Snow on the Headlight Part 14

Now a red-haired woman came to the edge of the crowd, put her bucket and scrubbing brush down, and asked what had happened.

"Drunk man under the engine," said one of the curious, snappishly. The woman knew that Greene had pa.s.sed out that way only a few moments ago.

She had given him a quarter and he had promised not to come back to her again, and now she put her head down and ploughed through the crowd like a football player.

"h.e.l.lo Mag," said Greene, as the woman threw herself upon her knees beside him. "Here's yer money--I won't get to spend it," and he opened his clinched fist and there was the piece of silver that she had given him.

The big policeman now renewed his request to have the man taken out, but the foreman whispered something to him. "Oh! begorry, is that so? All right, all right," said the officer.

"Am I delayin' traffic?" asked Greene of the foreman. "It takes a little time to die ye know, but ye only have to do it onct."

"Have ye's anythin' to say?" asked the officer.

"Yes," said Greene, for his hatred for a policeman stayed with him to the end, "ye can do me a favor."

"An' phot is it?"

"Jist keep your nose out of this business, an' don't speak to me again till after I'm dead. Do ye mind that, ye big duffer?"

It was the first time in all his life when he could say what was on his mind to a policeman without the dread of being arrested.

"Come closer, Mag--whisper, Dan. Here, you," said Greene to the foreman, and that official bent down to catch the words which were growing fainter every moment. "I'm goin' to die. Ye mind the time ye kicked me out at the round-house? Well, ye don't need to say; I mind, an' that's sufficient. I swore to git even with the Burlington for that. I hated George Cowels because he married a woman that was too good fur 'im,--she was too good for me, for that matter. Well, when he went back on the Brotherhood and took his old engineer's job I went to this man Moran and offered to blow the engine up, and he put me out of his room. I then put the dynamite on the engine myself an' Moran followed me and took it off, and saved Cowels's life, prevented me from becoming a murderer, and went to jail. Good-by, Mag. Give me your hand Dan, old man. Back up."

The old engineer nodded to the foreman, who signalled the man on the engine, and the great wheel moved from above the body. More than one man turned his back to the machine. The woman fainted. Moran had covered the eyes of the unfortunate man with his hand, and now when he removed it slowly the man's eyes were still closed. He never moved a finger nor uttered a sound. It was as if he had suddenly fallen asleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST

The Denver Limited had backed into the depot shed at Chicago, and was loading when the Philosopher came through the gate. He was going down to Zero Junction where he was serving the company in the capacity of station agent. Patsy Daly was taking the numbers of the cars, and at his elbow walked a poorly-dressed man, and the Philosopher knew in a moment that the man wanted to ride.

The Philosopher, with a cigar in his mouth, strolled up and down catching s.n.a.t.c.hes of the man's talk. In a little while he had gathered that the anxious stranger's wife lay dying in Cheyenne, and that he had been tramping up and down the land for six months looking for work. If Patsy could give him a lift to Omaha he could work his way over the U. P. where he knew some of the trainmen, having worked on the Kansas Pacific out of Denver in the early days of the road. His story was so lifelike and pathetic that Patsy was beginning to look troubled. If he could help a fellow-creature up the long, hard hill of life--three or four hundred miles in a single night--without straining the capacity of the engine, he felt that he ought to do it.

Patsy had gone to the head end (the stranger standing respectfully apart) to ask the engineer to slow down at the Junction, and let the agent off. He hoped the man might go away and try a freight train, but as the conductor turned back the unfortunate traveller joined him.

Now the eyes of Patsy fell upon the face of the Philosopher, and a brilliant thought flashed through his mind. He marvelled, afterwards, that he had not thought of it sooner.

"Here, old man," said Patsy, "take this fellow's testimony, try his case, and let me have your opinion in nine minutes--it's just ten minutes to leaving time."

Now it was the Philosopher to whom the prospective widower rehea.r.s.ed his tale of woe.

There was not much time, so the station agent at Zero began by offering the man a cigar, which was accepted. In the midst of his sorrowful story the man paused to observe a handsome woman, who was at that moment lifting her dainty, silken skirts to step into the sleeper. The Philosopher had his eyes fastened to the face of the man, and he thought he saw the man's mustache quiver as though it had been agitated by the pa.s.sing of a smothered smile.

"Well," the man was saying, "we had been married only a year when I lost my place and started out to look for work."

By this time he had taken a small pocket knife from his somewhat ragged vest, clipped the end off the cigar neatly, put the cut end between his teeth, and the knife back into his pocket. Without pausing in his narrative (he knew he had but nine minutes) he held out a hand for a match. The Philosopher pretended not to notice the movement, which was graceful and perfectly natural. As they turned, up near the engine, the sorrowful man went into his vest again and brought up a small, silver match-box which he held carefully in his closed fist, but which snapped sharply, as the knife had done when he closed it.

"Excuse me," said the Philosopher, reaching for the match-box, "I've lost my fire."

The melancholy man made a move towards his vest, paused, changed his mind, and pa.s.sed over his lighted cigar.

"Go on," said the examining judge, when he had got his cigar going again.

Now at each turn the Philosopher quickened his pace, and the man, eager to finish his sad story, walked beside him with a graceful, springy walk. The man's story was so like his own--so like the tale he had told to Patsy when the strikers had chased him into a box car--that his heart must have melted, had it not been for the fact that he was becoming more and more convinced, as the story grew upon him, that the man was lying. Now and then he said to himself in spite of himself, "This must be true," for there were tears in the man's voice, and yet there were things about him that must be explained before he could ride.

"Patsy," said the Philosopher, pausing before the conductor, "if you'll stand half the strain, I'll go buy a ticket for this man to Cheyenne."

"N' no," said the man, visibly affected by this unexpected generosity, "n' no, I can't let you do that. I should be glad of a ride that would cost you nothing and the company nothing; but I can't--I can't take your money," and he turned away, touching the cuff of his coat, first to his right and then to his left eye.

Patsy sighed, and the two men walked again. Five minutes more and the big engine would begin to crawl from the great shed, and the voyager began wondering whether he would be on board. The engineer was going round the engine for the last time. The fireman had spread his fire and was leaning leisurely on the arm-rest. The Pullman conductors, with clean cuffs and collars, were putting away their people. The black-faced porters were taking the measures of men as they entered the car. Here comes a gray-haired clergyman, carrying a heavy hand-satchel, and by his side an athletic looking commercial tourist.

One of the black porters glides forward, takes the light hand-grip, containing the travelling man's tooth-brush, nights.h.i.+rt, and razor, and runs up the step with it.

Now a train arrives from the West, and the people who are going away look into the faces of the people who are coming home, who look neither to the right nor left, but straight ahead at the open gates, and in three minutes the empty cars are being backed away, to be washed and dusted, and made ready for another voyage. How sad and interesting would be the story of the life of a day coach. Beaten, b.u.mped, battered, and banged about in the yards, trampled and spat upon by vulgar voyagers, who get on and off at flag stations, and finally, in a head-end collision, crushed between the heavy vestibuled sleepers and the mighty engine.

But sadder still is the story of a man who has been buffeted about and walked upon by the arrogant of this earth, and to such a story the Philosopher was now listening. The man was talking so rapidly that he almost balled up at times, and had to go back and begin again. At times it seemed to him that the Philosopher, to whom he was talking, was giving little or no attention to his tale; but he was. He was making up his mind.

It is amazing the amount of work that can be done in ten minutes, when all the world is working. Tons of trunks had pa.s.sed in and out, the long platform had been peopled and depopulated twice since the two men began their walk, and now another train gave up its human freight to the already crowded city.

Now, as they went up and down, the Philosopher, at each turn, went a little nearer to the engine. Only three minutes remained to him in which to render his decision, which was to help the unhappy man a half-thousand miles on the way to his dying wife, or leave him sadder still because of the failure--to pine and ponder upon man's inhumanity to man.

Patsy, glancing now and then at the big clock on the station wall, searched the sad face of his friend and tried to read there the answer to the man's prayer.

It would be that the man should ride, he had no doubt, for this story was so like the story of this same man, the Philosopher, with which he had come into Patsy's life, and Patsy had resolved never to turn his back upon a man who was down on his luck.

The Philosopher's face was indecipherable. Finally when they had come to the turning point in the shadow of the mail car, he stopped, leaned against the corner of the tank and said: "I can't make you out, and you haven't made out your case."

"I don't follow you," said the man.

"No? Well suppose I say, for answer, that I'll let you go--sneak away up through the yards and lose yourself; provided you promise not to do it again."

"You talk in riddles. What is it that I am not to do again? You say you have hit the road yourself, and you ought to have sympathy for a fellow out o' luck."

"I have, and that's why I'm going to let you go. Your story is a sad one, and it has softened my heart. It's the story of my own life."

"Then how can you refuse me this favor, that will cost you nothing?"

"Hadn't you better go?"

"No, I want you to answer me."

"Well, to be frank with you, you are not a tramp. You've got money, and you had red wine with your supper, or your dinner, as you would say."

The man laughed, a soundless laugh, and tried to look sad.

"You've got a gold signet ring in your right trousers pocket."