LITMIR.BIZ

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for that matter. Dead? Yes. I'm a dispatcher, look at it from the other side if you want to, it's only fair. That bit of tissue cleared Mooney, of course—but it sent him to his death. Yes, I know, good God, don't you think I know what it means—to slip?

      It was just before Davis, Breen's relief, came on for the morning trick, in fact Davis was in the room, when Breen got the report. He scribbled it on a pad, word by word as it came in, for Carleton to see. For a minute it didn't seem to mean anything to him, and then, as I say, he got it. I never saw such a look on a man's face before, and I pray God I never may again. He seemed to wither up, blasted as the oak is blasted by a lightning stroke. The horror, the despair, the agony in his eyes are beyond any words of mine to describe, and you wouldn't want to hear it if I could tell you. He held out his arms pitifully like a pleading child. His lips moved, but he had to try over and over again before any sound came from them. There was no ​thought of throwing the blame on anybody else. Breen wasn't that kind. Oh, yes, he could have done it. He could have put the blunder on the night man at the Gap where Mooney received his Elktail holding order, and Breen's order book would have left it an open question as to which of the two had made the mistake—would probably have let him out and damned the other. You say from the way he acted he didn't think of that and therefore the temptation didn't come to him. Yes, I know what you mean. Not so much to Breen's credit, what? Well, I don't know, it depends on the way you look at it. I'd rather believe the thought didn't come because the man's soul was too clean. It was clean them—no matter what he did afterward.

      There have been death scenes of dispatchers before, many of them—there will be others in the days to come, many of them. So long as there are railroads and so long as men are frail as men, lacking the infallibility of a higher power, just so long will they be inevitable. But no death scene of a dispatcher's career was ever as this one was. Breen was his own judge, his own jury, his own executioner. Do you think I could ever forget his words? He pointed his hand toward the window that faced the western stretch of track, toward the foothills, toward the mighty peaks of the Rockies that towered beyond them, and the life, the being of the man was in his voice. They came slowly, those words, wrenched from a broken heart, torn from a shuddering soul.

      "I wish to God that it were me in their stead. ​Christ be merciful! I did it, Carleton. I don't know how. I did it."

      No one answered him. No one spoke. For a moment that seemed like all eternity there was silence, then Breen, his arms still held out before him, walked across the room as a blind man walks in his own utter darkness, walked to the door and passed out—alone. Those few steps across the room—alone! I've thought of that pretty often since—they seemed so horribly, grimly, significantly in keeping with what there was of life left for the stricken man—alone. It's a pretty hard word, that, sometimes, and sometimes it brings the tears.

      I don't know how I let him go like that. I was too stunned to move I guess, but I reached him at the foot of the stairs as he stepped out onto the platform. There wasn't anything I could say, was there? What would you have said?

      No man knew better than Breen himself what this would mean to him. He was wrecked, wrecked worse than that other wreck, for his was a living death. There weren't any grand jurys or things of that kind out here then, not that it would have made any difference to Breen if there had been. You can't put any more water in a pail when it's already full, can you? You can't add to the maximum, can you? Don't you think Breen's punishment was beyond the reach of man or men to add to, or, for that matter, to abate by so much as the smallest fraction? It was, God knows it was—all except one final twinge, that I believe now settled him, though I'll say here that whatever it did ​to Breen it's not for me to judge her. Who am I, that I should? It is between her and her Maker. I'll come to that in a minute.

      Yes, Breen knew well enough what it meant to him, but his thoughts that morning as we walked up the street weren't, I know right well, on himself—he was thinking of those others. And I, well, I was thinking of Breen. Wouldn't you? I told you I owed Breen everything I had in the world. Neither of us said a word all the way up to his boarding-house. It was almost as though I wasn't with him for all the attention he paid to me. But he knew I was there just the same. I like to think of that. I wasn't very old then—I'm not offering that as an excuse, for I'm not ashamed to admit that I was near to tears—if I'd been older perhaps I could have said or done something to help. As it was, all I could do was to turn that one black thought over and over and over again in my mind. Breen's living death, death, death, death. That's the way it hit me, the way it caught me, and the word clung and repeated itself as I kept step beside him.

      He was dead, dead to hope, ambition, future, everything, as dead as though he lay outstretched before me in his coffin. It seemed as if I could see him that way. And then, don't ask me why, I don't know, I only know such things happen, come upon you unconsciously, suddenly, there flashed into my mind that bit of verse from the Bible, you know it—"if a man die, shall he live again?" I must have said it out loud without knowing it, for he whirled upon me quick as lightning, placed his two hands upon my shoulders, and stared ​with a startled gaze into my eyes. I say startled. It was, but there was more. There seemed for a second a gleam of hope awakened, hungry, oh, how hungry, pitiful in its yearning, and then the uselessness, the futility of that hope crushed it back, stamped it out, and the light in his eyes grew dull and died away.

      We had halted at the door of his boarding-house and I made as though to go upstairs with him to his room, but he stopped me.

      "Not now, Charlie, boy," he said, shaking his head and trying to smile; "not now. I want to be alone."

      And so I left him.

      Alone! He wanted to be alone. Were ever words more full of cruel mockery! It seems hard to understand sometimes, doesn't it? And we get to questioning things we'd far better leave alone. I know at first I used to wonder why Almighty God ever let Breen make that slip. He could have stopped it, couldn't He? But that's not right. We're running on train orders from the Great Dispatcher, and the finite can't span the infinite.

      Maybe you'll think it queer that I left Breen like that, let him go to his room alone. You're thinking that in his condition he might do himself harm—end it all, to put it bluntly. Well, that thought didn't come to me then, it did afterward, but not then. Why? It must have been just the innate consciousness that he wouldn't do that sort of thing. Some men face things one way, some face them another. It's a question of individuality and temperament. I don't think Breen could have done anything like that, I know he seemed ​so far apart from it in my mind that, as I say, the thought didn't come to me. He was too big a man, big enough to have faced what was before him, faced conditions, faced the men, though God knows they treated him like skulking coyote, if it had not been for her. I want to stand right on this. Breen would never have done what he did if she had acted differently. That much I know. But, I want to say it again, I've no right to judge her.

      Perhaps you've read that story of Kipling's about the Black Tyrone Regiment that saw their dead? Well, Breen, as I told you, at the beginning, wasn't popular, and the boys had seen their dead. Do you understand? Pariah, outcast, what you like, they made him, all except pity they gave him, and I say he would have taken it all, accepted it all, only there are some things too heavy for a man to bear, aren't there? Load limit, the engineers call it when they build their bridge. Well, there's a load limit on the heart and brain and soul of a man just as there is on a bridge; and while one, strained beyond the breaking point, goes crashing in a horrid mass of twisted wreckage to the bottom of the cañon, to the bottom of the gorge, into the rushing, boiling waters of the river beneath, the other crashes, a damned soul, to the bottom of hell. Kitty Mooney had seen her dead. Kitty Mooney, the engineer's sister! And Breen loved her, was going to marry her. That's all.

      How do I know? How do you know? Perhaps it was grief, perhaps it was hysteria, perhaps it was according to the light God gave her and she couldn't ​understand, perhaps it was only wild, unreasoning, frantic passion. I don't know. I only know she called him—a murderer. She couldn't have loved him, you say. Perhaps no, perhaps yes. Does it make any difference? Breen thought she did, and Breen loved her. I don't know. I only know that where he looked for a ray of mercy, her mercy, to light the blackened depths, for the touch, her touch, that would have held him back from the brink, for

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