CHAPTER NINETEENTH
At last the agony was over—at least the agony of suspense. The poor misguided men knew now that all hope had died. They would be re-employed when the company needed them, but it was January—the dullest month in the year. Every railroad in the West was laying men off. Hundreds of the new men were standing in line waiting for business to pick up, and this line must be exhausted before any of the old employees could be taken back. The management considered that the first duty of the company was to the men who had helped to win the strike. There was no disposition on the part of the officials to make it harder for the vanquished army. They admired the loyalty and self-sacrifice, though deploring the judgment of the mismanaged men; but they were only officers in an opposing army, and so fought the fight for the interest they represented, and for the principles in which they believed.
Nothing in the history of the strike shows more conclusively that the men were out-generalled than the manner in which the company handled the press. It is not to be supposed for a moment that the daily papers of Chicago, with possibly one exception, willfully misrepresented the men, but the story of the strikers was never told. Mr. Paul, the accomplished "bureau of information," stood faithfully at the 'phone and saw that the public received no news that would embarrass the company or encourage the men. The cold, tired reporter found a warm welcome and an easy chair in Mr. Paul's private office, and while he smoked a fragrant cigar the stenographer brought in the "news" all neatly type-written and ready for the printer. Mr. Paul was a sunny soul, who, in the presence of the reporter laughed the seemingly happy laugh of the actor-man, and when alone sighed, suffered and swore as other men did. Mr. Paul was a genius. By his careful manipulation of the press the public was in time persuaded that the only question was whether the company, who owned the road, should run it, or whether the brotherhoods, who did not own it, should run it for them. Every statement given out by the company was printed and accepted, generally, as the whole thing, while only two papers in all the town pretended to print the reports issued by the strikers. The others cut them and doctored them so that they lost their point. But all is fair in love and war, and this was war—war to the knife and the knife to the hilt—so Mr. Paul should not be hated but admired, even by his foes. He was a brilliant strategist. Many there are who argue to this day that Mr. Paul won the strike for the company, but Mr. Paul says Watchem, the detective, did it. At all events they each earned the deathless hatred of the strikers. But, leaving this question open, the fact remains that the general in command—the now dead hero of that fierce fight—deserves a monument at the expense of American railroads, if, as American railroad managers argue, that war was an holy war.
There had never been a moment when the management feared defeat. They had met and measured the amateur officials who were placed in command of the strikers. They were but children in the hands of the big brainy men who were handling the company's business. They could fire a locomotive, "ride a fly," or make time on the tick of the clock. They could awe a convention of car-hands or thrill an audience at a union meeting, but they had not the experience, or mental equipment to cope with the diplomatic officials who stood for the company. Their heads had been turned by the magnitude of their position. They established themselves at a grand hotel where only high-salaried railroad officials could afford to live. They surrounded themselves with a luxury that would have been counted extravagant by the minister of many a foreign land. They dissipated the strength of the Brotherhood and wasted their substance in high living. They had gotten into clothes that did not fit them, and, saddest of all, they did not know it. The good gray chief of the Brotherhood, who was perfectly at home in the office of a president or a general manager, who knew how to meet and talk with a reporter, who was at ease either in overalls or evening dress, was kept in the background. He would sell out to the company, the deep-lunged leaders said. He could not be trusted, and so from the men directly interested in the fight the strikers chose a leader, and he led them to inglorious defeat; though defeat was inevitable.
At last, made desperate by the shadow of coming events, this man, so the officials say, issued a circular advising old employees to return to work and when out on the road to disable and destroy the company's locomotives, abandoning them where they were wrecked and ruined. The man accused of this crime declared that the circular was a forgery, committed by his secretary, who was a detective. But that the circular went out properly signed and sealed is beyond dispute, and in reply to it there came protests from hundreds of honest engine-drivers all up and down the land. The chief of a local division came to Chicago with a copy of the circular and protested so vigorously that he was expelled from the Brotherhood, to the Brotherhood's disgrace.
Smarting under what he deemed a great wrong, he gave the letter into the hands of the officials, and now whenever he secures a position the road that employs him is forced to let him go again or have a strike. He is an outcast—a vagabond, so far as the union is concerned. Ah, the scars of that conflict are deep in the souls of men. The blight of it has shadowed hundreds of happy homes, and ruined many a useful life.
With this "sal-soda" circular in their possession the managers caused the arrest of its author, charging him with conspiracy—a serious offense in Illinois.
A sunny-faced man, with big, soulful blue eyes and a blond mustache, had been living on the same floor occupied by the strike committee. He had conceived a great interest in the struggle. For a man of wealth and culture he showed a remarkable sympathy for the strikers, and so won the heart and confidence of the striker-in-chief. It was perfectly natural, then, that in the excitement incidental to the arrest, the accused should rush into the apartments of the sympathetic stranger and thrust into his keeping an armful of letters and papers.
As the officers of the law led the fallen hero away the blond man selected a number of letters and papers from the bundle, abandoned the balance and strolled forth. For weeks, months, he had been planning the capture of some of these letters, and now they had all come to him as suddenly as fame comes to a man who sinks a ship under the enemy's guns.
This blond man was a detective. His victim was a child.
Yes, the great struggle that had caused so much misery and cost so many millions was at an end, but it was worth to labor and capital all it had cost. The lesson has lasted ten years, and will last ten more.
It had been a long, bitter fight in which even the victorious had lost. They had lost at least five million dollars in wrecked and ruined rolling stock, bridges and buildings. The loss in net earnings alone was nearly five millions in the first five months of the strike that lasted nearly a year. It would cost five millions more to put the property in the same excellent condition in which the opening of hostilities had found it. It would cost another five millions to win back the confidence of the travelling and shipping public. Twenty millions would not cover the cost, directly and indirectly, to the company, for there were no end of small items—incidentals. To a single detective agency they paid two hundred thousand dollars. And there were others.
It has taken nearly ten years to restore the road to its former condition, and to man the engines as they were manned before the strike. It would have taken much longer had the owners of the property not settled upon the wise policy of promoting men who had been all their lives in the employ of the Burlington road, to fill the places as fast as they became vacant, of men—the heroes of the strike—who were now sought out by other companies for loftier positions. In this way the affairs of the company were constantly in the hands of men who had gone through it all, who could weed out the worthless among the new men, and select the best of those who had left the road at the beginning of the strike. The result is that there is scarcely an official of importance in the employ of the company to-day who has not been with it for a quarter of a century. The man who took the first engine out at the beginning of the strike—taking his life in his hands, as many believed—is now the general manager of the road.
There was something admirable, even heroic, in the action of the owners in standing calmly by while the officials melted down millions of gold. As often as a directors' meeting was called the strikers would take heart. "Surely," they would say, "when they see what it costs to fight us they will surrender." The men seem never to have understood that all this was known to the directors long before the sad news reached the public. And then, when the directors would meet and vote to stand by the president, and the president would approve and endorse all that the general manager had done, the disheartened striker would turn sadly away to break the melancholy news to a sorrowing wife, who was keeping lonely vigil in a cheerless home.
CHAPTER TWENTIETH
Dan Moran had not applied for re-employment when the strike was off, but chose rather to look for work elsewhere, and he had looked long and faithfully, and found no place. First of all he had gone west, away to the coast, but with no success. Then he swung around the southern route, up the Atlantic coast and home again. Three years,—one year with the strikers,—four years in all of idleness, and he was discouraged. "It's the curse of the prison," he used to say to his most intimate friends; "the damp of that dungeon clings to me like a plague. It's a blight from which I can't escape. Every one seems to know that I was arrested as a dynamiter, and even my old friends shun me."
He had been saying something like that to Patsy Daly the very day he returned to Chicago. They were walking down through the yards, for Patsy, who was close to the officials, had insisted upon going personally to the master-mechanic, and interceding for the old engineer who had carried him thousands of miles while the world slept, and the wild storm raged around them. Patsy had been telling the old engineer the news of the road, but was surprised that Moran should seem to know all that had taken place, the changes and promotions, the vast improvements that had been made by the company, and the rapidly growing traffic. Patsy stopped short, and looking his companion in the eye, began to laugh.
"Now what in thunder are you laughing at?" asked Moran.
"At Patsy Daly, the luny," said the conductor (Patsy had been promoted); "why, of course you know everything. I've been rooming at the house, and I remember now that she always knew just where you were at all times. Ah! ye sly old rogue—"
"Patsy," said Moran, seriously, putting up his hand as a signal for silence.
"That's all right, old man. She deserves a decent husband, but it'll be something new to her. Say, Dan, a fool has less sense than anybody, an' Patsy Daly's a fool. Here have I been at the point of making love to her myself, and only her tears and that big boy of hers have kept me from it. And all the time I thought she was wastin' water on that blatherskite of a Cowels, but I think better of her now."
"And why should she weep for any one else?" asked the old engineer.
"And why shouldn't she weep for you, Dannie? wandering up and down the earth, homeless and alone. Why I remember now. She would cry in her coffee at the mention of your name. And Dan, she's growin' prettier every day, and she's that gentle and—"
Just then the wild scream of a yard engine close behind them caused them to step aside.
"Wope!" cried a switchman, bang bang went the bell—"Look out there," yelled Patsy, for as the two pedestrians looked back they saw a drunken man reel out from among the cars. The driver of the switch-engine saw the man as the engine struck him, and, reversing, came to a quick stop and leaped to the ground.
The man lay with his lower limbs beneath the machine, and a blind driver (those broad wheels that have no flanges) resting on the pit of his stomach, holding him to the rail. The young engineer, having taken in the situation, leaped upon his engine, and was about to back off when Moran signalled him to stand still. "Don't move," said the old engineer, "he may want to say a word before he dies, and if you move that wheel he will be dead."
"Why, hello Greene, old hoss; is this you?" asked Moran, lifting the head of the unfortunate man and pushing the unkept hair back from his forehead.
Greene opened his eyes slowly, looked at his questioner, glanced all about and, as Moran lifted his head, gazed at the great wheel that had almost cut his body into two pieces. He was perfectly sober now, and asked why they didn't back up and look him over.
"We shall presently," said Moran, "only we were afraid we might hurt you. You are not in any pain now, are you?"
"No," said the man, "I don't know when I've felt more comfortable; but for all that I guess I'm clean cut in two, ain't I, Dan?"
"Oh no, not so bad as that."
"Oh yes, I guess there's no use holdin' out on me. Is the foreman here?"
"Yes, here I am, Billy."
"Billy!" said Greene, "now wouldn't that drive you to cigarettes? Billy!—why don't you call me drunken Bill? I'm used to that."
"Well, what is it, old man?" asked the foreman, bending down.
"You know this man? This is Dan Moran, the dynamiter." And the foreman of the round-house, recognizing the old engineer for the first time, held out his hand, partly to show to Moran and others that the strike was off, and partly to please the dying man.
"That's right," said Greene to the foreman, "it'll be good for you to touch an honest hand."
By this time a great crowd had gathered about the engine. Some police officers pushed in and ordered the engineer to "back away."
"An' what's it to ye?" asked Greene with contempt, for he hated the very buttons of a policeman. "It's no funeral uf yours. Ye won't grudge me a few moments with me friend, will ye? Move on ye tarrier."
The big policeman glanced about and recognizing the foreman asked why the devil he didn't "git th' felly out?"
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 passed 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.
"Hello 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 snatches 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 rehearsed 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 passing 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 passed 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, nightshirt, 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, bumped, 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 passed 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."
The man worked his fingers and when the Philosopher thought he must have the ring in his hand, he caught hold of the man's wrist, jerked the hand from his pocket, and the ring rolled upon the platform. When the man cut off the end of his cigar the Philosopher had seen a white line around one of the fingers of the man's sea-browned hand. Real tramps, thought the Philosopher, don't cut off the ends of their cigars. They bite them off, and save the bite. They don't throw a half-smoked cigar away, but put it, burning if necessary, in their pocket.
"What do you mean?" demanded the man, indignantly.
"Pick up your ring."
"I have a mind to smash you."
"Do, and you can ride."
"You've got your nerve."
"You haven't. Why did you stare at that lady's feet, when she was climbing into the car?"
"That's not your business."
"It's all my business now."
"I'll report you for this."
The man started to walk past the big station master, but a strong hand was clapped to the man's breast pocket and when it came away it held a small pocket memorandum.
"See what's in that, Patsy," said the Philosopher, passing the book to the conductor, who had gone forward for the decision.
The man made a move, as if he would snatch the book, but the big hand at his throat twisted the flannel shirt, and choked him. Patsy, holding the book in the glare of his white light, read the record of a man who had been much away from home. He had, according to the book, ridden with many conductors, whose names were familiar to Patsy, and had, upon divers occasions, noticed that sometimes some people rode without paying fare. In another place Patsy learned that trainmen and other employees drank beer, or other intoxicating beverages. A case in point was a couple of brakemen on local who, after unloading a half-dozen reapers and a threshing machine at Mendota, had gone into a saloon with the shipper and killed their thirst.
While Patsy was gleaning this interesting information the man writhed and twisted, fought and fumed, but it was in vain, for the hand of the Philosopher was upon his throat.
"Let me go," gasped the man, "an' we'll call it square, an' I won't report you."
"Oh! how good of you."
"Let me go, I say, you big brute."
"I wanted to let you go a while ago, and you wouldn't have it."
The man pulled back like a horse that won't stand hitched and the button flew from his cheap flannel shirt.
"I'm a goat," said the Philosopher, stroking the man's chest with his big right hand, "if he hasn't got on silk underwear."
"Come now, you fellahs," said the man changing his tune, "let me go and you'll always have a friend at Court."
"Be quiet," said the Philosopher, "I'm going to let you go, but tell me, why did you want to do little Patsy, that everybody likes?"
"Because Mr. Paul was so cock sure I couldn't. He bet me a case of champagne that I couldn't ride on the Omaha Limited without paying fare."
"And now you lose the champagne."
"It looks that way."
"Poor tramp!"
Patsy had walked to the rear of the train, shouted "All aboard," and the cars were now slipping past the two men.
"Have you still a mind to smash me?"
"I may be a wolf but this is not my night to howl."
"Every dog has his day, eh?"
"Curse you."
"Good night," said the Philosopher, reaching for a passing car.
"Go to—" said the tramp, and the train faded away out over the switches.