Held for Orders Part 6

"Ed," Hailey raised his voice at the foreman, "will you get those stay-bolts and chuck them into the baggage-car for me on Number Two? I'm going over to the house for a minute." He forgot to answer Bucks; they knew what it meant. He was bracing himself to tell the folks before he left them. Preparing to explain why he wouldn't have the Sunday at home with the children. Preparing to tell the wife--and the old man--that he was out. Out of the railroad system he had given his life to help build up and make what it was. Out of the position he had climbed to by studying like a hermit and working like a hobo. Out--without criticism, or allegation, or reason--simply, like a dog, out.

n.o.body at the Wickiup wanted to hear the telling over at the cottage; n.o.body wanted to imagine the scene. As Number Two's mellow chime whistle rolled down the gorge, they saw Hailey coming out of his house, his wife looking after him, and two little girls tugging at his arms as he hurried along; old Denis behind, head down, carrying the boy's shabby valise, trying to understand why the blow had fallen.

That was what Callahan up with Bucks at the window was trying to figure--what it meant.

"The man that looks to Omaha for rhyme or reason will beggar his wits, Callahan," said Bucks slowly, as he watched Ed Peeto swing the stay-bolts up into the car so they would crack the baggageman across the s.h.i.+ns, and then try to get him into a fight about it. "They never had a man--and I bar none, no, not Brodie--that could handle the mountain-water like Hailey; they never will have a man--and they dump him out like a pipe of tobacco. How does it happen we are cursed with such a crew of blooming idiots? Other roads aren't."

Callahan made no answer. "I know why they did it," Bucks went on, "but I couldn't tell Hailey."

"Why?"

"I think I know why. Last time I was down, the president brought his name up and asked a lot of questions about where he was educated and so on. Somebody had plugged him, I could see that in two minutes. I gave him the facts--told him that Brodie had given him his education as an engineer. The minute he found out he wasn't regularly graduated, he froze up. Very polite, but he froze up. See? Experience, actual acquirements," Bucks extended his hand from his vest pocket in an odd wavy motion till it was lost at arm's length, "nothing--nothing--nothing."

As he concluded, Hailey was climbing behind his father into the smoker; Number Two pulled down the yard and out; one thing Hailey meant to make sure of--that they shouldn't beat him out of the finish of the Spider bridge as he had planned it; one monument Hailey meant to have--one he has.

The new superintendent of bridges took hold promptly; we knew he had been wired for long before his appointment was announced. He was a good enough fellow, I guess, but we all hated him. Bucks did the civil, though, and took Agnew down to the Spider in a special to inspect the new work and introduce him to the man whose bread and opportunity he was taking. "I've been wanting to meet you, Mr. Hailey," said Agnew pleasantly after they had shaken hands. Hailey looked at Agnew silently as he spoke; Bucks looked steadfastly at the gra.s.shopper derrick.

"I've been expecting you'd be along pretty soon," replied Hailey presently. "There's considerable to look over here. After that we'll go back to Peace River canon. We're just getting things started there: then we'll run up to the Bend and I'll turn the office over."

"No hurry about that. You've got a good deal of a bridge here, Mr.

Hailey?"

"You'll need a good deal of a bridge here."

"I didn't expect to find you so far along out here in the mountains.

Where did you get that pneumatic process?"

It touched Hailey, the pleasant, easy way Agnew took him. The courtesy of the east against the blunt of the west. There wasn't a mean drop anywhere in Hailey's blood, and he made no trouble whatever for his successor.

After he let go on the West End Hailey talked as if he would look up something further east. He spoke about it to Bucks, but Bucks told him frankly he would find difficulty without a regular degree in getting a satisfactory connection. Hailey himself realized that; moreover, he seemed reluctant to quit the mountains. He acted around the cottage and the Wickiup like a man who has lost something and who looks for it abstractedly--as one might feel in his pockets for a fishpole or a burglar. But there were l.u.s.ty little Haileys over at the cottage to be looked after, and Bucks, losing a roadmaster about that time, asked Hailey (after chewing it a long time with Callahan) to take the place himself and stay on the staff. He even went home with Hailey and argued it.

"I know it doesn't seem just right," Bucks put it, "but, Hailey, you must remember this thing at Omaha isn't going to last. They can't run a road like this with Harvard graduates and Boston typewriters. There'll be an entire new deal down there some fine day. Stay here with me, and I'll say this, Hailey, if I go, ever, you go with me."

And Hailey, sitting with his head between his hands, listening to his wife and to Bucks, said, one day, "Enough," and the first of the month reported for duty as roadmaster.

Agnew, meantime, had stopped all construction work not too far along to discontinue. The bridge at the Spider fortunately was beyond his mandate; it was finished to a rivet as Hailey had planned it. Three spans, two piers, and a pair of abutments--solid as the Tetons. But the Peace River canon work was caught in the air. Hailey's caissons gave way to piles which pulled the cost down from one hundred to seventy-five thousand dollars, and incidentally it was breathed that the day for extravagant expenditures on the West End was past--and Bucks dipped a bit deeper than usual into Callahan's box of cross-cut, and rammed the splintered leaf into his brier a bit harder and said no word.

"But if we lose just one more bridge it's good-bye and gone to the California fast freight business," muttered Callahan. "It's taken two years to get it back as it is. Did you tell the president that?" he growled at Bucks, smoking. Bucks put out his little wave.

"I told him everything. I told him we couldn't stand another tie-up. I showed them all the records. One bridge at Peace River, three at the Spider in ten years."

"What did they say?"

"Said they had entire confidence in Agnew's judgment; very eminent authority and that sort--new blood was making itself felt in every department; that, of course, was fired at me; but they heard all I intended to say, just the same. I asked the blooming board whether they wanted my resignation and--" Bucks paused to laugh silently, "the president invited me up to the Millard to dine with him. h.e.l.lo, Phil Hailey!" he exclaimed as the new roadmaster walked in the door. "Happy New Year. How's your culverts, old boy? Ed Peeto said yesterday the piles were going in down at Peace River."

"Just as good as concrete as long as they stay in," smiled Hailey, "and they do cost a heap less. This is great bridge weather--and for that matter great track weather."

We had no winter that year till spring; and no spring till summer; and it was a spring of snow and a summer of water. Down below, the plains were lost in the snow after Easter even, the snow that brought the Blackwood disaster with three engines and a rotary to the bad, not to speak of old man Sankey, a host in himself. After that the snow let up; it was then no longer a matter of keeping the line clear; it was a matter of las.h.i.+ng the track to the right of way to keep it from swimming clear. Hailey had his hands full; he caught it all the while and worse than anybody, but he worked like two men, for in a pinch that was his way. Bucks, irritable from repeated blows of fortune, leaned on the wiry roadmaster as he did on Callahan or Neighbor. Hailey knew Bucks looked to him for the track and he strained every nerve making ready for the time the mountain snows should go out.

There was n.o.body easy on the West End: and least of all Hailey, for that spring, ahead of the suns, ahead of the thaws, ahead of the waters, came a going out that unsettled the oldest calculator in the Wickiup.

Brodie's old friends began coming out of the upper country, out of the Spider valley. Over the Eagle pa.s.s and through the Peace canon the Sioux came in parties and camps and tribes--out and down and into the open country. And Bucks stayed them and talked with them. Talked the great White Father and the Ghost dance and the Bad Agent. But the Sioux grunted and did not talk; they traveled. Then Bucks spoke of good hunting, far, far south; if they were uneasy Bucks was willing they should travel far, for it looked like a rising. Some kind of a rising it must have been to take the Indians out of winter quarters at such a time. After Bucks, Hailey tried, and the braves listened for they knew Hailey and when he accused them of fixing for fight they shook their heads, denied, and turned their faces to the mountains. They stretched their arms straight out under their blankets like stringers and put out their palms, downward, and muttered to Hailey.

"Plenty snow."

"I reckon they're lying," said Bucks, listening. "There's some deviltry up. They're not the kind to clear out for snow."

Hailey made no comment. Only looked thoughtfully at the ponies shambling along, the squaws trudging, the braves loitering to ask after the fire-water chief who slept under a cairn of stones off the right of way above the yard. Bucks didn't believe it. He could fancy rats deserting a sinking s.h.i.+p, because he had read of such things--but Indians clearing out for snow!

"Not for snow, nor for water," muttered Bucks, "unless it's fire-water."

And once more the red man was misunderstood.

Now the Spider wakes regularly twice; at all other times irregularly.

Once in April; that is the foothills water: once in June; that is the mountain water. And the June rise is like this [image: round mound]. But the April rise is like this [image: peaked mound].

Now came an April without any rise; that April nothing rose--except the snow. "We shall get it all together," suggested Bucks one night.

"Or will it get us altogether?" asked Hailey.

"Either way," said Callahan, "it will be mostly at once."

May opened bleaker than April; even the trackmen walked with set faces; the dirtiest half-breed on the line knew now what the mountains held. At last, while we looked and wondered, came a very late Chinook; July in May; then the water.

II

Section gangs were doubled and track-walkers put on. By-pa.s.ses were opened, bridge crews strengthened, everything buckled for grief. Gullies began to race, culverts to choke, creeks to tumble, rivers to madden.

From the Muddy to the Summit the water courses swelled and boiled--all but the Spider; the big river slept. Through May and into June the Spider slept; but Hailey was there at the Wickiup, always, and with one eye running over all the line, one eye turned always to the Spider where two men and two, night and day, watched the lazy surface water trickle over and through the vagabond bed between Hailey's monumental piers.

Never an hour did the operating department lose to the track. East and west of us railroads everywhere clamored in despair. The flood reached from the Rockies to the Alleghenies. Our trains never missed a trip; our schedules were unbroken; our people laughed; we got the business, dead loads of it; our treasury flowed over; and Hailey watched; and the Spider slept.

Big Ed Peeto, still foreman of the bridges, hung on Hailey's steps and tried with his staring, swearing eye to make it all out; to guess what Hailey expected to happen, for it was plain he was thinking. Whether smoking or speaking, whether waking or sleeping, he was thinking. And as May turned soft and hot into June with every ditch bellying and the mountains still buried, it put us all thinking.

On the 30th there was trouble beyond Wild Hat and all our extra men, put out there under Hailey, were fighting to hold the Rat valley levels where they hug the river on the west slope. It wasn't really Hailey's track. Bucks sent him over there because he sent Hailey wherever the Emperor sent Ney. Sunday while Hailey was at Wild Hat it began raining.

Sunday it rained. Monday it rained all through the mountains; Tuesday it was raining from Omaha to Eagle pa.s.s, with the thermometer climbing for breath and the barometer flat as an adder--and the Spider woke.

Woke with the April water and the June water and the rain water all at once. Trackmen at the bridge Tuesday night flagged Number One and reported the river wild, and sheet ice running. A wire from Bucks brought Hailey out of the west and into the east; and brought him to reckon for the last time with his ancient enemy.

He was against it Wednesday morning with dynamite. All the day, the night and the next day the sullen roar of the giant powder shook the ice-jams. Two days more he spent there watching, with only an occasional thunderbolt to heave and scatter the Spider water into sudden, s.h.i.+very columns of spray; then he wired, "ice out," and set back dragged and silent for home and for sleep--ten hours out of two hundred, maybe, was all he reckoned to the good when he struck a pillow again. Sat.u.r.day night he slept and Sunday all day and Sunday night. Monday about noon Bucks sent up to ask, but Hailey was asleep; they asked back by the lad whether they should wake him; Bucks sent word, "No."

Tuesday morning the tall roadmaster came down fresh as suns.h.i.+ne and all day he worked with Bucks and the despatchers watching the line. The Spider raced like the Missouri, and the men at the bridge sent in panic messages every night and morning, but Hailey lit his pipe with their alarms. "That bridge will go when the mountains go," was all he said.

Tuesday was his wedding date, old Denis told Peeto; it was Hailey's wooden wedding, and when he found everybody knew they were going to have a little spread over at the cottage, Hailey invited the boys up for the evening. Just a little celebration, Hailey said, and everybody he spoke wrung his hand and slapped his iron shoulders till Hailey echoed good cheer through and through. Callahan was going over; Bucks had promised to look in, and Ed Peeto and the boys had a little surprise for Hailey, had it in the dark of the baggage-room in the Wickiup, a big Morris chair. No one would ever guess how it landed at Medicine Bend, but it was easy. Ed Peeto had pulled it badly demoralized out of a freight wreck at the Sugar b.u.t.tes and done it over in company screws and varnish to surprise Hailey. The anniversary made it just right, very hot stuff, Ed Peeto said, and the company had undoubtedly paid a claim voucher, for it--or would.

It was nine o'clock, night, and every star blinking when Hailey looked in again at the office for the track-walkers' reports and the Railway weather bulletins. Bucks, Callahan, and Peeto sat about Duffy, who in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves threw the stuff out off the sounder as it trickled in dot and dash, dot and dash over the wires. The west wire was good but east everything below Peace River was down. We had to get the eastern reports around by Omaha and the south--a good thousand miles of a loop--but bad news travels even round a Robin Hood loop.

And Wild Hat came first from the west with a stationary river and the Loup creek falling--clear--good night. And Ed Peeto struck the table heavily and swore it was well in the west. Then from the east came Prairie Portage, all the way round, with a northwest rain, a rising river, and anchor ice pounding the piers badly, track in fair shape and--and--

The wire went wrong. As Duffy knit his eyes and tugged and cussed a little the wind outside took up the message and whirled a bucket of rain against the windows. But the wires wouldn't right and stuff that no man could get tumbled in like a dictionary upside down. And Bucks and Callahan and Hailey and Peeto smoked, silent, and listened to the deepening drum of the rain on the roof.

Then Duffy wrestled mightily yet once more, and the long way came word of trouble in the Omaha yards with the river at twenty-two feet and cutting; rising at Bismarck one foot an hour.