Cy Warman

“ At times the ship sank so deep into the main that one would fancy the keel scraping the bottom of the Atlantic. Nowhere in this world does one feel one’s insignificance and utter helplessness more than at mid-ocean in such a sea. Miss Landon found herself thinking how helpless she would be in the world if that kind, indulgent father were to pass away. Half her fortune was invested in a railway along with the fortunes of friends and neighbors, who knew nothing about the business. Naturally enough her mind went back to her own experience on a mountain railroad, and to the handsome conductor. ”

“ Higher and higher the gray cloud rose, trailing behind the black one, like the smoke from a locomotive. In a little while it covered the whole west and shut out the light from the far pink sky. The wolves, lifting their heads, listened to the roar of the advancing cloud. The darkness deepened as the roar of the cloud increased. The agent, with his rifle resting on his arm, stood and stared down the [Pg 106] plain. A moment later the head of the cloud swept across the track just below the water tank. It looked like a regiment of cavalry riding the desert. ”

“ The Union Pacific Company was liberal with the men who helped them to open the great trail across the plains, and helped them to keep it open. McGuire watched the train, as he had watched each and every train that had come and gone since his arrival, until the rear car sank below the level of the plain. When he prepared his supper his little friend, the ground squirrel, came and sat in the door and ate crumbs. When the shadows began to creep across the plain from the east the agent sat by the door of his hut and watched the twilight deepen on the dreary plain. ”

“ Patient as a monk, solitary as a bandit, lonely as an outcast, the faithful watchman dwelt by the bridge. To the gray-haired driver of the Midnight Express, whose black steed lifted him in a short half hour out of the great American bottoms, by the coal mines at Collinsville [Pg 4] and up to the tablelands of Troy, who strained his eye around the curve at Hagler’s Tank, he showed the friendly white light. “Let her go,” it seemed to say, and the great headlight, trembling down the long grade, flashed a moment on the storm-stained face of the old watchman, and was gone again. ”

“ He could see neither the beginning nor the end of the herd, and raising his rifle he began pumping lead into the flying band. With a great crash one of the animals drove its head against the base of the water tank and then lay still while the drove galloped past. The roar of ten thousand feet beating the desert, the wild snorts of the wounded brutes, and the mad rush of the flying mass, so excited the agent that he ran forward firing as he went into the dark and roaring flood. ”

“ Time had been when McGuire could linger and laugh for hours where these rollicking voyagers played and told stories, but now their talk seemed absolutely silly, not to say vulgar, and he turned away.
“After all,” mused McGuire, “there’s not such a gulf between us. She’s a rich merchant’s daughter, I’m a poor conductor. She must ever remain a merchant’s daughter with no show for promotion. I’m due to be a superintendent, a general manager, and, possibly, the president of a railroad. And then—if she is still a merchant’s daughter! ”

“ Suddenly behind the star a yellow light flared, fan-shaped, from the earth, and he knew that the star was the headlight of a locomotive and the flash was from the furnace where the fireman was shovelling coal for dear life. Now the rails that were glistening in the glare of the headlight and bridging the darkness to the edge of the light of the burning tank began to sing, and the Indians took warning and fled into the darkness.
“Too late, too late!” said the captain of the scouts, who was riding in the cab. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII LITTLE JACK’S PROMOTION
“I don’t care a tinker’s dime about Denis McGuire,“ said the agent, angrily, “but something must be done for little Jack. He’s having malaria. Winter will be coming on and he can’t stand a winter in that shanty.”
“I can take Jack in my office to carry dispatches,” said the roadmaster; “but who can I put on the bridge to watch it as that boy does?”
“There you are,” replied the agent, sarcastically. “Because the boy is faithful, you would keep him there until he dies and leaves his mother utterly helpless. ”

“ There is no work in the passenger department of a railroad that does not sharpen the intellect and quicken the eye. The office of the General Passenger Agent is a school of itself, and a boy beginning with a very limited education will come out of such an office in a few years with an edge on him that would let him pass for at least a high school graduate. Tommy read constantly. He read the advertisements of the Vandalia and of other roads as well, and made comparisons. ”

“ In a little while the sun came up over the tree-tops and touched the water tank. Little Mary Connor came down the track, bringing breakfast for the boys, and they were glad to see her. When she had fixed the plates and poured the hot, black coffee into the bright tin cups, she allowed Tommy to lift her onto the platform, where she encouraged the mule while the boys had breakfast.
“Say, Jack, old man; this is great,” said Tommy, taking a long pull at the bracing beverage. Jack gave his companion a furtive glance, but deigned no reply—not even a smile. “Jimminy-crismus, why don’ yo’ eat?” ”

“ The successful railway man is often amazed at the number of officials who “made him,” just as the great writer is constantly crossing the trail of the man who “discovered” him.
When McGuire had mastered the key he was given a station. He was duly appointed station-master, ticket agent, operator, yardmaster, head switchman, and superintendent of the windmill and water tank at Plainfield, far out on the plains. ”

“ He was going over the Silver Creek bridge on the White Mail and in his own private car, and he tried to feel perfectly satisfied with himself and the world. If he could only work himself up to feeling as proud and important as he did the day he took charge of the mule, the tank, and all the company’s property at West Silver Creek, he would be glad, but it would not go. He was really a great man now, and that enabled him to appreciate what a little bit of a hole would be left if one great man were to be pulled out of the world. ”

“ The agent, who was something of a philosopher, always argued that Tommy McGuire was not as bad as he was painted. He was not wicked, but curious, Heidelberg said. When he put precisely the same sized can to Jimmie Connor’s dog that he put to his own dog, it was not to punish the brutes, but merely to see which would get home first, and settle a dispute of long standing. ”

“ Every trainman on the division, agents, operators, section men—in fact, all who heard of the thing, were eager to contribute, so that the best and biggest flag that could be bought and used in such a place, took less than half the money. The balance was spent for red fire and noise, so that the boys at the bridge, who never knew what it was to have a holiday—who knew it was Sunday once a week because the Highland local didn’t run—could amuse themselves and the people of Lick Skillet without losing any time. ”

“ Many were wounded, some were dead, and the rest desperate. Leaving their horses out of range of the agent’s rifle, the band concentrated their efforts upon the front door. By the sound of the bullets that hailed upon the house, the agent could tell that they were coming only from one direction, and so kept his place at the side of the shanty nearest the track. He could hear them ripping boards from the framework of the water tank, and with them beating upon the heavy door. ”

“ When a merchant is going to ship a few cars of goods over somebody’s railroad, he says to McGuire, who happens to be his personal friend, “You can do this as cheaply as the other fellows?” “Yes,” says McGuire, “the rate is about the same on all lines.” So it comes down to a matter of personal popularity, and McGuire gets [Pg 160] the freight, and that’s all there is to railroading, so far as getting business goes. When it comes to handling men and keeping up track, that requires a genius with colder blood. ”

“ Few men in America had made greater success or reached a higher place in the railway world in a lifetime than this man had gained in thirty-five years, and yet he was not happy.
Now, as the time for the election of a new president drew near, the pressure became so great and the cry for McGuire at the seat of war grew so loud, that the General Manager yielded, reluctantly, and made ready for the journey. He might have carried his private car, for there was not a line between the Atlantic and the Pacific that would hesitate to handle it ”

“ The old pump mule, upon whose back Tommy had hurried to the top of the hill in the face of the flying train, had lost his life, and the railway company had lost a mule, but the company made no complaint. The brave boy, by warning the engineer, had saved the company the trouble and expense of hauling a heavy engine from the bottom of a very muddy stream, rebuilding a number of cars, and apologizing to the postal authorities at Washington, to say nothing of costly damage suits. And the President of the Vandalia had marked the pump boy at West Silver Creek for promotion. ”

“ Down by West Silver Creek bridge there was a water tank and a pump, whose motive power was a mule. Close by the bank of the lazy little river stood the watchman’s shanty, narrow, high, and painted red, like the tank, and like hundreds of other shanties that were strung along the line from St. Louis to Indianapolis. Rain or shine old man Connor was always there to show his white light to the engineer of the Midnight Express, and a white flag to the men [Pg 3] on the White Mail in the morning. ”

“ President McGuire had intended to offer his old playmate a position on the Air Line, but when he had heard him discourse for a couple of hours on the relations of “Capital and Labor,” he changed his mind. “A man who is always hugging a grievance will forget to flag,” was what passed through the President’s mind, and he concluded to leave his old friend on his native heath, where he was least liable to get into trouble.
“Jack, my boy,” said McGuire, with his hand on the door of his stateroom, “you’re on the wrong leg of the ‘Y,’ and you’ll be throwing sixes all your life unless you switch. ”

“ There was something fine in the make-up of a man who could call for a switch to wreck himself to save the crew and passengers on another train. The agent signalled the yardmaster to get off, but McGuire shook his head. The agent turned his back, and McGuire went out on the main line, leaning to the curve like a man driving a fast horse on a circular course. Below the station there was a short stretch of straight track from which the wind, blowing down from Tennessee Pass, had swept the snow. The yardmaster, climbing from car to car, set the brakes as tight as he could set them ”

“ Jim Law is no good as a freight man so they reward him with a soft run; a thorn for virtue and a rose for vice. Hazelton, the poor should help the poor—speak a word for little Jack, the Hibernian czar goes down with you to-day.”
And it came to pass that Denis McGuire, with one leg shorter than the other, was made watchman at Silver Creek, and little Jack went to be messenger boy in the office of the roadmaster. ”

“ The stock of the Inter-Mountain Air Line became sensitive to the newspaper comments. Every man who had a dollar in the enterprise was uneasy. Men who lived like undertakers, off the misfortunes of others, who made money only when some one else lost, knew not whether to buy or sell. If the election could take place now, they could give a good guess that young Van Swell would be the next president. If a certain man who had been abroad for three or four years returned, took the advice of his friends and voted his stock instead of allowing his lawyer to vote it, things might be different. ”

“ That was a trying moment for the station agent. If he threw McGuire in on the spur he would be shot down the hill with a half-dozen freight cars on top of him. If he let him out on to the main line, he must almost surely collide with the up-coming passenger train that had already passed Haydens and could not be caught by wire. He knew McGuire and liked him. He was awed by the great courage that could hold a single man on [Pg 130] a runaway train on such a hill at such a time. ”

“ When the train had begun to wind away down the mountain side the conductor brought a camp stool, and the young lady sat upon the rear platform of the rearmost car and watched [Pg 153] the mountains spring up in their wake. Once, when they were rounding a long curve, the conductor asked her to look over the low range, Poncho Pass, that walls the San Luis away from the Arkansas Valley, and there she saw an even hundred miles of the snowy Sangre de Cristo, lifting her white crest far up into the burnished blue. ”

“ Jack nodded his head. “S’pose you made a dummy an’ it done d’ work, long comes Mr. Roadmaster, sees d’ dummy, says ‘that’s a good thing,’ an’ you git d’ bounce. No, sir, when a fellow’s got a job he wants to hold it, an’ not go sawin’ it off on an effigy, same as soldiers ’at’s grafted in d’ war an’s afraid to fight. There’s a good lesson fur you, Mr. Jack,” added Tommy: “Hold yer job an’ don’t bank on d’ Union or a dummy;” and with this advice Tommy cracked the mule up and subsided, with a countenance fixed and resolute. ”

“ For the further awing of those who may meditate violence he will fire three shots—bang, bang, bang—that shall come like the measured thumping of my lady’s heart, when she sees a cow. These pistol shots will be followed by the tinkling sound of falling glass, for the three glims will have been doused. And, by the same token you shall know, O, Jimmie, and you, my shivering Pete, that your uncle is doing business in the day coach. ”

“ When the road had been extended to Leadville young McGuire, having attracted the notice and won the respect of the Superintendent, was sent up to take charge of the yards. Switchmen were scarcer there than they had been at Pueblo, for the town was wild and wide open. Those who came to work in the yards were the toughest of the tough; men who could not find employment east of Denver came here to railroad, ten thousand feet above the sea. McGuire undertook to improve the service. ”

“ CHAPTER VII THE LABOR QUESTION
“Say, Jack, d’ roadmaster won’t know this mule,” said Tommy, standing off and looking the animal over. “Mr. Heidelberg says they’s just one thing ’at looks onryer ’n a long-haired mule, ’at’s a short-haired woman. Women an’ horses should be trimmed alike, an’ men an’ mules.”
With that Tommy put away his clippers and started the mule on his circular journey. The ingenious pump boy had grown tired of the narrow platform in the centre of the circle and conceived the idea of bringing a camp stool and sitting in the shadow of a tree just outside the ring. ”