The Road Builders. Merwin Samuel

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      “This is Mr. Van’ervelt,” put in Charlie, who had followed; “Mr. Van’ervelt, of the railroad.”

      “What’ll you pay?” asked Flagg.

      Young Van named the amount.

      “When do you want to start?”

      “Now.”

      “Charlie,” – Flagg was sweeping in a heap of chips, – “go down to Jim’s and get my things and fetch ’em here.” And with this he turned back to the game.

      Young Van looked uncertainly at Charlie, whose condition was hardly such that he could be trusted to make the trip without a series of stops in the numerous havens of refuge along the way. The thing to do was perhaps to go with him; at any rate, that is what Young Van did.

      “Won’erful man!” murmured Charlie, when they reached the sidewalk. Then, “Say, Mr. Van’ervelt, come over here a minute – jus’ over to Bill White’s. Wanna see a man, – jus’ minute.”

      But Young Van was not in a tolerant mood. “Stiffen up, Charlie,” he said sharply. “No more of this sort of thing – not if you’re going with us.”

      Charlie was meekly obedient, and even tried to hurry; but at the best it took considerable time to get together the clothing of the cook and his assistant, pay their bill, and return to Murphy’s. This much accomplished, it became necessary to use some tact with Flagg, who was bent on winning a little more before stopping. And as Flagg could easily have tossed the engineer out of the window, and had, besides, the strategical advantage, Young Van was unable to see much choice for himself in the matter. And standing there, waiting on the pleasure of his cook, he passed the time in wondering where he had made his mistake. Paul Carhart, or John Flint, he thought, would never have found it necessary to take the undignified measures to which he had been reduced. But what was the difference? What would they have done? In trying to answer these questions he hit on every reason but the right one. He forgot that he was a young man.

      Carhart and Flint, after waiting a long time at the “Eagle, House,” went down to the station, arriving there some time after the outburst of Peet, which was noted at the beginning of the chapter. Tiffany saw them coming, and communicated the news to the superintendent. The engine reappeared, and again coupled up to the forward car.

      “Everything all right?” called Tiffany.

      “No,” replied Carhart; “don’t start yet.”

      The three walked on and joined Old Van by the steps of the rear car.

      “Well,” growled the veteran, “how much longer are we going to wait, Paul?”

      “Until Gus comes.”

      “Gus? I thought he was aboard here.”

      “No,” said John Flint, with a wink; “he went out last night to see the wheels go round. Here he comes now. But what in – ”

      They all gazed without a word. Three men were walking abreast down the platform, Gus Vandervelt, with a white face and ringed eyes, in the middle. The youngest engineer of the outfit was not a small man, but between the two cooks he looked like a child.

      “Would you look at that!” said Flint, at length. “Neither of those two Jesse Jameses will ever see six-foot-three again. Makes Gus look like a nick in a wall.”

      Young Van met Carhart’s questioning gaze almost defiantly. “The cook,” he said, indicating Flagg.

      “All right. Get aboard.”

      “Rear car,” cried Old Van, who had charge of the arrangements on the train.

      This time the bell did not ring in vain. The train moved slowly out toward the unpeopled West, and the engineers threw off coats and collars, and made themselves as nearly comfortable as they could under the circumstances.

      A few minutes after the start Paul Carhart, who was writing a letter in pencil, looked up and saw Young Van beside him, and tried not to smile at his sorry appearance.

      “I think I owe you an explanation, Mr. Carhart,” began the young man, in embarrassment which took the form of stiffness.

      But the chief shook his head. “I’m not asking any questions, Gus,” he replied. Then the smile escaped him, and he turned it off by adding, “I’m writing to Mrs. Carhart.” He held up the letter and glanced over the first few lines with a twinkle in his eyes. “I was just telling her,” he went on, “that the cook problem in Chicago is in its infancy.”

      CHAPTER II

      WHERE THE MONEY CAME FROM

      Doubtless there were official persons to be found at the time of this narrative – which is a matter of some thirty years back – who would have insisted that the letters “S. & W.” meant “Sherman and Western.” But every one who lived within two days’ ride of the track knew that the real name of the road was the “Shaky and Windy.”

      Shaky the “S. & W.” certainly was – physically, and, if newspaper gossip and apparent facts were to be trusted, financially. The rails weighed thirty-five pounds to the yard, and had been laid in scallops, with high centres and low joints, – “sight along the rails and it looks like a washboard,” said John Flint, describing it. For ballast the clay and sand of the region were used. And, as for the financial part, everybody knew that old De Reamer had been forced to abandon the construction work on the Red Hills extension, after building fully five-sixths of the distance. The hard times had, of course, something to do with that, – roads were going under all through the West; receiverships were quite the common thing, – but De Reamer and the S. & W. did not seem to revive so quickly as certain other lines. This was the more singular in that the S. & W., extending as it did from the Sabine country to the Staked Plains, really justified the popular remark that “the Shaky and Windy began in a swamp and ended in a desert.” On the face of things, without the Red Hills connection with the bigger C. & S. C., and without an eastern connection with one of the New Orleans or St. Louis lines, the road was an absurdity.

      Then, only a few months before the time of our narrative, the railroad world began to wake up. Commodore Durfee, one of “the big fellows,” surprised the Southwest by buying in the H. D. & W. (which meant, and will always mean, the High, Dry, and Wobbly). The surprise was greater when the Commodore began building southwestward, in the general direction of Red Hills. As usual when the big men are playing for position, the public and the wise-acres, even Wall Street, were mystified. For the S. & W. was so obviously the best and shortest eastern connection for the C. & S. C., – the H. D. & W. would so plainly be a differential line, – that it was hard to see what the Commodore was about. He had nothing to say to the reporters. Old General Carrington, of the C. & S. C., the biggest and shrewdest of them all, was also silent. And Daniel De Reamer couldn’t be seen at all.

      And finally, by way of a wind-up to the first skirmish of the picturesque war in which our engineers were soon to find themselves taking part, there was a western breeze and a flurry of dust in Wall Street. Somebody was fighting. S. & W. shares ran up in a day from twenty-two to forty-six, and, which was more astonishing, sold at that figure for another day before dropping. Other mysterious things were going on. Suddenly De Reamer reappeared in the Southwest, and that most welcome sign of vitality, money, – red gold corpuscles, – began to flow through the arteries of the S. & W. “system.” The construction СКАЧАТЬ