THE SPIDER WATER.
II.
On the 30th there was trouble beyond Wild Hat, and all our extra men,put out there under Healey, were fighting to Hold the Rat Valley levelswhere they hug the river on the west slope. It wasn't really Healey'strack. Bucks sent him over there just as the emperor sent Ney, whereverhe needed his right arm. Sunday, while Healey was at Wild Hat, rainbegan falling. Sunday it rained; Monday all through the mountains itrained; Tuesday it was raining from Omaha to Eagle Pass, with thethermometer climbing for breath and the barometer flat as an adder--andthe Spider woke. Woke with the April water and the June water and thestorm water all at once.
Trackwalkers Tuesday night flagged Number One, and reported the Spiderwild, with heavy sheet ice running. A wire from Bucks brought Healeyout of the west and into the east, and brought him to reckon for thelast time with his ancient enemy.
He was against it Wednesday with dynamite. All the day, all the night,all the next day the sullen roar of the giant powder shook the formingjam above the bridge, and after two days Healey wired, "Ice out," andset back without a minute's sleep for home. Saturday night he slept andSunday all day and Sunday night. Monday about noon Bucks sent up toask, but Healey still slept. They asked back by the lad whether theyshould wake him. Bucks sent word, "No."
It was late Tuesday morning when the tall roadmaster came down, and hewas fresh as sunshine. All day he sat with Bucks and the dispatcherswatching the line. The Spider raced mad, and the watchers sent in panicmessages, but Healey put them in his pipe. "That bridge will go whenthe mountains go," was all he said.
Nine o'clock that night every star was blinking when Healey lookedin for the trackwalkers' reports and the railroad weather bulletins.Bucks, Callahan, and Peeto sat about Martin Duffy, the dispatcher, whoin his shirt sleeves threw the stuff off the sounder as it trickled indot and dash, dot and dash over the wires.
The west wire was good; east everything below Peace River was down. Wehad to get the eastern reports around by Omaha and the south--a goodthousand miles of a loop--but bad news travels even around a Robin Hoodloop.
And first came Wild Hat from the west with a stationary river and theLoup Creek falling--clear--good night. And Ed Peeto struck the tableheavily and swore it was well in the west. Then from the east camePrairie Portage, all the way round, with a northwest rain, a risingriver, and anchor ice running, pounding the piers bad--track in fairshape, and--and----
The wire went wrong. As Duffy knit his eyes and tugged and cussed alittle, the wind outside took up the message and whirled a bucket ofrain against the windows. But the wires wouldn't right, and stuffthat no man could get tumbled in like a dictionary upside down. AndBucks and Callahan and Healey and Peeto smoked, silent, and heard thedeepening drum of the rain on the roof.
Then Duffy wrestled mightily yet once more.
"Keep still," he exclaimed, leaning heavily on the key. "Here'ssomething--from the Spider."
He snatched a pen and ran it across a clip; Bucks leaning over readaloud from his shoulder:
"Omaha.
"J. F. BUCKS:
"Trainmen from No. 75 stalled west of Rapid City--track afloat in Simpson's Cut--report Spider bridge out--send----"
And the current broke.
Callahan's hand closed rigidly over the hot bowl of his pipe; Peeto satspeechless; Bucks read again at the broken message, but Healey spranglike a man wounded and snatched the clip from his hand.
He stared at the running words till they burned his eyes, and then,with an oath, frightful as the thunder that shook the mountains, hedashed the clip to the floor. His eyes snapped greenish, and he cursedOmaha, cursed its messages, and everything that came out of it. Slowat first, then fast and faster, until all the sting that poisonedhis heart in his unjust discharge poured from his lips. It floodedthe room like a spilling stream, and none put a word against it, forthey knew he stood a wronged man. Out it came--all the rage, all theheart-burning, all the bitterness--and he dropped into a chair andcovered his face with his hands. Only the sounder clicking iron jargonand the thunder shaking the wickiup like a reed filled the ears of themen about him. They watched him slowly knot his fingers and loosenthem, and saw his face rise dry and hard and old out of his hands.
"Get up an engine!"
"Not--you're not going down there to-night?" stammered Bucks.
"Yes. Now. Right off. Peeto, get out your men!"
The foreman jumped for the door. Little Duffy, snatching the trainsheet, began clearing track for a bridge special. In twenty minutestwenty men were running as many ways through the storm, and a liveengine boomed under the wickiup window.
"I want you to be careful, Phil," Bucks spoke anxiously as he lookedwith Healey out into the storm. "It's a bad night." Healey made noanswer.
The lightning shot the yards in a blaze and a crash split the gorge. "Awicked night," muttered Bucks.
Evans, conductor of the special, ran in.
"Here's your orders," said Duffy. "You've got forty miles an hour."
"Don't stretch it," warned Bucks. "Good-by, Phil," he added to Healey,"I'll see you in the morning."
"In the morning," echoed Healey. "Good-by."
The switch engine had puffed up with a caboose; ahead of it Peeto hadcoupled in the pile driver. At the last minute Callahan concluded togo, and with the bridge gang tumbling into the caboose, the assistantsuperintendent, Ed Peeto, and Healey climbed into the engine, and theypulled out, five in the cab, for the Spider Water.
Healey, moody at first, began joking and laughing the minute they gotaway. He sat behind Denis Mullenix, the engineer, and poked his ribsand taunted him with his heavy heels. At last he covered Denis' bighands on the throttle with his own bigger fingers, good-naturedlycoaxed them loose, and pushing him away got the reins and the whip intohis own keeping. He drew the bar out a notch and settled himself forthe run across the flat country.
As they sped from the shelter of the hills, the storm shook them witha freshening fury, and drove the flanges into the south rail with agrinding screech. The rain fell in a sheet, and the right-of-way rana river. The wind, whipping the water off the ballast, dashed it likehail against the cab glass; the segment of desert caught in the yellowof the headlight rippled and danced and swam in the storm water, andHealey pulled again at the straining throttle and latched it wider.
Notch after notch he drew; heedless of lurch and jump; heedless ofbed or curve; heedless of track or storm; and with every spur at hercylinders the engine shook like a frantic horse. Men and monster alikelost thought of caution and drunk a frenzy in the whirl that Healeyopened across the swimming plain.
The Peace River hills loomed suddenly in front like moving pictures;before they could think it the desert was behind.
"Phil, man, you must steady up!" yelled Callahan, getting his mouthto Healey's ear. The roadmaster nodded and checked a notch, but thefire was in his blood, and he slewed into the hills with a speedunslackened. The wind blew them, and the track pulled them, and afrenzied man sat at the throttle.
Just where the line crosses the Peace River the track bends sharplythrough the Needles to take the bridge. The curve is a ten degree. Asthey struck it, the headlight shot far out upon the river--and theyin the cab knew they sat dead men. Instead of lighting the box of thetruss, the lamp lit a black and snaky flood with yellow foam sweepingover the abutment, for the Peace had licked up Agnew's thirty-footpiles--and his bridge was not.
There were two things to do; Healey knew them both, and both meantdeath to the cab, but the caboose sheltered twenty of Healey's faithfulmen. He instantly threw the air, and with a scream from the tires,the special, shaking in the brake shoes, swung the curve. Again theroadmaster checked heavily, and the pile driver, taking the elevationlike a hurdle, bolted into the Needles, dragging the caboose after it.But engine and tender and five in the cab plunged head on into theriver.
Not a man in the caboose was killed. They scrambl
ed out of thesplinters and on their feet, men and ready to do. One voice camethrough the storm from the river, and they answered its calling. It wasCallahan, but Durden, Mullenix, Peeto, and Healey never called again.
At daybreak, wreckers of the West End, swarming from mountain andplain, were heading for the Peace, and the McCloud gang--up--crossedthe Spider on Healey's bridge--on the bridge the coward trainmen hadreported out, quaking as they did in the storm at the Spider foamingover its approaches. But Healey's bridge stood--stands to-day.
Yet three days the Spider raged, and knew then its master, while he,three whole days, sat at the bottom of the Peace, clutching the enginelevers, in the ruins of Agnew's mistake.
And when the divers got them up, Callahan and Bucks tore big Peeto'sarms from his master's body and shut his staring eye and laid him athis master's side. And only the Spider, ravening at Healey's caissons,raged. But Healey slept.
THE END.
Motor Matt Makes Good; or, Another Victory For the Motor Boys Page 19
