Whispering Smith

  CHAPTER VIII

  SMOKY CREEK BRIDGE

  It was not alone that a defiance makes a bad dinner sauce: there wasmore than this for McCloud to feed on. He was forced to confess tohimself as he walked back to the Wickiup that the most annoyingfeature of the incident was the least important, namely, that his onlyenemy in the country should be intrusted with commissions from theStone Ranch and be carrying packages for Dicksie Dunning. It wasSinclair's trick to do things for people, and to make himself souseful that they must like first his obligingness and afterwardhimself. Sinclair, McCloud knew, was close in many ways to LanceDunning. It was said to have been his influence that won Dunning'sconsent to sell a right of way across the ranch for the new CrawlingStone Line. But McCloud felt it useless to disguise the fact tohimself that he now had a second keen interest in the Crawling Stonecountry--not alone a dream of a line, but a dream of a girl. Sittingmoodily in his office, with his feet on the desk, a few nights afterhis encounter with Sinclair, he recalled her nod as she said good-by.It had seemed the least bit encouraging, and he meditated anew on theonly twenty minutes of real pleasurable excitement he had ever felt inhis life, the twenty minutes with Dicksie Dunning at Smoky Creek. Herintimates, he had heard, called her Dicksie, and he was vaguelyenvying her intimates when the night despatcher, Rooney Lee, openedthe door and disturbed his reflections.

  "How is Number One, Rooney?" called McCloud, as if nothing but thethought of a train movement ever entered his head.

  Rooney Lee paused. In his hand he held a message. Rooney's cheeks werehollow and his sunken eyes were large. His face, which was singularlya night face, would shock a stranger, but any man on the divisionwould have given his life for Rooney. The simple fellow had but twoliving interests--his train-sheets and his chewing tobacco. SometimesI think that every railroad man earns his salary--even the president.But Rooney was a Past Worthy Master in that unnumbered lodge ofrailroad slaves who do killing work and have left, when they die, onlya little tobacco to show for it. It was on Rooney's account thatMcCloud's order banishing cuspidors from his office had beenrescinded. A few evenings of agony on the despatcher's part when inconsultation with his chief, the mournful wandering of hisuncomplaining eyes, his struggle to raise an obstinate window beforehe could answer a question, would have moved a heart harder thanMcCloud's. The cuspidor had been restored to one corner of the largeroom, and to this corner Rooney, like a man with a jaw full ofbirdshot, always walked first. When he turned back to face his chiefhis face had lost its haunted expression, and he answered with solemncheer, "On time," or "Fourteen minutes late," as the case might be.This night his face showed something out of the ordinary, and he facedMcCloud with evident uneasiness. "Holy smoke, Mr. McCloud, here's aripper! We've lost Smoky Creek Bridge."

  "Lost Smoky Creek Bridge?" echoed McCloud, rising in amazement.

  "Burned to-night. Seventy-seven was flagged by the man at the pumpstation."

  "That's a tie-up for your life!" exclaimed McCloud, reaching for themessage. "How could it catch fire? Is it burned up?"

  "I can't get anything on that yet; this came from Canby. I'll have agood wire in a few minutes and get it all for you."

  "Have Phil Hailey and Hyde notified, Rooney, and Reed and Brill Young,and get up a train. Smoky Creek Bridge! By heavens, we are ripped upthe back now! What can we do there, Rooney?" He was talking tohimself. "There isn't a thing for it on God's earth but switchbacksand five-per-cent. grades down to the bottom of the creek and cribbingacross it till the new line is ready. Wire Callahan and Morris Blood,and get everything you can for me before we start."

  Ten hours later and many hundreds of miles from the mountain division,President Bucks and a companion were riding in the peace of a Junemorning down the beautiful Mohawk Valley with an earlier andillustrious railroad man, William C. Brown. The three men were atbreakfast in Brown's car. A message was brought in for Bucks. He readit and passed it to his companion, Whispering Smith, who sat atBrown's left hand. The message was from Callahan with the news of theburning of Smoky Creek Bridge. Details were few, because no one on theWest End could suggest a plausible cause for the fire.

  "What do you think of it, Gordon?" demanded Bucks bluntly.

  Whispering Smith seemed at all times bordering on good-naturedsurprise, and in that normal condition he read Callahan's message.Everything surprised Whispering Smith, even his salary; but animportant consequence was that nothing excited him. He seemed toaccommodate himself to the unexpected through habitual surprise. Itshowed markedly in his eyes, which were bright and quite wide open,and, save for his eyes, no feature about him would fix itself in thememory. His round, pleasant face, his heavy brown mustache, the mediumbuild that concealed under its commonplace symmetry an unusualstrength, his slightly rounding shoulders bespeaking a not too seriousestimate of himself--every characteristic, even to his unobtrusivesuit and black hat, made him distinctly an ordinary man--one to be metin the street to-day and passed, and forgotten to-morrow.

  He was laughing under Bucks's scrutiny when he handed the messageback. "Why, I don't know a thing about it, not a thing; but taking along shot and speaking by and far, I should say it looks somethinglike first blood for Sinclair," he suggested, and to change thesubject lifted his cup of coffee.

  "Then it looks like you for the mountains to-night instead of forWeber and Fields's," retorted Bucks, reaching for a cigar. "Brown, whyhave you never learned to smoke?"