Held for Orders Part 11

Special 202, Eng. 636, will run to Salt Rocks regardless of No.

One.

SALT ROCKS! I glared at the words and the letters of the words.

I re-read the first order and read again the second. O'Fallon's for Number One. That was right. O'Fallon's it should be for the Special 202, of course, to meet her. But it wasn't: it was the first station east of O'Fallon's he had ordered the Special to run to. It was a lap order. My scalp began to creep. A lap order for the Irving Special and the Number One pa.s.senger, and it doomed them to meet head on somewhere between O'Fallon's and the Salt Rocks, in the Peace River canon.

My mouth went sticking dry. The sleet outside had deepened into a hail that beat the west gla.s.s sharper and the window shook again in the wind.

I asked myself, afraid to look around, what Blackburn could be doing in Callahan's room. The horror of the wreck impending through his mistake began to grow on me; I know what I suffered; I ask myself now what he suffered, inside, alone, in the dark.

Oh, you who lie down upon the rail at night to sleep, in a despatcher's hand, think you, ever, in your darkened berths of the cruel responsibility on the man who in the watches of the night holds you in his keeping?

Others may blunder; others may forget; others may fall and stand again: not the despatcher; a single mistake d.a.m.ns him. When he falls he falls forever.

Young as I was, I realized that night the meaning of the career to which my little ambition urged me. The soldier, the officer, the general, the statesman, the president, may make mistakes, do make mistakes, that cost a life or cost ten thousand lives. They redeem them and live honored. It is the obscure despatcher under the lamp who for a single lapse pays the penalty of eternal disgrace. I felt something of it even then, and from my boy's heart, in the face of the error, in the face of the slaughter, I pitied Blackburn.

Callahan's room door opened again and Blackburn came out of the dark. I had left the table and was standing in front of the stove. He looked at me almost eagerly; the expression of his face had completely changed. I never in my life saw such a change in so few minutes on any man's face, and, like all the rest, it alarmed me. It was not for me to speak if I had been able, and he did not. He walked straight over to the table, closed the order book, plugged Callahan's house wire again, and began calling him. The a.s.sistant superintendent answered, and Blackburn sent him just these words:

"You need not come down."

I heard Callahan reply with a question: "What is the matter?"

Blackburn stood calmly over the key, but he made no answer. Instead, he repeated only the words, "You need not come down."

Callahan, easily excitable always, was wrought up. "Blackburn," he asked over the wire, impatiently, "what in G.o.d's name is the matter?" But Blackburn only pulled the plug and cut him out, and sunk into the chair like a man wearied.

"Mr. Blackburn," I said, my heart thumping like an injector, "Mr.

Blackburn?" He glanced vacantly around; seemed for the first time to see me. "Is there anything," I faltered, "I can do?"

Even if the words meant nothing, the offer must have touched him. "No, Jack," he answered quietly; "there isn't." With the words the hall door opened and Bucks, storm-beaten in his ulster, threw it wide and stood facing us both. The wind that swept in behind him blew out the lamps and left us in darkness.

"Jack, will you light up?"

It was Blackburn who spoke to me. But Bucks broke in instantly, speaking to him:

"Callahan called me over his house wire a few minutes ago, Blackburn, and told me to meet him here right away. Is anything wrong?" he asked, with anxiety restrained in his tone.

I struck a match. I was so nervous that I took hold of the hot chimney of the counter lamp and dropped it smash to the floor. No one said a word and that made me worse. I struck a second match, and a third, and with a fourth got the lamp on the despatchers' table lighted as Blackburn answered the superintendent. "Something serious has happened," he replied to Bucks. "I sent lap orders at one o'clock for Number One and the Irving Special."

Bucks stared at him.

"Instead of making a meeting-point at O'Fallon's I sent One an order to run to O'Fallon's and ordered the Special to run to Salt Rocks against One."

"Why, my G.o.d!" exclaimed Bucks, "that will bring them together in--the Peace canon--Blackburn!--Blackburn!--Blackburn!" he cried, tearing off his storm-coat. He walked to the table, seized the order book and steadied himself with one hand on the chair; I never saw him like that.

But it looked as if the horror long averted, the trouble in the Peace River canon, had come. The sleet tore at the old depot like a wolf, and with the sash shivering, Bucks turned like an executioner on his subordinate.

"What have you done to meet it?" He drew his watch, and his words came sharp as doom. "Where's your wreckers? Where's your relief? What have you done? What are you doing? _Nothing?_ Why don't you speak? Will you kill two trainloads of people without an effort to do anything?"

His voice rang absolute terror to me; I looked toward Blackburn perfectly helpless.

"Bucks, there will be no wreck," he answered steadily.

"Be no wreck!" thundered Bucks, towering in the dingy room dark as the sweep of the wind. "Be no wreck? Two pa.s.senger trains meet in h.e.l.l and be no wreck? Are you crazy?"

The despatcher's hands clutched at the table. "No," he persisted steadily, "I am not crazy, Bucks. Don't make me so. I tell you there will not be a wreck."

Bucks, uncertain with amazement, stared at him again.

"Blackburn, if you're sane I don't know what you mean. Don't stand there like that. Do you know what you have done?" The superintendent advanced toward him as he spoke; there was a trace of pity in his words that seemed to open Blackburn's pent heart more than all the bitterness.

"Bucks," he struggled, putting out a hand toward his chief, "I am sure of what I say. There will be no wreck. When I saw what I had done--knew it was too late to undo it--I begged G.o.d that my hands might not be stained with their blood." Sweat oozed from the wretched man's forehead.

Every word wrung its bead of agony. "I was answered," he exclaimed with a strange confidence, "there will be no wreck. I cannot see what will happen. I do not know what; but there will be no wreck, believe me or not--it is so."

His steadfast manner staggered the superintendent. I could imagine what he was debating as he looked at Blackburn--wondering, maybe, whether the man's mind was gone. Bucks was staggered; he looked it, and as he collected himself to speak again the hall door opened like an uncanny thing, and we all started as Callahan burst in on us.

"What's so?" he echoed. "What's up here? What did it mean, Blackburn?

There's been trouble, hasn't there? What's the matter with you all?

Bucks? Is everybody struck dumb?"

Bucks spoke. "There's a lap order out on One and the theatrical Special, Callahan. We don't know what's happened," said Bucks sullenly.

"Blackburn here has gone crazy--or he knows--somehow--there won't be any wreck," added the superintendent slowly and bewilderedly. "It's between O'Fallon's and Salt Rocks somewhere. Callahan, take the key," he cried of a sudden. "There's a call now. Despatcher! Don't speak; ask no questions. Get that message," he exclaimed sharply, pointing to the instrument. "It may be news."

And it was news: news from Ames Station reporting the Irving Special _in_ at 1.52 A. M.--out at 1.54! We all heard it together, or it might not have been believed. The Irving Special, eastbound, safely past Number One, westbound, on a single track when their meeting orders had lapped! Past without a word of danger or of accident, or even that they had seen Number One and stopped in time to avoid a collision? Exactly; not a word; nothing. In at 52; out at 54. And the actors hard asleep in the berths--and on about its business the Irving Special--that's what we got from Ames.

Callahan looked around. "Gentlemen, what does this mean? Somebody here is insane. I don't know whether it's me or you, Blackburn. Are you horsing me?" he exclaimed, raising his voice angrily. "If you are, I want to say I consider it a d.a.m.ned shabby joke."

Bucks put up a hand and without a word of comment repeated Blackburn's story just as the despatcher had told it. "In any event there's nothing to do now; it's on us or we're past it. Let us wait for Number One to report."

Callahan pored over the order book. "Maybe," he asked after a while, "didn't you send the orders right and copy them wrong in the book, Blackburn?"

The despatcher shook his head. "They went as they stand. The orders lapped, Callahan. Wait till we hear from Number One. I feel sure she is safe. Wait."

Bucks was pacing the floor. Callahan stuck silent to the key, taking what little work came, for I saw neither of the chiefs wanted to trust Blackburn at the key. He sat, looking, for the most part, vacantly into the fire. Callahan meantime had the orders repeated back from Ames and Rosebud. It was as Blackburn had said; they did lap; they had been sent just as the order book showed. There was nothing for it but to wait for Rosebud to hear from Number One. When the night operator there called the despatcher again it brought Blackburn out of his gloom like a thunderclap.

"Give me the key!" he exclaimed. "There is Rosebud." Callahan pushed back and Blackburn, dropping into the chair, took the message from the night operator at Rosebud.

"Number One, in, 2.03 A. M."

Blackburn answered him, and strangely, with all the easy confidence of his ordinary sending. He sat and took and sent like one again master of the situation.

"Ask Engineer Sampson to come to the wire," said he to Rosebud. Sampson, not Maje, but his brother Arnold, was pulling Number One that night.

"Engineer Sampson here," came from Rosebud presently.

"Ask Sampson where he met Special 202 to-night."

We waited, wrought up, for in that reply must come the answer to all the mystery. There was a hitch at the other end of the wire; then Rosebud answered:

"Sampson says he will tell you all about it in the morning."