Читать книгу The Rainy Day Railroad War - Holman Day - Страница 4

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All at once the stump-dotted, rocky hillside became clamorous and animated. From the little shacks sheathed with tarred paper, from the sodded huts, from burrows sunk into the hillside men suddenly came popping out with shrill cries.

Three men, shouldering surveying instruments, stopped in their tracks on the freshly-heaped soil of a new railroad embankment, and gazed up at the hillside. The railroad skirted its foot and the sudden activity on the slope was in full view. “Your lambs seem to be blatting around the fodder-rack once more, Parker,” observed the man who lugged the transit. He was a thin, elderly man and his tone was somewhat satirical.

The men were running toward a common center, uttering cries in shrill staccato and sounding like yelping dogs.

Parker drove the spurs of his tripod into the soft soil and stared up at the hillside, his tanned brow puckering with apprehension.

“I don't think there's much of the lamb to that rush,” observed the third man; “they sound to me more like hyenas after raw meat.”

“It will be Dominick they'll eat, then,” said the elderly man.

“I'm afraid you put the Old Harry into 'em last week when you took their part and straightened out Dominick's bill of fare,” he went on. “They probably think they can get quail on toast now if they yap for it.”

“I believe in letting dagoes fight it out among themselves,” announced the third man with much derision. “Helping one of 'em is like picking a hornet out of a puddle. You'll get stung while doing it.”

The men on the hillside had knotted themselves into a jostling group before the door of a long, low structure sheathed with tarred paper like the shacks. In the sunshine an occasional glint flashed above their heads.

“Yes, their stingers are out,” remarked the elderly man drily. “If they've got Dominick cornered in that eating camp I'm thinking this will be the day that he'll get his——whatever it is, they've laid up for him.”

“He promised me there should be no more weevils and no more spoiled meat,” cried the one who had been addressed as Parker, a young man whose earnest face now expressed deep trouble. “As matters were going, those Italians were half starved and doing hardly half a day's work in nine hours. Their padrone was putting the food rake-off into his own pocket.”

“I'm not backing up Dominick,” said the other. “But when you took the men's part and laid down the law to him on the grub question you gave them their cue for general rebellion. Ten chances to one the padrone has done as he agreed. I reckon you scared him enough for that. Now they're probably around with knives looking for napkins and sparkling red wine. I tell you, Parker, you're inviting trouble when you go to boosting up what you call the oppressed multitude.”

“That's a pretty hard view to take of the world and the people in it, Mr. Searles,” replied the youth. “There ought to be a bit of merit and encouragement in a man's going out of his way to right a wrong.”

“Well, Parker, I'm hired as construction engineer on the P. K. & R. railroad system and I've worked for the road a good many years and found that I get along best when I am attending strictly to my own business in my own line. I told you at the time you butted into that dago row you were laying up trouble either for yourself or for some one else—and I guess it's some one else.”

A series of pistol shots popped smartly on the hillside, the reports partly muffled by the thin walls of the shack. The cries of the men outside became shrieks. The next instant the side wall bellied outward and then burst asunder. A man came hustling through the opening, evidently self-propelled, for he struck lightly on his feet and began to run down the steep hill. A soiled canvas apron fluttered at his waist. Stones rained after him. The knot of men at the door scattered like quicksilver and howling runners pursued him.

Probably fear helped him as much as agility, for he kept well ahead of the rout, leaped a low fence at the bottom of the hill, scurried across a little valley and came floundering up the soft soil of the railroad embankment, scrambling toward the little group of engineers.

“It's Dominick,” said Searles. “There seems to be a little more work cut out for you in your side line of philanthropist.”

“I do it whatta you say,” screamed the man as his head came over the edge of the embankment. “Nice! Good! All good to eat. But they want mucha more—too mucha!”

He struck himself repeated blows on the breast with one fist and pointed with the other hand at the men who came swarming up the side of the graded road bed.

“You coma look—look to the nice br-read, meat all good, beer—plenty much to eat, dr-rink!” the padrone gasped in appeal, as he circled about Parker to put him between the rioters and himself.

The men who came after, screaming and cursing, jerking their arms above their heads, rolling back their lips from their yellow teeth, were apparently so many lunatics whose frenzy was not to be stayed. But undisciplined natures whose excesses spring from lack of self control are all the more ready to respond to the masterful control of others.

First of all the men recognized in Parker the champion who had won their first rights from the padrone.

They stopped their shrill vituperation and, crowding about him, began to bleat their explanations and appeals. But he threw out his arms, pushed them back a safe distance from the panting Dominick and roared them into silence, brandishing his fists, as he would have quelled a noisy school.

When they understood that he wished them to be quiet they were silent, all leaning forward, their eyes shining, their lips apart, their fists clinched as tho they were holding their tongues in leash by that means, their dark, brown faces alight with wistful, almost palpitating eagerness. The regard they fixed on his face was baleful in its intentness.

“Looka what they do,” yelled Dominick rushing to his side. He had stripped his sleeve back from his arm. Blood was trickling from a knife gash.

Then the tumult broke out again from the crowd. Two men leaped forward shaking their hats in their hands and screaming assertions and pointing quivering fingers at bullet holes in the crowns.

“Shut up!” barked the young man. The presence of the satiric and unsympathetic old engineer nerved him to settle the dispute, if he might. The hint from the other that he had been meddling in what was outside his business gave him an uncomfortable sense of responsibility.

“About face and back to the camp,” he shouted. “I will look at your dinner and we shall see!”

They hesitated a moment, but he went among them, pushing them down the bank.

He followed with the padrone behind the jabbering throng, and the two engineers came along at his earnest request.

“Mr. Searles,” said Parker after a little while, as they walked side by side, “being an older and wiser man than I am you are probably right in suggesting that I did wrong in interfering in this affair at the outset. But,” he half-chuckled, “I am going to lay the blame on my professor in sociology. He set me to thinking pretty hard in college and I guess I haven't been out from under his influence long enough to get hardened into the selfish views of my fellowman.”

There was earnestness under his smile.

“My boy,” said the elder, “I am not blaming you for what you have done for the poor devils. But I have been all for business in my life. Business hasn't seemed to mix well with philanthropy. I haven't dared to think of what I ought to do. I have thought only of what I had to do, to earn a living for my family.”

“Well,” said Parker, “if the P. K. & R. folks decide that I've been meddling in matters that are none of my business I have no family to suffer for my indiscretion—but I have prospects and I know that a discharged man is worse off than a man who has started.”

The elder man patted Parker's arm.

“As it stands now—and I'm speaking as a friend, young man, and not as a captious critic—you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful Parker, that they don't trample you down when they rush for the trough.”

The young man walked along up the hillside in silence. But just as they arrived in front of the long camp the scowl of puzzled hesitation disappeared from his forehead.

“As old Uncle Flanders used to say,” he muttered, “'When a man sticks his finger into a tight knot-hole he'd better pull it out mighty quick, before it swells, even if he does leave some skin on the edges.'”

The men halted and grouped themselves about the door. Their eager looks and nudgings of each other showed plainly that they expected their champion to take up their cause against the padrone once more.

Dominick prudently halted at a little distance.

“You go look for yourself, Sir Engineer,” he shouted; “on the kettle, in the table all about and you see whatta I feed to those beasts when I try to satisfy.”

The men retorted in shrill chorus leaping about and gesticulating till their joints snapped.

Parker resolutely pushed through the throng without trying to understand what they were saying to him and slammed the door in the faces of the few who attempted to crowd in with him. Those who anxiously peered through the windows saw him examine the food set out on the table for the noon meal, lift the covers from the stew pans on the rusty stove and then pass into the little building behind the main camp. The great stone ovens for the bread-baking were located there.

When at last he came out he faced them with grim visage, squared the shoulders that had borne many a football assault and called to Dominick.

“Go inside,” he said, “and coax those two helpers of yours out of those ovens. They couldn't understand my Italian. Tell them that they are safe. Let the padrone through, men! Do you hear?”

The crowd sullenly parted and Dominick trotted up the lane they left, hastening with apprehensive shruggings of his shoulders.

“Go about your work,” said Parker, clutching his arm a moment as the padrone hastened past. “I can see it isn't your fault this time.”

“Now, men,” he cried, turning to the throng, “few words and short so that you may all understand. Dominick's dinner is good. Good as any in the line boarding camps. I'm going to eat here. You come in and eat too.”

A mumbling began among them and immediately it swelled into a jabbering chorus as the few who understood translated his words to the others.

He leaped down off the muddy stoop and strode among them, cuffing this one and that of those malcontents who were noisiest.

“That young man certainly understands dago nature,” muttered Searles to the other engineer. “A club, good grit and a hard fist will drive them when a machine gun wouldn't.”

“I stood up for you when you were not used right,” shouted the young man. “He has given you what I told him to give you—what you asked for. Go in there and get it.”

He knew who the ring-leaders in the mutiny were and he drove those into the camp first. The others followed. In five minutes they were all at their places at table munching quietly. Another man, even with equal determination, might have not succeeded. But the greediest grumbler among them understood that this young man had first been as valiant to secure their rights as he was now ready to curb their rebellion.

In his own heart he was loathing this role of arbiter and mentor. His first interference had come out of his natural sense of justice. He had pitied this herd of men who had been so helplessly appealing against their wrongs.

As he stood at one end of the room now and gazed at them, he realized with a little pang of self-reproach that his latest exploit had been prompted by as much of a desire to set himself right with the company as to square the padrone's critical case.

Later, when they were trudging down the hill together Searles said with a little touch of malice,

“For a philanthropist, Parker, you seem to relish rough-house about as well as any one I ever saw, I've heard for a long time that football makes prizefighters out of college boys—so much so that they go looking for trouble. Is that so?”

“I wish you'd let the matter drop, Mr. Searles,” said the young man. “I'm thoroughly ashamed of the whole thing.”

“Well, I was going to say,” went on the elderly man, “that civil engineers in these days get just as good wages without being shoulder-hitters. You'll get along faster on the peace basis.”

That was Parker's reflection two days later when he was in the room of the chief engineer of the P. K. & R. system, at the company's general offices.

“By the way,” said the chief, after his subordinate had finished his regular report, “Mr. Jerrard wishes to see you.”

Jerrard was general traffic manager and chief executive.

The young engineer went slowly down the long corridor, apprehension gnawing at his heart. He huskily muttered his name to the clerk at the grilled door and was admitted. He fairly dragged his feet along the strip of matting that led to the general manager's private office. It was like the Bridge of Sighs to him.

“Parker, eh?” repeated the general manager, whirling in his chair and letting his eyeglasses drop against his plump “front elevation,” as Parker whimsically termed it in his thoughts, even in this moment of his distress.

Jerrard gazed at him for a little while, a rather curious expression in his eyes under their shaggy gray brows, then whirled back to his desk and scrabbled among his papers. He drew forth a sheet of memoranda, gave Parker another shrewd glance and inquired:

“Is it true, sir, that you have been interfering in the padrone system of the construction department?”

“I suppose what I did might be termed that, tho I wasn't intending to be meddlesome, Mr. Jerrard.”

“Nothing in general instructions, was there, to lead a cub assistant in the engineering corps to revise a boarding house bill of fare?”

“No, sir.”

“I find it further mentioned that you were back next day and herded about seventy-five Italians into a victualling camp as you would drive steers to a fodder rack. Don't you know that we reserve that sort of business for a squad of police?”

“Mr. Jerrard,” said the young man, recovering some of his self-possession tho his tone was apologetic, “since I have been on the road I saw what happened once when the police came with their clubs and revolvers. There was a free fight and two men were killed. I thought I saw a chance for one man to arbitrate a little difficulty—and arbitration is pretty highly recommended in these days by good authorities. When I found that arbitration didn't make things stay put I meddled once more in order to undo my first mistake—if we may call it that. It probably was a mistake, looked at officially. But you see—” his voice faltered a little, for the manager was surveying him with rather a hard look in his eyes, “I hoped that putting the padrone into line on his food question would prevent a strike; when I drove the men to table I had only the interests of the road at heart, for the strike was then fairly on.”

“Well,” said the manager, a bit of a smile at the corners of his mouth, “you certainly were not thinking very hard of your own interests when you went into that rabid gang.”

“I can see that I made a botch of it generally, Mr. Jerrard. I will save you the trouble of requesting my resignation.”

But as he bowed and turned Jerrard spoke sharply.

“Not so fast, young man,” he said. “As the executive of the P. K. & R, system it wouldn't be exactly official and proper in me to approve your judgment in that matter of the Italians; but as a man—plain man, now, you understand—I know grit when I see it and—” he dropped his bluff stiffness got out of his chair and came along and squeezed Parker's muscular arm, “you've got a brand of it that I admire. Yes, I do. No mistake! But that is just between you and me. That is simply my own personal opinion. I don't believe the directors relish the idea of gladiators in the engineering corps. Just respect this little private hint of mine hereafter please.”

He surveyed the young man with twinkling and appreciative eyes.

“Parker,” he said, “once in a while there comes up in the railroad business a demand for a man who has brains and spunk and muscle all rolled up in one bundle. I haven't tested you out yet on the first named but the chief engineer speaks in your behalf. The last two you certainly have. There's the story of a man who was going home late at night and picked up what he thought was a kitten and found it to be a pole-cat. It was good judgment to set it down again mighty sudden. But the skin was worth something and he resolved to have the skin to pay for the damage. Now President Whittaker and myself have been up in the north woods this season—among the big game, you understand. We picked up what we thought was a kitten. It has turned out to be something else. But we are not going to drop it.”

The young engineer was looking at him with puzzled gaze.

“You don't understand a bit of it, do you?” laughed the traffic manager. “Well, I can't explain the thing just yet. I'll simply leave it this way today: Do you want to take a pole-cat and skin it for us? I don't mean by that that it's a job that any enterprising young man should be ashamed or afraid of. It's a job in your line. It's something of close personal interest to the president of this system and myself. It is going to take you away into the big woods. Do you want it—yes or no?”

The engineer hesitated only a moment.

“I'll take it,” he said simply.

“That's the boy!” cried Jerrard. His tone was so enthusiastic that Parker's instinct told him that this bluff offer was another test of his readiness in an emergency and had succeeded.

The manager put his hand against his shoulder and gently pushed him out of the office.

“Get ready for a cold winter out of doors and practice your tongue on the names To-quette Carry' and 'Colonel Gideon Ward' until you are not afraid of the sound of them.”

With a chuckle he shut the door on the astonished young man, but opened it again before Parker had moved from the mat outside.

“Don't be worried, my boy, because I cannot explain the whole situation today.” There was kindly reassurance in his tones. “You'll make out all right, I'm sure of that.” A queer little smile puckered the corners of his eyes and his voice again became teasing. “The idea is, you've taken a contract to do up the Gideonites of the Wilderness in a lone-handed job. But I think you're good for the trick.” He shut the door again.