It is well for its peace of mind that the traveling public takes railroads so much for granted. The only men who are incurably1 nervous about railway travel are the railroad operatives. A railroad man never forgets that the next run may be his turn.
On a single-track road, like that upon which Ray Kennedy worked, the freight trains make their way as best they can between passenger trains. Even when there is such a thing as a freight time-schedule, it is merely a form. Along the one track dozens of fast and slow trains dash in both directions, kept from collision only by the brains in the dispatcher’s office. If one passenger train is late, the whole schedule must be revised in an instant; the trains following must be warned, and those moving toward the belated train must be assigned new meeting-places.
Between the shifts and modifications2 of the passenger schedule, the freight trains play a game of their own. They have no right to the track at any given time, but are supposed to be on it when it is free, and to make the best time they can between passenger trains. A freight train, on a single-track road, gets anywhere at all only by stealing bases.
Ray Kennedy had stuck to the freight service, although he had had opportunities to go into the passenger service at higher pay. He always regarded railroading as a temporary makeshift, until he “got into something,” and he disliked the passenger service. No brass3 buttons for him, he said; too much like a livery. While he was railroading he would wear a jumper, thank you!
The wreck4 that “caught” Ray was a very commonplace one; nothing thrilling about it, and it got only six lines in the Denver papers. It happened about daybreak one morning, only thirty-two miles from home.
At four o’clock in the morning Ray’s train had stopped to take water at Saxony, having just rounded the long curve which lies south of that station. It was Joe Giddy’s business to walk back along the curve about three hundred yards and put out torpedoes5 to warn any train which might be coming up from behind—a freight crew is not notified of trains following, and the brakeman is supposed to protect his train. Ray was so fussy6 about the punctilious7 observance of orders that almost any brakeman would take a chance once in a while, from natural perversity8.
When the train stopped for water that morning, Ray was at the desk in his caboose, making out his report. Giddy took his torpedoes, swung off the rear platform, and glanced back at the curve. He decided9 that he would not go back to flag this time. If anything was coming up behind, he could hear it in plenty of time. So he ran forward to look after a hot journal that had been bothering him. In a general way, Giddy’s reasoning was sound. If a freight train, or even a passenger train, had been coming up behind them, he could have heard it in time. But as it happened, a light engine, which made no noise at all, was coming,—ordered out to help with the freight that was piling up at the other end of the division. This engine got no warning, came round the curve, struck the caboose, went straight through it, and crashed into the heavy lumber10 car ahead.
The Kronborgs were just sitting down to breakfast, when the night telegraph operator dashed into the yard at a run and hammered on the front door. Gunner answered the knock, and the telegraph operator told him he wanted to see his father a minute, quick. Mr. Kronborg appeared at the door, napkin in hand. The operator was pale and panting.
“Fourteen was wrecked11 down at Saxony this morning,” he shouted, “and Kennedy’s all broke up. We’re sending an engine down with the doctor, and the operator at Saxony says Kennedy wants you to come along with us and bring your girl.” He stopped for breath.
Mr. Kronborg took off his glasses and began rubbing them with his napkin.
“Bring—I don’t understand,” he muttered. “How did this happen?”
“No time for that, sir. Getting the engine out now. Your girl, Thea. You’ll surely do that for the poor chap. Everybody knows he thinks the world of her.” Seeing that Mr. Kronborg showed no indication of having made up his mind, the operator turned to Gunner. “Call your sister, kid. I’m going to ask the girl herself,” he blurted12 out.
“Yes, yes, certainly. Daughter,” Mr. Kronborg called. He had somewhat recovered himself and reached to the hall hatrack for his hat.
Just as Thea came out on the front porch, before the operator had had time to explain to her, Dr. Archie’s ponies13 came up to the gate at a brisk trot14. Archie jumped out the moment his driver stopped the team and came up to the bewildered girl without so much as saying good-morning to any one. He took her hand with the sympathetic, reassuring15 graveness which had helped her at more than one hard time in her life. “Get your hat, my girl. Kennedy’s hurt down the road, and he wants you to run down with me. They’ll have a car for us. Get into my buggy, Mr. Kronborg. I’ll drive you down, and Larry can come for the team.”
The driver jumped out of the buggy and Mr. Kronborg and the doctor got in. Thea, still bewildered, sat on her father’s knee. Dr. Archie gave his ponies a smart cut with the whip.
When they reached the depot16, the engine, with one car attached, was standing17 on the main track. The engineer had got his steam up, and was leaning out of the cab impatiently. In a moment they were off. The run to Saxony took forty minutes. Thea sat still in her seat while Dr. Archie and her father talked about the wreck. She took no part in the conversation and asked no questions, but occasionally she looked at Dr. Archie with a frightened, inquiring glance, which he answered by an encouraging nod. Neither he nor her father said anything about how badly Ray was hurt. When the engine stopped near Saxony, the main track was already cleared. As they got out of the car, Dr. Archie pointed18 to a pile of ties.
“Thea, you’d better sit down here and watch the wreck crew while your father and I go up and look Kennedy over. I’ll come back for you when I get him fixed19 up.”
The two men went off up the sand gulch20, and Thea sat down and looked at the pile of splintered wood and twisted iron that had lately been Ray’s caboose. She was frightened and absent-minded. She felt that she ought to be thinking about Ray, but her mind kept racing21 off to all sorts of trivial and irrelevant22 things. She wondered whether Grace Johnson would be furious when she came to take her music lesson and found nobody there to give it to her; whether she had forgotten to close the piano last night and whether Thor would get into the new room and mess the keys all up with his sticky fingers; whether Tillie would go upstairs and make her bed for her. Her mind worked fast, but she could fix it upon nothing. The grasshoppers23, the lizards24, distracted her attention and seemed more real to her than poor Ray.
On their way to the sand bank where Ray had been carried, Dr. Archie and Mr. Kronborg met the Saxony doctor. He shook hands with them.
“Nothing you can do, doctor. I couldn’t count the fractures. His back’s broken, too. He wouldn’t be alive now if he weren’t so confoundedly strong, poor chap. No use bothering him. I’ve given him morphia, one and a half, in eighths.”
Dr. Archie hurried on. Ray was lying on a flat canvas litter, under the shelter of a shelving bank, lightly shaded by a slender cottonwood tree. When the doctor and the preacher approached, he looked at them intently.
“Didn’t—” he closed his eyes to hide his bitter disappointment.
Dr. Archie knew what was the matter. “Thea’s back there, Ray. I’ll bring her as soon as I’ve had a look at you.”
Ray looked up. “You might clean me up a trifle, doc. Won’t need you for anything else, thank you all the same.”
However little there was left of him, that little was certainly Ray Kennedy. His personality was as positive as ever, and the blood and dirt on his face seemed merely accidental, to have nothing to do with the man himself. Dr. Archie............