The King of Arcadia Part 12

Williams used to be Upham's wrecking boss over on the D. & U. P. main line, and he'll make short work of this little pile-up, engine and all."

Accordingly, the whistle of the relief train's engine was blown to recall Fitzpatrick's men, and a little later the string of flats, men-laden, trailed away among the up-river hills, leaving the scene of the disaster with only the dull red glow of the workmen's night fire to illuminate it.

When the rumble of the receding relief train was no longer audible, the figure of a man, dimly outlined in the dusky glow of the fire, materialised out of the shadows of the nearest arroyo. First making sure that no watchman had been left to guard the point of hazard, the man groped purposefully under the fallen locomotive and drew forth a stout steel bar which had evidently been hidden for this later finding. With this bar for a lever, the lone wrecker fell fiercely at work under the broken cab, prying and heaving until the sweat started in great drops under the visor of his workman's cap and ran down to make rivulets of gray in the grime on his face.

Whatever he was trying to do seemed difficult of accomplishment, if not impossible. Again and again he strove at his task, pausing now and then to take breath or to rub his moist hands in the dry sand for the better gripping of the smooth steel. Finally--it was when the embers of the fire on the hill slope were flickering to their extinction--the bar slipped and let him down heavily. The fall must have partly stunned him, since it was some little time before he staggered to his feet, flung the bar into the wreck with a morose oath, and limped away up the track toward the headquarters camp, turning once and again to shake his fist at the capsized locomotive in the ditch at the curve.

It was in the afternoon of the day following the wreck that Ballard made the laboratory test for blame; the office room in the adobe shack serving as the "sweat-box."

First came the flagmen, one at a time, their stories agreeing well enough, and both corroborating Galliford's account. Next came Hoskins's fireman, a green boy from the Alta Vista mines, who had been making his first trip over the road. He knew nothing save that he had looked up between shovelfuls to see Hoskins fighting with his levers, and had judged the time to be ripe for the life-saving jump.

Last of all came Hoskins, hanging his head and looking as if he had been caught stealing sheep.

"Tell it straight," was Ballard's curt caution; and the engineman stumbled through a recital in which haziness and inconsistency struggled for first place. He had seen something on the track or he thought he had, and had tried to stop. Before he could bring the train under control he had heard the cras.h.i.+ng of the wreck in the rear. He admitted that he had jumped while the engine was still in motion.

"Which way was she running when you jumped, John?--forward or backward?"

asked Ballard, quietly.

Bromley, who was making pencil notes of the evidence, looked up quickly and saw the big engine-man's jaw drop.

"How could she be runnin' any way but forrards?" he returned, sullenly.

Ballard was smoking, and he s.h.i.+fted his cigar to say: "I didn't know."

Then, with sudden heat:

"But I mean to know, Hoskins; I mean to go quite to the bottom of this, here and now! You've been garbling the facts; purposely, or because you are still too badly rattled to know what you are talking about. I can tell you what you did: for some reason you made an emergency stop; you _did_ make it, either with the brakes or without them. Then you put your engine in the reverse motion and _backed_; you were backing when you jumped, and the engine was still backing when it left the rails."

Hoskins put his shoulders against the wall and pa.s.sed from sullenness to deep dejection. "I've got a wife and two kids back in Alta Vista, and I'm all in," he said. "What is there about it that you don't know, Mr.

Ballard?"

"There are two or three other things that I do know, and one that I don't. You didn't come up to the camp on the hand-car last night; and after we left the wreck, somebody dug around in the Two's cab trying to fix things so that they would look a little better for John Hoskins. So much I found out this morning. But I don't care particularly about that: what I want to know is the first cause. What made you lose your head?"

"I told you; there was something on the track."

"What was it?"

"It was--well, it was what once was a man."

Ballard bit hard on his cigar, and all the phrases presenting themselves were profane. But a glance from Bromley enabled him to say, with decent self-control: "Go on; tell us about it."

"There ain't much to tell, and I reckon you won't believe a thing 'at I say," Hoskins began monotonously. "Did you or Mr. Bromley notice what bend o' the river that curve is at?"

Ballard said "No," and Bromley shook his head. The engineman went on.

"It's where _he_ fell in and got drownded--Mr. Braithwaite, I mean. I reckon it sounds mighty foolish to you-all, sittin' here in the good old daylight, with nothin' happening: but I _saw_ him. When the Two's headlight jerked around the curve and picked him up, he was standing between the rails, sideways, and lookin' off toward the river. He had the same little old two-peaked cap on that he always wore, and he had his fis.h.i.+n'-rod over his shoulder. I didn't have three car lengths to the good when I saw him; and--and--well, I reckon I went plumb crazy."

Hoskins was a large man and muscular rather than fat; but he was sweating again, and could not hold his hands still.

Ballard got up and walked to the window which looked out upon the stone yard. When he turned again it was to ask Hoskins, quite mildly, if he believed in ghosts.

"I never allowed to, before this, Mr. Ballard."

"Yet you have often thought of Braithwaite's drowning, when you have been rounding that particular curve? I remember you pointed out the place to me."

Hoskins nodded. "I reckon I never have run by there since without thinking of it."

Ballard sat down again and tilted his chair to the reflective angle.

"One more question, John, and then you may go. You had a two-hour lay-over in Alta Vista yesterday while the D. & U. P. people were transferring your freight. How many drinks did you take in those two hours?"

"Before G.o.d, Mr. Ballard, I never touched a drop! I don't say I'm too good to do it: I ain't. But any man that'd go crookin' his elbow when he had that mountain run ahead of him would be _all_ fool!"

"That's so," said Ballard. And then: "That will do. Go and turn in again and sleep the clock around. I'll tell you what is going to happen to you when you're better fit to hear it."

"Well?" queried Bromley, when Hoskins was gone.

"Say your say, and then I'll say mine," was Ballard's rejoinder.

"I should call it a pretty harsh joke on Hoskins, played by somebody with more spite than common sense. There has been some little ill blood between Fitzpatrick's men and the railroad gangs; more particularly between the stone-cutters here at the dam and the train crews. It grew out of Fitzpatrick's order putting his men on the water-wagon. When the camp canteen was closed, the stone 'buckies' tried to open up a jug-line from Alta Vista. The trainmen wouldn't stand for it against Macpherson's promise to fire the first 'boot-legger' he caught."

"And you think one of the stone-cutters went down from the camp to give Hoskins a jolt?"

"That is my guess."

Ballard laughed.

"Mine isn't quite as practical, I'll admit; but I believe it is the right one. I've been probing Hoskins's record quietly, and his long suit is superst.i.tion. Half the 'hoodoo' talk of the camp can be traced back to him if you'll take the trouble. He confessed just now that he never pa.s.sed that point in the road without thinking of Braithwaite and his taking-off. From that to seeing things isn't a very long step."

Bromley made the sign of acquiescence.

"I'd rather accept your hypothesis than mine, Breckenridge. I'd hate to believe that we have the other kind of a fool on the job; a man who would deliberately make scare medicine to add to that which is already made. What will you do with Hoskins?"

"Let him work in the repair shop for a while, till he gets the fever out of his blood. I don't want to discharge him."

"Good. Now that is settled, will you take a little walk with me? I want to show you something."

Ballard found his pipe and filled it, and they went out together. It was a perfect summer afternoon, still and cloudless, and with the peculiar high-mountain resonance in the air that made the clink of the stone hammers ring like a musical chorus beaten out upon steel anvils.

Peaceful, orderly industry struck the key-note, and for the moment there were no discords. Out on the great ramparts of the dam the masons were swinging block after block of the face wall into place, and the _burr-r_ and cog-chatter of the huge derrick hoisting gear were incessant. Back of the masonry the concrete mixers poured their viscous charges into the forms, and the puddlers walked back and forth on their stagings, tamping the plastic material into the network of metal bars binding the ma.s.s with the added strength of steel.

Bromley led the way through the stone-yard activities and around the quarry hill to the path notched in the steep slope of the canyon side.

The second turn brought them to the gap made by the land-slide. It was a curious breach, abrupt and clean-cut; its shape and depth suggesting the effect of a mighty hammer blow scoring its groove from the path level to the river's edge. The material was a compact yellow shale, showing no signs of disintegration elsewhere.

"What's your notion, Loudon?" said Ballard, when they were standing on the edge of the newly made gash.

Bromley wagged his head doubtfully.

"I'm not so sure of it now as I thought I was when I came up here this morning. Do you see that black streak out there on the shale, just about at the path level? A few hours ago I could have sworn it was a powder burn; the streak left by a burning fuse. It doesn't look so much like it now, I'll confess."

"You've 'got 'em' about as bad as Hoskins has," laughed Ballard. "A dynamite charge that would account for this would advertise itself pretty loudly in a live camp five hundred yards away. Besides, it would have had to be drilled before it could be shot, and the drill-holes would show up--as they don't."