The Spotter

The Spotter

By

Frank L. Packard

From Railroad Stories, September 1935. Digitized by Doug Frizzle, December 2018 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca            and      https://franklpackard.blogspot.com/

It was a pitch-black night in the late fall, no snow, but freezing hard, as Budd Masters slowed the Fast Mail, eastbound, for the water tank at the foot of Devil’s Slide. The big racers drink heavy on the mountain grades, and here and there a water tank is strewn along the right-of-way for their refreshment. At the foot of the Devil’s Slide there was no other thing but a water tank.

Pete Leroy was handling the shovel end of it that night in the cab, and he was back up on the tender and had the spout down almost before Budd Masters, with a nicety of precision, had his train stopped where the spout could do business from the word “go.”

The Fast Mail didn’t have any time to throw away jockeying for position, and Budd Masters wasn’t the man to throw it, anyhow, in that or any other kind of way. Almost as quick as his fireman to the back of the tender, the engineer had swung through the gangway and jumped to the ground for an oil around.

With the torch in his hand winking like a gigantic firefly in the darkness as he jabbed it in and out of the entrails of the big machine, Masters poked with his long-spouted oilcan—and, disinterestedly, out of the corner of his eye, caught sight of Joe Scharff’s green lamp coming up along the track toward the forward cars.

Budd felt the drivers’ axles solicitously with the back of his hand as he moved along. Then, leaning in over the rod, his torch, oilcan and half his body disappeared from sight as he gave his attention to the motion gear.

The next instant all three came into sight again with a sudden jerk and he flung the torch up above his head to gaze back along the track, as a bull-like roar from the conductor reached him, followed by a half-frightened cry.

Scharff’s voice rose again, in a steady stream of profanity now, intermingled with the sound of a scuffle from the direction of the front end of the baggage car—but the only man Masters could see was his fireman in the dark outline up on the rear of the tender.

Then he heard his fireman’s voice in a contemptuous, threatening snarl:

“Aw, let him alone, you big stiff!”

Budd Masters started on the jump for the scene of the disturbance, though there wasn’t much doubt in his mind as to the cause of it—Scharff had probably caught a hobo beating his way, that was all.

There was light enough to see without the aid of the conductor’s lantern, which, hooked on Scharff’s arm, was joggling crazily up and down with every movement of the man’s body.

Masters’ torch, between the tender and the front end of the baggage car, made lurid daylight. Scharff was on the lower step, and under him, head and body sprawled back on the car platform, was another form. Masters caught a glimpse of the white, half-starved face of a young fellow—not more than nineteen or twenty—and as he looked, before he could lift a finger, big Joe Scharff sprang off the step, snatched hold of the other by the ankles and yanked the boy viciously to the ground.

That was a brutal act. There was a good two and a half feet to the ties, and the lad’s head struck the lower step. His body huddled inertly almost at Budd Masters’ feet.

Something seemed to shoot blood red, in a flash, before the little engineer’s eyes. The torch and oilcan dropped from his hands, and, with a spring, he was on the conductor like an infuriated wildcat.

With the impact both men lost their balance. The roadbed was raised a little, and down into the hollow they rolled. Crash! The lantern fell from Scharff’s arm, shivered to splinters. Masters was on top, and fist drove smashing straight between the conductor’s eyes. It was the only blow he got in. Scharff was twice his size, and Scharff, in a hell of fury now, flung Masters over, got the engineer down, got his knees on the engineer’s chest and began to batter a tattoo with his fists on Masters’ face.

It wasn’t genteel fighting, but it didn’t last long—fortunately for the engineer. The first to interfere was the boy, who staggered weakly between the two, but he didn’t count. He was swept incontinently and without ceremony out of the way— though not by either Scharff or Masters.

With a yell, Pete Leroy leaped from the tender and into the game. Pete was a big man, and nursing the steam gage on a fast run makes the muscles hard. Pete would have given his right hand for his engineer any time; he gave both hands to Scharff now, and he gave them with his whole heart in the work.

Even under other circumstances, Joe Scharff was not exactly popular with his fellow workers. They never really had anything on Scharff, the big, cunning-faced, pig-eyed conductor was too cute for that. But he had the reputation of being a spotter, though there wasn’t a man on the Hill Division who would have put it past Scharff to lift a fare or two himself; in fact, they put him down as a past master at the game.

And now, from the baggage and mail cars, attracted by the row, streamed the clerks, express messengers, the baggage man and the news agent. Scharff’s brakemen came, too—but even they didn’t succeed in tearing Leroy from the conductor; that was done by the sudden rush and swish of water gushing from the spout and overflowing in torrents from the tender.

It was a queer sight on the trackside in the blackness, lighted by only the trainmen’s lamps. Scharff, with raw, cut face, was mouthing threats; the boy was sitting on the ground, and Masters, his own face bruised and bleeding, was bending over him. Everybody was clustered around, all talking at once, including the passengers who were now beginning to straggle out of the cars.

Leroy shut the water off, shot the spout back with a vicious bang, and returned to the scene on the run to renew the interrupted hostilities if provided with half a chance.

Masters tried to lift the boy to his feet, but the boy didn’t seem able to walk. For a moment it looked like another clash as the engineer spoke.

“Here!” he called. “Give me a hand, some of you, to put this fellow in the baggage car. I guess he’s right bad, and mabbe a drop or two of something, if any of you have got it, wouldn’t do any harm.”

“No, you don’t!” Scharff retorted sullenly, stepping forward. “You can cut that right out from the start. There’s no tramps riding on my train. I’m conductor here, and don’t you forget it!”

“The boy’s sick,” said Masters evenly. “H’m! What are you going to do with him—leave him out here all night in the mountains to freeze?”

“I guess it ain’t the first time he’s been out all night,” sneered Scharff.

“Mabbe not,” Masters admitted, “only that don’t signify what’s to be done with him now.”

“I don’t care what’s done with him,” said Scharff. “His kind don’t ride on my train. They’re all alike, the low-lived, broken-down lot of whining curs. He ain’t hurt, he’s only putting it on.” Then suddenly, with a rush of passion: “Blast you, Masters, I’ll teach you to mind your own business before I’m through with this! I’m in charge of this train. You get up there in your cab and go ahead. The tramp don’t ride—not this trip.”

“Don’t he?” inquired Masters slowly, as though puzzling the matter out. “Look here, Scharff, I’m going to take this fellow’s head, and Pete’s going to take his feet, and we’re going to put him in the baggage car— and if he ain’t there when we get into Big Cloud, Pete and me will pound your face into everlasting pulp! I’ll admit it don t sound good for two to pile onto one, but I guess you get the idea, h’m? Pete, take his feet!”

So the hobo went into the baggage car— and stayed in the baggage car until Big Cloud was reached. MacNicoll, the baggage man, and Express Messenger Nulty spread their chair cushions on the floor, ministering to him. Once, when Joe Scharff came into the car, they did a little more than that. They scared the big conductor till the purpling bruises on his face went a sickly gray, by telling him they thought the boy was going to die.

But MacNicoll and Nulty weren’t more than half bluffing at that. The bum had got a nasty crack on his head, and wasn’t laying much for himself. He was badly hurt, bad enough to give them both a scare or two for their own account without any monkey business about it, before they finally rattled in through the Big Cloud yards.

The boy wasn’t doing much talking, but he told them his name was Bert Prouty. The express messenger asked Prouty where his home was. MacNicoll knew it was a foolish question when he asked it. The boy said he hadn’t any home.

MacNicoll shoved his cap back on his head till the visor took an acute angle upward from the plane of his forehead, and stared at Nulty.

“What’s to be done with him when we get in, I don’t know,” said he heavily. Then, as though it were an afterthought: “Blamed if I know.”

There weren’t any hospital accommodations in those days in the little mountain town that was headquarters, and Nulty sucked on his pipe thoughtfully before he answered.

“I dunno,” said Nulty.

If there was anybody in Big Cloud who couldn’t afford space for a medical ward or the cash to endow it, it was Budd Masters, but MacNicoll, Nulty, and Big Cloud generally, when they came to think it over, told themselves that was exactly what Budd Masters would do—Prouty went up to the engineer’s shanty where there wasn’t room to walk around the sitting-room table without tripping over a kid or two.

Where did they put him? Leave it to a woman. The boy was hurt, wasn’t he? Well, that was enough for Mrs. Masters.

Little Dr. McTurk, the company surgeon, took his hat off when Royal Carleton and Tommy Regan spoke to him about it; took his hat off and scowled fiercely as he did when emotion threatened to get the better of him.

“God bless that woman!” said he fervently.

“Kind of got used to making room for one more after getting the habit for eleven years without a break, I guess,” said Regan, the gruff, big-hearted, big-paunched master mechanic.

Superintendent Carleton, tilted back in his swivel chair, smiled softly.

“How’s the boy doing?” he asked.

“No strength,” said Dr. McTurk. He s been half starved. Pull him around after a while, maybe.”

“H’m!” observed Regan reflectively.

That was all they said about it in the super’s office. Not a word about Scharff. Maybe he was a spotter and maybe he wasn’t, but no official action was taken against Masters for letting a hobo ride his train.

No, the trouble that Scharff promised didn’t come—not then. Perhaps he was too thoroughly scared, or had wit enough not to go up against a tide of public opinion that would have swamped him. At any rate, there was no official recognition of the episode, and the huge conductor didn’t ask for any.

Scharff got the trainmaster to let him change runs with one of the Limited’s conductors, and silently nursed the black blood in his heart. But, though he could keep his own mouth shut, he couldn’t gag the Hill Division. Some pretty plain talk was thrown his way by those rough-and-ready railroaders of the Rockies, who weren’t in the habit of mincing words or the way they used them when it came to expressing their feelings.

These words were enough to have caused a man, built in a different mold from Scharff, to pull up stakes and apply for a punch on some other road, but with Scharff it didn’t seem to get under the skin.

“It’s orders, ain’t it?” he would growl at whoever came to him. “Well, then, what’s the matter with you? I’ll throw any hobo off I catch riding on my train. Forget it! It’s orders, ain’t it?”

Outwardly it didn’t seem to affect him any more than that. But there were some days when he ran into a good deal of that kind of talk. The black blood grew blacker, and Scharff began to live to even the score that, rankling, grew ever larger against Budd Masters and the hobo. Everything comes to him who waits, they say—and Scharff hugged that old adage to his heart.

Thanks to Mrs. Masters’ motherly care, Dr. McTurk’s prescriptions, and Budd Masters, who did what he could when he was off duty, Bert Prouty mended rapidly, color came back to his face.

No one would call him handsome. Big ears, big mouth, big nose, kind of scraggly black hair that would stay anywhere except where you brushed it, and eyes that had a habit of drooping until you didn’t know whether they were looking at you or not, was about the way Prouty sized up. All that and a stunted growth, for his height was a shade below five feet five.

The tramp was a quiet sort of chap, even when he got around enough to where he was able to talk. But he told Budd Masters that he had beaten his way pretty nearly all over the United States and up into Canada and back again. He told Masters that much—and guessed it was probably what he’d do when he got on his feet again.

Budd Masters thought things over, guessed a little differently from the way Prouty guessed; and, without saying anything to Prouty about it, put the problem up to the master mechanic.

“He’s too young to get wrecked like that,” the engineer said to Tommy Regan. “Ain’t no more than his pony truck jumped the rails so far, but it won’t take long for the rest to follow and spill him in the ditch. He needs jacking back onto the right-of-way, and a start off again with a clear permit.”

After a pause Budd went on: “I dunno how long he’s going to be sick, but he ain’t going to be sick forever, and I’d like to tell him there’s a job waiting when he gets around again. Think it’ll chirp him up, too. What do you say, Regan?”

Regan would have said “Yes” to most anything Budd Masters asked for, but the “Yes” came more readily now than usual.

The fat little M.M. wanted men for jobs harder than men wanted jobs. Things were booming on the Hill Division. Extra freights, extra specials, and extra everything were the order of the day. Men were scarce, spare men became regulars and got their systems full of it, firemen moved to the coveted throttles, and wipers went up to the left-hand side of the cabs. Promotion was coming thick and fast. Everything was sizzling, and the motive power department—which was Tommy Regan— was getting more than its share of it.

“Sure, yes,” Regan agreed. “Roundhouse, as soon as he gets out.”

Masters went home to tell the good news to Bert Prouty, looking to see the kid’s face light up—and, instead, Budd’s own face dropped.

Prouty said: “No.”

“Why?” asked Masters.

“Because,” Prouty said vaguely. Which was a woman’s reason.

Masters talked to him for a long time, smiling while he talked, his hand on Prouty’s arm. No high-flown sentiments or goody-goody business about it. Nothing like that, just plain, homely words, the way the engineer felt. A steady job and a pay check every month, and friends around, and playing the game the best you knew how.

“That’s a blamed sight better than ’boing it, ain’t it?” submitted Masters.

“Yes,” said Prouty.

“Well then,” demanded the engineer, thinking he had argument clinched, “what do you say?”

Prouty was sitting up in a chair then, and his fingers sort of aimlessly traced out the patch Mrs. Masters had found time to darn in the knee of his trousers while he was in bed. He shook his head.

“But why?” insisted Masters.

Prouty looked up quickly, as though he were going to say something, then his eyes dropped to the patch again and held there.

“No,” was all he said, in a low queer way. “’Taint no use. I can’t.”

Masters scratched his head uneasily as he stared at Prouty, but Masters wasn’t the man to give up without a struggle. He tried again, a little more earnestly than before. In fact, he tried several times. He might as well have tried to make a graven image change its mind.

Prouty said “No” once or twice more, growing a little sullen as he said it, without lifting his eyes—and finally Prouty said nothing at all.

Masters was disappointed, a little more than disappointed. It hurt the big-hearted engineer a good deal. Somehow, he had come to picture making a man of the boy. He had developed a natural pride, as it were, in looking forward to seeing Prouty able to dig his fingers into his vest pocket and find his self-respect there, in helping the lad to get away from the useless, vagrant, dog’s life he led.

He had come to think a lot of the lad, had thought the boy had it in him, and it hurt a good deal, this obstinate refusal. But the refusal didn’t leave any question as to its finality; there was no shaking Prouty’s determination.

In spite of that, it was Masters who indirectly made a railroad man out of Prouty. A bit of ice on the gangway step of the 904 a few nights later, and Budd Masters fell on the ties with a leg under him. The leg broke.

It’s queer the way things come about. A broken leg in some households wouldn’t be anything more than—a broken leg, as you might say. But up in the engineer’s shanty it was a disaster.

Budd Masters hadn’t laid by anything, except debts. And with Masters laid up for the length of time it would take for a bone to knit, it looked pretty black for the family. Anyone in Big Cloud with half an eye could see as much. That is, anyone but Prouty, who had not been there long enough to gain much intimate knowledge of things.

Prouty didn’t know about that side of it. How could he? But everybody else did. In less than no time after the accident had happened down in the yards, and they had had got Budd home, and Mrs. Masters had got the children marshaled out in the front yard because there wasn’t any other place where they wouldn’t be in the way, and Dr. McTurk had come on the run, everybody in Big Cloud was talking about it and wondering what the Masters folks were going to do—all except Prouty.

Mrs. MacGonigal, the freight conductor’s wife, who lived next door, came right in to “sympathize” with Mrs. Masters the moment the doctor left the house.

“Dear, dear,” she gushed, “misfortunes don’t never come singly, do they now? An’ you runnin’ behind so with your bills account of that young fellow’s sickness that Mr. Masters brought home! An’ now here’s your old man laid up an’ earnin’ nothin’ for two months to come! Dear, dear, an’ all those children’s mouths to fill! Whatever will you do? But you must bear up an’ make the best of it, Mrs. Masters.”

Bert Prouty, in the sitting room, heard her; but he didn’t hear Mrs. Masters’ reply. He didn’t wait for that. According to Dr. McTurk, he wasn’t supposed to move about much for another day or two, but he got up then and walked outside into the yard, and down as far as the front gate.

There the children clustered around him, asking questions about their sick daddy, wanting him to play with them—and then they fell back, pouting. They might as well not have been there for all the attention the tramp paid them.

A long time Prouty hung over the front gate, his lips set tightly. When at last he opened the front gate and walked out, he did so hesitantly, as though what seemed like a mental battle going on within him wasn’t quite decided. But there was no hanging back once he was fairly started on the way downtown.

From the station, as an abortive starting point, he trailed Regan all over the yards, through the roundhouse and the storekeeper’s office, finally running the master mechanic to earth in the fitting shop.

“You’re Mr. Regan, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Sure, that’s me,” said Regan.

“I’m Prouty,” the hobo explained quietly. “Budd Masters said you’d give me a job.”  .

Regan, who hadn’t heard of Prouty’s previous refusal, looked the applicant up and down, nodded, and expectorated his blackstrap juice pleasantly into the engine pit that happened to be conveniently at his side.

“All made over again, h’m?”

“Yes,” said Prouty. “Fine.”

“All right, son,” the fat little master mechanic replied genially. “You can start in wiping in the roundhouse tomorrow morning—I’ll let Clarihue know you’re coming. Tell Budd I’m blamed sorry he’s hurt, will you? I’ll be up to smoke a pipe with him.”

Prouty went to work the next morning, and the mornings after that; and a month went by. They got to like him in the roundhouse, and they didn’t guy him for the strange figure he cut in a borrowed suit of Budd Masters’ overalls that were a mile too big for him—why should they? His pay check went to Mrs. Masters.

Rough if you like, those grimy men, their hearts were never set very far “off center,” and where they would have guyed another, they didn’t guy Bert Prouty.

The youth was quiet almost to the verge of shyness. All day in the roundhouse and straight back to the Masters’ house at night, that was his routine; he never showed himself anywhere else. But he stuck to his work and did it well.

He looked like a schoolboy almost from his height, and as his convalescence merged into perfect health again his strength was the strength of a young bull. They liked him for that, too.

Tommy Regan began to sit up and take notice of his new hostler. There wasn’t anything the matter with Prouty’s work, not a thing. Prouty around the roundhouse, grooming up a flyer, didn’t get by the master mechanic, who had an eye for anything, good, bad, or indifferent, when it concerned his engines, that he loved more than he loved any other thing on earth.

Regan got to tugging complacently at his scraggly brown moustache every time he saw one of his pet mountain racers, as spick and span as though just out of the shops from an overhauling, coming out over the turntable. And when he heard about the pay check—Masters told him—Regan, so to speak, took Prouty right to his heart.

“Steady as a clock,” the M. M. murmured to himself, “and takes to an engine like a baby to a rubber ring. I got an idea,” and he chuckled deep down in his throat.

The next morning Prouty went to firing on the day switcher in the yards.

“How’s he getting along?” Regan used to ask Matty Sims, the switcher’s engineer, every second day or so. “How’s he getting along, Matty?”

“None better,” Matty would say ungrudgingly. “He’ll do. Takes hold like an old-timer. All he wants is half a chance. It’s like he was born to it.”

“Guess he was,” the master mechanic agreed heartily. “Guess that’s just what he was—born to it. H’m! Give him a clear track, Matty. Show him all there is to show. Give him ‘clear’ all the way.”

“Sure, I will,” said Sims, and he did. The ex-hobo was making good. But it didn’t change his reticence or his routine, didn’t change him at all. He never seemed to lose his head over it, or show any inclination to buy a larger-sized hat. That didn’t hurt him any with the Hill Division, either. They began to prophesy things for Bert Prouty—that he’d go up pretty fast —make a record run to the top, as it were.

Therein the Hill Division, paradoxical as it may sound, was both right and wrong— mostly right, though, according to the way the majority sized it up afterward. Scharff was the only one who disagreed.

Joe Scharff was carrying a punch on the Limited now. He and Prouty didn’t meet; yard switching and a Limited run didn’t have much in common. Prouty said nothing about it. He side-tracked the conversation, for that matter, every time the conductor’s name happened to come up.

The pig-faced Joe Scharff didn’t say much. Evidently it wasn’t a pleasant topic for him. The spotter had carried marks on his face for too many days, and heard too much about the cause of them, to hanker about introducing the subject himself. And when the marks went, they sank into the black blood in his heart.

Scharff, sullen and tricky, biding his time, didn’t say much, either, even when the news got around to him of the little plan over which the master mechanic was indulging in anticipatory chuckles. The news got around to everybody else on the Hill Division, so far as that goes—except Budd Masters and Young Prouty, the ones most concerned.

Regan offered it as a sort of consolation prize for the weeks Budd had lain on his back. And the afternoon that Budd came back to his run and the westbound Fast Mail was coming in off the Prairie Division at 5.40, quite a little crowd had gathered.

Clarihue, the turner, ran the 904 out over the turntable, preparatory to backing down and coupling on for the mountain run. Budd Masters looked for Pete Leroy, his fireman. He blinked at the impromptu reception committee, who were telling him how blamed glad they were to see him back on the job, but he couldn’t see Leroy.

“Where’s Pete?” he demanded.

They grinned at him.

“Say,” inquired Budd, “what’s the joke? You look like a row of Cheshire cats.”

From the switching engine, just across a spur, came Regan with the switcher’s crew trailing along, Matty Sims and Prouty.

“Hello, Budd!” the master mechanic called out. “What you looking for—lost anything?”

“I’m looking for a fireman,” said Masters, a little crossly. It was getting close onto 5.40.

“H’m!” said Regan, as though he had an inspiration on the spur of the moment, and not carrying it off very well. “That so? A fireman, eh? Well, here, Prouty, suppose you fire for him.”

“What?” ejaculated Masters, staring as though he hadn’t heard right. “Prouty fire the 904?”

“Well, what the blazes is the matter with Prouty?” grumbled Regan, while his eyes twinkled. “Ain’t the cab big enough to hold you both?”

Masters didn’t say anything for a moment. Then his face lit up, and he shoved out his hand to the master mechanic.

“D’ye mean that, Regan—straight?” he asked. “Is that right? D’ye mean it?”

“Sure,” said Regan, taking Budd’s hand with one of his own, and reaching into his hip pocket for his chewing tobacco with the other, “you seem so infernally fond of each other that—”

And then the crowd laughed.

“By glory!” exclaimed Masters—which was as near to profanity as Masters ever came. “By glory, Regan, you’re all right!”

But Bert Prouty hung back. “Me?” he said in confusion. “I—I—”

“Get in there, you blamed idiot!” growled Matty Sims, giving him a friendly push toward the gangway. “Get in there! You’ve got the chance of your life, an’ if you don’t give him two hundred an’ ten pounds all the way after the trouble I’ve taken with you, I’ll make you wish you was good an’ dead when you get back!”

And so the Fast Mail, westbound, pulled out of Big Cloud that evening for the mountain run with Budd Masters and Bert Prouty in the cab.

Tommy Regan—fat, jolly, kindly, big-hearted Tommy Regan—went home chuckling to himself at having had a little hand in modeling human destiny along the line of what it ought to be, according to his way of thinking.

For the first hour or so, Budd Masters watched the performances of his new fireman critically and kept his eye pretty constantly on the steam gage. After that he didn’t give it another thought. Prouty sprinkled his coal and nursed his fire as craftily as Pete Leroy or any other man ever did. Matty Sims had known what he was talking about when he had told Regan that Prouty would do.

With long intervals between, when only the roar of the train and the whistling sweep of the wind held sway, Budd Masters talked a bit. He said again what he thought of the way Prouty had acted when he, Masters, was laid up.

He told the youth as one man tells another when his heart is full, told him with no more words than were needed to convey his meaning—and spoke of the days to come and the future for young Prouty.

The former tramp was always quiet, and if he were more so that night the engineer didn’t notice it. Monosyllables were about all Budd Masters in two months’ intimacy had come to expect from Prouty, anyhow.

An hour, two hours passed, and they were pretty well in the thick of the mountains. Prouty was hanging out of the gangway, silent, apparently drinking it all in.

The giant, towering snow-covered slopes with the moonlight beginning to glimmer upon them, diverged away in a vast, endless, majestic sweep. Then they converged abruptly into a pitch-black cut, where it seemed one could reach out a hand and touch the rock walls, and from which in the sudden darkness the sparks from the stack shot volleying skyward like a miniature volcano.

The Fast Mail ran fast. The bark of her exhaust echoed over hills and valleys like a single, long-drawn-out note of thunder. Now, with a dizzy slew, the 904 swung a curve, Budd Masters easing grudgingly; now she struck the tangent again, and like a racehorse reached along the stretch.

Prouty turned from the gangway. He pulled the door for a look at his fire, fed it with a shovelful or so. Then he flung the door shut, and went over and stood beside Masters in a strange, uncertain way.

Masters glanced at him, smiling genially with what he thought was understanding. All this was new to the boy, of course.

“Well, how’s it strike you?” he shouted cheerily over the roar. “Different from a yard switcher, eh? How do you like a fast run, son?”

It was a moment before Prouty spoke.

“I like it—I like it better than anything else I know of,” he answered.

His voice, raised as it was to carry over the rush of wind, the pound of the big drivers, the thousand noises that filled the cab, lost none of the lingering, wistful note that was dominant in it.

“I like it,” he added, “but it’s not for me.”

Budd Masters screwed sharply around in his seat. Even in the faint yellow of the cab lamp, he could see a whiteness about the tight-closed lips, a kind of strained, hopeless look on the other’s face.

Prouty didn’t meet his eyes. The fireman was staring out through the cab glass to where the headlight made glittering ribbons of the rails ahead.

“What d’ye mean?” demanded the engineer. “Not for you! Why, say, boy, with a start like this you’ll be pulling a latch yourself in a couple of years.”

“I was going to quit tonight—going to beat it out of Big Cloud,” said Prouty monotonously, almost as though talking to himself. “I am going to quit tonight. Someone else’ll be firing for you on the run back. This looked like a good chance of getting a lift on the way, didn’t it?”

“Going to quit?” repeated Masters, in a half-impatient, half-puzzled exclamation.

“Going to quit? That don’t sound sense to me! You might as well have stuck to what you said along back there at the beginning, and not gone to work at all.”

“Maybe,” said Prouty.

Masters went on quickly: “I had an idea you’d thought better of what you told me, and was going to cut out the old life, after all, when you took a job. But it looks like I was wrong if you’re going to quit now. What’d you start at all for if—”

The engineer stopped abruptly, glanced at Prouty, and swallowed hard as a sudden inspiration came to him.

“Say, boy,” he said huskily, “was it that —account of me—account of me being laid up? And I never thought of it. I never thought of it like that.”

Prouty didn’t answer, didn’t turn his head. He just stood there silently, swaying with the sway of the cab. The big racer nosed a curve, and Budd Masters checked mechanically.

“I didn’t know,” the engineer said heavily, as Prouty continued silent. “I just figured you’d thought better of it and changed your mind, and I ain’t saying now what I feel—couldn’t say it if I wanted to. But there’s something behind this. You wouldn’t quit now with a start like this if there wasn’t something more. You’ve got to tell me, lad. Tell me what it is.”

“I’m going to tell you,” Prouty answered in a dull, listless way.

Masters eyed him expectantly.

“It won’t take long,” said the fireman. “I’m no good to anyone on earth. I never was from the time I was on the streets. I learned my trade early, when I was about eight. ’Tain’t healthy for me to hang around any one place too long. I’m ‘wanted’! There’s more’n one would like to get the nippers on me. A good many of them, I guess! They were pushing me pretty hard that night you took me up.”

Budd Masters didn’t say anything. There weren’t any words that seemed to come, only a sort of queer tightness in his throat. Budd didn’t say anything, but he reached up and laid his hand on the other’s sleeve.

Prouty still stared out through the cab glass, eyes fixed on the gleaming metal ahead of the pilot, lips quivering a little.

“That’s what I am,” he blurted out. “You’ve got it all now. I’m only a thief!”

The engineer’s fingers closed in an eloquent pressure on Prouty’s arm. His heart was full.

“Prouty, my lad, don’t go!” he choked. “Don’t go, boy. Stay and live it down. Who’s to know but me? You’ve got the chance here now. Stay and live it down. I’ll help you, lad, and there’s no one to know but me.”

“It’s too late for that,” the youth said numbly. “They wouldn’t give me the chance. I’m ‘wanted,’ I tell you! If they get me they’ll send me up. I wouldn’t have a hope. They’re after me hard—all the time. For all I know, there’s one of them riding behind us now.”

He reached around and in a kind of wistful, reluctant way lifted the engineer’s hand from his arm.

“You and Mrs. Masters, you’ve been good to me—more’n anybody in my life ever was—I’ll never forget.”

He turned quickly. Slashing the back of his hand across his eyes, he moved toward the tender to pick up his shovel.

And Budd Masters, with a lump in his throat and something before his eyes that dimmed the headlight’s glare, opened the 904 out again as the pony truck came clear of the curve. The Fast Mail thundered on through the night.

A queer little bit of tragedy in the cab of a flying train, and about the last place on earth you’d look for it. Sometimes one gets the impression that railroading is all steel and iron and timetables, perhaps. One forgets the other side, where tears and laughter, smiles and sorrows are the human side.

In railroading more than anywhere else, they come quick and sharp, the tears and laughter, smiles and sorrows. You play a stiff game sometimes, and mostly always it’s table stakes.

The Hill Division through the mountains was single-tracked, and as everyone knows, dispatchers are not infallible. Right now there’s a slow order out. Conductor Scharff has the right of way for a block or two. His green lamp is on the aisle beside the seat in the forward smoker of the eastbound Limited, and on the seat with him, feet up on the one in front, is a heavy-built, shrewd-faced man.

The conversation between the two, at first casual as between strangers, has become intimate.

“Thought maybe you might have seen him,” observed the man who had introduced himself to the conductor as Evans. “Thought I might as well mention it, anyway. He was last seen somewhere out here.”

“What’s he look like?” inquired the pig-faced conductor with sudden interest.

“Oh, if you’d ever seen him,” said Evans, “you’d know him fast enough. Every feature on his face prominent—big everything, except his height—he’s so short he looks like a kid. They call him ‘The Midget.’”

Evans stole a shrewd look at the conductor’s face. Evans was evidently a good reader of men; his business called for it. “Guess you’ve run across him, eh?” he submitted quietly.

“I don’t know as I have,” countered Scharff non-committally. “Is he wanted— bad?”

“Pretty bad,” said the detective. “He’s about the slickest that’s loose. Five hundred dollars reward if he’s brought to trial.”

“Oh!” said the spotter, glancing at Evans.

“Two hundred and fifty for you, Mr. Conductor, if you’ve got the information that’ll lead to his arrest,” said Evans, and shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth.

Scharff laughed harshly and shoved out his hand. Evans took it.

“Say,” gloated Scharff, with a twisted smile on his lips. “I guess we’re both in luck tonight—thanks to Regan, the mushy philanthropist.”

“Who’s he?” asked Evans.

“He’s the master mechanic, but never mind about him. The fellow you want is known as Prouty—Bert Prouty. He’s firing the Fast Mail tonight. We cross her at Elk River.”

“Good work!” said the detective.

“I’ll give you a hand when the time comes,” volunteered Scharff. “Prouty’s engineer may put a fight. That two hundred and fifty goes, eh?”

“Just as good as in your pocket,” said Evans, “if Prouty is The Midget and we get him.”

“All right,” Scharff agreed. “We’ll get him, I promise you that, and—”

He rose and picked up his lantern as the train whistled. “I’ll see you again after this stop,” he called back over his shoulder, hurrying down the aisle.

A dispatcher’s blunder has nothing to do with this in a detailed way. It’s the result alone that is vital. Miles away in that little room at headquarters under the green-shaded lamp, a man whose face was gray with fear hung desperately over his key, the sweat spurting in beads from his forehead, as a tattoo came incessantly from the working of the little round, black disc his fingers clutched.

But does that make any difference? It was too late.

Budd Masters in the cab of the 904 saw it first. He saw it as Prouty turned from him to pick up his shovel. He saw it as he swung from a curve onto the tangent into the straight. It seemed to leap at him in a blinding flash through the cab glass into his brain.

Down grade, out from a cut ahead, the long powerful rays of a headlight shot streaming into the night, blended with those of the 904, and left a dazzling haze between the two onrushing trains.

In the winking of an eye sometimes one lives eternity. Home, wife, and children, a long vista of years gone by, the lives of those in the swaying coaches behind him, the ruin, the horror and disaster all seared itself in lightning play through Budd Masters’ mind.

It was the Limited against him, against the Fast Mail—the two fastest trains on the mountain schedule. And he was running down grade!

But quicker almost than his thoughts was Budd Masters in his acts. With a cry, strange sounding over the thunder of the train, like a cry of a wounded animal in mortal hurt, the engineer was on his feet.

Prouty, who had jerked himself suddenly upright, was shot reeling backward into the tender with the shock. Masters slammed the throttle shut and flung the 904 over into the reverse, his right hand closing on the air latch, while his left snatched at the throttle again.

Like vampires screaming in unholy glee came the piercing shrieks of the brake-shoes as they locked on the racing drivers. From rail and tire, as from gigantic pinwheels, flew the sparks. Though the cab of the 904 was rocking, reeling, swaying, staggering it seemed to hold the rails.

What man could do, Budd Masters had done—and he stood there now clinging to his levers. Stood at his post and waited. She slowed fiercely, frantically, the 904, as though she were in a maddened, terrified frenzy to escape herself. She slowed, but the distance between her and the Limited was sickeningly short.

Prouty was on his feet again, moving to the engineer’s back. Masters turned his head quickly. There was a strange, wistful smile on his set lips

“Take your chance, boy!” he shouted hoarsely. “Jump!”

“Jump yourself!” Prouty screamed in the engineer’s ear. “You’ve got a wife and kids. Jump, I tell you!”

Budd Masters shook his head. His fingers seemed to close a little tighter on the levers, his body leaned a little forward as though to brace himself—where bracing was but mockery-—and he shook his head.

Strong as a young bull was Bert Prouty. Quickly he took the engineer unawares. His hands locked on the other’s shoulders. With a single vicious pull he had Masters staggering back in the cab. Before the engineer fairly knew what was happening, before he could recover himself, Prouty had pushed him through the gangway. The engineer was pitching and rolling to the ground.

Bert Prouty could not follow. Even as he sprang, the way was closed. There was a crash, a roar, the shriek of steam, the crunch of grinding steel, the smash of impact as the masses met.

The medley of wild noises went flinging weird insistent, oft-repeated echoes far and near through the mountains— but Prouty never heard them.

There was a nasty spill, of course. It might have been worse. Thanks to the grade, the Limited had stopped; and the Fast Mail had slowed, had almost stopped. Another fifty yards would have been enough!

Not much, fifty yards—but they cost Prouty his life—the only life that went out as the 904 crawled up the front end of the Limited’s engine.

The 904 seemed to claw with her pony truck for a grip on the other’s stack, and then doubled up like a jackknife.

Budd Masters found Prouty almost immediately—between the tender and the cab. Yes, he was dead.

Broken and shaken from the fall, crazed with pain, crawling the few yards along the right-of-way, in through the steam and fire, in the tangled cab, Budd found his fireman, but couldn’t move him. He backed out, his mind temporarily a blank.

Crowds were streaming from both trains. And what was that? A lantern was thrust into his face, and two men stood before him. That was queer! One was the pig-faced Scharff. Budd didn’t quite understand how Scharff came to be there.

“Where’s Prouty?” the big conductor rasped impatiently.

“Prouty?” Masters’ head was swimming sickly; he couldn’t get the meaning much of anything. “Prouty? What do you want Prouty for?”

“What do I want him for?” snapped Scharff, with a cunning gleam in his eyes. “This man here is a detective. I want him for what he is, a thief!”

Masters stared at the spotter for a moment. Then his hands wriggled to his head, and he laughed in a foolish way.

“Well, go get him, then!” roared the engineer, pointing to the hell of twisted steel and spurting steam. “He’s in there. Go get him, Scharff!” He laughed again, and slid unconscious to the ground. . . .

A thief? Well, perhaps. But that wasn’t the record the boys claimed Bert Prouty carried with him when he went up to Headquarters to answer to the Great Trainmaster that night.

And Joe Scharff? Scharff’s railroading yet, so far as anyone knows—but not on the Hill Division.

The End.

[7600 words]

(Editor’s Note: Although RAILROAD STORIES is NOT a reprint magazine. “The Spotter” is reprinted here because we have received many requests for Packard’s stories.)