Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/68

 thought of throwing the blame on anybody else. Breen wasn't that kind. Oh, yes, he could have done it. He could have put the blunder on the night man at the Gap where Mooney received his Elktail holding order, and Breen's order book would have left it an open question as to which of the two had made the mistake—would probably have let him out and damned the other. You say from the way he acted he didn't think of that and therefore the temptation didn't come to him. Yes, I know what you mean. Not so much to Breen's credit, what? Well, I don't know, it depends on the way you look at it. I'd rather believe the thought didn't come because the man's soul was too clean. It was clean them—no matter what he did afterward.

There have been death scenes of dispatchers before, many of them—there will be others in the days to come, many of them. So long as there are railroads and so long as men are frail as men, lacking the infallibility of a higher power, just so long will they be inevitable. But no death scene of a dispatcher's career was ever as this one was. Breen was his own judge, his own jury, his own executioner. Do you think I could ever forget his words? He pointed his hand toward the window that faced the western stretch of track, toward the foothills, toward the mighty peaks of the Rockies that towered beyond them, and the life, the being of the man was in his voice. They came slowly, those words, wrenched from a broken heart, torn from a shuddering soul.

"I wish to God that it were me in their stead.