Golden Stories

I suppose every old traveler on the system knew Sankey. He was not only always ready to answer questions; but, what is more, ready to answer the same question twice. It is that which makes conductors gray-headed and spoils their chances for heaven—answering the same questions over and over again. Children were apt to be startled a bit at first sight of Sankey, he was so dark. But Sankey had a very quiet smile that always made them friends after the first trip through the sleepers, and they sometimes ran about asking for him after he had left the train. Of late years—and this hurts a bit—these very same children, grown ever so much bigger, and riding again to or from California or Japan or Australia, will ask, when they reach the West End, about the Indian conductor. But the conductors who now run the overland trains pause at the question, checking over the date limits on the margins of the coupon tickets, and handing the envelopes back, look at the children, and say quietly: "He isn't running any more."

If you have ever gone over our line to the mountains or to the coast, you may remember at McCloud, where they change engines and set the diner in or out, the pretty little green park to the east of the depot, with a row of catalpa trees along the platform line. It looks like a glass of spring water. If it happened to be Sankey's run and a regular West End day, sunny and delightful, you would be sure to see standing under the catalpas a shy, dark-skinned girl of fourteen or fifteen years, silently watching the preparations for the departure of the Overland. And after the new engine had been backed champing down, and harnessed to its long string of vestibuled sleepers; after the air-hose had been connected and examined; after the engineer had swung out of his cab, filled his cups, and swung in again; after the fireman and his helper had disposed of their slice-bar and shovel and given the tender a final sprinkle, and after the conductor had walked leisurely forward, compared time with the engineer, and cried, "All Abo-o-o-ard!" then, as your coach moved slowly ahead, you might notice, under the receding catalpas, the little girl waving a parasol or a handkerchief at the outgoing train. That is, at Conductor Sankey; for she was his daughter, Neeta Sankey. Her mother was Spanish, and died when Neeta was a wee bit. Neeta and the Limited were Sankey's whole world.

When Georgie Sinclair began pulling the Limited, running west opposite Foley, he struck up a great friendship with Sankey. Sankey, though he was hard to start, was full of early-day stories. Georgie, it seemed, had the faculty of getting him to talk; perhaps because when he was pulling Sankey's train he made extraordinary efforts to keep on time; time was a hobby with Sankey. Foley said he was so careful of it that he let his watch stop when he was off duty just to save time. Sankey loved to breast the winds and the floods and the snows, and if he could get home pretty near on schedule, with everybody else late, he was happy; and in respect of that, as Sankey used to say, Georgie Sinclair could come nearer gratifying Sankey's ambition than any engine-runner we had. Even the firemen used to observe that the young engineer, always neat, looked still neater on the days when he took out Sankey's train.

By and by there was an introduction under the catalpas. After that it was noticed that Georgie began wearing gloves on the engine—not kid gloves, but yellow dogskin; and black silk shirts—he bought them in Denver. Then—such an odd way engineers have of paying compliments—when Georgie pulled into town on Number Two, if it was Sankey's train, the big sky-scraper would give a short, hoarse scream, a most peculiar note, just as it drew past Sankey's house, which stood on the brow of the hill west of the yards. Thus Neeta would know that Number Two and her father, and naturally Mr. Sinclair, were in again, and all safe and sound.

When the railway trainmen held their division fair at McCloud there was a lantern to be voted to the most popular conductor—a gold-plated lantern with a green curtain in the globe. Cal Stewart and Ben Doton, who were very swell conductors and great rivals, were the favorites, and had the town divided over their chances for winning it. But at the last moment Georgie Sinclair stepped up to the booth and cast a storm of votes for old man Sankey. Doton's friends and Stewart's laughed at first; but Sankey's votes kept pouring in amazingly. The two favorites got frightened; they pooled their issues by throwing Stewart's vote to Doton. But it wouldn't do. Georgie Sinclair, with a crowd of engineers—Cameron, Kennedy, Foley, Bat Mullen, and Burns—came back at them with such a swing that in the final five minutes they fairly swamped Doton. Sankey took the lantern by a thousand votes. But I understood it cost Georgie and his friends a pot of money.

Sankey said all the time that he didn't want the lantern, but just the same he always carried that particular lantern, with his full name, Sylvester Sankey, ground into the glass just below the green mantle. Pretty soon, Neeta being then eighteen, it was rumored that Sinclair was engaged to Miss Sankey, and was going to marry her. And marry her he did; though that was not until after the wreck in the Blackwood gorge after the Big Snow.

It goes by just that name on the West End yet; for never were such a winter and such a snow known on the plains and in the mountains. One train on the northern division was stalled six weeks that winter, and one whole coach was chopped up for kindling wood. The great and desperate effort of the company was to hold open the main line, the artery which connected the two coasts. It was a hard winter on trainmen. Week after week the snow kept falling and blowing. The trick was not to clear the line; it was to keep it clear. Every day we sent out trains with the fear that we should not see them again for a week. Freight we didn't pretend to move; local passenger business had to be abandoned. Coal, to keep our engines and our towns supplied, we had to carry; and after that all the brains and muscle and motive power were centered on keeping One and Two, our through passenger trains, running.

Our trainmen worked like Americans; there were no cowards on our rolls. But after too long a strain men become exhausted, benumbed, indifferent; reckless, even. The nerves give out, and will-power seems to halt on indecision; but decision is the life of the fast train. None of our conductors stood the hopeless fight like Sankey. He was patient, taciturn, untiring; and in a conflict with the elements, ferocious. All the fighting blood of his ancestors seemed to course again in that struggle with the winter king. I can see him yet, on bitter days, standing alongside the track in a heavy pea-jacket and Napoleon boots, a sealskin cap drawn snugly over his straight black hair, watching, ordering, signaling, while Number One, with its frost-bitten sleepers behind a rotary, tried to buck through ten and twenty-foot cuts which lay bank-full of snow west of McCloud.

Not until April did it begin to look as if we should win out. A dozen times the line was all but choked on us. And then, when snow-plows were disabled and train crews desperate, there came a storm that discounted the worst blizzard of the winter. As the reports rolled in on the morning of the 5th, growing worse as they grew thicker, Neighbor, dragged out, played out, mentally and physically, threw up his hands. It snowed all day the 6th, and on Saturday morning the section men reported thirty feet in the Blackwood cañon. It was six o'clock when we got the word, and daylight before we got the rotary against it. They bucked away till noon without much headway, and came in with their gear smashed and a driving-rod fractured. It looked as if we were at last beaten. Number One pulled into McCloud that day eighteen hours late; it was Sankey's and Sinclair's run west.

There was a long council in the round-house. The rotary was knocked out; coal was running low in the chutes. If the line wasn't kept open for the coal from the mountains, it was plain we should be tied until we could ship it from Iowa or Missouri. West of Medicine Pole there was another big rotary working east, with plenty of coal behind her; but she was reported stuck fast in the Cheyenne Hills. Foley made suggestions, and Dad Sinclair made suggestions. Everybody had a suggestion left. The trouble was, Neighbor said, they didn't amount to anything, or were impossible. "It's a dead block, boys," announced Neighbor sullenly after everybody had done. "We are beaten unless we can get Number One through to-day. Look there: by the holy poker, it's snowing again."

The air was dark in a minute with whirling clouds. Men turned to the windows and quit talking. Every fellow felt the same—hopeless; at least, all but one. Sankey, sitting back of the stove, was making tracings with a piece of chalk. "You might as well unload your passengers, Sankey," said Neighbor. "You'll never get 'em through this winter."

And it was then that Sankey proposed his double-header.

He devised a snow-plow which combined in one monster ram about all the good material we had left, and submitted the scheme to Neighbor. Neighbor studied it, and hacked at it all he could, and brought it over to the office. It was like staking everything on the last cast of the dice, but we were in the state of mind which precedes a desperate venture. It was talked over an hour, and orders were finally given by the superintendent to rig up the double-header and get against the snow with it.

All that day and most of the night Neighbor worked twenty men on Sankey's device. By Sunday morning it was in such shape that we began to take heart. "If she don't get through, she'll sure get back again, and that's what most of 'em don't do," growled Neighbor, as he and Sankey showed the new ram to the engineers.

They had taken the 566, George Sinclair's engine, for one head, and Burns's, the 497, for the other. Behind these were Kennedy, with the 314, and Cameron, with the 296. The engines were set in pairs, headed each way, and buckled up like pack mules. Over the pilots and stacks of the head engines rose the tremendous plows, which were to tackle the worst drifts ever recorded, before or since, on the West End. The ram was designed to work both ways. Under the coal, each tender was loaded with pig-iron.

The beleaguered passengers on Number One, side-tracked in the yards, eagerly watched the preparations Sankey was making to clear the line. Every amateur on the train had his camera out taking pictures of the ram. The town, gathered in a single great mob, looked silently on, and listened to the frosty notes of the sky-scrapers as they went through their preliminary manœuvers. Just as the final word was given by Sankey, conductor in charge, the sun burst through the fleecy clouds, and a wild cheer followed the ram out of the western yard; it was looked on as a sign of good luck to see the sun again.

Little Neeta, up on the hill, must have seen them as they pulled out. Surely she heard the choppy ice-bitten screech of the 566; for that was never forgotten, whether the service was special or regular. Besides, the head cab of the ram carried this time not only Georgie Sinclair, but her father as well. Sankey could handle a slice-bar as well as a punch, and rode on the head engine, where, if anywhere, the big chances would come. What Sankey was not capable of in the train-service we never knew, because he rose superior to every emergency that ever confronted him.

Bucking snow is principally brute force; there is very little coaxing. West of the bluffs there was a volley of sharp tooting, like code signals between a fleet of cruisers, and in just a minute the four ponderous engines, two of them in the back motion, fires white and throats bursting, steamed wildly into the cañon. Six hundred feet from the first cut, Sinclair's whistle signaled again. Burns and Cameron and Kennedy answered; and then, literally turning the monster ram loose against the dazzling mountain, the crews settled themselves for the shock.

At such a moment there is nothing to be done. If anything goes wrong, eternity is too close to consider. There came a muffled drumming on the steam-chests; a stagger and a terrific impact; and then the recoil, like the stroke of a trip-hammer. The snow shot into the air fifty feet, and the wind carried a cloud of fleecy confusion over the ram and out of the cut. The cabs were buried in white, and the great steel frames of the engines sprung like knitting-needles under the frightful force of the blow. Pausing for hardly a breath, they began the signaling again; then backed up and up and up the line; and again the massive machines were hurled screaming into the cut. "We're getting there, Georgie," cried Sankey when the rolling and lurching had stopped.

No one else could tell a thing about it, for it was snow and snow and snow; above and behind and ahead and beneath. Sinclair coughed the flakes out of his eyes and nose and mouth like a baffled collie. He looked doubtful of the claim until the mist had blown clear and the quivering monsters were again recalled for a dash. Then it was plain that Sankey's instinct was right; they were gaining.

Again they went in, lifting a very avalanche over the stacks, packing the banks of the cut with walls hard as ice. Again, as the drivers stuck, they raced in a frenzy, and into the shriek of the wind went the unearthly scrape of the overloaded safeties. Slowly and sullenly the machines were backed again. "She's doing the work, Georgie," cried Sankey. "For that kind of a cut she's as good as a rotary. Look everything over now while I go back and see how the boys are standing it. Then we'll give her one more, and give it the hardest kind."

And they did give her one more; and another. Men at Santiago put up no stouter fight than these men made that Sunday morning in the cañon of the Blackwood. Once they went in, and twice. And the second time the bumping drummed more deeply; the drivers held, pushed, panted, and gained against the white wall; heaved and stumbled ahead; and with a yell from Sinclair and Sankey and the fireman, the double-header shot her nose into the clear over the Blackwood gorge. As engine after engine flew past the divided walls each cab took up the cry; it was the wildest crowd that ever danced to victory. Through they went and half-way across the bridge before they could check their monster catapult. Then, at a half full, they shot it back again at the cut, for it worked as well one way as the other.

"The thing is done," declared Sankey, when they got into position up the line for a final shoot to clean out the eastern cut and get head for a dash across the bridge and into the west end of the cañon, where there lay another mountain of snow to split. "Look the machines over pretty close, boys," said he to the engineers. "If nothing's sprung, we'll take a full head across the gorge—the bridge will carry anything—and buck the west cut. Then after we get Number One through this afternoon, Neighbor can put his baby cabs in here and keep 'em chasing all night. But it's done snowing," he added, looking at the leaden sky.

He had the plans all figured out for the master mechanic, the shrewd, kindly old man. I think, myself, there's no man on earth like a good Indian; and, for that matter, none like a bad one. Sankey knew by a military instinct just what had to be done and how to do it. If he had lived, he was to have been assistant superintendent. That was the word that leaked from headquarters afterward. And with a volley of jokes between the cabs and a laughing and yelling between toots, down went Sankey's double-header again into the Blackwood gorge.

At the same moment, by an awful misunderstanding of orders, down came the big rotary from the west end with a dozen cars of coal behind. Mile after mile it had wormed east toward Sankey's ram, and it now burrowed through the western cut of the Blackwood, crashed through the drift Sankey was aiming for, and whirled out into the open, dead against him, at forty miles an hour. Each train, in order to make the grade and the blockade against it, was straining the cylinders.

Through the swirling snow that half hid the bridge and interposed between the rushing plows Sinclair saw them coming. He yelled. Sankey saw them a fraction of a second later, and while Sinclair struggled with the throttle and the air, Sankey gave the alarm through the whistle to the poor fellows in the blind pockets behind. But the track was at the worst. Where there was no snow there were "whiskers"; oil itself couldn't have been worse to stop on. It was the old and deadly peril of fighting blockades from both ends on a single track. The great rams of steel and fire had done their work, and with their common enemy overcome, they dashed at each other like madmen across the Blackwood gorge.

The fireman at the first cry shot out the side. Sankey yelled at Sinclair to jump. But Georgie shook his head: he never would jump. Without hesitating, Sankey picked him from the levers in his arms, planted a sure foot, and hurled him like a coal shovel through the gangway far out into the gorge. The other cabs were already empty. But the instant's delay in front cost Sankey his life. Before he himself could jump the rotary crashed into the 566. They reared like mountain lions, pitched sideways and fell headlong into the creek, fifty feet. Sankey went under them. He could have saved himself; he chose to save George. There wasn't time to do both; he had to choose, and to choose instantly. Did he, maybe, think in that flash of Neeta and of whom she needed most—of a young and a stalwart protector rather than an old and failing one? I do not know; I know only what he did. Every one who jumped got clear. Sinclair lit in ten feet of snow, and they pulled him out with a rope: he wasn't scratched. Even the bridge was not badly strained. Number One pulled over it next day.

Sankey was right; there was no more snow; not even enough to cover the dead engines that lay on the rocks. But the line was open: the fight was won.

There never was a funeral in McCloud like Sankey's. George Sinclair and Neeta followed first, and of the mourners there were as many as there were spectators. Every engine on the division carried black for thirty days.

Sankey's contrivance for fighting snow has never yet been beaten on the high line. It is perilous to go against a drift behind it: something has to give. But it gets there, as Sankey got there—always; and in time of blockade and desperation on the West End they still send out Sankey's double-header; though Sankey, as the conductors tell the children, traveling east or traveling west—Sankey isn't running any more.

VIII

AUNT MARY TELEGRAPHS

A Comedy of Everyday LifeBy LLOYD E. LONERGAN

"Auntie left on the six-o'clock train last night. Meet her at the depot.—Clara."

This telegram, dated New York, greeted Frank Carey when he reached his pleasant little home on Indiana Avenue, Chicago.

"Aunt Mary will be here to-night," he said to his wife, "my rich aunt from New York, you know. I am to meet her at the depot."

"When does she arrive?" fluttered pretty little Mrs. Carey, a bride of a few months. "Cannot I go with you to the depot?"

Mr. Carey said she could, then he thought for a moment, then he put his doubts into words after a second reading of the telegram.

"I wonder what road she is coming in on?" he said.

"'Twas stupid of her," replied his wife, "but call up the railroads and find out which one has a six-o'clock train from New York. Silly!"

Mr. Carey kissed his wife and remarked that she was the brightest little girl in the world, after which he gaily telephoned, listened intently to someone on the other end of the line, made numerous notes, and turned to his wife in despair.

"Bless Clara!" he said devoutly.

His wife looked surprised, so he hastily explained.

"There is a six o'clock train from New York on the Pennsylvania, also on the Lake Shore, likewise on the Michigan Central, and the Lehigh Valley, and the Grand Trunk, and the West Shore, and the B. &. O.!"

"Which one is auntie coming on?" inquired Mrs. Carey with interest.

"All of them," replied her husband wrathfully. "She is sitting on the cow-catcher of each and every train, and if I'm not there to meet her she'll disinherit me. Haven't you any sense?"

Whereupon there were tears, apologies, and finally a council of war. It was Mrs. Carey who solved the problem.

"All we have to do," she cried, "is to meet all the trains. Won't it be cute?"

Carey didn't think so, but was afraid to express himself. He simply tried to look impressed and listened.

"There are only seven trains," she continued. "Now you," counting on her fingers, "are one, and I am two and Mr. and Mrs. Haines next door, who belong to my whist club, are four; and Ella Haines is five; and I just saw Mr. What's-his-name go in to call on Ella—and he'll be six; and that horrid man on the next block who is in your lodge will have to be seven."

The "train meeters" were gathered together inside of an hour. Mrs. Carey overruled all objections and laughed away all difficulties. She told them it would be a lark, and they believed it—at the time! As none of them had met Mrs. Smith (Aunt Mary), Carey was called upon for a description.

"Aunt Mary," he said, "is of medium height, dark complexion and usually dresses in black. She is fifty-eight years old, but tells people she is under fifty. You cannot miss her." And with this they were compelled to be satisfied.

Ella Haines was assigned to the Pennsylvania depot and arrived late. All the New York passengers had disembarked, but an old woman was standing at the entrance and looking anxiously at the passers-by.

"Mrs. Smith?" said Ella, inquiringly.

"Thank heaven, you have come," was the joyous reply.

"Here," and she stepped to one side and revealed a little girl who was gazing out at the tracks. "I've had such a time with that brat and I'll never travel with another again. I've just got time to catch my train for St. Paul. Good-bye!" Whereupon, disregarding Ella's cries and her protestations, the woman rushed madly to the other end of the depot and disappeared through a gate which closed behind her with a slam. It was the last call for the St. Paul train.

Naturally, Ella did not know what to do. She hung around the depot for half an hour, hoping someone would claim the child. Then she put the little one in a cab and gave the Careys' address in Indiana Avenue.

Walter Haines went to the Lake Shore depot. One of the first passengers to emerge from the New York train was a female, who seemed to answer the general description furnished by Carey. She was breathless as if from running faster than an old woman should run. As she reached Haines, she stopped and glared at him.

"Mrs. Smith?" he inquired, lifting his hat.

The woman grabbed him by the arm. "I knew you would be here, but hurry, that man is after me!"

"What man?" asked Haines in surprise.

"Hush, we cannot talk now," was the reply. "Get a carriage and drive fast, fast; we must escape him."

"George couldn't come, he sent me. My name is Haines," said the puzzled escort.

"I don't care if your name is Beelzebub" was the impatient retort. "You get that carriage or I'll write to Roosevelt." And Mr. Haines, very much astonished, complied.

He thought as he drove away that he heard someone shouting, but was not sure; in fact, he paid no attention, for he was too busy thinking what a queer old aunt his friend Carey had.

The "horrid man who belonged to the lodge" was named Perkins. He reached the B. & O. depot half an hour ahead of time, so he went across the street and had a drink. When he returned he discovered that No. 7 was late, and so had another. Also, several more. By the time the train did arrive he was in such a mellow state that he couldn't tell a parlor car from a lake steamer—and he didn't care! He had likewise forgotten what George's aunt looked like, but that, too, was a trivial matter. So he stood at the gate, beaming blandly at every person that appeared.

"Are you Georsh's saunt?" he inquired of a tall man with white side-whiskers and garbed in ministerial black. His answer was a look of horror, but it had no effect on Perkins, who repeated his question at intervals without result. His lack of success finally drove him to tears.

"Poor Georsh!" he sobbed. "Dear old Georsh! Must have an naunt! Break hish heart if he don't have an naunt! Can't fine his naunt! Get him one myself!"