The Road Builders

“‘Don’t you touch me,’ I yelled; ‘don’t you touch me!’

“‘Well, come along, then,’ said he.

“‘Not a bit of it,’ said I. ‘I’ve nothing to do with you.’

“‘Well, you ran,’ he yelled; ‘you ran!’

“I just looked at him. ‘Do you call this running?’ said I.

“‘Well,’ said he, ‘the other fellow ran.’

“‘All right,’ said I, ‘we’ll run after him.’ So we did. Pretty soon they caught Charlie. And I was a bit nervous, for I didn’t know what he might say. But he was too scared to say anything. So I turned to the officer.

“‘Now,’ said I, ‘suppose you tell us what it is you want?’

“‘We want you,’ said one of them.

“‘No, you don’t,’ said I.

“‘Yes, we do,’ said he.

“It seemed to be getting time for some bluffing, so I hit right out. ‘Where’s your headquarters?’ said I.

“‘Right over here,’ said he.

“‘All right,’ said I, ‘that’s where we’re going, right now. We’ll see if two railroad men can’t walk through Chaplin’s yards whenever they feel like it.’

“And all the while we were talking I could hear that second train a-whooping it up for the state line – clickety – clickety – whoo-oo-oo! – clickety – clickety – getting fainter and fainter.

“There was a big captain dozing on a bench in the station house. When he saw us come in, he climbed up behind his desk so he could look down on us – they like to look down at you, you know.

“‘Well, Captain,’ said the officer, ‘we’ve got ’em.’

“‘Yes,’ the captain answered, looking down with a grin, ‘I think you have.’

“‘Well now,’ said I, to the captain, ‘who have you got?’

“‘That’ll be all right,’ said he, with another grin.

“It was pretty plain that he wasn’t going to say anything. There was something about the way he looked at us and especially about that grin that started me thinking. I decided on bluff number two. I took out my pass case, opened it, and spread out annual passes on the Great Windy, the Erie, the South-eastern, and the Lake Shore. My name was written on all of them, H. L. Tiffany, Pittsburg. The minute the captain saw them he looked queer, and I turned to Charlie and told him to get out his passes, which he did. For a minute the captain couldn’t say anything; then he turned on those three officers, and you ought to have heard what he said to them – gave ’em the whole forty-two degrees right there, concentrated.

“‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said to us, when he’d told the officer all that was on his mind, ‘this is pretty stupid business. I’m very sorry we’ve put you to this trouble, and I can tell you that if there is anything I can do to make it right, I’ll be more than glad to do it.’

“Well, there wasn’t anything in particular that I wanted just then except to get out of Buffalo quick. But I did stop to gratify my curiosity.

“‘Would you mind telling me, Captain,’ said I, ‘who you took us for?’

“The captain looked queer again, then he said, solemn, ‘We took you for body snatchers.’

“‘Body snatchers!’ I looked at Charlie, and Charlie, who was beginning to recover, looked at me.

“‘You see,’ the captain went on, ‘there’s an old building out there by the yard, and some young surgeons and medical students have been using it nights to cut up people in, and when the boys saw two well-dressed young fellows hanging around there in the middle of the night, they didn’t stop to think twice. I’m very sorry, indeed. I’ll send two of these men over to escort you to your hotel, with your permission.’

“That didn’t please me very much, but I couldn’t decline. So we started out, Charlie and I and the two coppers. But instead of going to the Swift House I steered them into the Mansion House, and dampened things up a bit. Then I got three boxes of cigars, Havana imported. I gave one to each of the officers, and on the bottom of the third I wrote, in pencil, ‘To the Captain, with the compliments of H. L. Tiffany, of the A. & G. W., Pittsburg, Pa.’ I thought he might have reason to be interested when he got his next morning’s paper in knowing just who we were. The coppers went back, tickled to death, and Charlie and I got out into the street.

“‘Well, Hen,’ said he, very quiet, ‘what are you going to do next?’

“‘You can do what you like, Charlie,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to take the morning three o’clock on the Michigan Central for Toronto.’ And Charlie, he thought maybe he’d go with me.”

Tiffany leaned back in a glow of reminiscence, and chuckled softly. Of the others, some had pushed back their chairs, some were leaning forward on the table. All had been, for half an hour, in the remote state of New York with this genial railroading pirate of the old school. Now, outside, a horse whinnied. Through the desert stillness came the clanking and coughing of a distant train. They were back in the gray Southwest, perhaps facing adventures of their own.

Carhart rose, for he had work to do at the headquarters tent. Young Van took the hint, and followed his example. But the long-nosed instrument man, the fire of a pirate soul shining out through his countenance, leaned eagerly forward. “What happened then?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing much,” Tiffany responded. “What could happen? Charlie and I came back from Toronto a few days later by way of Detroit.” Then his eye lighted up again. “But I like to think,” he added, “that next morning when that captain read about the theft of ninety gondola cars right out from under the sheriff’s nose by H. L. Tiffany, of Pittsburg, Pa., he was smoking one of said H. L. Tiffany’s cigars.”

The sun was up, hot and bright. The laborers and the men of the tie squad and the iron squad were straggling back to work. The wagons were backing in alongside the cars. And halfway down the knoll stood Carhart and Flint, both in easy western costume, Flint booted and spurred, stroking the neck of his well-kept pony.

“Well, so long, Paul,” said the bridge-builder.

“Good-by,” said Carhart.

It rested with these two lean men whether an S. & W. train should enter Red Hills before October. They both felt it, standing there at the track-end, their backs to civilization, their faces to the desert.

“All right, sir.” Flint got into his saddle. “All right, sir.” He turned toward the waiting wagon train. “Start along, boys!” he shouted in his thin voice.

Haddon galloped ahead with the order. The drivers took up their reins, and settled themselves for the long journey. Like Carhart’s men, they were a mixed lot – Mexicans, half-breeds, native Americans of a curiously military stamp, and nondescripts – but good-natured enough; and Flint, believing with Carhart in the value of good cooks, meant to keep them good-natured. One by one the whips cracked; a confusion of English, Spanish, and French cries went up; the mules plunged; the heavy wagons, laden with derricks, timber, tools, camp supplies, and the inevitable pile-driver, groaned forward; and the La Paz Bridge outfit was off.

There was about the scene a sense of enterprise, of buoyant freedom, of deeds to be done. Flint felt it, as he rode at the head of his motley cavalcade; for he was an imaginative man. Young Van, standing by the headquarters tent, felt it, for he was young. Tiffany, still at breakfast, felt it so strongly that he swore most unreasoningly at the cook. Down on the job, the humblest stake man stood motionless until Old Van, who showed no signs of feeling anything, asked him if he hadn’t had about enough of a sy-esta. As for Carhart, he was stirred, but his fancy did not roam far afield. From now on those things which would have it in their power to give him the deepest pleasure were the sight of gang after gang lifting cross-ties, carrying them to the grade, and dropping them into place; the sight of that growing line of stubby yellow timbers, and the sound of the rails clanking down upon them and of the rapid-fire sledges driving home the spikes.

Young Van poked his head in through the flaps.

“Well?” said the chief, looking up.

“Won’t you come down, Mr. Carhart? The boys want you to drive the first spike.”

Carhart smiled, then pushed back his chair, and strode out and down the slope to the grade.

“Stand back there, boys!” cried somebody.

Carhart caught up a sledge, swung it easily over his shoulder, and brought it down with a swing.

“There,” he cried, entering into the spirit of the thing, “there, boys! That means Red Hills or bust.”

The cheer that followed was led by the instrument man. Then Carhart, still smiling, walked back to his office. Now the work was begun.

But Old Van, the division engineer, was scowling. He wished the chief would quit stirring up these skylarking notions – on his division, anyway. It took just that much longer to take it out of the men – break them so you could drive them better.

CHAPTER IV