Tom Jarnagan, Junior/Chapter 1

no use talking, Tom; you must learn to keep your wits about you if you ever expect to become a successful passenger man. You can't hope to win in the railway service if you do your work with one eye on business and the other on something else."

Mr. Thomas Jarnagan, traveling passenger-agent of the Colorado East & West Railway, was a busy man with little time and less inclination for fault-finding; hence the reproof moved Tom Junior to say in his own defense:

"I don't fall down so very often, do I?"

"No, but when you do it counts. Now, to-day I had an hour between trains, and I've lost half of it because you were careless enough to copy that Jensen letter in the telegraph-book."

"I'm awfully sorry," Tom began contritely, but his father interrupted:

"I suppose you are, but regrets don't mend broken bones. The repentance that counts is the kind that keeps you from falling down in the same place another time."

"I always do mean to be more careful."

"Yes, but 'mean to' is a lame duck. I appreciate your unselfishness in giving up the Colorado trip to stay here and help me, but your help will be only a hindrance unless I can depend upon you while I'm away. I don't care how little you do, but I want to feel sure that the little is going to be done, and done right."

"I tackle everything I dare to," asserted Tom, who was not lacking in self-confidence.

"I know you do, and I'm not finding fault with your judgment. Your weak point is carelessness. Oversights in business are always expensive; there is hardly a day passes in which you couldn't neglect something that might make us no end of trouble."

Tom hung his head and made many good resolutions, some outspoken but more to himself. He was a dutiful son, and nothing was further from his intention than mere lip-service. Hence, when his father had left the office to take the train for Duluth, he copied the letters, cleaned up the desk, and did everything he could find to do before going home.

At that time—it is needful to be particular, because railway people are ever on the move—the Jarnagans lived in Merriam Park, which is half-way between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Mrs. Jarnagan and the two younger children were visiting in Colorado, and Kate and Tom were keeping house by themselves.

Mr. Jarnagan's business, which was the securing of passenger traffic for the C. E. & W. Railway, and a general oversight of that company's interests in the Northwest, kept him "on the wing" much of his time. His office was in St. Paul, and, like most traveling passenger-agents, he had no clerk. For this cause Tom, who had already made choice of his father's calling, sided with his sister when she argued that some of them ought to stay and keep the home open for their father.

"I'm with you, Kittie," Tom had said, when the Colorado trip was up for discussion in the family council; "you stay and run the house, and I'll stay and help out in the office." And thus it had been decided.

The arrangement was a fortnight old when Tom received his little lecture about carelessness. On the whole, matters had gone on very satisfactorily, and if Tom could have found enough to do at the office to keep him busy he would have made fewer slips. As it was, two or three hours a day were all he could find employment for, and so there was too much time to think of other things.

The two or three hours were usually given out of the afternoon; but on the morning following the reprimand a fishing-excursion intervened, and Tom was divided between a desire to spend an unbroken day at Juniper Lake, and a certain dutiful dislike to omit the customary trip to St. Paul. Having caught up with the office-work the previous evening, he knew there was nothing pressing; but there was no telling what the mail might bring, and on this chance he hesitated.

"Oh, what's the reason you can't go?" demanded Joe Johnson, when Tom gloomily shook his head at Joe's proposal to go to Juniper Lake for a day's fishing.

Tom stated his dilemma briefly and with force.

"If that's all, you just go ahead and catch fish," said Harry Bramwell, Tom's permanent chum. "I've got to go to the city this afternoon on an errand for Uncle Frank, and I'll get your father's mail and bring it out. What's the matter with that?"

Tom considered it for a moment, and concluded there was nothing "the matter with it." So he went with the others to the lake, neglecting, you may be sure, to tell Kate that he had authorized Harry to get the mail.

That was the last of it, so far as either of the principals was concerned. Tom came home late in the evening, too tired to think of anything but supper and bed; and since he did not happen to meet Harry the following day, the volunteer errand and its possible outcome in letters and telegrams was easily forgotten.

That afternoon, after Tom had been hammering on vacation Latin with a coach who came over twice a week from Hamline University, he went home and found Kate waiting for him on the veranda.

"Hurry, Tom!" she called as he came leisurely up the walk. "You must fly around and take the four-twelve to the city."

Tom quickened his pace. "I'm going to. What's the matter? Wire from father?"

"Yes; he's coming in on the Omaha local, and going right out with the Langton party to California. You're to take the auxiliary, and get the mail, and meet him at the station."

The "auxiliary" was a relay handbag kept ready packed in Mr. Jarnagan's room for just such emergencies as the present, and Tom ran upstairs and brought it down. "All aboard!" he said. "Anything else?"

"No,—but hurry, or you will miss the train."

But Tom did not miss it. Procrastination was not one of his failings; and, moreover, he prided himself on never missing a train—no railway man ever did that.

Now, it chanced that upon this day of all others the Omaha local was late—so late that Mr. Jarnagan had barely five minutes to spare between his arrival on one train and his departure on the other. Tom was waiting on the platform with the mail and the "auxiliary," and he carried the handbag over to the S. E. & S. W. train while his father opened and read the letters and telegrams.

"Sure you have everything, Tom, are you?" he asked when they reached the steps of the Langton sleeper.

"Sure," asserted Tom, confidently. Then his conscience nipped him smartly when he remembered, for the first time since its making, the resultless arrangement with Harry Bramwell the day before. Left to himself and given a little time, he would have made open confession, as the occasion required; but his father went on, speaking hurriedly and watching the rapidly diminishing truck-load of baggage which was the outgoing train's last anchor.

"I asked because I was expecting a letter from Aaron Simpson about that Utah colony. He promised to let me know when I was wanted, and said he'd write in a day or two. That was a week ago."

Tom knew all about the Utah colony, a large party of people preparing for a westward migration from a small town in southern Wisconsin—possible passengers for the C. E. & W.

"I know," he said, trying desperately to find words in which to tell of the Harry Bramwell episode.

"Well, there's no letter, so I suppose they are not ready to close yet; but we mustn't be caught napping on it, whatever happens. It's the largest party of the season, and Manville, the agent of our rival road, the Transcontinental, is after it, hot-foot. Listen, now, and I'll tell you exactly what to do. If the letter should come before to-morrow night, wire me at Kansas City and I'll turn back to Richville on the first train. Do you understand?"

Seeing his chance of confession escaping with the tumbling cataract of trunks pouring into the baggage-car, Tom's "Yes, sir" was anything but intelligent; but his father was too hurried to notice his abstraction.

"Good. If the letter doesn't get here by to-morrow night, I shall be too far away to turn back. In that event, you must find Fred Cargill, tell him the circumstances, and ask him whether he can arrange to go in my place."

"Where shall I find him?" asked Tom, absently, knowing very well that Cargill's office was two doors above his father's in East Third Street.

"Why, at his office, of course; and if he isn't in town, you must chase him by wire, and keep on wiring till you catch him and get his promise to go to Richville at once. Will you do that?"

Tom promised in one word, and the Southeastern conductor waved his hand to the impatient engineer. Mr. Jarnagan swung up to the step of the sleeper, and said once more while the first blast of steam was hissing through the cylinders:

"Remember; between now and to-morrow night you 're to wire me. If I don't hear from you at Kansas City, I'll know you are going to find Cargill. Good-by; and, whatever you do, don't slip up on this."

The train gathered headway, and Tom went slowly across to the "short-line" track to wait until he could go home. That was half an hour, and he had time to despise himself from several different points of view for his lack of frankness. What if the letter had come yesterday, and Harry had forgotten to give it to him? The thought was harrowing, and he refused to entertain it. Of course Harry had not found any mail at the office; if he had, he would have brought it to the house.

So reasoning, Tom went home, meaning to make assurance sure by hunting up Harry before he slept. But the good intention failed, as usual; and when he went to bed the proposed inquiry had gone to join the very considerable number of things he meant to do, but never did.

Now, a well-regulated conscience, when it is once unhandsomely snubbed, is apt to avenge itself by taking a nap. Tom saw Harry half a dozen times during the next two days, but he never thought to ask about the mail; and as no letter came from Farmer Simpson, there was nothing to jog his memory.

But on the third day the suspended sword fell, and Tom's peace of mind fled shrieking. They had been fishing together all morning, and on the way home Harry had occasion to search his pockets for a bit of missing gear. Among the many things which came to light in this process were three letters addressed to Mr. Thomas Jarnagan, and Harry gave them to Tom with much contrition expressed in few words.

Tom heard nothing and saw nothing but the letters, which he tore open with shaking hands. Two were unimportant. The third was from Aaron Simpson, written five days before, and asking Mr. Jarnagan to come to Richville on the first train.

Tom had a sharp attack of dizziness when he realized the magnitude of the thing. Then came the reaction, and he bounded away with nerves a-tingle and his heart pounding a double-quick, leaving Harry without a word of explanation, and taking the shortest cut across lots for home.

Kate was away and the house locked, but he found the key under the mat. After he had dashed up to his room and changed his clothes, there was still time to snatch a bite of luncheon from the pantry, and to scribble a brief note to Kate, telling her he was going to find Cargill, and what for. Fifteen minutes later he was in St. Paul, making breathless inquiry at the ticket-office for Mr. Frederic Cargill.

The search for the traveling passenger-agent of the Utah Inland promised to be sufficiently exciting. Everywhere Tom went, Cargill had just preceded him. The chase led him around and about among the railway-offices, and finally took him back to his starting-point at Cargill's headquarters in East Third Street. Here, again, he was a minute too late. The passenger-agent had just gone down to take the train for Minneapolis; and as Tom braced himself for a run, the office-boy gave him a telegram.

"Give that to Mr. Cargill, and tell him it came just after he left," said the boy; and Tom jammed the envelope into his pocket and made a quick dash for the Union Depot, reaching the platform just in time to see the short-line train disappear around the curve in the yard.

That meant a trying wait of half an hour before he could follow, and he walked it out on the platform with his head down and his hands in his pockets, reflecting upon the wisdom of that Scripture which says: "Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!"

A tempting but unnecessary fishing-trip; the very natural "trusting to luck" and to his chum; a sprinkling of forgetfulness and a pinch of inaccuracy in the answer to his father's question: these were the kindlings. And out of the fire would come the loss of a great deal of money for the Colorado East & West Railway, a reprimand or something worse for its passenger-agent, his own father, and disgrace enough to bury the passenger-agent's son beyond all hope of a business resurrection.

Tom's conscience was wide awake now, sketching disquieting pictures with chalk-talk rapidity and startling clearness of detail.

"Great Peter! what a terrible mess I've made of it!" he ejaculated, tramping anxiously up and down, and turning every tenth second to mark the snail-like movement of the minute-hand on the big clock. "Five days lost, and father out of reach, and Mr. Cargill dodging around so that I just can't get at him. But I will find him—I'll never go home till I do."

He meant what he said, but when the tardy train finally bore him to Minneapolis, and he had made the round of the ticket-offices and hotels without finding a trace of Cargill, he began to doubt his ability to keep the promise. When he was about to give up in despair, he stumbled upon John Crosby, the Minneapolis ticket-agent of the S. E. & S. W., and recovered the lost clue.

"Fred Cargill? He's gone to Lake Minnetonka. Want to see him?"

"I've got to see him," Tom corrected. "Did he go to Hotel Lafayette?"

"Yes; can't you wire?"

"No; I've got to see him and talk to him."

"Well, you can take the one-o'clock train and skip out to the lake. Got money enough to pay your fare?"

Tom remembered that he had not, and admitted it.

Crosby laughed. He was a good friend of the Jarnagans, and he was shrewd enough to guess that Tom was about his father's business. Wherefore he pressed a five-dollar bill into Tom's hand and said: "Here you are; I'll get it back from your father when I see him. By the way, where is your father?"

"Didn't you know? He has gone to California with the Langton party," said Tom.

"Oho!" said the ticket-agent, as if that explained something.

"What is it?" queried Tom, acutely alive to the hidden possibilities in things.

"Oh, nothing much, I guess. Charlie Manville was here yesterday, and he seemed tolerably anxious to find out where your father was."

Tom understood perfectly. Manville knew about the Utah colony, and had made a flying trip to ascertain if his rival, Mr. Jarnagan, the C. E. & W. representative, would be on the ground.

"That's a pointer," Tom said. "Good-by." And he sped away to the Union Station, caught his train, and was swiftly transported to the great hotel at Minnetonka Beach.

Here the chase ended tamely. The first person Tom saw as he went up the steps to the broad veranda was the Utah Inland traveling agent; and when he had told his tale, Cargill readily consented to take the night train for Richville.

"Zabulon's on our line and we'll get the business, anyway," he said; "but I'd ride a couple of nights any time to help your father out."

"Thank you," said Tom, beginning to live again. "You'll be sure to go?"

"Sure; unless something happens between now and train-time. You say they've notified your father?"

"Yes."

"How long ago?"

"Mr. Simpson's letter was written last Thursday. It—it has been mislaid," faltered Tom.

"Whew!" Cargill whistled. "Five days! Why, it must have been mailed two days before your father left."

"It was," Tom admitted; "but it was—er—mislaid." He could think of no other word.

"Well, I'll go; but that makes it a wild-goose chase, sure. The business has probably gone by default long before this."

So it came about that the burden rolled back upon Tom's shoulders, and he started for the station to take the train for Minneapolis and home with his responsibility weighing upon him like a nightmare. At the station, and when the train was already in sight, he remembered the telegram which had been given him in St. Paul to hand to Cargill, and had barely time to dash back to the hotel with it, and to catch his train as it was moving out.

It was an hour and a half later when he reached home; and Kate, who was watching for him, ran out as he came up the steps, and handed him a freshly written telegram.

"What does this mean, Tom?" she questioned. "Haven't you seen Mr. Cargill?"

Tom's jaw fell and his eyes grew wide as he read the message. It was dated an hour earlier at Hotel Lafayette, and addressed to T. Jarnagan, Jr., Merriam Park: