The Night Operator Part 25

And ten minutes later, the Directors' Special, metamorphosed into a string of box cars with two flats trailing on the rear, on which the newly elected board of the Transcontinental sat, some on their baggage, and some with their legs hanging over the sides, pulled away from the wreck and headed down the grade for Eagle Pa.s.s. Funny, the transition from the luxurious leather upholstery of the observation to an angry, chattering mob of magnates, clinging to each others' necks as they jounced on the flooring of an old flat? Well perhaps--it depends on how you look at it. Regan looked at it--and Regan grinned for the pure savagery that was in him.

"But I guess," said Regan to himself, as he watched them go, "I guess mabbe I'll be looking for that job on the Penn after all--h'm?"

Everybody talked about the Directors' Special run--naturally. And, naturally, everybody wondered what was going to come from it. It was an open secret that Regan had handed one to the general manager without any candy coating on the pill, and the Hill Division sort of looked to see the master mechanic's head fall and Regan go. But Regan did not go; and, for that matter, nothing else happened--for a while.

Carleton came back and got the rights of it from Regan--and said nothing to Regan about his reply to H. Herrington Campbell's letter, in which he had stated that if they were looking for a new master mechanic there would be a division superintendency vacant at the same time. The day man at Mitre Peak quit railroading--without waiting for an investigation. Old Dan MacCaffery and Billy Dawes went back to their regular run with the 304. And the division generally settled down again to its daily routine--and from the perspective of distance, if the truth be told, got to grinning reminiscently at the run the Big Bugs had had for their money.

Only the grin came too soon.

A week or so pa.s.sed, pay day came and went--and the day after that a general order from the East hit the Hill Division like a landslide.

Carleton slit the innocent-looking official manila open with his paper knife, chucked the envelope in the wastebasket, read the communication, read it again with gathering brows--and sent for Regan. He handed the form to the master mechanic without a word, as the latter entered the office.

Regan read it--read it again, as his chief had--and two hectic spots grew bright on his cheeks. It was brief, curt, cold--for the good of the service, safety, and operating efficiency, it stated. In a word, on and after the first of the month the services of employees over the age of sixty years would no longer be required. Those were early days in railroading; not a word about pensions, not a word about half-pay; just sixty years and--out!

The paper crackled in Regan's clenched fists; Carleton was beating a tattoo on his teeth with the mouthpiece of his pipe--there wasn't another sound in the office for a moment. Then Regan spoke--and his voice broke a little.

"It's a d.a.m.ned shame!" he said, through his teeth. "It's that skunk Campbell."

"How many men does it affect?" asked Carleton, looking through the window.

"I don't know," said the little master mechanic bitterly; "but I know one that it'll hit harder than all the rest put together--and that's old Dan MacCaffery."

There was hurt in the super's gray eyes, as he looked at the big-hearted little master mechanic's working face.

"I was thinking of old Dan myself," he said, in his low, quiet way.

"He hasn't a cent!" stormed Regan. "Not a cent--not a thing on earth to fall back on. Think of it! Him and that little old missus of his, G.o.d bless her sweet old face, that have been scrimping all these years to pay back what that blasted kid robbed out of the bank. It ain't right, Carleton--it ain't right--it's h.e.l.l, that's what it is! Sixty years! There ain't a better man ever pulled a latch in a cab, there ain't a better one pulling one anywhere to-day than old Dan MacCaffery.

And--and I kind of feel as though I were to blame for this, in a way."

"To blame?" repeated Carleton.

"I put him on that run, and Riley put old Pete Chartrand on. It kind of stuck them under Campbell's nose. The two of them together, the two oldest men--and the blamedest luck that ever happened on a run! H'm?"

Carleton shook his head.

"I don't think it would have made any difference in the long run, Tommy. I told you there'd be changes as soon as the new board got settled in the saddle."

Regan tugged viciously at his scraggly brown mustache.

"Mabbe," he growled fiercely; "but Campbell's seen old Dan now, or I'd put one over on the pup--I would that! There ain't any birth register that I ever heard of out here in the mountains, and if Dan said he was fifty I'd take his word for it."

"Dan wouldn't say that," said Carleton quietly, "not even to hold his job."

"No, of course he wouldn't!" spluttered the fat little master mechanic, belligerently inconsistent. "Who said he would? And, anyway, it wouldn't do any good. Campbell asked him his age, and Dan told him.

And--and--oh, what's the use! I know it, I know I'm only talking, Carleton."

Neither of them said anything for a minute; then Regan, pacing up and down the room, spoke again:

"It's a clean sweep, eh? Train crews, engine crews, everything--there ain't any other job for him. Over sixty is out everywhere. A white man--one of the whitest"--Regan sort of said it to himself--"old Dan MacCaffery. Who's to tell him?"

Carleton drew a match, with a long crackling noise, under the arm of his chair.

"Me?" said Regan, and his voice broke again. He stopped before the desk, and, leaning, over, stretched out his arm impulsively across it.

"I'd rather have that arm cut off than tell him, Carleton," he said huskily. "I don't know what he'll say, I don't know what he'll do, but I know it will break his heart, and break Mrs. MacCaffery's heart--Carleton." He took another turn the length of the room and back again. "But I guess it had better be me," said the little master mechanic, more to himself than to Carleton. "I guess it had--I'd hate to think of his getting it so's it would hurt any more than it had to, h'm?"

And so Tommy Regan told old Dan MacCaffery--that afternoon--the day after pay day.

Regan didn't mean to exactly, not then--he was kind of putting it off, as it were--until next day--and fretting himself sick over it. But that afternoon old Dan, on his way down to the roundhouse--Dan took out the regular pa.s.senger local that left Big Cloud at 6.55 every evening, and to spend an hour ahead of running time with the 304 was as much a habit with Dan as breathing was--hunted Regan up in the latter's office just before the six o'clock whistle blew. For an instant Regan thought the engineer had somehow or other already heard the news, but a glance at Dan's face dispelled that idea as quickly as it had come. Dan was always smiling, but there was a smile on the wizened, puckered, honest old face now that seemed to bubble out all over it.

"Regan," said old Dan, bursting with happy excitement, "I just had to drop in and tell you on the way over to the roundhouse, and the missus, she says, 'You tell Mr. Regan, Dan; he'll be rightdown glad.'"

Regan got up out of his chair. There seemed a sense of disaster coming somehow that set him to breathing heavily.

"Sure, Dan--sure," he said weakly. "What is it?"

"Well," said Dan, "you know that--that trouble the boy got into back--back----'

"Yes, I know," said Regan hastily.

"Well," said Dan, "it's taken a long time, a good many years, but yesterday, you know, was pay day; and to-day, Regan, we, the missus and me, Regan, sent the last of that money East, interest and all, the last cent of it, cleaned it all up. Say, Regan, I feel like I was walking on air, and you'd ought to have seen the missus sitting up there in the cottage and smiling through the tears. 'Oh, Dan!' she says, and then she gets up and puts her two hands on my shoulders, and I felt blamed near like crying myself. 'We can start in now, Dan, to save up for old age,' she says, smiling. Say, Regan, ain't it--ain't it fine? We're going to start in now and save up for old age."

Regan didn't say a word. It came with a rush, choking him up in his throat, and something misty in front of his eyes so he couldn't see--and he turned his back, searching for his hat on the peg behind his desk. He jammed his hat on his head, and jerked it low down over his forehead.

"Ain't you--glad?" said old Dan, a sort of puzzled hurt in his eyes.

"I'll walk over a bit of the way to the roundhouse with you, Dan," said Regan gruffly. "Come on."

They stepped out of the shops, and across a spur--old Dan, still puzzled, striding along beside the master mechanic.

"What's the matter, Regan?" he asked reproachfully. "I thought you'd be----"

And then Regan stopped--and his hand fell in a tight grip on the other's shoulder.

"I got to tell you, Dan," he blurted out. "But I don't need to tell you what I think of it. It's a d.a.m.ned shame! The new crowd that's running this road don't want anybody helping 'em to do it after the first of the month that's over sixty years of age. You're--you're out."

Old Dan didn't seem to get it for a minute; then a whiteness kind of crept around his lips, and his eyes, from Regan, seemed to circuit in a queer, wistful way about the yards, and fix finally on the roundhouse in front of him; and then he lifted his peaked cap, in the way he had of doing, and scratched near his ear where the hair was. He hit Regan pretty hard with what he said.

"Regan," he said, "there's two weeks yet to the end of the month.

Don't tell her, Regan, and don't you let the boys tell her--there's two weeks she don't need to worry. I'd kind of like to have her have them two weeks."

Regan nodded--there weren't any words that would come, and he couldn't have spoken them if there had.

"Yes," said old Dan, sort of whispering to himself, "I'd kind of like to have her have them two weeks."

Regan cleared his throat, pulled at his mustache, swore under his breath, and cleared his throat again.

"What'll you do, Dan--afterwards?"