Chapter V: The Greater Discipline (3)

“It is a pity she did not whip out some of her other peculiarities.”

“Mother Glen was much to blame for some of them. You knew Paul Glen, and what a strange, silent being he was--always absorbed in some mysterious pursuits, roving from one lost region to another, coming home, now and then, for a day and leaving, as if for a short time, to be heard of after months of inquiry in Hyderabad, or Jerusalem, or the heart of Guinea. Well, after he came home the last time he made Asenath the subject of numerous psychological experiments. He could mesmerize any one--what other gifts he had is not known; but he called mesmerism child’s play. Mother Glen did not object to his making this use of the girl, because she did not wish to cross Paul and have him go away again. It is my belief that Asenath discovered, through some of his experiments, the existence of an occult power in herself. Before long, she had Paul completely under her control. I had not yet come here; but Mother Glen told me about it, and that any effort to break the spell made Paul perfectly furious. He taught her to read, and to sing, and obeyed her in everything--think of it! After a while he fell sick, but it was thought not dangerously. Asenath nursed him, and he would not eat or drink unless she bade him.”

“That, though, may have been a mere whim, such as the sick often take.”

She shook her head. “You have not heard all: Two of the servants--Mammy Clara and Belinda--declare that they overheard Asenath forbid Paul ever to touch food again, and tell him that she would pretend to bid him eat, but he must not do so. And it is certainly true that he at last refused all sustenance and died of starvation.”

“What a horrible idea!”

“Shortly before Paul was stricken down,” Helen proceeded, “he disposed of all his property--it was in securities of various kinds--and we have never been able to find out what he did with the money he received. Thousands and thousands of dollars took wing somehow. It was never brought here, so she could not have stolen it actually, but I am as sure that Asenath knows where that money is as I am that I live.”

“Now, Helen, be sensible, do.”

“Mother Glen was a sensible woman, and she believed as I do. She said the girl was uncanny. Moreover, she declared to me that Asenath had set out to conquer her as she did Paul, and that it was only by constant resistance that she prevented her from gaining her object. There was a psychic contest between them. Mother Glen’s brain was in a condition of siege for months. It could not stand the strain. She was seized with paralysis and died. I blame Asenath for her death.”

I did not say much in reply. My odd experience of a few minutes before puzzled me. Helen’s account of the girl threw a weird light upon what I felt bound, as a reasonable man, to consider merely curious phenomena, subjective in character and due to some unexplained physical cause. I determined to say a few decided words to Robert Glen about the culpability of allowing his delicate wife to contend with such an annoyance as Asenath, who, if not a sorceress, certainly was a fractious and troublesome servant.

“It is strange that Robert does not remove her,” said I.

Helen’s face flushed and was drawn by a momentary spasm. She looked at me in troubled silence, as if she could not decide to speak what she wished to tell me.

“I am afraid for Robert,” she said at length, almost in a whisper; “there is something in that girl’s demeanor to him that it sickens me to think of--and which I dare not try to explain, even to myself. It seems impossible that she can dare to think that he”--she went on hurriedly, after a pause--“you see, he believes in no psychic powers and is not on his guard. He calls her unearthly pranks mere mischief that a few years’ discipline will take out of her. Robert intends her to marry Lucas.”

She spoke the last sentence quite loudly, and, as the girl and her driver were passing by the window, they overheard. Lucas, a squat, stolid-looking mulatto, with a face like that of a satiated animal, chuckled and poked at Asenath with the gad.

The girl stopped. She threw down her burden, flung back her head, and turned upon Helen a wild and vicious stare. Her face, streaming with perspiration, was full of threat. She gasped for breath from emotion or the heaviness of her toil. She raised one hand, wiped her brow with its open palm, and flung the drops of sweat in a shower at Helen.

“May every drop curse you!” she said, between her labored breaths.

Helen looked at her with quiet scorn. “Go on, Lucas,” she said, calmly.

Asenath shook herself, like a chained animal. She ground her teeth and turned upon Lucas in fury, as if she would rend him. He did not quail, but raised his gad threateningly and pointed to the barrow-handles, and, after a momentary struggle with herself, the girl took them up and went on, panting under her toil.

“She shall continue that until she drops,” said my sister.

“But, Helen, that surely is cruel.”

“Not more so than drawing the fangs of a snake. I have discovered that she is psychically powerless when physically exhausted. All the negroes on the place know this and are rejoicing now--they all feel more secure for knowing that she has been disciplined.”

While she was speaking, I saw Robert Glen coming along the walk to the house. Helen saw him, too. Leaning out the window, she called to Lucas and bade him take his charge “to the old barn.” He hurriedly departed, driving the girl--who now seemed doubly unwilling to drag her load--literally like an ox, and very unsparing of the gad.

Robert greeted me cordially; but it was evident to me that there was a cloud between his wife and him. His ruddy face assumed a stern expression when he looked at her, and his voice had a hard tone when he addressed her. Her manner to him had an appealing, almost fawning, air, which it distressed me to see.

It was some days before I found a chance to speak to Robert on the subject of the girl. I had better have held my tongue, for he was nettled in an instant, shrugged his shoulders, and curled his lip.

“You Northern people know nothing whatever about the management of slaves. Helen leads that girl the life of a toad under a harrow, because the other darkies say she ‘hoodoos’ them, and because my mother had some irrational ideas about demoniacal possession. I declare to you, Tom, that if I did not know Helen’s delicate condition and nervousness were much to blame, I should be ashamed of her treatment of Asenath, who is a good house-servant, and valuable.”

“But she is an annoyance that Helen should not have to contend with now.”

“How is she to be got rid of?” he demanded, impatiently. “We never sell any of the people on this estate, and she won’t take her freedom as a gift. I can’t kill her.”

Then I dropped the subject. When I next saw Helen, she had been crying, and she begged me not to speak to Robert about the girl again.

I saw no more of Asenath for some time, and learned that she had been put steadily to work at the loom, the day following my arrival.

One morning, news came that the loom-house had been entered in the night, all the yarn carried off, the woven cloth cut to pieces, and the loom and wheels so shattered that new ones would be necessary. Even the walls of the building were half-destroyed.

“This is some of Asenath’s work,” said Helen.

Robert, who had been annoyed by the news, now seemed additionally so.

“Pshaw, Helen!” he said sharply; “it would take the strength of several men to do some of this mischief.”

“She has it at command. Lucas shall take her in hand again.”

“No, we will have no more of that,” Robert said, sternly. “Now, hear me, Helen; I have told Lucas that if he obeys you in that respect again he shall be flogged within an inch of his life, and I mean it.”

Helen’s face turned very white, her hands fell into her lap, and she sat as if stricken helpless and hopeless. I hastened away to avoid hearing more, comprehending now what the trouble in my sister’s life was, and with a presentiment of coming evil that would be greater.

It was that very night that, having strolled into the shrubbery to smoke my cigar, I fell asleep upon a rustic bench there and awoke to find it was late at night, with the wind moaning as if a storm were brewing in the cloudy heavens.

As I arose to go to the house, something--that was not visible--seemed to come from every quarter at once and smite me. I felt a sharp, electric thrill, which was followed by a sensation as if I had been flung from a height and raised up again, with some of my faculties benumbed by the fall. My hair stood up, but I felt no fear, only a passive wonder, mixed with expectation. Turning, I saw, by a transient gleam of moonlight, the girl Asenath, standing in the path near by, pointing at me with a long, slender rod. The ray passed and left a black Shadow there, which moved slowly away, beckoning to me. I followed.

The Shadow led me out of the shrubbery and along the wide avenue between the two rows of huts occupied by the negroes, and ended at the mansion house. I had no will or thought but to follow it exactly. It stopped before one of the huts and bent itself nearly double. I, too, bent over, involuntarily, and every muscle of my body seemed to become tense. The perspiration started out of me, and my will was like a bar of steel ending in great fingers, which grasped something and pulled upon it with such force that my inner self was a-tremble with weakness when the tension relaxed, which it did at the opening of the cottage door and the coming out of a little lad--a mere child--who looked ghastly, as one of the dead walking. He placed himself beside me, we followed the shadowy woman to another house, dragged at the invisible cords of another human soul, and brought it out into the night. It was a woman, this time, in scantiest of night-robes.

And so we went on, stopping at every door, and from every door some one came forth, except from that of Lucas. There, grasp as it would, the steel fingers clutched nothing, and the door remained shut.

The woman Asenath muttered to herself, and all the crowd of followers muttered, too. With them, my own lips formed words, of which I did not then comprehend the meaning: “Soulless beast!” We went on beyond the quarters, stopped at the mansion, and dragged at something that resisted with all its strength, which was weaker than ours, for it yielded at last, and came slowly, slowly down the steps and stood among us. It was my sister Helen.

Asenath laughed, and ghastly laughter broke from all, even from Helen herself.

I had no feeling of compassion for her, nor of fear for her or myself, but was simply a force which another exerted. The wills of those who followed Asenath were but strands in the cable of her power, and their strength was in her hands for good or ill.

We followed again--out of the plantation, through a forest of pines, over a bridge that spanned slow-crawling, black water, past a fallen church, surrounded by forgotten graves, to the top of a hill where there were stones laid in the form of a serpent--a great cleft stone, like open jaws, forming the head. There Asenath paused and cast down her rod. She stretched out her hands, and in a moment we were formed into a circle about the rod.

And then once again those fingers of steel grasped something--something that all their strength seemed unable to move. Our breath came in gasps, our forms shook like the leaves of the aspen tree, and in the heart was a fear, too great to be measured, of failure. Long, long the effort lasted--lasted until the will seemed to discard its own puerile strength and to fling itself upon the bosom of impersonal force, seize the reservoir of the universal will, and turn its power in a mighty stream upon the burden of one desire--one unyielding demand that the door be opened. And with that borrowed force came the sense of unlimited strength. Faith was born. We stretched out our arms in gestures of which I can only remember that they were first those of invitation, then of welcome. Nature began to pulsate. There was a sound like the slow, regular beating of a heart, in the chambers of which we were inclosed. The inner life throbbed with it so fiercely that the blood seemed almost to leap from my body. All about us were the movements of awakening birds and insects; from afar came the lowing of kine, the crowing of cocks, and the crying of children, as if they were suddenly startled into fear.

In the centre of the circle appeared a square of strange light. We looked upon it and beheld a place of which the darkness and the light of this world are but the envelopes. We saw there, afar off, a vast crystalline globe, from which extended, in all directions, millions of filaments of clear light. The globe scintillated as a diamond does, and its sparks floated away upon the endless filaments of light. Nearer to us, moving about, were beings not human, and not resembling each other further than that they were all gigantic and all possessed of some human attributes. Some were beautiful, some hideous; but upon every one was stamped--in strange characters that I somehow understood--the words “_I only am God_.” Upon some the writing was fantastic, as if put on in mockery. Upon others it shone with a clear and cruel radiance that pained the sight. Some bore it faded and dim, as if the pretension it set up had fallen like a leaf into the stream of the ages and been almost forgotten. A great awe fell upon us all, so great that all, except the woman Asenath and myself, fell down and seemed as if dead. The woman trembled and murmured to herself, and again my lips formed her words: “Is it worth while, when human desires are so poor, human life so short?”

Through that door there floated not a voice, for the silence was only broken by a faint, soft hum, like very distant music, but an unspoken command that impressed itself upon the spirit.

“_Speak!_”

Still the woman hesitated. Suddenly her lips moved again, mine following them: “But only through this can _he_ be won.”

“I would have the desire of my heart,” she said aloud.

“_It is thine_,” was the silent answer; “_to him who knocks at this door shall it be opened, and what he asks for there shall he receive, whether for good or ill. It is the law._”

“I would be fair, like those who enslave me. All that she has”--she pointed to my sister--“I would take from her and have for my own.”

“_The power to obtain thy will is thine, whether thou be of the just or of the unjust. The spirit which commands shall be obeyed. It is the law._”

“And is there a penalty to be paid?”

“_Thy act is the seed from which its penalty shall grow._”

The woman sighed.

“What penalty?”

“_Thou knowest the law._”

Sighing again, bitterly, Asenath stretched out her hand. The square of light went out. Across the spot where it had been, drifted indistinct forms which passed into invisibility on either side. Under their feet ran a serpent of fire, which leaped at the woman. She grasped it, and it seemed to become the rod she had cast down.

I remembered nothing more until I came slowly to myself, stretched upon the bench in the shrubbery, with the morning sun shining into my face. My limbs were stiff, my head ached, and my heart was heavy with a foreboding of evil. It was impossible for me to decide whether the experience of the night was a dream or a reality, but I was sorely troubled; I could not think of Asenath without a creeping of the flesh.

On approaching the house, I saw Robert standing in the doorway. My first glimpse of him set me to trembling with fear of evil tidings, he looked so agitated and distressed. When he perceived me, he wrung his hands and burst into tears.

“Oh, Tom!” he cried, “Helen is dying. She was taken with convulsions early this morning. She does not know me. The baby was born dead, and Helen can not live. I must lose her! Oh, God, I must lose her!”

He ran through the hall and up the stairs, like a wild man. I followed, but the heaviness of the shock was so great that it was but slowly and with a feeling as if the floor was rising up to my face. Asenath was moving stealthily about the hall. I bade her begone. She looked at me like a startled cat, but did not go. A black girl, coming down the stairs, passed me, and I recognized her as the first of the women who had joined our ghastly crowd the night before. She gazed straight before her, with wide-open, horrified eyes, and her face had the same pinched look the hall mirror had shown me upon my own as I glanced into it involuntarily when passing it. At the top of the stairs, Belinda, Helen’s poor little maid, flung herself at my feet and clasped my knees.

“Oh, Massa Tom,” she cried, “she am ’witched. Go an’ git d’ witch doctah t’--tak’--de spell off’n her. Nuffin’ll save her ef yo’ don’t do dat.”

As I stopped to put the poor creature aside, old Mammy Clara, her face streaming with tears, came up to me.

“Massa Tom,” she said, solemnly, “de good God hab tooken Miss Helen. She’s in heben wid her li’l’ baby.”

The blow overcame me. It will be best to pass over that time. I shut myself into my room and bore my agony alone. I went once into the room where Helen lay and looked at her face. It was the face of one in peaceful rest, but it had aged twenty years in twelve hours. Her maids, directed by Mrs. Grayson, an old friend of the family, were ready to prepare her for the grave.

“They think,” whispered Mrs. Grayson, “that she had walked in her sleep. Her feet are scratched and torn, as if she had been among briars barefoot, and the doctors say that her convulsions probably came on from the shock of awakening. She was found at daybreak, unconscious, in the hall, and the outer door was wide open.”

I left the plantation a few days after the funeral, and for years neither saw nor heard directly from Robert Glen. I never could forgive his indifference to Helen’s peace of mind while she lived, nor get over a certain disgust with which his lack of self-control at the time of her death inspired me. I never liked him, and, after that sad time, I had less regard for him than ever. I never told him the story I have written. He would only have pronounced me mad, and I did not wish to obtain that reputation for the mere sake of warning him. Besides, I tried with all my mind to believe the experience of that night a dream, but I found that impossible and was always looking for a sequel to it. The sequel came in its appointed time.

Years passed away. At the outbreak of the war, the Graysons came North. From them, I learned that Asenath had disappeared from the plantation long before, and was supposed to have drowned herself in the black creek and to haunt the plantation in the form of a black-and-white snake. Dr. Grayson blamed himself for her death.

“Some of the Glen negroes,” he said, “told some of mine that the girl was turning white, and that, with the exception of her face and hands, her whole body had changed its color. Now I had heard of such cases, but never had seen one, and in spite of what Buffon and other naturalists say on the subject, felt doubtful of the possibility of such a thing taking place. I rode over to Glen’s one day to investigate the matter. Glen was not at home; but, presuming upon old friendship with him, I saw the girl and told her the object of my call. I wish you had seen her; she flew into an outrageous passion, called me vile names, said there was not a white spot on her person, and that if I touched her it should cost me dear. Of course, I paid no attention to her threats, and called that Lucas of Glen’s to help me turn up her sleeves. Her arms really were white, but before I could half-examine them, she broke away from us and tore out of the house. We followed, but lost sight of her in the shrubbery, and to this day she has never been seen again. The negroes say she drowned herself. Glen, when he returned, seemed to believe so. He took me to task in a most ungentlemanly manner for what had happened, and we have not been on speaking terms since. He has now gone abroad to stay until this little war squall blows over, I hear.”

“I trust that he may--and longer,” I said. The doctor chuckled a little and changed the subject. In secret, I said to myself: “I don’t believe the girl is dead, and I do believe that Robert Glen knows where she is. The sequel will come.”

In ’68, Robert returned home, bringing a wife with him. He wrote me a formal announcement of his marriage, to which I replied with equal formality.

It was rumored that the new wife was rich in her own right; that she was of English parentage, but born and reared in Calcutta. Later, I heard that Robert’s old neighbors had not taken to her at all, and that she had an ungovernable temper, being unable to keep any servant under her roof, except a couple of East Indian women, whom she berated continually in their own tongue, but who could not speak English enough to impart any information about their mistress to her neighbors.

The year after Robert’s marriage, I accepted an invitation to spend a few days with the Graysons. Feeling that I owed Robert the courtesy of a call, I rode over to the plantation, not so much to discharge a social duty as to see the new Mrs. Glen, about whom I noticed, on the part of the Graysons, a marked reluctance to speak. They edged away from the subject, when I brought it up, with nervous looks at each other.

Leaving my horse at the outer gate, I walked along the wide avenue nearly to the house. There was a spectral stillness upon the place. Sadness exhaled from everything, to be drawn in with every breath. The old servants were all gone. I had met the once sleek and stolid Lucas, now rheumatic and ragged, begging in the village. Belinda was in the county asylum, and the others were scattered or dead. The scent of the lilacs was gone from the air--the very bushes were rooted up, and lay, sear and dead, by little heaps of earth. A triangle of cloud in the sky cast upon the earth a triangle of shadow, in the midst of which Robert Glen’s home lay as if it were entranced. No sign of happy life met me; but, as I turned aside to look at a certain bench in the shrubbery, a black-and-white snake ran over my foot.

I went no further. A woman was seated upon the bench--a fair woman, with hair like dull copper reflecting sullen fire, with a face and form perfect as those of the goddesses of old, a face which betokened an indomitable soul which knew the secret of the power wielded by the gods. She was bending over her clasped hands, her face was turned aside in an attitude of eager waiting, and wore a smile that transfigured it. Slowly approaching her, walking as a man walks in his sleep, came Robert Glen. He threw himself at her feet and laid his head upon her knee. She bent to him with a little rapturous caress, and both faces were as happy as those of the people in Paradise.

I turned and went away from the place, and entered its precincts no more. From that hour, I was self-devoted to one purpose--to seek the knowledge that should open the door to her degradation and destruction. In the midst of her success, and in the height of her pride, she should turn black as she was in the day when Lucas drove her. I swore it. So should my friend and my sister, whom she robbed and slew, be avenged.

OLD “HARD LUCK”

By E. Munson

Every one admitted he had a good heart in him. Even his bitterest enemy, Kid Alderson, was willing to make that concession, but qualified it by adding that he “was so blamed unlucky and peculiar, a body never knowed when he _was_ in to clear.”

This singularity extended to his name. “H-o-s-s-e-l-k-u-s, accent on the _sel_,” he was wont to explain, with something like a shade of weariness, when a new operator faltered on his long patronymic.

Eben J. Hosselkus was engineer of Engine Seventeen-Forty-Three.

With the meagre data available, it is difficult to determine whether the name Hosselkus belongs to the Anglo-Saxon, Indo-European, or Teutonic family; but no such uncertainty attached to the origin of its unfortunate bearer. He was an unmistakable Yankee; rather below the medium height, lean and wiry; his mild, light-blue eyes were overshadowed by bushy and frowning eyebrows, and his grizzled mustache bristled with a singular ferocity, which the weakness of mouth and chin immediately belied. The whole man was decidedly contradictory. When first addressed, his manner was brusque and his voice gruff; but, after a few terrible expletives, his tone would soften and his most positive assertions invariably ended with an appeal for confirmation. “Now ain’t it so, for a fact? Now wouldn’t you say so, ’f you’uz me?” he would ask, while his wistful eyes wandered from face to face in search of support or sympathy, perhaps.

He was the oldest engineer on the division, and the most unfortunate. Two decades of brakemen and conductors had twisted and distorted his luckless surname in every conceivable way; but to all appellations, from “Old Hoss” to “Hustle-Cuss,” he ever accorded the same ready response.

Of late years he had been known simply as “Hard Luck.” When a train-crew would reach the end of the division, wan and famished from a protracted sojourn at some desert-siding, the first inquiry of their sympathetic brethren would be: “Who was pullin’ you?” “Old Hard Luck, of course,” was the seldom varied reply.

Old Hosselkus had probably suffered more “moving accidents by flood and field” than any other man ever lived through. And yet he was a thoroughly competent engineer. He was an earnest student of mechanical engineering, and could explain the mysteries of “link motion,” the principles of the “injector,” and the working of the Westinghouse automatic air-brake in a singularly lucid manner. Nothing pleased him better than to enlighten a green fireman upon some knotty point, and the walls of the roundhouse and bunkhouse are still covered with his elaborate chalk and pencil diagrams of the different parts of the locomotive.

As far back as he could remember, it had been the dream of Hosselkus’s life to be a regular passenger-engineer--in railroad parlance, to “pull varnished cars.” This was the goal upon the attainment of which the best efforts of his life had been concentrated, and still, after twenty years’ service, he seemed as far as ever from success. Many times he had almost achieved it, but always something had happened to prevent, some unaccountable and unavoidable piece of ill-luck. Finally, his name became so synonymous with disaster that the “Company” hesitated to intrust the valuable equipment of an express-train and the lives of the traveling public to him. Thus, as the years went by, old Hard Luck had become accustomed to crawling out from under the disgruntled engine of a side-tracked worktrain or way-freight to acknowledge the patronizing wave of the hand, as some former fireman of his whizzed by with a passenger-train or an “officers’ special.” Despair, however, had no place in his heart, and he still reveled in the fancied joys of pulling the fast express, and dreamed of that happy time when, to the customary inquiry as to the time of his departure, he would be able to answer: “I go out on Number Three.”

There is a great difference in engineers; some can step off the foot-board at the end of a long run looking as fresh and clean as at the start, while, to judge from the appearance of others, one would imagine they had made the journey in the ash-pan. Hosselkus belonged to the latter class. It would have required some more powerful solvent than simple soap and water to have removed the soot and grime that had gradually accumulated in the wrinkles and hollows of his countenance during the years of arduous service. There was some excuse for him, however, seeing that so much of his life had been spent upon superannuated “ten-wheelers,” which, as every one knows, are awkward machines to oil, on account of their wheels being so low and close together. Then, too, he had so many accidents. He scarcely ever made a round trip without “slipping an eccentric,” “bursting a flue,” or “burning out his grates,” not to mention more serious mishaps, such as derailments, head and hind-end collisions, or running into slides and wash-outs. Much practice had made him almost perfect in “taking down a side,” or disconnecting a locomotive, while some of his exploits in the fire-box, plugging flues, rivaled the exhibition given by the Hebrew children in that seven times heated furnace of Holy Writ.

But while his extensive experience upon the road had developed habits of self-reliance and a certain readiness in emergencies, it was not calculated to impart that gloss or polish which enables one to shine in society. Hard Luck’s only appearance within the charmed circle had been when he acted as pall-bearer at the funeral of a division superintendent, and upon that occasion he had scandalized his colleagues by appearing without the conventional white gloves, and a hurried and embarrassed search of his pockets only brought to light a bunch of “waste” and a “soft hammer,” articles which, though almost indispensable on a locomotive, are not essential to the success of a well-ordered interment.

Gamblers say that if one is but possessed of sufficient capital, the most persistent run of ill-luck may eventually be broken, and so it proved in Hosselkus’s case.

An “officers’ special,” carrying the leading magnates of the road upon a tour of inspection, was expected, and Engine Seven-Seventy-Seven, the fastest locomotive on the division, and Bill Pearson, an engineer with a record, had been held in readiness for some time to take them out.

The engine, with a full tank of the best coal, had already been run out of the roundhouse, and the train-dispatcher had the freights safely side-tracked, and satisfactory “meets” with the passenger-trains about figured out, when he was interrupted in his study of the train-sheet by a nervous ring at the telephone. The dispatcher answered it himself, and the foreman of the roundhouse announced that Pearson was sick, and unable to take the special out.

“That’s bad,” mused the dispatcher, but added, a moment later: “Well, send the next best man, and get a move on; they’ll be here in ten minutes.”

“They ain’t none,” replied the roundhouse.

“No other engineer?” shouted the dispatcher.

“Well, there’s only Perkins on the yard-engine and Hard Luck just in on Scott’s work-train--might double him out again--that’s all.”

The dispatcher rushed into the adjoining room to consult the superintendent.

It was in the midst of the busiest season, and every available engineer was out upon the road.

“Hard Luck? nonsense!” said the superintendent when he was informed of the situation. “Tell Pearson he must take the special out--this is a nice time for him to get sick!”

The roundhouse was notified, and replied that Pearson was “foamin’ awful--his wife’s got him jacked up and two doctors workin’ on him,” yelled the foreman.

“This is terrible! _terrible!_” groaned the superintendent. “Perkins is only a boy, we can’t put him on, and Hosselkus will never get over the division without something happening--never in the world!” and the perspiration started upon his forehead. The whistle of the special aroused him to the necessity of immediate action.

“Tell them to put Hosselkus on, and get him out as quick as possible--we are in the hands of Providence anyway, I suppose,” he added to himself.

All was hurry and excitement when the special pulled in. The engine that brought it in was cut off and hurried out of the way, while the huge, well-groomed “Three-Sevens” backed slowly down in charge of Hosselkus, whose heart swelled chokingly as the brazen clangor of her bell pealed out.

But the beginning was ominous. The engine was unfamiliar to him and worked more stiffly than he had expected, so that when he backed down to be coupled on, he struck the train with a momentum that jarred its occupants uncomfortably.

“Lord! _Lord!_” moaned the superintendent as he wiped his clammy brow and sought to divert the directors’ attention from the mishap by suggesting some needed improvements in the “Company’s” water supply.

Presently he excused himself and went ahead to the engine to interview Hard Luck. He found him with an oil-can in one hand and a bunch of waste in the other, engaged in the important duty of “oiling ’round.”

Hosselkus had had no time to change his greasy jumper and overalls for cleaner ones; his hasty wash had merely imparted a smeary look to his countenance, and the badge on his cap was upside down, but his eyes sparkled beneath their shaggy brows, his mustache bristled savagely, and the whole man was nervously alert as, with a squirt of oil here, a dab of the waste there, and feeling carefully each key and bearing to detect any signs of heating, he worked his way around the mighty racer. He was just finishing his round when the superintendent came up.

“Now, Hosselkus,” said the latter, appealingly, “_do_ be careful and try and get us over the division in some kind of shape--make time, and, for heaven’s sake, don’t break down on the road. If you make a first-class run, I’ll see what we can do about getting a passenger run for you.”

Hosselkus put away his tallow-pot, wiped his hands on the bunch of waste, which he then carefully placed in his pocket to serve as a handkerchief, and at length spoke: “Colonel,” he said, “don’t you lose no sleep over this excursion--we’ll git there in the biggest kind of shape--this mill has got it in her, an’ if I can’t coax a move out of her, I’ll run a stationary the rest of my life. Now, these kid-engineers of yours, they ain’t up in mechanics like they’d oughter be--not but what they’re good boys--mind you, I’m not sayin’ a word agin ’em--but they waste her stren’th--they don’t really savvy the theory. Now----”

“Yes, yes,” hurriedly interrupted the superintendent; “I know, but we must be getting out of here, and don’t forget that passenger run--it’s manslaughter, if not murder in the first degree,” he said to himself, as he hastened back; “but if we escape with our lives, he shall have the run.”

The conductor waved his hand, Hosselkus opened the throttle slightly and the steam shrilled through the cylinder-cocks as the special moved down the yard. Slowly he threaded the network of tracks, cut-offs, and blind switches, and then more rapidly by the long siding opposite the row of cottages, where the families of the conductors and engineers lived. And instinctively he felt the eyes of the women upon him, and that they were saying: “Well, if there ain’t that crazy fool on Pearson’s Three-Sevens, with a passenger special! Wouldn’t that kill you?” for women are jealous divinities--they would not that man should have any other gods or goddesses before them, and, as Hosselkus worshiped only a locomotive, a thing of steel and iron, they made of him a by-word and a reproach. But at that moment, Hard Luck cared but little for their disdain; he only thought of his triumph, and the discordant clanging of the bell of the Three-Sevens sounded in his ears as a pæan of victory. “At last--at last,” seemed to say its brazen tongue.

The last switch was passed, and Hosselkus, forgetting the lightness of his train, opened the throttle so suddenly that the engine fairly leaped forward, while passengers’ necks received a violent wrench.

“This engineer of yours, colonel,” said the general superintendent, spitting out the end of a cigar he had involuntarily swallowed, “is just off a pile-driver, is he not?”

The colonel laughed a joyless laugh. “The fact is,” he replied, “the regular man was taken sick at the last moment, and we had no one but this fellow to put on. He is an old engineer, but not used to the engine. I think he will improve when he gets the hang of it.”

“I hope so--I hope so,” said the general, fervently, as he lit a fresh cigar; “there is evidently room for improvement.”

But presently even the anxious superintendent was forced to admit they were moving. Telegraph-poles, that had appeared and disappeared with majestic deliberation, began to flit by the windows with a frequency and abruptness very unusual in those stately objects; quicker and less rhythmic came the click of the wheels as each rail was passed, and the leaps of the engine at each revolution of the driving-wheels were merged into a continuous, convulsive shudder. The passengers no longer experienced the sensation of being drawn along, but felt as though projected through space, and the more timid clung to their seats to avoid soaring off through the roof. Trainmen who could traverse undisturbed the reeling roofs of a fast freight, made their way through the swaying cars with difficulty.

Old Hard Luck was evidently “getting there,” and the superintendent prayed silently that he might maintain the speed to the end.

At the first stop he went forward to congratulate the engineer. The fireman was under the engine “hoeing out,” and Hosselkus, sooty but triumphant, was “oiling ’round.”

“How’d’s that suit you, colonel?” he cried, as his superior approached; “the old girl’s a-crawlin’, ain’t she?”

“You’re doing fine, Hosselkus--fine, but keep it up--pound her on the back, for the porter tells me the wine is getting low and they’re liable to see something to beef about. Keep ’em a-rollin’, and the passenger run is yours.” The colonel had risen from the ranks, and at times, unconsciously, lapsed into the old dialect.

“Don’t you worry none, we’ll git there. Gimme this mill, colonel, an’ none of the other boys on the division ’ud ever get a smell of my smoke. An’ she does it so easy, reminds of your maw’s old rocker--just handle her right, don’t crowd her, that’s the main point. Now my theory’s like this, we’ll say the cylinder receives so much----”

But the colonel had fled. Hard Luck carried his theory with him, for he never succeeded in obtaining a listener to whom he could expound it.

No accident occurred, however; the speed was maintained, and the special reached Oleson’s Siding so far in advance of the train-dispatcher’s calculations that quite a wait was necessary while Number Three, the east-bound express, toiled up the grade.

Hosselkus lit the headlight, for the sun was impaled upon one of the peaks of the distant Sierras, whose eastern slopes were already purpling with shades of evening.

It was the last stop. Below him wound the tortuous Goose-Neck Grade, with the division terminus at its foot. The run was nearly ended.

Having finished oiling, Hosselkus leaned against the cylinder-head and gazed abstractedly down the track. A brakeman was seated on the head-block of the switch, throwing stones at an adjacent telegraph-pole, and moodily speculating upon the probabilities of “getting in” in time for supper, while an occasional breath of wind from the valley brought with it, from far down the grade, the puffing of the engines on Number Three.

He had succeeded. The record would be broken beyond a doubt; but as the cool breeze of sunset blew in his face, he suddenly became aware of the fact that he was tired, and he remembered then that he had been on the road for over forty-eight hours.

The smell of heated tallow struck him, for the first time, as being a singularly unappetizing odor, and he looked over the huge machine with something akin to dissatisfaction in the expression of his face. He sighed, and the brakeman asked if she was coming--meaning the train.

“No,” replied Hard Luck; “she ain’t showed up ’round the bend yet--I’uz just thinkin’.”

“Well, here she’s a-comin’.”

Hosselkus clambered to his seat, and as soon as the express-train had cleared the switch it was opened by the brakeman, and the special was once more under way.

Leaning uncomfortably now to this side, now to that, and with angry grinding of flange on rail, it swept around the curves with ever-increasing speed. A crashing roar, a flare of yellow sunset light reflected from rocky walls, told of a cutting safely passed, while bridge, and culvert, and trestle bellowed again as the engine cleared them at a bound.

The Three-Sevens devoured the way. Again and again Hosselkus proved the correctness of his theory by the terrific bursts of speed with which the mighty engine responded to his every impulse; but his nerves were no longer responsive to the exultant thrill of triumph. A sickening foreboding griped his heart; yet, whenever he would have shut off steam and slackened speed, an unconquerable impulse restrained him; for, in the exhaust of the engine and the roar of wheels, he fancied he heard one word repeated over and over again, with maddening persistency: “Hurry! hurry! hurry! hurry!” And the fireman, as he shoveled in coal and struggled to maintain his difficult footing, noted with wonder, not unmixed with uneasiness, that Hosselkus was working steam on grades where it was usual to “let them down” under the restraining pressure of the air-brakes.

The lagging summer twilight gradually deepened until the illuminated faces of clock and steam-gauge stood out with pallid distinctness in the gloom of the cab. Lights in lonely section-houses shot past, and occasionally a great flare of red rushed upward from the momentarily opened door of the fire-box. The dazzling light of the furnace revealed old Hard Luck crouching forward on his seat, one hand on the throttle, the other grasping the reversing lever. His features were set and sharpened, and so pale that through its grimy enameling his face looked positively blue. An occasional swift, comprehensive glance took in clock, steam-gauge, and water-glass, and then his eyes were again fixed upon the arrowy torrent of ties that streamed into the glare of the headlight and disappeared beneath the pilot with unbroken, dizzying swiftness. At last a white post flitted by and Hosselkus relaxed. He glanced at the clock, and the next moment a long, wailing blast of the whistle warned the yardmen at the division’s end.

The record was broken; the passenger run was his at last; old Hard Luck had actually got over the division without a mishap and in time never before equaled; but instead of exulting over it, as he shut off steam, he found himself marveling how faint and far away the whistle had sounded; had he not felt the vibration of the escaping steam, he would hardly have believed it was the Three-Seven’s stentorian voice. Undoubtedly there was something wrong; he would have to fix it the first thing in the morning. The engine lurched over the switches, and Hosselkus cursed the sudden fog that had dimmed the switch-lamps so he could hardly tell red from white, but at length he pulled up before the Railway Hotel--fortune favored him to the last, he made a splendid stop.

With a great sigh of relief he leaned back on his seat, while the eating-house gong banged and thundered a hospitable welcome to the belated guests.

“You made a magnificent run, Hosselkus. I’ll fix it with the master-mechanic--you go out on Number Three to-morrow,” called out the superintendent, as he hurried by.

Presently a yardman uncoupled the engine and waved his lantern. “All right!” called out the fireman, who was standing in the gangway.

The engineer made no move.

“What’s the matter?” inquired the switchman, climbing into the cab; “Why in----” The light of his lantern fell upon the engineer’s face; he paused suddenly, for it was white beneath the grime.

Hard Luck was taken from the engine, laid upon a bench, and a physician hastily summoned. Engineers, with smoky torches, and trainmen, with lanterns, crowded around with bated breath, while the doctor listened long and attentively for a sound of life, but only the air-pump on the Three-Sevens sighed softly, as the light rings of smoke from her stack floated up, and up, and up in the quiet air, where still a tinge of twilight lingered.

“Dead!” said the doctor, and the tension was relaxed.

Then they all praised their late comrade, and all agreed that the old fellow had a good heart in him, anyway--that is, all but the doctor, who, as he rose and carefully wiped his spectacles, muttered something about “Organic weakness--told him so.”

The next day, as the superintendent had promised, Hard Luck went out on Number Three--but he went in a box, lashed to the platform of the baggage-car.

THE DOTTED TRAIL

By W. H. Irwin

The first time that Dudley Latimer kissed Belle Sharp, the half-Spanish “help” at the P. L. Ranch, he was not in earnest; he would have been the last to say that there was any serious intention in it. He did it partly in a spirit of pure bravado, and partly because the morning was as warm and white as new milk, and she, smiling back over her shoulder as she emptied her pails, looked a part of it. Equally innocent of any harmful intent, she let him after a formal struggle. He was tall and clean, and as handsome as a young Englishman can be when he is in perfect condition, and has a fine, red coat of tan. Then he bade her good-by. He had been at the ranch a week, ranging the hills in a vain hunt for antelope, already then, in the early eighties, becoming scarce. His canvas-covered wagon and his “side partner,” the Hon. Justin Weymouth, waited by the gate.

The Hon. Justin was taking a parting nip with the “Old Man,” and did not see the diversion, and none of the four noticed that Emilio Gonolez, horse trainer and man-of-all-work, was coming in through the kitchen yard carrying an antelope so freshly killed that its throat was not yet cut. Emilio stood and watched. He saw the struggle, heard the girl cry “The gall of you!” saw her color turn as she lifted her face with unwilling willingness, saw her throw at young Latimer, walking away, a look of admiration that he took for something else. Then Emilio slipped round the barn with his quarry, and came upon the wagon in front. Dudley was smiling across the fence at Belle, who had found business in the front yard. For half a minute, Emilio looked what he felt; then smiled as he slipped into view, and said: “I make-a present you thees antelope. He ees fresh. Myself, I shoot heem. He come ver’ close.”

“Careful how you tie it, Emmy,” said the Old Man. “Dump it in for ’em. Well, boys, stacking in the north field. Good-by, and luck to you.”

While Dudley chatted across the fence with Belle, Emilio was explaining to the Hon. Justin how an antelope should be tied and hung for a journey. “Head down so he bleed--the dust bother ver’ leetle--oh, yes, a lee-tle cut on the throat so he bleed slow. That ees bes’. I cut heem.” A slow, red stream trickled over snowy throat and gray jaws. The wagon drove on. Down the road behind it trailed an irregular line of wet dots, the centres for an army of noisy flies.

“Awfully jolly girl,” said Dudley, as they bowled easily along through the red dust. The Hon. Justin puffed at his pipe, and made no answer. He might have said that he hastened their going just because his companion was very young and the girl very pretty. A flock of sage-hens started from the olive-green brush to one side. Justin pulled up, took out his shotgun and followed, Dudley throwing stones to make them rise. A right and left shot brought down a brace. They gathered up the birds, and turned to the wagon, and as they did so, the elder man looked back. Just level with the ranch house, two miles behind, a cloud of red dust veiled the road and lapped far over its edge. Through the thin atmosphere came a muffled rumble, and then a few dots, followed at an interval by another, heaved out of the mass.

“Cattle!” said Dudley. “That’s jolly. I always wanted to see one of those big droves on the foot. Shall we wait for them to pass?”

“I think not,” said the Hon. Justin. “Not until we get to the next ranch. They say that those wild range cattle do singular things.” But still they stood and watched, fascinated by the shimmering, shifting, red cloud, the distant rumble, the glint of a blazing sun on the sabred heads of a thousand Texas long-horns.

Of a sudden the dust-cloud, which had spilled over the road only to the right, away from the ranch fence, widened out, shifted to the left. They had passed the fence corner, and were on open range. No dust arose on that wing; it was hard prairie, tied close by sagebrush. And inexperienced as were their eyes, the two Englishmen could see some commotion running through the mass; the units composing it were spreading hither and thither; two compound dots, mounted men, were swinging wide about them. The rumble grew louder, lulled, rose again, and above the noise came the sound of a dozen shots, fired in quick succession. Away back in his consciousness, Dudley began to regret that they had chosen, in their young British insolence, to travel without a guide, who might explain to them the strange happenings of this incomprehensible country.

Justin started at the sound of a frightened snort in his ear. He turned to see his horses quivering in every nerve. Almost before he could catch its bridle, the near one was plunging and pitching.

“Get the reins!” yelled Justin; “we’d best be out of here.”

The team broke into a dead run. Looking back, Justin saw the cloud ominously, frightfully near. A struggling advance-guard of long-horns heaved out before, and ahead of them were two men, riding like demons, yet ever beating backward as they rode. Then the red veil fell, and there was nothing but a dust-cloud, rolling on nearer and nearer.

* * * * *

When the Englishmen were gone, Belle looked after their retreating wagon, and sighed. She was just realizing, now that the week was past and these clean, courteous, easy-moving beings of another world were gone, that she had been dreaming dreams. Emilio looked also, sometimes after the wagon, sometimes after the girl. When he bent his gaze on Belle he was serious enough, but when his eye ran down the track of bloody dots, he drew his lips back from his white teeth, and smiled. He was holding the reins of his roan bronco; he dropped them to lean over the fence, and looked up the road, away from the wagon.

“What is it that you see up there?” she asked, carelessly, in Spanish.

“Something that your white-haired friend will be glad to see,” he answered. She looked, saw the dust-cloud coming, saw the little, caking pool of blood, and went white in a moment.

“That,” she cried, “that is what your antelope meant! You knew that cattle were coming this way to-day.”

“A thousand head passing up to the White River country. And wild, very wild.”

“They will trample them; kill them!”