The Night Operator Part 40

"The old man's gone, ain't he?" he said in a queer, lifeless way.

"Yes," said Bradley simply.

MacQuigan looked around the circle sort of mechanically, sort of unseeingly--then at the form on the floor. Then he spoke again, almost as though he were talking to himself.

"Might just as well have been me that fired the shot," he whispered, nodding his head. "I'm to blame--ain't I? An' I guess--I guess I've finished the old lady, too." He looked around the circle again, then his hands kind of wriggled up to his temples--and before Bradley could spring to catch him, he went down in a heap on the floor.

MacQuigan wasn't much more than a boy, not much more than that--but old enough in another way. What he went through that night and in the days that followed was between MacQuigan and his G.o.d. Life makes strange meeting points sometimes, and sometimes the running orders are hard to understand, and sometimes it looks like disaster quick and absolute, with everything in the ditch, and the right of way a tangled ruin--and yet when morning breaks there is no call for the wrecking crew, and it comes to you deep down inside somewhere that it's the Great Despatcher who's been sitting in on the night trick.

Reddy MacQuigan went back to the roundhouse a different MacQuigan than he had left it--sort of older, quieter, more serious--and the days went by, a month or two of them.

Regan, with a sort of inward satisfaction and some complacency, tugged at his scraggly brown mustache, and summed it up pretty well.

"Did I not say," said Regan, "that the only decent thing old John would ever do would be to die? H'm? Well, then, I was right, wasn't I?

Look at young Reddy! Straight as a string--and taking care of the old lady now. No; I ain't getting my shirts starched the way Mrs.

MacQuigan used to starch them--but no matter. Mrs. MacQuigan isn't taking in washing any more, G.o.d bless her! I guess Reddy got it handed to him pretty straight on the carpet that night. I'll have him pulling a throttle one of these days--what?"

Bradley? Yes; this is Martin Bradley's story--not Reddy MacQuigan's.

But Reddy had his part in it--had running orders to make one more of those strange meeting points fixed by the Great Despatcher that we were speaking about a minute ago.

It was three months to the day from old John MacQuigan's death that Bradley, in from a run, found a letter waiting for him up at Mrs.

MacQuigan's--and went down under it like a felled ox! Not the big thing to do? Well, perhaps not--all that he cared for in life, everything that he lived for, everything that had kept him straight since his trouble years ago, s.n.a.t.c.hed from him without a moment's warning--that was all. Another man might not have lost his grip--or he might. Bradley lost his--for a little while--but they call him to-day a game man on the Hill Division.

White-faced, not quite understanding himself, in a queer sort of groping way, Bradley, in his flood of bitter misery, told Mrs.

MacQuigan, who had watched him open the letter--told her that his little housekeeper, as he had come to call the kiddie, was dead. Not even a chance to see her--an accident--the letter from the lawyers who did his business, transmitting the news received from the school authorities who knew only the lawyers as the princ.i.p.als--a letter, trying to break the news in a softer way than a telegram would have done, since Bradley was too far away to get back East in time, anyhow.

And Mrs. MacQuigan put her arms around him, and, understanding as only her mother's heart could understand, tried to comfort him, while the tears rained down the sweet old face. But Bradley's eyes were dry.

With his elbows on the table, holding his chin in his hands, his face like stone, he stared at the letter he had spread out on the red checkered cloth--stared for a long time at that, and at the little photograph he had taken from his pocket.

"Martin, boy," pleaded Mrs. MacQuigan, and her hand brushed back the hair from his forehead, "Martin, boy, don't take it like that."

And then Bradley turned and looked at her--not a word--only a bitter laugh--and picked up his letter and the picture and went out.

Bradley went up on the 582 with the local freight, west, that night, and there was a dare-devil laugh in his heart and a mechanical sense of existence in his soul. And in the cab that night, deep in the mountains, Bradley lost his grip. It seemed to sweep him in a sudden, overwhelming surge; and, with the door swung wide, the cab leaping into fiery red, the sweat beads trickling down his face that was white in a curious way where the skin showed through for all the grime and perspiration, he lurched and s.n.a.t.c.hed at his engineer's arm.

"Life's a h.e.l.l of a thing, ain't it, Smithers?" he bawled over the roar of the train and the swirl of the wind, wagging his head and shaking imperatively at Smithers' arm.

Smithers, a fussy little man, with more nerves than are good for an engineer, turned, stared, caught a something in the fireman's face--and tried to edge a little farther over on his seat. In the red, flickering glare, Bradley's eyes had a look in them that wasn't sane, and his figure, swaying with the heave of the cab, seemed to shoot back and forth uncannily, grotesquely, in and out of the shadows.

"Martin, for G.o.d's sake, Martin," gasped the engineer, "what's wrong with you?"

"You heard what I said," shouted Bradley, a sullen note in his voice, gripping the engineer's arm still harder. "That's what it is, ain't it? Why don't you answer?"

Smithers, frightened now, stared mutely. The headlight shot suddenly from the glittering ribbons of steel far out into nothingness, flinging a filmy ray across a canon's valley, and mechanically Smithers checked a little as they swung the curve. Then, with a deafening roar of thunder racketing through the mountains, they swept into a cut, the rock walls towering high on either side--and over the din Bradley's voice screamed again--and again he shook Smithers' arm.

"Ain't it? D'ye hear--ain't it? Say--ain't it?"

"Y-yes," stammered Smithers weakly, with a gulp.

And then Bradley laughed--queerly.

"You're a d.a.m.n fool, Smithers!" he flung out, with a savage jeer.

"What do you know about it!" And throwing the engineer's arm from him, his shovel clanged and clanged again, as into the red maw before him he shot the coal.

Smithers was scared. Bradley never said another word after that--just kept to his own side of the cab, hugging his seat, staring through the cab gla.s.s ahead, chin down on his breast, pulling the door at intervals, firing at intervals like an automaton, then back to his seat again. Smithers was scared.

At Elk River, the end of the local run, Smithers told the train crew about it, and they laughed at him, and looked around to find out what Martin Bradley had to say about it--but Bradley wasn't in sight.

Not much of a place, Elk River, not big enough for one to go anywhere without the whole population knowing it; and it wasn't long before they knew where Bradley was. The local made a two hours' lay-over there before starting back for Big Cloud; and Martin Bradley spent most of it in Kelly's place, a stone's throw from, the station. Not drinking much, a gla.s.s or two all told, sitting most of the time staring out of the window--not drinking much--getting the _taste_ of it that he hadn't known for a matter of many years. Two gla.s.ses, perhaps three, that was all--but he left Kelly's for the run back with a flask in his pocket.

It was the flask that did it, not Smithers. Smithers was frightened at his silent fireman tippling over his shovel, good and frightened before he got to Big Cloud, and Smithers did not understand; but Smithers, for all that, wasn't the man to throw a mate down cold. Neither was Bradley himself bad enough to have aroused any suspicion. It was the flask that did it.

They made Big Cloud on the dot that morning--11.26. And in the roundhouse, as Bradley stepped out through the gangway, his overalls caught on the hasp of the tool-box on the tender, and the jerk sent the flask flying into splinters on the floor--at Regan's feet.

The fat little master mechanic, on his morning round of inspection, halted, stared in amazement at the broken gla.s.s and trickling beverage, got a whiff of the raw spirit, and blinked at Bradley, who, by this time, had reached the ground.

"What's the meaning of this?" demanded Regan, nonplussed. "Not you, Bradley--on the run?"

Bradley did not answer. He was regarding the master mechanic with a half smile--not a pleasant one--more a defiant curl of his lips.

Smithers, discreetly attempting to make his escape through the opposite gangway, caught Regan's attention.

"Here, you, Smithers," Regan called peremptorily, "come----"

Then Bradley spoke, cutting in roughly.

"Leave Smithers out of it," he said.

Regan stared for another moment; then took a quick step forward, close up to Bradley--and got the fireman's breath.

Bradley shoved him away insolently.

It was a minute before Regan spoke. He liked Bradley and always had; but from the soles of his feet up to the crown of his head, Regan, first and last, was a railroad man. And Regan knew but one creed.

Other men might drink and play the fool and be forgiven and trusted again, a wiper, a shop hand, a brakeman, perhaps, or any one of the train crew, but a man in the cab of an engine--_never_. Reasons, excuses, contributory causes, counted not at all--they were not asked for--they did not exist. The fact alone stood--as the fact. It was a minute before Regan spoke, and then he didn't say much, just a word or two without raising his voice, before he turned on his heel and walked out of the roundhouse.

"I'm sorry for this, Bradley," he said. "You're the last man I expected it from. You know the rules. You've fired your last run on this road. You're out."

But Regan might have been making some comment on the weather for all the concern it appeared to give Bradley. He stood leaning against the tender, snapping his fingers in his queer way, silent, hard-faced, his eyes far away from his immediate surroundings. Smithers, a wiper or two, Reddy MacQuigan amongst them, cl.u.s.tered around him after Regan had gone; but Bradley paid no attention to them, answered none of their questions or comments; and after a little while pushed himself through them and went out of the roundhouse.

Bradley didn't go home that day; but Reddy MacQuigan did--at the noon hour. That's how Mrs. MacQuigan got it. Mrs. MacQuigan did not wait to wash up the dishes. She put on the little old-fashioned poke bonnet that she had worn for as many seasons as Big Cloud could remember, and started out to find Regan. She ran the master mechanic to earth on the station platform, and opened up on him, fluttering, anxious, and distressed.

"Sure, Regan," she faltered, "you did not mean it when you fired Martin this morning--not for good."

Regan pulled at his mustache and looked at her--and shook his head at her reprovingly.

"I meant it, Mrs. MacQuigan," he said kindly. "You must know that. It will do neither of us any good to talk about it. I wouldn't have let him out if I could have helped it."

"Then listen here, Regan," she pleaded. "Listen to the why of it, that 'tis only me who knows."