Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/62

 only I get a shiver every time I read a newspaper headline that I know, besides being a death-warrant, is tearing the heart out of some poor devil. You've seen the kind I mean, read scores of them—"Dispatcher's Blunder Costs Many Lives"—or something to the same effect. Maybe you'll think it queer, but for days afterward I can't handle an order book or a train sheet when I'm on duty without my heart being in my mouth half the time.

What's this got to do with Breen? Well, in one way, it hasn't anything to do with him; and, then again, in another way, it has. I want you to know that a blunder means something to a dispatcher besides the loss of his job. Do you think they're a cold-blooded, calloused lot? I want you to know that they care. Oh, yes, they're human. They've got a heart and they've got a soul; the one to break, the other to sear. My God! think of it—a slip. That's the ghastly horror of it all—a slip! Don't you think they can feel? Don't you think their own agony of mind is punishment enough without the added reproach, and worse, of their fellows? But let it go, it's the Law of the Game.

I said they didn't know much about Breen out here then except that he was a pretty good dispatcher, but as far as that goes it didn't help him any, rather the reverse, when the smash came. The better the man the harder the fall, what? It's generally that way, isn't it? Perhaps you're wondering what I know about him. I'll tell you. If any one knew Breen, I knew him. I was only a kid then, I'm a man now. I