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ОглавлениеMike Mullins of Boston Crick
Mike Mullins’ Big Moment
It all happened long ago at a little bush station south of Matheson. Much of it came to me second hand and what I had from Mike himself was so larded with talk about organization and organizing ability—his presumably—that it only tended to confuse the issue. Anyway, from one source or another, the incident worked out as near as may be like this.
Mike Mullins was in a quandary. His big moment had come and he feared that it might be too big for him to cope with single-handed. “There’s glory in it for sure,” thought Mike, “but more kicks than kisses if I don’t pull it off.” A voice over the telephone had informed him that in three days there would be a shipment of a thousand pigs to handle. Mike was alone. The Agent, for two days, had been fighting the thousand devils that torture a man in a severe bout of ’flu. No help could come from that quarter. It was sink or swim and Mike decided to take the plunge. Never before had pigs been shipped from that point and Mike was determined to share none of the glory of such a shipment with the Chief Despatcher.
The little bush station had a twenty-car siding. A two mile spur stabbed off into the bush to serve a now long-forgotten mill. Trains stopped for flags and devil a bit else. It was a peaceful spot. Rather too peaceful for the amount of business now in sight.
“Pigs is it,” thought Mike, “and one thousand of them. Where they’re coming from ’tis hard to say but shipped they’ll be and nothing short of murder’s going to stop me. One thousand pigs and how big would a pig be now?” It seemed to Mike that they came in assorted sizes and big pigs would take more cars than little pigs. “How big was a big pig?” That was the question. Memories of fat pigs from his youth made them appear enormous. “Not a black-fly’s eyebrow less than six feet long they be, for certain, and two feet across the beam at the very least. One thousand of the creatures! Sure, ’tis big business I’m engaged in and one of those days it will be Mr. Mullins, General Freight Agent, no less.”
This bright vision faded abruptly when Mike realized that the thousand had to be reduced to terms of stock cars. Arithmetic in its simplest form was higher mathematics to Mr. Mullins. Sums that required no more than his ten fingers for their solution were well within his compass but calculations involving lead pencils and furrowed brows were quite another matter. However, he went to it.
“One thousand pigs is it and each of the creatures two feet across the back of him.” He plunged deep into the problem. Slightly blown, some minutes later, he came up with the answer. “If you stand them side by side along the track, they’ll make a procession sideways two thousand feet no less and that’ll bring more than half of them out on the main line. Anyway standing them up like a lot of soldiers will never do. ’Tis into stock cars, bad cess to them, I’ll have to pack them.” With grim determination, Mike went at it again with pencil and maledictions against every pig that wasn’t already reduced to bacon.
Fifty stock cars was the answer. Try as he would, there was no other and the siding would take twenty. “The saints be with me but they may be little pigs but, big or little, ’tis twenty cars they’ll get. Worry enough I’ve had already to be giving thought to the comfort of a pig. Crowd in, you devils, and lucky you are to be riding at all, at all.” Twenty cars and Mike looked along a siding as empty as the main line streaking away into the bush.
A man can only stand so much and Mike needed rest. It is doubtful if he got it. Years later Mike asked if counting sheep would make one sleep. When assured it would, all he said was, “Counting pigs won’t work. I’ve tried it.” However each day brings its problems and, tired as he was, Mike was up with the crack of dawn. There on the siding, blank the day before, as if in answer to prayer, were ten stock cars. “ ’Tis leprechauns I’ll be seeing next. Sure, and I must be living right.” Half his problem was solved because a way-freight in the night had dropped them to make a passing farther up the line. All day they stood there and no one made a pass at them. Ten cars and he needed twenty. In the morning the pigs would arrive and big or little they must be shipped. It was a worrying day for Mike and the temptation to call in the Chief Despatcher was strong but resisted. This was Mike’s show and he would see it through alone.
Night was falling and there were still only ten cars. The barometer of Mike’s feelings was falling fast and pointed strongly to foul weather when a toot from the sawmill switch engine made it jump a point or two. The dinkey rumbled out of the bush with a string of a dozen boxcars ahead of it. Spotting these on the spur near the main line switch, it uncoupled and chugged its way back to the mill. “Tempting a decent man, is it? ’Tis piracy on the high seas or pigs rampaging in the ticket office and I has no choice. I’ll do it and may the saints protect me.”
A car mover was his only tool and it’s far less handy than a 300-class locomotive. Fortunately the spur was on just the suspicion of a grade. Setting all brakes, Mike cut loose the first car and started pumping. It was a night of toil and backache, pumping the mover, throwing switches and hopping up to brake wheels. At last it was done in the first streaks of early dawn and Mike, exhausted, croaked, “Bring on yer pigs.”
He had not long to wait. Around a curve in the road, the first wagon appeared and a car, passing it at high speed, drew up to the station. A burly man hopped out, glanced at the siding and almost raced up to Mike. “Man, man,” he cried, “I’m lucky. I’ll need the lot and a hundred more.”
“The lot of what?” said Mike.
“The cars, man, the cars,” he roared. “Here’s the boom at the pulp mill gone and all the logs hightailing it to James Bay. The chippers are eating into the stock pile like twenty beavers at a poplar. We’ll save the situation. There’s twenty thousand cords of pulpwood waiting for your cars and you’d better be ordering more at once.”
“The cars is bespoke,” said Mike, grandly, and turned to greet the man on the first wagon.
“You’re the pig man, I take it,” said Mike, “and when will the pigs be coming?”
“Sure they’re here,” said the man. “Can’t you see them on the wagon?”
“What’s here?” said Mike.
“The sow and pigs,” said the man, “and perhaps you’ll help the crate on to the platform.”
Mike stared, but it was too much for his jaded nerves. “One sow and pigs! One thousand pig! And ten thousand ring-tailed devils.” He caught the pulp man as he was stepping into his car. “The cars is yours,” he said, “Sure and I couldn’t see you stuck. I’ve rearranged my shipments and you can start loading at once. It’s all along of my organizing ability.”
