The Last Spike Part 18

"Turn that fellow loose and send him to Loneville on three--all a joke.

"W.C.V., Superintendent."

In a little while the train was rattling over the road again; and when the engine screamed for Loneville, the Superintendent stood up and looked at the messenger.

"What'll I tell her?" the latter asked.

"Well, he got left at Cactus sure enough, didn't he? If that doesn't satisfy her, tell her that he may get over on No. 3."

When the messenger had turned his freight over to the driver of the Fargo wagon, he gathered up the Christmas tree and the toys and trudged homeward, looking like Santa Claus, so completely hidden was he by the tree and the trinkets. As he neared the Downs' home, the door swung open, the lamplight shone out upon him, and he saw two women smiling from the open door. It took but one glance at the messenger's face to show them that something was wrong, and the smiles faded. Mrs. Downs received the shock without a murmur, leaning on her friend and leaving the marks of her fingers on her friend's arm.

The messenger put the toys down suddenly, silently; and feeling that the unhappy woman would be better alone, the neighbors departed, leaving her seated by the window, peering into the night, the lamp turned very low.

The little clock on the shelf above the stove ticked off the seconds, measured the minutes, and marked the melancholy hours. The storm ceased, the stars came out and showed the quiet town asleep beneath its robe of white. The clock was now striking four, and she had scarcely stirred.

She was thinking of the watchers of Bethlehem, when suddenly a great light shone on the eastern horizon. At last the freight was coming. She had scarcely noticed the messenger's suggestion that Charley might come in on three. Now she waited, with just the faintest ray of hope; and after a long while the deep voice of the locomotive came to her, the long black train crept past and stopped. Now her heart beat wildly.

Somebody was coming up the road. A moment later she recognized her erring husband, dressed exactly as he had been when he left home, his short coat b.u.t.toned close up under his chin. When she saw him approaching slowly but steadily, she knew he was sober and doubtless cold. She was about to fling the door open to admit him when he stopped and stood still. She watched him. He seemed to be wringing his hands. An awful thought chilled her,--the thought that the cold and exposure had unbalanced his mind. Suddenly he knelt in the snow and turned his sad face up to the quiet sky. He was praying, and with a sudden impulse she fell upon her knees and they prayed together with only the window-gla.s.s between them.

When the prodigal got to his feet, the door stood open and his wife was waiting to receive him. At sight of her, dressed as she had been when he left her, a sudden flame of guilt and shame burned through him; but it served only to clear his brain and strengthen his will-power, which all his life had been so weak, and lately made weaker for want of exercise.

He walked almost hurriedly to the chair she set for him near the stove, and sank into it with the weary air of one who has been long in bed. She felt of his hands and they were not cold. She touched his face and found it warm. She pushed the dark hair from his pale forehead and kissed it.

She knelt and prayed again, her head upon his knee. He bowed above her while she prayed, and stroked her hair. She felt his tears falling upon her head. She stood up, and when he lifted his face to hers, looked into his wide weeping eyes,--aye, into his very soul. She liked to see the tears and the look of agony on his face, for she knew by these signs how he suffered, and she knew why.

When he had grown calm she brought a cup of coffee to him. He drank it, and then she led him to the little dining-room, where a midnight supper had been set for four, but, because of his absence, had not been touched. He saw the tree and the toys that the messenger had left, and spoke for the first time. "Oh, wife dear, have they all come? Are they all here? The toys and all?" and then, seeing the overcoat that the messenger had left on a chair near by, and which his wife had not yet seen, he cried excitedly, "Take that away--it isn't mine!"

"Why, yes, dear," said his wife, "it must be yours."

"No, no," he said; "I bought a coat like that, but I sold it. I drank a lot and only climbed on the train as it was pulling out of Omaha. In the warm car I fell asleep and dreamed the sweetest dream I ever knew. I had come home sober with all the things, you had kissed me, we had a great dinner here, and there stood the Christmas tree, the children were here, the messenger and his wife, and their children. We were all so happy! I saw the shadow fade from your face, saw you smile and heard you laugh; saw the old love-light in your eyes and the rose coming into your cheek.

And then--'Oh, bitterness of things too sweet!'--I woke to find my own old trembling self again. It was all a dream. Looking across the aisle, I saw that coat on the back of an empty seat. I knew it was not mine, for I had sold mine for two miserable dollars. I knew, too, that the man who gave them to me got them back again before they were warm in my pocket. This thought embittered me, and, picking up the coat, I walked out and stood on the platform of the baggage car. At the next stop they took me off and turned me over to the city marshal,--for the coat belonged to the Superintendent.

"It is like mine, except that it is real, and mine, of course, was only a good imitation. Take it away, wife--do take it away--it haunts me!"

Pitying him, the wife put the coat out of his sight; and immediately he grew calm, drank freely of the strong coffee, but he could not eat.

Presently he went over and began to arrange the little Christmas tree in the box his wife had prepared for it during his absence. She began opening the parcels, and when she could trust herself, began to talk about the surprise they would have for the children, and now and again to express her appreciation of some dainty trifle he had selected for her. She watched him closely, noting that his hand was unsteady, and that he was inclined to stagger after stooping for a little while.

Finally, when the tree had been trimmed, and the sled for the boy and the doll-carriage for the girl were placed beneath it, she got him to lie down. When she had made him comfortable she kissed him again, knelt by his bed and prayed, or rather offered thanks, and he was asleep.

Two hours later the subdued shouts of her babies, the exclamations of glad surprise that came in stage whispers from the dining-room, woke her, and she rose from the little couch where she had fallen asleep, already dressed to begin the day.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when she called the prodigal. When he had bathed his feverish face and put on the fresh clothes she had brought in for him and come into the dining-room, he saw his rosy dreams of the previous night fulfilled. The messenger and his wife shook hands with him and wished him a Merry Christmas. His children, all the children, came and kissed him. His wife was smiling, and the warm blood leaping from her happy heart actually put color in her cheeks.

As Downs took the chair at the head of the table he bowed his head, the rest did likewise, and he gave thanks, fervently and without embarra.s.sment.

THE STUFF THAT STANDS

It was very late in the fifties, and Lincoln and Douglas were engaged in animated discussion of the burning questions of the time, when Melvin Jewett journeyed to Bloomington, Illinois, to learn telegraphy.

It was then a new, weird business, and his father advised him not to fool with it. His college chum said to him, as they chatted together for the last time before leaving school, that it would be grewsomely lonely to sit in a dimly lighted flag-station and have that inanimate machine tick off its talk to him in the sable hush of night; but Jewett was ambitious. Being earnest, brave, and industrious, he learned rapidly, and in a few months found himself in charge of a little wooden way-station as agent, operator, yard-master, and everything else. It was lonely, but there was no night work. When the shadows came and hung on the bare walls of his office the spook pictures that had been painted by his school chum, the young operator went over to the little tavern for the night.

True, Springdale at that time was not much of a town; but the telegraph boy had the satisfaction of feeling that he was, by common consent, the biggest man in the place.

Out in a hayfield, he could see from his window a farmer gazing up at the humming wire, and the farmer's boy holding his ear to the pole, trying to understand. All this business that so blinded and bewildered with its mystery, not only the farmer, but the village folks as well, was to him as simple as sunshine.

In a little while he had learned to read a newspaper with one eye and keep the other on the narrow window that looked out along the line; to mark with one ear the "down brakes" signal of the north-bound freight, clear in the siding, and with the other to catch the whistle of the oncoming "cannon ball," faint and far away.

When Jewett had been at Springdale some six or eight months, another young man dropped from the local one morning, and said, "_Wie gehts_,"

and handed him a letter. The letter was from the Superintendent, calling him back to Bloomington to despatch trains. Being the youngest of the despatchers, he had to take the "death trick." The day man used to work from eight o'clock in the morning until four o'clock in the afternoon, the "split trick" man from four until midnight, and the "death trick"

man from midnight until morning.

We called it the "death trick" because, in the early days of railroading, we had a lot of wrecks about four o'clock in the morning.

That was before double tracks and safety inventions had made travelling by rail safer than sleeping at home, and before trainmen off duty had learned to look not on liquor that was red. Jewett, however, was not long on the night shift. He was a good despatcher,--a bit risky at times, the chief thought, but that was only when he knew his man. He was a rusher and ran trains close, but he was ever watchful and wide awake.

In two years' time he had become chief despatcher. During these years the country, so quiet when he first went to Bloomington, had been torn by the tumult of civil strife.

With war news pa.s.sing under his eye every day, trains going south with soldiers, and cars coming north with the wounded, it is not remarkable that the fever should get into the young despatcher's blood. He read of the great, sad Lincoln, whom he had seen and heard and known, calling for volunteers, and his blood rushed red and hot through his veins. He talked to the trainmen who came in to register, to enginemen waiting for orders, to yardmen in the yards, and to shopmen after hours; and many of them, catching the contagion, urged him to organize a company, and he did. He continued to work days and to drill his men in the twilight. He would have been up and drilling at dawn if he could have gotten them together. He inspired them with his quiet enthusiasm, held them by personal magnetism, and by unselfish patriotism kindled in the breast of each of his fifty followers a desire to do something for his country.

Gradually the railroad, so dear to him, slipped back to second place in the affairs of the earth. His country was first. To be sure, there was no shirking of responsibility at the office, but the business of the company was never allowed to overshadow the cause in which he had silently but heartily enlisted. "Abe" Lincoln was, to his way of reasoning, a bigger man than the President of the Chicago and Alton Railroad--which was something to concede. The country must be cared for first, he argued; for what good would a road be with no country to run through?

All day he would work at the despatcher's office, flagging fast freights and "laying out" local pa.s.senger trains, to the end that the soldiers might be hurried south. He would pocket the "cannon ball" and order the "thunderbolt" held at Alton for the soldiers' special. "Take siding at Sundance for troop train, south-bound," he would flash out, and glory in his power to help the government.

All day he would work and scheme for the company (and the Union), and at night, when the silver moonlight lay on the lot back of the machine shops, he would drill and drill as long as he could hold the men together. They were all stout and fearless young fellows, trained and accustomed to danger by the hazard of their daily toil. They knew something of discipline, were used to obeying orders, and to reading and remembering regulations made for their guidance; and Jewett reasoned that they would become, in time, a crack company, and a credit to the state.

By the time he had his company properly drilled, young Jewett was so perfectly saturated with the subject of war that he was almost unfit for duty as a despatcher. Only his anxiety about south-bound troop trains held his mind to the matter and his hand to the wheel. At night, after a long evening in the drill field, he would dream of great battles, and hear in his dreams the ceaseless tramp, tramp of soldiers marching down from the north to re-enforce the fellows in the fight.

Finally, when he felt that they were fit, he called his company together for the election of officers. Jewett was the unanimous choice for captain, other officers were chosen, and the captain at once applied for a commission.

The Jewetts were an influential family, and no one doubted the result of the young despatcher's request. He waited anxiously for some time, wrote a second letter, and waited again. "Any news from Springfield?" the conductor would ask, leaving the register, and the chief despatcher would shake his head.

One morning, on entering his office, Jewett found a letter on his desk.

It was from the Superintendent, and it stated bluntly that the resignation of the chief despatcher would be accepted, and named his successor.

Jewett read it over a second time, then turned and carried it into the office of his chief.

"Why?" echoed the Superintendent; "you ought to know why. For months you have neglected your office, and have worked and schemed and conspired to get trainmen and enginemen to quit work and go to war. Every day women who are not ready to be widowed come here and cry on the carpet because their husbands are going away with 'Captain' Jewett's company. Only yesterday a schoolgirl came running after me, begging me not to let her little brother, the red-headed peanut on the local, go as drummer-boy in 'Captain' Jewett's company.

"And now, after demoralizing the service and almost breaking up a half a hundred homes, you ask, 'Why?' Is that all you have to say?"

"No," said the despatcher, lifting his head; "I have to say to you, sir, that I have never knowingly neglected my duty. I have not conspired. I have been misjudged and misunderstood; and in conclusion, I would say that my resignation shall be written at once."

Returning to his desk, Jewett found the long-looked-for letter from Springfield. How his heart beat as he broke the seal! How timely--just as things come out in a play. He would not interrupt traffic on the Alton, but with a commission in his pocket would go elsewhere and organize a new company. These things flashed through his mind as he unfolded the letter. His eye fell immediately on the signature at the end. It was not the name of the Governor, who had been a close friend of his father, but of the Lieutenant-Governor. It was a short letter, but plain; and it left no hope. His request had been denied.

This time he did not ask why. He knew why, and knew that the influence of a great railway company, with the best of the argument on its side, would outweigh the influence of a train despatcher and his friends.

Reluctantly Jewett took leave of his old a.s.sociates in the office, went to his room in the hotel, and sat for hours crushed and discouraged.

Presently he rose, kicked the kinks out of his trousers, and walked out into the clear sunlight. At the end of the street he stepped from the side-walk to the sod path and kept walking. He pa.s.sed an orchard and plucked a ripe peach from an overhanging bough. A yellow-breasted lark stood in a stubble-field, chirped two or three times, and soared, singing, toward the far blue sky. A bare-armed man, with a muley cradle, was cradling grain, and, far away, he heard the hum of a horse-power threshing machine. It had been months, it seemed years, since he had been in the country, felt its cooling breeze, smelled the fresh breath of the fields, or heard the song of a lark; and it rested and refreshed him.

When young Jewett returned to the town he was himself again. He had been guilty of no wrong, but had been about what seemed to him his duty to his country. Still, he remembered with sadness the sharp rebuke of the Superintendent, a feeling intensified by the recollection that it was the same official who had brought him in from Springdale, made a train despatcher out of him, and promoted him as often as he had earned promotion. If he had seemed to be acting in bad faith with the officials of the road, he would make amends. That night he called his company together, told them that he had been unable to secure a commission, stated that he had resigned and was going away, and advised them to disband.

The company forming at Lexington was called "The Farmers," just as the Bloomington company was known as the "Car-hands." "The Farmers" was full, the captain said, when Jewett offered his services. At the last moment one of the boys had "heart failure," and Jewett was taken in his place. His experience with the disbanded "Car-hands" helped him and his company immeasurably. It was only a few days after his departure from Bloomington that he again pa.s.sed through, a private in "The Farmers."