The Night Operator Part 33

Brannahan stooped and lunged the stub of the cigar in his mouth over the lamp chimney, and with the up-draft nearly extinguished the flame; then he pulled up a chair, tilted back and stuck his feet up on the desk.

"Guess most anything would be variety in this G.o.d-forsaken hole," he observed between puffs. "What?"

"Oh, it's not so bad--when you get used to it," said the Kid.

He edged his own chair around to face Brannahan squarely--the wound in the back of his head was bleeding again; perhaps it had never stopped bleeding, he did not know.

Brannahan made small talk, waiting for the fast freight, east, to cross; and the Kid smiled, while his fingers clutched desperately now and then at the arms of his chair to keep himself from pitching over, as those sickening, giddy waves, like hot and cold flashes, swept him.

Brannahan went at last, the fast freight roared by, No. 81 pulled out, and the Kid went back to the wash-basin and put his bandage on again.

The morning came and went, the afternoon, and the evening; and by evening the Kid was sick and dropping weak. That smash on his head must have been more serious than he had thought at first; for, again and again, and growing more frequent, had come those giddy flashes, and once, he wasn't sure, but it seemed as though he had fainted for a moment or two.

It was getting on to ten o'clock now, and he sat, or, rather, lay forward with his head in his arms over the desk under the lighted lamp.

The sounder was clicking busily; the Kid raised his head a little, and listened. There was a Circus Special, west, that night, and No. 2, the eastbound Limited, was an hour off schedule, and, trying to make it up, was running with clear rights while everything else on the train sheet dodged to the sidings to get out of the way. The sounder stopped for an instant, then came the dispatcher's "complete"--the Circus Special was to cross the Limited at L'Aramie, the next station west of Angel Forks. It had nothing to do with the Kid, and it would be another two hours at least before the Circus Special was along.

The Kid's head dropped back on his arms again. What was he to do? He could stick out the night somehow--he _must_ stick it out. If he asked for a relief it was the sack for the man upstairs--it was throwing McGrew cold. It wouldn't take them long to find out what was the matter with McGrew! And surely McGrew would be straight again by morning--he wasn't any better now, worse if anything, but by morning surely the worst of the drink would be out of him. McGrew had been pretty bad all day--as bad as the Kid had ever seen a man. He wondered a little numbly about it. He had thought once that McGrew might have had some more drink hidden, and he had searched for it during the forenoon while McGrew watched him from the bunk; but he had found nothing. It was strange, too, the way McGrew was acting, strange that it took so long for the man to get it out of his system, it seemed to the Kid; but the Kid had not found those last two bottles, neither was the Kid up in therapeutics, nor was he the diagnostician that Doctor McTurk was.

"By morning," said the Kid, with the moan, "if he can't stand a trick I'll _have_ to wire. I'm afraid to-night 'll be my limit."

It was still and quiet--not even a breeze to whisper through the cut, or stir the pine-clad slope into rustling murmurs. Almost heavily the silence lay over the little station buried deep in the heart of the mighty range. Only the sounder spoke and chattered--at intervals--spasmodically.

An hour pa.s.sed, an hour and a half, and the Kid scarcely moved--then he roused himself. It was pretty near time for the Circus Special to be going through to make its meeting point with the Limited at L'Aramie, and he looked at his lights. He could see them, up and down, switch and semaph.o.r.e, from the bay window of the station where he sat. It was just a glance to a.s.sure himself that all was right. He saw the lights through red and black flashes before his eyes, saw that the main line was open as it should be--and dropped his swooning, throbbing head back on his arms once more.

And then suddenly he sat erect. From overhead came the dull, ominous thud of a heavy fall. He rose from his chair--and caught at the table, as the giddiness surged over him and his head swam around. For an instant he hung there swaying, then made his way weakly for the stairs and started up.

There was a light above--he had kept a lamp burning there--but for a moment after he reached the top nothing but those ghastly red and black flashes met his eyes--and then, with a strange, inarticulate cry, he moved toward the side of the room.

Sprawled in a huddled heap upon the floor beneath the eaves, collapsed, out like the snuffing of a candle wick, as Doctor McTurk had said some day he would go out, dead, lay Dan McGrew--the loose plank up, two empty bottles beside him, as though the man had s.n.a.t.c.hed first one and then the other from their hiding place in the wild hope that there might be something left of the supply drained to the last drop hours before.

The Kid stooped over McGrew, straightened up, stared at the lifeless form before him, and his hands went queerly to his temples and the sides of his head--the room spun dizzily around and around, the lamp, the dead man on the floor, the bunks, a red-and-black flashed whirl--the Kid's hands reached grasping into nothingness for support, and he slipped inertly to the floor.

From below came the sharp tattoo of the sounder making the Angel Forks call, quick, imperative at first--then like a knell of doom, in frantic appeal, the despatchers' life and death, the _seventeen_--and, "Hold Circus Special." Over and over again the sounder spoke and cried and babbled and sobbed like a human soul in agony; over and over again while the minutes pa.s.sed, and with heavy, resonant roar the long Circus Special rumbled by--but the man on the night wire at Angel Forks was dead; and the Kid was past the hearing--there were to come weeks, while he raved in the furious delirium and lay in the heavy stupor of brain fever, before a key meant anything to him again.

It's queer the way things happen! Call it luck, if you like--maybe it is--maybe it's something more than luck. It wouldn't be sacrilege, would it, to say that the hand of G.o.d had something to do with keeping the Circus Special and the Limited from cras.h.i.+ng head-on in the rock-walled, twisting canon, four miles west of Angel Forks, whatever might be the direct means, ridiculous, before-unheard-of, funny, or absurd, that saved a holocaust that night? That wouldn't be sacrilege, would it? Well, call it luck, if you like--call it anything you like.

Queer things happen in railroading--but this stands alone, queerest of all in the annals of fifty roads in a history of fifty years.

The Limited, thanks to a clean-swept track, had been making up time, making up enough of it to throw meeting point with the Circus Special at L'Aramie out--and the despatcher had tried to Hold the Circus Special at Angel Forks and let the Limited pa.s.s her there. There was time enough to do it, plenty of it--and under ordinary circ.u.mstances it would have been all in the night's work. But there was blame, too, and Saxton, who was on the key at Big Cloud that night, relieving Donkin, who was sick, went on the carpet for it--he let the Limited tear through L'Aramie _before_ he sent his order to Angel Forks, with the Circus Special in the open cutting along for her meeting point with nothing but Angel Forks between her and L'Aramie.

That was the despatcher's end of it--the other end is a little different. Whether some disgruntled employee, seeking to revenge himself on the circus management, loosened the door of one of the cars while the Special lay on the siding waiting for a crossing at Mitre Peak, her last stop, or whether it was purely an accident, no one ever knew--though the betting was pretty heavy on the disgruntled employee theory--there had been trouble the day before. However, be that as it may, one way or the other, one thing was certain, they found the door open after it was all over, and--but, we're over-running our holding orders--we'll get to that in a minute.

Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan, in the 428, were pulling the Special that night, and as they shot by the Angel Forks station the fireman was leaning out of the gangway for a breath of air.

"Wonder how the Kid's making out?" he shouted in Hogan's ear, retreating into the cab as they b.u.mped over the west-end siding switch with a shattering racket. "Good kid, that--ain't seen him since the day he came up with us."

Hogan nodded, checking a bit for the curve ahead, mindful of his high-priced, heavily insured live freight.

"Did ever you hear such a forsaken row!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed irrelevantly.

"Listen to it, Bull. About three runs a year like this and I'd be clawing at iron bars and trying to mimic a menagerie. Listen to it!"

Coussirat listened. Every conceivable kind of an animal on earth seemed to be lifting its voice to High Heaven in earnest protest for some cause or other--the animals, beyond any peradventure of doubt, were displeased with their accommodations, uncomfortable, and indignantly uneasy. The rattle of the train was a paltry thing--over it hyenas laughed, lions roared, elephants trumpeted, and giraffes emitted whatever noises giraffes emit. It was a medley fit for Bedlam, from shrill, whistling, piercing shrieks that set the ear-drums tingling, to hoa.r.s.e, cavernous bellows like echoing thunder.

"Must be something wrong with the animals," said Coussirat, with an appreciative grin. "They weren't yowling like that when we started--guess they don't like their Pullmans."

"It's enough to give you the creeps," growled Fatty Hogan.

Coussirat reached for the chain, and with an expert flip flung wide the furnace door--and the bright glow lighted up the heavens and shot the black of the cab into leaping, fiery red. Coussirat swung around, reaching for his shovel--and grabbed Hogan's arm instead, as a chorus of unearthly, chattering shrieks rent the air.

"For the love of Mike, for G.o.d's sake, Fatty," he gasped, "look at that!"

Perched on the tender, on the top of the water tank, just beyond the edge of the coal, sat a well-developed and complacent ape--and, as Coussirat looked, from the roof of the property car, behind the tender, another swung to join the first.

"Jiminy Christmas!" yelled Hogan, screwed around in his seat. "The whole blasted tribe of monkeys is loose! That's what's wrong with the rest of the animals--the little devils have probably been teasing them through the barred air-holes at the ends of the cars. Look at 'em!

Look at 'em come!"

Coussirat was looking--he hadn't stopped looking. Along the roof of the property car they came, a chattering, jabbering, swaying string of them--and on the brake wheel two sat upright, lurching and clinging for dear life, the short hair blown straight back from their foreheads with the sweep of the wind, while they peered with earnest, strained faces into the cab. And the rest, two dozen strong now, ma.s.sed on the roof of the property car, perilously near the edges for anything but monkeys, inspected the cab critically, picked at each other's hides, made gestures, some of which were decidedly uncomplimentary, and chattered volubly to their leaders already on the tender. The tender seemed to appeal. Down came another monkey via the brake-rod, and swung by its tail with a sort of flying-trapeze effect to the tender--and what one did another did--the accommodation on the water tank was being crowded--the front rank moved up on the coal.

"Say!" bawled Coussirat to his mate. "Say, Fatty, get up and give 'em your seat--there's ladies present. And say, what are we going to do about it? The little pets ought to be put back to bed."

"Do nothing!" snapped Hogan, one wary eye on the monkeys, and the other on the right of way ahead. "If the circus people don't know enough to shut their d.a.m.ned beasts up properly it's their own lookout--it's not our funeral, whatever happens."

The advance guard of the monkeys had approached too close to the crest of the high-piled coal, and as a result, while they scrambled back for firmer footing, they sent a small avalanche of it rolling into the cab.

This was touching Coussirat personally--and Coussirat glared.

Coussirat was no nature faker--he knew nothing about animals, their habits, peculiarities, or characteristics. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up a piece of coal, and heaved it at the nearest monkey.

"Get out, you little devil--_scut_!" he shouted--and missed--and the effect was disconcerting to Coussirat.

Monkeys are essentially imitative, earnestly so--and not over-timid when in force--they imitated Coussirat. Before he could get his breath, first one and then another began to pick up hunks of coal and heave them back--and into the cab poured a rain of missiles. For an instant, a bare instant, Coussirat stood his ground, then he dove for the shelter of his seat. Soft coal? Yes--but there are some fairish lumps even in soft coal.

Crash went the plate-gla.s.s face of the steam gauge! It was a good game, a joyous game--and there was plenty of coal, hunks and hunks of it--and plenty of monkeys, "the largest and most intelligent collection on earth," the billboards said.

Crash went the cab gla.s.s behind Fatty Hogan's head--and the monkeys shrieked delight. They hopped and jumped and performed gyrations over each other, those in the rear; while those on the firing line, with stern, screwed up, wizened faces, blinking furiously, swung their hairy arms--and into the cab still poured the hail of coal.

With a yell of rage, clasping at his neck where the gla.s.s had cut him, Fatty Hogan bounced forward in his seat.

"You double-blanked, blankety-blanked, triple-plated a.s.s!" he bellowed at Coussirat. "You--you _d.a.m.ned_ fool, you!" he screamed. "Didn't you know any better than that! Drive 'em off with the hose--turn the hose on them!"

"Turn it on yourself," said Coussirat sullenly; he was full length on his seat, and mindful that his own gla.s.s might go as Hogan's had.

"D'ye think I'm looking for glory and a wreath of immortelles?"

Funny? Well, perhaps. Is this sacrilege--to say it wasn't luck?

Cras.h.!.+ There was a hiss of steam, a scalding stream of water, and in a moment the cab was in a white cloud. Mechanically, Hogan slammed his throttle shut, and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the "air." It was the water gla.s.s--and the water gla.s.s sometimes is a nasty matter. Coussirat was on his feet now like a flash, and both men, clamped-jawed, groped for the c.o.c.k; and neither got off scathless before they shut it--and by then the train had stopped, and not a monkey was in sight.

Jimmie Burke, the conductor, came running up from the rear end, as Coussirat and Hogan swung out of the gangway to the ground.

"What's wrong?" demanded Burke--he had his watch in his hand.