the banks of the Gunnison, through the Black Cañon, over Cerro
Summit, and down the Uncompaghre and the Grande to Grand Junction, the
gate of the Utah Desert.

John Cassidy was an express messenger whose run was over this route and
whose heart and its secret were in the keeping of Nora O'Neal.

From day to day, from week to week, he had waited her answer, which was
to come to him "by Christmas."

And now, as only two days remained, he dreaded it, as he had hoped and
prayed for it since the aspen leaves began to gather their gold. He knew
by the troubled look she wore when off her guard that Nora was thinking.

       *       *       *       *       *

Most of the men who were gunning in Gunnison in the early 80's were
fearless men, who, when a difference of opinion arose, faced each other
and fought it out; but there had come to live at La Veta a thin, quiet,
handsome fellow, who moved mysteriously in and out of the camp, slept a
lot by day, and showed a fondness for faro by night. When a name was
needed he signed "Buckingham." His icy hand was soft and white, and his
clothes fitted him faultlessly. He was handsome, and when he paid his
bill at the end of the fourth week he proposed to Nora O'Neal. He was so
fairer, physically, than Cassidy and so darker, morally, that Nora could
not make up her mind at all, at all.

In the shadow time, between sunset and gas-light, on the afternoon of
the last day but one before Christmas, Buck, as he came to be called,
leaned over the office counter and put a folded bit of white paper in
Nora's hand, saying, as he closed her fingers over it: "Put this powder
in Cassidy's cup." He knew Cassidy merely as the messenger whose freight
he coveted, and not as a contestant for Nora's heart and hand,--a hand
he prized, however, as he would a bob-tailed flush, but no more.

As for Cassidy, he would be glad, waking, to find himself alive; and if
this plan miscarried, Buck should be able to side-step the gallows.
Anyway, dope was preferable to death.

Nora opened her hand, and in utter amazement looked at the paper. Some
one interrupted them. Buck turned away, and Nora shoved the powder down
deep into her jacket pocket, feeling vaguely guilty.

No. 7, the Salt Lake Limited, was an hour late that night. The regular
dinner (we called it supper then) was over when Shanley whistled in.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the headlight of the Rockaway engine gleamed along the hotel windows,
Nora went back to see that everything was ready.

In the narrow passage between the kitchen and the dining-room she met
Buckingham. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"Now, my beauty," said Buck, laying a cold hand on her arm, "don't be
excited."

She turned her honest eyes to him and he almost visibly shrank from
them, as she had shuddered at the strange, cold touch of his hand.

"Put that powder in Cassidy's cup," he said, and in the half-light of
the little hallway she saw his cruel smile.

"And kill Cassidy, the best friend I have on earth?"

"It will not kill him, but it may save his life. I shall be in his car
to-night. Sabe? Do as I tell you. He will only fall asleep for a little
while, otherwise--well, he may oversleep himself." She would have passed
on, but he stayed her. "Where is it?" he demanded, with a meaning
glance.

She touched her jacket pocket, and he released his hold on her arm.

The shuffle and scuffle of the feet of hungry travellers who were piling
into the dining-room had disturbed them. Nora passed on to the rear,
Buck out to sit down and dine with the passengers, who always had a
shade the best of the bill.

From his favorite seat, facing the audience, he watched the trainmen
tumbling into the alcove off the west wing, in one corner of which a
couple of Pullman porters in blue and gold sat at a small table, feeding
with their forks and behaving better than some of their white comrades
behaved.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassidy came in a moment later, sat down, and looked over to see if his
rival was in his accustomed place. The big messenger looked steadily at
the other man, who had never guessed the messenger's secret, and the
other man looked down.

Already his supper, steaming hot, stood before him, while the table-girl
danced attendance for the tip she was always sure of at the finish. She
studied his tastes and knew his wants, from rare roast down to the
small, black coffee with which he invariably concluded his meal.

When Buck looked up again he saw Nora approach the table, smile at
Cassidy, and put a cup of coffee down by his plate.

The trainmen were soon through with their supper, being notoriously
rapid feeders,--which disastrous habit they acquire while on freight,
when they are expected to eat dinner and do an hour's switching in
twenty minutes.

Unusually early for him, Buck passed out. Nora purposely avoided him,
but watched him from the unlighted little private office. She saw him
light a cigar and stroll down the long platform. At the rear of the last
Pullman he threw his cigar away and crossed quickly to the shadow side
of the train. She saw him pass along, for there were no vestibules
then, and made no doubt he was climbing into Cassidy's car. As the
messenger reached for his change, the cashier-manager caught his hand,
drew it across the counter, leaned toward him, saying excitedly: "Be
careful to-night, John; don't fall asleep or nod for a moment. Oh, be
careful!" she repeated, with ever-increasing intensity, her hot hand
trembling on his great wrist; "be careful, come back safe, and you shall
have your answer."

When Cassidy came back to earth he was surrounded by half a dozen
good-natured passengers, men and women, who had come out of the
dining-room during the ten or fifteen seconds he had spent in Paradise.

A swift glance at the faces about told him that they had seen, another
at Nora that she was embarrassed; but in two ticks of the office clock
he protected her, as he would his safe; for his work and time had
trained him to be ready instantly for any emergency.

"Good-night, sister," he called cheerily, as he hurried toward the door.

"Good-night, John," said Nora, glancing up from the till, radiant with
the excitement of her "sweet distress."

"Oh, by Jove!" said a man.

"Huh!" said a woman, and they looked like people who had just missed a
boat.

With her face against the window, Nora watched the red lights on the
rear of No. 7 swing out to the main line.

       *       *       *       *       *

Closing the desk, she climbed to her room on the third floor and knelt
by the window. Away out on the shrouded vale she saw the dark train
creeping, a solid stream of fire flowing from the short stack of the
"shotgun"; for Peasley was pounding her for all she was worth in an
honest effort to make up the hour that Shanley had lost in the
snowdrifts of Marshall Pass. Presently she heard the muffled roar of the
train on a trestle, and a moment later saw the Salt Lake Limited
swallowed by the Black Cañon, in whose sunless gorges many a driver died
before the scenery settled after having been disturbed by the builders
of the road.

Over ahead in his quiet car Cassidy sat musing, smoking, and wondering
why Nora should seem so anxious about him. Turning, he glanced about.
Everything looked right, but the girl's anxiety bothered him.

Picking up a bundle of way-bills, he began checking up. The engine
screamed for Sapinero, and a moment later he felt the list as they
rounded Dead Man's Curve.

Unless they were flagged, the next stop would be at Cimarron, at the
other end of the cañon.

His work done, the messenger lighted his pipe, settled himself in his
high-backed canvas camp-chair, and put his feet up on his box for a good
smoke. He tried to think of a number of things that had nothing whatever
to do with Nora, but somehow she invariably elbowed into his thoughts.

He leaned over and opened his box--not the strong-box, but the wooden,
trunk-like box that holds the messenger's street-coat when he's on duty
and his jumper when he's off. On the under side of the lifted lid he had
fixed a large panel picture of Nora O'Neal.

       *       *       *       *       *

Buckingham, peering over a piano-box, behind which he had hidden at
Gunnison, saw and recognized the photograph; for the messenger's white
light stood on the little safe near the picture. For half an hour he had
been watching Cassidy, wondering why he did not fall asleep. He had seen
Nora put the cup down with her own hand, to guard, as he thought,
against the possibility of a mistake. What will a woman not dare and do
for the man she loves? He sighed softly. He recalled now that he had
always exercised a powerful influence over women,--that is, the few he
had known,--but he was surprised that this consistent Catholic girl
should be so "dead easy."

"And now look at this one hundred and ninety-eight pounds of egotism
sitting here smiling on the likeness of the lady who has just dropped
bug-dust in his coffee. It's positively funny."

Such were the half-whispered musings of the would-be robber.

He actually grew drowsy waiting for Cassidy to go to sleep. The car
lurched on a sharp curve, dislodging some boxes. Buck felt a strange,
tingling sensation in his fingers and toes. Presently he nodded.

Cassidy sat gazing on the pictured face that had hovered over him in all
his dreams for months, and as he gazed, seemed to feel her living
presence. He rose as if to greet her, but kept his eyes upon the
picture.

Suddenly realizing that something was wrong in his end of the car, Buck
stood up, gripping the top of the piano-box. The scream of the engine
startled him. The car crashed over the switch-frog at Curecanti, and
Curecanti's Needle stabbed the starry vault above. The car swayed
strangely and the lights grew dim.

Suddenly the awful truth flashed through his bewildered brain.

"O-o-o-oh, the wench!" he hissed, pulling his guns.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassidy, absorbed in the photo, heard a door slam; and it came to him
instantly that Nora had boarded the train at Gunnison, and that some one
was showing her over to the head end. As he turned to meet her, he saw
Buck staggering toward him, holding a murderous gun in each hand.
Instantly he reached for his revolver, but a double flash from the guns
of the enemy blinded him and put out the bracket-lamps. As the
messenger sprang forward to find his foe, the desperado lunged against
him. Cassidy grabbed him, lifted him bodily, and smashed him to the
floor of the car; but with the amazing tenacity and wonderful agility of
the trained gun-fighter, Buck managed to fire as he fell. The big bullet
grazed the top of Cassidy's head, and he fell unconscious across the
half-dead desperado.

Buck felt about for his gun, which had fallen from his hand; but already
the "bug-dust" was getting in its work. Sighing heavily, he joined the
messenger in a quiet sleep.

At Cimarron they broke the car open, revived the sleepers, restored the
outlaw to the Ohio State Prison, from which he had escaped, and the
messenger to Nora O'Neal.




JACK RAMSEY'S REASON


When Bill Ross romped up over the range and blew into Edmonton in the
wake of a warm chinook, bought tobacco at the Hudson's Bay store, and
began to regale the gang with weird tales of true fissures, paying
placers, and rich loads lying "virgin," as he said, in Northern British
Columbia, the gang accepted his tobacco and stories for what they were
worth; for it is a tradition up there that all men who come in with the
Mudjekeewis are liars.

That was thirty years ago.

The same chinook winds that wafted Bill Ross and his rose-hued romances
into town have winged them, and the memory of them, away.

In the meantime Ross reformed, forgot, the people forgave and made him
Mayor of Edmonton.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Jack Ramsey called at the capital of British Columbia and told of a
territory in that great Province where the winter winds blew warm,
where snow fell only once in a while and was gone again with the first
peep of the sun; of a mountain-walled wonderland between the Coast Range
and the Rockies, where flowers bloomed nine months in the year and gold
could be panned on almost any of the countless rivers, men said he had
come down from Alaska, and that he lied.

To be sure, they did not say that to Jack,--they only telegraphed it one
to another over their cigars in the club. Some of them actually believed
it, and one man who had made money in California and later in Leadville
said he _knew_ it was so; for, said he, "Jack Ramsey never says or does
a thing without a 'reason.'"

At the end of a week this English-bred Yankee had organized the "Chinook
Mining and Milling Company, Limited."

This man was at the head of the scheme, with Jack Ramsey as Managing
Director.

Ramsey was a prospector by nature made proficient by practice. He had
prospected in every mining camp from Mexico to Moose Factory. If he were
to find a real bonanza, his English-American friend used to say, he
would be miserable for the balance of his days, or rather his
to-morrows. He lived in his to-morrows,--in these and in dreams. He
loved women, wine, and music, and the laughter of little children; but
better than all these he loved the wilderness and the wildflowers and
the soft, low singing of mountain rills. He loved the flowers of the
North, for they were all sweet and innocent. On all the two thousand
five hundred miles of the Yukon, he used to say, there is not one
poisonous plant; and he reasoned that the plants of the Peace and the
Pine and the red roses of the Upper Athabasca would be the same.

And so, one March morning, he sailed up the Sound to enter his
mountain-walled wonderland by the portal of Port Simpson, which opens on
the Pacific. His English-American friend went up as far as Simpson, and
when the little coast steamer poked her prow into Work Channel he
touched the President of the Chinook Mining and Milling Company and
said, "The Gateway to God's world."

       *       *       *       *       *

The head of the C.M. & M. Company was not surprised when Christmas came
ahead of Jack Ramsey's preliminary report. Jack was a careful,
conservative prospector, and would not send a report unless there was a
good and substantial reason for writing it out.

In the following summer a letter came,--an extremely short one,
considering what it contained; for it told, tersely, of great prospects
in the wonderland. It closed with a request for a new rifle, some
garden-seeds, and an H.B. letter of credit for five hundred dollars.

After a warm debate among the directors it was agreed the goods should
go.

The following summer--that is, the second summer in the life of the
Chinook Company--Dawson dawned on the world. That year about half the
floating population of the Republic went to Cuba and the other half to
the Klondike.

As the stream swelled and the channel between Vancouver Island and the
mainland grew black with boats, the President of the C.M. & M. Company
began to pant for Ramsey, that he might join the rush to the North. That
exciting summer died and another dawned, with no news from Ramsey.

When the adventurous English-American could withstand the strain no
longer, he shipped for Skagway himself. He dropped off at Port Simpson
and inquired about Ramsey.

Yes, the Hudson people said, it was quite probable that Ramsey had
passed in that way. Some hundreds of prospectors had gone in during the
past three years, but the current created by the Klondike rush had drawn
most of them out and up the Sound.

One man declared that he had seen Ramsey ship for Skagway on the
"Dirigo," and, after a little help and a few more drinks, gave a minute
description of a famous nugget pin which the passing pilgrim said the
prospector wore.

And so the capitalist took the next boat for Skagway.

By the time he reached Dawson the death-rattle had begun to assert
itself in the bosom of the boom. The most diligent inquiry failed to
reveal the presence of the noted prospector. On the contrary, many
old-timers from Colorado and California declared that Ramsey had never
reached the Dike--that is, not since the boom. In a walled tent on a
shimmering sand-bar at the mouth of the crystal Klondike, Captain Jack
Crawford, the "Poet Scout," severely sober in that land of large
thirsts, wearing his old-time halo of lady-like behavior and hair, was
conducting an "Ice Cream Emporium and Soft-drink Saloon."

"No," said the scout, with the tips of his tapered fingers trembling on
an empty table, straining forward and staring into the stranger's face;
"no, Jack Ramsey has not been here; and if what you say be true--he
sleeps alone in yonder fastness. Alas, poor Ramsey!--Ah knew 'im well";
and he sank on a seat, shaking with sobs.

       *       *       *       *       *

The English-American, on his way out, stopped at Simpson again. From a
half-breed trapper he heard of a white man who had crossed the Coast
Range three grasses ago. This white man had three or four head of
cattle, a Cree servant, and a queer-looking cayuse with long ears and a
mournful, melancholy cry. This latter member of the gang carried the
outfit.

Taking this half-caste Cree to guide him, the mining man set out in
search of the long-lost Ramsey. They crossed the first range and
searched the streams north of the Peace River pass, almost to the crest
of the continent, but found no trace of the prospector.

When the summer died and the wilderness was darkened by the Northern
night, the search was abandoned.

The years drifted into the past, and finally the Chinook Mining and
Milling Company went to the wall. The English-American promoter,
smarting under criticism, reimbursed each of his associates and took
over the office, empty ink-stands and blotting paper, and so blotted out
all records of the one business failure of his life.

But he could not blot out Jack Ramsey from his memory. There was a
"reason," he would say, for Ramsey's silence.

One day, when in Edmonton, he met Mayor Ross, who had come into the
country by the back door some thirty years ago. The tales coaxed from
the Mayor's memory corresponded with Ramsey's report; and having nothing
but time and money, the ex-President of the C.M. & M. Company determined
to go in _via_ the Peace River pass and see for himself. He made the
acquaintance of Smith "The Silent," as he was called, who was at that
time pathfinding for the Grand Trunk Pacific, and secured permission to
go in with the engineers.

At Little Slave Lake he picked up Jim Cromwell, a free-trader, who
engaged to guide the mining man into the wonderland he had described.

The story of Ramsey and his rambles appealed to Cromwell, who talked
tirelessly, and to the engineer, who listened long; and in time the
habitants of Cromwell's domains, which covered a country some seven
hundred miles square, all knew the story and all joined in the search.

Beyond the pass of the Peace an old Cree caught up with them and made
signs, for he was deaf and dumb. But strange as it may seem, somehow,
somewhere, he had heard the story of the lost miner and knew that this
strange white man was the miner's friend.

Long he sat by the camp fire, when the camp was asleep, trying, by
counting on his fingers and with sticks, to make Cromwell understand
what was on his mind.

When day dawned, he plucked Cromwells' sleeve, then walked away fifteen
or twenty steps, stopped, unrolled his blankets, and lay down, closing
his eyes as if asleep. Presently he got up, rubbed his eyes, lighted his
pipe, smoked for awhile, then knocked the fire out on a stone. Then he
got up, stamped the fire out as though it had been a camp fire, rolled
up his blankets, and travelled on down the slope some twenty feet and
repeated the performance. On the next march he made but ten feet. He
stopped, put his pack down, seated himself on the trunk of a fallen tree
and, with his back to Cromwell, began gesticulating, as if talking to
some one, nodding and shaking his head. Then he got a pick and began
digging.

At the end of an hour Cromwell and the engineer had agreed that these
stations were day's marches and the rests camping places. In short, it
was two and a half "sleeps" to what he wanted to show them,--a prospect,
a gold mine maybe,--and so Cromwell and the English-American detached
themselves and set out at the heels of the mute Cree in search of
something.

On the morning of the third day the old Indian could scarcely control
himself, so eager was he to be off.

All through the morning the white men followed him in silence. Noon
came, and still the Indian pushed on.

At two in the afternoon, rounding the shoulder of a bit of highland
overlooking a beautiful valley, they came suddenly upon a half-breed boy
playing with a wild goose that had been tamed.

Down in the valley a cabin stood, and over the valley a small drove of
cattle were grazing.

Suddenly from behind the hogan came the weird wail of a Colorado canary,
who would have been an ass in Absalom's time.

They asked the half-breed boy his name, and he shook his head. They
asked for his father, and he frowned.

The mute old Indian took up a pick, and they followed him up the slope.
Presently he stopped at a stake upon which they could still read the
faint pencil-marks:--

        C.M.
        M. Co.
        L'T'D

The old Indian pointed to the ground with an expression which looked to
the white men like an interrogation. Cromwell nodded, and the Indian
began to dig. Cromwell brought a shovel, and they began sinking a shaft.

The English-American, with a sickening, sinking sensation, turned toward
the cabin. The boy preceded him and stood in the door. The man put his
hand on the boy's head and was about to enter when he caught sight of a
nugget at the boy's neck. He stooped and lifted it. The boy shrank back,
but the man, going deadly pale, clutched the child, dragging the nugget
from his neck.

Now all the Indian in the boy's savage soul asserted itself, and he
fought like a little demon. Pitying the child in its impotent rage, the
man gave him the nugget and turned away.

Across the valley an Indian woman came walking rapidly, her arms full of
turnips and onions and other garden-truck. The white man looked and
loathed her; for he felt confident that Ramsey had been murdered, his
trinkets distributed, and his carcass cast to the wolves.

When the boy ran to meet the woman, the white man knew by his behavior
that he was her child. When the boy had told his mother how the white
man had behaved, she flew into a rage, dropped her vegetables, dived
into the cabin, and came out with a rifle in her hands. To her evident
surprise the man seemed not to dread death, but stood staring at the
rifle, which he recognized as the rifle he had sent to Ramsey. To his
surprise she did not shoot, but uttering a strange cry, started up the
slope, taking the gun with her. With rifle raised and flashing eyes she
ordered the two men out of the prospect hole. Warlike as she seemed, she
was more than welcome, for she was a woman and could talk. She talked
Cree, of course, but it sounded good to Cromwell. Side by side the
handsome young athlete and the Cree woman sat and exchanged stories.

Half an hour later the Englishman came up and asked what the prospect
promised.

"Ah," said Cromwell, sadly, "this is another story. There is no gold in
this vale, though from what this woman tells me the hills are full of
it. However," he added, "I believe we have found your friend."

"Yes?" queried the capitalist.

"Yes," echoed Cromwell, "here are his wife and his child; and here,
where we're grubbing, his grave."

"Quite so, quite so," said the big, warm-hearted English-American,
glaring at the ground; "and that was Ramsey's 'reason' for not
writing."




THE GREAT WRECK ON THE PÈRE MARQUETTE


The reader is not expected to believe this red tale; but if he will take
the trouble to write the General Manager of the Père Marquette Railroad,
State of Michigan, U.S.A. enclosing stamped envelope for answer, I make
no doubt that good man, having by this time recovered from the dreadful
shock occasioned by the wreck, will cheerfully verify the story even to
the minutest detail.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of course Kelly, being Irish, should have been a Democrat; but he was
not. He was not boisterously or offensively Republican, but he was going
to vote the prosperity ticket. He had tried it four years ago, and
business had never been better on the Père Marquette. Moreover, he had a
new hand-car.

The management had issued orders to the effect that there must be no
coercion of employees. It was pretty well understood among the men that
the higher officials would vote the Republican ticket and leave the
little fellows free to do the same. So Kelly, being boss of the gang,
could not, with "ju" respect to the order of the Superintendent, enter
into the argument going on constantly between Burke and Shea on one side
and Lucien Boseaux, the French-Canadian-Anglo-Saxon-Foreign-American
Citizen, on the other. This argument always reached its height at
noon-time, and had never been more heated than now, it being the day
before election. "Here is prosper tee," laughed Lucien, holding up a
half-pint bottle of _vin rouge_.

"Yes," Burke retorted, "an' ye have four pound of cotton waste in the
bottom o' that bucket to trow the grub t' the top. Begad, I'd vote for
O'Bryan wid an empty pail--er none at all--before I'd be humbugged."

"Un I," said Lucien, "would pour Messieur Rousveau vote if my baskett
shall all the way up be cotton."

"Sure ye would," said Shea, "and ate the cotton too, ef your masther
told ye to. 'Tis the likes of ye, ye bloomin' furreighner, that kapes
the thrust alive in this country."

When they were like to come to blows, Kelly, with a mild show of
superiority, which is second nature to a section boss, would interfere
and restore order. All day they worked and argued, lifting low joints
and lowering high centres; and when the red sun sank in the tree-tops,
filtering its gold through the golden leaves, they lifted the car onto
the rails and started home.

When the men had mounted, Lucien at the forward handle and Burke and
Shea side by side on the rear bar, they waited impatiently for Kelly to
light his pipe and seat himself comfortably on the front of the car, his
heels hanging near to the ties.

There was no more talk now. The men were busy pumping, the "management"
inspecting the fish-plates, the culverts, and, incidentally, watching
the red sun slide down behind the trees.

At the foot of a long slope, down which the men had been pumping with
all their might, there was a short bridge. The forest was heavy here,
and already the shadow of the woods lay over the right-of-way. As the
car reached the farther end of the culvert, the men were startled by a
great explosion. The hand-car was lifted bodily and thrown from the
track.

The next thing Lucien remembers is that he woke from a fevered sleep,
fraught with bad dreams, and felt warm water running over his chest. He
put his hand to his shirt-collar, removed it, and found it red with
blood. Thoroughly alarmed, he got to his feet and looked, or rather
felt, himself over. His fingers found an ugly ragged gash in the side of
his neck, and the fear and horror of it all dazed him.

       *       *       *       *       *

He reeled and fell again, but this time did not lose consciousness.

Finally, when he was able to drag himself up the embankment to where the
car hung crosswise on the track, the sight he saw was so appalling he
forgot his own wounds.

On the side opposite to where he had fallen, Burke and Shea lay side by
side, just as they had walked and worked and fought for years, and just
as they would have voted on the morrow had they been spared.
Immediately in front of the car, his feet over one rail and his neck
across the other, lay the mortal remains of Kelly the boss, the stub of
his black pipe still sticking between his teeth. As Lucien stooped to
lift the helpless head his own blood, spurting from the wound in his
neck, flooded the face and covered the clothes of the limp foreman.
Finding no signs of life in the section boss, the wounded, and by this
time thoroughly frightened, French-Canadian turned his attention to the
other two victims. Swiftly now the realization of the awful tragedy came
over the wounded man. His first thought was of the express now nearly
due. With a great effort he succeeded in placing the car on the rails,
and then began the work of loading the dead. Out of respect for the
office so lately filled by Kelly, he was lifted first and placed on the
front of the car, his head pillowed on Lucien's coat. Next he put Burke
aboard, bleeding profusely the while; and then began the greater task of
loading Shea. Shea was a heavy man, and by the time Lucien had him
aboard he was ready to faint from exhaustion and the loss of blood.

Now he must pump up over the little hill; for if the express should come
round the curve and fall down the grade, the hand-car would be in
greater danger than ever.

After much hard work he gained the top of the hill, the hot blood
spurting from his neck at each fall of the handle-bar, and went hurrying
down the long easy grade to Charlevoix.

To show how the trifles of life will intrude at the end, it is
interesting to hear Lucien declare that one of the first thoughts that
came to him on seeing the three prostrate figures was, that up to that
moment the wreck had worked a Republican gain of one vote, with his own
in doubt.

But now he had more serious work for his brain, already reeling from
exhaustion. At the end of fifteen minutes he found himself hanging onto
the handle, more to keep from falling than for any help he was giving
the car. The evening breeze blowing down the slope helped him, so that
the car was really losing nothing in speed. He dared not relax his hold;
for if his strength should give out and the car stop, the express would
come racing down through the twilight and scoop him into eternity. So he
toiled on, dazed, stupefied, fighting for life, surrounded by the dead.

Presently above the singing of the wheels he heard a low sound, like a
single, smothered cough of a yard engine suddenly reversed. Now he had
the feeling of a man flooded with ice-water, so chilled was his blood.
Turning his head to learn the cause of delay (he had fancied the pilot
of an engine under his car), he saw Burke, one of the dead men, leap up
and glare into his face. That was too much for Lucien, weak as he was,
and twisting slightly, he sank to the floor of the car.

Slowly Burke's wandering reason returned. Seeing Shea at his feet,
bloodless and apparently unhurt, he kicked him, gently at first, and
then harder, and Shea stood up. Mechanically the waking man took his
place by Burke's side and began pumping, Lucien lying limp between them.
Kelly, they reasoned, must have been dead some time, by the way he was
pillowed.

When Shea was reasonably sure that he was alive, he looked at his mate.

"Phat way ar're ye feelin'?" asked Burke.

"Purty good fur a corpse. How's yourself?"

"Oh, so-so!"

"Th' Lord is good to the Irish."

"But luck ut poor Kelly."

"'Tis too bad," said Shea, "an' him dyin' a Republican."

"'Tis the way a man lives he must die."

"Yes," said Shea, thoughtfully, "thim that lives be the sword must go be
the board."

When they had pumped on silently for awhile, Shea asked, "How did ye
load thim, Burke?"

"Why--I--I suppose I lifted them aboard. I had no derrick."

"Did ye lift me, Burke?"

"I'm damned if I know, Shea," said Burke, staring ahead, for Kelly had
moved. "Keep her goin'," he added, and then he bent over the prostrate
foreman. He lifted Kelly's head, and the eyes opened. He raised the head
a little higher, and Kelly saw the blood upon his beard, on his coat, on
his hands.

"Are yez hurted, Kelly?" he asked.

"Hurted! Man, I'm dyin'. Can't you see me heart's blood ebbin' over me?"
And then Burke, crossing himself, laid the wounded head gently down
again.

By this time they were nearing their destination. Burke, seeing Lucien
beyond human aid, took hold again and helped pump, hoping to reach
Charlevoix in time to secure medical aid, or a priest at least, for
Kelly.

When the hand-car stopped in front of the station at Charlevoix, the
employees watching, and the prospective passengers waiting, for the
express train gathered about the car.

"Get a docther!" shouted Burke, as the crowd closed in on them.

In a few moments a man with black whiskers, a small hand-grip, and
bicycle trousers panted up to the crowd and pushed his way to the car.

"What's up?" he asked; for he was the company's surgeon.

"Well, there's wan dead, wan dying, and we're all more or less kilt,"
said Shea, pushing the mob back to give the doctor room.

Lifting Lucien's head, the doctor held a small bottle under his nose,
and the wounded man came out. Strong, and the reporter would say
"willing hands," now lifted the car bodily from the track and put it
down on the platform near the baggage-room.

When the doctor had revived the French-Canadian and stopped the flow of
blood, he took the boss in hand. Opening the man's clothes, he searched
for the wound, but found none.

They literally stripped Kelly to the waist; but there was not a scratch
to be found upon his body. When the doctor declared it to be his opinion
that Kelly was not hurt at all, but had merely fainted, Kelly was
indignant.

Of course the whole accident (Lucien being seriously hurt) had to be
investigated, and this was the finding of the experts:--

A tin torpedo left on the rail by a flagman was exploded by the wheel of
the hand-car. A piece of tin flew up, caught Lucien in the neck, making
a nasty wound. Lucien was thrown from the car, when it jumped the track,
so violently as to render him unconscious. Kelly and Burke and Shea,
picking themselves up, one after the other, each fainted dead away at
the sight of so much blood.

Lucien revived first, took in the situation, loaded the limp bodies, and
pulled for home, and that is the true story of the awful wreck on the
Père Marquette.




THE STORY OF AN ENGLISHMAN


A young Englishman stood watching a freight train pulling out of a new
town, over a new track. A pinch-bar, left carelessly by a section gang,
caught in the cylinder-cock rigging and tore it off.

Swearing softly, the driver climbed down and began the nasty work of
disconnecting the disabled machinery. He was not a machinist. Not all
engine-drivers can put a locomotive together. In fact the best runners
are just runners. The Englishman stood by and, when he saw the man
fumble his wrench, offered a hand. The driver, with some hesitation,
gave him the tools, and in a few minutes the crippled rigging was taken
down, nuts replaced, and the rigging passed by the Englishman to the
fireman, who threw it up on the rear of the tank.

"Are you a mechanic?" asked the driver.

"Yes, sir," said the Englishman, standing at least a foot above the
engineer. "There's a job for me up the road, if I can get there."

"And you're out of tallow?"

The Englishman was not quite sure; but he guessed "tallow" was United
States for "money," and said he was short.

"All right," said the engine-driver; "climb on."

The fireman was a Dutchman named Martin, and he made the Englishman
comfortable; but the Englishman wanted to work. He wanted to help fire
the engine, and Martin showed him how to do it, taking her himself on
the hills. When they pulled into the town of E., the Englishman went
over to the round-house and the foreman asked him if he had ever
"railroaded." He said No, but he was a machinist. "Well, I don't want
you," said the foreman, and the Englishman went across to the little
eating-stand where the trainmen were having dinner. Martin moved over
and made room for the stranger between himself and his engineer.

"What luck?" asked the latter.

"Hard luck," was the answer, and without more talk the men hurried on
through the meal.

They had to eat dinner and do an hour's switching in twenty minutes.
That is an easy trick when nobody is looking. You arrive, eat dinner,
then register in. That is the first the despatcher hears of you at E.
You switch twenty minutes and register out. That is the last the
despatcher hears of you at E. You switch another twenty minutes and go.
That is called stealing time; and may the Manager have mercy on you if
you're caught at it, for you've got to make up that last twenty minutes
before you hit the next station.

As the engineer dropped a little oil here and there for another dash,
the Englishman came up to the engine. He could not bring himself to ask
the driver for another ride, and he didn't need to.

"You don't get de jobs?" asked Martin.

"No."

"Vell, dat's all right; you run his railroad some day."

"I don't like the agent here," said the driver; "but if you were up at
the other end of the yard, over on the left-hand side, he couldn't see
you, and I couldn't see you for the steam from that broken
cylinder-cock."

Now they say an Englishman is slow to catch on, but this one was not;
and as the engine rattled over the last switch, he climbed into the cab
in a cloud of steam. Martin made him welcome again, pointing to a seat
on the waste-box. The dead-head took off his coat, folded it carefully,
laid it on the box, and reached for the shovel. "Not yet," said Martin,
"dare is holes already in de fire; I must get dose yello smoke from de
shtack off."

The dead-head leaned from the window, watching the stack burn clear,
then Martin gave him the shovel. Half-way up a long, hard hill the
pointer on the steam-gauge began to go back. The driver glanced over at
Martin, and Martin took the shovel. The dead-head climbed up on the tank
and shovelled the coal down into the pit, that was now nearly empty. In
a little while they pulled into the town of M.C., Iowa, at the crossing
of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul. Here the Englishman had to
change cars. His destination was on the cross-road, still one hundred
and eighteen miles away. The engine-driver took the joint agent to one
side, the agent wrote on a small piece of paper, folded it carefully,
and gave it to the Englishman. "This may help you," said he; "be
quick--they're just pulling out--run!"

Panting, the Englishman threw himself into a way-car that was already
making ten miles an hour. The train official unfolded the paper, read
it, looked the Englishman over, and said, "All right."

It was nearly night when the train arrived at W., and the dead-head
followed the train crew into an unpainted pine hotel, where all hands
fell eagerly to work. A man stood behind a little high desk at the door
taking money; but when the Englishman offered to pay he said, "Yours is
paid fer."

"Not mine; nobody knows me here."

"Then, 'f the devil don't know you better than I do you're lost, young
man," said the landlord. "But some one p'inted to you and said, 'I pay
fer him.' It ain't a thing to make a noise about. It don't make no
difference to me whether it's Tom or Jerry that pays, so long as
everybody represents."

"Well, this is a funny country," mused the Englishman, as he strolled
over to the shop. Now when he heard the voice of the foreman, with its
musical burr, which stamped the man as a Briton from the Highlands, his
heart grew glad. The Scotchman listened to the stranger's story without
any sign of emotion or even interest; and when he learned that the man
had "never railroaded," but had been all his life in the British
Government service, he said he could do nothing for him, and walked
away.

The young man sat and thought it over, and concluded he would see the
master-mechanic. On the following morning he found that official at his
desk and told his story. He had just arrived from England with a wife
and three children and a few dollars. "That's all right," said the
master-mechanic; "I'll give you a job on Monday morning."

This was Saturday, and during the day the first foreman with whom the
Englishman had talked wired that if he would return to E. he could find
work. The young man showed this wire to the master-mechanic. "I should
like to work for you," said he; "you have been very kind to give me
employment after the foreman had refused, but my family is near this
place. They are two hundred miles or more from here."

"I understand," said the kind-hearted official, "and you'd better go
back to E."

The Englishman rubbed his chin and looked out of the window. The train
standing at the station and about to pull out would carry him back to
the junction, but he made no effort to catch it, and the
master-mechanic, seeing this, caught the drift of the young man's mind.
"Have you transportation?" he asked. The stranger, smiling, shook his
head. Turning to his desk, the master-mechanic wrote a pass to the
junction and a telegram requesting transportation over the Iowa Central
from the junction to the town of E.

That Sunday the young man told his young wife that the new country was
"all right." Everybody trusted everybody else. An official would give a
stranger free transportation; a station agent could give you a pass, and
even an engine-driver could carry a man without asking permission.

He didn't know that all these men save the master-mechanic had violated
the rules of the road and endangered their own positions and the chance
of promotion by helping him; but he felt he was among good, kind people,
and thanked them just the same.

On Monday morning he went to work in the little shop. In a little while
he was one of the trustworthy men employed in the place. "How do you
square a locomotive?" he asked the foreman. "Here," said the foreman;
"from this point to that."

That was all the Englishman asked. He stretched a line between the given
points and went to work.

Two years from this the town of M. offered to donate to the railroad
company $47,000 if the new machine shop could be located there, steam up
and machinery running, on the first day of January of the following
year.

The general master-mechanic entrusted the work of putting in the
machinery, after the walls had been built and the place roofed over, to
the division master-mechanic, who looked to the local foreman to finish
the job in time to win the subsidy.

The best months of the year went by before work was begun. Frost came,
and the few men tinkering about were chilled by the autumn winds that
were wailing through the shutterless doors and glassless windows.
Finally the foreman sent the Englishman to M. to help put up the
machinery. He was a new man, and therefore was expected to take signals
from the oldest man on the job,--a sort of straw-boss.

The bridge boss--the local head of the wood-workers--found the
Englishman gazing about, and the two men talked together. There was no
foreman there, but the Englishman thought he ought to work anyway; so he
and the wood boss stretched a line for a line-shaft, and while the
carpenter's gang put up braces and brackets the Englishman coupled the
shaft together, and in a few days it was ready to go up. As the young
man worked and whistled away one morning, the boss carpenter came in
with a military-looking gentleman, who seemed to own the place. "Where
did you come from?" asked the new-comer of the machinist.

"From England, sir."

"Well, anybody could tell that. Where did you come from when you came
here?"

"From E."

"Well, sir, can you finish this job and have steam up here on the first
of January?"

The Englishman blushed, for he was embarrassed, and glanced at the wood
boss. Then, sweeping the almost empty shop with his eye, he said
something about a foreman who was in charge of the work. "Damn the
foreman," said the stranger; "I'm talking to you."

The young man blushed again, and said he could work twelve or fourteen
hours a day for a time if it were necessary, but he didn't like to make
any rash promises about the general result.

"Now look here," said the well-dressed man, "I want you to take charge
of this job and finish it; employ as many men as you can handle, and
blow a whistle here on New Year's morning--do you understand?"

The Englishman thought he did, but he could hardly believe it. He
glanced at the wood boss, and the wood boss nodded his head.

"I shall do my best," said the Englishman, taking courage, "but I should
like to know who gives these orders."

"I'm the General Manager," said the man; "now get a move on you," and
he turned and walked out.

It is not to be supposed that the General Manager saw anything
remarkable about the young man, save that he was six feet and had a good
face. The fact is, the wood foreman had boomed the Englishman's stock
before the Manager saw him.

The path of the Englishman was not strewn with flowers for the next few
months. Any number of men who had been on the road when he was in the
English navy-yards felt that they ought to have had this little
promotion. The local foremen along the line saw in the young Englishman
the future foreman of the new shops, and no man went out of his way to
help the stranger. But in spite of all obstacles, the shop grew from day
to day, from week to week; so that as the old year drew to a close the
machinery was getting into place. The young foreman, while a hard
worker, was always pleasant in his intercourse with the employees, and
in a little while he had hosts of friends. There is always a lot of
extra work at the end of a big job, and now when Christmas came there
was still much to do. The men worked night and day. The boiler that was
to come from Chicago had been expected for some time. Everything was in
readiness, and it could be set up in a day; but it did not come.
Tracer-letters that had gone after it were followed by telegrams;
finally it was located in a wreck out in a cornfield in Illinois on the
last day of the year.

A great many of the officials were away, and the service was generally
demoralized during the holidays, so that the appropriation for which the
Englishman was working at M. had for the moment been forgotten; the
shops were completed, the machinery was in, but there was no boiler to
boil water to make steam.

That night, when the people of M. were watching the old year out and the
new year in, the young Englishman with a force of men was wrecking the
pump-house down by the station. The little upright boiler was torn out
and placed in the machine shops, and with it a little engine was driven
that turned the long line-shaft.

At dawn they ran a long pipe through the roof, screwed a locomotive
whistle on the top of it, and at six o'clock on New Year's morning the
new whistle on the new shops at M. in Iowa, blew in the new year.
Incidentally, it blew the town in for $47,000.

This would be a good place to end this story, but the temptation is
great to tell the rest.

When the shops were opened, the young Englishman was foreman. This was
only about twenty-five years ago. In a little while they promoted him.

In 1887 he went to the Wisconsin Central. In 1890 he was made
Superintendent of machinery of the Santa Fé route,--one of the longest
roads on earth. It begins at Chicago, strong like a man's wrist, with a
finger each on Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, and El Paso, and a
thumb touching the Gulf at Galveston.

The mileage of the system, at that time, was equal to one-half that of
Great Britain; and upon the companies' payrolls were ten thousand more
men than were then in the army of the United States. Fifteen hundred men
and boys walk into the main shops at Topeka every morning. They work
four hours, eat luncheon, listen to a lecture or short sermon in the
meeting-place above the shops, work another four hours, and walk out
three thousand dollars better off than they would have been if they had
not worked.

These shops make a little city of themselves. There is a perfect water
system, fire-brigade with fire stations where the firemen sleep, police,
and a dog-catcher.

Here they build anything of wood, iron, brass, or steel that the company
needs, from a ninety-ton locomotive to a single-barrelled mouse-trap,
all under the eye of the Englishman who came to America with a good wife
and three babies, a good head and two hands. This man's name is John
Player. He is the inventor of the Player truck, the Player hand-car, the
Player frog, and many other useful appliances.

This simple story of an unpretentious man came out in broken sections as
the special sped along the smooth track, while the General Manager
talked with the resident director and the General Superintendent talked
with his assistant, who, not long ago, was the conductor of a work-train
upon which the G.S. was employed as brakeman. I was two days stealing
this story, between the blushes of the mechanical Superintendent.

He related, also, that a man wearing high-cut trousers and milk on his
boot had entered his office when he had got to his first position as
master-mechanic and held out a hand, smiling, "Vell, you don't know me
yet, ain't it? I'm Martin the fireman; I quit ranchin' already, an' I
want a jobs."

Martin got a job at once. He got killed, also, in a little while; but
that is part of the business on a new road.

Near the shops at Topeka stands the railroad Young Men's Christian
Association building. They were enlarging it when I was there. There are
no "saloons" in Kansas, so Player and his company help the men to
provide other amusements.




ON THE LIMITED


One Sabbath evening, not long ago, I went down to the depot in an
Ontario town to take the International Limited for Montreal. She was on
the blackboard five minutes in disgrace. "Huh!" grunted a commercial
traveller. It was Sunday in the aforesaid Ontario town, and would be
Sunday in Toronto, toward which he was travelling. Even if we were on
time we should not arrive until 9.30--too late for church, too early to
go to bed, and the saloons all closed and barred. And yet this restless
traveller fretted and grieved because we promised to get into Toronto
five minutes late. Alas for the calculation of the train despatchers,
she was seven minutes overdue when she swept in and stood for us to
mount. The get-away was good, but at the eastern yard limits we lost
again. The people from the Pullmans piled into the café car and
overflowed into the library and parlor cars. The restless traveller
snapped his watch again, caught the sleeve of a passing trainman, and
asked "'S matter?" and the conductor answered, "Waiting for No. 5." Five
minutes passed and not a wheel turned; six, eight, ten minutes, and no
sound of the coming west-bound express. Up ahead we could hear the
flutter and flap of the blow-off; for the black flier was as restless as
the fat drummer who was snapping his watch, grunting "Huh," and washing
suppressed profanity down with _café noir_.

Eighteen minutes and No. 5 passed. When the great black steed of steam
got them swinging again we were twenty-five minutes to the bad. And how
that driver did hit the curves! The impatient traveller snapped his
watch again and said, refusing to be comforted, "She'll never make it."

Mayhap the fat and fretful drummer managed to communicate with the
engine-driver, or maybe the latter was unhappily married or had an
insurance policy; and it is also possible that he is just the devil to
drive. Anyway, he whipped that fine train of Pullmans, café, and parlor
cars through those peaceful, lamplighted, Sabbath-keeping Ontario towns
as though the whole show had cost not more than seven dollars, and his
own life less.

On a long lounge in the library car a well-nourished lawyer lay sleeping
in a way that I had not dreamed a political lawyer could sleep. One
gamey M.P.--double P, I was told--had been robbing this same lawyer of a
good deal of rest recently, and he was trying at a mile a minute to
catch up with his sleep. I could feel the sleeper slam her flanges
against the ball of the rail as we rounded the perfectly pitched curves,
and the little semi-quaver that tells the trained traveller that the man
up ahead is moving the mile-posts, at least one every minute. At the
first stop, twenty-five miles out, the fat drummer snapped his watch
again, but he did not say, "Huh." We had made up five minutes.

A few passengers swung down here, and a few others swung up; and off we
dashed, drilling the darkness. I looked in on the lawyer again, for I
would have speech with him; but he was still sleeping the sleep of the
virtuous, with the electric light full on his upturned baby face, that
reminds me constantly of the late Tom Reed.

A woman I know was putting one of her babies to bed in lower 2, when we
wiggled through a reverse curve that was like shooting White Horse
Rapids in a Peterboro. The child intended for lower 2 went over into 4.
"Never mind," said its mother, "we have enough to go around;" and so she
left that one in 4 and put the next one in 2, and so on.

At the next stop where you "Y" and back into the town, the people,
impatient, were lined up, ready to board the Limited. When we swung over
the switches again, we were only ten minutes late.

As often as the daring driver eased off for a down grade I could hear
the hiss of steam through the safety-valve above the back of the black
flier, and I could feel the flanges against the ball of the rail, and
the little tell-tale semi-quaver of the car.

By now the babies were all abed; and from bunk to bunk she tucked them
in, kissed them good-night, and then cuddled down beside the last one, a
fair-haired girl who seemed to have caught and kept, in her hair and in
her eyes, the sunshine of the three short summers through which she had
passed.

Once more I went and stood by the lounge where the lawyer lay, but I had
not the nerve to wake him.

The silver moon rose and lit the ripples on the lake that lay below my
window as the last of the diners came from the café car. Along the shore
of the sleeping lake our engine swept like a great, black, wingless bird
of night. Presently I felt the frogs of South Parkdale; and when, from
her hot throat she called "Toronto," the fat and fretful traveller
opened his great gold watch. He did not snap it now, but looked into its
open face and almost smiled; for we were touching Toronto on the tick of
time.

I stepped from the car, for I was interested in the fat drummer. I
wanted to see him meet her, and hold her hand, and tell her what a
really, truly, good husband he had been, and how he had hurried home. As
he came down the short stair a friend faced him and said "Good-night,"
where we say "Good-evening." "Hello, Bill," said the fat drummer. They
shook hands languidly. The fat man yawned and asked, "Anything doing?"
"Not the littlest," said Bill. "Then," said Jim (the fat man), "let us
go up to the King Edward, sit down, and have a good, quiet smoke."




THE CONQUEST OF ALASKA


Immediately under the man with the money, who lived in London, there was
the President in Chicago; then came the chief engineer in Seattle, the
locating engineer in Skagway, the contractor in the grading camp, and
Hugh Foy, the "boss" of the builders. Yet in spite of all this
overhanging stratification, Foy was a big man. To be sure, none of these
men had happened to get their positions by mere chance. They were men of
character and fortitude, capable of great sacrifice.

Mr. Close, in London, knew that his partner, Mr. Graves, in Chicago,
would be a good man at the head of so cold and hopeless an enterprise as
a Klondike Railway; and Mr. Graves knew that Erastus Corning Hawkins,
who had put through some of the biggest engineering schemes in the West,
was the man to build the road. The latter selected, as locating
engineer, John Hislop, the hero, one of the few survivors of that wild
and daring expedition that undertook, some twenty years ago, to survey a
route for a railroad whose trains were to traverse the Grand Cañon of
Colorado, where, save for the song of the cataract, there is only shade
and silence and perpetual starlight. Heney, a wiry, compact, plucky
Canadian contractor, made oral agreement with the chief engineer and,
with Hugh Foy as his superintendent of construction, began to grade what
they called the White Pass and Yukon Railway. Beginning where the
bone-washing Skagway tells her troubles to the tide-waters at the elbow
of that beautiful arm of the Pacific Ocean called Lynn Canal, they
graded out through the scattered settlement where a city stands to-day,
cut through a dense forest of spruce, and began to climb the hill.

When the news of ground-breaking had gone out to Seattle and Chicago,
and thence to London, conservative capitalists, who had suspected Close
Brothers and Company and all their associates in this wild scheme of
temporary insanity, concluded that the sore affliction had come to stay.
But the dauntless builders on the busy field where the grading camp was
in action kept grubbing and grading, climbing and staking, blasting and
building, undiscouraged and undismayed. Under the eaves of a dripping
glacier, Hawkins, Hislop, and Heney crept; and, as they measured off the
miles and fixed the grade by blue chalk-marks where stakes could not be
driven, Foy followed with his army of blasters and builders. When the
pathfinders came to a deep side cañon, they tumbled down, clambered up
on the opposite side, found their bearings, and began again. At one
place the main wall was so steep that the engineer was compelled to
climb to the top, let a man down by a rope, so that he could mark the
face of the cliff for the blasters, and then haul him up again.

It was springtime when they began, and through the long days of that
short summer the engineers explored and mapped and located; and ever,
close behind them, they could hear the steady roar of Foy's fireworks as
the skilled blasters burst big boulders or shattered the shoulders of
great crags that blocked the trail of the iron horse. Ever and anon,
when the climbers and builders peered down into the ragged cañon, they
saw a long line of pack-animals, bipeds and quadrupeds,--some hoofed and
some horned, some bleeding, some blind,--stumbling and staggering,
fainting and falling, the fittest fighting for the trail and gaining the
summit, whence the clear, green waters of the mighty Yukon would carry
them down to Dawson,--the Mecca of all these gold-mad men. As often as
the road-makers glanced at the pack-trains, they saw hundreds of
thousands of dollars' worth of traffic going past or waiting
transportation at Skagway, and each strained every nerve to complete the
work while the sun shone.

By midsummer they began to appreciate the fact that this was to be a
hard job. When the flowers faded on the southern slopes, they were not
more than half-way up the hill. Each day the sun swung lower across the
canals, all the to-morrows were shorter than the yesterdays, and there
was not a man among them with a shade of sentiment, or a sense of the
beautiful, but sighed when the flowers died. Yes, they had learned to
love this maiden, Summer, that had tripped up from the south, smiled on
them, sung for a season, sighed, smiled once more, and then danced down
the Lynn again.

"I'll come back," she seemed to say, peeping over the shoulder of a
glacier that stood at the stage entrance; "I'll come back, but ere I
come again there'll be strange scenes and sounds on this rude stage so
new to you. First, you will have a short season of melodrama by a
melancholy chap called Autumn, gloriously garbed in green and gold, with
splashes and dashes of lavender and lace, but sad, sweetly sad, and
sighing always, for life is such a little while."

With a sadder smile, she kissed her rosy fingers and was gone,--gone
with her gorgeous garments, her ferns and flowers, her low, soft sighs
and sunny skies, and there was not a man that was a man but missed her
when she was gone.

The autumn scene, though sombre and sad, was far from depressing, but
they all felt the change. John Hislop seemed to feel it more than all
the rest; for besides being deeply religious, he was deeply in love. His
nearest and dearest friend, Heney--happy, hilarious Heney--knew, and he
swore softly whenever a steamer landed without a message from
Minneapolis,--the long-looked-for letter that would make Hislop better
or worse. It came at length, and Hislop was happy. With his horse, his
dog, and a sandwich,--but never a gun,--he would make long excursions
down toward Lake Linderman, to Bennett, or over Atlin way. When the
country became too rough for the horse, he would be left picketed near a
stream with a faithful dog to look after him while the pathfinder
climbed up among the eagles.

In the meantime Foy kept pounding away. Occasionally a soiled pedestrian
would slide down the slope, tell a wild tale of rich strikes, and a
hundred men would quit work and head for the highlands. Foy would storm
and swear and coax by turns, but to no purpose; for they were like so
many steers, and as easily stampeded. When the Atlin boom struck the
camp, Foy lost five hundred men in as many minutes. Scores of graders
dropped their tools and started off on a trot. The prospector who had
told the fable had thrown his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the
general direction. Nobody had thought to ask how far. Many forgot to
let go; and Heney's picks and shovels, worth over a dollar apiece, went
away with the stampeders. As the wild mob swept on, the tethered
blasters cut the cables that guyed them to the hills, and each loped
away with a piece of rope around one ankle.

Panting, they passed over the range, these gold-crazed Coxeys, without a
bun or a blanket, a crust or a crumb, many without a cent or even a
sweat-mark where a cent had slept in their soiled overalls.

When Foy had exhausted the English, Irish, and Alaskan languages in
wishing the men luck in various degrees, he rounded up the remnant of
his army and began again. In a day or two the stampeders began to limp
back hungry and weary, and every one who brought a pick or a shovel was
re-employed. But hundreds kept on toward Lake Bennett, and thence by
water up Windy Arm to the Atlin country, and many of them have not yet
returned to claim their time-checks.

The autumn waned. The happy wives of young engineers, who had been
tented along the line during the summer, watched the wildflowers fade
with a feeling of loneliness and deep longing for their stout-hearted,
strong-limbed husbands, who were away up in the cloud-veiled hills; and
they longed, too, for other loved ones in the lowlands of their
childhood. Foy's blasters and builders buttoned their coats and buckled
down to keep warm. Below, they could hear loud peals of profanity as the
trailers, packers, and pilgrims pounded their dumb slaves over the
trail. Above, the wind cried and moaned among the crags, constantly
reminding them that winter was near at hand. The nights were longer than
the days. The working day was cut from ten to eight hours, but the pay
of the men had been raised from thirty to thirty-five cents an hour.

One day a black cloud curtained the cañon, and the workmen looked up
from their picks and drills to find that it was November and night. The
whole theatre, stage and all, had grown suddenly dark; but they knew, by
the strange, weird noise in the wings, that the great tragedy of winter
was on. Hislop's horse and dog went down the trail. Hawkins and Hislop
and Heney walked up and down among the men, as commanding officers show
themselves on the eve of battle. Foy chaffed the laborers and gave them
more rope; but no amount of levity could prevail against the universal
feeling of dread that seemed to settle upon the whole army. This weird
Alaska, so wild and grand, so cool and sweet and sunny in summer, so
strangely sad in autumn,--this many-mooded, little known Alaska that
seemed doomed ever to be misunderstood, either over-lauded or lied
about,--what would she do to them? How cruel, how cold, how weird, how
wickedly wild her winters must be! Most men are brave, and an army of
brave men will breast great peril when God's lamp lights the field; but
the stoutest heart dreads the darkness. These men were sore afraid, all
of them; and yet no one was willing to be the first to fall out, so they
stood their ground. They worked with a will born of desperation.

The wind moaned hoarsely. The temperature dropped to thirty-five degrees
below zero, but the men, in sheltered places, kept pounding. Sometimes
they would work all day cleaning the snow from the grade made the day
before, and the next day it would probably be drifted full again. At
times the task seemed hopeless; but Heney had promised to build to the
summit of White Pass without a stop, and Foy had given Heney his hand
across a table at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Skagway.

At times the wind blew so frightfully that the men had to hold hands;
but they kept pegging away between blasts, and in a little while were
ready to begin bridging the gulches and deep side-cañons. One day--or
one night, rather, for there were no days then--a camp cook, crazed by
the cold and the endless night, wandered off to die. Hislop and Heney
found him, but he refused to be comforted. He wanted to quit, but Heney
said he could not be spared. He begged to be left alone to sleep in the
warm, soft snow, but Heney brought him back to consciousness and to
camp.

A premature blast blew a man into eternity. The wind moaned still more
drearily. The snow drifted deeper and deeper, and one day they found
that, for days and days, they had been blasting ice and snow when they
thought they were drilling the rock. Heney and Foy faced each other in
the dim light of a tent lamp that night. "Must we give up?" asked the
contractor.

"No," said Foy, slowly, speaking in a whisper; "we'll build on snow, for
it's hard and safe; and in the spring we'll ease it down and make a
road-bed."

They did so. They built and bedded the cross-ties on the snow, ballasted
with snow, and ran over that track until spring without an accident.

They were making mileage slowly, but the awful strain was telling on the
men and on the bank account. The president of the company was almost
constantly travelling between Washington and Ottawa, pausing now and
again to reach over to London for another bag of gold, for they were
melting it up there in the arctic night--literally burning it up, were
these dynamiters of Foy's.

To conceive this great project, to put it into shape, present it in
London, secure the funds and the necessary concessions from two
governments, survey and build, and have a locomotive running in Alaska
a year from the first whoop of the happy Klondiker, had been a mighty
achievement; but it was what Heney would call "dead easy" compared with
the work that confronted the President at this time. On July 20, 1897,
the first pick was driven into the ground at White Pass; just a year
later the pioneer locomotive was run over the road. More than once had
the financial backers allowed their faith in the enterprise and in the
future of the country beyond to slip away; but the President of the
company had always succeeded in building it up again, for they had never
lost faith in him, or in his ability to see things that were to most men
invisible. In summer, when the weekly reports showed a mile or more or
less of track laid, it was not so hard; but when days were spent in
placing a single bent in a bridge, and weeks were consumed on a switch
back in a pinched-out cañon, it was hard to persuade sane men that
business sense demanded that they pile on more fuel. But they did it;
and, as the work went on, it became apparent to those interested in such
undertakings that all the heroes of the White Pass were not in the
hills.

In addition to the elements, ever at war with the builders, they had
other worries that winter. Hawkins had a fire that burned all the
company's offices and all his maps and notes and records of surveys. Foy
had a strike, incited largely by jealous packers and freighters; and
there was hand-to-hand fighting between the strikers and their abettors
and the real builders, who sympathized with the company.

Brydone-Jack, a fine young fellow, who had been sent out as consulting
engineer to look after the interests of the shareholders, clapped his
hands to his forehead and fell, face down, in the snow. His comrades
carried him to his tent. He had been silent, had suffered, perhaps for a
day or two, but had said nothing. The next night he passed away. His
wife was waiting at Vancouver until he could finish his work in Alaska
and go home to her.

With sad and heavy hearts Hawkins and Hislop and Heney climbed back to
where Foy and his men were keeping up the fight. Like so many big
lightning-bugs they seemed, with their dim white lamps rattling around
in the storm. It was nearly all night then. God and his sunlight seemed
to have forsaken Alaska. Once every twenty-four hours a little ball of
fire, red, round, and remote, swung across the cañon, dimly lighted
their lunch-tables, and then disappeared behind the great glacier that
guards the gateway to the Klondike.

As the road neared the summit, Heney observed that Foy was growing
nervous, and that he coughed a great deal. He watched the old fellow,
and found that he was not eating well, and that he slept very little.
Heney asked Foy to rest, but the latter shook his head. Hawkins and
Hislop and Heney talked the matter over in Hislop's tent, called Foy in,
and demanded that he go down and out. Foy was coughing constantly, but
he choked it back long enough to tell the three men what he thought of
them. He had worked hard and faithfully to complete the job, and now
that only one level mile remained to be railed, would they send the old
man down the hill? "I will not budge," said Foy, facing his friends;
"an' when you gentlemen ar-re silibratin' th' vict'ry at the top o' the
hill ahn Chuesday nixt, Hugh Foy'll be wood ye. Do you moind that,
now?"

Foy steadied himself by a tent-pole and coughed violently. His eyes were
glassy, and his face flushed with the purplish flush that fever gives.

"Enough of this!" said the chief engineer, trying to look severe. "Take
this message, sign it, and send it at once."

Foy caught the bit of white clip and read:--

  "CAPTAIN O'BRIEN,

              SKAGWAY.

    "Save a berth for me on the 'Rosalie.'"

They thought, as they watched him, that the old road-maker was about to
crush the paper in his rough right hand; but suddenly his face
brightened, he reached for a pencil, saying, "I'll do it," and when he
had added "next trip" to the message, he signed it, folded it, and took
it over to the operator.

So it happened that, when the last spike was driven at the summit, on
February 20, 1899, the old foreman, who had driven the first, drove the
last, and it was _his_ last spike as well. Doctor Whiting guessed it was
pneumonia.

When the road had been completed to Lake Bennett, the owners came over
to see it; and when they saw what had been done, despite the prediction
that Dawson was dead and that the Cape Nome boom would equal that of the
Klondike, they authorized the construction of another hundred miles of
road which would connect with the Yukon below the dreaded White Horse
Rapids. Jack and Foy and Hislop are gone; and when John Hislop passed
away, the West lost one of the most modest and unpretentious, yet one of
the best and bravest, one of the purest minded men that ever saw the sun
go down behind a snowy range.




NUMBER THREE


One winter night, as the west-bound express was pulling out of Omaha, a
drunken man climbed aboard. The young Superintendent, who stood on the
rear platform, caught the man by the collar and hauled him up the steps.

The train, from the tank to the tail-lights, was crammed full of
passenger-people going home or away to spend Christmas. Over in front
the express and baggage cars were piled full of baggage, bundles, boxes,
trinkets, and toys, each intended to make some heart happier on the
morrow, for it was Christmas Eve. It was to see that these passengers
and their precious freight, already a day late, got through that the
Superintendent was leaving his own fireside to go over the road.

The snow came swirling across the plain, cold and wet, pasting the
window and blurring the headlight on the black locomotive that was
climbing laboriously over the kinks and curves of a new track. Here and
there, in sheltered wimples, bands of buffalo were bunched to shield
them from the storm. Now and then an antelope left the rail or a lone
coyote crouched in the shadow of a telegraph-pole as the dim headlight
swept the right of way. At each stop the Superintendent would jump down,
look about, and swing onto the rear car as the train pulled out again.
At one time he found that his seat had been taken, also his overcoat,
which had been left hanging over the back. The thief was discovered on
the blind baggage and turned over to the "city marshal" at the next
stop.

Upon entering the train again, the Superintendent went forward to find a
seat in the express car. It was near midnight now. They were coming into
a settlement and passing through prosperous new towns that were building
up near the end of the division. Near the door the messenger had set a
little green Christmas tree, and grouped about it were a red sled, a
doll-carriage, some toys, and a few parcels. If the blond doll in the
little toy carriage toppled over, the messenger would set it up again;
and when passing freight out he was careful not to knock a twig from
the tree. So intent was he upon the task of taking care of this
particular shipment that he had forgotten the Superintendent, and
started and almost stared at him when he shouted the observation that
the messenger was a little late with his tree.

"'Tain't mine," he said sadly, shaking his head. "B'longs to the fellow
't swiped your coat."

"No!" exclaimed the Superintendent, as he went over to look at the toys.

"If he'd only asked me," said the messenger, more to himself than to the
Superintendent, "he could 'a' had mine and welcome."

"Do you know the man?"

"Oh, yes--he lives next door to me, and I'll have to face his wife and
lie to her, and then face my own; but I can't lie to her. I'll tell her
the truth and get roasted for letting Downs get away. I'll go to sleep
by the sound of her sobs and wake to find her crying in her
coffee--that's the kind of a Christmas I'll have. When he's drunk he's
disgusting, of course; but when he's sober he's sorry. And Charley Downs
is honest."

"Honest!" shouted the Superintendent.

"Yes, I know he took your coat, but that wasn't Charley Downs; it was
the tarantula-juice he'd been imbibing in Omaha. Left alone he's as
honest as I am; and here's a run that would trip up a missionary. For
instance, leaving Loneville the other night, a man came running
alongside the car and threw in a bundle of bills that looked like a bale
of hay. Not a scrap of paper or pencil-mark, just a wad o' winnings with
a wang around the middle. 'A Christmas gift for my wife,' he yelled.
'How much?' I shouted. 'Oh, I dunno--whole lot, but it's tied good'; and
then a cloud of steam from the cylinder-cocks came between us, and I
haven't seen him since.

"For the past six months Downs has tried hard to be decent, and has
succeeded some; and this was to be the supreme test. For six months his
wife has been saving up to send him to Omaha to buy things for
Christmas. If he could do that, she argued, and come back sober, he'd be
stronger to begin the New Year. Of course they looked to me to keep him
on the rail, and I did. I shadowed him from shop to shop until he
bought all the toys and some little trinkets for his wife. Always I
found he had paid and ordered the things to be sent to the express
office marked to me.

"Well, finally I followed him to a clothing store, where, according to a
promise made to his wife, he bought an overcoat, the first he had felt
on his back for years. This he put on, of course, for it is cold in
Omaha to-day; and I left him and slipped away to grab a few hours'
sleep.

"When I woke I went out to look for him, but could not find him, though
I tried hard, and came to my car without supper. I found his coat,
however, hung up in a saloon, and redeemed it, hoping still to find
Charley before train time. I watched for him until we were signalled
out, and then went back and looked through the train, but failed to find
him.

"Of course I am sorry for Charley," the messenger went on after a pause,
"but more so for the poor little woman. She's worked and worked, and
saved and saved, and hoped and dreamed, until she actually believed he'd
been cured and that the sun would shine in her life again. Why, the
neighbors have been talking across the back fence about how well Mrs.
Downs was looking. My wife declared she heard her laugh the other day
clear over to our house. Half the town knew about her dream. The women
folks have been carrying work to her and then going over and helping her
do it as a sort of surprise party. And now it's all off. To-morrow will
be Christmas; and he'll be in jail, his wife in despair, and I in
disgrace. Charley Downs a thief--in jail! It'll just break her heart!"

The whistle proclaimed a stop, and the Superintendent swung out with a
lump in his throat. This was an important station, and the last one
before Loneville. Without looking to the right or left, the
Superintendent walked straight to the telegraph office and sent the
following message to the agent at the place where Downs had been
ditched:--

     "Turn that fellow loose and send him to Loneville on three--all
     a joke.

                                 "W.C.V., Superintendent."

In a little while the train was rattling over the road again; and when
the engine screamed for Loneville, the Superintendent stood up and
looked at the messenger.

"What'll I tell her?" the latter asked.

"Well, he got left at Cactus sure enough, didn't he? If that doesn't
satisfy her, tell her that he may get over on No. 3."

When the messenger had turned his freight over to the driver of the
Fargo wagon, he gathered up the Christmas tree and the toys and trudged
homeward, looking like Santa Claus, so completely hidden was he by the
tree and the trinkets. As he neared the Downs' home, the door swung
open, the lamplight shone out upon him, and he saw two women smiling
from the open door. It took but one glance at the messenger's face to
show them that something was wrong, and the smiles faded. Mrs. Downs
received the shock without a murmur, leaning on her friend and leaving
the marks of her fingers on her friend's arm.

The messenger put the toys down suddenly, silently; and feeling that the
unhappy woman would be better alone, the neighbors departed, leaving her
seated by the window, peering into the night, the lamp turned very low.

The little clock on the shelf above the stove ticked off the seconds,
measured the minutes, and marked the melancholy hours. The storm ceased,
the stars came out and showed the quiet town asleep beneath its robe of
white. The clock was now striking four, and she had scarcely stirred.
She was thinking of the watchers of Bethlehem, when suddenly a great
light shone on the eastern horizon. At last the freight was coming. She
had scarcely noticed the messenger's suggestion that Charley might come
in on three. Now she waited, with just the faintest ray of hope; and
after a long while the deep voice of the locomotive came to her, the
long black train crept past and stopped. Now her heart beat wildly.
Somebody was coming up the road. A moment later she recognized her
erring husband, dressed exactly as he had been when he left home, his
short coat buttoned close up under his chin. When she saw him
approaching slowly but steadily, she knew he was sober and doubtless
cold. She was about to fling the door open to admit him when he stopped
and stood still. She watched him. He seemed to be wringing his hands. An
awful thought chilled her,--the thought that the cold and exposure had
unbalanced his mind. Suddenly he knelt in the snow and turned his sad
face up to the quiet sky. He was praying, and with a sudden impulse she
fell upon her knees and they prayed together with only the window-glass
between them.

When the prodigal got to his feet, the door stood open and his wife was
waiting to receive him. At sight of her, dressed as she had been when he
left her, a sudden flame of guilt and shame burned through him; but it
served only to clear his brain and strengthen his will-power, which all
his life had been so weak, and lately made weaker for want of exercise.
He walked almost hurriedly to the chair she set for him near the stove,
and sank into it with the weary air of one who has been long in bed. She
felt of his hands and they were not cold. She touched his face and found
it warm. She pushed the dark hair from his pale forehead and kissed it.
She knelt and prayed again, her head upon his knee. He bowed above her
while she prayed, and stroked her hair. She felt his tears falling upon
her head. She stood up, and when he lifted his face to hers, looked
into his wide weeping eyes,--aye, into his very soul. She liked to see
the tears and the look of agony on his face, for she knew by these signs
how he suffered, and she knew why.

When he had grown calm she brought a cup of coffee to him. He drank it,
and then she led him to the little dining-room, where a midnight supper
had been set for four, but, because of his absence, had not been
touched. He saw the tree and the toys that the messenger had left, and
spoke for the first time. "Oh, wife dear, have they all come? Are they
all here? The toys and all?" and then, seeing the overcoat that the
messenger had left on a chair near by, and which his wife had not yet
seen, he cried excitedly, "Take that away--it isn't mine!"

"Why, yes, dear," said his wife, "it must be yours."

"No, no," he said; "I bought a coat like that, but I sold it. I drank a
lot and only climbed on the train as it was pulling out of Omaha. In the
warm car I fell asleep and dreamed the sweetest dream I ever knew. I had
come home sober with all the things, you had kissed me, we had a great
dinner here, and there stood the Christmas tree, the children were here,
the messenger and his wife, and their children. We were all so happy! I
saw the shadow fade from your face, saw you smile and heard you laugh;
saw the old love-light in your eyes and the rose coming into your cheek.
And then--'Oh, bitterness of things too sweet!'--I woke to find my own
old trembling self again. It was all a dream. Looking across the aisle,
I saw that coat on the back of an empty seat. I knew it was not mine,
for I had sold mine for two miserable dollars. I knew, too, that the man
who gave them to me got them back again before they were warm in my
pocket. This thought embittered me, and, picking up the coat, I walked
out and stood on the platform of the baggage car. At the next stop they
took me off and turned me over to the city marshal,--for the coat
belonged to the Superintendent.

"It is like mine, except that it is real, and mine, of course, was only
a good imitation. Take it away, wife--do take it away--it haunts me!"

Pitying him, the wife put the coat out of his sight; and immediately he
grew calm, drank freely of the strong coffee, but he could not eat.
Presently he went over and began to arrange the little Christmas tree in
the box his wife had prepared for it during his absence. She began
opening the parcels, and when she could trust herself, began to talk
about the surprise they would have for the children, and now and again
to express her appreciation of some dainty trifle he had selected for
her. She watched him closely, noting that his hand was unsteady, and
that he was inclined to stagger after stooping for a little while.
Finally, when the tree had been trimmed, and the sled for the boy and
the doll-carriage for the girl were placed beneath it, she got him to
lie down. When she had made him comfortable she kissed him again, knelt
by his bed and prayed, or rather offered thanks, and he was asleep.

Two hours later the subdued shouts of her babies, the exclamations of
glad surprise that came in stage whispers from the dining-room, woke
her, and she rose from the little couch where she had fallen asleep,
already dressed to begin the day.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when she called the prodigal. When
he had bathed his feverish face and put on the fresh clothes she had
brought in for him and come into the dining-room, he saw his rosy dreams
of the previous night fulfilled. The messenger and his wife shook hands
with him and wished him a Merry Christmas. His children, all the
children, came and kissed him. His wife was smiling, and the warm blood
leaping from her happy heart actually put color in her cheeks.

As Downs took the chair at the head of the table he bowed his head, the
rest did likewise, and he gave thanks, fervently and without
embarrassment.




THE STUFF THAT STANDS


It was very late in the fifties, and Lincoln and Douglas were engaged in
animated discussion of the burning questions of the time, when Melvin
Jewett journeyed to Bloomington, Illinois, to learn telegraphy.

It was then a new, weird business, and his father advised him not to
fool with it. His college chum said to him, as they chatted together for
the last time before leaving school, that it would be grewsomely lonely
to sit in a dimly lighted flag-station and have that inanimate machine
tick off its talk to him in the sable hush of night; but Jewett was
ambitious. Being earnest, brave, and industrious, he learned rapidly,
and in a few months found himself in charge of a little wooden
way-station as agent, operator, yard-master, and everything else. It was
lonely, but there was no night work. When the shadows came and hung on
the bare walls of his office the spook pictures that had been painted
by his school chum, the young operator went over to the little tavern
for the night.

True, Springdale at that time was not much of a town; but the telegraph
boy had the satisfaction of feeling that he was, by common consent, the
biggest man in the place.

Out in a hayfield, he could see from his window a farmer gazing up at
the humming wire, and the farmer's boy holding his ear to the pole,
trying to understand. All this business that so blinded and bewildered
with its mystery, not only the farmer, but the village folks as well,
was to him as simple as sunshine.

In a little while he had learned to read a newspaper with one eye and
keep the other on the narrow window that looked out along the line; to
mark with one ear the "down brakes" signal of the north-bound freight,
clear in the siding, and with the other to catch the whistle of the
oncoming "cannon ball," faint and far away.

When Jewett had been at Springdale some six or eight months, another
young man dropped from the local one morning, and said, "_Wie gehts_,"
and handed him a letter. The letter was from the Superintendent, calling
him back to Bloomington to despatch trains. Being the youngest of the
despatchers, he had to take the "death trick." The day man used to work
from eight o'clock in the morning until four o'clock in the afternoon,
the "split trick" man from four until midnight, and the "death trick"
man from midnight until morning.

We called it the "death trick" because, in the early days of
railroading, we had a lot of wrecks about four o'clock in the morning.
That was before double tracks and safety inventions had made travelling
by rail safer than sleeping at home, and before trainmen off duty had
learned to look not on liquor that was red. Jewett, however, was not
long on the night shift. He was a good despatcher,--a bit risky at
times, the chief thought, but that was only when he knew his man. He was
a rusher and ran trains close, but he was ever watchful and wide awake.

In two years' time he had become chief despatcher. During these years
the country, so quiet when he first went to Bloomington, had been torn
by the tumult of civil strife.

With war news passing under his eye every day, trains going south with
soldiers, and cars coming north with the wounded, it is not remarkable
that the fever should get into the young despatcher's blood. He read of
the great, sad Lincoln, whom he had seen and heard and known, calling
for volunteers, and his blood rushed red and hot through his veins. He
talked to the trainmen who came in to register, to enginemen waiting for
orders, to yardmen in the yards, and to shopmen after hours; and many of
them, catching the contagion, urged him to organize a company, and he
did. He continued to work days and to drill his men in the twilight. He
would have been up and drilling at dawn if he could have gotten them
together. He inspired them with his quiet enthusiasm, held them by
personal magnetism, and by unselfish patriotism kindled in the breast of
each of his fifty followers a desire to do something for his country.
Gradually the railroad, so dear to him, slipped back to second place in
the affairs of the earth. His country was first. To be sure, there was
no shirking of responsibility at the office, but the business of the
company was never allowed to overshadow the cause in which he had
silently but heartily enlisted. "Abe" Lincoln was, to his way of
reasoning, a bigger man than the President of the Chicago and Alton
Railroad--which was something to concede. The country must be cared for
first, he argued; for what good would a road be with no country to run
through?

All day he would work at the despatcher's office, flagging fast freights
and "laying out" local passenger trains, to the end that the soldiers
might be hurried south. He would pocket the "cannon ball" and order the
"thunderbolt" held at Alton for the soldiers' special. "Take siding at
Sundance for troop train, south-bound," he would flash out, and glory in
his power to help the government.

All day he would work and scheme for the company (and the Union), and at
night, when the silver moonlight lay on the lot back of the machine
shops, he would drill and drill as long as he could hold the men
together. They were all stout and fearless young fellows, trained and
accustomed to danger by the hazard of their daily toil. They knew
something of discipline, were used to obeying orders, and to reading
and remembering regulations made for their guidance; and Jewett reasoned
that they would become, in time, a crack company, and a credit to the
state.

By the time he had his company properly drilled, young Jewett was so
perfectly saturated with the subject of war that he was almost unfit for
duty as a despatcher. Only his anxiety about south-bound troop trains
held his mind to the matter and his hand to the wheel. At night, after a
long evening in the drill field, he would dream of great battles, and
hear in his dreams the ceaseless tramp, tramp of soldiers marching down
from the north to re-enforce the fellows in the fight.

Finally, when he felt that they were fit, he called his company together
for the election of officers. Jewett was the unanimous choice for
captain, other officers were chosen, and the captain at once applied for
a commission.

The Jewetts were an influential family, and no one doubted the result of
the young despatcher's request. He waited anxiously for some time, wrote
a second letter, and waited again. "Any news from Springfield?" the
conductor would ask, leaving the register, and the chief despatcher
would shake his head.

One morning, on entering his office, Jewett found a letter on his desk.
It was from the Superintendent, and it stated bluntly that the
resignation of the chief despatcher would be accepted, and named his
successor.

Jewett read it over a second time, then turned and carried it into the
office of his chief.

"Why?" echoed the Superintendent; "you ought to know why. For months you
have neglected your office, and have worked and schemed and conspired to
get trainmen and enginemen to quit work and go to war. Every day women
who are not ready to be widowed come here and cry on the carpet because
their husbands are going away with 'Captain' Jewett's company. Only
yesterday a schoolgirl came running after me, begging me not to let her
little brother, the red-headed peanut on the local, go as drummer-boy in
'Captain' Jewett's company.

"And now, after demoralizing the service and almost breaking up a half a
hundred homes, you ask, 'Why?' Is that all you have to say?"

"No," said the despatcher, lifting his head; "I have to say to you, sir,
that I have never knowingly neglected my duty. I have not conspired. I
have been misjudged and misunderstood; and in conclusion, I would say
that my resignation shall be written at once."

Returning to his desk, Jewett found the long-looked-for letter from
Springfield. How his heart beat as he broke the seal! How timely--just
as things come out in a play. He would not interrupt traffic on the
Alton, but with a commission in his pocket would go elsewhere and
organize a new company. These things flashed through his mind as he
unfolded the letter. His eye fell immediately on the signature at the
end. It was not the name of the Governor, who had been a close friend of
his father, but of the Lieutenant-Governor. It was a short letter, but
plain; and it left no hope. His request had been denied.

This time he did not ask why. He knew why, and knew that the influence
of a great railway company, with the best of the argument on its side,
would outweigh the influence of a train despatcher and his friends.

Reluctantly Jewett took leave of his old associates in the office, went
to his room in the hotel, and sat for hours crushed and discouraged.
Presently he rose, kicked the kinks out of his trousers, and walked out
into the clear sunlight. At the end of the street he stepped from the
side-walk to the sod path and kept walking. He passed an orchard and
plucked a ripe peach from an overhanging bough. A yellow-breasted lark
stood in a stubble-field, chirped two or three times, and soared,
singing, toward the far blue sky. A bare-armed man, with a muley cradle,
was cradling grain, and, far away, he heard the hum of a horse-power
threshing machine. It had been months, it seemed years, since he had
been in the country, felt its cooling breeze, smelled the fresh breath
of the fields, or heard the song of a lark; and it rested and refreshed
him.

When young Jewett returned to the town he was himself again. He had been
guilty of no wrong, but had been about what seemed to him his duty to
his country. Still, he remembered with sadness the sharp rebuke of the
Superintendent, a feeling intensified by the recollection that it was
the same official who had brought him in from Springdale, made a train
despatcher out of him, and promoted him as often as he had earned
promotion. If he had seemed to be acting in bad faith with the officials
of the road, he would make amends. That night he called his company
together, told them that he had been unable to secure a commission,
stated that he had resigned and was going away, and advised them to
disband.

The company forming at Lexington was called "The Farmers," just as the
Bloomington company was known as the "Car-hands." "The Farmers" was
full, the captain said, when Jewett offered his services. At the last
moment one of the boys had "heart failure," and Jewett was taken in his
place. His experience with the disbanded "Car-hands" helped him and his
company immeasurably. It was only a few days after his departure from
Bloomington that he again passed through, a private in "The Farmers."

Once in the South, the Lexington company became a part of the 184th
Illinois Infantry, and almost immediately engaged in fighting. Jewett
panted to be on the firing-line, but that was not to be. The regiment
had just captured an important railway which had to be manned and
operated at once. It was the only means of supplying a whole army corps
with bacon and beans. The colonel of his company was casting about for
railroaders, when he heard of Private Jewett. He was surprised to find,
in "The Farmers," a man of such wide experience as a railway official,
so well posted on the general situation, and so keenly alive to the
importance of the railroad and the necessity of keeping it open. Within
a week Jewett had made a reputation. If there had been time to name him,
he would doubtless have been called superintendent of transportation;
but there was no time to classify those who were working on the road.
They called him Jewett. In some way the story of the one-time captain's
experience at Bloomington came to the colonel's ears, and he sent for
Jewett. As a result of the interview, the young private was taken from
the ranks, made a captain, and "assigned to special duty." His special
duty was that of General Manager of the M. & L. Railroad, with
headquarters in a car.

Jewett called upon the colonel again, uninvited this time, and
protested. He wanted to get into the fighting. "Don't worry, my boy,"
said the good-natured colonel, "I'll take the fight out of you later on;
for the present, Captain Jewett, you will continue to run this
railroad."

The captain saluted and went about his business.

There had been some fierce fighting at the front, and the Yankees had
gotten decidedly the worst of it. Several attempts had been made to rush
re-enforcements forward by rail, but with poor success. The pilot
engines had all been ditched. As a last desperate chance, Jewett
determined to try a "black" train. Two engines were attached to a
troop-train, and Jewett seated himself on the pilot of the forward
locomotive. The lights were all put out. They were to have no pilot
engine, but were to slip past the ambuscade, if possible, and take
chances on lifted rails and absent bridges. It was near the end of a
dark, rainy night. The train was rolling along at a good freight clip,
the engines working as full as might be without throwing fire, when
suddenly, from either side of the track, a yellow flame flared out,
followed immediately by the awful roar of the muskets from whose black
mouths the murderous fire had rushed. The bullets fairly rained on the
jackets of the engines, and crashed through the cab windows. The
engineer on the head engine was shot from his seat. Jewett, in a hail of
lead, climbed over the running-board, pulled wide the throttle, and
whistled "off brakes." The driver of the second engine, following his
example, opened also, and the train was thus whirled out of range, but
not until Jewett had been badly wounded. A second volley rained upon the
rearmost cars, but did little damage. The enemy had been completely
outwitted. They had mistaken the train for a pilot engine, which they
had planned to let pass; after which they were to turn a switch, ditch,
and capture the train.

There was great rejoicing in the hungry army at the front that dawn,
when the long train laden with soldiers and sandwiches arrived. The
colonel was complimented by the corps commander, but he was too big and
brave to accept promotion for an achievement in which he had had no part
or even faith. He told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth; and, when it was all over, there was no more "Captain" Jewett.
When he came out of the hospital he had the rank of a major, but was
still "assigned to special duty."

Major Jewett's work became more important as the great struggle went on.
Other lines of railway fell into the hands of the Yankees, and all of
them in that division of the army came under his control. They were good
for him, for they made him a very busy man and kept him from panting for
the firing-line. In conjunction with General D., the famous army
engineer, who has since become a noted railroad-builder, he rebuilt and
re-equipped wrecked railways, bridged wide rivers, and kept a way open
for men and supplies to get to the front.

When at last the little, ragged, but ever-heroic remnant of the
Confederate army surrendered, and the worn and weary soldiers set their
faces to the north again, Major Jewett's name was known throughout the
country.

At the close of the war, in recognition of his ability and great service
to the Union, Major Jewett was made a brevet colonel, by which title he
is known to almost every railway man in America.

       *       *       *       *       *

Many opportunities came to Colonel Jewett to enter once more the field
in which, since his school days, he had been employed. One by one these
offers were put aside. They were too easy. He had been so long in the
wreck of things that he felt out of place on a prosperous,
well-regulated line. He knew of a little struggling road that ran east
from Galena, Illinois. It was called the Galena and something, for
Galena was at that time the most prosperous and promising town in the
wide, wild West.

He sought and secured service on the Galena line and began anew. The
road was one of the oldest and poorest in the state, and one of the very
first chartered to build west from Chicago. It was sorely in need of a
young, vigorous, and experienced man, and Colonel Jewett's ability was
not long in finding recognition. Step by step he climbed the ladder
until he reached the General Managership. Here his real work began. Here
he had some say, and could talk directly to the President, who was one
of the chief owners. He soon convinced the company that to succeed they
must have more money, build more, and make business by encouraging
settlers to go out and plough and plant and reap and ship. The United
States government was aiding in the construction of a railway across the
"desert," as the West beyond the Missouri River was then called. Jewett
urged his company to push out to the Missouri River and connect with the
line to the Pacific, and they pushed.

Ten years from the close of the war Colonel Jewett was at the head of
one of the most promising railroads in the country. Prosperity followed
peace, the West began to build up, the Pacific Railroad was completed,
and the little Galena line, with a new charter and a new name, had
become an important link connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific.

For nearly half a century Jewett has been at the front, and has never
been defeated. The discredited captain of that promising company of
car-boys has become one of our great "captains of industry." He is
to-day President of one of the most important railroads in the world,
whose black fliers race out nightly over twin paths of steel, threading
their way in and out of not less than nine states, with nearly nine
thousand miles of main line. He has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams;
and his success is due largely to the fact that when, in his youth, he
mounted to ride to fame and fortune, he did not allow the first jolt to
jar him from the saddle. He is made of the stuff that stands.




THE MILWAUKEE RUN


Henry Hautman was born old. He had the face and figure of a voter at
fifteen. His skin did not fit his face,--it wrinkled and resembled a
piece of rawhide that had been left out in the rain and sun.

Henry's father was a freighter on the Santa Fé trail when Independence
was the back door of civilization, opening on a wilderness. Little Henry
used to ride on the high seat with his father, close up to the tail of a
Missouri mule, the seventh of a series of eight, including the trailer
which his father drove in front of the big wagon. It was the wind of the
west that tanned the hide on Henry's face and made him look old before
his time.

At night they used to arrange the wagons in a ring, in which the
freighters slept.

One night Henry was wakened by the yells of Indians, and saw men
fighting. Presently he was swung to the back of a cayuse behind a
painted warrior, and as they rode away the boy, looking back, saw the
wagons burning and guessed the rest.

Later the lad escaped and made his way to Chicago, where he began his
career on the rail, and where this story really begins.

It was extremely difficult, in the early days, to find sober, reliable
young men to man the few locomotives in America and run the trains. A
large part of the population seemed to be floating, drifting west, west,
always west. So when this stout-shouldered, strong-faced youth asked for
work, the round-house foreman took him on gladly. Henry's boyhood had
been so full of peril that he was absolutely indifferent to danger and a
stranger to fear. He was not even afraid of work, and at the end of
eighteen months he was marked up for a run. He had passed from the
wiping gang to the deck of a passenger engine, and was now ready for the
road.

Henry was proud of his rapid promotion, especially this last lift, that
would enable him to race in the moonlight along the steel trail, though
he recalled that it had cost him his first little white lie.

One of the rules of the road said a man must be twenty-one years old
before he could handle a locomotive. Henry knew his book well, but he
knew also that the railroad needed his service and that he needed the
job; so when the clerk had taken his "Personal Record,"--which was only
a mild way of asking where he would have his body sent in case he met
the fate so common at that time on a new line in a new country,--he gave
his age as twenty, hoping the master-mechanic would allow him a year for
good behavior.

Years passed. So did the Indian and the buffalo. The railway reached out
across the Great American Desert. The border became blurred and was
rubbed out. The desert was dotted with homes. Towns began to grow up
about the water-tanks and to bud and blow on the treeless plain.

Henry Hautman became known as the coolest and most daring driver on the
road. He was a good engineer and a good citizen. He owned his home; and
while his pay was not what an engineer draws to-day for the same run
made in half the time, it was sufficient unto the day, his requirements,
and his wife's taste.

Only one thing troubled him. He had bought a big farm not far from
Chicago, for which he was paying out of his savings. If he kept well, as
he had done all his life, three years more on the Limited would let him
out. Then he could retire a year ahead of time, and settle down in
comfort on the farm and watch the trains go by.

It would be his salvation, this farm by the roadside; for the very
thought of surrendering the "La Salle" to another was wormwood and gall
to Henry. It never occurred to him to quit and go over to the N.W. or
the P.D. & Q., where they had no age limit for engineers. No man ever
thought of leaving the service of the Chicago, Milwaukee & Wildwood. The
road was one of the finest, and as for the run,--well, they used to say,
"Drive the Wildwood Limited and die." Henry had driven it for a decade
and had not died. When he looked himself over he declared he was the
best man, physically, on the line. But there was the law in the Book of
Rules,--the Bible of the C.M. & W.,--and no man might go beyond the
limit set for the retirement of engine-drivers; and Henry Hautman, the
favorite of the "old man," would take his medicine. They were a loyal
lot on the Milwaukee in those days. Superintendent Van Law declared them
clannish. "Kick a man," said he, "in St. Paul, and his friends will feel
the shock in the lower Mississippi."

Time winged on, and as often as Christmas came it reminded the old
engineer that he was one year nearer his last trip; for his mother, now
sleeping in the far West, had taught him to believe that he had come to
her on Christmas Eve.

How the world had aged in threescore years! Sometimes at night he had
wild dreams of his last day on the freight wagon, of the endless reaches
of waving wild grass, of bands of buffalo racing away toward the setting
sun, a wild deer drinking at a running stream, and one lone Indian on
the crest of a distant dune, dark, ominous, awful. Sometimes, from his
high seat at the front of the Limited, he caught the flash of a field
fire and remembered the burning wagons in the wilderness.

But the wilderness was no more, and Henry knew that the world's greatest
civilizer, the locomotive, had been the pioneer in all this great work
of peopling the plains. The pathfinders, the real heroes of the
Anglo-Saxon race, had fought their way from the Missouri River to the
sundown sea. He recalled how they used to watch for the one opposing
passenger train. Now they flashed by his window as the mile-posts
flashed in the early days, for the line had been double-tracked so that
the electric-lighted hotels on wheels passed up and down regardless of
opposing trains. All these changes had been wrought in a single
generation; and Henry felt that he had contributed, according to his
light, to the great work.

But the more he pondered the perfection of the service, the comfort of
travel, the magnificence of the Wildwood Limited, the more he dreaded
the day when he must take his little personal effects from the cab of
the La Salle and say good-bye to her, to the road, and hardest of all,
to the "old man," as they called the master-mechanic.

One day when Henry was registering in the round-house, he saw a letter
in the rack for him, and carried it home to read after supper.

When he read it, he jumped out of his chair. "Why, Henry!" said his
wife, putting down her knitting, "what ever's the matter,--open switch
or red light?"

"Worse, Mary; it's the end of the track."

The old engineer tossed the letter over to his wife, sat down, stretched
his legs out, locked his fingers, and began rolling his thumbs one over
the other, staring at the stove.

When Mrs. Hautman had finished the letter she stamped her foot and
declared it an outrage. She suggested that somebody wanted the La Salle.
"Well," she said, resigning herself to her fate, "I bet I have that
coach-seat out of the cab,--it'll make a nice tête-à-tête for the front
room. Superannuated!" she went on with growing disgust. "I bet you can
put any man on the first division down three times in five."

"It's me that's down, Mary,--down and out."

"Henry Hautman, I'm ashamed of you! you know you've got four years come
Christmas--why don't you fight? Where's your Brotherhood you've been
paying money to for twenty years? I bet a 'Q' striker comes and takes
your engine."

"No, Mary, we're beaten. I see how it all happened now. You see I began
at twenty when I was really but sixteen; that's where I lose. I lied to
the 'old man' when we were both boys; now that lie comes back to me, as
a chicken comes home to roost."

"But can't you explain that now?"

"Well, not easy. It's down in the records--it's Scripture now, as the
'old man' would say. No, the best I can do is to take my medicine like a
man; I've got a month yet to think it over."

After that they sat in silence, this childless couple, trying to fashion
to themselves how it would seem to be superannuated.

The short December days were all too short for Henry. He counted the
hours, marked the movements of the minute-hand on the face of his cab
clock, and measured the miles he would have, not to "do" but to enjoy,
before Christmas. As the weeks went by the old engineer became a changed
man. He had always been cheerful, happy, and good-natured. Now he
became thoughtful, silent, melancholy. There was not a man on the first
division but grieved because he was going, but no man would dare say so
to Henry. Sympathy is about the hardest thing a stout heart ever has to
endure.

While Henry was out on his last trip his wife waited upon the
master-mechanic and asked him to bring his wife over and spend Christmas
Eve with Henry and help her to cheer him up; and the "old man" promised
to call that evening.

Although there were half-a-dozen palms itching for the throttle of the
La Salle, no man had yet been assigned to the run. And the same kindly
feeling of sympathy that prompted this delay prevented the aspirants
from pressing their claims. Once, in the lodge room, a young member
eager for a regular run opened the question, but saw his mistake when
the older members began to hiss like geese, while the Worthy Master
smote the table with his maul. Henry saw the La Salle cross the
turn-table and back into the round-house, and while he "looked her
over," examining every link and pin, each lever and link-lifter, the
others hurried away; for it was Christmas Eve, and nobody cared to say
good-bye to the old engineer.

When he had walked around her half-a-dozen times, touching her burnished
mainpins with the back of his hand, he climbed into the cab and began to
gather up his trinkets, his comb and tooth-brush, a small steel
monkey-wrench, and a slender brass torch that had been given to him by a
friend. Then he sat upon the soft cushioned coach-seat that his wife had
coveted, and looked along the hand-railing. He leaned from the cab
window and glanced along the twin stubs of steel that passed through the
open door and stopped short at the pit, symbolizing the end of his run
on the rail. The old boss wiper came with his crew to clean the La
Salle, but when he saw the driver there in the cab he passed him by.

Long he sat in silence, having a last visit with La Salle, her brass
bands gleaming in the twilight. For years she had carried him safely
through snow and sleet and rain, often from dawn till dusk, and
sometimes from dusk till dawn again. She had been his life's companion
while on the road, who now, "like some familiar face at parting, gained
a graver grace."

Presently the lamp-lighters came and began lighting the oil lamps that
stood in brackets along the wall; but before their gleam reached his
face the old engineer slid down and hurried away home with never a
backward glance.

       *       *       *       *       *

That night when Mrs. Hautman had passed the popcorn and red apples, and
they had all eaten and the men had lighted cigars, the engineer's wife
brought a worn Bible out and drew a chair near the master-mechanic. The
"old man," as he was called, looked at the book, then at the woman, who
held it open on her lap.

"Do you believe this book?" she asked earnestly.

"Absolutely," he answered.

"All that is written here?"

"All," said the man.

Then she turned to the fly-leaf and read the record of Henry's
birth,--the day, the month, and the year.

Henry came and looked at the book and the faded handwriting, trying to
remember; but it was too far away.

The old Bible had been discovered that day deep down in a trunk of old
trinkets that had been sent to Henry when his mother died, years ago.

The old engineer took the book and held it on his knees, turned its limp
leaves, and dropped upon them the tribute of a strong man's tear.

The "old man" called for the letter he had written, erased the date, set
it forward four years, and handed it back to Henry.

"Here, Hank," said he, "here's a Christmas gift for you."

So when the Wildwood Limited was limbered up that Christmas morning,
Henry leaned from the window, leaned back, tugged at the throttle again,
smiled over at the fireman, and said, "Now, Billy, watch her swallow
that cold, stiff steel at about a mile a minute."




BOOKS BY CY WARMAN


SHORT RAILS

12mo. $1.25

       *       *       *       *       *

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

N.Y. TIMES REVIEW.

It is good for the soul that we should look into other worlds than our
own, and Mr. Warman knows how to put us beside fireman and engineer and
how to make us feel the poetry as well as the power of the tireless
giants that fulfil for us moderns the ancient dream of the
fire-breathing brazen bulls yoked for the service of man.

THE OUTLOOK.

A dozen or more spirited tales, tersely told, and with that surety of
touch which comes only from intimate knowledge.... The romance, danger,
bravery, plottings, and nobility of action incident to life on the rail
are all realistically depicted, and the reader feels the charm which
attaches to the new or strange.

BOSTON ADVERTISER.

The reader will find much pleasure, and no disappointment, in reading
these pages.


THE WHITE MAIL

12mo. $1.25

       *       *       *       *       *

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

THE NATION.

Cy Warman can always impart a living interest to a story through his
close intimacy with locomotives, yard-masters, signals, switches, with
all that pertains to railroading, in a word--from a managers' meeting to
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jungle is contagious.

THE OUTLOOK

Mr. Cy Warman, by long personal experience, acquired a close and exact
knowledge of the life of railroad men. "The White Mail" brings out
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freight handler.

THE CONGREGATIONALIST

Cy Warman writes excellent railroad stories, of course, and his new one,
"The White Mail," is short, lively, and eminently readable.

ST. LOUIS GLOBE-DEMOCRAT

In "The White Mail," Cy Warman, in the pleasant, witty style for which
this poet of the Rockies has become noted, has presented a tender,
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TALES OF AN ENGINEER

_With Rhymes of the Rail_

12mo. $1.25

       *       *       *       *       *

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

THE CONGREGATIONALIST

There is true power in Cy Warman's "Tales of an Engineer," and the
reader yields willingly to the attraction of its blended novelty,
spirit, and occasional pathos. It does not lack humor, and every page is
worth reading.

THE CHURCHMAN

A new departure in literature should be interesting even if lacking in
the brilliant off-hand sketchiness of these pages. One steps into a new
life. There is not a dull page in this book, and much of it is of more
than ordinary interest.

NEW YORK COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER

There is a rugged directness about the description of rushing runs on
the rail, through which one can hear the thump-thump of the machinery as
the engine dashes over the rails, and which seems to be illumined by the
glow of the headlights and the colored signals.


THE EXPRESS MESSENGER

_And Other Tales of the Rail_

12mo. $1.25

       *       *       *       *       *

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

BOSTON TRANSCRIPT

The author's work is familiarly and pleasantly known to magazine readers
for the realistic details of Western railroad life, which give them a
dashing, vital movement, though they are often highly romantic. The
romantic in them, however, seems very human--indeed, there is a ring of
true feeling in these little tales.

BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE

Mr. Warman's work has about it the merit of a genuine realism, and it is
as full of romance and adventure as the most exacting reader could
desire. It is a volume of sketches that is well worth reading, not only
because they are well written and full of action, but for the pictures
they give of a life that the world really knows very little about.

PHILADELPHIA PRESS

The poet appears in the descriptive passages, and there is a melodious
rhythm to his prose style that is pleasurable in a high degree. Mr.
Warman has a field of his own, and he is master of it.


FRONTIER STORIES

12mo. $1.25

       *       *       *       *       *

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

REVIEW OF REVIEWS

Nobody knows his frontier life better than Mr. Warman, and his yarns of
Indians, striking miners, cowboys, half-breeds, and railroad men, are
full of vivid reality. There is plenty of romance and excitement in this
score of stories.

THE CHURCHMAN

Eighteen tales which certainly are excellent in their kind, quick,
breezy, full of the local color, yet with delightful touches of
universal humanity.

CINCINNATI COMMERCIAL TRIBUNE

They are honest little chapters of life simply written, an effective
word of slang stuck in here and there where it does not seem at all out
of place; honest, open-hearted, steady-eyed narratives all, with the
breeze of the Western prairies in every line, as well as the brotherhood
of man, and his triumphs and his failures impressing themselves upon you
at every turn.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK








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