The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 4, 1903, Page 13

THE BUNDAY CALL. 13 BY FRANK 5. SPEARMAN ways and everywhere made life a burden. *wye appeared to Bullhead nothing for it ” ndike. On the table before operator lay his letter of res- ed in due form to J. 8. dent. Near it, under the & well-thumbed copy of the - ©s, open &t the chapter on res- & s, with subbeads on— who should. how to. €7, when to. (See also Time.) ? bad at last palnfuly ead that he was not T the raliroad business. Pat Fran- selingly told him so; Callahan 1d him so; Neighbor had told him Bucks had told him so. On that point leading west end authorities were & Yet in spite of these discourage- wents he had persisted and at last made s show. Who was it now that #baken his stubborn conviction? Bull head hardly dared confess. But it was blase flew up the chimney—out—and left the nightman and the conductor in dark- ness. The trainman with a swear shoved to tbe door, and Bullhead the patient, turned over his letter of resignation quick In the dark, felt -or a match and re- lighted his Swearing again at Bull- head, the freight conductor swaggered over to his table, felt in all the operator's pockets for a cigar, tumbled all the pa- i once more, on general pers arounu principles, swore. Bullhead took things uncomplainingly, but he watched close and was determined to fight if the brute discovered letter of resignation. When the trainman couid think of no further inwgnities he took X ders, to meet No. 1 at Sackley, the seconc tion east of Goose River. After be had signed, Bullhead asked him about the depot fire at Bear Dance that had been going over the wi for two hours, reminded him of the slow order for the No. 9 culvert, and as the rude visitor slammed the door behind him held his bend over the lamp. Then he sat down again and turned over his letter of resig- nation. To make it binding it lacked only his enst without a quiver out of the ordi- nary. One fatality followed another. The engineer of the Short Line train did not see the man he had hit, and with the night man Ilying unconscious in the ditch, the local freight pulled out for Sackley. Bullhead never knew just how long he lay under the stars. When his head began to whirl the wind was blowing cool and strong on him, 1e alkali dust was eddying his open mouth. It was only ter of seconds, though it hours, to pull himself intc a mat seemed Bullhead as a Grizzly Would a Gnat and Hurled Him Fifty Feet. undoubtedly one who put up to be no au- ority motive power or train operating was Matt Caseldy’s gir whatever on service or While be reresd his formal letter and vor epelling with his pocket W in whistled. Bullhead look- ed s ck—11:40 p. m. It was the local- freight, Thirty, coming in from the West, working back to Medicine. From the t, No. 1 had not arrived. She was wix Bullhead looked out . orders for the elg as not en that such a because One rarely went e badly enough to throw her his turn. He had his orders copled O K'd, and wa.ted only to’ deliver rt windy. The 266 engine, put Thirty that night, wheesed in the gole like & man with the apoplexy. She hed & new fireman on, who was burning the out of her, and as she puited painfully down on the scrap rails of the first siding and took the Y her overioaded safety gasped violently, en the conductor of the No. 30 train gpencd the station door the wind followed him llke & catamount. The stove puffed open with & down draught and shot the room full of stinging smoke. The lamp signature—James Gillesple Blaine Lyons —now himself of the opinfon of every one else on the west end—that he was just a natural born blooming fool. He lifted his pen to sign off the aspirations of a young lifetime, when the sounder began to snap and sputter his call. It was the dispatcher, and he asked hurried- ly If No, 30 was there, “Number Thirty is on the Y,” answered Bullhead. Then came & train order. ber Thirty till Number One arriv Bullhead repeated the order and got back the O K. He grabbed his hat and hurried out of the door to deliver the new order to the local freight before it should pull out. ' To reach the train Bullhead had to cross the short line tracks. The wind was scouring the flats, and as he tacked up the platform the dust swept dead into him. At the switch he sprang across the ralls, thinking of nothing but reaching the engine cab of the local—forgetting about the track he was crossing. Before he could think or see or jump a through freight on the short line, wild, from the west, storming down the grade behind him, struck Bullhead as a grizzly would a gnat—hurled him, doubling, fifty feet out on the spur—and stormed on Into the “Hold Num- together and to put up his hand un- steadily to feel what it was soak- ing warm and sticky into his hair; then to realize that he had been struck by a Bhort Line train; to think of what a fallure he had lately acknowl- edged himself to be; and of what it was he was clutching so tightly in his right hand—the holding order for No. 2. He raised his reeling head; there was a drift of starlight through the dust cloud, but no train in sight; No. 30 was gone. With that consclousness came a recollection—he had forgotten to put out his red light. His red light wasn't out. He kept re- peating that to himself to put the picturse of what it meant before him. He had started to deliver an order without put- ting out his light, and No. 30 was gone; eagainst No. 1—a head-end colllsion star- ing the freight and the belated passenger in the face, No. 8, running hard on her order to make Backley for the meeting, and 1, running furiously, as she always ran—to-night worse than ever. He lifted his head, enraged with himself —enraged. He thought about the rules, and he grew enraged. Only himself he blamed, nobody else—studying the rules for a lifetime and just when it would mean the death of a trainload of people forgetting his red signal. He lifted his head; it was sick, deadly sick. But up it must come. Thirty gone, and it wob- bled, swooning sick and groggy as he stared around and tried to locate himself. One thing he could see, the faint outline of the station and his lamp blazing smoky in the window. Bullhead figured a sec- ond; then he began to crawl. If he could reach the lamp before his head went off again, before he went completely silly, he might yet save himself and Number One. It wasn’t In him to crawl till he thought of his own mistake; but there was a spur ia the sweep of that through his head. His brain, he knew, was wobbling, but he could crawl, and he stuck fainting to that one idea and crawled ~ 5 for the light of his lamp. It 1s abare hundred feet across to the Y. Bullhead taped every foot of the h can on for help; he just stuck to the crawl, grinding his teeth In bitter self- reproach. They traced him, next morning, when he was past the telling of it, and his struggle looked the track of a wound- ed bear. Dragging along one crushed leg and half crazed by the crack on his fore- hecd, Bullhead climbed to the platform, across, and dragged himself to the door. He can tell yet about roliing his broken leg under him and raising himself to grasp the thumb-latch. Not until he tried to open it did he remember it was a spring 'ock and that he was outside. He felt In his pocket for his keys—but his keys were gone. There were no rules to consult then. No vay on edrth of getting into the office in time to do anything; to drag himself to the lunchroom, twice further than the station, was out of the question. But there was a way to reach his key In spite of all bad things, and Bullhead knew the way. He struggled fast around to the window. Ralsing himself with a frightful twinge on one knee, he beat at the glass with his fist. Clutching the sash, he drew himself up with a hand, and with the other tore away the bunting, stuck his head and shoulders through the opening, got his hand on the key and called the If You Read This You Certainly Won’t Miss “The Operator’s Story, Which Will Be Published Next Sunday. | first station east, Blalsdell, with the 19. Life and death that call meant; the 19, the dispatcher’s call—hanging over the key, stammering the 19 over the wire and bap- tizsing the call In his own blood—that is the way Bullhead learned to be a rall- road man. For Blaisdell got hfm and his warning and had No. 1 on the siding just as the freight tore around the west curve, head- ed for Sackley. While it was all going on Bullhead lay on the wind-swept plat- form at Goose River with a hole in his head that would have killed anybody on the West End, or, for that matter, on earth, except James Gillesple Blaine Lyons. After No. 30 had passed so impudently No. 1 felt her way rather cautiously to Goose River, because the dispatchers couldn’t get the blamed station. They de- clded, of course, that Bullhead was asleep, and fixed everything at the Wickiup to send a new man up there on Three In the morning and fire him for good. But about 1 o'clock No. 1 rolled bad temipered Into Goose River Junction, and Bat Mullen, stopping his train, strode angrily to the station. It was dark as a pocket inside. Bat smashed in the door with his heel and the trainmen swarmed in and began looking with their lanterns for the nightman. The stove was red hot, but he was not asleep in the arm- chair nor napping under the counter on the supplies. They turned to his table and discovered the broken window and thought of a hold-up. They saw whers the nightman had spilled something that looked like ink over the table, over the order book, aver the clip, and there was a hand print that looked inky on an open Jetter addressed to the superintendent— and a little pool of something like ink under the key. Somebody sald suicide; but Mat Mullen suddenly stuck his lamp out of the broken window, put his head through after it, and cried out. Setting his lantern down on the platform, he crawled through the broken sash and picked up Bullhead. Next morning it was all over the West End. “And Bullhead!” cried everybody. “That's what gets me. Who'd have thought it of Bullhead!" When they all got up there and saw what Bullhead had done everybody agreed that nobody but Bullhead could have done it. The pilot bar of the short line mogul, in swiping Bullhead unmercifully, had really made a railroad man out of him. It had let a great light In on the situation. ‘Whereas before every one else on the line had been to blame for his fallures, Bull- head now saw that he himself had been to blame, and was man enough to stand up and say When the big fellows, Callahan and Kenyon and Pat Francls, s@v his trail next morning, saw the Blood smegred over the table and saw Bull- head's letter of resignation signed in his own blood manual, and heard his straight- out story days afterward, they sald never a word. * But that morning, the morning after, Callahan picked wp the lettsr and put it just as it was between the leaves of the order book and locked both in his grip. It was some weeks before he had a talk with Bullhead, and he spoke then only a few words, because the night man fainted before hé got through. Callahan made him understand, though, that as scon as he was able he could have any key on that division he wanted as long as he was running it—and Callahan is running that division yet. It all came easy after he got well. In- stead of getting the worst of it from everybody Bullhead began to get the best of it, even from pretty Nellle Cassidy. But Nellle had missed her opening. She tried tenderness while the boy was being nursed at the Junction. Bullhead looked grim and far-off through his bulging bandages, and asked his mother to put the sugar In his coffee for him; Bullhead was getting sense. Besides, what need has a young man with a heavy crescent-shaped scar on his forehead that people Inquire about and who within a year after the Goose River affair was made a train dispatcher under Barnes Tracy at Medicine Bend—what need has he of a coquette’s smiles? His mother, who has honorably retired from hard work, says half the girls at the Bend are after bim, and his mother ought to know, for she keeps house for him. Bullhead's letter of resignation, with the print of his hand on _it, hangs framed over Callahan’s desk, and s shown to raflroad blg fellows who are accorded the courtesies of the Wickiup. But when they ask Bullhead about it he just laughs and says some rallroad men have to have sense pounded into them. Copyright, 1903, by Frank H. Spearman. —_———— A Lresden (German) physician, having addressed a list of thirty-six questions to seventy-thres persons who wers more than 90 years old, learned. among other things, that all of them are below the average height; most of them have light hair and have retained plenty of it, and none of them has any teeth remalning; all take kindly to the bath or to fresh air. (Copyright, 193, by T. C. McClure.) ARION BRIDGES pushed the papers, covered with figures, to one side. She had studied them until her head ached. Read up or down they spelled ‘‘~enewed effort.” And she had so hoped that her ‘utoring during July would end her sum- mer's work. Girl like, she yearned for some real vacation days. But if sl > was to return to college the third week in September there was much yet to be done. Her slender income—for Marion was an orphan—would barely pay her way through her last year at college, with its attendant commencement festivi- ties and expenses. If she drew on this In- come for a vacation jaunt, if she even stayed in town at an mexpensive board- ing-house, there would be a ghortage be- fore the end of the college year. And what could she do? BShe had no influence to help her to a pleasant posi- tion as companion or private secretary. She knew the impossibility of selling fan- cy work, when the city exchanges for wo- men's needlework were absolutely dead. Bhe rose and walked wearilly to the open window. Would it pay—this strug- gle to get her degree? And after com- mencement day, what? Year after year in a schoolroom! Was it her sphere? Would she become old and dun-colored and silent like Mi: Halnes, who had taught algebra during the freshman term? & To drive such thoughts from her mind she picked up the morning paper, her eye falling on the '‘help wanted” column. “Wanted—Next Monday, 100 neat, busi- nesslike young women to pick hops; good wages; reasonable board. The Biscon- AT SISCONSETT POINT---By Anna S. sett Hop Growers’ Company, Sisconsett, N. ¥.” “@cod wages, reasonable board.” And the climate and scenic attractions of Sis- consett drew hundreds of summer visitors each year. “Why not?’ she murmured. It would not be a vacation, exactly, but it would fill that awful gap until the third week in September. S0 she went downtown, with her head held high, but her heart sinking, to buy dark calico for two work- ing dresses. She made them at home, through the kindness of her landlady, who not only loaned her the machine, but fitted the walsts. It was when she was finishing the low, turn-over collars with a bit of strong lace, that his letter came. She had not expected to hear from him, and yet she was not surprised. There had been moments in the laboratory which had set her heart beating oddly, but then she reasoned that his Interest ‘was due to the fact that she was one of the best scholars in his branch. Yet his letter stated” distinctly: *T will stop off in New York to see you, if only for a few hours.” She looked at the heading of the letter. He was at Cape May. There would be time to let him know that she was leav- ing town. And leave she must before he came. What would he think? Marion Bridges plcking hops! Her cheeks burned crimson and her hands trembled as she snatched up her sewing. She would leave at once, even if the picking did not begin for another week. Board was reasonable, and she would get a breath of fresh air and rest before beginning the work. She knew she could never keep the truth from him If they were face to face. She wrate a brief note: “So sorry that I will not be in town next Monday. 1 am just leaving for Sis- consett on a little vacation. Wishing you @ very pleasant summer, yours sincerely, “MARION BRIDGES.” . o e It was at the end of her first day's work, and she walked with the long line of chattering girls to the welghing-room to get her credit slip. A man In loose flannels was checking off the list. He started, flushed slightly, then smited and held out her slip. It fluttered for an {nstant in her fingers, then fell to the ground. With a white face and frightened eyes she bent down, picked it up and hurried out of the office. He found her sitting on a ledge over- looking the river. The rising moon cast an incongruous silvery sheen over her prosaic working dress. She had Intended to change her frock every night after sup- per, but what was the use? Nothing seemed to matter, now that he had seen her in that line of uncouth, lll-mannered girls. He sat down beside her, kindly looking across the stretch of trees slop- ing to the moisy little river, Instead of into her eyes, which bore traces of tears. “I see you have found my favorite spot already. This is my third season here, you see, and T know every pretty nook and cranny about the place.” “I suppose you are studying sociology,” then she added wearily; “well, you ought to see it In many phases here.” She was wondering how he had felt ‘when he saw her in that line. “No,” he replled quietly. “I am here solely for the sake of the wages. My sal- ary is not large emough to support my mother as she has been accustomed to Uve, and I usually hunt outdoor work to Richardson | o 2 rest my mind and bulld up my body dur- ing the summer.” Marion looked straight into his eyes. “How small you must think me to have pretended that I was taking a vacation, when 1, too, need the money.” He smiled tenderly and reached for her hand. “No, it is one of the things I have admired in you—that faculty for making the best of things, keeping the best foot forward. It is so much better than re- pining for the things you cannot have and parading your troubles and disap- pointments before all your friends. I think you are just the woman to help a struggling college professor to make his way In the world. Wil you try it—right after commencement day >’ A moment later the sober outlines of a dark calico dress stood in sharp contrast against the soft folds of his light flannels, and Marion murmured happily: “Ten months will not seem so very long, because 1 shall make a specialty of phy- sics next year term.”™ —_—————— Remarkable Aztec Monument. most wonderful aboriginal monu- ment In the New World s the stone known to archaeologistsas “the Aztec Cal- endar.” It is, properly speaking. a zodiac, eleven feet eight inches in dameter, carved from the solld rock, and its weight, estimated by Vonm Humboldt, is 53,792 pounds. At the time Columbus discovered America it had been In position for thir- teen years. In 1521 it and many large idols wers thrown into a marsh by the monks of Cortez to hide them from the eyes of the heathen. It came to the sur- face thirty years afterward, but was re- buried and forgotten for 232 years. The Mexican National Museum has now given it a prominent place.