Chapter I: P. SPEARS, Roadmaster, Big Cloud (1)

Sammy Durgan missing.
P. DONOVAN."

Missing--that was it. Just that, nothing more--as though the earth had opened and swallowed him up, Sammy Durgan had disappeared. And while Carleton grew red and apoplectic over the claim sheet for damages presented by the moving-picture company, and Regan fumed and tugged at his scraggly brown mustache at thought of the damage to his rolling stock--Sammy Durgan was just missing, that was all--just missing. Nobody knew where Sammy Durgan had gone. Nobody had seen him. Station agents, operators, road bosses, section bosses, construction bosses and everybody else were instructed to report--and they did. They reported--nothing. Regan even went so far as to ask Mrs. Durgan.

"Is ut here to taunt me, yez are!" screamed Mrs. Durgan bitterly--and slammed the door in the little master mechanic's face.

"I guess," observed Regan to himself, as he gazed at the uncommunicative door panels, "I guess mabbe the neighbors have been neighborly--h'm? But I guess, too, we're rid of Sammy Durgan at last; and I dunno but what that comes pretty near squaring accounts for window glass and about a million other incidentals. Only," added the little master mechanic, screwing up his eyes, as he walked back to the station, "only it would have been more to my liking to have got my hands on him first--and got rid of him after!"

But Regan, and Carleton, and Mrs. Durgan, and the Hill Division generally were not rid of Sammy Durgan--far from it. For a week he was missing, and then one afternoon young Hinton, of the division engineer's staff, strolled into the office, nodded at Carleton, and grinned at the master mechanic, who was tilted back in a chair with his feet on the window sill.

"I dropped off this morning to look over the new grading work at The Gap," said Hinton casually. "And I thought you might be interested to know that MacMurtrey's got a man working for him up there by the name of Timmy O'Toole."

"Doesn't interest me," said Regan blandly, chewing steadily on his blackstrap. "Try and spring it on the super, Hinton. He always bites."

"Who's Timmy O'Toole?" smiled Carleton.

Hinton squinted at the ceiling.

"Sammy Durgan," said Hinton--casually.

There wasn't a word spoken for a minute. Regan lifted his feet from the window sill and lowered his chair legs softly down to the floor as though he were afraid of making a noise, and the smile on Carleton's face sort of faded away as though a blight had withered it.

"What was the name?" said Carleton presently, in a velvet voice.

"Timmy O'Toole," said Hinton.

Carleton's hand reached out, kind of as though of its own initiative, kind of as though it were just habit, for a telegraph blank--but Regan stopped him. It wasn't often that the fat, good-natured little master mechanic was vindictive, but there were times when even Regan's soul was overburdened.

"Wait!" said Regan, with ferocious grimness. "Wait! I'll make a better job of it than that, Carleton. I'm going up the line myself to-morrow morning on Number Three--and _I'll_ drop off at The Gap. Timmy O'Toole now, is it? I'll make him sick!" Regan clenched his pudgy fist. "When I'm through with him he'll never have to be fired again--not on this division. Still looking for an emergency to rise to, eh? Well, I'll accommodate him! He'll run up against the hottest emergency to-morrow morning he ever heard of!"

And Regan was right--that was exactly what Sammy Durgan did. Only it wasn't quite the sort of emergency that Regan----But just a moment till the line's clear, there go the cautionaries against us.

If it had been any other kind of a switch it would never have happened--let that be understood from the start. And how it ever came to be left on the main line when modern equipment was installed is a mystery, except perhaps that as it was never used it was therefore never remembered by anybody. Nevertheless, there it stood, an old weather-beaten, two-throw, stub switch of the vintage of the ark. Two-throw, mind you, when a one-throw switch, even in the days of its usefulness, would have answered the purpose just as well, better for that matter. No modern drop-handle, interlocking safety device about it. Not at all! A handle sticking straight out like a sore thumb that could creak around on a semi-circular guide, with a rusty pin dangling from a rusty chain to lock it--if some itinerant section hand didn't forget to jab the pin back into the hole it had the habit of worming its way out of! It stood about a quarter of the way down the grade of The Gap, which is to say about half a mile from the summit, a deserted sentinel on guard over a deserted spur that, in the old construction days, had been built in a few hundred yards through a soft spot in the mountain side for camp and material stores.

As for The Gap itself, it was not exactly what might be called a nice piece of track. Officially, the grade is an average of 4.2; practically, it is likened to a balloon descension by means of a parachute. It begins at the east end and climbs up in a wriggling, twisting way, hugging gray rock walls on one side, and opening a canyon on the other that, as you near the summit, would make you catch your breath even to look at over the edge--it is a sheer drop. And also the right of way is narrow, very narrow; just clearance on one side against the rock walls, and a whole canyon full of nothingness at the edge of the other rail, and----But there's our "clearance" now.

MacMurtrey's camp was at the summit; and MacMurtrey's work, once the camp was fairly established and stores in, was to shave the pate of the summit, looking to an amelioration in The Gap's grade average--that is, its official grade average. But on the morning that Regan left Big Cloud on No. 3, the work was not very far along--only the preliminaries accomplished, so to speak, which were a siding at the top of the grade, with storehouse and camp shanties flanking it.

And on the siding, that morning, just opposite the storehouse which, it might be remarked in passing, had already received its first requisition of blasting materials for the barbering of the grade that was to come, a hybrid collection of Polacks, Swedes, and Hungarians were emptying an oil-tank car and discharging supplies from some flats and box cars; while on the main line track a red-haired man, with leathery face, was loading some grade stakes on a handcar.

MacMurtrey, tall, lanky and irascible, shouted at the red-haired man from a little distance up the line.

"Hey, O'Toole!"

The red-haired man paid no attention.

"_O'Toole!_" It came in a bellow from the road boss. "You, there, O'Toole, you wooden-headed mud-picker, are you deaf!"

Sammy Durgan looked up to get a line on the disturbance--and caught his breath.

"By glory!" whispered Sammy Durgan to himself. "I was near forgetting--'tis me he's yelling at."

"O'Too----"

"Yes, sir!" shouted Sammy Durgan hurriedly.

"Oh, you woke up, have you?" shrilled MacMurtrey. "Well, when you've got those stakes loaded, take 'em down the grade and leave 'em by the old spur. And take it easy on the grade, and mind your brakes going down--understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Sammy Durgan.

Sammy Durgan finished loading his handcar, and, hopping aboard, started to pump it along. At the brow of the grade he passed the oil-tank car, and nodded sympathetically at a round-faced, tow-headed Swede who was snatching a surreptitious drag at his pipe in the lee of the car.

Like one other memorable morning in Sammy Durgan's career, it was sultry and warm with that same leisurely feeling in the air. Sammy Durgan and his handcar slid down the grade--for about an eighth of a mile--rounded a curve that hid Sammy Durgan and the construction camp one from the other, continued on for another hundred yards--and came to a stop.

Sammy Durgan got off. On the canyon side there was perhaps room for an agile mountain goat to stretch its legs without falling off; but on the other side, if a man squeezed in tight enough and curled his legs Turk fashion, the rock wall made a fairly comfortable backrest.

"'Twas easy, he said, to take it on the grade," said Sammy Durgan reminiscently. "And why not?"

Sammy Durgan composed himself against the rock wall, and produced his black cutty.

"'Tis a better job than track-walking," said Sammy Durgan judicially, "though more arduous."

Sammy Durgan smoked on.

"But some day," said Sammy Durgan momentously, "I'll have a better one. I will that! It's a long time in coming mabbe, but it'll come. Once in every man's life a chance comes to him. 'Tis patience that counts, that and rising to the emergency that proves the kind of a man you are, as some day I'll prove to Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em."

Sammy Durgan smoked on. It was a warm summer morning, sultry even, as has been said, but it was cool and shady against the rock ledge. Peace fell upon Sammy Durgan--drowsily. Also, presently, the black cutty fell, or, rather, slipped down into Sammy Durgan's lap--without disturbing Sammy Durgan.

A half hour, three-quarters of an hour passed--and MacMurtrey, far up at the extreme end of the construction camp, let a sudden yell out of him and started on a mad run toward the tank-car and the summit of the grade, as a series of screeches in seven different varieties of language smote his ears, and a great burst of black smoke rolling skyward met his startled gaze. But fast as he ran, the Polacks, Swedes and Hungarians were faster--pipe smoking under discharging oil-tank cars and in the shadow of a dynamite storage shed they were accustomed to, but to the result, a blazing oil-tank car shooting a flame against the walls of the dynamite shed, they were not--they were only aroused to action with their lives in peril, and they acted promptly and earnestly--too earnestly. Some one threw the main line open, and the others crowbarred the blazing car like mad along the few feet of siding to get it away from the storage shed, bumped it on the main line, and then their bars began to lose their purchase under the wheels--the grade accommodatingly took a hand.

MacMurtrey, tearing along toward the scene, yelled like a crazy man:

"Block her! Block the wheels! You--you----" His voice died in a gasp. "D'ye hear!" he screamed, as he got his breath again. "Block the wheels!"

And the Polacks, the Swedes, the Hungarians and the What-Nots, scared stiff, screeched and jabbered, as they watched the tank-car, gaining speed with every foot it travelled, sail down the grade. And MacMurtrey, too late to do anything, stopped dead in his tracks--his face ashen. He pulled his watch, licked dry lips, and kind of whispered to himself.

"Number Three 'll be on the foot of the grade now," whispered MacMurtrey, and licked his lips again. "Oh, my God!"

Meanwhile, down the grade around the bend, Sammy Durgan yawned, sat up, and cocked his ear summitwards.

"Now what the devil are them crazy foreigners yelling about!" complained Sammy Durgan unhappily. "'Tis always the way with them, like a cageful of screeching cockatoos, they are--but being foreigners mabbe they can't help it, 'tis their nature to yell without provocation and----"

Sammy Durgan's ear caught a very strange sound, that mingled the clack of fast-revolving wheels as they pounded the fish-plates with a roar that hissed most curiously--and then Sammy Durgan's knees went loose at the joints and wobbled under him.

Trailing a dense black canopy of smoke, wrapped in a sheet of flame that spurted even from the trucks, the oil-tank car lurched around the bend and plunged for him--and for once, Sammy Durgan thought very fast. There was no room to let it pass--on one side was just nothing, barring a precipice; and on the rock side, no matter how hard he squeezed back from the right of way, there wasn't any room to escape that spurting flame that even in its passing would burn him to a crisp. And with one wild squeak of terror Sammy Durgan flung himself at his handcar, and, pushing first like a maniac to start it, sprang aboard. Then he began to pump.

There were a hundred yards between the bend and the scene of Sammy Durgan's siesta--only the tank-car had momentum, a whole lot of it, and Sammy Durgan had not. By the time Sammy Durgan had the handcar started the hundred yards was twenty-five, and the monster of flame and smoke behind him was travelling two feet to his one.

Sammy Durgan pumped--for his life. He got up a little better speed--but the tank-car still gained on him. Down the grade he went, the handcar rocking, swaying, lurching, and up and down on the handle, madly, frantically, desperately, wildly went Sammy Durgan's arms, shoulders and head--his hat blew off, and his red hair sort of stood straight up in the wind, and his face was like chalk.

Down he went, faster and faster, and the handcar, reeling like a drunken thing, took a curve with a vicious slew, and the off wheels hung in air for an instant while Sammy Durgan bellowed in panic, then found their base again and shot along the straight. And faster and faster behind him, on wings of fire it seemed, spitting flame tongues, vomiting its black clouds of smoke like an inferno, roaring like a mighty furnace in blast, came the tank-car. It was initial momentum and mass against Sammy Durgan's muscles on a handcar pump handle--and the race was not to Sammy Durgan.

He cast a wild glance behind, and squeaked again, and his teeth began to go like castanets, as the hot breath of the thing fanned his back.

"'Tis my finish," wheezed and stuttered Sammy Durgan through bursting lungs and chattering teeth. "'Tis a dead man, I am--oh, Holy Mither--'tis a dead man I am!"

Ahead and to either side swept Sammy Durgan's eyes like a hunted rat's--and they held, fascinated, on where the old spur track led off from the main line. But it was not the spur track that interested Sammy Durgan--it was that the rock wall, diverging away from his elbow, as it were, presented a wide and open space.

"It's killed I am, anyway," moaned Sammy Durgan. "But 'tis a chance. If--if mabbe I could jump far enough there where there's room to let it pass, I dunno--but 'tis killed, I'll be, anyway--oh, Holy Mither--but 'tis a chance--oh, Holy Mither!"

Hissing in its wind-swept flames, belching its cataract of smoke that lay behind it up the grade like a pall of death, roaring like some insensate demon, the tank-car leaped at him five yards away. And, screaming now in a paroxysm of terror that had his soul in clutch, crazed with it, blind with it, Sammy Durgan jumped--_blindly_--just before he reached the spur.

Like a stone from a catapult, Sammy Durgan went through the air, and with a sickening thud his body crashed full into the old stub switch-stand and into the switch handle, whirled around, and he ricochetted, a senseless, bleeding, shattered Sammy Durgan, three yards away.

It threw the switch. The handcar, already over it, sailed on down the main line and around the next bend, climbed up the front end of the 508 that was hauling No. 3 up the grade, smashed the headlight into battered ruin, unshipped the stack, and took final lodgment on the running board, its wheels clinging like tentacles to the 508's bell and sand-box; but the tank-car, with a screech of wrenching axles, a frightened, quivering stagger, took the spur, rushed like a Berserker amuck along its length, plowed up sand and gravel and dirt and rock where there were no longer any rails, and toppled over, a spent and buckled thing, on its side.

It was a flying switch that they talk of yet on the Hill Division. No. 3, suspicious of the handcar, sniffed her way cautiously around the curve, and there, passengers, train crew, engine crew and Tommy Regan, made an excited exodus from the train--just as MacMurtrey, near mad with fear, Swedes, Hungarians and Polacks stringing out along the right of way behind him, also arrived on the scene.

Who disclaims circumstantial evidence! Regan stared at the burning oil-tank up the spur, stared at the bleeding, senseless form of Sammy Durgan--and then he yelled for a doctor.

But a medical man amongst the passengers was already jumping for Sammy Durgan; and MacMurtrey was clawing at the master mechanic's arm, stuttering out the tale of what had happened.

"And--and if it hadn't been for Timmy O'Toole there," stuttered MacMurtrey, flirting away the sweat that stood out in great nervous beads on his face, "I--it makes me sick to think what would have happened when the tank struck Number Three. Something would have gone into the canyon sure. Timmy O'Toole's a----"

"His name's Sammy Durgan," said Regan, kind of absently.

"I don't give a blamed hoot what his name is!" declared MacMurtrey earnestly. "He's a man with grit from the soles up, and a head on him to use it with. It was three-quarters of an hour ago that I sent him down, so he must have been near the top on his way back when he saw the tank-car coming--and he took the one chance there was--to try and beat it to the spur here to save Number Three; and it was so close on him, for it's a cinch he hadn't time to stop, that he had to jump for the switch with about one chance in ten for his own life--see?"

"A blind man could see it," said Regan heavily, "but--Sammy Durgan!" He reached uncertainly toward his hip pocket for his chewing--and then, with sudden emotion, the big-hearted, fat, little master mechanic bent over Sammy Durgan.

"God bless the man!" blurted out Regan. And then, to the doctor: "Will he live?"

"Oh, yes; I think so," the doctor answered. "He's pretty badly smashed up, though."

Sammy Durgan's lips were moving. Regan leaned close to catch the words.

"A steady job," murmured Sammy Durgan. "Never get a chance. But some day it'll come. I'll show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em!"

"You have, Sammy," said Regan, in a low, anxious voice. "It's all right, Sammy. It's all right, old boy. Just pull around and you can have any blamed thing you want on the Hill Division."

The doctor smiled sympathetically at Regan.

"He's delirious, you know," he explained kindly. "What he says doesn't mean anything."

Regan looked up with a kind of a grim smile.

"Don't it?" inquired Regan softly. Then he cleared his throat, and tugged at his scraggly brown mustache--both ends of it. "That's what I used to think myself," said the fat little master mechanic, sort of as though he were apostrophizing the distant peaks across the canyon, and not as though he were talking to the doctor at all. "But I guess--I guess I know Sammy Durgan better than I did. H'm?"

IV

THE WRECKING BOSS

Opinions, right or wrong, on any subject are a matter of individuality--there have been different opinions about Flannagan on the Hill Division. But the story is straight enough--from car-tink to superintendent, there has never been any difference of opinion about that.

Flannagan was the wrecking boss.

Tommy Regan said the job fitted Flannagan, for it took a hard man for the job, and Flannagan, bar none, was the hardest man on the payroll; hardest at crooking elbows in MacGuire's Blazing Star Saloon, hardest with his fists, and hardest of all when it came to getting at the heart of some scalding, mangled horror of death and ruin that a man wouldn't be called a coward to turn from--sick.

Flannagan looked it. He stood six feet one in his stockings, and his chest and shoulders were like the front-end view you'd get looking at a sturdy, well-grown ox. He wasn't pretty. His face was scarred with cuts and burns enough to stall any German duelling student on a siding till the rails rusted, and the beard he grew to hide these multitudinous disfigurements just naturally came out in tussocks; he had black eyes that could go _coal_ black and lose their pupils, and a shock of black hair that fell into them half the time; also, he had a tongue that wasn't elegant. That was Flannagan--Flannagan, the wrecking boss.

There's no accounting for the way some things come about--and it's pretty hard to call the turn of the card when Dame Fortune deals the bank. It's a trite enough saying that it is the unexpected that happens in life, but the reason it's trite is because it's immeasurably true. Flannagan growled and swore and cursed one night, coming back from a bit of a spill up the line, because they stalled him and his wrecking outfit for an hour about half a mile west of Big Cloud--the reason being that, like the straw that broke the camel's back, a circus train in from the East, billed for a three days' lay-off at Big Cloud, had, seeking siding, temporarily choked the yards, already glutted with traffic, until the mix-up Gleeson, the yardmaster, had to wrestle with would have put a problem in differential calculus into the kindergarten class.

Flannagan was very dirty, and withal very tired, and when, finally, they gave him the "clear" and his flat and caboose and his staggering derrick rumbled sullenly down toward the roundhouse and shops, the sight of gilded cages, gaudily decorated cars, and converted Pullmans that were second-class-tourist equipment painted white, did not assuage his feelings; neither was there enchantment for him in the roars of multifarious beasts, nor in the hybrid smells that assailed his nostrils from the general direction of the menagerie. Flannagan, for an hour's loss of sleep, with heartiness and abandon, consigned that particular circus, also all others and everything thereunto pertaining, from fangless serpents to steam calliopes, to regions that are popularly credited with being somewhat warmer than the torrid zone on the hottest day in mid-summer. But then--Flannagan did not know.

Opinions differ. Flannagan was about the last man on earth that any one on the Hill Division would have picked out for a marrying man; and, equally true the other way round, about the last man they would have picked out as one a pretty girl would want to marry. With her, maybe, it was the strength of the man, since they say that comes first with women; with him, maybe, it was just the trim little brown-eyed, brown-haired figure that could ride with the grace of a fairy. Anyway, the only thing about it that didn't surprise any one was the fact that, when it came, it came as sudden and quick as a head-on smash around a ninety-degree curve. That was Flannagan's way, for Flannagan, if he was nothing else, was impulsive.

That night Flannagan cursed the circus; the next day he saw Daisy MacQueen riding in the street parade and--but this isn't the story of Flannagan's courtship, not but that the courtship of any man like Flannagan would be worth the telling--only there are other things.

At first, Big Cloud winked and chuckled slyly to itself; and then, when the circus left and Flannagan got a week off and left with it, it guffawed outright--but when, at the end of that week, Flannagan brought back Mrs. Flannagan, _nee_ Daisy MacQueen, Big Cloud stuck its tongue in its cheek, wagged its head and waited developments.

This is the story of the developments.

Maybe that same impulsiveness of Flannagan's, that could be blind and bullheaded, coupled with a passion that was like a devil's when aroused, was to blame; maybe the women of Big Cloud, following the lead of Mrs. MacAloon, the engineer's wife and the leader of society circles, who shook her fiery red head and turned up her Celtic nose disdainfully at Daisy MacQueen, had something to do with it; maybe Daisy herself had a little pride--but what's the use of speculating? It all goes back to the same beginning--opinions differ.

Tongues wagged; Flannagan listened--that's the gist of it. But, once for all, let it be said and understood that Daisy MacQueen was as straight as they make them. She hadn't been brought up the way Mrs. MacAloon and her coterie had, and she liked to laugh, liked to play, liked to live, and not exist in a humdrum way ever over washtubs and a cook stove--though, all credit to her who hadn't been used to them, she never shirked one nor the other. The women's ideas about circuses and circus performers were, putting it mildly, puritanical; but the men liked Daisy MacQueen--and took no pains to hide it. They clustered around her, and, before long, she ruled them all imperially with a nod of her pretty head; and, as a result, the women's ideas from puritanical became more so--which is human nature, Big Cloud or anywhere else.

At first, Flannagan was proud of the little wife he had brought to Big Cloud--proud of her for the very attitude adopted toward her by his mates; but, as the months went by, gradually the wagging tongues got in their work, gradually Flannagan began to listen, and the jealousy that was his by nature above the jealousy of most men commenced to smolder into flame. Just a rankling jealousy, directed against no one in particular--just jealousy. Things up at the little house off Main Street where the Flannagans lived weren't as harmonious as they had been.

In the beginning, Daisy, not treating the matter seriously, answered Flannagan with a laugh; finally, she answered him not at all. And that stage, unfortunately far from unique in other homes than Flannagan's the world over, was reached where only some one act, word or deed was needed to bring matters to a head.

Perhaps, after all, there was poetic justice in Flannagan's cursing of the circus, for it was the circus that supplied that one thing needed. Not that the circus came back to town--it didn't--but a certain round, little, ferret-eyed, short, pompadour-haired, waxed-mustached, perfumed Signor Ferraringi, the ringmaster, did.

Ferraringi was a scoundrel--what he got he deserved, there was never any doubt about that; but that night Flannagan, when he walked into the house, saw only Ferraringi on his knees before Daisy, heard only impassioned, flowery words, and, in the blind fury that transformed him from man to beast, the scorn, contempt and horror in Daisy's eyes, the significance of the rigid little figure with tight-clenched hands, was lost. Ferraringi had been in love with Daisy. Flannagan knew that, and his seething brain remembered that. The circus people had told him so; Daisy had told him so; Ferraringi had told him so with a snarl and a threat--and he had laughed--_then_.

One instant Flannagan hung upon the threshold. He was not a pretty sight. Back from a wreck, he was still in his overalls, and these were smeared with blood--four carloads of steers had gone into premature shambles in the ditch. One instant Flannagan hung there, his face working convulsively--and then he jumped. His left hand locked into the collar of the ringmaster's coat, his arm straightened like the tautening chains of his own derrick crane, and, as the other came off his knees and upright from the yank, Flannagan's right swung a terrific full-arm smash that, landing a little above the jaw, plastered one side of that tonsorial work of art, the waxed and curled mustache, flat into Ferraringi's cheek.

Ferraringi's answer, as he wriggled free, was a torrent of malediction--and a blinding flash. Daisy screamed. The shot missed, but the powder singed Flannagan's face.

It was the only shot that Ferraringi fired! With a roar, high-pitched like the maddened trumpeting of an elephant amuck, Flannagan with a single blow sent the revolver sailing ceiling high--then his arms, like steel piston rods, worked in and out, and his fists drummed an awful, merciless tattoo upon the ringmaster.

The smoke from the shot filled the room with pungent odor. Chairs and furniture, overturned, broken, crashed to the floor. Daisy, wild-eyed, with parted lips, dumb with terror, crouched against the wall, her hands clasped to her breast--but before Flannagan's eyes all was red--_red_.

A battered, bruised, reeling, staggering form before him curled up suddenly and slid in a heap at his feet. Flannagan, with groping hands and twitching fingers, reached for it--and then, with a rush, other forms, many of them, came between him and what was on the floor.

It was very good for Ferraringi, very good, for that was all that saved him--Flannagan was seeing only red.

The neighbors lifted the stunned ringmaster, limp as rags, to his feet. Flannagan brushed his great fist once across his eyes in a half-dazed way, and glared at the roomful of people. Suddenly, he heaved forward, pushing those nearest him violently toward the door.

"Get out of here!" he bellowed hoarsely. "Get out, curse you, d'ye hear! Get out!"

There were men in that little crowd, men besides the three or four women, Mrs. MacAloon amongst them; men not reckoned overfaint of spirit in Big Cloud by those who knew, but _they_ knew Flannagan, and they went--went, half carrying, half dragging the ringmaster, oiled and perfumed now in a fashion grimly different than before.

"Get out!" roared Flannagan again to hurry them, and, as the last one disappeared, he whirled on Daisy. "And you, too!" he snarled. "Get out!"

Terrified, shaken by the scene as she was, his words, their implication, their injustice, whipped her into scorn and anger. White-lipped, she stared at him for an instant.

"You dare," she burst out, "you dare to----"

"_Get out!_" Flannagan's voice in his passion was a thick, stumbling, guttural whisper. "Get out! Go back to your circus--go where you like! Get out!" His hand dove into his pocket, and its contents, bills and coins, what there was of them, he flung upon the table. "Get out--as far as all I've got will take you!"

Daisy MacQueen was proud--perhaps, though, not above the pride of other women. The blood was hot in her cheeks; her big, brown eyes had a light in them near to that light with which she had faced Ferraringi but a short time before; her breath came in short, hard, little gasps. For a full minute she did not speak--and then the words came cold as death.

"Some day--some day, Michael Flannagan, you'll get what you deserve."

"That's what I'm gettin' now--what I deserve," he flung back; then, halting in the doorway: "You understand, eh? Get out! I'm lettin' you down easy. Get out of Big Cloud! Get out before I'm back. Number Fifteen 'll be in in an hour--you'd better take her."

Flannagan stepped out on the street. A curious little group had collected two houses down in front of Mrs. MacAloon's. Flannagan glanced at them, muttered a curse; and then, head down between his shoulders, clenched fists rammed in his pockets, he headed in the other direction toward Main Street. Five minutes later, he pushed the swinging doors of the Blazing Star open, and walked down the length of the room to where Pete MacGuire, the proprietor, lounged across the bar.

"Pete"--he jerked out his words hoarsely--"next Tuesday's pay day--is my face good till then?"

MacGuire looked at him curiously. The news of the fracas had not yet reached the Blazing Star.

"Why, sure," said he. "Sure it is, Flannagan, if you want it. What's----"

"Then let 'em come my way," Flannagan rapped out, with a savage laugh; "an' let 'em come--_fast_."

Flannagan was the wrecking boss. A hard man, Regan had called him, and he was--a product of the wild, rough, pioneering life, one of those men who had followed the grim-faced, bearded corps of engineers as they pitted their strength against the sullen gray of the mighty Rockies from the eastern foothills to the plains of the Sierras, fighting every inch of their way with indomitable perseverance and daring over chasms and gorges, through tunnels and cuts, in curves and levels and grades, against obstacles that tried their souls, against death itself, taping the thin steel lines they left behind them with their own blood. Hard? Yes, Flannagan was hard. Un-cultured, rough, primal, he undoubtedly was. A brute man, perhaps, full of the elemental--fiery, hot-headed, his passions alone swayed him. That side of Flannagan, the years, in the very environment in which he had lived them, had developed to the full--the other side had been untouched. What Flannagan did that night another might not have done--or he might. The judging of men is a grave business best let alone.

Flannagan let go his hold then; not at once, but gradually. That night spent in the Blazing Star was the first of others, others that followed insidiously, each closer upon the former's heels. Daisy had gone--had gone that night--where, he did not know, and told himself he did not care. He grew moody, sullen, uncompanionable. Big Cloud took sides--the women for Flannagan; the men for the wife. Flannagan hated the women, avoided the men--and went to the Blazing Star.

There was only one result--the inevitable one. Regan, kindly for all his gruffness, understanding in a way, stood between Flannagan and the super and warned Flannagan oftener than most men were warned on the Hill Division. Nor were his warnings altogether without effect. Flannagan would steady up--temporarily--maybe for a week--than off again. Steady up just long enough to keep putting off and postponing the final reckoning. And then one day, some six months after Daisy Flannagan had gone away, the master mechanic warned him for the last time.

"I'm through with you, Flannagan," he said. "Understand that? I'm out from under, and next time you'll talk to Carleton--and what he'll have to say won't take long--about two seconds. You know Carleton, don't you? Well, then--what?"

It was just a week to a day after that that Flannagan cut loose and wild again. He made a night and a day of it, and then another. After that, though by that time Flannagan was quite unaware of the fact, some of the boys got him home, dumped him on his bed and left him to his reflections--which were a blank.

Flannagan slept it off, and it took about eighteen hours to do it. When he came to himself he was in a humor that, far from being happy, was atrocious; likewise, there were bodily ailments--Flannagan's head was bad, and felt as though a gang of boiler-makers, working against time, were driving rivets in it. He procured himself a bracer and went back to bed. This resulted in a decidedly improved physical condition, but when he arose late in the afternoon any improvement there might have been in his mental state was speedily dissipated--Flannagan found a letter shoved under his door, postmarked the day before, and with it an official manila envelope from the super's office.

He opened the letter and read it--read it again while his jaws worked and the red surged in a passion into his face; then, with an oath, he tore it savagely into shreds, flung the bits on the floor and stamped upon them viciously with his heavy nail-heeled boot.

The official manila he did not open at all. A guess was enough for that--a curt request to present himself in the super's office, probably. Flannagan glared at it, then grabbed his hat, and started down for the station. There was no idea of shirking it; Flannagan wasn't that kind at any time, and just now his mood, if anything, spurred him on rather than held him back. Flannagan welcomed the prospect of a row about anything with anybody at that moment--if only a war of words.

Carleton's office was upstairs over the ticket office and next to the despatchers' room then, for the station did duty for headquarters and everything else--not now, it's changed now, and there's a rather imposing gray-stone structure where the old wooden shack used to be; but, no matter, that's the way it was then, for those were the early days when the road was young and in the making.

Flannagan reached the station, climbed the stairs, and pushed Carleton's door open with little ceremony.

"You want to see me?" he demanded gruffly, as he stepped inside.

Carleton, sitting at his desk, looked up and eyed the wrecking boss coolly for a minute.

"No, Flannagan," he said curtly. "I don't."

"Then what in blazes d'ye send for me for?" Flannagan flung out in a growl.

"See here, Flannagan," snapped Carleton, "I've no time to talk to you. You can read, can't you? You're out!"

Flannagan blinked.

"Was that what was in the letter?"

"It was--just that," said Carleton grimly.

"Hell!" Flannagan's short laugh held a jeering note of contempt. "I didn't open it--or mabbe I'd have known, eh?"

Carleton's eyes narrowed.

"Well, you know now, don't you?"

"Sure!" Flannagan scowled and licked his lips. "I'm out, thrown out, and----"

"Then, get out!" Carleton cut in sharply. "You've had more chances than any man ever got before from me, thanks to Regan; but you've had your last, and talking won't do you any good now."

Flannagan stepped nearer to the desk.

"Talkin'! Who's talkin'?" he flared in sudden bravado. "Didn't I tell you I didn't read your damned letter? Didn't I, eh, didn't I? D'ye think I'd crawl to you or any man for a job? I'm out, am I? D'ye think I came down to ask you to take me back? I'd see you rot first! T'hell with the job--see!"

Few men on the Hill Division ever saw Carleton lose his temper--it wasn't Carleton's way of doing things. He didn't lose it now, but his words were like trickling drops of ice water.

"Sometimes, Flannagan," he said, "to make a man like you understand one has to use your language. You say you'd see me rot before you asked me for the job back again--very well. I'd rot before I gave it to you after this. Now, will you get out--or be thrown out?"

For a moment it looked as though Flannagan was going to mix it there and then. His eyes went ugly, and his fists, horny and gnarled, doubled into knots, as he glared viciously at the super.

Carleton, who was afraid of no man, or any aggregation of men, his face stern-set and hard, leaned back in his swivel chair and waited.

A tense minute passed. Then Flannagan's better sense weighed down the balance, and, without so much as a word, he turned, went out of the room, and stamped heavily down the stairs.

Goaded into it, or through unbridled, ill-advised impulse, men say rash things sometimes--afterward, both Flannagan and Carleton were to remember their own and the other's words--and the futility of them. Nor was it to be long afterward--without warning, without so much as a premonition, quick and sudden as doom, things happen in railroading.

It was half past five when Flannagan went out of the super's office; it was but ten minutes later when, before he had decanted a drop from the bottle he had just lifted to fill his glass, he slapped the bottle back on the bar of the Blazing Star with a sudden jerk. From down the street in the direction of the yards boomed three long blasts from the shop whistle--the wrecking signal. It came again and again. Men around him began to move. Chairs from the little tables were pushed hurriedly back. The bell in the English chapel took up the alarm. It stirred the blood in Flannagan's veins, and whipped it to his cheeks in fierce excitement--it was the call to arms!

He turned from the bar--and stopped like a man stunned. There had been times in the last six months when he had not responded to that call, because, deaf to everything, he had not _heard_ it. Then, it had been his call--the call for the wrecking crew, and, first of all, for the wrecking boss; now--there was a dazed look on his face, and his lips worked queerly. It was not for him, he was barred--_out_.

Slowly he turned back to the bar, rested his foot on the rail, and, with a mirthless laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, reached for the bottle again. He poured the whisky glass full to the brim--and laughed once more and shrugged his shoulders as his fingers curled around it. He raised the glass--and held it poised halfway to his lips.

Quick-running steps came up the street, the swinging doors of the Blazing Star burst open and a call boy shoved in his head.

"Wreckers out! Wreckers out!" he bawled. "Number Eighty's gone to glory in Spider Cut. Everybody's killed"--and he was gone, a grimy-faced harbinger of death and disaster; gone, speeding with his summons to wherever men were gathered throughout the little town.

An instant Flannagan stood motionless as one transformed from flesh to sculptured clay--then the glass slid from his fingers and crashed into tinkling splinters on the floor. The liquor splashed his boots. Number Eighty was the eastbound Coast Express! Like one who moves in unknown places through the dark, so, then, Flannagan moved toward the door. Men looked at him in amazement, and stood aside to let him pass. Something was tugging at his heart, beating at his brain, impelling him forward; a force irresistible, that, in its first, sudden, overwhelming surge he could not understand, could not grasp, could not focus into concrete form--could only obey.

He passed out through the doors, and then for the first time a cry rang from his lips. There were no halting, stumbling, uncertain steps now. Men running down the street called to Flannagan as he sped past them. Flannagan made no answer, did not look their way; his face, strained and full of dumb anguish, was set toward the station.

He gained the platform and raced along it. Shouts came from across the yards. Up and down the spurs fluttered the fore-shortened little yard engine, coughing sparks and wheezing from her exhaust as she bustled the wrecking train together; lamps swung and twinkled like fireflies, for it was just opening spring and the dark fell early; and in front of the roundhouse, the 1014, blowing hard from her safety under a full head of steam, like a thoroughbred that scents the race, was already on the table.

With a heave of his great shoulders and a sweep of his arms, Flannagan won through the group of trainmen, shop hands, and loungers clustered around the door, and took the stairs four at a leap.

A light burned in the super's office, but the voices came from the despatchers' room. And there in the doorway Flannagan halted--halted just for a second's pause while his eyes swept the scene before him.

Regan, the master mechanic, by the window, was mouthing curses under his breath as men do in times of stress; Spence, the despatcher, white-faced, the hair straggling into his eyes, was leaning over the key under the green-shaded lamp, over the key clearing the line while the sounder clicked in his ears of ruin and of lives gone out. Harvey, the division engineer, was there, pulling savagely at a brier with empty bowl. And at the despatcher's elbow stood Carleton, a grim commander, facing tidings of disaster, his shoulders braced and bent a little forward as though to take the blow, his jaws clamped tight till the lips, compressed, were bloodless, and the chiselled lines on his face told of the bitterness in his heart.

Then Flannagan stepped forward.

"Carleton," he cried, and his words came like panting sobs, "Carleton, give me back my job."

It was no place for Flannagan.

Carleton's cup was already full to overflowing, and he swung on Flannagan like a flash. His hand lifted and pointed to the door.

"Get out of here!" he said between his teeth.

"Carleton," cried Flannagan again, and his arms went out in supplication toward the super, "Carleton, give me back my job--give it back to me for to-night--just for to-night."

"No!" the single word came from Carleton's lips like a thunder clap.

Flannagan shivered a little and shrank back.

"Just for to-night," he mumbled hoarsely. "Just for----"

"No!" Carleton's voice rang hard as flint. "I tell you, no! Get out of here!"

Harvey moved suddenly, threateningly, toward Flannagan--and, as suddenly, Flannagan, roused by the act, brushed the division engineer aside like a plaything, sprang forward, and, with a quick, fierce grip, caught Carleton's arms and pinioned them, vise-like, to his sides.

"And I tell you, yes!" his voice rose dominant with the power, the will that shook him now to the depths of his turbulent soul. As a man who knows no law, no obstacle, no restraint, as a man who would batter down the gates of hell itself to gain his end, so then was Flannagan. "I tell you, yes! I tell you, yes! _My wife and baby's in that wreck to-night?_"

Turmoil, shouts, the short, quick intermittent hiss of steam as the 1014, her cylinder cocks open, backed down to the platform, the clash of coupling cars, a jumbled medley of sounds, floated up from the yard without--but within the little room, the chattering sounder for the moment stilled, there fell a silence as of death, and no man among them moved or spoke.

Flannagan, gray-faced, gasping, his mighty grip still on Carleton, his head thrown forward close to the other's, stared into the super's face--and, for a long minute, in the twitching muscles of the big wrecker's face, in the look that man reads seldom in his fellows' eyes, Carleton drew the fearful picture, lived the awful story that the babbling wire had told. "Royal" Carleton, square man and big of heart, his voice broke.

"God help you, Flannagan--go."

No word came from Flannagan's lips--only a queer choking sound, as his hands dropped to his sides--only a queer choking sound, as he turned suddenly and jumped for the door.

On the stairs, Dorsay, the driver of the 1014, coming up for his orders, passed Flannagan.

"Bad spill, I hear," growled the engineer, as he went by. "The five hundred and five's pony truck jumped the rails on the lower curve and everything's in the ditch. Old Burke's gone out and a heap of the passengers with him. I----"

Flannagan heard no more--he was on the platform now. Coupled behind the derrick crane and the tool car were two coaches, improvised ambulances, and into these latter, instead of the tool car, the men of the wrecking gang were piling--a bad smash brought luxury for them. Shouts, cries, hubbub, a babel of voices were around him, but in his brain, repeated and repeated over and over again, lived only a phrase from the letter he had torn to pieces, stamped under heel that afternoon--the words were swimming before his eyes: "Michael, dear, we've both been wrong; I'm bringing _baby_ back on the Coast Express Friday night."

Men with little black bags brushed by him and tumbled into the rear coach--the doctors of Big Cloud to the last one of them. Dorsay came running from the station, a bit of tissue, his orders, fluttering in his hand, and sprang for the cab. 1014's exhaust burst suddenly into quick, deafening explosions, the sparks shot volleying heavenward from her short stack, the big, whirling drivers were beginning to bite--and then, through the gangway, after the engineer, into the cab swung Flannagan--Flannagan, the wrecking boss.

Spider Cut is the Eastern gateway of the Rockies, and it lies, as the crows fly, sixteen miles west of Big Cloud; but the right of way, as it twists and turns, circling and dodging the buttes that grow from mounds to foothills, makes it on the blue-prints twenty-one decimal seven. The running time of the fast fliers on this stretch is--but what of that? Dorsay that night smashed all records, and the medical men in the rear coach tell to this day how they clung for life and limb to their seats and to each other, and most of them will admit--which is admitting much--that they were frightened, white-lipped men with broken nerves.

As the wreck special, with a clash and clatter, shattered over the switches in the upper yard and nosed the main line, Stan Willard, who had the shovel end of it, with a snatch at the chain swung open the furnace door and a red glow lighted up the heavens. Dorsay turned in his seat and looked at the giant form of the wrecking boss behind him--they had told him the story in the office.

The eyes of the two men met. Flannagan's lips moved dumbly; and, with a curious, pleading motion, he gestured toward the throttle.

Dorsay opened another notch. He laughed a grim, hard laugh.

"I _know_," he shouted over the roar. "I know. Leave it to me, Flannagan."

The bark of the exhaust came quicker and quicker, swelled and rose into the full, deep-toned thunder of a single note. Notch by notch, Dorsay opened out the 1014, notch by notch, and the big mountain racer, answering like a mettlesome steed to the touch of the whip, leapt forward, ever faster, into the night.

Now the headlight played on shining steel ahead; now suddenly threw a path of light across the short, yellow stubble of a rising butte, and Dorsay checked grudgingly for an instant as they swung the curve--just for an instant--then into the straight again, with wide-flung throttle.

It was mad work, and in that reeling, dizzy cab no man spoke. The sweep of the singing wind, the wild tattoo of beating trucks, the sullen whir of flying drivers was in their ears; while behind, the derrick crane, the tool car and the coaches writhed and wriggled, swayed and lurched, tearing at their couplings, bouncing on their trucks, jerking viciously as each slue took up the axle play, rolling, pitching crazily like cockleshells tossed on an angry sea.

Now they tore through a cut, and the walls took up the deafening roar and echoed and reechoed it back in volume a thousandfold; now into the open, and the sudden contrast was like the gasping breath of an imprisoned thing escaped; now over culverts, trestles, spans, hollow, reverberating--the speed was terrific.

Over his levers, bounding on his seat, Dorsay, tense and strained, leaned far forward following the leaping headlight's glare; while staggering like a drunken man to keep his balance, the sweat standing out in glistening beads upon his grimy face, Stan Willard watched the flickering needle on the gauge, and his shovel clanged and swung; and in the corner, back of Dorsay, bent low to brace himself, thrown backward and forward with every lurch, in the fantastic, dancing light like some tigerish, outraged animal crouched to spring, Flannagan, with head drawn into his shoulders, jaws outthrust, stared over the engineer's back, stared with never a look to right or left, stared through the cab glass to the right of way ahead--stared toward Spider Cut.

Again and again, with sickening, giddy shock, wheel-base lifted from the swing, the 1014 struck the tangents, hung a breathless space, and, with a screech of crunching flanges, found the rails once more.

Again and again--but the story of that ride is the doctors' story--they tell it best. Dorsay made the run that night from Big Cloud to Spider Cut, twenty-one point seven miles, in _nineteen_ minutes.

There have been bad spills on the Hill Division, bad spills--but there have never been worse than on that Friday night when the 505 jumped the rails at the foot of the curve coming down the grade just east of Spider Cut, shot over the embankment and piled the Coast Express, mahogany sleepers and all, into splintered wreckage forty feet below the right of way.

As Dorsay checked and with screaming brake-shoes the 1014 slowed, Flannagan, with a wild cry, leaped from the cab and dashed up the track ahead of the still-moving pilot. It was light enough--the cars of the wreck nearest him, the mail and baggage cars, had caught, and, fanned by the wind into yellow flames, were blazing like a huge bonfire. Shouts arose from below; cries, anguished, piercing, from those imprisoned in the wreck; figures, those of the crew and passengers who had made their escape, were moving hither and thither, working as best they might, pulling others through shattered windows and up-canted doors, laying those who were past all knowing beside the long row of silent forms already tenderly stretched upon the edge of the embankment.

A man, with face cut and bleeding, came running toward Flannagan. It was Kingsley, conductor of Number Eighty. Flannagan jumped for him, grasped him by the shoulders and stared without a word into his face.

But Kingsley shook his head.

"I don't know, Flannagan," he choked. "She was in the first-class just ahead of the Pullmans. There's--there's no one come out of that car yet"--he turned away his head--"we couldn't get to it."

"Couldn't get to it"--Flannagan's lips repeated the phrase mechanically. Then he looked--and understood the grim significance of the words. He laughed suddenly, jarring hoarse, as it is not good to hear men laugh--and with that laugh Flannagan went into the fight.