Cy Warman - The Last Spike
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Cy Warman >> The Last Spike
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"It is impossible, my son. When he came into the church he left the
world. He was bound by the law of the church to give up father, mother,
sister, brother--all."
"The church be--do you mean to say--"
"Peace, my son, you do not understand," said the bishop, lifting the
little cross which he had taken gently from the factor at the beginning
of the interview.
Now the factor was not in the habit of having his requests ignored and
his judgment questioned.
"Do you mean to say you will _not_ give me the name and address of the
dead man's mother?"
"It's absolutely impossible. Moreover, I am shocked to learn that our
late brother could so far forget his duty at the very door of death. No,
son, a thousand times no," said the bishop.
"Then give me the crucifix!" demanded the factor, fiercely.
"That, too, is impossible; that is the property of the church."
"Well," said the factor, filling his pipe again and gazing into the
flickering fire, "they're all about the same. And they're all right,
too, I presume--all but Wing and Dunraven and me."
THE MYSTERIOUS SIGNAL
As Waterloo lingered in the memory of the conquered Corsican, so
Ashtabula was burned into the brain of Bradish. Out of that awful wreck
he crawled, widowed and childless. For a long time he did not realize,
for his head was hurt in that frightful crash.
By the time he was fit to leave the hospital they had told him, little
by little, that all his people had perished.
He made his way to the West, where he had a good home and houses to rent
and a hole in the hillside that was just then being changed from a
prospect to a mine.
The townspeople, who had heard of the disaster, waited for him to speak
of it--but he never did. The neighbors nodded, and he nodded to them and
passed on about his business. The old servant came and asked if she
should open the house, and he nodded. The man-servant--the woman's
husband--came also, and to him Bradish nodded; and at noon he had
luncheon alone in the fine new house that had just been completed a year
before the catastrophe.
About once a week Bradish would board the midnight express, ride down
the line for a few hundred miles, and double back.
When he went away they knew he had gone, and when he came back they knew
he had returned and that was as much as his house-keeper, his agent, or
the foreman at the mines could tell you.
One would have thought that the haunting memory of Ashtabula would have
kept him at home for the rest of his life; but he seemed to travel for
the sake of the ride only, or for no reason, as a deaf man walks on the
railroad-track.
Gradually he extended his trips, taking the Midland over into Utah; and
once or twice he had been seen on the rear end of the California Limited
as it dropped down the western water-shed of Raton Range.
One night, when the Limited was lapping up the landscape and the Desert
was rushing in under her pilot and streaking out below the last sleeper
like tape from a ticker, the danger signal sounded in the engine cab,
the air went on full, the passengers braced themselves against the seats
in front of them, or held their breath in their berths as the train came
to a dead stop.
The conductor and the head man hurried forward shouting, "What's the
matter?" to the engineer.
The driver, leaning from his lofty window, asked angrily, "What in
thunder's the matter with you? I got a stop signal from behind."
"You'd better lay off and have a good sleep," said the conductor.
"I'll put you to sleep for a minute if you ever hint that I was not
awake coming down Canon Diablo," shouted the engineer, releasing his
brakes. As the long, heavy train glided by, the trainmen swung up like
sailors, and away went the Limited over the long bridge, five minutes to
the bad.
A month later the same thing happened on the East end. The engineer was
signalled and stopped on a curve with the point of his pilot on a high
bridge.
This time the captain and the engineer were not so brittle of temper.
They discussed the matter, calling on the fireman, who had heard
nothing, being busy in the coal-tank.
The head brakeman, crossing himself, said it was the "unseen hand" that
had been stopping the Limited on the Desert. It might be a warning, he
said, and walked briskly out on the bridge looking for dynamite, ghosts,
and things.
When he had reached the other end of the bridge, he gave the go-ahead
signal and the train pulled out. As they had lost seven minutes, it was
necessary for the conductor to report "cause of delay;" and that was the
first hint the officials of any of the Western lines had of the "unseen
hand."
Presently trainmen, swapping yarns at division stations, heard of the
mysterious signal on other roads.
The Columbia Limited, over on the Short Line, was choked with her head
over Snake River, at the very edge of Pendleton. When they had pulled in
and a fresh crew had taken the train on, the in-coming captain and his
daring driver argued over the incident and they each got ten days,--not
for the delay, but because they could not see to sign the call-book next
morning and were not fit to be seen by other people.
The next train stopped was the International Limited on the Grand Trunk,
then the Sunset by the South Coast.
The strange phenomenon became so general that officials lost patience.
One road issued an order to the effect that any engineer who heard
signals when there were no signals should get thirty days for the first
and his time for the second offence.
Within a week from the appearance of the unusual and unusually offensive
bulletin, "Baldy" Hooten heard the stop signal as he neared a little
Junction town where his line crossed another on an overhead bridge.
When the signal sounded, the fireman glanced over at the driver, who
dived through the window up to his hip pockets.
When the engine had crashed over the bridge, the driver pulled himself
into the cab again, and once more the signal. The fireman, amazed,
stared at the engineer. The latter jerked the throttle wide open; seeing
which, the stoker dropped to the deck and began feeding the hungry
furnace. Ten minutes later the Limited screamed for a regular stop, ten
miles down the line. As the driver dropped to the ground and began
touching the pins and links with the back of his bare hand, to see if
they were all cool, the head brakeman trotted forward whispering
hoarsely, "The ol' man's aboard."
The driver waved him aside with his flaring torch, and up trotted the
blue-and-gold conductor with his little silver white-light with a
frosted flue. "Why didn't you stop at Pee-Wee Junction?" he hissed.
"Is Pee-Wee a stop station?"
"On signal."
"I didn't see no sign."
"_I_ pulled the bell."
"Go on now, you ghost-dancer," said the engineer.
"You idiot!" gasped the exasperated conductor. "Don't you know the old
man's on, that he wanted to stop at Pee-Wee to meet the G.M. this
morning, that a whole engineering outfit will be idle there for half a
day, and you'll get the guillotine?"
"Whew, you have _shore_ got 'em."
"Isn't your bell working?" asked a big man who had joined the group
under the cab window.
"I think so, sir," said the driver, as he recognized the superintendent.
"Johnny, try that cab bell," he shouted, and the fire-boy sounded the
big brass gong.
"Why didn't you take it at Pee-Wee?" asked the old man, holding his
temper beautifully.
The driver lifted his torch and stared almost rudely into the face of
the official in front of him. "Why, Mr. Skidum," said he slowly, "I
didn't hear no signal."
The superintendent was blocked.
As he turned and followed the conductor into the telegraph office, the
driver, gloating in his high tower of a cab, watched him.
"He's an old darling," said he to the fire-boy, "and I'm ready to die
for him any day; but I can't stop for him in the face of bulletin 13.
Thirty days for the first offence, and then fire," he quoted, as he
opened the throttle and steamed away, four minutes late.
The old man drummed on the counter-top in the telegraph office, and then
picked up a pad and wrote a wire to his assistant:--
"Cancel general order No. 13."
The night man slipped out in the dawn and called the day man who was the
station master, explaining that the old man was at the station and
evidently unhappy.
The agent came on unusually early and endeavored to arrange for a light
engine to carry the superintendent back to the Junction.
At the end of three hours they had a freight engine that had left its
train on a siding thirty miles away and rolled up to rescue the stranded
superintendent.
Now, every railway man knows that when one thing goes wrong on a
railroad, two more mishaps are sure to follow; so, when the rescuing
crew heard over the wire that the train they had left on a siding,
having been butted by another train heading in, had started back down
grade, spilled over at the lower switch, and blocked the main line, they
began to expect something to happen at home.
However, the driver had to go when the old man was in the cab and the
G.M. with a whole army of engineers and workmen waiting for him at
Pee-Wee; so he rattled over the switches and swung out on the main line
like a man who was not afraid.
Two miles up the road the light engine, screaming through a cut,
encountered a flock of sheep, wallowed through them, left the track, and
slammed the four men on board up against the side of the cut.
Not a bone was broken, though all of them were sore shaken, the engineer
being unconscious when picked up.
"Go back and report," said the old man to the conductor. "You look after
the engineer," to the fireman.
"Will you flag west, sir?" asked the conductor.
"Yes,--I'll flag into Pee-Wee," said the old man, limping down the line.
To be sure, the superintendent was an intelligent man and not the least
bit superstitious; but he couldn't help, as he limped along, connecting
these disasters, remotely at least, with general order No. 13.
In time the "unseen signal" came to be talked of by the officials as
well as by train and enginemen. It came up finally at the annual
convention of General Passenger Agents at Chicago and was discussed by
the engineers at Atlanta, but was always ridiculed by the eastern
element.
"I helped build the U.P.," said a Buffalo man, "and I want to tell you
high-liners you can't drink squirrel-whiskey at timber-line without
seein' things nights."
That ended the discussion.
Probably no road in the country suffered from the evil effects of the
mysterious signal as did the Inter-Mountain Air Line.
The regular spotters failed to find out, and the management sent to
Chicago for a real live detective who would not be predisposed to accept
the "mystery" as such, but would do his utmost to find the cause of a
phenomenon that was not only interrupting traffic but demoralizing the
whole service.
As the express trains were almost invariably stopped at night, the
expert travelled at night and slept by day. Months passed with only two
or three "signals." These happened to be on the train opposed to the
one in which the detective was travelling at that moment. They brought
out another man, and on his first trip, taken merely to "learn the
road," the train was stopped in broad daylight. This time the stop
proved to be a lucky one; for, as the engineer let off the air and
slipped round a curve in a canon, he found a rock as big as a box car
resting on the track.
The detective was unable to say who sounded the signal. The train crew
were overawed. They would not even discuss the matter.
With a watchman, unknown to the trainmen, on every train, the officials
hoped now to solve the mystery in a very short time.
The old engineer, McNally, who had found the rock in the canon, had
boasted in the lodge-room, in the round-house and out, that if ever he
got the "ghost-sign," he'd let her go. Of course he was off his guard
this time. He had not expected the "spook-stop" in open day. And right
glad he was, too, that he stopped _that_ day.
A fortnight later McNally, on the night run, was going down Crooked
Creek Canon watching the fireworks in the heavens. A black cloud hung
on a high peak, and where its sable skirts trailed along the range the
lightning leaped and flashed in sheets and chains. Above the roar of
wheels he could hear the splash, and once in a while he could feel the
spray, of new-made cataracts as the water rushed down the mountain side,
choking the culverts.
At Crag View there was, at that time, a high wooden trestle stilted up
on spliced spruce piles with the bark on.
It used to creak and crack under the engine when it was new. McNally was
nearing it now. It lay, however, just below a deep rock cut that had
been made in a mountain crag and beyond a sharp curve.
McNally leaned from his cab window, and when the lightning flashed, saw
that the cut was clear of rock and released the brakes slightly to allow
the long train to slip through the reverse curve at the bridge. Curves
cramp a train, and a smooth runner likes to feel them glide smoothly.
As the black locomotive poked her nose through the cut, the engineer
leaned out again; but the after-effect of the flash of lightning left
the world in inky blackness.
Back in a darkened corner of the drawing-room of the rearmost sleeper
the sleuth snored with both eyes and ears open.
Suddenly he saw a man, fully dressed, leap from a lower berth in the
last section and make a grab for the bell-rope. The man missed the rope;
and before he could leap again the detective landed on the back of his
neck, bearing him down. At that moment the conductor came through; and
when he saw the detective pull a pair of bracelets from his hip-pocket,
he guessed that the man underneath must be wanted, and joined in the
scuffle. In a moment the man was handcuffed, for he really offered no
resistance. As they released him he rose, and they squashed him into a
seat opposite the section from which he had leaped a moment before. The
man looked not at his captors, who still held him, but pressed his face
against the window. He saw the posts of the snow-shed passing, sprang
up, flung the two men from him as a Newfoundland would free himself from
a couple of kittens, lifted his manacled hands, leaped toward the
ceiling, and bore down on the signal-rope.
The conductor, in the excitement, yelled at the man, bringing the rear
brakeman from the smoking-room, followed by the black boy bearing a
shoe-brush.
Once more they bore the bad man down, and then the conductor grabbed the
rope and signalled the engineer ahead.
Men leaped from their berths, and women showed white faces between the
closely drawn curtains.
Once more the conductor pulled the bell, but the train stood still.
One of the passengers picked up the man's hand-grip that had fallen from
his berth, and found that the card held in the leather tag read:
"JOHN BRADISH."
"Go forward," shouted the conductor to the rear brakeman, "and get 'em
out of here,--tell McNally we've got the ghost."
The detective released his hold on his captive, and the man sank limp in
the corner seat.
The company's surgeon, who happened to be on the car, came over and
examined the prisoner. The man had collapsed completely.
When the doctor had revived the handcuffed passenger and got him to sit
up and speak, the porter, wild-eyed, burst in and shouted: "De bridge is
gone."
A death-like hush held the occupants of the car.
"De hangin' bridge is sho' gone," repeated the panting porter, "an' de
engine, wi' McNally in de cab's crouchin' on de bank, like a black cat
on a well-cu'b. De watah's roahin' in de deep gorge, and if she drap she
gwine drag--"
The doctor clapped his hand over the frightened darky's mouth, and the
detective butted him out to the smoking-room.
The conductor explained that the porter was crazy, and so averted a
panic.
The detective came back and faced the doctor. "Take off the irons," said
the surgeon, and the detective unlocked the handcuffs.
Now the doctor, in his suave, sympathetic way, began to question
Bradish; and Bradish began to unravel the mystery, pausing now and again
to rest, for the ordeal through which he had just passed had been a
great mental and nervous strain.
He began by relating the Ashtabula accident that had left him wifeless
and childless, and, as the story progressed, seemed to find infinite
relief in relating the sad tale of his lonely life. It was like a
confession. Moreover, he had kept the secret so long locked in his
troubled breast that it was good to pour it out.
The doctor sat directly in front of the narrator, the detective beside
him, while interested passengers hung over the backs of seats and
blocked the narrow aisle. Women, with faces still blanched, sat up in
bed listening breathlessly to the strange story of John Bradish.
Shortly after returning to their old home, he related, he was awakened
one night by the voice of his wife calling in agonized tones, "John!
John!" precisely as she had cried to him through the smoke and steam and
twisted debris at Ashtabula. He leaped from his bed, heard a mighty
roar, saw a great light flash on his window, and the midnight express
crashed by.
To be sure it was only a dream, he said to himself, intensified by the
roar of the approaching train; and yet he could sleep no more that
night. Try as he would, he could not forget it; and soon he realized
that a growing desire to travel was coming upon him. In two or three
days' time this desire had become irresistible. He boarded the midnight
train and took a ride. But this did not cure him. In fact, the more he
travelled the more he wanted to travel. Soon after this he discovered
that he had acquired another habit. He wanted to stop the train. Against
these inclinations he had struggled, but to no purpose. Once, when he
felt that he must take a trip, he undressed and went to bed. He fell
asleep, and slept soundly until he heard the whistle of the midnight
train. Instantly he was out of bed, and by the time they had changed
engines he was at the station ready to go.
The mania for stopping trains had been equally irresistible. He would
bite his lips, his fingers, but he would also stop the train.
The moment the mischief (for such it was, in nearly every instance) was
done, he would suffer greatly in dread of being found out. But to-night,
as on the occasion of the daylight stop in the canon, he had no warning,
no opportunity to check himself, nor any desire to do so. In each
instance he had heard, dozing in the day-coach and sleeping soundly in
his berth, the voice cry: "John! John!" and instantly his brain was
ablaze with the light of burning wreckage. In the canon he had only
felt, indefinitely, the danger ahead; but to-night he saw the bridge
swept away, and the dark gorge that yawned in front of them. Instantly
upon hearing the cry that woke him, he saw it all.
"When I realized that the train was still moving, that my first effort
to stop had failed, I flung these strong men from me with the greatest
ease. I'm sure I should have burst those steel bands that bound my
wrists if it had been necessary.
"Thank God it's all over. I feel now that I am cured,--that I can settle
down contented."
The man drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead,
keeping his face to the window for a long time.
* * * * *
When the conductor went forward, he found that it was as the porter had
pictured. The high bridge had been carried away by a water-spout; and on
the edge of the opening the engine trembled, her pilot pointing out
over the black abyss.
McNally, having driven his fireman from the deck, stood in the cab
gripping the air-lever and watching the pump. At that time we used what
is technically known as "straight air"; so that if the pump stopped the
air played out.
The conductor ordered the passengers to leave the train.
The rain had ceased, but the lightning was still playing about the
summit of the range, and when it flashed, those who had gone forward saw
McNally standing at his open window, looking as grand and heroic as the
captain on the bridge of his sinking ship.
A nervous and somewhat thoughtless person came close under the cab to
ask the engineer why he didn't back up.
There was no answer. McNally thought it must be obvious to a man with
the intelligence of an oyster, that to release the brakes would be to
let the heavy train shove him over the bank, even if his engine had the
power to back up, which she had not.
The trainmen were working quietly, but very effectively, unloading. The
day coaches had been emptied, the hand-brakes set, and all the wheels
blocked with links and pins and stones, when the link between the engine
and the mail-car snapped and the engine moved forward.
McNally heard the snap and felt her going, leaped from the window,
caught and held a scrub cedar that grew in a rock crevice, and saw his
black steed plunge down the dark canon, a sheer two thousand feet.
McNally had been holding her in the back motion with steam in her
cylinders; and now, when she leaped out into space, her throttle flew
wide, a knot in the whistle-rope caught in the throttle, opening the
whistle-valve as well. Down, down she plunged,--her wheels whirling in
mid-air, a solid stream of fire escaping from her quivering stack, and
from her throat a shriek that almost froze the blood in the veins of the
onlookers. Fainter and farther came the cry, until at last the wild
waters caught her, held her, hushed her, and smothered out her life.
CHASING THE WHITE MAIL
Over the walnuts and wine, as they say in Fifth Avenue, the gray-haired
gentleman and I lingered long after the last of the diners had left the
cafe car. One by one the lights were lowered. Some of the table-stewards
had removed their duck and donned their street clothes. The shades were
closely drawn, so that people could not peep in when the train was
standing. The chief steward was swinging his punch on his finger and
yawning. My venerable friend, who was a veritable author's angel, was a
retired railway president with plenty of time to talk.
"We had, on the Vandalia," he began after lighting a fresh cigar, "a
dare-devil driver named Hubbard--'Yank' Hubbard they called him. He was
a first-class mechanic, sober and industrious, but notoriously reckless,
though he had never had a wreck. The Superintendent of Motive Power had
selected him for the post of master-mechanic at Effingham, but I had
held him up on account of his bad reputation as a wild rider.
"We had been having a lot of trouble with California fruit
trains,--delays, wrecks, cars looted while in the ditch,--and I had made
the delay of a fruit train almost a capital offence. The bulletin was, I
presume, rather severe, and the enginemen and conductors were not taking
it very well.
"One night the White Mail was standing at the station at East St. Louis
(that was before the first bridge was built) loading to leave. My car
was on behind, and I was walking up and down having a good smoke. As I
turned near the engine, I stopped to watch the driver of the White Mail
pour oil in the shallow holes on the link-lifters without wasting a
drop. He was on the opposite side of the engine, and I could see only
his flitting, flickering torch and the dipping, bobbing spout of his
oiler.
"A man, manifestly another engineer, came up. The Mail driver lifted his
torch and said, 'Hello, Yank,' to which the new-comer made no direct
response. He seemed to have something on his mind. 'What are you out
on?' asked the engineer, glancing at the other's overalls. 'Fast
freight--perishable--must make time--no excuse will be taken,' he
snapped, quoting and misquoting from my severe circular. 'Who's in that
Kaskaskia?' he asked, stepping up close to the man with the torch.
"'The ol' man,' said the engineer.
"'No! ol' man, eh? Well! I'll give him a canter for his currency this
trip,' said Yank, gloating. 'I'll follow him like a scandal; I'll stay
with him this night like the odor of a hot box. Say, Jimmie,' he
laughed, 'when that tintype of yours begins to lay down on you, just
bear in mind that my pilot is under the ol' man's rear brake-beam, and
that the headlight of the 99 is haunting him.'
"'Don't get gay, now,' said the engineer of the White Mail.
"'Oh, I'll make him think California fruit is not all that's perishable
on the road to-night,' said Yank, hurrying away to the round-house.
"Just as we were about to pull out, our engineer, who was brother to
Yank, found a broken frame and was obliged to go to the house for
another locomotive. We were an hour late when we left that night,
carrying signals for the fast freight. As we left the limits of the
yard, Hubbard's headlight swung out on the main line, picked up two
slender shafts of silver, and shot them under our rear end. The first
eight or ten miles were nearly level. I sat and watched the headlight of
the fast freight. He seemed to be keeping his interval until we hit the
hill at Collinsville. There was hard pounding then for him for five or
six miles. Just as the Kaskaskia dropped from the ridge between the east
and west Silver Creek, the haunting light swept round the curve at
Hagler's tank. I thought he must surely take water here; but he plunged
on down the hill, coming to the surface a few minutes later on the high
prairie east of Saint Jacobs.
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