The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, October 18, 1903, Page 13

“Heaping bonfires that threw & light all night on the dread pile smoking on the desert.” Delar Maje © f he was rusty in the ritual. Not pson himself could work the rd without the countersign; it the hurry of getting to lodge | his heels in the outer air me back; Delaroo was pitiless. he was as taciturn as he was nder the kerosene lamp just listened. But his any man's who ever Delaroo made more steam than any man In the round- bor began to hold him up el for the division, and the boys the way to jolly Neighbor was things about Delaroo. The tive power would brighten the mention of Delaroo’s 1 he finally fixed up a surprise One night after De- ghbor, in the bluff way promoting a man, told e could have an engine; & good outer g bove to say nice he liked to Delaroo b one, one of the K class; as much finer a machine than the old 264 .as Duffy's chronometer was than a prize package watch. Delaroo never sald aye, yes or no; be merely listened. Neighbor mever had & promotion received in just that way; it nearly gave him the apoplexy. But If Delaroo treated the proposal coolly, not so Maje Bampson; when the news of the offer reached him. Maje went into an unaccountable flutter. He acted at first exactly as if he wanted to hold his man back, which was dead against cab ethics. Finally he assented, but his cheeks went flabby and his eyes hollow, and he showed more worry than his creditors. Nobody understood it, yet there was evidently something on, and the Major's anxlety increascd until Delaroo, the Indian fireman and knight companion of the Ancient Order of Druids and Fiuids, completely took Neighbor’'s breath by declining the new engine. That was a ‘West End wonder. He said if it made no odds he would stay on the 264. The men 2ll wondered; then something new came up and the thing was forgotten. Maje Sampson's cheeks filled out again, he re- gained his usual nerve, and swore on the money question harder than ever. After that it was pretty generally un- derstood that Delaroo and Maje Santp- gon and the 264 were fixtures. Nelghbor never gave any one a chance to decline an engine mcre thap once. The boys all knew, if Delaroo didn’t, that he would be firing & long time"after throwing that chance by; and he was. The combination came to be regarded as eternal. When the sloppy 264 hove in sight, little Delaroo and big Maje Samp- son were known to be behind the boller pounding up and down the mountains, up and down, year in and year out. BIg en- gines came Into the division and bigger. All the time the division was crowding on the motive power and putting in the mammoth types, until when the 264 was stalied alongside a consolidated, or a mo- gul skyscraper, she looked llke an an- clent beer glass set next an imported stein. ‘With the 264, when the 800 or the 1100 class were concerned, it was simply a THE EUNDAY CALL, BY case of keep out of our way er get smash- ed, Maje Sampson or no Maje Sampson, money question ©Or ne money question. Benevolent benefits fraternally proposed or anteroom signals cenfidentially put forth by the bald-headed 264 were of no sort of consequence with the modern glants that pulled 1000 tons in a string up & 2000-foot grade at better than twenty miles an hour. It was clear, yet cold, “You old tub, get out of our way, will you?' And the fast runners, like Moore and Hawksworth and Mullen and the Crowleys, Tim and Syme, had about as much consideration for Maje and his financial theories as their machines had for his machine. His jim-crow freight witfit didn’t cut much of a figure in their nck schedules. So the Maje Bampson combination, but quite as brassy as though it had rights of the first class, dodged the big fellows up and down the line pretty successfully until the Government began pushing troops into the Philippines,and there came days when a Rocky Mountain sheep could hardly have kept out of the way of the extras that tore, hissing and booming over the mountains for Frisco. For a time the traffic came hot; so hot we were pressed to handle it. Thers was a good bit of skirmishing on the part of the pas- senger department to get the business, end then tremulous skirmishing in the operating department to deliver the goods. Every brokendown coach In the backyards was scrubbed up for the soldier trains. We aimed to kill just as few as possible of the boys en route to the islands, though that may have been a mistaken mercy. However, we handled them well; not a man In khaki got away from us in a wreck, and In the helght of the push we put more livestock into South Omaha, ear for car, than has ever gone in before or since, It was November and great weather for running, and when the ralls were not epringing under the soldiers west-bound they were humming under the steers east- bound. Maje Sampson, with his beer kegs and his crackers and his 264 and his be- knighted fireman, hugged the sidings week. Some of the pretty close that trains had part of the rights and others had the remainder. The 264 and her train took what was left, which threw Mafe Sampson most of the time on the worn- out, run-down scrap rails that make cor- duroy roads of the passing tracks. Then came the night that Moulton, the Philip- pine commandant, went through on his epecial. With his staff and his baggage and his correspondents and that kind he took one whole train. Syme Crowley pulled them, with Ben Shearer conductor, and, whatever else may be sald of that palr, they deliver their trains on time. Maje Sampson left Medicine Bend with Twenty-nine at noon on his regular run &nd tried to get west. But between the goldiers behind him and the steers against him he goon lost every visionary right he ever did possess. They lald him out nearly every mile of the way to the end of the run. At Sugar Buttes they -held him thirty minutes for the Moulton spe- clal to pass, and, to crown his indignities, kept him there fifteen minutes more walt- ing for an east-bound sheep train. Samp- son afterward claimed that Barnes Tracy, the dispatcher that did it, was a gold Democrat, but this never was proved. It was nearing dark when the crew of local freight Twenty-nine neard the dull roar of the Moulton special speeding through the canyon of the Rat. A pas- genger train running through the canyon at night comes through with the far roll of & thousand drums, deepening Into a rumble of thunder. Then out and over all comes the threatening purr of the strain- ing engine breaking into a storm of ex- hausts, until, like a rocket, the headlight bursts streaming from the black wall, and Moore on the 8§11 or Mullen with the 818, or Hawksworth In the 1110, tear with a tury of alkall and a sweep of noise over the Butte switch, past caboose and flats and boxes and the 254 like fading light. Just a sweep of darkened glass and dead varnish, a whirl of smoking trucks beat- ing madly at the fish piates, and the rust train is up and out and gone! Twenty-nine, local, was used to all this. Used to the vanishing tail lights, the measured sinking of the sullen dust, the gilence brooding again over the desert with, this night, fifteen minutes more to walt for the east-bound stock train before they dared open the switch. Maje SBamp- son kiiled the time by going back to the caboose to talk equities with the conduc- tor. It was no trick for him to put away fitteen minutes discussing the rights of man with himself; and with ‘an angel of o fireman to watch the cab why not? The 264 standing on the side was chewing her cud as sweet as an old cow, with may be & hundred and forty pounds of steam to the right of the dial, maybe a hundred and fifty—I say may be, because no one but Delaroo ever knew—when the sheep train whistled. Sheep—nothing but sheep. dar atter car rattling down from the Short Line behind two spanking big engines. They whistléd, hoarse as pirates, for the Butte siding, and, rising the hill a mile west of it, bore down the grade throwing Dannah coal from both stacks like hydraulic gravel. p No one knew or ever will know how it happened. THey cat-hauled men on the carpet a week about that switch. The crew of the Moulton special testified; the crews of the stock traln testified; Maje BSampson testified; his conductor and both brakemen testified; the roadmaster and the section boss each testifled, and -their SPEARMAN. men testified—but however or whatever it was—whether the Moulton special frac- tured the tongue or whether the pony of, the lead engine flew the guard, or whether the switch had been opened, or whether, in closing, the slip rail had somehow failed to follow the rod—the double-headed stocker went into that Butte switch, into that Butte siding, into the peaceable old 264 and the Twenty-nine, local, like a lyd- dite shell, crashing, rearing, ripping, scattering two whole trains into blood and scrap. Destruction, madness, throes, death, silence; then a pyre of dirty smoke, a wall of sickening bleats, and a scream of hissing stéam over a thousand sheep caught in the sudden shambles. There was frightened crawling out of the ghattered cabooses, a hurrying up of the stunned crews, and a bewildering count of heads. Both engine crews of the stock train had jumped as thelr train gplit the switch. The train crews were badly shaken; the head brakeman of the sheep train lay torn in the barbed wire fencing the Tight of way; but only one man was missing—the fireman of Twenty- nine—Delaroo. “Second 88 jumped west switch passing track and went into train 29, engine 264 Bad splll. Delarco, fireman the 264, miss- ing,” wired Sugar Buttes to Medicine Bend a few minutes later. Nelghbor got there by 10 o'clock with both roadmasters and the wrecking outfit. It was dark as a canyon on the desert that night. Benedict Morgan's men tore splintered car timber fronxthe debris, and on the knolls back of the siding lighted heaping bonfires that threw a light all night on the dread plle smoking on the desert. They dug by the flame of the fires at the ghastly heap till midnight; then the moon rose, an extra crew arrived from the Bend, and then they got ‘the derrick at work. Yet with all the toil when day broke the confusion looked worse con- founded. The main line was so hopelessly blocked that at daylight & special with ties and steel was run in to lay a tempor- ary track around the wreck. “What do I think of It?” muttered Neighbor, when the local operator asked him for a report for Callahan. “I think there's two engines for the scrap in sight —and the 264, If we can ever find any- thing of her—and about a million sheep to pay for—" Nelghbor paused to give an order and survey the frightful scene. “And Delaroo” repeated the operator. “He wants to know about Delaroo—" “Missing.” At dawn hot coffee was passed among the wreckers, and shortly after sunrise the McCloud gang arrived with the sec- ond derrick. Then the mien of the night took hold with & new grip to get into the heart of the pile; to find—if he was there— Delaroo, None of the McCloud gang knew the man they were hunting for, but the men from the Bend were soon telling them about Maje Sampson's Indian. ‘Not a mute nod he ever gave; not & plece of tobacco he ever passed; not a brief word he ever spoke to one of the battered old hulks who rode and cut and slashed and stormed and drank and cursed with Benedict Morgan was forgotten then. Every slewed, twisted, weather-beaten, crippled-up, gin-shivered old wreck of a wrecker—they were hard men—had some- thing to say about Delarco. And with their hair matted and thelr faces streaked and their shirts daubed and their elbows in blood, they sald it—whatever It was, much or little—of Delaroo. The picks swung, the derricks creaked, and all day with the heaving and the calling they tofled; but the sun was sink- ing before they got to the middle of it. Then Benedict Morgan, crawling under the drivers of the hind mogul, partly un- covered, edged out with a set face: he swore he heard breathing. It was alcohol to the veins of the double gang. Neighbor imseif went in and heard—and stayed to fasten a grapple to pull the engine truck off the roof of a box car that was jammed over and against the mogul stack. The big derrick groaned as the slack drew and the truck crashed through a tier of stays and swung whirling into the clear. A glant wrecker dodged the sus- pended wheels and raising an ax bit a hole into the jammed roof. Through that they passed a second grapple, and prcs- ently it gave sullenly, toppled back with a crash, and the foremost axman, peering into the opening, saw the heart of the wreck. Bending forward he bpicked up something struggling in his arms. They thought it was a man; but it was a sheep, alve and uninjured under all the horror: that was the breathing they heard. Bene- dict Morgan threw the man and his bur- den aslde and stepped himself into the gap and through. One started to follow, but the chief of the wreckers waved him back. Close by where the sheep had been freed stood Delarco. He stood as if with ear alert, so closely did the counterfeit seem the real. So sure was the impres- sion of life that not until Morgan, speak- ing to the fireman, put his hand on his shoulder did he realize that the 'Indian stood quite dead just where the shock had caught him in his cab. Stumbling over ' the wreckage they passed him in the silence of the sunset from hand to hand into the open. A big fellow, pallid and scared, tottered after them and when they lald the dead man down, half fell at his side; it was Maje Sampson. It surprised everybody the way Maje Sampson went to pleces after Delaroo was killed. The Indian was carried back to the Bend and up to Sampson’s and laid out in the God férsaken parlor: but Maje wasn’t any good fixing things up that time. He usually shone on like oc- casions. He was the comforter of the afflicted to an extraordinary degree: he gave the usual mourner no chanece to let THE BEST Railroad Stories EVER WRITTEN. W B — ...Dispatchert’s Story... NEXT SUNDAY. One of the Best «-0F - - Frank H. Spearman’s NEW SERIES. up. But now his day was as one that Is darkened. When Neighbor went up next night to see about some minor matters connected with the funeral and the pre- cedence of the various dozen orders that were to march he found Maje Sampson and Martie alone in the darkness of the parlor with the silent Delaroo. Maje turned to the master mechanic from where Delaroo lay. ‘“‘Neighbor, you might as well know it now as any time. Don’t you say so, Martie? Martie, what do you say?’ Martle burst into tears; but through them Neighbor caught the engineer's broken confession. “Neighbor —I'm color blind.” The master mechanic sat stunned. “True as God's wo You might as well know it now. There's a man that stood between me and the loss of my job. It's been coming on me for two year. He knew it, that's why he ved in my cab He stayed because I was color biind. He knowed I'd git ketched the minute a new fireman come In, Neighbor. He watched the signals—Delarco. I'm color blind, God help me.” Maje Sampson sat down by the coffin. Martie hushed her crying; the three sat in the darkness. “It wouldn't worry wasn't f'r the family, woman—and the.b I ain’t much a- savin’; you know that. If you can gl’ me a job I can get bread an’ butter out of, give It to me.” I can't pull & train; my eyes went out with this man here. I wish to God It was me, and him standing over. A man that’s color biind, and don’'t know a thing on God’s earth but runnin’ an en- gine, i1s wos'n a dead man.” Neighbor went home thinking. They buried Delaroo. But even' then they were not through with him. Dela- roo had insurance in every order in the Bend, which meant almost ‘every one on earth. There was no end to his benefit certificates, and no known beneficiaries. But when they overhauled his trupk the found every last certificate filed away up to the last pald assessment and the last quarter’s dues. Then came a shock. Peo- ple found out that there was a bene- ficiary. While the fraters were busy making their passes Delaroo had quietly been directing the right honorable re- cording secretaries to make the benefits run to Neighbor, and so every dollar of his insurance ran. Nobody was more thunderstruck than the master mechanic himself. Yet Delaroco meant someghing - by ft. After Neighbor had studied over it nights the best of a month; after Maje Sampson had tried to take the color test and failed, as he persistently said he would; after he had gone to tinkering in the round- house and from tinkering respectably and by degrees down the hill to wiping at a dollar and forty cents a day with time and a half for overtime eighbor bethought himself all of a sudden one day of a paper Delaroo had once given him and asked him to keep. He had put it away in the storekeeper’'s safe with his own papers and the draw- ings of his extension front end patent— and safely forgotten ali about it. It wa the day they had to go iito the county court about the will that was not, wher he recollected Delaroo’s paper and pull it out of its envelope., There was ¥ a half sheet of paper, inside, with this writing from Delaroo to Neighbor: R. B. A—What is coming to me on en- surance give to Marty Sampson, wife of Maje. Give my trunk to P. McGraw, Rispk., P. De LA ROUX. When the master mechanic read that before the probate judge Maje Sampson took a-trembling, Martie hid her face in hér shawl, crying again. Maybe a glim- mer of what it meant came for the first time in her life over her. Maybe shé re- membered Delaroo as he used to sit with them under the kerosene lamp while Maje untiringly pounded the money question into him—smoking as he listened, and Martie mended on never-ending trousers. Looking from Maje Sampson, heated with monologue, to his wife, patiently stitch- ing. No comments; just looking as Pierre Delaroux could look. Strange, Neighbor thought it, and yet maybe not so strange. It was all there in the paper—the torn, worn little book of Delaroo’s life. She was the only woman on earth that had ever done him a kind- ness. Nobody at Medicine Bend quite under- stood it; but nobody at Medicine Bend quite suspected that under all the bar- renness up at Maje Sampson’s an ambi- tion could have survived; yet one had. Martie had an ambition. Way down un- der her faded eyes and her faded dress there was an ambition, and that for the least promising subjects in the Rocky Mountains—the brickbats. Under the un- ending mending and the poverty and the toll Martie, who never put her nose out of doors, who never attended a church so- clal, naver ventured even to a free public school show—had an ambition for the boys. She wanted the two biggest to go to the State University—wanted them to go and get an education. And they went; and Maje Sampson says them boys, ary one, has forgotten more about the money question than he ever knew. It looks as if after all the brickbats might come out —a bit of money in Martie's hands goes so far. There are a few soldiers buried at the me so much if it Neighbor. The 13 Bend. Decoration day there is an attempt at a turnout—a little speech tle marching—e thin, strags! of the same warped, bent oid the same faded old blue. Up t g0 and around to the cemetery to deco- ey rate. When they turn at Maje Sa place—there's a gate th now and more or less of the boys a kind of join in along and go ove n them, carrying a basket or so of flowers and a bucket of water. The crowd is, But M oys so around the fe gets do what apart and prods th all up loose with an old would think she might be kneading there, the way r stray he sways under her does Delaroo a year,” eighbor alwavs winds up It may not do him a blamed bit of good; I don’'t say it s. But I can see them. I see them from ouse; it does me good: H “Maje?" he will add I've got him over there at 'm going to put him stationary if old John Baxter ever dies. When will he di Blamed if 1 >w. John is a pret. ty good man yet. I can’t kill him, can I? Well, then, what's a matter with you? No, M as much as he used to—fo: passes more or less, too. g like some more of us. He's kind of quit the money ques- tion; clalms he don't understand it now as well as the boys do. But he can talk about Delaroo; he understands Delarco pretty well—now.” Is the Artificial Diamond Possible? N the realm of sclence, since the golden dream of the ancient alchem- ists first stirred man to probe amons the Innermost secrets of nature, per- haps no more daring conception has taken form and life than the attempt to subjugate and direct nature’s own forces to the production of one of her greatest masterpieces—the diamond. By means of the great power plant at Niagara Falls—that magic wand of mod- ern science by which the tremendous force of gravity is transformed into elec- tric heat of an Intensity which rivals even the primal heat of the earth—was produced, not the diamond, but the won- derful earborundum, the first (but arti- ficial) cousin. This of itself proport is an achievement of no ons,” sclentifically consid- but s s short of success. eoretically, it seemed should have roduced the dlamond, but practically it did not. Something was not as it should have been. Something in nature’s labora- tory was more perfect than man's; some law necessary t he carbon in the coal to . gen- mors state of 1 known n In general, large pe and sha vhich they w ars formed crystals require more time ta form than s0 t a short period of cooling or crystallization will resuit in smail granular crystals. As each substance has its own characteristic crystal, it follows that to be perfect in form it must be pure In order t a crystal be pure it Is not essential that the original “liqu con- taining it shall be pure. It is always tendency of the crystal in forming to ex- clude foreign matter, as will be realized by those who have observed comparative- Iy pure ice upon a muddy pond. There are two ways by which a pure erystal may be formed from an impure source: First, by a sufficient lapse of time during crystallization to enable all foreign mat- ter to be excluded, which s nature's way; second, by successively taking the par- tially purified product of one crystaliiza- tion, remelting and recrystallizing, untit purity is reached, which Is man's way. Now by analogy why not apply these principles to the manufacture of the dia- mond? For nature’s great advantage of unlimited time why not substitute recrys- tallization? Carborundum we may consider as a very satisfactory product for the first step in the process. The carbon in the coal has by a single oparation been trans- formed into small granular crystals, dis- coloréd and impure but exceedingly bard and closely akin fo the dlamond. The cause of these unsatisfactory features we have already seen; now the remedy: Let us suppose, for instance, that a tun- nel or shaft be excavated to a point a hundred feet below the surface of the earth, a quantity of the already purified carbon (carborundum) be piaced at that point, the necessary wire connections made, the excavation refilled and the full force of the electric current turned on for such time as may be possible. or nee- essary to fuse the carborundum and to greatly heat the surrounding earth. Here we would have probably all the heat necessary, a considerable degree of pressure, and possibly some mouths of Wme for the process of crystallization. ‘Who dares say that this process, or a repetition of it, might not result in—dia~ monds? G. M. LITTLE.