Allan had learned as much of the science of train-dispatching as it is possible to do without actual experience, and he was duly appointed operator at headquarters and extra dispatcher. He had a desk in the dispatchers’ office, where he worked ten and sometimes twelve hours a day receiving and sending the multitudinous messages which passed between the various officials of the road. This work was in one way not such good training for a future dispatcher as a trick out on the road, for here he had nothing whatever to do with the movement of trains; but on the other hand he was constantly in touch with the dispatchers, he could listen to their conversation and pick up matters of detail which no one would have thought to tell him; in such leisure moments as he had, he could sit down before the train-sheet and watch the actual business of dispatching trains; he could see how unusual problems were solved and unusual difficulties met; and all the information picked up thus, as it were, at haphazard, he stored away for future use, certain that it would some day be needed.
? 238 ?
Not infrequently one of the dispatchers would relinquish his chair to him, and, for an hour or so, look after the operator’s duties, while Allan did the actual work of dispatching. But he knew that this was not a real test, for, in case of emergency, help was always at hand. It was with him much as it is with those amateur sociologists who assume the garb and habits of the poor, and imagine that they are tasting all the misery of life in the slums; forgetting that its greatest misery, its utter hopelessness, they can never taste, since they have only to walk out and away from the life whenever they choose, and be rid of it for ever. So Allan, in case of need, had only to lift his finger, and aid was at hand.
But at last the time came around when one of the dispatchers was to take his vacation; and one night, Allan reported for duty, to take the third trick on the east end. It was not without a certain tingling of the nerves that he sat down in the chair, looked over the sheet, and carefully read the written explanation of train-orders in force which the second-trick man had prepared for him.
“Understand?” the latter asked, when Allan had finished.
“Yes, I think so,” said the boy, and the dispatcher, nodding, took up his lunch-basket and left the office.
The weight of responsibility weighed on the boy for a time, and it was with no little nervousness ? 239 ? that he transmitted his first order; but this feeling gradually wore away and was replaced by one of confidence. After all, there was no cause to worry. The position of every train was marked there on the sheet before him; there was no excuse for mistake. And yet, as he thought of those mighty engines rushing through the night with their precious burdens, obedient to his orders, his pulses quickened with a sense of power.
Fortunately business was light and the trains were running on time, so he really had little to do; and when, at last, his relief came at seven o’clock, he arose from the desk with a sense of work well done, without mistake or accident. For two weeks, night after night, he sat at that desk, ordering the traffic over that hundred miles of track, and with every night he felt his confidence increase. Problems arose, of course, but his training had been of the very best; he never lost his head or his nerve, and when, at last, the dispatcher came back from his vacation, Allan returned to the operator’s desk conscious that he had “made good,” and that he would be strong enough to climb the ladder of promotion for some rounds, at least.
He had been kept at the office rather later than usual the evening after he had resumed his work as operator, for there happened to be a sudden rush of business to be attended to, and it was after six o’clock when he finally put on his coat and started home to supper. As he entered the dining-room, ? 240 ? he saw that supper had not yet been served, and from the kitchen he heard Jack’s voice raised excitedly.
“That you, Allan?” called Jack. “Come on out here.”
The boy entered the kitchen and saw Jack standing near the lamp, the evening paper in his hand.
“Did ye see this?” he asked, holding out the paper, and pointing to some flaring headlines on the first page. They read:
DARING ESCAPE!
Four Convicts Scale the Wall of the
State Prison!
GUARD WHO TRIED TO STOP THEM
SERIOUSLY INJURED!
Had Made a Rope of Their Bedclothing and Carefully
Arranged the Details of Their Plan!
No Present Trace of Their Whereabouts—Had Been Sent
from Ross County under Ten-year Sentence
for Train-wrecking!
Not until he read the last line did Allan understand why Jack appeared so interested.
“Them’s our men,” said Jack; “but read the article.”
“Don’t read it now,” protested Mary; “supper’s about spoiled as it is.” And then an odour ? 241 ? from the stove caused her to fly to it. “Look a-there, now,” she added, “th’ p’taties nearly burned up! Come along, both o’ ye,” and taking the paper inexorably from Allan, she pushed them all in toward the table. “They’s no use in lettin’ th’ supper spile, even if all th’ convicts in th’ pen. got loose!”
Which, indeed, was true. And Allan did not fully understand the cause of Jack’s excitement until, near the end of the meal, a single remark fell from him.
“Well, all I’ve got t’ say,” he remarked, “is that I certainly pity Dan Nolan if them fellys git hold o’ him!”
Allan looked up with sudden interest.
“You haven’t heard anything from Nolan?” he asked.
“No,” said Jack; “but I’d like t’ bet them fellys’ll soon find out where he is. They ain’t a tramp’ll stand by him arter what he did, an’ they’ll pass th’ word along where he’s likely t’ be found. I reckon Nolan went south fer th’ winter, but it wouldn’t surprise me t’ see him show up around here afore th’ summer’s over.”
“Maybe he’s not a tramp,” objected Allan. “Maybe he’s working somewhere.”
“Workin’ nothin’!” exclaimed Jack, disgustedly. “Why, he’s fergot how.”
“Well, anyway,” said Allan, "I don’t believe he’ll ever come around here again. He’s broken ? 242 ? his parole and he knows the minute he sets foot in this State he’s in danger of being clapped back into prison."
“Yes, he knows that,” admitted Jack, “an’ yet I don’t believe even that’ll keep him away. They’s a kind o’ fascination seems t’ draw a man back t’ th’ place where he’s committed a crime. If they wasn’t, lots more’d escape than do.”
“Well,” laughed Allan, “I hope no fascination will draw our friends the train-wreckers back to this neighbourhood. But perhaps they’re safe in jail again before this.”
The morning papers, however, showed that they were anything but safe in jail. They had disappeared completely, and there seemed every reason to believe that confederates had been waiting to assist them, and that they had been able to discard their convict garb as soon as they reached the street. This conjecture became a certainty on the following day, when a labourer, cleaning one of the sewer inlets near the prison, had fished out four suits of convict clothi............