Whispering Smith/Chapter 1
Whispering Smith
CHAPTER I
THE WRECKING BOSS
NEWS of the wreck at Smoky Creek reached Medicine Bend from Point of Rocks at five o’clock. Sinclair, in person, was overseeing the making up of his wrecking train, and the yard, usually quiet at that hour of the morning, was alive with the hurry of men and engines. In the trainmaster’s room of the weather-beaten headquarters building, nicknamed by railroad men “The Wickiup,” early comers—sleepy-faced, keen-eyed trainmen—lounged on the tables and in chairs discussing the reports from Point of Rocks, and among them crew-callers and messengers moved in and out. From the door of the big operators’ room, pushed at intervals abruptly open, burst a blaze of light and the current crash of many keys; within, behind glass screens, alert, smooth-faced boys in shirt sleeves rained calls over the wires or bent with flying pens above clips, taking incoming messages. At one end of the room, heedless of the strain on the division, press despatches and cablegrams clicked in monotonous relay over commercial wires; while at the other, operators were taking from the despatchers’ room the train orders and the hurried dispositions made for the wreck emergency by Anderson, the assistant superintendent. At a table in the alcove the chief operator was trying to reach the division superintendent, McCloud, at Sleepy Cat; at his elbow, his best man was ringing the insistent calls of the despatcher and clearing the line for Sinclair and the wrecking gang. Two minutes after the wrecking train reported ready they had their orders and were pulling out of the upper yard, with right of way over everything to Point of Rocks.
The wreck had occurred just west of the creek. A fast east-bound freight train, double-headed, had left the track on the long curve around the hill, and when the wrecking train backed through Ten Shed Cut the sun streamed over the heaps of jammed and twisted cars strung all the way from the point of the curve to the foot of Smoky Hill. The crew of the train that lay in the ditch walked slowly up the track to where the wreckers had pulled up, and the freight conductor asked for Sinclair. Men rigging the derrick pointed to the hind car. The conductor, swinging up the caboose steps, made his way inside among the men that were passing out tools. The air within was bluish-thick with tobacco smoke, but through the haze the freightman saw facing him, in the far corner of the den-like interior, a man seated behind an old dining-car table, finishing his breakfast; one glimpse was enough to identify the dark beard of Sinclair, foreman of the bridges and boss of the wrecking gang.
Beside him stood a steaming coffee-tank, and in his right hand he held an enormous tin cup that he was about to raise to his mouth when he saw the freight conductor. With a laugh, Sinclair threw up his left hand and beckoned him over. Then he shook his hair just a little, tossed back his head, opened an unusual mouth, drained the cup at a gulp, and cursing the freightman fraternally, exclaimed, “How many cars have you ditched this time?”
The trainman, a sober-faced fellow, answered dryly, “All I had.”
“Running too fast, eh?” glared Sinclair.
With the box cars piled forty feet high on the track, the conductor was too old a hand to begin a controversy. “Our time’s fast,” was all he said.
Sinclair rose and exclaimed, “Come on!” And the two, leaving the car, started up the track. The wrecking boss paid no attention to his companion as they forged ahead, but where the train had hit the curve he scanned the track as he would a blue print. “They’ll have your scalp for this,” he declared abruptly.
“I reckon they will.”
“What’s your name?”
“Stevens.”
“Looks like all day for you, doesn’t it? No matter; I guess I can help you out.”
Where the merchandise cars lay, below the switch, the train crew knew that a tramp had been caught. At intervals they heard groans under the wreckage, which was piled high there. Sinclair stopped at the derrick, and the freight conductor went on to where his brakeman had enlisted two of Sinclair’s giants to help get out the tramp. A brake beam had crushed the man’s legs, and the pallor of his face showed that he was hurt internally, but he was conscious and moaned softly. The men had started to carry him to the way car when Sinclair came up, asked what they were doing, and ordered them back to the wreck. They hastily laid the tramp down. “But he wants water,” protested a brakeman who was walking behind, carrying his arm in a sling.
“Water!” bawled Sinclair. “Have my men got nothing to do but carry a tramp to water? Get ahead there and help unload those refrigerators. He’ll find water fast enough. Let the damned hobo crawl down to the creek after it.”
The tramp was too far gone for resentment; he had fainted when they laid him down, and his half-glazed eyes, staring at the sky, gave no evidence that he heard anything.
The sun rose hot, for in the Red Desert sky there is rarely a cloud. Sinclair took the little hill nearest the switch to bellow his orders from, running down among the men whenever necessary to help carry them out. Within thirty minutes, though apparently no impression had been made on the great heaps of wrenched and splintered equipment, Sinclair had the job in hand.
Work such as this was the man’s genius. In handling a wreck Sinclair was a marvel among mountain men. He was tall but not stout, with flashing brown eyes and a strength always equal to that of the best man in his crew. But his inspiration lay in destruction, and the more complete the better. There were no futile moves under Sinclair’s quick eyes, no useless pulling and hauling, no false grappling; but like a raven at a feast, every time his derrick-beak plucked at the wreck he brought something worth while away. Whether he was righting a tender, rerailing an engine, tearing out a car-body, or swinging a set of trucks into the clear, Sinclair, men said, had luck, and no confusion in day or night was great enough to drown his heavy tones or blur his rapid thinking.
Just below where the wrecking boss stood lay the tramp. The sun scorched his drawn face, but he made no effort to turn from it. Sometimes he opened his eyes, but Sinclair was not a promising source of help, and no one that might have helped dared venture within speaking distance of the injured man. When the heat and the pain at last extorted a groan and an appeal, Sinclair turned. “Damn you, ain’t you dead yet? What? Water?” He pointed to a butt standing in the shade of a car that had been thrown out near the switch. “There’s water; go get it!” The cracking of a box car as the derrick wrenched it from the wreck was engaging the attention of the boss, and as he saw the grapple slip he yelled to his men and pointed to the chains.
The tramp lay still a long time. At last he began to drag himself toward the butt. In the glare of the sun timbers strained and snapped, and men with bars and axes chopped and wrenched at the massive frames and twisted iron on the track. The wrecking gang moved like ants in and out of the shapeless débris, and at intervals, as the sun rose higher, the tramp dragged himself nearer the butt. He lay on the burning sand like a crippled insect, crawling, and waiting for strength to crawl. To him there was no railroad and no wreck, but only the blinding sun, the hot sand, the torture of thirst, and somewhere water, if he could reach it.
The freight conductor, Stevens, afraid of no man, had come up to speak to Sinclair, and Sinclair, with a smile, laid a cordial hand on his shoulder. “Stevens, it’s all right. I’ll get you out of this. Come here.” He led the conductor down the track where they had walked in the morning. He pointed to flange-marks on the ties. “See there—there’s where the first wheels left the track, and they left on the inside of the curve; a thin flange under the first refrigerator broke. I’ve got the wheel itself back there for evidence. They can’t talk fast running against that. Damn a private car-line, anyway! Give me a cigar—haven’t got any? Great guns, man, there’s a case of Key Wests open up ahead; go fill your pockets and your grip. Don’t be bashful; you’ve got friends on the division if you are Irish, eh?”
“Sure, only I don’t smoke,” said Stevens, with diplomacy.
“Well, you drink, don’t you? There’s a barrel of brandy open at the switch.”
The brandy-cask stood up-ended near the water-butt, and the men dipped out of both with cups. They were working now half naked at the wreck. The sun hung in a cloudless sky, the air was still, and along the right of way huge wrecking fires added to the scorching heat. Ten feet from the water-butt lay a flattened mass of rags. Crusted in smoke and blood and dirt, crushed by a vise of beams and wheels out of human semblance, and left now an aimless, twitching thing, the tramp clutched at Stevens’s foot as he passed. “Water!”
“Hello, old boy, how the devil did you get here?” exclaimed Stevens, retreating in alarm.
“Water!”
Stevens stepped to the butt and filled a cup. The tramp’s eyes were closed. Stevens poured the water over his face; then he lifted the man’s head and put a cupful to his lips.
“Is that hobo alive yet?” asked Sinclair, coming back smoking a cigar. “What does he want now? Water? Don’t waste any time on him.”
“It’s bad luck refusing water,” muttered Stevens, holding the cup.
“He’ll be dead in a minute,” growled Sinclair.
The sound of his voice roused the failing man to a fury. He opened his bloodshot eyes, and with the dregs of an ebbing vitality cursed Sinclair with a frenzy that made Stevens draw back. If Sinclair was startled he gave no sign. “Go to hell!” he exclaimed harshly.
With a ghastly effort the man made his retort. He held up his blood-soaked fingers. “I’m going all right—I know that,” he gasped, with a curse, “but I’ll come back for you!”
Sinclair, unshaken, stood his ground. He repeated his imprecation more violently; but Stevens, swallowing, stole out of hearing. As he disappeared, a train whistled in the west.