Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad Life - Spearman Frank Hamilton

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never stopped to inventory their fears; they seemed to have vanished with the frost that lured them to destruction. They jumped together into the cab; and whistling at the laborers strung back along the right of way Extra 240 West began backing pluckily up hill to Soda Springs. The first man who approached the cab as they slowed down for the platform – in fact, people rather stood back for him – was Bucks, Superintendent of the Division; his car had come in attached to Number Sixteen.

      "How did your train get away from you?" he asked of Aloysius; there was neither speculation nor sympathy in his manner and his words were bitten with frost.

      "It didn't get away from me," retorted Aloysius, who had never before in his life seen the man, and was not aware that he owed him any money. But the operator at the Springs, who knew Aloysius and the superintendent both, was standing behind the latter doing a pantomime that would shame a medicine man.

      "Quick talking will do more for you than smart talking," replied the superintendent, crisply. "You'll never get a better chance while you're working for this company to explain yourself."

      Aloysius himself began to think so, for the nods and winks of the operator were bewildering. He tried to speak up, but the foreman of the steel gang put in: "See here, sport," he snapped, irreverently, at the angry official. "Why don't you cool your hat before you jump a fellow like that?"

      "What business is it of yours how I jump a fellow?" returned the superintendent, sharply, "who are you?"

      "I'm only foreman of this steel gang, my friend; and I don't take any back talk from anybody."

      "In that case," responded Bucks, with velvet sarcasm, "perhaps you will explain things. I'm only superintendent of this division; but it's customary to inquire into matters of this kind."

      Aloysius at the words nearly sank to the platform; but the master of the hoboes, who had all the facts, went at the big man as if he had been one of the gang, and did not falter till he had covered the perspiring wiper with glory.

      "What's the reason the air wouldn't work?" asked the superintendent, turning, without comment, when the track-layer had finished, to Aloysius.

      "I haven't had time to find out, sir."

      "Find out and report to me. What's your name?"

      "McGrath."

      "McGraw, eh? Well, McGraw, look close into the air. There may be something in it for you. You did the firing?" he added, turning short again on the unabashed steel foreman.

      "What there was done."

      "I'll do a little now myself. I'll fire you right here and now for impertinence."

      "I suppose you're the boss," responded the man of ties, imperturbably. "When I made the crack, I'd made it harder if I had known who you were."

      "You know now, don't you?"

      "I guess so."

      "Very good," said Bucks, in his mildest tones. "If you will report to me at Medicine Bend this afternoon, I'll see whether we can't find something better for your manners than cursing hoboes. You can ride down in my car, sport. What do you say? That will save you transportation."

      It brought a yell from the railroad men crowding around, for that was Bucks's way of doing things; and the men liked Bucks and his way. The ex-captain of the dagoes tried to look cool, but in point of fact went very sheepish at his honors.

      Followed by a mob, eager to see the finish, Superintendent Bucks made his way up the track along the construction train to where Aloysius and the engineer of Number Sixteen were examining the air. They found it frozen between the first and the second car. Bucks heard it all – heard the whole story. Then he turned to his clerk.

      "Discharge both crews of Extra 240. Fire Johnnie Horigan."

      "Yes, sir."

      "McGrath, run your train back to Wind River behind us. We'll scare up a conductor here somewhere; if we can't, I'll be your conductor. Make your report to Medicine Bend," Bucks added, speaking to the operator; and without further words walked back to his car.

      As he turned away, the engineer of Number Sixteen slapped Aloysius on the back:

      "Kid, why the blazes didn't you thank him?"

      "Who?"

      "Bucks."

      "What for?"

      "What for? Jiminey Christmas! What for? Didn't he just make you an engineer? Didn't he just say, 'Run your train back behind us to Wind River'?"

      "My train?"

      "Sure, your train. Do you think Bucks ever says a thing like that without meaning it? You bet not."

      Bucks's clerk, too, was a little uncertain about the promotion. "I suppose he's competent to run the train back, isn't he?" he asked of Bucks, suggestively.

      Bucks was scrawling a message.

      "A man that could hold a train from Wind River here on whiskers, with nothing but a tankful of sand and a hobo fireman, wouldn't be likely to fall off the right of way running back," he returned dryly. "He's been firing for years, hasn't he? We haven't got half enough men like McGraw. Tell Neighbor to give him an engine."

      The Roadmaster's Story

      THE SPIDER WATER

      Not officially; I don't pretend to say that. You might travel the West End from fresh water to salt – and we dip into both – without ever locating the Spider Water by map or by name.

      But if you should happen anywhere on the West End to sit among a gang of bridge carpenters; or get to confidence with a bridge foreman; or find the springy side of a roadmaster's heart; then, you might hear all you wanted about the Spider Water – maybe more; anyway, full plenty, as Hailey used to say.

      The Sioux named it; and whatever may be thought of their interpretation of Scriptural views on land-grabbing, no man with sense ever attempted to improve on their names for things, whether birds, or braves, or winds, or waters – they know.

      Our General Managers hadn't always sense – this may seem odd, but on the system it would excite no comment – and one of them countenanced a shameful change in the name of the Spider Water. Some polytechnical idiot at a safe distance dubbed it The Big Sandy; and the Big Sandy it is to this day on map and in folder – but not in the lingo of trackmen nor the heart of the Sioux. Don't say Big Sandy to trackmen and hand out a cigar. It will not go. Say Spider Water without any cigar and you will get a word and a stool, and if you ask it, fine cut.

      The Spider Water – although ours is the pioneer line – was there when we first bridged it. It is probably as old as sundown, and nothing like as pretty. The banks – it has none to speak of. Its stones – they are whiskered. Its bed – full of sand-burs. Everything about the villain stream has a dilapidate, broken-down air: the very mud of the Spider Water is rusty.

      So our people bridged it; and the trouble began. A number of matters bothered our pioneer managements – Indians, outlaws, cabinet officers, congressional committees, and Wall Street magnates – but at one time or another our folks managed all of them. The only thing they couldn't at any time satisfactorily manage was the Spider Water. Bridge after bridge they threw across it – and into it. Year after year the Spider Water toyed with our civil engineers and our material department. One man at Omaha given to asthma and statistics estimated, between spells, that the Spider Water had cost us more money than all the water courses together from the Missouri to the Sierras.

      Then came to the West End a masterful man, a Scotchman, pawky and hard. Brodie was his name, an Edinburgh man with no end of degrees and master of every one. Brodie came to be superintendent of bridges on the Western Division, and to boss every water course on the plains and in the mountains. But the Spider Water took a fall even out of Brodie. It swept out a Howe truss bridge for Brodie before he got his bag unpacked, and thereafter Brodie, who was reputed not to care a stringer for anybody, did not conceal a distinct respect for the Spider.

      Brodie went at it right. He tried, not to make friends with the Spider, for nobody could do that, but to get acquainted with it. For this he went to its oldest neighbors, the Sioux. Brodie spent weeks and

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