The Last Spike Part 15

"What's up?" he asked; for he was the company's surgeon.

"Well, there's wan dead, wan dying, and we're all more or less kilt,"

said Shea, pushing the mob back to give the doctor room.

Lifting Lucien's head, the doctor held a small bottle under his nose, and the wounded man came out. Strong, and the reporter would say "willing hands," now lifted the car bodily from the track and put it down on the platform near the baggage-room.

When the doctor had revived the French-Canadian and stopped the flow of blood, he took the boss in hand. Opening the man's clothes, he searched for the wound, but found none.

They literally stripped Kelly to the waist; but there was not a scratch to be found upon his body. When the doctor declared it to be his opinion that Kelly was not hurt at all, but had merely fainted, Kelly was indignant.

Of course the whole accident (Lucien being seriously hurt) had to be investigated, and this was the finding of the experts:--

A tin torpedo left on the rail by a flagman was exploded by the wheel of the hand-car. A piece of tin flew up, caught Lucien in the neck, making a nasty wound. Lucien was thrown from the car, when it jumped the track, so violently as to render him unconscious. Kelly and Burke and Shea, picking themselves up, one after the other, each fainted dead away at the sight of so much blood.

Lucien revived first, took in the situation, loaded the limp bodies, and pulled for home, and that is the true story of the awful wreck on the Pere Marquette.

THE STORY OF AN ENGLISHMAN

A young Englishman stood watching a freight train pulling out of a new town, over a new track. A pinch-bar, left carelessly by a section gang, caught in the cylinder-c.o.c.k rigging and tore it off.

Swearing softly, the driver climbed down and began the nasty work of disconnecting the disabled machinery. He was not a machinist. Not all engine-drivers can put a locomotive together. In fact the best runners are just runners. The Englishman stood by and, when he saw the man fumble his wrench, offered a hand. The driver, with some hesitation, gave him the tools, and in a few minutes the crippled rigging was taken down, nuts replaced, and the rigging pa.s.sed by the Englishman to the fireman, who threw it up on the rear of the tank.

"Are you a mechanic?" asked the driver.

"Yes, sir," said the Englishman, standing at least a foot above the engineer. "There's a job for me up the road, if I can get there."

"And you're out of tallow?"

The Englishman was not quite sure; but he guessed "tallow" was United States for "money," and said he was short.

"All right," said the engine-driver; "climb on."

The fireman was a Dutchman named Martin, and he made the Englishman comfortable; but the Englishman wanted to work. He wanted to help fire the engine, and Martin showed him how to do it, taking her himself on the hills. When they pulled into the town of E., the Englishman went over to the round-house and the foreman asked him if he had ever "railroaded." He said No, but he was a machinist. "Well, I don't want you," said the foreman, and the Englishman went across to the little eating-stand where the trainmen were having dinner. Martin moved over and made room for the stranger between himself and his engineer.

"What luck?" asked the latter.

"Hard luck," was the answer, and without more talk the men hurried on through the meal.

They had to eat dinner and do an hour's switching in twenty minutes.

That is an easy trick when n.o.body is looking. You arrive, eat dinner, then register in. That is the first the despatcher hears of you at E.

You switch twenty minutes and register out. That is the last the despatcher hears of you at E. You switch another twenty minutes and go.

That is called stealing time; and may the Manager have mercy on you if you're caught at it, for you've got to make up that last twenty minutes before you hit the next station.

As the engineer dropped a little oil here and there for another dash, the Englishman came up to the engine. He could not bring himself to ask the driver for another ride, and he didn't need to.

"You don't get de jobs?" asked Martin.

"No."

"Vell, dat's all right; you run his railroad some day."

"I don't like the agent here," said the driver; "but if you were up at the other end of the yard, over on the left-hand side, he couldn't see you, and I couldn't see you for the steam from that broken cylinder-c.o.c.k."

Now they say an Englishman is slow to catch on, but this one was not; and as the engine rattled over the last switch, he climbed into the cab in a cloud of steam. Martin made him welcome again, pointing to a seat on the waste-box. The dead-head took off his coat, folded it carefully, laid it on the box, and reached for the shovel. "Not yet," said Martin, "dare is holes already in de fire; I must get dose yello smoke from de shtack off."

The dead-head leaned from the window, watching the stack burn clear, then Martin gave him the shovel. Half-way up a long, hard hill the pointer on the steam-gauge began to go back. The driver glanced over at Martin, and Martin took the shovel. The dead-head climbed up on the tank and shovelled the coal down into the pit, that was now nearly empty. In a little while they pulled into the town of M.C., Iowa, at the crossing of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul. Here the Englishman had to change cars. His destination was on the cross-road, still one hundred and eighteen miles away. The engine-driver took the joint agent to one side, the agent wrote on a small piece of paper, folded it carefully, and gave it to the Englishman. "This may help you," said he; "be quick--they're just pulling out--run!"

Panting, the Englishman threw himself into a way-car that was already making ten miles an hour. The train official unfolded the paper, read it, looked the Englishman over, and said, "All right."

It was nearly night when the train arrived at W., and the dead-head followed the train crew into an unpainted pine hotel, where all hands fell eagerly to work. A man stood behind a little high desk at the door taking money; but when the Englishman offered to pay he said, "Yours is paid fer."

"Not mine; n.o.body knows me here."

"Then, 'f the devil don't know you better than I do you're lost, young man," said the landlord. "But some one p'inted to you and said, 'I pay fer him.' It ain't a thing to make a noise about. It don't make no difference to me whether it's Tom or Jerry that pays, so long as everybody represents."

"Well, this is a funny country," mused the Englishman, as he strolled over to the shop. Now when he heard the voice of the foreman, with its musical burr, which stamped the man as a Briton from the Highlands, his heart grew glad. The Scotchman listened to the stranger's story without any sign of emotion or even interest; and when he learned that the man had "never railroaded," but had been all his life in the British Government service, he said he could do nothing for him, and walked away.

The young man sat and thought it over, and concluded he would see the master-mechanic. On the following morning he found that official at his desk and told his story. He had just arrived from England with a wife and three children and a few dollars. "That's all right," said the master-mechanic; "I'll give you a job on Monday morning."

This was Sat.u.r.day, and during the day the first foreman with whom the Englishman had talked wired that if he would return to E. he could find work. The young man showed this wire to the master-mechanic. "I should like to work for you," said he; "you have been very kind to give me employment after the foreman had refused, but my family is near this place. They are two hundred miles or more from here."

"I understand," said the kind-hearted official, "and you'd better go back to E."

The Englishman rubbed his chin and looked out of the window. The train standing at the station and about to pull out would carry him back to the junction, but he made no effort to catch it, and the master-mechanic, seeing this, caught the drift of the young man's mind.

"Have you transportation?" he asked. The stranger, smiling, shook his head. Turning to his desk, the master-mechanic wrote a pa.s.s to the junction and a telegram requesting transportation over the Iowa Central from the junction to the town of E.

That Sunday the young man told his young wife that the new country was "all right." Everybody trusted everybody else. An official would give a stranger free transportation; a station agent could give you a pa.s.s, and even an engine-driver could carry a man without asking permission.

He didn't know that all these men save the master-mechanic had violated the rules of the road and endangered their own positions and the chance of promotion by helping him; but he felt he was among good, kind people, and thanked them just the same.

On Monday morning he went to work in the little shop. In a little while he was one of the trustworthy men employed in the place. "How do you square a locomotive?" he asked the foreman. "Here," said the foreman; "from this point to that."

That was all the Englishman asked. He stretched a line between the given points and went to work.

Two years from this the town of M. offered to donate to the railroad company $47,000 if the new machine shop could be located there, steam up and machinery running, on the first day of January of the following year.

The general master-mechanic entrusted the work of putting in the machinery, after the walls had been built and the place roofed over, to the division master-mechanic, who looked to the local foreman to finish the job in time to win the subsidy.

The best months of the year went by before work was begun. Frost came, and the few men tinkering about were chilled by the autumn winds that were wailing through the shutterless doors and gla.s.sless windows.

Finally the foreman sent the Englishman to M. to help put up the machinery. He was a new man, and therefore was expected to take signals from the oldest man on the job,--a sort of straw-boss.

The bridge boss--the local head of the wood-workers--found the Englishman gazing about, and the two men talked together. There was no foreman there, but the Englishman thought he ought to work anyway; so he and the wood boss stretched a line for a line-shaft, and while the carpenter's gang put up braces and brackets the Englishman coupled the shaft together, and in a few days it was ready to go up. As the young man worked and whistled away one morning, the boss carpenter came in with a military-looking gentleman, who seemed to own the place. "Where did you come from?" asked the new-comer of the machinist.

"From England, sir."