Snow on the Headlight

CHAPTER TENTH

The night winds moaned among the empty freight cars. The arc lamps hummed and sputtered, making the flying frost look like diamond dust dropping from the grinding stars. Out of a shadowy alley a bent man crept, crouching under the snow-hung eaves. Far down the track, at a crossing, the man saw the flash of a helmet and the glint of brass buttons, and dodged among the cars. The man had committed no crime against the law, but he was willing to, and so avoided the silent guardian of the peace, pacing his beat. Beyond the track he came to the street door of a two-story building, struck a match, read the number on the transom, and entered the hall. At the top of the first flight of stairs a door stood open. Beneath a gas jet in the open room Dan Moran sat reading a book. He had heard the unsteady footsteps on the stair, but had not allowed them to disturb him. Now the prowler paused, steadied himself against the door-jamb, coughed, hiccoughed, hello'd in a whisper, and Moran looked up.

"Well, Greene," said Dan, "what brings you abroad on a night like this?"

"Business!" was the half-whispered reply, "Business, ol' man."

Now the rum-crazed rambler left the door, put a trembling hand on the table in the centre of the room, glanced back toward the stairs, and peered into the face of the old engineer. "We are betrayed!" he whispered, leaning heavily upon the stand. His wrist shook violently, causing the table to quiver. The smoking outfit upon the table made a low, rumbling noise. "What's that?" he asked, glaring about.

Having satisfied himself that all was right he put both hands upon the table, and gazing again into the face of Moran, repeated: "We are betrayed. Cowels is goin' out with Blackwings on the Denver Limited to-morrow night. The plumber told the foreman an hour ago—I heard 'im. Least they think he's goin', but he ain't. He's goin' to—"

"Oh, Greene, you're drunk. Go home and have a good sleep."

"Home! Did you say home? I ain't got no home. Drunk? Yes, I been drunk lots o' times, but I ain't drunk now. Honest, I ain't teched a drop to-day. Got a bot about you, ol' man? Say, if you have, fur th' love o' life gimme a drop—half a drop—Dan, I'm all afire inside."

It was an awful picture that Moran looked upon now. The bloated face, the sunken, blood-shot eyes, the blazing, hideous nose, burning in the iron-gray stubble, all topped by a shock of tousled, unkempt hair, made a picture horrible in the extreme.

"Say!" Greene began again, glancing toward the door, "meet me at seven thirty to-morrow night, on the 'rep' track near the round-house, an' I'll show you a trick."

"What sort of trick will you show me?"

With another look over his shoulder at the door the drunkard leaned over the table and whispered. When the old engineer had gathered what the man had said he got to his feet, took his midnight caller by the collar and lead him to the top of the stairs. Greene was opposed to leaving the cheerful room, so Moran was obliged to go with him to the street door. Having put the wreck out into the frosty night the engineer went back to his book. But he could not read. That awful face into which he had looked, and the black soul that he had seen as well, haunted him. He sat with his feet upon the table and smoked pipe after pipe, in a vain effort to drive the frightful picture from his mind. The news that Greene had brought disturbed him also. His fireman was going to desert the Brotherhood, and take their old engine out.

Blackwings! How he loved that locomotive, and how absurd it seemed now for a man to become so attached to a mere machine! But she was not inanimate. She lived, moved, breathed. How often, as they swept beneath the stars of an autumn night, had he felt her hot breath upon his face, heard the steel singing beneath her feet and felt her tremble, responsive to his lightest touch. How wild and free and glad she had seemed, let loose in the moonlight with the Limited behind her. How gracefully, easily, she lifted the huge, vestibuled train from swale to swell. How she always passed station after station on the tick of the clock, keeping to the time-card, unvarying as the sun. Proud and queenly, yet gentle, she always answered the signals of the less fortunate locomotives that stood panting on the side tracks, with their heavy loads. Even the Meteor, the engine that wore white flags and pulled the president's private car, always took the siding and saluted Blackwings as she swept by majestically with the Limited.

More than once Moran had refused promotion that would take him from his engine—from the open fields and free, wide world in which they lived and moved together—to the cares and anxieties of a stuffy office. He had been contented and happy with Blackwings, his books and his briar-root pipe. He did not share the troubles of his less fortunate brothers, who hugged and exaggerated their grievances until they became, to them, unbearable. But when they quit he climbed down, took off his overclothes, folded them carefully and carried them away with him. He had nothing to gain by the strike, but he had much to lose by remaining at his post—the confidence and respect of his fellow-toilers. Besides he, in common with the rest, regarded the classification of engineers as unfair to the men and to the travelling public. If a man were competent to handle a passenger train, said the strikers, he ought to have first-class pay. If he were incompetent he ought to be taken off, for thousands of lives were in the hands of the engineer during the three years through which, at reduced pay, he was becoming competent. These were the arguments advanced by the men. This business upon the one hand, and a deep longing upon the part of the management to learn just how far the men could go in the way of dictating to the officials, in fixing the load for a locomotive, and the pay of employees, caused the company, after years of sparing, to undertake the chastisement of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.3

It is to be presumed that the generals, colonels and captains in the two armies fought for what they considered right. At all events they were loyal and obedient to their superiors. But each had found a foe vastly more formidable than had been expected. They had not dreamed that the fight could become so bitter. Life-long friends became enemies. Family ties were severed, homes were ruined, men's lives were wrecked, women's hearts were broken, and out of the shadow of the awful strife came men fit for murder. It was these things that had kept Dan Moran awake far into the morning.

Presently he heard a whistle, opened his eyes, looked at his watch and then undressed and went to bed, while other workmen, more happily situated, passed under his window on the way to work.

CHAPTER ELEVENTH

"Brush the snow off the headlight!"

"What?"

"Brush the snow off the headlight!"

It was the first time the engineer had spoken to the fireman since they left Chicago. When they crossed the last switch and left the lights of the city behind them he had settled down in his place, his eyes, with a sort of dazed look in them, fixed upon the front window. The snow was driving from the north-west so hard that it was impossible for the engineer, even when running slowly through the country towns, to put his head outside the cab, and now they were falling out into the night at the rate of a mile a minute.

It was Barney Guerin's first trip as a fireman. He was almost exhausted by the honest effort he had been making to keep the engine hot, and now he looked at the engineer in mingled surprise and horror. He could not believe that the man expected him to go out over the wet and slippery running-board to the pilot and wipe the snow from the headlight glass. He stood and stared so long that the fire burned low and the pointer on the steam gauge went back five pounds. For the next two or three minutes he busied himself at the furnace door, and when he finally straightened up, half-blinded by the awful glare of the fire-box, half-dazed by being thrown and beaten against the sides of the coal tank, the engineer said:

"Brush the snow off the headlight!"

The fireman opened the narrow door in front of him and the storm came in so furiously that he involuntarily closed it again. Again he tried and again was beaten back by the wind. Pulling his cap tight down he faced about and stepped out with his back to the storm. Holding to the hand railing he worked his way to the front end. One sweep of his gloved hand swept the snow away and the great glare of the headlight flashed up the track.

"My God! how she rolls!" exclaimed the engineer.

And she did roll.

Never before in the history of the road had the Denver Limited been entrusted to a green crew, for the engineer was also making his maiden trip. The day coach was almost empty. In the chair car, with four chairs turned together, the newly-made conductor, the head brakeman, a country editor, and the detective sent out to spot the crew, played high five. The three or four passengers in the sleeper were not asleep. They were sitting silently at the curtained windows and occasionally casting anxious glances at the Pullman conductor who seemed to be expecting something to happen. Where were all the people who used to travel by this splendid train? The road was now considered, by most people, as unsafe and the people were going round it. Public opinion, at the beginning of the strike, was about equally divided between the men and the company. Now and then a reckless striker or sympathizer would blow up a building, dope a locomotive or ditch a train, and the stock of the strikers would go down in the estimation of the public. Burlington stock was falling rapidly—the property was being wrecked.

On nearly every side track could be seen two or three dead engines that had been ruined and abandoned by amateur engine-drivers, and now and then at way-stations the smouldering ruins of a freight train, whose blackened skeleton still clung to the warped and twisted track. At every station great crowds of people blocked the platforms, for the Limited had not been able to leave Chicago for more than a month. The engineer had scarcely touched the whistle, deeming it safer to slip quietly through the night, and the light train was now speeding noiselessly over the snow-muffled earth. They had left Chicago two hours late, and as they had a clear track, so far as other trains were concerned, the young driver was letting her go regardless of danger. At any moment they might expect to be blown into eternity, and it was just as safe at seventy miles an hour as at seventeen.

Besides, George Cowels was desperate. For five long years he had fired this run with the same locomotive. He knew all her tricks and whims, her speed and power, and the road was as familiar to him as was his mother's face. He knew where the "old man" used to cut her back and ease off on the down grades. He knew that he ought to do the same, but he did not. "Let her roll," he would say to himself; and she did roll, and with every swing the bell sounded a single note, low and mournful, like a church bell tolling for the dead. It seemed to the unhappy engineer that it tolled for him, for that day he had died to all his friends.

Although he had only been out a little over an hour now, he knew that in that hour the story of his desertion had flashed out to every division of the various brotherhoods in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and that a hundred thousand men and women would curse him that night before they slept. He recollected what a vigorous striker he had been in the beginning, how he had shouted, "Put him out" when the grand master had said: "We are fighting a losing fight." He recalled with some bitterness that their leader had looked him straight in the face when he added: "And you who fight hardest here will be first to fall."

Then the face of his ten-year-old boy rose up before him, as it had appeared from the street as he was leaving his home that evening, all bruised and bleeding, with soiled and torn clothes, and he heard the brave child's explanation: "Mamma, I wouldn't 'ave fit, but Dugan's boy said my papa was a scab."4

Ordinarily it would require a great deal of "sand" to enable a man to take out a train of this kind and run at such a high rate of speed through a country full of anarchy, but in Cowels's case it required nothing in the way of bravery. The great sacrifice he had made in abandoning all that he held to be honorable,—the breaking of his vow, the violation of his oath, had left him utterly indifferent to personal danger.

It will be difficult for those unacquainted with the vast army of daily toilers to appreciate the sufferings of this youthful engine-driver. A king, who in a night's debauch loses an empire, loses no more than the man who abandons all that he holds sacred. The struggles and disappointments of the poor mean as much to them as similar sorrows mean to the rich. The heart of a Bohemian milkmaid beats as wildly, aches as sorely and breaks as surely as does the heart of the proudest princess. This man and his wife, on the day they abandoned the cause of his comrades—of the Brotherhood of which he had been so proud, of whose strength he had boasted in many a crowded hall—made a great sacrifice. To stand disgraced in their little world was to be disgraced before all the people of all the earth, for in that world were the only people they knew and cared about.

When the fireman returned to the cab he was almost overcome with terror. More than once, as he worked his way along the side of the rolling, plunging engine, he had nearly been dashed to death. The very machine, he fancied, was striving to shake him from her. Once he had lost his footing on the running board and only saved himself by clinging to the hand rail while the rolling steed beat and thrashed him against her iron side.

"Never ask me to do that again," he shouted, as he shook his clenched fist at the engineer. The latter laughed, then asked:

"Why?"

"Because it is dangerous; I nearly lost my life."

"And what if you had?" said the engineer, and he laughed again. "Why, don't you know that thousands would rejoice at the news of your death and scarcely a man would mourn? Don't you know that at thousands of supper-tables to-night, working men who could afford to buy an evening paper read your name and cursed you before their wives and children? Nearly lost your life! Poor, miserable, contemptible scab."

"Never apply that name to me again!" shouted Guerin, and this time it was not his fist but the coal-pick he shoved up into the very face of the engineer.

"Why?"

"Because it is dangerous; you nearly lost your life."

The engineer made no reply.

"And what if you had?" the fireman went on, for it was his turn to talk now.

"If my action makes me contemptible in the eyes of men, how much more contemptible must yours make you? I take the place of a stranger—you the place of a friend; a man who has educated you, who has taught you all you know about this machine. Right well I know how I shall be hated by the dynamiters who are blowing up bridges and burning cars, and I tell you now that it does not grieve me. Can you say as much? Here's a copy of the message that went out to your miserable little world to-night—read it, it will do you good. I fancy your friends will be too busy cursing you this evening to devote any time to mere strangers."

Cowels took the message with a jerk, turned the gauge lamp to his corner and read:

The Denver Limited left to-night, two hours late, Fireman George Cowels as engineer, and Time-keeper Guerin as fireman. Cowels is the man who wanted the grand master thrown out of a hall in Chicago. He was a great labor agitator and his desertion is a great surprise.

Later—

It is now understood that Cowels, the scab who went out on engine Blackwings to-night, was bought outright by a Burlington detective. This fact makes his action all the more contemptible. He is now being burned in effigy on the lake front, and the police are busy trying to keep an infuriated mob from raiding and burning his house. The action of Guerin was no surprise, as he was employed in the office of the master-mechanic, and has always been regarded as a company man—almost as an official.

Guerin, having put in a fresh fire, stood watching the face of his companion, and when the engineer crumpled the message in his hand and ground his teeth together the fireman shoved another message under the nose of the unhappy man. This message was on the same subject, but from quite another source, and varied slightly from those we have just read.

Official Bulletin: Burlington Route

The Denver Limited went out on time to-night with a reasonably well-filled train, Engineer Cowels in the cab. Mr. Cowels has been many years in the service of the company and is highly esteemed by the officials. Although he was, for a time, a prominent striker, he saw the folly of further resistance on the part of the employees, and this morning came to the company's office and begged to be allowed to return to his old run, which request was granted. Cowels is a thoroughly competent engineer and has been on this same run for five years, and up to the time of the strike had never missed a trip. It is expected that his return to his engine will be the signal for a general stampede. The company has generously agreed to reïnstate all old employees (unless guilty of some lawless act) who return before noon to-morrow.

It would be difficult to say which of these dispatches distressed him most. The first said he had sold himself for so much money, the second that he had gone to the company and begged to be reïnstated. Slowly he opened the first crumpled message and read down to the word "scab." "George Cowels, the scab,—burned in effigy—a great mob about his house." All these things passed swiftly before him, and the thought of his wife and baby being in actual danger, his boy being kicked and cuffed about, almost made him mad. He crushed the crumpled messages in his right hand while with his left he pulled the throttle wide open. The powerful Blackwings, built to make time with ten cars loaded, leaped forward like a frightened deer. The speed of the train was now terrific, and the stations, miles apart, brushed by them like telegraph poles. At Mendota a crowd of men hurled sticks and stones at the flying train. As the stones hailed into the cab, and the broken glass rained over him, the desperate driver never so much as glanced to either side, but held his place, his hand on the throttle and his eye on the track. For the first time he looked at his watch. He was still more than an hour late. He remembered how the old engineer had said, an hundred times perhaps: "George, an express train should never be late; she should be on time or in the ditch."

It was the first time Blackwings had ever been an hour late anywhere, and with all his greater sorrows this grieved the young engineer. Now at the way stations the crowd that awaited them invariably fell back as the wild train dashed by, or, if they hurled their missiles, those aimed at the locomotive struck the sleeper or flew across the track behind it, so great was the speed of the train. Cowels yielded at last to the irresistible desire to see how his companion was taking it, but as he bent his gaze in that direction it encountered the grinning face of the fireman, into which he threw the crumpled paper. Then, as he continued to grin, the infuriated engineer grabbed a hard-hammer and hurled it murderously at Guerin's head. The latter saved his life by a clever dodge, and springing to the driver's side caught him by the back of the neck and shoved his head out at the window and held it there. They were just at that moment descending a long grade down which the most daring driver always ran with a closed throttle. Blackwings was wide open, and now she appeared to be simply rolling and falling through space. Although we have no way of knowing how fast she fell, it is safe to say she was making ninety miles an hour. While the fireman held on to the engineer, squeezing and shaking away at the back of his neck, the speed of the train was increasing with every turn of the wheels. Gradually the resistance of the engineer grew feebler until all at once he dropped across the arm-rest, limp and lifeless. Guerin, finding himself alone on the flying engine, had presence of mind enough to close the throttle, but with that his knowledge of the locomotive ended. He reasoned that in time she must run down and stop of herself, and then the train crew would come forward and relieve his embarrassment. It never occurred to him for a moment that he might be regarded as a murderer, for he had only held the engineer down to the seat, with no more violence than boys use toward each other in play. And while he stood staring at the still form of the driver that hung out of the window like a pair of wet overalls, the engine rolled, the snow drifted deeper and deeper on the headlight, and with every roll the bell tolled! tolled!! like a church bell tolling for the dead. The train, slowing down, rolled silently over the shrouded earth, the fire in the open furnace blackened and died, the cold air chilled her flues and the stream of water from the open injector flooded the boiler of Blackwings and put the death-rattle in her throat. When at last the train rolled slowly into Galesburg the fireman stood on the deck of a dead locomotive, with snow on her headlight, and, as the crowd surged round him, pointed to the limp form of the young engineer that hung in the window, dead.

CHAPTER TWELFTH

Judge Meyer's court was crowded when the three big policemen, formed like a football team, wedged their way into the building. In the centre of the "A" walked the prisoner, handcuffed and chained like a murderer. When they had arrived in front of the judge and the officers stepped back they left the prisoner exposed to the gaze of the spectators. Standing six feet two, strong and erect, he looked as bold and defiant as a Roman warrior, and at sight of him there ran a murmur through the court room which was promptly silenced by the judge.

In response to the usual questions the prisoner said his name was Dan Moran, that his occupation was that of a locomotive engineer. He had been in the employ of the Burlington for a quarter of a century—ever since he was fifteen years old—but being one of the strikers he was now out of employment.

"You are charged," said the clerk, "with trespassing upon the property of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company, inciting a riot, attempting to blow up a locomotive and threatening the life of the engineer. How do you plead?"

"Not guilty," said the old engine-driver, and as he said this he seemed to grow an inch and looked grander than ever.

Being asked if he desired counsel the prisoner said he did not, that the whole matter could be explained by a single witness—an employee of the company.