Whispering Smith. Spearman Frank Hamilton

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СКАЧАТЬ assassin; nor has the mystery of its fate ever completely been solved, though it is believed to lie with Murray Sinclair in the Frenchman hills. The engineering department and the operating department united in a tremendous effort to bring about a resumption of traffic. Glover’s men, pulled off construction, were sent forward in trainloads. Dancing’s linemen strung arc-lights along the creek until the canyon twinkled at night like a mountain village, and men in three shifts worked elbow to elbow unceasingly to run the switchbacks down to the creek-bed. There, by cribbing across the bottom, they got in a temporary line.

      Train movement was thrown into a spectacle of confusion. Upon the incessant and well-ordered activities of the road the burning of the bridge fell like the heel of a heavy boot on an ant-hill; but the railroad men like ants rose to the emergency, and, where the possible failed, achieved the impossible.

      McCloud spent his days at the creek and his nights at Medicine Bend with his assistant and his chief despatcher, advising, counselling, studying out trouble reports, and steadying wherever he could the weakened lines of his operating forces. He was getting his first taste of the trials of the hardest-worked and poorest-paid man in the operating department of a railroad–the division superintendent.

      To these were added personal annoyances. A trainload of Duck Bar steers, shipped by Lance Dunning from the Crawling Stone Ranch, had been caught west of the bridge the very night of the fire. They had been loaded at Tipton and shipped to catch a good market, and under extravagant promises from the live-stock agent of a quick run to Chicago. When Lance Dunning learned that his cattle had been caught west of the break and would have to be unloaded, he swore up a horse in hot haste and started for Medicine Bend. McCloud, who had not closed his eyes for sixty hours, had just got into Medicine Bend from Smoky Creek and was sitting at his desk buried in a mass of papers, but he ordered the cattleman admitted. He was, in fact, eager to meet the manager of the big ranch and the cousin of Dicksie. Lance Dunning stood above six feet in height, and was a handsome man, in spite of the hard lines around his eyes, as he walked in; but neither his manner nor his expression was amiable.

      “Are you Mr. McCloud? I’ve been here three times this afternoon to see you,” said he, ignoring McCloud’s answer and a proffered chair. “This is your office, isn’t it?”

      McCloud, a little surprised, answered again and civilly: “It certainly is; but I have been at Smoky Creek for two or three days.”

      “What have you done with my cattle?”

      “The Duck Bar train was run back to Point of Rocks and the cattle were unloaded at the yard.”

      Lance Dunning spoke with increasing harshness: “By whose order was that done? Why wasn’t I notified? Have they had feed or water?”

      “All the stock caught west of the bridge was sent back for feed and water by my orders. It has all been taken care of. You should have been notified, certainly; it is the business of the stock agent to see to that. Let me inquire about it while you are here, Mr. Dunning,” suggested McCloud, ringing for his clerk.

      Dunning lost no time in expressing himself. “I don’t want my cattle held at Point of Rocks!” he said angrily. “Your Point of Rocks yards are infected. My cattle shouldn’t have been sent there.”

      “Oh, no! The old yards where they had a touch of fever were burned off the face of the earth a year ago. The new yards are perfectly sanitary. The loss of the bridge has crippled us, you know. Your cattle are being well cared for, Mr. Dunning, and if you doubt it you may go up and give our men any orders you like in the matter at our expense.”

      “You’re taking altogether too much on yourself when you run my stock over the country in this way,” exclaimed Dunning, refusing to be placated.

      “How am I to get to Point of Rocks–walk there?”

      “Not at all,” returned McCloud, ringing up his clerk and asking for a pass, which was brought back in a moment and handed to Dunning. “The cattle,” continued McCloud, “can be run down, unloaded, and driven around the break to-morrow–with the loss of only two days.”

      “And in the meantime I lose my market.”

      “It is too bad, certainly, but I suppose it will be several days before we can get a line across Smoky Creek.”

      “Why weren’t the cattle sent through that way yesterday? What have they been held at Point of Rocks for? I call the thing badly managed.”

      “We couldn’t get the empty cars up from Piedmont for the transfer until to-day; empties are very scarce everywhere now.”

      “There always have been empties here when they were wanted until lately. There’s been no head or tail to anything on this division for six months.”

      “I’m sorry that you have that impression.”

      “That impression is very general,” declared the stockman, with an oath, “and if you keep on discharging the only men on this division that are competent to handle a break like this, it is likely to continue!”

      “Just a moment!” McCloud’s finger rose pointedly. “My failure to please you in caring for your stock in an emergency may be properly a matter for comment; your opinion as to the way I am running this division is, of course, your own: but don’t attempt to criticise the retention or discharge of any man on my payroll!”

      Dunning strode toward him. “I’m a shipper on this line; when it suits me to criticise you or your methods, or anybody else’s, I expect to do so,” he retorted in high tones.

      “But you cannot tell me how to run my business!” thundered McCloud, leaning over the table in front of him.

      As the two men glared at each other Rooney Lee opened the door. His surprise at the situation amounted to consternation. He shuffled to the corner of the room, and while McCloud and Dunning engaged hotly again, Rooney, from the corner, threw a shot of his own into the quarrel. “On time!” he roared.

      The angry men turned. “What’s on time?” asked McCloud curtly.

      “Number One; she’s in and changing engines. I told them you were going West,” declared Rooney in so deep tones that his fiction would never have been suspected. If his cue had been, “My lord, the conductor waits,” it could not have been rung in more opportunely.

      Dunning, to emphasize, without a further word, his disgust for the situation and his contempt for the management, tore into scraps the pass that had been given him, threw the scraps on the floor, took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it; insolence could do no more.

      McCloud looked over at the despatcher. “No, I am not going West, Rooney. But if you will be good enough to stay here and find out from this man just how this railroad ought to be run, I will go to bed. He can tell you; the microbe seems to be working in his mind right now,” said McCloud, slamming down the roll-top of his desk. And with Lance Dunning glaring at him, somewhat speechless, he put on his hat and walked out of the room.

      It was but one of many disagreeable incidents due to the loss of the bridge. Complications arising from the tie-up followed him at every turn. It seemed as if he could not get away from trouble following trouble. After forty hours further of toil, relieved by four hours of sleep, McCloud found himself, rather dead than alive, back at Medicine Bend and in the little dining-room at Marion’s. Coming in at the cottage door on Fort Street, he dropped into a chair. The cottage rooms were empty. He heard Marion’s voice in the front shop; she was engaged with a customer. Putting his head on the table to wait a moment, nature asserted itself and McCloud fell asleep. He woke hearing a voice that he had heard СКАЧАТЬ