Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 14/Number 3/Signals Against Him/Chapter 2

RAWL was fond of a joke, even if it happened to be at his own expense. That little matter of the missing semicolon had put him in a good humor, so that the stars seemed to be grouping themselves auspiciously for Harding.

“Personally,” said Harding, with a grin, “I never have any use for punctuation marks, and now I'm mighty glad somebody forgot that semicolon.”

In spite of his apparent cheerfulness, and the realization that the moment had come for him to strike, and to strike hard, deep down in his soul there was a quivering sense of injustice and wrong. After all the Hardings had done and given for that line of road, Trawl would have turned down his request for a fifty-mile ride, and had intended to turn it down, with a heartless parody on the message from Sweetbriar.

But Trawl was a protégé and pet of the G. M.'s. He had been advanced to his post over the heads of others—men who may not have been more able, but who certainly were more deserving. By nature the superintendent was cold and calculating. He loved his authority, and it was much in evidence up and down the division; although, to give him his due, he tried to be just.

Still chuckling over the message, which he had laid on the desk in front of him where his eyes could easily fall on it from time to time, he took a cigar from his vest pocket and slowly snipped off the end with a contrivance that swung from his watch chain.

“It's on me, Harding,” said Trawl. “And now you're here, and we're together, and there's something on your mind. You'll never have a better chance to get it out of your system.

“I want an engine, Mr. Trawl,” said Harding respectfully.

“I suppose,” and the superintendent slowly struck a match, “that you're not particular whether it's a switch bumper in the yards or one of the new ten-wheelers on the fast-passenger run?”

“No,” was the answer, while the wistful gray eyes searched the official's face, “I'm not particular. I've knocked around, tin-canned and double-crossed by my record on this division, until I'm tired of it. Either I'll get that private hoodoo of mine, or it will get me. I'm out to make good, or to run head on into something that will lay me out for keeps.”

“And the Jerkwater Division is the instrument you have made up your mind to use?”

“Why not, Mr. Trawl? Here's where trouble first got crossways of my track, and here's where the line ought to be cleared.”

“And very likely at the company's expense. I don't see it, Hardluck. If I remember, I was master mechanic when you were a sweeper in the roundhouse. Even then, my lad, you couldn't stub your toe without putting the company's foot in it to the tune of dollars and cents. We could never put a finger on you when it came to laying the blame, but, for all that, misfortune dogged your heels, and you were mighty expensive. When you got your job of wiping, Carter was the roundhouse boss. It was you, wasn't it, who ran the old Eighty-seven into the turntable pit?"

“That wasn't my fault, sir. I was told to come on with the Eighty-seven before the turntable was locked. Morris”

“I'm not saying it was your fault, Hardluck,” cut in Trawl, with a wave of his cigar, “but your misfortune. The road shouldered your misfortunes, then, but I'll be hanged if I can see why that should be the case now. After that affair with the Eighty-seven you learned to pound the key. You got so you could take and send with the best of them, and you were tried out on the night trick at Ransom. What happened there? You were off duty when you should have taken an order”

“I was down the track punching a cowboy's head for shooting out my switch lights,” broke in Harding, with spirit. “I was young then, and key pounding had made me limp and unsteady. And there happened to be two cowboys instead of one. When I came to myself the extra west was feeling its way through the Ransom yard, and the headlight of the up passenger was just showing around the bend. There was a close call, but I wasn't responsible.”

“Close call!” repeated the superintendent, his hair rising with the thought of it. “Here at Crook everybody was having nervous prostration, and a call had been sent out for the wrecking crew. No, Harding, you weren't responsible; but it was just your devilish ill luck. Your uncle thought he could break the black spell that had settled down on you, and took you into the cab. He did do something, I'll admit that, and it looked as though you had got your jinx on the siding and had spiked the switch, when along came that trouble on the Piute, and”

“For Heaven's sake, Mr. Trawl!” cried Harding, white-faced and leaning forward, “you can't think I had anything to do with that? The track-walker had reported the bridge safe!”

“Billy,” returned Trawl, not unkindly, “you had no more to do with what happened then than a babe in arms, but it was all a part of the trouble trail that followed you persistently all over this division. You were let out because the road was afraid to hang on to you any longer. Why can't you get into some other business? I have known men”—and here the superintendent looked thoughtfully at the burning tip of his cigar—“I have known men who were cursed with misfortune as railroaders, but who rose rapidly and successfully on the ranges and in the cities. Why don't you get into something else?”

“I've tried,” said Harding bitterly. “What do you think I've been doing the past year? The reputation I've loaded up with on this road has hounded me, and everybody is afraid to give me a chance. Anyhow, I'd rather be a car tink on this jerkwater division than a captain of industry in a line that has nothing to do with rails and ties. I belong to a family of railroaders, Mr. Trawl, and with me it has got to be the railroad or nothing.”

“I'm mighty sorry, Harding, and that's a fact,” went on Trawl, after a period of thought, “but giving you an engine, or even a place in the cab, is out of the question. The trainmaster don't want you, the roadmaster wouldn't take you on a bet, the roundhouse boss would resign if we tried to put you there, and the dispatcher would probably throw a fit if I suggested that he give you a key.”

“Is there anything wrong with—with my ability?” murmured Harding, his hopes slowly descending toward zero.

“Your ability is beyond dispute. It's merely that everybody on this division is afraid of you. But I don't want to be hard. The sacrifice your father made for the good of this company has not been forgotten. We don't consider that the small pension given your mother cancels that debt. We have a friendly feeling toward you, Billy, but it's a feeling that must be exercised with prudence. I want to think over your case. Will you be advised by me?”

“Certainly, sir,” said Harding, grasping at the straw of hope.

“Then go up to Divide, and stay there until something turns up where I think we can take a chance on doing you a good turn. Grow a beard—why not?” and Trawl winked.

“Grow a beard?” repeated Harding, puzzled.

“That's the idea! I don't imagine you can change your appearance so your close friends will fail to recognize you, but I'll try to find something for you that will not bring you into personal contact with those who know you too well. When you get a tip from me, my boy, run down to the Junction. Mail me a letter from there, asking for a job, and sign that letter John Smith, or Tom Brown, or—or—well, anything but William Horace Harding. In that way, understand, I may be able to help you without setting this division by the ears.”

Trawl's idea flashed over Harding suddenly. It rather nettled the young man to think that he had to go out of his character in order to secure a place on that road.

“It will be a joke on the fellows of the Jerkwater Division,” pursued Trawl, his eyes crinkling with subdued mirth. “They've got it in for Hardluck Harding, and are afraid to work with him; but possibly we can put one over on them, Billy. We can try, anyhow,” and the superintendent finished with a laugh.

“I'm not ashamed of the name, Mr. Trawl,” said Harding, “and neither am I afraid to use it while bucking the line.”

“I've yet to find the first man who thinks you're afraid of anything. But that isn't the point. In helping you, I've got to use strategy. Beats all how the fool notion that a man's a hoodoo and marked up for trouble will take hold of a lot of railroaders and play hob with their common sense. Go up and down this line, Harding, and you'll not find a man who'll admit being superstitious; but just scratch the veneer, and you'll find a black list filled with Fridays, cross-eyed women, red-headed men, nine and its multiples for locomotive numbers, black cats, and so on. It's mighty queer, but it's a fact. If you're bound to break the back of your particular hoodoo, we've got to go about it diplomatically.”

“All right, sir,” agreed Harding reluctantly. “I'm obliged to you for the suggestion. Can I get transportation up to Divide?”

“Is that the way you're fixed?” Trawl's hand groped for his pocket. “I couldn't take that message from Sweetbriar literally, you know.”

“It should have been taken that way,” said Harding, with a reddening face. “But I'll not have any money from you, sir. I'm not an object of charity yet, I hope. All I want is a chance to break this run of tough luck.”

“I like your spirit, anyway,” said Trawl, rising. “A dozen loads of steel are going over the mountain to-night, and I'll speak to Davy and see that he takes you as far as Divide in the way car. It may be a useless wish, my boy, but all the same, and for the sake of your grit, I wish you luck.”

Harding shook hands with the superintendent; and when he went downstairs and out of the building he was more hopeful of the future than he had been at any time for a year. Trawl might be a favorite with the Big Boss, but certainly he had shown the white side in his dealing with the unfortunate young railroader. He had been cautious, of course, and perhaps unnecessarily so. At that dismal period of his career, however, small favors were very gratefully received by Harding.

There was no doubt that the joke wrapped up in the super's message to Lansing had inclined the head of. the division to receive the former employee of the road in an amiable and condescending spirit. And it was equally plain that his willingness to help Harding on was prompted, at least in part, by a spirit of fun and a desire to “put something over” on the rest of the division.

There was nothing funny about all this to Harding. He was hungry to get out on the main line and run regardless, meeting a sorry situation with all the energy and sincerity and courage that were in him. Trawl's “slow order” disappointed him, and the disposition to treat a crisis in a man's life as a jest saddened him. But the super had to be taken as he was, and, as stated before, Harding was not disposed to be critical.

But Davy! He wished he had been going up to Divide with any other man on the line.

So Chris Davy had got a freight run! Matters had not been standing still on the division during the past year.

Harding knew Davy as hostler at the roundhouse. Uncle Horace had always insisted on having his engine turned “with the sun.” And this small eccentricity of one of the best drivers on the line had been hooted by Chris Davy. Uncle Horace trusted William to see to it always that the engine was turned in accordance with his desires. Davy had tried to turn it the other way, once, in spite of William's remonstrances, and, in the clash that resulted, the boss hostler was knocked into an ash pit and William had turned the engine himself. That was why William hated to ride with Chris Davy to Divide.