Kitabı oku: «The Cattle-Baron's Daughter», sayfa 17

XXIV
THE STOCK TRAIN

It was almost unpleasantly hot in the little iron-roofed room at the railroad depot, and the agent, who flung the door open, stood still a minute or two blinking into the darkness. A big lamp that flickered in the wind cast an uncertain gleam upon the slushy whiteness under foot, and the blurred outline of a towering water-tank showed dimly through the sliding snow. He could also just discern the great locomotive waiting on the side-track, and the sibilant hiss of steam that mingled with the moaning of the wind whirling a white haze out of the obscurity. Beyond the track, and showing only now and then, the lights of the wooden town blinked fitfully; on the other hand and behind the depot was an empty waste of snow-sheeted prairie. The temperature had gone up suddenly, but the agent shivered as he felt the raw dampness strike through him, and, closing the door, took off and shook his jacket and sat down by the stove again.

He wore a white shirt of unusually choice linen, with other garments of fashionable city cut, for a station agent is a person of importance in the West, and this one was at least as consequential as most of the rest. He had finished his six o’clock supper at the wooden hotel a little earlier; and as the next train going west would not arrive for two or three hours, he took out a rank cigar, and, placing his feet upon a chair, prepared to doze the time away, though he laid a bundle of accounts upon his knee, in case anyone should come in unexpectedly. This, however, was distinctly improbable on such a night.

The stove flung out a drowsy heat, and it was not long before his eyes grew heavy. He could still hear the wailing of the wind and the swish of the snow that whirled about the lonely building, and listened for a while with tranquil contentment; for the wild weather he was not exposed to enhanced the comfort of the warmth and brightness he enjoyed. Then, the sounds grew less distinct and he heard nothing at all until he straightened himself suddenly in his chair as a cold draught struck him. A few flakes of snow also swept into the room and he saw that the door was open.

“Hallo!” he called. “Wait there a moment. I guess this place doesn’t belong to you.”

A man who looked big and shapeless in his whitened furs signed to somebody outside without answering, and four or five other men in fur caps and snow-sprinkled coats came in. They did not seem to consider it necessary to wait for permission, and it dawned upon the agent that something unusual was about to happen.

“We have a little business to put through,” said one.

“Well,” said the agent brusquely, “I can’t attend to you now. You can come back later – when the train comes in.”

One of the newcomers smiled sardonically, and the agent recognized two of his companions. They were men of some importance in that country, who had, however joined the homestead movement and were under the ban of the company’s chief supporters, the cattle-barons. There was accordingly no inducement to waste civility on them; but he had an unpleasant feeling that unnecessary impertinence would not be advisable.

“It has got to be put through now,” said the first of them, with a little ring in his voice. “We want a locomotive and a calaboose to take us to Boynton, and we are quite willing to pay anything reasonable.”

“It can’t be done. We have only the one loco here, and she is wanted to shove the west-bound train up the long grade to the hills.”

“I guess that train will have to get through alone to-night,” said another man.

The agent got up with an impatient gesture. “Now,” he said, “I don’t feel like arguing with you. You can’t have the loco.”

“No?” said the homesteader, with a little laugh. “Well, I figure you’re mistaken. We have taken charge of her already and only want the bill. If you don’t believe me, call your engineer.”

The agent strode to the door, and there was a momentary silence after he called, “Pete!”

Then, a shout came out of the sliding snow: “I can’t come.”

It broke off with significant suddenness, and the agent turned to the man who had first spoken. “You are going to be sorry for this, Mr. Grant,” he said and then tried to slip away, but one of the others pulled the door to and stood with his back to it while Grant, smiling, said, “I’m quite willing to take my chances. Have the stock-cars passed Perry’s siding?”

“I don’t know,” said the agent.

“Then, hadn’t you better call them up and see? We are giving you the first chance of doing it out of courtesy, but one of us is a good operator.”

“I was on the Baltimore and Ohio road,” said one man. “You needn’t play any tricks with me.”

The agent sat down at the telegraph instrument, and looked up when it rapped out an answer to his message.

“Stock train left Birch Hollow. No sign of her yet.”

“That’s all right,” said the man who had served the B. and O. “Tell them to side-track her for half an hour, anyway, after your loco comes through. It’s necessary. Don’t worry ’bout any questions, but tell them to keep us a clear road, now.”

The agent, who saw that the other man was prepared to do the work himself, complied, and the latter once more nodded when the instrument clicked out the answer.

“Make out your bill,” said Grant, taking a wallet from his pocket.

“No,” said the agent; “we’re going to have the law of you.”

Grant laughed. “It strikes me there is very little law in this country now, and your company would a good deal sooner have the dollars than a letter telling them you had let us take one of their locomotives away from you.”

“That,” said the agent reflectively, “sounds quite sensible. Well, I’ll take the dollars. It doesn’t commit us to anything.”

The bills were counted over, and as the men went out Grant turned in the doorway. “It would not be advisable for you to wire any of the folks along the line to stop us,” he said. “We are going through to Boynton as fast as your engineer can shove his loco along, and if anybody switched us into a side-track it would only mean the smashing up of a good deal of the company’s property.”

He had gone out in another moment, and, in a few more, climbed into the locomotive cab, while somebody coupled on a calaboose in the rear. Then, he showed the engineer several bills and the agent’s receipt together.

“If you can hold your tongue and get us through to Boynton five minutes under the mail schedule time, the dollars are yours,” he said.

The engineer looked doubtful for a moment, then, his eyes twinkling, he took the bills.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve got the agent’s receipt, and the rest is not my business. Sit tight, and we’ll show you something very like flying to-night.”

Another man flung open the furnace door, a sudden stream of brightness flashed out as he hurled in coal, the door shut with a clang, and there was a whirr of slipping wheels as the engineer laid his hand on the lever. The great locomotive panted, and Grant, staring out through the glasses, saw a blinking light slide back to them. Then, the plates beneath him trembled, the hammering wheels got hold, and the muffled clanging and thudding swelled into a rhythmic din. The light darted past them, the filmy whiteness which had streamed down through the big headlamp’s glare now beat in a bewildering rush against the quivering glass, and the fan-shaped blaze of radiance drove on faster through the snow.

Five minutes passed, and Grant, who held a watch in his hand, glanced at the engineer as the blaze whirled like a comet along the clean-cut edge of a dusky bluff.

“You’ll have to do better,” he said.

“Wait till we have got her warmed up,” said the man, who stood quietly intent, his lean hand on the throttle. “Then you’ll see something.”

Grant sat down on a tool-locker, took out his cigar-case, and passed it to Breckenridge who sat opposite him. Breckenridge’s face was eager and there was an unusual brightness in his eyes, for he was young and something thrilled within him in unison with the vibration of the great machine. There was, however, very little to see just then beyond the tense, motionless figure of the man at the throttle and the damp-beaded face of another forced up in the lurid glare from the furnace door. A dim whiteness lashed the glasses, and when Breckenridge pressed his face to one of them the blaze of radiance against which the smoke-stack was projected blackly only intensified the obscurity they were speeding through.

Still, there was much to feel and hear – the shrill wail of the wind that buffeted their shelter, the bewildering throb and quiver of the locomotive which, with its suggestion of Titanic effort, seemed to find a response in human fibre, pounding and clashing with their burden of strain, and the roar of the great drivers that rose and fell like a diapason. Perhaps Breckenridge, who was also under a strain that night, was fanciful, but it seemed to him there was hidden in the medley of sound a theme or motive that voiced man’s domination over the primeval forces of the universe, and urged him to the endurance of stress, and great endeavour. It was, for the most part, vague and elusive; but there were times when it rang exultingly through the subtly harmonious din, reminding him of Wagnerian music.

Leaning forward, he touched Grant’s knee. “Larry, it’s bracing. The last few months were making me a little sick of everything – but this gets hold of one.” Grant smiled, but Breckenridge saw how weary his bronzed face showed in the dim lantern light. “There was a time, two or three years ago, when I might have felt it as you seem to do,” he said. “I don’t seem to have any feeling but tiredness left me now.”

“You can’t let go,” said Breckenridge.

“No,” and Grant sighed, “not until the State takes hold instead of me, or the trouble’s through.”

Breckenridge said nothing further, and Grant sat huddled in a corner with the thin blue cigar-smoke curling about him. He knew it was possible he was taking a very heavy risk just then, since the homesteaders might have changed their plans again; and his task was a double one, for he had not only to save the stock train, but prevent an encounter between his misguided followers and the cavalry. So there was silence between them while, lurching, rocking, roaring, the great locomotive sped on through the night, until the engineer, turning half-round, glanced at Grant.

“Is she making good enough time to suit you? Perry’s siding is just ahead, and we’ll be on the Bitter Creek trestle five minutes after that,” he said.

Grant rose and leaned forward close to the glasses. He could see nothing but the radiance from the headlamp whirling like a meteor through the filmy haze; but the fierce vibration of everything, and the fashion in which the snow smote the glasses, as in a solid stream, showed the pace at which they were travelling. He looked round and saw that Breckenridge’s eyes were fixed upon him. His comrade’s voice reached him faint and strained through the hammering of the wheels.

“You feel tolerably sure Harper was right about the bridge?”

Grant nodded. “I do.”

“What if he was mistaken, and they meant to try there after all? There are eight of us.”

“We have got to take the risk,” said Grant very quietly, “and it is a big responsibility; but if the boys got their work in and fell foul of Cheyne, we would have half the State ablaze.”

He signed for silence, and Breckenridge stared out through the glasses, for he feared his face would betray him, and fancied he understood the burden that was upon the man who, because it seemed the lesser evil, was risking eight men’s lives.

As he watched, a blink of light crept out of the snow, grew brighter, and swept back to them. Others appeared in a cluster behind it, a big water-tank flashed by, and the roar of wheels and scream of whistle was flung back by a snow-covered building. Then, as Breckenridge glanced to the opposite side, the blaze of another headlamp dazzled his eyes and he had a blurred vision of a waiting locomotive and a long row of snow-smeared cars. In another second cars and station had vanished as suddenly as they had sprung up out of the night, and they were once more alone in the sliding snow. Breckenridge drew a breath of relief.

“There’s the stock train, any way. And now for the bridge!” he said.

“That was the easiest half of it. Muller was there – I saw him – and he could have warned the agent at the last minute,” Grant answered.

Neither of them said anything further, but Breckenridge felt his heart beat faster as the snow whirled by. The miles were slipping behind them, and he was by no means so sure as Larry was that no attempt would be made upon the bridge. His fancy would persist in picturing the awful leap into the outer darkness through the gap in the trestle, and he felt his lips and forehead grow a trifle colder and his flesh shrink in anticipation of the tremendous shock. He looked at Grant; the latter’s face was very quiet, and had lost its grimness and weariness – there was almost a suggestion of exaltation in it.

“We are almost on the bridge now,” he said.

The engineer nodded, and the next moment Breckenridge, who had been watching the light of the headlamp flash along the snow beside the track, saw it sweep on, as it were, through emptiness. Then, he heard a roar of timber beneath him, and fancied he could look down into a black gulf through the filmy snow. He knew it was a single track they were speeding over, and that the platform of the calaboose behind them overhung the frozen river far below.

He set his lips and held his breath for what seemed a very long time, and then, with a sigh of relief, sank back into his seat as he felt by the lessening vibration, that there was frozen soil under them. But in spite of himself the hands he would have lighted a cigar with shook, and the engineer who looked round glanced at him curiously.

“Feeling kind of sick?” he said. “Well, it’s against the regulations, but there’s something that might fix you as well as tea in that can.”

Breckenridge smiled feebly. “The fact is, I have never travelled on a locomotive before, and when I took on the contract I didn’t quite know all I was letting myself in for,” he said.

“How far are we off the long down grade with the curve in it?” asked Grant.

“We might get there in ’bout ten minutes,” said the engineer.

“Slacken up before you reach the grade and put your headlamp out,” said Grant. “I want you to stop just this side of the curve, and wait for me five minutes.”

The engineer looked at him steadily. “Now, there’s a good deal I don’t understand about all this. What do you want me to stop there for?”

“I don’t see why you should worry. It does not concern you. Any way, I have hired this special, and I give you my word that nothing I am going to do will cause the least damage to any of the company’s property. I want you to stop, lend me a lantern, and sit tight in the cab until I tell you to go on. We will make it two dollars a minute.”

The engineer nodded. “I don’t know what you are after, but I guess I can take your word,” he said. “You seem that kind of a man.”

Ten minutes later the fireman vanished into the darkness, and the blaze of the headlamp went out before he returned and the roar of the drivers sank. The rhythmic din grew slack, and became a jarring of detached sounds again, the snow no longer beat on the glasses as it had done, and, rocking less, the great locomotive rolled slowly down the incline until it stopped, and Grant, taking the lantern handed him, sprang down from the cab. Four other men were waiting on the calaboose platform, and when Grant hid the lantern under his fur coat they floundered down the side of the graded track which there crossed a hollow. A raw wind whirled the white flakes about them and Breckenridge could scarcely see the men behind him. He was thankful when, slipping, sliding, stumbling, they gained the level.

From there he could just distinguish the road bed as something solid through the whirling haze, and he felt they were following a bend of it when Grant stopped and a clinking sound came out of the obscurity above them. It might have been made by somebody knocking out key wedges or spikes with a big hammer and in his haste striking the rail or chair.

Then Grant said something Breckenridge could not catch, and they were crawling up the slope, with the clinking and ringing growing a trifle louder. Breckenridge’s heart beat faster than usual, but he was tolerably collected now. He had a weapon he was not unskilled with in his pocket, and the chance of a fight with even desperate men was much less disconcerting than that of plunging down into a frozen river with a locomotive. He had also a reassuring conviction that if Larry could contrive it there would be no fight at all.

He crawled on, with the man behind clutching at him, now and then, and the one in front sliding back on him, until his arms were wet to the elbows and his legs to the knees; but the top of the grade seemed strangely difficult to reach, and he could see nothing with the snow that blew over it in his eyes. Suddenly Larry rose up, there was a shout and a flounder, and, though he did not quite know how he got there, Breckenridge found himself standing close behind his comrade, and in the light of the lantern held up saw a man drop his hammer. There were other men close by, but they were apparently too astonished to think of flight.

“It’s Larry!” somebody exclaimed.

“Stop where you are,” said Grant sharply as one man made a move. “I don’t want to shoot any of you, but I most certainly will if you make me. Are there any more of you?”

“No,” said one of the men disgustedly.

Grant walked forward swinging his lantern until his eyes rested on one partly loosened rail. “And that is as far as you have got?” he said. “Take up your hammer and drive the wood key in. Get hold of their rifles, Charley. I guess they are under that coat.”

There was an angry murmur, and a man started to speak; but Grant stopped him.

“Hammer the wedges in,” he said. “It was pure foolishness made me come here to save you from the cavalry who had heard of what you meant to do, because we have no use for men of your kind in this country. You haven’t even sense enough to keep your rifles handy, and there will be two or three less of you to worry decent folks if you keep us waiting.”

A man took up the hammer, and then waited a moment, looking at those who stood about Larry. He could see the faces of one or two in the lantern light, and recognized that he need expect no support from them. The men were resolute Americans, who had no desire for anything approaching anarchy.

“We are with Larry, and don’t feel like fooling. Hadn’t you better start in?” one of them said.

The rail was promptly fastened, and Grant, after examining it, came back.

“Go on in front of us, and take your tools along! It will not be nice for the man who tries to get away,” he said.

The prisoners plodded dejectedly up the track until they reached the calaboose, into which the others drove them. Then Grant and Breckenridge went back to the locomotive, and the former nodded to the engineer:

“Take us through to Boynton as fast as you can.”

“That is a big load off your mind,” Breckenridge said as the panting engine got under way.

But Grant, huddled in a corner, neither moved nor spoke until, half an hour later, they rolled into a little wooden town and the men in the calaboose got down. There was nobody about the depot to ask them any questions, and they crossed the track to the straggling street apparently on good terms with each other, though four of them knew that unpleasant results would follow any attempt at a dash for liberty. In answer to Grant’s knock, a man let them into one of the stores.

“I guess we’ll lock them in the back store until morning,” he said, after a short conference apart with Grant. “A little cooling down is not going to do them much harm, and I don’t think anyone could get out without an axe.”

The building looked secure and, when food and hot coffee had been served them, Grant retired to rest. He slept soundly, and it was close on daylight when a pounding on the door awakened him.

“I guess you had better get up at once,” their host called.

A few minutes later Grant and Breckenridge went downstairs with him, and the storekeeper, opening a door, lifted the lamp he held and pointed to an open window in the roof. A barrel, with a box or two laid upon it, stood suggestively beneath it.

Breckenridge glanced at Larry, and saw a curious little smile on his face. “Yes,” he said, “it’s quite simple. Now, I never saw that window. Where would they be likely to head for?”

“Pacific Slope,” said the storekeeper. “Wages are high just now, and they seemed quite afraid of you. The west-bound fast freight stopped here for water about two hours ago, and it was snowing that thick nobody would see them getting into a box car. They heave a few dry goods out here occasionally.”

Breckenridge turned to Grant. “You seem relieved.”

“Yes,” said Grant, with a little shake of his shoulders. “If they have lit out of the country it will content me. I have had quite enough hard things to do lately.”

A sudden thought struck Breckenridge. “You didn’t mean – ” he said with a shudder.

“I didn’t mean to let them go, but I’m glad they’ve gone,” Grant answered. “We made a warning of one of the cattle-barons’ men, and the man who takes the law into his own hands is doubly bound to do the square thing all round. If he does less, he is piling up a bigger reckoning than I would care to face.”