The Last Spike by Cy Warman (red white and royal blue hardcover .TXT) 📕

be cotton."

"Sure ye would," said Shea, "and ate the cotton too, ef your masther told ye to. 'Tis the likes of ye, ye bloomin' furreighner, that kapes the thrust alive in this country."

When they were like to come to blows, Kelly, with a mild show of superiority, which is second nature to a section boss, would interfere and restore order. All day they worked and argued, lifting low joints and lowering high centres; and when the red sun sank in the tree-tops, filtering its gold through the golden leaves, they lifted the car onto the rails and started home.

When the men had mounted, Lucien at the forward handle and Burke and Shea side by side on the rear bar, they waited impatiently for Kelly to light his pipe and seat himself comfortably on the front of the car, his heels hanging near to the ties.

There was no more talk now. The men were busy pumping, the "management" inspecting the fish-plates, the culverts, and, incidentally, watching the red sun slide down behind the trees.

At the foot of a long slope, down which the men had been pumping with all their might, there was a short bridge. The forest was heavy here, and already the shadow of the woods lay over the right-of-way. As the car reached the farther end of the culvert, the men were startled by a great explosion. The hand-car was lifted bodily and thrown from the track.

The next thing Lucien remembers is that he woke from a fevered sleep, fraught with bad dreams, and felt warm water running over his chest. He put his hand to his shirt-collar, removed it, and found it red with blood. Thoroughly alarmed, he got to his feet and looked, or rather felt, himself over. His fingers found an ugly ragged gash in the side of his neck, and the fear and horror of it all dazed him.

* * * * *

He reeled and fell again, but this time did not lose consciousness.

Finally, when he was able to drag himself up the embankment to where the car hung crosswise on the track, the sight he saw was so appalling he forgot his own wounds.

On the side opposite to where he had fallen, Burke and Shea lay side by side, just as they had walked and worked and fought for years, and just as they would have voted on the morrow had they been spared. Immediately in front of the car, his feet over one rail and his neck across the other, lay the mortal remains of Kelly the boss, the stub of his black pipe still sticking between his teeth. As Lucien stooped to lift the helpless head his own blood, spurting from the wound in his neck, flooded the face and covered the clothes of the limp foreman. Finding no signs of life in the section boss, the wounded, and by this time thoroughly frightened, French-Canadian turned his attention to the other two victims. Swiftly now the realization of the awful tragedy came over the wounded man. His first thought was of the express now nearly due. With a great effort he succeeded in placing the car on the rails, and then began the work of loading the dead. Out of respect for the office so lately filled by Kelly, he was lifted first and placed on the front of the car, his head pillowed on Lucien's coat. Next he put Burke aboard, bleeding profusely the while; and then began the greater task of loading Shea. Shea was a heavy man, and by the time Lucien had him aboard he was ready to faint from exhaustion and the loss of blood.

Now he must pump up over the little hill; for if the express should come round the curve and fall down the grade, the hand-car would be in greater danger than ever.

After much hard work he gained the top of the hill, the hot blood spurting from his neck at each fall of the handle-bar, and went hurrying down the long easy grade to Charlevoix.

To show how the trifles of life will intrude at the end, it is interesting to hear Lucien declare that one of the first thoughts that came to him on seeing the three prostrate figures was, that up to that moment the wreck had worked a Republican gain of one vote, with his own in doubt.

But now he had more serious work for his brain, already reeling from exhaustion. At the end of fifteen minutes he found himself hanging onto the handle, more to keep from falling than for any help he was giving the car. The evening breeze blowing down the slope helped him, so that the car was really losing nothing in speed. He dared not relax his hold; for if his strength should give out and the car stop, the express would come racing down through the twilight and scoop him into eternity. So he toiled on, dazed, stupefied, fighting for life, surrounded by the dead.

Presently above the singing of the wheels he heard a low sound, like a single, smothered cough of a yard engine suddenly reversed. Now he had the feeling of a man flooded with ice-water, so chilled was his blood. Turning his head to learn the cause of delay (he had fancied the pilot of an engine under his car), he saw Burke, one of the dead men, leap up and glare into his face. That was too much for Lucien, weak as he was, and twisting slightly, he sank to the floor of the car.

Slowly Burke's wandering reason returned. Seeing Shea at his feet, bloodless and apparently unhurt, he kicked him, gently at first, and then harder, and Shea stood up. Mechanically the waking man took his place by Burke's side and began pumping, Lucien lying limp between them. Kelly, they reasoned, must have been dead some time, by the way he was pillowed.

When Shea was reasonably sure that he was alive, he looked at his mate.

"Phat way ar're ye feelin'?" asked Burke.

"Purty good fur a corpse. How's yourself?"

"Oh, so-so!"

"Th' Lord is good to the Irish."

"But luck ut poor Kelly."

"'Tis too bad," said Shea, "an' him dyin' a Republican."

"'Tis the way a man lives he must die."

"Yes," said Shea, thoughtfully, "thim that lives be the sword must go be the board."

When they had pumped on silently for awhile, Shea asked, "How did ye load thim, Burke?"

"Why--I--I suppose I lifted them aboard. I had no derrick."

"Did ye lift me, Burke?"

"I'm damned if I know, Shea," said Burke, staring ahead, for Kelly had moved. "Keep her goin'," he added, and then he bent over the prostrate foreman. He lifted Kelly's head, and the eyes opened. He raised the head a little higher, and Kelly saw the blood upon his beard, on his coat, on his hands.

"Are yez hurted, Kelly?" he asked.

"Hurted! Man, I'm dyin'. Can't you see me heart's blood ebbin' over me?" And then Burke, crossing himself, laid the wounded head gently down again.

By this time they were nearing their destination. Burke, seeing Lucien beyond human aid, took hold again and helped pump, hoping to reach Charlevoix in time to secure medical aid, or a priest at least, for Kelly.

When the hand-car stopped in front of the station at Charlevoix, the employees watching, and the prospective passengers waiting, for the express train gathered about the car.

"Get a docther!" shouted Burke, as the crowd closed in on them.

In a few moments a man with black whiskers, a small hand-grip, and bicycle trousers panted up to the crowd and pushed his way to the car.

"What's up?" he asked; for he was the company's surgeon.

"Well, there's wan dead, wan dying, and we're all more or less kilt," said Shea, pushing the mob back to give the doctor room.

Lifting Lucien's head, the doctor held a small bottle under his nose, and the wounded man came out. Strong, and the reporter would say "willing hands," now lifted the car bodily from the track and put it down on the platform near the baggage-room.

When the doctor had revived the French-Canadian and stopped the flow of blood, he took the boss in hand. Opening the man's clothes, he searched for the wound, but found none.

They literally stripped Kelly to the waist; but there was not a scratch to be found upon his body. When the doctor declared it to be his opinion that Kelly was not hurt at all, but had merely fainted, Kelly was indignant.

Of course the whole accident (Lucien being seriously hurt) had to be investigated, and this was the finding of the experts:--

A tin torpedo left on the rail by a flagman was exploded by the wheel of the hand-car. A piece of tin flew up, caught Lucien in the neck, making a nasty wound. Lucien was thrown from the car, when it jumped the track, so violently as to render him unconscious. Kelly and Burke and Shea, picking themselves up, one after the other, each fainted dead away at the sight of so much blood.

Lucien revived first, took in the situation, loaded the limp bodies, and pulled for home, and that is the true story of the awful wreck on the Pere Marquette.


THE STORY OF AN ENGLISHMAN

A young Englishman stood watching a freight train pulling out of a new town, over a new track. A pinch-bar, left carelessly by a section gang, caught in the cylinder-cock rigging and tore it off.

Swearing softly, the driver climbed down and began the nasty work of disconnecting the disabled machinery. He was not a machinist. Not all engine-drivers can put a locomotive together. In fact the best runners are just runners. The Englishman stood by and, when he saw the man fumble his wrench, offered a hand. The driver, with some hesitation, gave him the tools, and in a few minutes the crippled rigging was taken down, nuts replaced, and the rigging passed by the Englishman to the fireman, who threw it up on the rear of the tank.

"Are you a mechanic?" asked the driver.

"Yes, sir," said the Englishman, standing at least a foot above the engineer. "There's a job for me up the road, if I can get there."

"And you're out of tallow?"

The Englishman was not quite sure; but he guessed "tallow" was United States for "money," and said he was short.

"All right," said the engine-driver; "climb on."

The fireman was a Dutchman named Martin, and he made the Englishman comfortable; but the Englishman wanted to work. He wanted to help fire the engine, and Martin showed him how to do it, taking her himself on the hills. When they pulled into the town of E., the Englishman went over to the round-house and the foreman asked him if he had ever "railroaded." He said No, but he was a machinist. "Well, I don't want you," said the foreman, and the Englishman went across to the little eating-stand where the trainmen were having dinner. Martin moved over and made room for the stranger between himself and his engineer.

"What luck?" asked the latter.

"Hard luck," was the answer, and without more talk the men hurried on through the meal.

They had to eat dinner and do an hour's