THE WHITE MAIL

The White Mail

BY

CY WARMAN

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1899

Copyright, 1899,
By Charles Scribner’s Sons.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

TO
BRYAN WARMAN
WITH A FATHER’S LOVE

CONTENTS

——◆——

The White Mail

CHAPTER I

THE PASSING OF THE WATCHMAN

Denis McGuire lived at Lick Skillet, on the ridge between the east and west forks of Silver Creek, midway between Troy and St. Jacobs, twenty-two miles east of St. Louis—Vandalia line. Denis McGuire was the section boss, Tommy McGuire was his only heir, Mrs. McGuire, in addition to being Tommy’s mother, made herself generally useful about the house.

Lick Skillet possessed a saw-mill and a blacksmith shop, and contained, if we count the “nigger” who drove Jim Anderson’s bull team at the mill, twenty-seven souls.

Denis McGuire was an honest Irishman, industrious and sober, except on Saturday nights, and possibly Sunday. He was unable to read or write, even his own name. Heidelberg, the station agent at St. Jacobs, the eastern terminus of McGuire’s section, kept his books and accounts and the time of the men. In return for this kindness McGuire used to do odd spurts of manual toil for Heidelberg. Sometimes, on a Saturday afternoon, he would set his car off at the end of his run, take his men over (between trains) and shovel snow and saw wood for the agent. In summer, when they had their scythes out, they invariably cut the weeds on the vacant lot between the station and Heidelberg’s house, clipped the lawn, and weeded the garden.

Down by West Silver Creek bridge there was a water tank and a pump, whose motive power was a mule. Close by the bank of the lazy little river stood the watchman’s shanty, narrow, high, and painted red, like the tank, and like hundreds of other shanties that were strung along the line from St. Louis to Indianapolis. Rain or shine old man Connor was always there to show his white light to the engineer of the Midnight Express, and a white flag to the men on the White Mail in the morning. Beyond the bridge, a round-faced lad of sixteen summers trudged after the mule, who appeared always to be going sidewise, as a boar goes to battle. The round-faced boy was the old watchman’s eldest son, a good-natured, lazy lad who could not whistle a tune, but who was forever singing, “The Hat Me Father Wore.”

When the old man had walked across the bridge and back, with his hands behind him, glanced at the block on the figure-board to see that the tank was full of water, filled his red light and his white light, polished the globes, and set them both burning by the door, he would light his pipe and sit and gaze down into the dirty delinquent river, that came cautiously under the bridge, crept noiselessly away and lost itself in the mournful, malarial forest.

Patient as a monk, solitary as a bandit, lonely as an outcast, the faithful watchman dwelt by the bridge. To the gray-haired driver of the Midnight Express, whose black steed lifted him in a short half hour out of the great American bottoms, by the coal mines at Collinsville and up to the tablelands of Troy, who strained his eye around the curve at Hagler’s Tank, he showed the friendly white light. “Let her go,” it seemed to say, and the great headlight, trembling down the long grade, flashed a moment on the storm-stained face of the old watchman, and was gone again. Nor did he sleep or nod or close his eyes until the dawn of day; until he had shown the milk-white flag to the men on the White Mail in the morning.

But time will tell upon us all. It told upon the bridge, upon the old man and the mule. In spring the carpenters would come and fix and brace the bridge, that had been racked and strained by ice and flood. In spring the local doctor gave the old man something for his cough, and the old man cut a quaking asp and fixed it in the stall for the mule to gnaw; for its bark was the bitters the mule needed in spring.

At the far end of a raw, cold March the old man fell sick of a fever; typhoid-pneumonia the doctor called it, a cruel combination, either half of which could kill.

It was midsummer before he was able to take his post at the bridge again.

In the autumn he had ague that shook his bent frame and made his old bones ache. All night he would watch in the little shanty, all the morning shake with ague, and burn with fever in the afternoon.

When winter came the ague went away, but it left the old man bent and pale. His cough grew worse, and finally a severe cold put him on his back with pneumonia.

When the day set down by the doctor for a change, “one way or the other,” had arrived, the medical expert lost nothing by the prediction. Like the Oracle at Delphi that assured the king that his war would wreck an empire, without saying which empire, the doctor’s reputation was reasonably safe. As the day wore away the old man grew restless. At night the fever came on. At midnight he leaped from his bed, seized the lamp that stood upon the little table near him, and rushed out into the rain-swept night to show it to the driver of the Midnight Express. When the train had crashed over the cattle-guards at the road crossing, the watchman went back into the house, but refused to go to bed again. “I can’t go yet,” he said, “I must wait for the White Mail.”

They sent for the doctor, and the doctor told them to send for the priest.

When the dawn came the old man opened his eyes.

“Me flag,” he cried, “where is me flag?” and Mrs. Connor brought a clean white flag and placed it in his hand.

Now the White Mail that had come out of the east in the afternoon, crossed Indiana in the evening, and entered Illinois in the night, dropped from the great prairie into the sag at East Creek, lifted again, screamed across the ridge, and plunged down the long hill towards West Creek bridge.

The old watchman, hearing the roar and the whistle, grasped his flag and darted from the door. As he reached the open air the White Mail went roaring past. A white ribbon of steam fluttered from the engine dome and floated far back along the top of the train. The old man flourished his flag, staggered, swayed, fell into the arms of his wife, and they carried him into the house again.

When the priest came the old watchman was sleeping with his cold hands crossed above his breast and candles burning about his bed.

CHAPTER II

AGAIN THE REAPER

At the suggestion of the section boss, the agent asked the roadmaster to put Jimmie Connor on the bridge as watchman, and give little Jack, his brother, the mule and the tank.

After that, instead of the bent form of the old man, the widow saw her boy coming up from the bridge of a morning when the White Mail had gone by.

Everyone was kind to the boys and gave them encouragement.

Conductor Wise, who went up on the Midnight Express and came down on the White Mail, sent a dog to be company for the young watchman. Charley Cope, who fired the Highland Accommodation, gave little Jack a long whip, and the foreman of the bridge gang built a platform so that he could stand, or sit in the centre of the “horse power” like the driver of a threshing machine.

But with all this kindness, the greatest measure of help and comfort, encouragement and amusement, came from little Tommy McGuire. Round-faced, freckled, happy, careless, “onry,” the neighbors called him. He found some paint one day that the painters had left when they painted the section house, painted the white calf red and striped the goat like the zebra, whose life-sized likeness adorned the blacksmith shop.

The agent, who was something of a philosopher, always argued that Tommy McGuire was not as bad as he was painted. He was not wicked, but curious, Heidelberg said. When he put precisely the same sized can to Jimmie Connor’s dog that he put to his own dog, it was not to punish the brutes, but merely to see which would get home first, and settle a dispute of long standing.

When he took his red spaniel under his naked arm and dived from the top of the bridge when the river was running bank full, it was merely to see which could stay under water longest, himself or the dog. And so, behind all of his mischief, the agent was able to see a motive. It was the boy’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge that made him want to explore everything, from the cave in the bluff to the crow’s nest in the top of the tallest sycamore.

It may be that the Connor boys were no better because of his visits, but they were happier; he was company for them and made them forget. He awed them with his wonderful feats of climbing, diving, swimming, and jumping. When Jimmie, the watchman, would shrink back and hold his cap as the cars roared past, Tommy McGuire would stand close to the rail and laugh in the face of the screaming steed. Once, just to see how it would feel, he hung from the bridge by his legs while the Midnight Express went by.

One morning Mrs. Connor saw Jimmie swinging down from the cab of a freight engine. His feet slipped from the iron step, he fell, and his mother put her hands over her eyes and screamed. In a moment he was on his feet again, waving his cap encouragingly to his mother and signalling to the engine crew to go ahead. But he was not unhurt. When they removed his trousers they found that the flange of a tank wheel had sliced the whole calf off one of his legs right down to the bone.

While the rest were busy with the wounded boy, Tommy McGuire went down to the tank to break the news to little Jack. “Don’t you be afraid,” said he to the pale boy who was two years his senior, “if anything happens to Jimmie I’ll take care uv you. Dad says I’m no good, mother says I’m sassy, Mis’ Dutton says I’m ‘onry’ and the priest says I’m ‘incourageable,’ and I guess they’re all about right, but you know me, Jack, eh? old man! an’ you know I’ll do what I say.”

There were tears in the eyes of the pump boy when Tommy took his two hands, gave him a jerk forward, let him go and hit him a hard jab in the ribs, and then, as he turned, gave him a kick that looked worse than it was.

“An’ I’ve got a frien’ Jack me boy, ’at can git us anythin’ from a push car to a private train—that’s Mr. Heidelberg—he’s me frien’.”

Ten days from the day the accident occurred, they cut Jimmie’s leg off, but it was too late. He never revived, and before the bewildered children and the grief-sick mother could realize what had happened, they had crossed his helpless hands over his youthful breast and lighted the candles.

That night McGuire and his men came and “waked” Jimmie, as they had waked his father only a few short months before.

U. P. Burns came with his black pipe and his black bottle and smoked and drank and sang “come-all-ye” songs.

CHAPTER III

SLEEPING OUT

The world looked dark to the widow Connor when her husband and her eldest son were sleeping among the crosses in the little Catholic graveyard.

Mrs. McGuire sent Denis to see Heidelberg, and when the roadmaster came up from East St. Louis these three officials held an important and animated meeting.

This conference was interrupted by Tommy McGuire, who burst in upon them like a sunrise in the desert.

“I got a scheme,” said he to the agent, who, having grown up under a cloud similar to that which hung over the freckled youth in front of him, beamed upon the boy encouragingly and bade him reveal his plans. “Yo’ see,” said Tommy, ignoring the roadmaster (he never noticed his father, probably because his father never noticed him), “Jack can’t keep th’ pump, ’cause he can’t harness d’ mule, an’ he can’t mind d’ bridge ’cause it’s too lonesome. Now I aint got nofin t’ do, an’ I can run d’ pump in daytime, an’ Jack can sleep n ’en I can sleep in d’ shanty nights, an’ Jack can wake me when d’ Midnight Express goes by, n ’ne I can go t’ sleep agin.”

Tommy had talked very rapidly, and now as he paused for breath he glanced at the roadmaster.

“And who’s goin’ t’ ’arness th’ mule fur ye, me lad?” asked the gruff official.

Tommy gave him a dark look and turned to the agent, as much as to say, “This is our end of the road.”

“I seen Mr. Collins,” he said to the station-master, “an’ he’s goin’ t’ build me a platform long side d’ stall so I can harness d’ mule and jump on his back an’ go to me work ’thout asken any odds uv U. P. er anybody, an’ till he gets d’ platform done d’ mule can sleep in his harness a few nights—taint no worse fur ’im than fur me t’ sleep in me clothes, an’ that’s what I’m goin’ to do.”

“Very well, Tommy,” said the agent, “you wait outside and we will see what can be done.”

“Well,” began the roadmaster, when the august body had reconvened, “if ye’s fellies wants to open a kindergarden, ye kin do it, but mind, I tell ye, it’s agin me judgment t’ put a lad like little Jack Connor watchin’ a bridge o’ nights.”

“I’ll be responsible fur Jack,” said McGuire, speaking for the first time; “th’ lad have the head uv a man above his slender shoulders, an’ Pat Connor’s boy can be trusted, do ye mind that?”

“And I’ll be responsible for Tommy McGuire,” said the agent, looking at the father of the freckled youth.

“He’s a tough kid that,” said the roadmaster, “wud all jew respect to his mother.”

“Leave him to me,” said the station-master, “he’s no whit tougher than I was at his age.”

When Tincher, the agent’s under-study, went out to look for Tommy, to apprise him of what he had overheard, the boy was not to be seen. Of course he could not be expected to sit quietly in the sun for nearly an hour, and he had not. He had climbed to the top of the grain elevator, he had mixed salt with U. P. Burns’s tobacco, and pinned a “lost” notice to his father’s coat that hung on the handle-bar of the hand car. Then he had scattered shelled corn for the miller’s pigs. He had discovered the agent’s marking pot, and was now lying flat on his stomach, reaching over the edge of the platform, making zebras of all the white pigs in the drove.

The widow laughed and cried when Tommy told her how it had all been arranged, and Tommy’s mother, to his surprise, actually kissed him. Even Denis McGuire was able to feel a pardonable pride in the boy. Mrs. Dutton said she was glad to “see th’ brat thryen to make suthen uv hissilf.” The priest promised to pray for him. “I’ll stand good for him here, father,” the agent had said to the priest, “if you’ll stand good hereafter,” and the priest had promised.

The first day was all too short for Tommy, though sad enough for Jack. By three o’clock in the afternoon the tank was full and the mule turned out to graze.

Mr. Collins, the foreman of the bridge carpenters, had built a bunk in the little shanty, and Mrs. McGuire and the widow had come down to fix the bed for Tommy. The enthusiastic boy gave Jack little time to hug his grief, but kept talking of the future, of their importance to the company and to Jack’s family. His plans were not quite perfect in his own mind, but he felt that in some way he must contribute to the support of the widow’s family. He had no need of money for himself. He had never had any or cared to have, unless it would be to buy a target rifle like Anderson’s boy had, or maybe some firecrackers for the Fourth, and for Christmas. But poor little Jack would not enthuse. As often as Tommy looked up he found his companion staring at him as if half afraid.

“Whatcher skeered about, Jack Connor?” demanded Tommy, boxing the boy’s cap off.

“When ye goin’ to bed?” asked Jack, his wild eyes growing wider as he pictured to himself the loneliness of the place when Tommy should go to sleep.

“Aw, shucks,” said Tommy, “I’m not goin’ t’ bed at all; come outside an’ le’s build a bonfire to keep th’ skeeters off.”

They made such a fire of dry brush and driftwood that when the Midnight Express came round the curve at Hagler’s tank the engineer thought the bridge was burning, and shut off. But a moment later little Jack was at the end of the bridge moving the white light up and down, as he had seen his father do, and the driver opened the throttle again. Despite the fact that Tommy was close behind him, the timid boy began to tremble and draw back as the headlight glared in his face. Tommy seized the signal lamp and stood smiling in the face of the driver as the great engine struck the bridge and roared past, shaking the earth for rods around. Away the wild steed went, out toward the morning. She had started fresh and clean from the Mississippi, she would slake, for a brief moment, her burning thirst at the Ambraw, and at dawn drink of the waters of the Wabash.

When the red lights on the rear of the flying train had drawn close together and finally dropped over the bridge, Tommy turned to find little Jack crouching at the door of the shanty.

“’Smatter uv you, Jack Connor?” demanded the freckled boy. “Guess I better tie you under th’ bridge till yo’ git ust to the cars.”

They put the white light down on the floor, and began to practise their writing lesson; learning to write their names so they could sign the pay rolls when the car came up the road again. Tommy started to sing, “The Hat Me Father Wore,” but remembering suddenly that this was the only song Jimmie Connor had ever tried to sing, he changed off to “Jerry Ile the Kayre,”—

“Wid a big soljer coat

Buttoned up to me troat,

All danger I would dare

Thin jint ahead an’ cinter back;

Oh! Jerry go ile th’ Kayre.”

But try as he would Tommy could not keep the clouds away from the face of his friend. The poor lad seemed half dazed by the dreadful scenes through which he had passed. It was nearly morning. The bonfire had burned down to gray ashes, and the boys were sleepy.

Tommy took the red light, shook it, and turned it up. A lost dog over by the saw-mill set up that awful unearthly howl that boys are wont to connect in some way with abandoned farms and funerals. A hoot-owl hooted on the top of the tank, and little Jack began to cry.

CHAPTER IV

THE FLOOD

“When the White Mail came out of the east, carrying signals for the sun on the following morning, the driver looked down on a pair of very dirty faces at the end of West Creek bridge. The white flag fluttered in the morning breeze, and little Jack’s arm shook like an aspen branch as the big engine struck the bridge and thundered by. Tommy, who feared nothing, day or night, stood near him, pushing him encouragingly as he shrank from the flying train. When they had walked across the bridge and back, to see that no sparks had fallen from the quivering ash-pan, they returned to the pump. The old mule had been harnessed before it was light, from the new platform that Tommy had designed and the boss carpenter had built. He had stopped short and fallen dead asleep the moment the boys left him to flag the fast mail. He was now rudely awakened by Tommy, who hit him a sharp cut with the long whip, as he climbed to his place on the platform.

In a little while the sun came up over the tree-tops and touched the water tank. Little Mary Connor came down the track, bringing breakfast for the boys, and they were glad to see her. When she had fixed the plates and poured the hot, black coffee into the bright tin cups, she allowed Tommy to lift her onto the platform, where she encouraged the mule while the boys had breakfast.

“Say, Jack, old man; this is great,” said Tommy, taking a long pull at the bracing beverage. Jack gave his companion a furtive glance, but deigned no reply—not even a smile. “Jimminy-crismus, why don’ yo’ eat?” shouted Tommy. Jack was staring at his sister, who looked so weird and ghost-like in her black frock, with eyes that seemed too large for her, and her white face hiding in a heap of hair.

The boys were much refreshed by the hot breakfast, and when Tommy helped little Mary from the platform he was in a humor to tease her. He even went so far as to pull her ear gently and to pinch her cheeks,—to put life in ’em, as he expressed it. Mary smiled and colored slightly: the first faint flush of little girlhood. She liked Tommy, and he liked her. Rough and boisterous with boys, he was always gentle and thoughtful with the little girls, and Mary, to his mind, was the belle of Lick Skillet.

When Tommy had helped Mary over the bridge, dropped the spaniel into the water for his morning bath, and shied a few stones at the kingfisher on the top of a telegraph pole, he pushed Jack from the platform, ordered him to bed, and began to tickle the mule with the long lash. Little Jack declared that he was not sleepy. “I’m boss o’ th’ day shif’, Mr. Jack,” said Tommy, “an’ my talk goes,—you’re th’ night hawk,—sabe?”

Jack went reluctantly to the bed that had been fixed for the other boy, but had not been used, and Tommy continued to larrup the mule and watch the marker crawl down the figure-board as the water crept toward the top of the tank. At the end of an hour little Jack came from the shanty, declaring that he was not sleepy.

“Well,” says Tommy, “if yo’ won’t sleep, yo’ kin work,” and he gave Jack the whip. “This ole giraft aint had no breakfast, an’ I guess he’ll want some time th’ tank’s full.”

A half hour later Tommy returned with a big feed of oats in a bag. When he reached the west end of the bridge he stopped, put down the bag, and made the woods ring with his boyish laughter.

The old mule was lying peacefully in the endless path, while little Jack, curled up like a bird dog on the platform, was sound asleep.

Tommy took off his coat, fixed it under Jack’s head for a pillow, and then cautiously wakened the mule. He dared not use the lash now, but, following close behind the mule, prodded him persistently with the whip-handle. Round and round they went, the marker crawled down, the water up, and little Jack snored like a saw-mill.

By twelve o’clock the big tank was full of water, and the old mule was having his breakfast and dinner all at one feed.

“I give yo’ fair warnin’, Mr. Jack Connor,” said Tommy, swimming on his back, “if yo’ don’ skin off yer duds an’ git in here I’ll come up there an’ trow yo’ off d’ bridge, duds an’ all.”

“I don’ feel like ut, Tommy,” said Jack, “t’ mar’ I’ll go in, maby.”

Tommy and the dog took a few dives from the bridge, when Jack, who had been standing guard, shouted to his companion to “hustle on his duds” for Mary was coming down the track with the dinner.

Tommy, properly attired, was waiting at the narrow foot-bridge that lay across the ditch from the grade to the little shanty. He took the basket and the jug of buttermilk, and Mary, young as she was, felt and appreciated these little attentions from the young gallant. She spread a newspaper on the little pine table and put down the plates.

“Watcher doin’ uv three plates, Mary?” asked Jack.

“Mamma said I could hev dinner wif you’uns,” said Mary, shyly.

“’S matter uv yo’, Jack Connor? Think girls never gits hungry?” demanded Tommy, tumbling over his companion and rolling him in the high grass.

There was no fried chicken, no green peas, no radishes, nor corn, nor bread and butter; there was nothing—not even chicken bones—when the banquet was over, for the dog had eaten the bones.

Mary picked up the dishes and the empty jug, and when Tommy had climbed up in the old sugar tree to see if the young birds were out, she swept the little shanty and gathered a bouquet of wild flowers and placed them in a tomato can on the little table.

When Tommy had helped her over the bridge the boys put the mule out to grass. They tied his long reata to the rope that hung from the water tank—the rope the fireman pulls when the engine stops for water—and then sat under the tank, playing mumblety-peg, while the mule regaled himself on the luxurious grass. Jack soon grew tired of the sport, put his head on the oat-bag and fell asleep. In a little while Tommy followed him, for they were exceedingly comfortable and content with the big tank full of water and their own little tanks full of wholesome food and buttermilk. They had scarcely begun to dream, however, when an extra west came creeping up over the ridge. The engineer was fanning them down the long slope in order to be able to lift them over the hill at Hagler’s tank, when he observed the old pump mule slowly crossing the track beyond the bridge. He sounded the whistle and the mule stopped, with his hind legs not far from the outer rail. The whistle screamed frantically, and the brakeman climbed out of the caboose to the top of the cars to be near the brakes in case of danger. The boys slept peacefully under the tank. The mule raised his head and looked at the locomotive. He had a placid contempt for screaming locomotives, whose very breath of life was drawn from tanks which he, and his kind, were forced to fill. The travel-worn engine had ceased its screaming and was now driving madly, and with malice aforethought, toward the mule. At the last moment—not from fear of the machine, but because he hated it—the mule moved a space away. This move on the part of the mule tightened the rope slightly, so that the pilot of the engine picked it up and stretched it across the front end of the flying locomotive. A moment later the mule, at one end of the rope, received a jerk that turned him over, and the tank valve, at the other end of the rope, was pulled wide open. A great stream of water, as big around as one of the boys, now shot down against the side of the passing train, and, rebounding, spread out under the tank. The boys, thus suddenly awakened by the cold flood, which, before they could get to their feet, began to roll them over and almost smothered them, thought they must be in the midst of a cloud-burst. The roar of the train was so deafening they could not call to each other. If they stood up, the weight of the falling water knocked them down again. When the train had gone by the noise grew less terrific and Tommy fought his way to the open air. A glance at the surroundings showed him what had happened, and he hastily dragged little Jack, drenched, half drowned, and thoroughly frightened, from under the tank. One end of the broken rope had wrapped around the water-spout and held the valve open. Tommy climbed upon the tank-ladder, extricated the rope, and that closed the valve.

The old mule, which had caused all the trouble, was hitched up again and started ’round on his endless journey to put up the few hundreds of barrels of water that had been wasted.

Tommy and Jack stretched themselves on the platform to encourage the mule and dry their clothes.

CHAPTER V

TOMMY’S REQUISITION

“Ahn a winter’s mornin’ whin the wind was blowin’

At a staid an’ stiddy gai-at,

Did a Kayre sit sail wud a kayrgo laden

Out of siction siventy-eight.”

“U. P. Burns stopped on the bridge and cocked his ear. He knew the song and the singer. It was U. P.’s day to walk the track, and he was now inspecting the bridge in an officious manner, not altogether pleasing to the young gentlemen who held themselves responsible for that structure—day and night.

“Hay, there! ol’ flatobacker!” cried Tommy McGuire, from the top of a waving elm, “d’ yo’ know the trains are all over-due this morning?”

“I know they’re all on time.”

“I say they’re all over-due,” insisted the pump boy.

“Well, what make ye tink so, Tommy?”

“’Cause they bin out all night—ha, ha, ha—yo’le bum; that’s th’ time yo’ tuck th’ pin hook.” And Tommy climbed still higher to be out of reach of the rocks and sticks that the track-walker sent up after him.

This was the day following the “cloud-burst” under the water tank: the morrow of the second night’s watch. Little Jack, thoroughly exhausted, was sleeping like a weary soldier, regardless of mosquitoes, heat, ticks, and red-ants. Tommy had filled the tank long before the sun came up over the tree-tops. The engineers, having heard of the struggles and hardships of the young railroaders, were taking water at Highland and Hagler’s whenever it was possible to do so, in order to save the water at Silver Creek.

The stationary engineer at Highland and the mule at Hagler’s kicked, but it did no good. The sympathy of the whole division was with the agent’s protégé at the tank, and the sad-faced little watchman in the red shanty down by the river.

Tommy and Mary waited dinner for nearly an hour under the old elm that day.

They waited until Tommy declared that he could eat his whiskers, if he had any to eat, and Jack was still asleep. At two o’clock the watchman came out, bathed his mosquito-bitten face in the river, had dinner—what was left of it—and declared himself ready to relieve his companion. But Tommy would not go to sleep. He flagged a work-train and went up to St. Jacobs.

“I want yo’ to write a request to the roadmaster,” said Tommy.

“Ah! Tommy,” said the agent, “a requisition for supplies so soon?”

“Well, things got t’ be fixed up a little down there ’f we stay on d’ job.”

“The Lord loveth a cheerful kicker,” said the agent, looking down upon his young friend. Seeing the agent with pen in hand, Tommy led off,—

“Screen door, an’ skeeter bar on d’ winder.”

The agent wrote it as nearly as possible as Tommy gave the order.

“That’s so Jack kin sleep daytime,” he explained.

“Very well.”

“’Nother stool fur d’ table. That’s fur Mary—but yo’ need’n say so. She brings d’ dinner, an’ she’s got a’ eat same as men.”

“Yes.”

“New giers fur d’ mule, an’ scissors to cut his mane an’ tail.”

“Yes.”

“New oil can. De mule stepped on d’ ol’ one—but you need’n put that in d’ letter—tings is s’posed to wear out sometime.”

“Very well.”

“Red flag an’ white flag, red globe an’ a white globe. Them’s fur extras.”

“Is that all?”

“No. Five gallons signal oil. Might’s well git enough while we’re at it.”

“Yes, Tommy,” said the agent, “but you must remember that all these supplies will be charged up to you, and your reign at the river will be successful or otherwise in proportion to the expense of the station.”

“I don’t quite git yeh,” said Tommy, eyeing the agent. “Yo’ don’t think fur a secont ’at I’m goin’ t’ put up fur this truck?”

“Not exactly, Tommy; but the company holds you responsible for the property in your charge, and you must be as economical—that is, as saving—as if you were paying for them.”

Tommy looked troubled.

“Do you think you really need all these things?” asked the station-master.

“Yes,” said Tommy, positively. He was usually positive, one way or the other.

“Anything else?”

“Well,” said Tommy, thoughtfully, “they ort ’o be a ’Merican flag top ’o d’ tank an’ d’ fort.”

“The company doesn’t furnish fireworks or prepared patriotism for its employees, Tommy, you know,” said the agent, looking seriously at the ambitious young official.

“Well, jist say, after th’ flag business, ’at your deescrishunt or something ’at ’ill show they don’t haf t’ fill that order,” said Tommy, nodding his head to indicate his perfect satisfaction with himself.

CHAPTER VI

THEY HOIST THE FLAG

When the Highland accommodation stopped for water, about a week after Tommy had received the supplies which he had requested, the express messenger kicked off a long bundle marked “Tent, West Silver Creek Bridge. (D. H.)”

When the train pulled out a couple of Mr. Collins’s men climbed up the water tank. After sighting and measuring for a while the men came down and asked: “Where’s your flag?”

“We aint go’ no flag,” said the pump boy.

“Well, we’ve been sent here to put up a flag. What’s in that bundle?”

“Tent!” yelled Tommy, after examining the tag. “Hully smoke, Jack, we’re goin’ t’ have a tent,” cried he, enthusiastically, as he began to cut the twine about the bundle. Tommy’s eyes widened when he shook the bundle open and found a big silk banner wearing the stars and stripes. “D’ flag! d’ flag, Jack!” he cried excitedly, as he threw the little watchman down and began to roll him up in the silk that lay upon the grass.

The company storekeeper had run a blue pencil through the flag in Tommy’s requisition, and then headed a subscription to buy what the boy wanted. Every trainman on the division, agents, operators, section men—in fact, all who heard of the thing, were eager to contribute, so that the best and biggest flag that could be bought and used in such a place, took less than half the money. The balance was spent for red fire and noise, so that the boys at the bridge, who never knew what it was to have a holiday—who knew it was Sunday once a week because the Highland local didn’t run—could amuse themselves and the people of Lick Skillet without losing any time.

The following day was the Fourth, and the first train up from St. Louis brought the fireworks. It was a great day; the biggest in the history of the settlement, and Tommy McGuire, who had been stoned and chased, freckled Tommy, “Onry Tommy,” whom the priest called “incourageable,” who had been voted a thoroughly worthless boy by all the females in the community—save his mother and little Mary—was easily the captain. And what pleased the agent, Tommy’s champion, who had driven down to the Skillet to see the show, was the fact that Tommy wore his honors easily. There was nothing of the swaggerer about him. To be sure, he awed the other boys, especially the farmer boys from a little way back, and he held the eyes of all the little girls, who envied Mary Connor, who was ever near the master of ceremonies, partly because she felt a sort of security in his company and partly from force of habit, for they were constant companions now. This fact did not escape the notice of the agent. It was a good sign, he said, to see a boy throwing a line out early in life.

Once, when the big flag had become entangled about the pole, Tommy ran up the pump ladder and over the roof of the tank to loosen it. Then, to save time, he slid down a long rope that reached from the roof to within ten feet of the ground. Every one was watching the boy, and when he dropped Mary put her hands to her eyes and said, “Oh!” and then she blushed and all the other girls laughed.

The station agent, who, instead of going to St. Louis to celebrate, had complimented the community by his presence, was, by common consent, the guest of honor. The section men brought a push-car load of lumber and built a big table, upon which the Widow Connor and Mrs. McGuire heaped the best products of their well-worked gardens. There was spring chicken, butter, and buttermilk. The agent stood at the head of the table, Tommy at his right, and little Mary, by a mere accident, at his left. In addition to keeping one eye on the agent and the other on Mary, Tommy looked out for every one. He was especially solicitous for Mrs. Dutton, who had given him the name of “Onry” Tommy, and saw that her plate was kept loaded. He even expressed a regret that the priest could not be there “to git a square once in his life.”

By the middle of the afternoon the news of the “celebration” at the bridge had filtered out among the farmers and reached up to St. Jacobs and down to Troy, and those who had made no arrangements to enjoy the Fourth, came to the water tank that evening to see the fireworks. Tommy had caused the section men to lay boards along one side of the bridge, and when it was dark, having the multitude, to the number of two or three hundred souls, including “Anderson’s nigger,” stationed at a distance, he stood upon the bridge and burned money. If he had dazzled the youth of the community, male and female, by day, he awed them at night. Standing there on the bridge in a blaze of glory, with Mary by his side, making it thunder and lightning, sending sizzling sky-rockets over the tops of tall trees, shooting burning bullets into the blue above, Tommy McGuire was easily the emperor of Lick Skillet, grand, picturesque, and awful.

CHAPTER VII

THE LABOR QUESTION

“Say, Jack, d’ roadmaster won’t know this mule,” said Tommy, standing off and looking the animal over. “Mr. Heidelberg says they’s just one thing ’at looks onryer ’n a long-haired mule, ’at’s a short-haired woman. Women an’ horses should be trimmed alike, an’ men an’ mules.”

With that Tommy put away his clippers and started the mule on his circular journey. The ingenious pump boy had grown tired of the narrow platform in the centre of the circle and conceived the idea of bringing a camp stool and sitting in the shadow of a tree just outside the ring. Immediately the mule walked to the far side of the circle and stopped. Tommy whipped him around the ring and tried it again. The mule stopped. Now up to this point it had made no great difference where the boy sat, but he would conquer the mule. He made a blind for the mule’s off eye, so that he could not see the driver as he went past, but, to his surprise, on the other side of the circle it was the near eye the mule used. He changed it. The mule went around to where he had been stopping, stopped, turned his head until his open eye was brought to bear upon his master, gave a deep sigh, and settled down to rest. Tommy was angry. He now put a blind over both the mule’s eyes, and the animal refused to budge. Tommy gave him a few sharp cracks and gave it up. He thought on the matter a great deal. It was the first time he had failed utterly; the first time he had ever been conquered; and by a mule! It was humiliating. He made a dummy and set it where he had been sitting, started the mule going and dodged behind a sycamore near where the mule was wont to stop. The animal pulled round to the effigy, shied a little, came nearer, smelled of it, snorted, and then began coolly to eat the stuffing out of it—some wisps of hay that were sticking up out of the dummy’s collar.

Little Jack came over, saw the dummy, and asked what it was for. Tommy was loath to acknowledge his defeat, and now a new idea came into his head. “We’ll stan’ that dummy at d’ end of d’ bridge, hang a white light on his arm an’ let d’ Midnight Express go by while we sleep, eh! Jack, old boy?”

Jack smiled.

“An’ say, Jack! d’ you know we can give d’ dummy a lamp fur d’ Midnight Express an’ a flag for the White Mail in d’ morning an’ sleep till sun up.”

“An’ the red light,” Jack began, “how we goin’ t’ fix that, Tommy? S’posen the dummy wants a red light?”

“Thatso,” said Tommy. “An’ say, Jack,” he added quickly, “s’pose d’ bridge ketch afire, is d’ dummy gun to put it out? Jimminy!” and with that Tommy made a run at his dummy, hit him a kick in the ribs, dragged him to the bank, and without more ado sent him down to a watery grave.

“That’s a good lesson for you, Mr. Jack Connor,” said Tommy, taking the whip and climbing up on the platform. “Do yer work yerself an’ hold yer job, an’ don’t depend on d’ Union. They’s too much machinery already in th’ worl’. U. P. says the inventor’s robbin’ d’ workin’ man. Here we’ve both got good jobs an’ we’re tryin’ to make a dummy watch a bridge.”

Jack was thoroughly shamed.

“Aint you got sense nuff to know, Jack Connor, that if a dummy’d do, the company’d have a dummy ’stead o’ payin’ you forty dollars a month to stay here?”

Jack nodded his head. “S’pose you made a dummy an’ it done d’ work, long comes Mr. Roadmaster, sees d’ dummy, says ‘that’s a good thing,’ an’ you git d’ bounce. No, sir, when a fellow’s got a job he wants to hold it, an’ not go sawin’ it off on an effigy, same as soldiers ’at’s grafted in d’ war an’s afraid to fight. There’s a good lesson fur you, Mr. Jack,” added Tommy: “Hold yer job an’ don’t bank on d’ Union or a dummy;” and with this advice Tommy cracked the mule up and subsided, with a countenance fixed and resolute.

CHAPTER VIII

LITTLE JACK’S PROMOTION

“I don’t care a tinker’s dime about Denis McGuire,“ said the agent, angrily, “but something must be done for little Jack. He’s having malaria. Winter will be coming on and he can’t stand a winter in that shanty.”

“I can take Jack in my office to carry dispatches,” said the roadmaster; “but who can I put on the bridge to watch it as that boy does?”

“There you are,” replied the agent, sarcastically. “Because the boy is faithful, you would keep him there until he dies and leaves his mother utterly helpless. But,” he added quickly—for he was a good stayer when he elected to stay—“since you ask my advice, I’ll tell you: Put Denis McGuire on the bridge—he’s a cripple for life; crippled in the service of this company.”

“I’ve told ye,” said the roadmaster, “that Denis McGuire was barred from workin’ fur the Vandalia phile I’m here.”

The agent wore a look of disgust, as he turned to answer a call.

Presently he came near the roadmaster, drew a chair, and said, as though he were telling a new, strange story to a little child: “I knew a section boss once who let a flat car get away on the hill at Collinsville; the car ran out on the main line, collided with the President’s private car, wrecked it and killed a trainman. He was discharged, reinstated after a few months, and is now—”

“That was not my fault,” broke in the roadmaster, “I sint a man to set the brake.”

“Denis McGuire sent a man to flag, but—”

“And he should have seen the flagman beyent th’ curve before loadin’ th’ push kayre.”

“And the gentleman at Collinsville should have seen that the brake was in working order before kicking the block from under the wheel with his own brave foot,” said the agent, nodding his head to clinch the point.

The roadmaster was beaten out. Presently he got to his feet and began walking the floor. When the local freight came along the agent told the conductor what had passed between the official and himself. “Hazelton,” said the agent, “they won’t give you a passenger train because you’re a good man on freight. Jim Law is no good as a freight man so they reward him with a soft run; a thorn for virtue and a rose for vice. Hazelton, the poor should help the poor—speak a word for little Jack, the Hibernian czar goes down with you to-day.”

And it came to pass that Denis McGuire, with one leg shorter than the other, was made watchman at Silver Creek, and little Jack went to be messenger boy in the office of the roadmaster.

Although loath to part company with his little friend, Tommy rejoiced at Jack’s good luck. What distressed him most was the thought that little Mary would not come now to fetch his dinner and put fresh flowers in the old tomato can.

There was no need for him to stay in the shanty nights; in fact, his mother wanted his protection, so Tommy moved back to the McGuire cottage in the heart of Lick Skillet.

To his surprise, Mary continued to bring his dinner until the beginning of the winter term of school, after which Tommy ate a cold lunch or came home for his dinner. He invariably had the tank filled, his mule stabled, and was up the road to meet Mary on her way from school. In winter, when the snow was deep, he took the mule, and the sled that Mr. Collins had made for him, and brought Mary home. It was wonderful, the change that had come over this apparently worthless boy within a year. He could walk into the pay-car, sign his name for forty dollars, and it was his, and he was a man, all but the whiskers, and he felt sure that they would be along on time.

When Jack came home for the holidays, with a new suit of store clothes, presents for his mother, a new, warm cloak for Mary, and firecrackers for all the little boys in the place, he and Tommy had many a happy hour together. East St. Louis was a wonderful city, and they were building a great bridge across the river that ran between the two towns, as wide as Anderson’s orchard and as deep as a well. And some day the roadmaster was going to give Tommy a lay-off and he was to visit Jack, and they would cross the great river on a steamboat with a whistle as big as the water tank.

“An’ dive off d’ bridge,” broke in Tommy, enthusiastically.

CHAPTER IX

TOMMY FLAGS THE WHITE MAIL

At last the long winter broke, spring came back, the grass grew green upon the graves of the old watchman and his son, school was out, and little Mary brought Tommy’s dinner, as she had done the summer before.

When seven o’clock came of a morning, Denis McGuire would limp home and Tommy would ride his mule down the track behind the White Mail.

It had been raining for nearly a week, the fields were flooded and the trains late.

Half of East St. Louis was under water, and the broad bottoms, seen from Collinsville, looked like a vast ocean. For twenty-four hours both East and West Silver Creek had been rising rapidly. An extra, taking water at the tank, told McGuire that the mail was an hour late at Effingham, and McGuire went home, leaving the bridge in Tommy’s care. Whilst he was walking home and the boy was riding down (the mule went fearfully slow to work), the water was rising fast. As Tommy came near the bridge he noticed that the water, in places, was almost up to the ends of the ties. Below the track it was two feet lower, and the boy sat watching the boiling flood of black water that was sucking under the bridge. Occasionally great logs would strike against the wooden piling and shake the whole structure. Tommy was thoroughly alarmed—not for himself—for he believed himself capable of swimming the widest river that ran, but for the White Mail that would soon come over the ridge and down the short hill like falling down a well. Suddenly, a great elm tree that stood near the bank above the bridge toppled over into the stream, drifted crosswise against the bridge and lodged.

The roots and branches of the huge tree choked the channel, other trees and logs drifted against it, and a great wall of water began to rise rapidly above the track. Finding the outlet clogged, the river ran swiftly along the railway, east and west, until it came to the bluffs. It backed up far into the forest over the flat bottoms, grew higher and heavier, and the old bridge began to tremble. Meanwhile the fresh engine that had taken the White Mail that morning at Effingham was quivering across the great prairies of Illinois. Pausing to quench her thirst at Highlands she dashed away again and was now whistling for St. Jacobs. A drunken little Dutch tailor, who had boarded the train at the last stop, insisted upon getting off at St. Jacobs.

“The next stop is East St. Louis,” said Conductor Wise, punching his ticket.

“Vell, eef you sthop or nit, I git off ust de same,” and, as the train whistled, a quarter of a mile above the station, the fool Dutchman stepped out into space and came down on the east end of the platform.

The agent, standing in front of the station (it was a sight to see the White Mail go by an hour late), saw a bundle of old clothes come rolling swiftly down the long platform, and finally fetch up with a bump against the end of the depot. The Dutchman was in that bundle. In all the history of the Vandalia Line the greatest marvel is that this man lived; that he actually got up and asked the agent to have a glass of beer. So, if there is ever a proper time for a man to become hopelessly and helplessly inebriated, it would seem to be just before getting off a mail train onto a hardwood platform at a mile a minute.

About the time the Dutchman hit the earth, the old bridge began to tremble and crack, like the breaking up of a hard winter. A moment later the great stringers parted, the river, laden with logs and trees, rushed into the opening, and the bridge was gone.

Even as Tommy turned his mule the water was running across the track between the ties. The mule, gladdened by the prospect of avoiding the pump and getting back to the stable, trotted briskly away, and finally, by dint of much kicking and thumping, broke into a run.

Tommy knew that the White Mail was almost due, and that if he failed to gain the ridge before she pitched over, she must leap into that awful flood, with all on board. He knew the old engineer, and how he ran when the Mail was late. He thought of the newsboy, now a flagman, who had given him picture papers, of Conductor Wise and his pretty daughter—almost as pretty as Mary.

When he came to the road-crossing where they usually turned off, the mule stopped. Tommy reined him to the track again and urged him on. He could almost see over the ridge, but not quite. A heavy mist was rising from the wet earth, filling the wood with gray fog. The boy glanced back, but could see nothing. The roar of the river, pouring over the grade, grew louder, instead of fainter, as he rode away.

Suddenly the White Mail screamed on the ridge, not a thousand feet from the mule. Instantly Tommy reined him over the rail, waving his straw hat in lieu of a flag. The mule moved slowly, showing contempt for the train. Until now, Tommy had not thought of his own life. He felt that the train would stop—must stop. Peering from his window, the old engineer saw something on the track, and instantly felt like hitting it, for was he not already nearly an hour late? He would not shut off. A second glance showed him the rider, dimly through the gray mist. Now he saw the hat and recognized the pump boy. The old man’s heart stood still as he shoved the throttle home, but it was too late, and Tommy and the mule went out of the right-of-way.

Denis McGuire had seen the engine strike the boy and hurried to him where he lay.

His mother came, and presently many of the neighbors, the trainmen, and some of the passengers. His mother lifted his head and held it in her lap.

They brought some water from the car and threw it in his face, and he came to life again. The men put money in his old straw hat; the women kissed him; for the train had stopped with the nose of the engine at the water-edge. After casting a pitying glance at the remains of the old mule, Tommy went away, walking wabbly, between little Mary and his mother.

CHAPTER X

TOMMY McGUIRE SEES THE CITY

It took Tommy McGuire more than a month to recover from the effect of his head-end collision with the White Mail. The old pump mule, upon whose back Tommy had hurried to the top of the hill in the face of the flying train, had lost his life, and the railway company had lost a mule, but the company made no complaint. The brave boy, by warning the engineer, had saved the company the trouble and expense of hauling a heavy engine from the bottom of a very muddy stream, rebuilding a number of cars, and apologizing to the postal authorities at Washington, to say nothing of costly damage suits. And the President of the Vandalia had marked the pump boy at West Silver Creek for promotion. He had issued orders to that effect to his subordinate officials. All these interesting facts had been made known to Tommy by little Mary Connor, who had it by letter from her brother Jack, the messenger boy in the office of the roadmaster at East St. Louis.

It had been arranged that Tommy should visit his friend, little Jack, at the river, as soon as he was able to travel, and to that visit the pump boy looked forward with great expectations.

It was midsummer when Tommy boarded the Highland accommodation one morning at St. Jacobs. Heidelberg, the agent, had consigned him to the care of the conductor, for none thought of transportation for Tommy McGuire, the hero of Silver Creek. Jack met him at the depot at East St. Louis and took him at once to his boarding house. After dinner the messenger boy, who had been in the great city for nearly a year, allowed Tommy to accompany him on his rounds among the various departments of the road.

Tommy was surprised to see the timid Jack pushing his way through crowds, darting across the tracks between the snorting switch engines, talking back to the big policemen, and even threatening to thump a grocer’s boy who was trying to run them down.

After supper that evening the boys took a ferry and crossed the great river. Tommy, who had found little to awe him in his short life, said, looking over-side, that it was awful. As they neared the west bank the noise of the heavy traffic along the river front became deafening. As far as they could see, up and down the river, there was nothing but houses, and high above their heads hung the skeleton of the big bridge. Tommy breathed easier when he felt the flagging beneath his feet. He was inclined to shrink from the big wagons and heavy drays that rattled past them in the narrow street, but when he caught little Jack grinning at him, he determined to face whatever came without flinching. A boy who had once ridden a mule up against an express train ought not to be afraid of a dray, or a thousand drays.

When they had wandered for an hour, never losing sight of the river that showed through the narrow streets up as far as Broadway, Jack bethought him of the spending-money the roadmaster had given him. Presently, near the door of a little wooden shop, they saw a sign that read:

“Sweet Cider and Cigars.”

They were too big for candy, and not big enough for beer, so Jack thought the sweet cider sign about the proper thing.

There was no light in the place, save the little that filtered through the dirty window and fell from the street lamp through the open door.

The boys hesitated, but when the voice of a woman called kindly to them, bidding them enter, they stepped inside. Jack called for cider, and when they had tasted it they both said it was not cider. They refused to drink it, but both pulled out their pocket books and wanted to pay. They had each put a quarter on the little show-case and the woman took both. The boys waited in silence for their change, and the silence was broken by the snoring of a man just behind the calico curtains that cut the narrow room eight feet from the door.

“Won’t yez have some candy, boys?” asked the woman, sliding the door in the show-case and putting in a fat hand.

“No!” said Jack; “we want our change.”

“Yez don’t git no change. Drinks is twenty-five cents in this shop.”

“Come on! les go,” said Tommy.

“No, yez don’t,” said the woman, stepping from behind the low counter and pushing the door shut. “Yez’ll drink what yez ordered or I’ll call th’ police.”

The boys glanced at each other. Jack was thoroughly frightened. Tommy was fighting mad. “Open that door,” he demanded. The woman laughed, a laugh that the boys had never heard before, locked the door and removed the key.

Tommy was about to throw himself upon her as she stepped toward the curtains, but Jack caught hold of his arm.

“Moik! Moik! I say Moik, wake up. Come ahn, ye brute, git up.”

The woman passed behind the curtains and was endeavoring to rouse the sleeping man. The place was quite dark now, with the door shut. The narrow window panes were covered with dust, and only a faint ray struggled through from a street lamp.

Tommy tried the door. “Take hold of my shoulder,” said he to Jack, “and pull for your life.”

Tommy grasped the knob, put one foot against the door jamb, and the two scared boys threw themselves back with all the strength they had. The screws that held the lock in place must have been eaten with rust, or the wood rotten, for the door gave way and the boys fell backward into the room.

As they scrambled to their feet and rushed out, the woman came after them, calling: “Police! police!” but the boys kept on running. They turned a corner and made for the river. Once or twice they thought they heard the heavy boots of a policeman close behind them, but they never looked back. They reached the river just as a ferry-boat was about to pull in the plank, and leaped aboard.

When they had gained courage to look back they saw a policeman standing on the wharf looking at the boat. No doubt he was looking at them, and they went forward, their hearts still beating wildly when they stepped ashore on the Illinois side.

“Les go home,” said Tommy.

“Never. Everybody in St. Louis knows me, and if we’ve been reco’nized they’ll go right to the house to git us. We must not go home to-night.”

“Well, les don’t stan’ here where they can see us,” said Tommy, and they strolled down along the water-edge.

They climbed up onto an old, abandoned cart and watched the ferry-boats come and go. They watched closely for the caps and buttons of police officers among the passengers that passed out between the two big lamps on the landing.

“Like as not they’ll put on citizens’ clothes, or maybe send detectives after us, an’ you can’t tell a detective from anybody else; sometimes they dress up like storekeepers an’ sometimes like tramps.”

It was quite dark now, where the boys sat upon the old cart, and presently they saw three men coming up the river, walking slowly and talking low.

“Come on,” said Jack, grasping Tommy’s arm, and hurrying down to the very water-edge. They hid under an old, abandoned wooden pier and waited for the men to pass by, for they made no doubt that they were detectives.

“They must have seen us,” whispered Jack, “they’re comin’ out on the pier.” Now the boys tried to hold their breath, for the men were walking silently over their hiding-place, and not four feet above them.

The three men sat down upon one of the stringers that pointed out over the water.

“Hark! what’s that?” said one.

“What’s what? you idiot; you’re worse ’an a two-year-old, shyin’ at a fallin’ leaf.”

“I heard someon’ cough.”

“It’s that chicken heart of yours hittin’ your vest. Close that fissure in your face.”

“Aw, cheese it,” said the third man, “what’s on yer mind, Charley?”

“A whole lot,” said the severe man, who seemed to be the captain. “The night express is the proper train, Monday night the time, and Casey Water Tank the place.”

Tommy hunched Jack.

“There’s always a lot of mail and express matter that accumulates here over Sunday, therefore the Monday fast express ought to be good picking.”

A bareheaded woman came down to the river, looked into the boiling flood, shivered and went away, manifestly determined to make one more effort to solve the bread and butter problem.

When she had passed out of hearing, the man went on: “Jim’ll go to Casey to-morrow, Sunday, and make his way to the tank. Having the only decent suit, I’ll take a sleeper for Indianapolis, but I promise you I won’t sleep. And Pete, you white-livered coyote, you’ll take the blind baggage at Greenup, so as to be on hand when the time comes.”

“An’ how do we proceed?” asked Jim.

“You’ll be hiding behind the tank, and when the fireman’s wrestling with the spout an’ the engineer’s watching his signals so as to place the engine, you’ll step quietly aboard, holding your gun close to the engineer, but not offensively close so as to enable him to take it away from you.”

“An’ must I pint it butt fust, er nozzle fust? You know I hain’t never handled a gun afore.”

“Well, if you handle it as recklessly as you handle the English language you’ll kill the man on sight. Well, to my tale: Pete will uncouple the train the moment the engineer has placed the engine and wait for me.”

“An’ what’ll the great man do?” demanded Jim, who was feeling the insult to his grammar.

“The great man will herd the car-hands up through the sleepers and into the day coach, where he will proceed to pacify the passengers. Having slipped into his false face he will pause with his back to the door at the rear of the car, twirl his arsenal playfully, and bid the multitude be quiet. For the further awing of those who may meditate violence he will fire three shots—bang, bang, bang—that shall come like the measured thumping of my lady’s heart, when she sees a cow. These pistol shots will be followed by the tinkling sound of falling glass, for the three glims will have been doused. And, by the same token you shall know, O, Jimmie, and you, my shivering Pete, that your uncle is doing business in the day coach.”

“An’ I’ll come in wud a mail sack an’ git de watches and diamins.”

“Watches! shade of Jesse! Does Two-card Charley rob unarmed men and helpless women? You will devote your time and that mite of gray matter that you are supposed to have in your head to the parting of the train.”

“S’pose some on’ shows fight?”

“Why, apologize and bow yourself out, of course. Oh, Pete! Pete! I’ve tried to make something of you, but it isn’t in the wood. It hurts me to hint such a thing, and yet I know the day will come when I must needs lay violent hands on you; kill you, mayhap, and cache you in the waving grass, you ass.”

Pete had stuck a short pipe into his mouth, and now indiscreetly struck a parlor match and held it to the pipe. The intellectual leader struck the pipe and the match with his open hand and drove them into the face of Pete, and immediately the conference broke up.

The two boys lay quiet until the men had passed the big lamp at the landing, and then crawled out.

“Say, Jack,” said Tommy, and the sound of his voice broke the silence so suddenly that Jack started and clutched at his friend’s arm, “them fellows’ll be hidin’ out same as us, if they don’t watch out.”

“Shall we tell on ’em?”

“Sure! Aint the company’s business our business?”

“Yes; still we wouldn’t like to have somebody tell on us.”

“But what have we done, Jack Connor? We ordered the drinks an’ paid for ’em—both of us.”

“An’ pulled the door down. You often hear of fellows bein’ sent up for breakin’ into houses.”

“We didn’t break in; we broke out, to gain our freedom. Liberty, Heidelberg says, is the rightful heritage of American citizens.”

Now, the boys, full of a great tale, stole softly up the shadow side of the street, and to bed.

CHAPTER XI

THE HOLD-UP AT CASEY’S TANK

It was Sunday in St. Louis, and in East St. Louis as well, but there was no rest for the officials of the Vandalia Line. Little Jack, the messenger boy, and Tommy, the pump boy, were being examined by the superintendent. The boys told their story without embarrassment. A boy who has been messenger for a year in the roadmaster’s office, and another boy who has been up against the White Mail with his mule, when the Mail was making little less than a mile a minute, are not going to get rattled when telling a simple story. When the superintendent had heard that Two-card Charley, Jim, and Pete were going to rob the Midnight Express on Monday night, he began to work the wire that went to Chicago.

Then, as now, Chicago was the headquarters of the famous Watchem Detective Agency, and the Vandalia wanted a good detective, right away, regardless of expense.

Now, the elder Watchem happened to be a personal friend of the President of the Vandalia Line, and he would send none other than his boy, Billy, who had already made a world-wide reputation as a criminal catcher. But Billy was away chasing a bank robber through the Michigan forests, and could not be found.

Late in the afternoon the Superintendent grew impatient, but the head of the Chicago agency assured him that a detective would reach the river in time to take the Midnight Express on Monday night.

When the last train over the Alton left Chicago that Sunday night, with no detective on board, the Superintendent went swearing to bed. When all the morning trains pulled out on Monday, bringing no help, the Superintendent said, over the wire, to Watchem, that he would give the business to Theil. Whereupon, old man Watchem reached over to Indianapolis, touched the President, and the President said, over the wire, to the Superintendent, “Leave it all to Watchem,” and he left it, and sulked in his tent the day.

The Michigan pines were making long shadows on Monday afternoon when Billy Watchem came to the lake-side and caught a wire from his father, bidding him hurry home.

“Step lively,” said Billy to his burglar, “you’re not the only robber on the road. There is work for me near the home office;” and so the men made haste.

The lamps had been lighted about the post office when young Watchem rushed into the office of the Chicago & Alton and asked for a special engine to carry him to East St. Louis. In his haste he got on the wrong spur, and stumbled over a little, inexpensive, but extremely officious official, whose business it is to pass upon the credentials of country editors and see that the company’s advertisements are properly printed.

“For whom do you want a special?” asked the keeper of the clippings.

“For myself; that’s ‘‘whom.’”

Now, the keeper of the clippings gave the young man one withering glance, and turned away with a hauteur in the presence of which the President would have paled, as the morning star pales before the rising sun.

At that moment a comfortable looking man stepped from the elevator. That was the little man’s chief.

“Hello, Billy,” said the General Passenger Agent, giving the young detective a glad hand, “are you all packed?”

“All packed,” said Billy, glancing at a hand grip that till now had been hidden beneath a fall overcoat that hung on his arm.

“Then let us be off. We’ve got a special engine and Pullman car waiting at the station for you,” and the two men went down together.

“Now, have I made of myself an ass?” mused the keeper of the clippings. “I would have wagered my position that he was the editor of the Litchfield Lamplight, and he goes to the river by special train over our road. Ay, over the Alton,” and he closed his desk with a bang.

“I want you to make a mile a minute to-night,” said the General Passenger Agent, offering a cigar to the engineer, as the slim eight-wheeler moved out of the station shed.

As the car clicked over the switches, the young detective turned to a cold lunch that the black boy had builded in the buffet, for he had not eaten since morning. He had scarcely commenced his meal when the heavy sleeper began to slam her flanges up against the rail and show him that she was rolling. The Alton was one of the oldest of the western roads, and upon this occasion she would take her place as pace-maker for the rest, just as she had taught the Atlantic lines the use of sleeping and dining cars. Indeed it is here, upon these very rails, that we are wont to picture young Mr. Pullman, with a single blanket and a wisp broom, swinging himself into his first sleeper, that was not his, but a rented car.