Chapter IV: Part 4

Shanley did not take the other side of the street on the way to Dinkelman’s--by no means. He deliberately passed as close to the Blazing Star saloon as he could, passed with contemptuous disregard, passed boastfully in the knowledge of his own strength. A sixteen-hundred class engine with her four pairs of forty-six-inch drivers can pull countless cars up a mountain grade steep enough to make one dizzy, but Shanley would have backed himself to win against her in a tug of war over the scant few inches that separated him from MacGuire’s dispensary as he brushed by. None of MacGuire’s for him. Not at all. Red-headed, freckle-faced, barked-knuckled, bulwarked-and-armor-cased-against-temptation Shanley dealt that morning with Mr. Dinkelman, purveyor of bargains in men’s apparel.

The dealings were liberal--on the part of both men. On Shanley’s part because he needed much; on Mr. Dinkelman’s part because it was Mr. Dinkelman’s business, and his nature, to sell much--if he could--safely. This was eminently safe. Carleton’s name in the mountains stood higher than guaranteed, gilt-edged gold bonds any time.

The business finally concluded, Shanley boarded Twenty-nine, local freight, west, and in due time, well on in the afternoon, righteously sober, straight as a string, cleaned, groomed, and resplendent in a new suit, swung off from the caboose at Glacier Canon as the train considerately slackened speed enough to give him a fighting chance for life and limb.

He landed safely, however, in the midst of a jabbering Italian labor gang, who received his sudden advent with patience and some awe. A short, squintfaced man greeted him with a grin.

“Me name’s McCann,” said he of the squint face. “This is Glacier Canon, fwhat yez see av ut. Them’s the Eyetalians. Yon’s fwhere I roost an’ by the same token, fwhere yez’ll roost, too, from now on. Above is the shack av the men. Are yez plased wid yer introduction? ‘Tis wan hell av a hole ye’ve come to. Shanley’s the name, eh? A good wan, an’ I’m proud to make the acquaintance.”

Shanley blinked as he stretched out his hand and made friends with his superior, and blinked again as he looked first one way and then another in an effort to follow and absorb the other’s graphic description of the surroundings.

The road foreman’s summary was beyond dispute. Glacier Canon was as wild a piece of track as the Hill Division boasted, which was going some. The right of way hugged the bald gray rock of the mountains that rose up at one side in a sheer sweep, and the trains crawled along for all the world like huge flies at the base of a wall. On the other side was the Glacier River with its treacherous sandy bed that had been the subject of more reports and engineers’ gray hairs than all the rest of the system put together. The construction camp lay just to the east of the Canon, and at the foot of a long, stiff, two-mile, four-per-cent grade. That was the reason the camp was there--that grade.

Locking the stable door when the horse is gone is a procedure that is very old. It did not originate with the directors of the Transcontinental--they never claimed it did. But their fixed policy, if properly presented before a court of arbitration, would have gone a long way toward establishing a clear title to it. If they had built a switchback at the foot of the grade in the first place, Extra Number Eighty-three, when she lost control of herself near the bottom coming down, would have demonstrated just as clearly the necessity for one being there as she demonstrated most forcibly what would happen when there wasn’t. All of which is by way of saying that rock or no rock, expense or no expense, the door was now to be locked, and McCann and his men were there to lock it.

McCann explained this to Shanley as he walked him around, up the track to the men’s shanties, over the work, and back again down the track to inspect the interior of the dwelling they were to share in common--a relic of deceased Extra Number Eighty-three in the shape of a truckless box-car with dinted and bulging sides--dinted one side and bulged the other, that is.

“But,” said Shanley, “I dunno what a switchback is.”

“Who expected it av ye?” inquired McCann. “An’ fwhat difference does ut make? Carleton sint word ye were green. Ye’ve no need to know. So’s ye can do as yez are told an’ make them geesers do as they are told, _an’_ can play forty-foive at night--that’s the point, the main point wid me, an’ it’s me yez av to get along wid----‘twill be all right. Since Meegan, him that was helpin’ me, tuk sick a week back, I’ve been alone. Begad, playin’ solytare is----”

“I can play forty-five,” said Shanley.

McCann’s face brightened.

“The powers be praised!” he exclaimed. “I’ll enlighten ye, then, on the matter av switchbacks, me son, so as ye’ll have an intilligent conception av the work. A switchback is a bit av a spur track that sticks out loike the quills av a porkypine at intervuls on a bad grade such as the wan forninst ye. ‘Tis run off the main line, d’ye mind, an’ up contrariwise to the dip av the grade. Whin a train comin’ down gets beyond control an’ so expresses herself by means av her whistle, she’s switched off an’ given a chance to run uphill by way av variety until she stops. An’ the same holds true if she breaks loose goin’ up. Is ut clear?”

“It is,” said Shanley. “When do I begin work?”

“In the mornin.’ ‘Tis near six now, an’ the bhoys’ll be quittin’ for the night. Forty-foive is a grand game. We’ll play ut to-night to our better acquaintance. I contind ‘tis the national game av the ould sod.”

Whether McCann’s contention is borne out by fact, or by the even more weighty consideration of public opinion, is of little importance. Shanley played forty-five with McCann that night and for many nights thereafter. He lost a figure or two off the pay check that was to come, but he won the golden opinion of the little road boss, which ethically, and in this case practically, was of far greater value.

“He’s a bright jool av a lad,” wrote McCann across the foot of a weekly report.

And Carleton, seeing it, was much gratified, for Carleton wasn’t in the habit of making many breaks when it came to sizing up a man--not many. He did sometimes, but not often. Shanley was making good. Carleton was much gratified.

Of the three weeks that followed Shanley’s advent to Glacier Canon, this story has little to do in a detailed way; but, as a whole, those three weeks are pointed, eloquent, and important--very important.

Italian laborers have many failings, but likewise they have many virtues. They are simple, demonstrative, and their capacity for adoration--of both men and things--is very great.

From Jacko, the water boy, to Pietro Maraschino, the padrone, they adored Shanley, and enthroned him as an idol in their hearts, for the very simple reason that Shanley, not being a professional slave-driver by trade, established new and heretofore undreamed-of relations with them. Shanley was very green, very ignorant, very inexperienced--he treated them like human beings. That was the long and short of it. Shanley became popular beyond the popularity of any man, before or since, who was ever called upon to handle the “foreign element” on the Hill Division.

And the work progressed. Day by day the cut bored deeper into the stubborn mountain-side; day by day the Glacier River gurgled peacefully along over its treacherous sandy bed, one of the prettiest scenic effects on the system, so pretty that the company used it in the magazines; day by day regulars and extras, freights and passengers, east and west, snorted up and down the grade, the only visitations from the outside world; night after night Shanley played forty-five with McCann in the smoky, truckless box-car.

Also the camp was dry, very dry, dryer than a sanatorium--that is, than _some_ sanatoriums. Carle-ton had been quite right. There was no opportunity for Shanley to hit the high joints quite as hard as he had that night in Big Cloud--there was no opportunity for him to hit the high joints _at all_. Shanley had not seen a bottle for three weeks. Therefore Shanley felt virtuous, which was proper.

Some events follow others as the natural, logical outcome and conclusion of preceding ones; others, again, are apparently irrelevant, and the connection is not to be explained either by logic, conclusion, or otherwise. Rain, McCann’s departure for Big Cloud, and Pietro Maraschino’s birthday are an example of this.

When it settles down for a storm in the mountains, it is, if the elements are really in earnest, torrential, and prolonged, and has the effect of tying up construction work tighter than a supreme court injunction could come anywhere near doing it.

McCann had business in Big Cloud, whether personal or pertaining to the company is of no consequence, and the day the storm set in--the morning having demonstrated that its classification was not to be considered as transient--he seized the opportunity to flag the afternoon freight eastbound. This was natural and logical, and an opportunity not to be neglected.

That this day, however, should be the anniversary of the day the padrone’s mother of blessed memory had given birth to Pietro Maraschino in sunny Naples fifty-three years before is, though apparently irrelevant, far from being so; and since its peculiar and coincident happening cannot be laid at the door of either logical, natural, scientific, or philosophical conclusions, and since it demands an explanation of some sort, it must, perforce, be attributed to the metaphysical--which is a name given to all things about which nobody knows anything.

“Yez are in charge,” said McCann grandiloquently, waving his hand to Shanley as he swung into the caboose. “Yez are in charge av the work, me son. See to ut. I trust ye.”

As the work at the moment was entirely at a standstill and bid fair to remain so until McCann’s return on the morrow, this was very good of McCann. But all men like words of appreciation, most of them whether they deserve them or not, so Shanley went back into the box-car out of the rain to ponder over the tribute McCann had paid him, and to ponder, too, over the new responsibility that had fallen to his lot.

He did not ponder very long; indeed, the freight that was transporting McCann could hardly have been out of sight over the summit of the grade, when a knock at the door was followed by the entrance of the dripping figure of the padrone.

Shanley looked up anxiously.

“Hello, Pietro,” he said nervously, for the weather wasn’t the kind that would bring a man out for nothing, and he was keenly alive to that new responsibility. “Hello, Pietro,” he repeated. “Anything wrong?”

Pietro grinned amiably, shook his head, unbuttoned his coat, and held out--a bottle.

Shanley stared in amazement, and then began to blink furiously.

“Here!” said he. “What’s this?”

“Chianti,” said Pietro, grinning harder than ever.

“Key-aunty.” Shanley screwed up his face. “What the devil is key-aunty?”

“Ver’ good wine from Italia,” said the beaming padrone.

“It is, is it? Well, it’s against the rules,” asserted Shanley with conviction. “It’s against the rules. McCann’u’d skin you alive. He would. Where’d you get it? What’s up, eh? It’s against the rules. I’m in charge.”

Pietro explained. It was his birthday. It was very bad weather. For the rest of the afternoon there would be no work. They would celebrate the birthday, Meester McCann had taken the train. As for the wine--Pietro shrugged his shoulders--his people adored wine. Unless they were very poor his people would have a little wine in their packs, perhaps. He was not quite sure where they had got it, but it was very thoughtful of them to remember his birthday. Each had presented him with a little wine. This bottle was an expression of their very great good estime of Meester Shanley. Perhaps, later, Meester Shanley would come himself to the shack.

“It’s against the rules,” blinked Shanley. “McCann ‘u’d skin you alive. Maybe I’ll drop in by and by. You can leave the bottle.”

Pietro bobbed, grinned delightedly, handed over the bottle, and backed out into the storm.

Shanley, still blinking, placed the bottle on the table, and gazed at it thoughtfully for a few minutes--and his thoughts were of Carleton.

“If ‘twere whisky,” said he, “I’d have no part of it, not a drop, not even a smell. I would not. I would not touch it. But as it is----” Shanley uncorked the bottle.

Not at all. One does _not_ get drunk on a bottle of Chianti wine. A single bottle of Chianti wine is very little. That is the trouble--it is _very_ little. After three weeks of abstinence it is very little indeed--so little that it is positively tantalizing.

The afternoon waned rapidly--and so did the Chianti. Outside, the storm instead of abating grew worse--the thunder racketing through the mountains, the lightning cutting jagged streaks in the black sky, the rain coming down in sheets that set the culverts and sluiceways running full. It was settling down for a bad night in the mountains, which, in the Rockies, is not a thing to be ignored. “’tis no wonder McCann found it lonely,” muttered Shanley, as he squeezed the last drop from the bottle. “‘Tis very lonely, indeed”--he held the bottle upside down to make sure that it was thoroughly drained--“most uncommon lonely. It is that. Maybe those Eyetalians ‘ll be thinkin’ I’m stuck up, perhaps--which I am not. It’s a queer name the stuff has, though it’s against the rules, an’ I can’t get my tongue around it, but I’ve tasted worse. For the sake of courtesy I’ll look in on the birthday party.”

He incased himself in a pair of McCann’s rubber boots, put on McCann’s rubber coat, and started out.

“An’ to think,” said he, as he sloshed and buffeted his way up the two hundred yards of track to the construction shanties, “to think that Pietro came out in cruel bad weather like this all for to present his compliments an’ ask me over! ‘Twould be ungracious to refuse the invitation; besides my presence will keep them in due bounds an’ restraint. I’ve heard that Eyetalians, being foreigners, do not practice restraint--but, being foreigners, ‘tis not to be held against them. I’m in charge, an’ I’ll see to it.”

They greeted him in the largest of the three bunk-houses. They greeted him heartily, sincerely, uproariously, and with fervor. They were unfeignedly glad to see him, and if he had not been by nature a modest man he would have understood that his popularity was above the popularity ever before accorded to a boss. Likewise, their hospitality was without stint. If there was any shortage of stock--which is a matter decidedly open to question--they denied themselves that Shanley might not feel the pinch. Shanley was lifted from the mere plane of man--he became a king.

A little Chianti is a little; much Chianti is to be reckoned with and on no account to be despised. Shanley not only became a king, he became regally, imperially, royally, and majestically drunk. Also there came at last an end to the Chianti, at which stage of the proceedings Shanley, with extravagant dignity and appropriate words--an exhortation on restraint--waddled to the door to take his departure.

It was very dark outside, very dark, except when an intermittent flash of lightning made momentary daylight. Pietro Maraschino offered Shanley one of the many lanterns that, in honor of the festive occasion, they had commandeered, without regard to color, from the tool boxes, and had strung around the shack. Further, he offered to see Shanley on his way.

The offer of assistance touched Shanley--it touched him wrong. It implied a more or less acute condition of disability, which he repudiated with a hurt expression on his face and forceful words on his tongue. He refused it; and being aggrieved, refused also the lantern Pietro held out to him. He chose one for himself instead--the one nearest to his hand. That this was red made no difference. Blue, white, red, green, or purple, it was all one to Shanley. His fuddled brain did not differentiate. A light was a light, that was all there was to that.

The short distance from the shanty door to the right of way Shanley negotiated with finesse and aplomb, and then he started down the track. This, however, was another matter.

Railroad ties, at best, do not make the smoothest walking in the world, and to accomplish the feat under some conditions is decidedly worthy of note. Shanley’s performance beggars the English language--there is no metaphor. For every ten feet he moved forward he covered twenty in laterals, and, considering that the laterals were limited to the paltry four, feet, eight and one-half inches that made the gauge of the rails, the feat was incontestably more than worthy of mere note--it was something to wonder at. He clung grimly to the lantern, with the result that the gyrations of that little red light in the darkness would have put to shame an expert’s exhibition with a luminous dumb-bell. The while Shanley spoke earnestly to himself.

“Queshun is am I drunk--thash’s the queshun. If I’m drunk--lose my job. Thash what Carleton said--lose my job. If I’m not drunk--s’all right. Wish I knew wesser I’m drunk or not.”

He relapsed into silent communion and debate. This lasted for a very long period, during which, marvelous to relate, he had not only reached a point opposite his box-car domicile, but, being oblivious of that fact, had kept on along the track. Progress, however, was becoming more and more difficult. Shanley was assuming a position that might be likened somewhat to the letter C, owing to the fact that the force of gravity seemed to be exerting an undue influence on his head. Shanley was coming to earth.

As a result of his communion with himself he began to talk again, and his words suggested that he had suspicions of the truth.

“Jus’ my luck,” said he bitterly. “Jus’ my luck. Allus same kind of luck. What’d I have to do wis Peto Mara--Mars--Marscheeno’s birthday? Nothing. Nothing ‘tall. ‘Twasn’t my fault. Jus’ my luck. Jus’ my----”

Shanley came to earth. Also his head came into contact with the unyielding steel of the left-hand rail, and as a result he sprawled inertly full across the right of way, not ten yards west of where the Glacier River swings in to crowd the track close up against the mountain base.

Providence sometimes looks after those who are unable to look after themselves. By the law of probabilities the lantern should have met disaster quick and absolute; but, instead, when it fell from Shanley’s hand, it landed right side up just outside the rail between two ties, and, apart from a momentary and hesitant flicker incident to the jolt, burned on serenely. And it was still burning when, five minutes later, above the swish of leaping waters from the Glacier River now a chattering, angry stream with swollen banks, above the moan of the wind and the roll of the thunder through the mountains, above the pelting splash of the steady rain, came the hoarse scream of Number One’s whistle on the grade.

Sanderson, in the cab, caught the red against him on the right of way ahead, and whistled insistently for the track. This having no effect, he grunted, latched in the throttle, and applied the “air.” The ray of the headlight crept along between the rails, hovered over a black object beside the lantern, passed on again and held, not on the glistening rain-wet rails--_they_ had disappeared--but on a crumbling road-bed and a dark blotch of waters, as with a final screech from the grinding brake-shoes Number One came to a standstill.

“Holy MacCheesar!” exclaimed Sanderson, as he swung from the cab.

He made his way along past the drivers to where the pilot’s nose was inquisitively poked against the lantern, picked up the lantern, and bent over Shanley.

“Holy MacCheesar!” he exclaimed again, straightening up after a moment’s examination. “Holy MacCheesar!”

“What’s wrong, Sandy?” snapped a voice behind him, the voice of Kelly, Spider Kelly, the conductor, who had hurried forward to investigate the unscheduled stop.

“Search me,” replied Sanderson. “Looks like the Glacier was up to her old tricks. There’s a washout ahead, and a bad one, I guess. But the meaning of this here is one beyond me. The fellow was curled up on the track just as you see him with the light burning alongside, that’s what saved us, but he’s as drunk as a lord.”

As Kelly bent over the prostrate form, others of the train crew appeared on the scene. One glance he gave at Shanley’s never-under-any-circumstances-to-be-for-gotten homely countenance, and hastily ordered the men to go forward and investigate the washout ahead. Then he turned to the engineer.

“The man is not drunk, Sandy,” said he.

“He is gloriously and magnificently drunk, Kelly,” replied the engineer.

“What would he be doing here, then? He is not drunk.”

“Sleeping it off. He is disgracefully drunk.”

“Can ye not see the bash on his head where he must have stumbled in the dark trying to save the train and struck against the rail? He is not drunk.”

“Can ye not smell?” retorted Sanderson. “He is dead drunk!”

“I have fought with him and he licked me. He is a man and a friend of mine”--Kelly shoved his lantern into Sanderson’s face. “_He is not drunk_.”

“He is _not_ drunk,” said Sanderson. “He is a hero. What will we do with him?”

“We’ll carry him, you and me, over to the construction shanty, it’s only a few yards, and put him in his bunk. He works here, you know. McCann’s in Big Cloud, for I saw him there. After that we’ll run back to the Bend for orders and make our report.”

“Hurry, then,” said the engineer. “Take his legs. What are you laughing at?”

“I was thinking of Carleton,” said Kelly. “Carleton? What’s Carleton got to do with it?”

“I’ll tell you later when we get to the Bend. Come on.”

“H’m,” said Sanderson, as they staggered with their burden over to the box-car shack. “I’ve an idea that bash on the head is more dirt than hurt. He’s making a speech, ain’t he?”

“Jus’ my luck,” mumbled the reviving Shanley dolefully. “Jus’ my luck. Alius same kind of luck.”

“Possibly,” said Kelly. “Set him down and slide back the door. That’s right. In with him now. We haven’t got time to make him very comfortable, but I guess he’ll do. I can fix him up better at the Bend than I can here.”

“At the Bend? What d’ye mean?” demanded Sanderson.

“You’ll see,” replied Kelly, with a grin. “You’ll see.”

And Sanderson saw. So did Carleton--in a way. Kelly’s report, when they got to the Bend, was a work of art. He disposed of the nature and extent of the washout in ten brief, well-chosen words, but the operator got a cramp before Kelly was through covering Shanley with glory. The passengers, packed in the little waiting-room clamoring for details, yelled deliriously as he read the message aloud--and promptly took up a collection, a very generous collection, because all collections are generous at psychological moments--that is to say, if not delayed too long to allow a recovery from hysteria.

At Big Cloud, the dispatcher, because the washout was a serious matter that not only threatened to tie up traffic, but was tying it up, sent a hurry call to Carleton’s house that brought the super on the run to the office. By this time the collection had been counted, and the total wired in, as an additional detail--one hundred and forty dollars and thirty-three cents. The odd change being a contribution from a Swede in the colonist coach who could not speak English, and who paid because a man in uniform, a brakeman acting as canvasser, made the request. A Swede has a great respect for a uniform.

“H’m,” said Carleton, when he had read it all. “I know a man when I see one. Tell Shanley to report here. I guess we can find something better for him to do than bossing laborers. What? Yes, send the letter up on the construction train. One hundred and forty, thirty-three, h’m? Tell him that, too. He’ll feel good when he sees it in the morning.”

But Shanley did not feel good when he saw it in the morning, for he was nursing a very bad headache and a stomach that had a tendency to squeamishness. The letter was lying on the floor, where some one had considerately chucked it in without disturbing him. His eyes fell on it as he struggled out of his bunk. He picked it up, opened it, read it--and blinked. His face set with a very blank and bewildered expression. He read it again, and again once more. Then he went to the door and looked out.

A construction train was on the line a little below him, and a gang of men, not his nor Pietro Maraschino’s men, were busily at work. As he gazed, his face puckered. The problem that had so obsessed him on his return journey from the birthday celebration the night before was a problem no longer.

“I _was_ drunk,” said he, with conviction. “I _must_ have been.”

He went back to the letter and studied it again, scratching his head.

“Something,” he muttered, “has happened. What it is, I dunno. I was drunk, an’ I’m not fired. I was drunk, an’ I’m promoted. I was drunk, an’ I’m paid well for it, very well. I was drunk--an’ I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Which was exactly the advice Kelly took pains to give him half an hour later, when Number One crawled down to the Canon and halted for a few minutes opposite the dismantled box-car, while the construction train put the last few touches to its work.

VI--THE BUILDER

There are two sides to every story--which is a proverb so old that it is in the running with Father Time himself. It is repeated here because there must be _some_ truth in it--anything that can stand the wear and tear of the ages, and the cynics, and the wise old philosophical owls without getting any knock-out dints punched in its vital spots must have some sort of merit fundamentally, what? Anyway, the company had their side, and the men’s version differed--of course. Maybe each, in a way, was more or less right, and, equally, in a way, more or less wrong. Maybe, too, both sides lost their tempers and got their crown-sheets burned out before the arbitration pow-wow had a chance to get the line clear and give anybody rights, schedule or otherwise. However, be that as it may, whoever was right or whoever was wrong, one or the other, or both, it is the strike, not the ethics of it, that has to do with--but just a moment, we’re over-running our holding orders.

From the time the last rail was spiked home and bridging the Rockies was a reality, not a dream--from then to the present day, there isn’t any very much better way of describing the Hill Division than to call it rough and ready. Coming right down to cases, the history of that piece of track, the history of the men who gave the last that was in them to make it, and the history of those who have operated it since isn’t far from being a pretty typical and comprehensive example of the pulsing, dominating, dogged, go-forward spirit of a continent whose strides and progress are the marvel of the world; and, withal, it is an example so compact and concrete that through it one may see and view the larger picture in all its angles and in all its shades. Heroism and fame and death and failure--it has known them all--but ever, and above all else, it has known the indomitable patience, the indomitable perseverance, the indomitable determination against which no times, nor conditions, nor manners, nor customs, nor obstacles can stand--the spirit of the New Race and the Great New Land, the essence and the germ of it.

Building a road through the Rockies and tapping the Sierras to give zest to the finish wasn’t an infant’s performance; and operating it, single-track, on crazy-wild cuts and fills and tangents and curves and tunnels and trestles with nature to battle and fight against, isn’t any infant’s performance, either. The Hill Division was rough and ready. It always was, and it is now--just naturally so. And Big Cloud, the divisional point, snuggling amongst the buttes in the eastern foothills, is even more so. It boasts about every nationality classified in certain erudite editions of small books with big names, and, to top that, has an extra anomaly or two left over and up its sleeve for good measure; but, mostly, it is, or rather was--it has changed some with the years--composed of Indians, bad Americans, a scattering of Chinese, and an indescribable medley of humans from the four quarters of Europe, the Cockney, the Polack, the Swede, the Russian and the Italian--laborers on the construction gangs. Big Cloud was a little more than rough and ready--it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a health resort for finnicky nerves.

So, take it by and large, the Hill Division, from one end to the other, wasn’t the quietest or most peaceful locality on the map even before the trouble came. After that--well, mention the Big Strike to any of the old-timers and they’ll talk fast enough and hard enough and say enough in a minute to set you wondering if the biographers hadn’t got mixed on dates and if Dante hadn’t got his material for that little hair-stiffener of his no further away than the Rockies, and no longer back than a few years ago. But no matter----

The story opens on the strike--_not_ the ethics of it. There’s some hard feeling yet--too much of it to take sides one way or the other. But then, apart from that, this is not the story of a strike, it is the story of men--a story that the boys tell at night in the darkened roundhouses in the shadow of the big ten-wheelers on the pits, while the steam purrs softly at the gauges and sometimes a pop-valve lifts with a catchy sob. They tell it, too, across the tracks at headquarters, or on the road and in construction camps; but they tell it better, somehow, in the roundhouse, though it is not an engineer’s tale--and Clarihue, the night turner, tells it best of all. Set forth as it is here it takes no rank with him,--but all are not so fortunate as to have listened while Clarihue talked.

Just one word more to make sure that the red isn’t against us anywhere and we’ll get to Keating and Spirlaw--just a word to say that Carleton, “Royal” Carle-ton, was superintendent then, and Regan was master mechanic, Harvey was division engineer, Spence was chief dispatcher, and Riley was trainmaster. Pretty good men that little group, pretty good railroaders--there have never been better. Some of them are bigger now in the world’s eyes, heads of systems instead of departments--and some of them will never railroad any more. However------

If you haven’t forgotten Shanley you will recall the Glacier Canon, and, most of all, you will recall the Glacier River with its treacherous sandy bed that snuggled close to the right of way and forced the track hard against the rocky walls of the mountain’s base. The havoc the Glacier played with the operating department on the night of Shanley’s memorable heroism was not the first time it had misbehaved itself, nor was it the last--that was the trouble. It washed out the road-bed with such consistent persistency, on so little provocation, and did it so effectually as to stir at last to resentment even the torpid blood of the directors down East. So they voted the sum, though it hurt, and solaced themselves with the thought that after all it was economy--which was true.

There was only one thing to do against that overhospitable and affectionate little stream, and that was to get away from it; but, before proceeding to do so--in order to get elbow room to work so that the flyers and the fast mails and the traffic generally wouldn’t be hung up every time a Polack swung a pick--they pushed the track out over the chattering river on a long, temporary, hybrid trestle of wood and steel. That done, the rest was up to Spirlaw--up to Spirlaw and Keating.

The plans called for the shaving down of the mountain-side, the barbering, mostly, to be done with dynamite, for the beard of the Rockies is not the down of a youth. So, when the trestle was finished, Spirlaw with a gang of some thirty Polacks moved into construction camp, promptly tore up the old track, and set themselves to the task in hand. A little later, Keating joined them.

Spirlaw was a road boss, and the roughest of his kind. Physically he was a giant; and which of the three was the hardest, his face, his fist, or his tongue, would afford the sporting element a most excellent opportunity to indulge in a little book-making with the odds about even all round. His hair was a coarse mop of tawny brown that straggled over his eyes; and his eyes were all black, every bit of them--there didn’t seem to be any pupil at all, which gave them a glint that was harder than a cold chisel. Take him summed up, Spirlaw looked a pretty tough proposition, and in some ways, most ways perhaps, he was--he never denied it.

“What the blue blinding blazes, d’ye think, h’m?” he would remark, reaching into his hip pocket for his “chewing,” as he swept the other arm comprehensively over the particular crowd of sweating foreigners that happened to be under his particular jurisdiction at the time. “What d’ye think! You can’t run cuts an’ fills with an outfit like this on soft soap an’ candy sticks, can you? Well then--h’m?”

That last “h’m” was more or less conclusive--very few cared to pursue the argument any further. At a safe distance, the Big Fellows on the division, as a salve to their consciences when humanitarian ideas were in the ascendancy, would bombard Spirlaw with telegrams which were forceful in tone and direful in threat--but that’s all it ever amounted to. Spirlaw’s work report for a day on anything, from bridging a canon to punching a hole in the bitter hard rock of the mountain-side, was a report that no one else on the division had ever approached, let alone duplicated--and figures count perhaps just a little bit more in the operating department of a railroad than they do anywhere else in the world. Spirlaw used the telegrams as spills to light a pipe as hard-looking as himself, whose bowl was down at the heels on one side from much scraping, and on such occasions it was more than ordinarily unfortunate for the sour-visaged Polack who should chance to arouse his ire.

Some men possess the love of a fight and their natures are tempestuous by virtue of their nationality, because some nationalities are addicted that way. This may have been the case with Spirlaw--or it may not. There’s no saying, for Spirlaw’s nationality was a question mark. He never delivered himself on the subject, and, certainly, there was no figuring it out from the derivation of his name--_that_ could have been most anything, and could have come from most anywhere.

To say that “opposites attract” isn’t any more original, any less gray-bearded, than the words at the head of these pages. Generally, that sort of thing is figured in the worn-out, stale, familiarity-breeds-con-tempt realm of platitude, and at its unctuous repetition one comes to turn up his nose; but, once in a while, life has a habit of getting in a kink or a twist that gives you a jolt and a different side-light, and then, somehow, a thing like that rings as fresh and virile as though you had just heard it for the first time. As far as any one ever knew, Keating was the only one that ever got inside of Spirlaw’s shell, the only one that the road boss ever showed the slightest symptoms of caring a hang about--and yet, on the surface, between the two there was nothing in common. Where one was polished the other was rough; where one was weak the other was strong. Keating was small, thin, pale-faced, and he had a cough--a cough that had sent him West in a hurry without waiting for the other year that would have given him his engineer’s diploma from the college in the East.

When the boy, he wasn’t much more than a boy, dropped off at Big Cloud, and Carleton read the letter he brought from one of the big Eastern operators, the super raised his eyebrows a little, looked him over and sent him out to Spirlaw. Afterwards, he spoke to Regan about him.

“I didn’t know what to do with him, Tommy; but I had to do something, what? Any one with half an eye could tell that he had to be kept out of doors. Thought he might be able to help Spirlaw out a little as assistant, h’m? Guess he’ll pick up the work quick enough. He don’t look strong.”

“Mabbe it’s just as well,” grinned the master mechanic. “He won’t be able to batter the gang any. One man doing that is enough--when it’s Spirlaw.”

Spirlaw heard about it before he saw Keating, and he swore fervently.

“What the hell!” he growled. “Think I’m runnin’ a nursery or an outdoor sanatorium? I guess I’ve got enough to do without lookin’ after sick kids, I guess I have. Fat lot of help he’ll be--help my eye! I don’t need no help.”

But for all that, somehow, from the first minute when Keating got off the local freight, that stopped for him at the camp, and shoved out his hand to Spirlaw it was different--after that it was _all_ Keating as far as the road boss was concerned.

Queer the way things go. Keating looked about the last man on earth you would expect to find rubbing elbows with an iron-fisted foreman whose tongue was rougher than a barbed-wire fence; the last man to hold his own with a slave-driven gang of ugly Polacks. He seemed too quiet, too shy, too utterly unfit, physically, for that sort of thing. The blood was all out of the boy--he got rid of it faster than he could make it. But his training stood him in good stead, and, within his limitations, he took hold like an old hand. That was what caught Spirlaw. He did what he was told, and he did what he could--did a little more than he could at times, which would lay him up for a bad two or three days of it.

“Good man,” Spirlaw scribbled across the bottom of a report one day--a day that was about equally divided between barking his knuckles on a Polack’s head and feeding cracked ice to Keating in his bunk. Cracked ice? No, it wasn’t on the regular camp bill of fare--but the company supplied it for all that. Spirlaw, with supreme contempt for the dispatchers and their schedules and their train sheets, held up Number Twelve and the porter of the Pullman for a goodly share of the commodity possessed by that colored gentleman. That’s what Spirlaw thought of Keating.

For the first few weeks after he struck the camp Keating didn’t have very much to say about himself, or anything else for that matter; but after he got a little nearer to Spirlaw and the mutual liking grew stronger, he began to open up at nights when he and the road boss sat outside the door of the construction shanty and watched the sun lose itself behind the mighty peaks, creep again with a wondrous golden-tinted glow between a rift in the range, and finally sink with ensuing twilight out of sight. Keating could talk then.

“Don’t see what you ever took up engineerin’ for,” remarked Spirlaw one evening. “It’s about the roughest kind of a life I know of, an’ you------”

“I know, I know,” Keating smiled. “You think I’m not strong enough for it. Why, another year out here in the West and I’ll be like a horse.”

“Sure, you will,” agreed Spirlaw, hastily. “I didn’t mean just that.” Then he sucked his briar hard.

Spirlaw wasn’t much up on therapeutics, he knew more about blasting rock, but down in his heart there wasn’t much doubt about another year in the West for the boy, and another and another, _all of them_--only they would be over the Great Divide that one only crosses once when it is crossed forever. Six months, four, three,--just months, not years, was what he read in Keating’s face. “What I meant,” he amended, “was that you don’t have to. From what you’ve said, I figur’ your folks back there would be willin’ to stake you in most any line you picked out, h’m?”

“No, I don’t have to,” Keating answered, and his face lighted up as he leaned over and touched the road boss on the sleeve. “But, Spirlaw, it’s the greatest thing in all the world. Don’t you see? A man does something. _He builds_. I’m going to be a builder--a builder of bridges and roads and things like that. I want to do something some day--something that will be worth while. That’s why I’m going to be an engineer; because, all over the world from the beginning, the engineers have led the way and--and they’ve left something behind them. I think that’s the biggest thing they can say of any man when he dies--that he was a builder, that he left something behind him. I’d like to have them say that about me. Well, after I put in another year out here--I’m a heap better even now than when I came--I’m going back to finish my course, and then--well, you understand what I want to do, don’t you?”

There were lots of talks like that, evening after evening, and they all of them ended in the same way---

Spirlaw would knock out his pipe against a stone or his boot heel, and “figur’ he’d stroll up the camp a bit an’ make sure all was right for the night.”

A pretty hard man Spirlaw was, but under the rough and the brutal, the horny, thick-shelled exterior was another self, a strange side of self that he had never known until he had known Keating. It got into him pretty deep and pretty hard, the boy and his ambitions; and the irony of it, grim and bitter, deepened his pity and roused, too, a sense of fierce, hot resentment against the fate that mocked in its pitiless might so defenseless and puny a victim. To himself he came to call Keating “The Builder,” and one day when Harvey came down on an inspection trip, he told the division engineer about it--that’s how it got around.

Carleton, when he heard it, didn’t say anything--just crammed the dottle in his pipe down with his forefinger and stared out at the switches in the yards. They were used to seeing the surface of things plowed up and the corners turned back in the mountains, there weren’t many days went by when something that showed the raw didn’t happen in one way or another, but it never brought callousness or indifference, only, perhaps, a truer sense of values.

They had been blasting in the Canon for a matter of two months when the first signs of trouble began to show themselves, and the beginning was when the shop hands at Big Cloud went out--the boiler-makers and the blacksmiths, the painters, the carpenters and the fitters. The construction camp, that is Spirlaw, didn’t worry very much about this for the very simple reason that there didn’t appear to be any reason why it, or he, should--that was Regan’s hunt. But when the train crews followed suit and stray rumors of a fight or two at Big Cloud began to come in, with the likelihood of more hard on the heels of the first, it put a different complexion on things; for the rioting, what there had been of it, lay, not at the door of the railroad boys, but with the town’s loafers and hangers-on, these and the foreign element--particularly the foreign element--the brothers and the cousins of the Polacks who were swinging the picks and the shovels under the iron hand of Spirlaw, their temporary lord and master--the Polacks, gently ungentle, when amuck, as starved pumas.

Then the Brotherhood said “quit,” and the engine crews followed the trainmen. Things began to look black, and headquarters began to find it pretty hard to move anything. The train schedule past the Canon was cut better than in half, and the faces of the men in the cabs and the cabooses were new faces to those in camp--the faces of the men the company were bringing in on hurry calls from wherever they could get them, from the plains East or the coast West.

Every day brought reports of trouble from one end of the line to the other, more rioting, more disorder at Big Cloud; and, in an effort to nip as much of it in the bud as possible, Carleton issued orders to stop all construction work--all except the work in Glacier Canon, for there the temporary trestle lay uneasy on his mind.

The day the stop orders went out elsewhere a letter went out to Spirlaw. Spirlaw read it and his face set like a thunder cloud. He handed it to Keating.

Keating read it--and looked serious.

“I guess things aren’t any too rosy down there,” he commented; then slowly: “I’ve noticed our men seemed a bit sullen lately. They don’t care anything much about the strike, it must be a sort of sympathetic movement with the rest of their crowd that’s running wild at Big Cloud--only I don’t just figure how they can know very much about what’s going on. We don’t ourselves, for that matter.”

Spirlaw smiled grimly.

“I’ll tell you how,” he said. “I caught a Polack in the camp last night that didn’t belong here--and I broke his head for the second time, see? He used to work’ for me about a year ago--that’s when I broke it the first time. He’s one of their influential citizens--name’s Kuryla. Sneaked in here to stir up trouble--guess he’s sorry for it, I guess he is.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said Keating, his eyes opening a little wider in surprise.

“You was asleep,” explained Spirlaw tersely.

Keating stared curiously at the road boss for a minute, then he glanced again at the super’s letter which he still held in his hand.

“Carleton says he is depending on you to put this work through if it’s a possible thing. You don’t really think we’ll have any serious trouble here though, do you?”

Spirlaw bit deeply into his plug before he answered.

“Yes, son; I do,” he said at last, “And there’s a good many reasons why we will, too. Once start ‘em goin’ an’ there’s no worse hellions on earth than the breed we’re livin’ next door to. Furthermore they don’t _love_ me--they’re just afraid of me as, by the holy razoo, I mean ‘em to be. Let ‘em once get a smell of the upper hand an’ it would be all day _an_’ good-by. Let ‘em get goin’ good at Big Cloud an’ they’ll get goin’ good here--they’ll kind of figur’ then that there ain’t any law to bother ‘em--an’, unless I miss my guess, Big Cloud’s in for the hottest celebration in its history, which will be goin’ some for it’s had a few before that weren’t tame by a damn sight.”

“Well,” inquired Keating, “what do you intend to do?”

“H’m-m,” drawled Spirlaw reflectively, and there was a speculative look in his eyes as they roved over his assistant. “That’s what I’ve been chewin’ over since I caught that skunk Kuryla last night. As far as I can figur’ it the chance of trouble here depends on how far those cusses go at Big Cloud. If I knew that, I’d know what to expect, h’m? I thought I’d send you up to headquarters for a day. You could have a talk with the super, tell him just where we stand here, an’ size things up there generally. What do you say?”

“Why, of course. All right, if you want me to,” agreed Keating readily.

“That’s the boy,” said Spirlaw, heartily. “Number Twelve will be along in half an hour. I’ll flag her, an’ you can go an’ get ready now. I’ll give you a letter to take along to Carleton.”

As Keating, with a nod of assent, turned briskly away, Spirlaw watched him out of sight--and the hint of a smile played over the lips of the road boss. He pulled a report sheet from his pocket, and on the back of it scrawled laboriously a letter to the superintendent of the Hill Division. It wasn’t a very long letter even with the P. S. included. His smile hardened as he read it over.

“Supt., Big Cloud,” it ran. “Dear Sir:--Replying to yours 8th inst., please send a couple of good.45s, and _plenty of stuffing_. [‘Plenty of stuffing’ was heavily underscored.) Yrs. Resp., H. Spirlaw. P.S. _Keep the boy up there out of this_.” (The P. S. was even more heavily underscored than the other.)

Wise and learned in the ways of men--and Polacks--was Spirlaw. Spirlaw was not dealing with the _possibility_ of trouble--it was simply a question of how long it would be before it started. He folded the letter, sealed it in one of the company’s manilas, and, as he watched Number Twelve disappear around the bend steaming east for Big Cloud with Keating aboard her and the epistle reposing in Keating’s pocket, he stretched out his arms that were big as derrick booms and drew in a long breath like a man from whose shoulders has dropped a heavy load.

That day Spirlaw talked from his heart to the men, and they listened in sullen, stupid silence, leaning on their picks and shovels.

“You know me,” he snapped, and his eyes starting at the right of the group rested for a bare second on each individual face as they swept down the line. “You know _me_. You’ve been actin’ like sulky dogs lately--don’t think I haven’t spotted it. You saw what happened to that coyote friend of yours that sneaked in here last night. I meant it as a lesson for the bunch of you as well as him. The yarns he was fillin’ you full of are mostly lies, an’ if they ain’t it’s none of your business, anyhow. It won’t pay you to look for trouble, I promise you that. You can take it from me that I’ll bash the first man to powder that tries it. Get that? Well then, wiggle them picks a bit an’ get busy!”

“The man that hits first,” said Spirlaw to himself, as he walked away, “is the man that usually comes out on top. I guess them there few kind words of mine ‘ll give ‘em a little something to chew on till Carle-ton sends that hardware down, I guess they will, h’m?”

The camp was pretty quiet that night--quieter than usual. The cook-house and the three bunk-houses, that lay a few hundred yards east of the trestle, might have been occupied by dead men for all the sounds that came from them. Occasionally, Spirlaw, sitting out as usual in front of his own shanty, that was between the trestle and the gang’s quarters, saw a Polack or two skulk from one of the bunk-houses to the other--and he scowled savagely as he divided his glances between them and the sky. It looked like a storm in the mountains, and a storm in the mountains is never by any possibility to be desired--least of all was it to be desired just then. The men at work was one thing; the men cooped up for a day, or two days, of enforced idleness with the temper they were in was another--

Spirlaw turned in that night with the low, ominous roll of distant thunder for a lullaby.

Once in the night he woke suddenly at the sound of a splitting crash, and once, twice, and again, like a fierce, winking stream of flame, the lightning filled the shack bright as day, while on the roof the rain beat steadily like the tattoo of a corps of snare drums. Spirlaw smiled grimly as the darkness shut down on him again.

“Got the little builder out just about the right time, h’m?” he remarked to himself; and, turning over in his bunk, went to sleep again--but even in his sleep the grim smile lingered on his lips.