Held for Orders Part 19

It was a queer deal out on the West End in those days. It was a case of wide open from the river to the Rockies. Everybody on the line from the directors to the car-tinks were giving the company the worst of it. The section hands hooked the ties for the maintenance, the painters drank the alcohol for the sh.e.l.lac, the purchasing agent had more fast horses than we had locomotives, and what made it discouraging for the conductors, the auditors stole what little money the boys did turn in.

A hard place to begin railroading the old line was then: but that's where I had to tackle the game, and in all the hard crowd I mixed with Dave Hawk was the only big man on the division. There were others there who fixed the thing up by comparing notes on their collections and turning in percentages to make their reports look right. But Dave was not a conspirator; never made a confidant of any man in his stealing or his spending, and despised their figuring. He did as he pleased and cared for no one; no superior had any terror for Dave. He had a wife somewhere back east of the river, they said, that had sold him out--that's why he was in the mountains--and he lived among free and easy men a lonely life. If anybody ever got close to him, I think maybe I did, though I was still only a freight conductor when the lightning struck the division.

It came with a clean sweep through the general offices at the River.

Everybody in the auditing department, the executive heads down to general manager and a whole raft of East End conductors. It was a shake-out from top to bottom, and the bloods on our division went white and sickly very fast.

Of course it was somebody's gain. When the heads of our pa.s.senger conductors began to drop, they began setting up freight men. Rocksby had resigned a year earlier, and Haverly, his successor, an ex-despatcher and as big a knave as there was on the pay roll, let the men out right and left with the sole idea of saving his own scalp. By the time I was put up to a pa.s.senger train the old force was pretty much cleared out except Dave.

Every day almost, we looked to see him go. Everybody loved him because he was a master railroad man, and everybody except Dave himself was apprehensive about his future. He moved on just the same, calm and cold as ice-water, taking the same old chances, reckless of everything and everybody. I never knew till afterward, but the truth was Haverly with all his bluff talk was just enough afraid of Dave Hawk to want to let him alone. The matter, though, focused one day up in the old office in an unexpected way.

Haverly's own seat got so hot that bedeviled by his fears of losing it and afraid to discharge Dave, who now sailed up and down the line reckless as any pirate of the Spanish Main, he cowered, called Dave into the little room at the Wickiup and asked him to resign. In all the storm that raged on the division the old conductor alone had remained calm.

Every day it was somebody's head off; every night a new alarm; Dave alone ignored it all. He was, through it all, the shining mark, the daredevil target; yet he bore a charmed life and survived every last a.s.sociate. Then Haverly asked him to resign. Dave, bitter angry, faced him with black words in his throat.

"It's come to a showdown," muttered the superintendent uneasily after a minute's talking. "Do you want to resign?"

Dave eyed the mountains coldly. "No."

"You'll have to--"

"Have to?" Hawk whirled dark as a storm. "Have to? Who says so?"

The superintendent shifted the paperweight on the desk uncomfortably.

"Why should I resign?" demanded the old conductor angrily. "Resign?" He rose from his chair. "You know I'm a thief. You're a thief yourself.

You helped make me one. I've carried more men for you than for anybody else on the whole division. I don't resign for anybody. Discharge me, d.a.m.n you. I don't ask any odds of you."

Haverly met it sullenly, yet he didn't dare do anything. He knew Dave could ruin him any day he chose to open his mouth. What he did not know was that Dave Hawk was molded in a cla.s.s of men different from his own.

Even dishonor was safe in the hands of Dave Hawk.

There was no change after, except that darker, moodier, lonelier than ever, Dave moved along on his runs, the last of the Old Guard. Better railroad man than he never took a train out of division. Stress of wind or stress of weather, storm, flood or blockade, Dave Hawk's trains came and went on time or very close. So he rode, grim old privateer, with his letters of marque on the company's strongbox, and Haverly trembled night and day till that day came that fear had foretold to him. A clap of thunder struck the Wickiup and Haverly's head fell low; and Dave Hawk sailed boldly on.

I was extra pa.s.senger man when John Stanley Bucks took the West End. He came from south of our country, and we heard great things about the new superintendent and about what would happen as soon as he got into the saddle. What few of the old men in the Wickiup were left looked at Bucks just once and began to arrange their temporal affairs. His appearance bore out his reputation. Only, everybody while pretty clear in his own mind as to what he would do--that is, as to what he would have to do--wondered what Dave would do.

He and Bucks met. I couldn't for the life of me help thinking when they struck hands, this grizzled mountaineer and this contained, strong, soldierly executive who had come to command us, of another meeting, I once saw when I carried Crook out on a special and watched him at Bear Dance strike hands with the last of the big fighting chiefs of the mountain Sioux.

For three months Bucks sat his new saddle without a word or an act to show what he was thinking: then there came from the little room a general order that swept right and left from trainmaster to wrecking boss. The last one of the old timers in the operating department went except Dave Hawk.

The day the order was bulletined Bucks sent for Dave; sent word by me he wanted to see him.

"Come on," said Dave to me when I gave him the message.

"What do you want me for?"

"Come on," he repeated, and, greatly against my inclination, I went up with him. I looked for a scene.

"Dave, you've been running here a good while, haven't you?" Bucks began.

"Long as anybody, I guess," said Dave curtly.

"How many years?"

"Nineteen."

"There's been some pretty lively shake-outs on the system lately,"

continued Bucks; the veteran conductor looked at him coldly. "I am trying to shape things here for an entire new deal."

"Don't let me stand in your way," returned Dave grimly.

"That's what I want to see you about."

"It needn't take long," blurted Dave.

"Then I'll tell you what I want----"

"I don't resign. You can discharge me any minute."

"I wouldn't ask any man to resign, Dave, if I wanted to discharge him.

Don't make a mistake like that. I suppose you will admit there's room for improvement in the running of this division?"

Dave never twitched. "A whole lot of improvement," Bucks, with perceptible emphasis, added. It came from the new superintendent as a sort of gauntlet and Dave picked it up.

"I guess that's right enough," he replied candidly, "there is room for a whole lot of improvement. If I sat where you do I'd fire every man that stood in the way of it, too."

"That's why I've sent for you," Bucks resumed.

"Then drop the chinook talk and give me my time."

"You don't understand me yet, Dave. I want you to give up your run. I want your friend, Burnes here, to take your run----"

A queer shadow went over Dave's face. When Bucks began he was getting a thunderstorm on. Somehow the way it ended, the way it was coming about--putting me into his place--I, the only boy on the division he cared "a d.a.m.n" about--it struck him, as it struck me, all in a heap. He couldn't say a word; his eyes went out the window into the mountains: something in it looked like fate. For my part I felt murder guilty.

"What I want you to do, Dave," added Bucks evenly, "is to come into the office here with me and look after the train crews. Just at present I've got to lean considerably on a trainmaster, do you want the job?"

The silent conductor turned to stone.

"The men who own the road are new men, Dave; they didn't steal it. They bought it and paid for it. They want a new deal and they propose to give a new deal to the men. They will pay salaries a man can live on honestly; they will give no excuse for knocking down; they want what's coming to them, and they propose the men shall have their right share of it in the pay checks.

"But there's more than that in it. They want to build up the operating force, as fast as it can be built, from the men in the ranks. I aim to make a start now on this division. If you're with me, hang up your coat here the first of the month, and take the train crews."

Dave left the office groggy. The best Bucks could do he couldn't get a positive answer out of him. He was overcome and couldn't focus on the proposition. Bucks saw how he had gone to pieces and managed diplomatically to leave the matter open, Callahan, whom Bucks had brought with him as a.s.sistant, filling in meanwhile as trainmaster.

The matter was noised. It was known that Dave, admittedly the brainiest and most capable of the Old Guard had been singled out, regardless of his past record for promotion. "I'm not here sitting in judgment on what was done last year," Bucks had said plainly. "It's what is done this year and next that will count in this office." And the conductors, thinking there was a chance, believing that at last if they did their work right they would get their share of the promotions, began to carry their lanterns as if they had more important business than holding up stray fares.

Meantime Dave hung to his run. Somehow the old run had grown a part of him and he couldn't give it up. When he told Bucks at the end of the week that he would like another week to make his decision the superintendent waved it to him. Everybody began to make great things of Dave: some of the boys called him trainmaster and told him to drop his punch and give Tommie a show.

He didn't take the humor the way one would expect. Always silent he grew more than that; sombre and dejected. We never saw a smile on his face.

"Dave is off," muttered Henry Cavanaugh, his old baggageman, "I don't understand it. He's off. You ought to talk to him, Tommie. You're the only man on the division can do it."

I was ordered west that night to bring a military special from Washakie.