LITMIR.BIZ

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"No, son; I guess not," he said. "We've got to maintain our dignity, you know."

      That winter, on top of the regular traffic, and that was not light, they began to push supplies from the East over the Hill Division, preparing to double track the road from the western side of the foothills as soon as spring opened up. And while the thermometer crept steadily to zero, the Hill Division sweltered.

      Everybody and everything got it, the shops and the road-beds, the train crews and the rolling-stock. What little sleep Carleton, the super, got, he spent in formulating dream plans to handle the business. Those that seemed good to him when he awoke were promptly vetoed by the barons of the General Office in the far-off East.

      Regan got no sleep. He raced from one end of the division to the other, and he did his best. Engine crews had to tinker anything less than a major injury for themselves: there was no room in the shops for them.

      But the men on the keys got it most of all. As the days wore into months, Spence's face grew careworn and haggard; and the irritability from overwork of the men about him added to his discomfort. Human nature needs a safety-valve, and one night near the end of January when Regan and Carleton and Spence were gathered at the office, with Bunty in his accustomed place in his father's chair, the master mechanic cut loose.

      "It's up to you, Spence," he cried savagely, bringing his fist down with a crash on the desk. "There ain't ​a pair of wheels on the division fit to pull a hand-car. Every engine's a cripple, and getting lamer every day. The engine ain't built, nor never will be, that'll stand the schedule you're putting them on through the hills, especially through the Gap. That's a three per cent, with the bed like an S. You can't make time there; you've got to crawl. You're pulling the stay-bolts out of my engines, that's what you're doing."

      Carleton, being in no angelic mood, and glad to vent his feelings, growled assent.

      Spence raised his head from the keys, a red tinge of resentment on his cheeks. He picked up his pipe, packing it slowly as he looked at Regan and the super. "I'm taking all they're sending," he said quietly. He reached over for the train-sheet and handed it to the super. "You and Regan here are growling about the schedule. It's your division, Carleton; but I'm not sure you know just what we're handling every twenty-four hours. It's push them through on top of each other somehow, or tell them down-East we can't handle them. Do you want to do that?"

      "No," said Carleton, "I don't; and what's more, I won't."

      Spence nodded. "I rather figured that was your idea. Well, we've about all we can do without nagging one another. I'm near in now, and so are you and Regan here, both of you. I've got to make time, Gap or no Gap. There's so much moving there isn't siding enough to cross them."

      "You're right," said Carleton; "we can't afford to jump each other. We're all doing our best, and each ​of us knows it. How's Number One and Two to-night?"

      Spence studied for a moment before he answered: "Number One is forty minutes off, and Number Two's an hour to the bad."

      Carleton groaned. The Imperial Limited West and East, officially known on the train-sheets as One and Two, carried both the transcontinental mail and the de-luxe passengers. Of late the East had been making pertinent suggestions to the Division Superintendent that it would be as well if those trains ran off the Hill Division with a little more regard for their established schedule. So Carleton groaned. He got up and put on his hat and coat preparatory to going home. "Look here," he said from the doorway, "they'll stand for 'most anything if we don't misuse One and Two. They're getting mighty savage about that, and they'll drop hard before long. You fellows have got to take care of those trains, if nothing else on the division moves. That's orders. I'll shoulder all kicks coming on the rest of the traffic. Good-night."

      When Bunty left the office that night and walked home with his father, he had learned that there was another side to railroading besides the building and repairing of engines, and the delivery of magic tissue sheets to train crews that told them when and where to stop, and how to thread their way through hills and plains on a single-track road, with heaps of other trains, some going one way, some another. He understood vaguely and in a hazy kind of way that somewhere, many, many miles away, were men who sat in ​judgment on the doings of his father and Spence and Carleton; that these men were to be obeyed, that their word was law, and that their names were President and Directors.

      So Bunty, trotting beside his father, pondered these things. Being too weighty for him, he appealed: "Daddy, what's president and directors?"

      Regan's temper being still ruffled, he answered shortly: "Fools, mostly."

      Bunty nodded gravely, and his education as a railroad man was almost complete. The rest came quickly, and the Gap did it.

      The Gap! There was not a man on the division, from track-walker to superintendent, who would not jump like a nervous colt if you said "Gap!" to them offhand and short-like. A peaceful stretch of track it looked, a little crooked, as Regan said, hugging the side of the mountain at the highest point of the division. The surroundings were undeniably grand. A sheer drop of eighteen-hundred feet to the cañon below, with the surrounding mountains rearing their snow-capped peaks skyward, completed a picture of which the road had electrotypes and which it used in their magazine-advertising. What the picture did not show was the two-mile drop, where the road-bed took a straight three per cent and sometimes better, to the lower levels. So when Carleton or Spence or Regan, reading their magazines, saw the picture, they shuddered, and, remembering past history and fearful of the future, turned the page hurriedly.

      But to Bunty the Gap possessed the fascination of ​the unknown. He was wakened early the next morning by his father's voice talking excitedly over the special wire with headquarters about the Gap and a wreck. He sat bolt upright, and listened with all his might; then he crawled noiselessly out of bed, and began to dress hastily. He heard his father speaking to his mother, and presently the front door banged. Bunty was dressed by that time and he crept downstairs and opened the door softly.

      It was just turning daylight as he started on a run for the yard. It was not far to the office—a hundred yards or so—and Bunty reached there in record time. Across the tracks by the roundhouse they were coupling on to the wrecker; and answering hasty summons, men, running from all directions, were quickly gathering.

      Bunty hesitated a minute on the platform, then he entered the station and tiptoed softly up the stairs. The office door was open, and from the top stair Bunty could see into the room. The night lamp was still burning on the dispatcher's desk, and Spence was sitting there, working with frantic haste to clear the line. In the center of the room, the super, his father, and Flannagan, the wrecking boss, were standing.

      "It's a freight smash," Carleton was saying to Flannagan—"east edge of the Gap. You'll have rights through, and no limit on your permit. Tell Emmons if he doesn't make it in better than ninety minutes he'll talk to me afterward. By the time you get there, Number Two will be crawling up the grade. She's pulling the Old Man's car, and that means get ​her through somehow if you have to drop the wreck over the cliff. You can back down to Riley's to let her pass. We'll do the patching up afterward. Understand?"

      Flannagan nodded, and glanced impatiently at Spence.

      The super opened and shut his watch. "Ready, Spence?" he asked shortly.

      "Just a minute," Spence answered quietly.

      Bunty waited to hear no more. He turned and ran down the stairs and across the tracks as fast as his legs would carry him. He scrambled breathlessly up the steps of the tool-car and edged his way in among the men grouped near the door. He was fairly inside before they noticed him.

      "Hello," cried Allan, Bunty's bosom friend of the fitting-gang days, "here's the little Super! What you doin' here, kid?"

      "I'm going up to the wreck," Bunty announced sturdily.

      The men laughed.

      "Well, I guess not much, you're not," said Allan, "What do you think your father would say?"

      "Nothing," said Bunty, airily. "I just comed from the office," he added artfully, "and I'll tell you about the wreck if you like."

      The

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