The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 26, 1904, Page 7

CISCO SUNDAY CALL! { 7 I've been on the rellef, so. I'm. tr wheat, reported out at.3:10. While e up a little now for my old we worked on our time card, Neigh- bor, in the dispatcher's office across the hall, figured out that the wheat would enrich the company just get- thousand ~dollars, tolls and in premium. “If it doesn't break in two g to-give us on the Beverly Hill,” growled Neigh- raper, bor, with a qualm. urning to On the dispatcher’s sheet, which is A sort of a orama, I watched the in whirl past station after sta- ing steadily nearer o us, the marvel, on full pas- senger time. It was a great feat, and Georgie McNeal, whose nerve and brain were guiding the tremendous was breaking records with every an, eva- move it, and I get a wire x hours to siding’s blocked, How many of those cars ca S were due in Harvard at 9 t 4, our fiyer, pulled in , meeting 55, the west- land freight, at the second of Harvard—Redbud. and I sat with the dis- in their office smoking. ain was now due from the looking at my watch, I the western window. Almost It the long peculiarly of the skyscraper whis- pper yard. g,"” I exclaimed. ded to the window, but ppened to glance to the es as I have one is always < me up, even, hear men rave marvel at it when I rse. 1 hear them But the upshot of it was the skyscraper at -hauli a week she was doin header at coming in from the o iiley?” he exclaimed, turn- the local dispatcher. We looked w a headlight in the east. e do they meet?” e takes the long siding in nction” — which was two d she ought to be on w" added the dispatcher, looking over the master s shoulder. d as if a bullet had 11 never take a siding »ming down the main t's her orders?” he demand- % g orders for first 4 at Redbud, here, 78 at Glencoe. Great cried the dispatcher, and his sick and scared, “they’ve think of her a long time ed the master mechanic, Jjumping to the west window. our red. lights! There's the headshot that instant around ites, less than a mile away, ng dead against her. I stood d, my'eyes glued on the the big engine. As she a street arc light I pse of Georgie McNeal's > cab window. He al- bareheaded if the night was d I knew it was he; but sud- . his head went in. s well if my eyes were thoughts his thoughts. en red signals where he had ht to look for white. i signals now—to stop her—to flat on Her haunches like a Shake a weather flag at a Th e a flas fire stream from her driv- Y they were churning in the ; I knew he had twenty air cars him sliding. What of it? and tons were sweeping e an avalanche. What did juck count for now with « 1 along like a school girl right into the teeth of it. | cROUCHING AN T, T AN AT ES OF, 7S B frightened. With a her INA %HWOU,S 0ld man raised b ap an e eorgie’s hands. ff’fg?T - - ¥ ‘Son,” he gasped to the astonished boy, “don’t you know me? “Of course I know you, Dad. What's the matter with you? Lie down.” i “Boy, I'm own fathe His face contracted and G and the fireman both. Hard lin My n't bother me eal with the t behind her in one t ed Neighbor was a ever get over ey do, that’s the daring chanc driving the the snapping point that was what it the company wanted re- ted the pres! To gain them we were tch our little resources to the uttermost. I studied a minute, then turned to Norman to send them out as that gives the right of way against them. ke it on that kind of schedule it isn't in the track.” extraordinary 1 Dad Hamil- zh of that. t after pay day, I postoffice lobby ver to the money moment later each th 2 money order. as the second section of our eastbound fiyer; but we took hair- lifting chances on the plains. It was ncon when the orders were o’clock No. 4 was due For three hours > 1 asked, as he came art of it goes there every month, “Checks are t00, now—eh, Dad?"” ellow like you ought to be money away in the bank” to leave Zanesville. I kept the wires busy warning all irainmen, even switch engines and yard masters, of the wheat special second 4. The flyer, the first section and reg- ular passenger train, was checked out operators and Well, you see, I have a bank back —a bank that is and .getting gray- beaded. I haven't sent her much since Pennsylvania which meant Georgie McNeal, the skyscraper - and fifty t know how the utner men felt. y breath choked in my at, my knees shook and a deadly seized me. Unable to avert the e blunder, I saw 1ts hideous re- s hid the worst of the sight; sund that appalled. Chil- p in sod shanties miles from e the two engines reared in awful k, juimped in their cribs at that little engine barely checked yscraper. She split it like a bucked like a frantic ped fearfully ahead. There nding explosion, a sudden t of steam; tne windows bout our ears, and we were E the wall and floor like lead- neils. A baggage truck, whipped up platform below, came through sh and down on the dis- ble like a brickbat, and as ed to our feet a shower of wheat suffocated us. The floor heave freight cars slid into the depot like ba tering-ram: In the height of the con- fusion an tank in the yard took fire and threw a yellow glare on the ghast- ly scene. I saw men get up and fall again to their knees; 1 was shivering and wet with sweat. The stairway was crushed into kindling woed. I climbed out a back window, down on the roof of the freight platform and so to the ground. There was a running to and fro, use- less and aimless. Men were beside themselves. They plunged through wheat up to their knees at every step. All at once, above the frantic hissing he buried Skyscraper and the wild lling of the car tinks, I heard the stentorian tones of Neighbor, mounted on a twisted truck, organizing the men at hand into a wrecking gang. Soon people began running up the yard to where the skyscraper lay, like another Samson, prostrate in the midst of the destruction it had wrought. Foremost among the excited men, covered with dirt and blocvd, staggered Dad Hamil- ton. “Where's McNeal?” cried Neighbor. Hamilton pointed to the wreck. “Why didn't he jump?” yelled Neigh- bor. A Hamilton pointed at the twisted sig- nal tower. The red light still burned in. it. “You changed the signals on him!” he cried savagely. “What does it mean? We had rights agalnst every- thing. What does it mean?” he raved, in a frenzy. e heav patther’s shoulder, never heard till then, and the two gi- ants hurried away together. reached the skyscraper, buried in the thick of the smash, roaring like & voi- men waiting next behind. Then Neigh- bor pulled Dad back, blind now and When they got the old fire- man out he made a pitiful struggle to pull himself together. He tried to stand up, but the sweat broke over him and he sank in a heap at Neighbor's feet. That was the saving of George Mc- Neal and.out there they will still tell you about that lift of Dad Hamil- the=Pair were alre jam like a brace of ferr the engine crews. though it was much less, found any one. 55's fireman. his back was broken. wormed through twistel trucks, under splintered beams, in and around overchoked -with steam, shouting as they groped, listen- ing for word or cry or gasp. Soon we heard Dad's voice in a dif- ferent cry—one that meant everything; and the wreckers, turning like beavers through a dozen blind trails, gathered all close to the big fireman. under a great piece of the cab, where none could follow, and he was crying They passed him a bar. Other men, careless of life and limb, tried to crawl urder and in to him, but he warned them back. Who but a man baked twenty years in an engine cab could stand the steam that poured on him where he lay? Neighbor, just outside, light, heard the labored strain of his breathing; saw him getting half up, bend to the bar and saw the iron give in his hands as he pried ady into: the hunting for Then they brought cut Neighbor found him. But ‘We put him on the cot at the hos- pital next to his engineer. dreadfully bruised and scalded, came on fast in spite of his hurts. doctor said Dad had wrenched a ten- don in that frightful effort, and he lay there a very sick and very old man long after the young engineer was up and around telling of his experience. “When we cleared the chutes I saw white signals, I thought,” he said to me at Dad's bedside. the right-of-way over everything. was a hustle, anyway, on that sched- ule, Mr. Reed; you know that; an aw- “I knew we had for a bar. choked her a notch to run the yards; didn’t mean to do it with the junction grade to cimb just ahead of us. I looked out again, and by hokey! I thought I'd gone crazy, got color biind, Of course, I thous must have been wrong the first time I choked her; aid; I dumped the gravel. she never felt it! flashing a red signals! I threw the I couldn’t figure how we were wrong, but there was the red ‘Jump, Dad!" and he ‘Jump, son!" Didn't you, Dad? “He jumped; but I wasn’'t ever going to jump and my engine going full against a red lamp. Not much. “I kind of dodged down behind the head; when she struck it was biff, and she jumped about twenty feet straight. - She didn't? like it. Then it was biff, biff, biff, one after another. behind her she'd have.gone through Did, you ever buck snow Neighbor heard, and he told me long afterward, how the old man flung the with an imprecation, cried for one to help him; for a minute meant a life now—the boy lying pinned under the shattered cab was roasting in a jet of livé steam. The master me- chanic crept in. By signs Dad told him what to do, and then, getting on his knees, crawled straight into the dash of the white jet —erawled into it, and got the cab on his shoulders. Crouching an instant, the giant mus- cles of his back set in a tremendous snapped and groaned, the knotted legs slowly and Neighbor answered him never a painfully straightened, word. He only put his hand on Dad's passing instant rose in the air and in that instant Neighbor dragged George “Find him first—find him!"” he re- McNeal from out the vise of death and peated, with a strain in his voice I passed him, like a pinch-bar, to the Well, it seemed + With that train Beverly HIill with a rotary, Mr. Reed? was about it, even to the rolling and Dad, want to lie down? me get another pillow behind Isn’t that better? he added, speaking of the engineer of 55, who was instantly killed. effort. The the cab for a Poor Musgrave I'd rather have it that way, I guess, I was wrong. Eh, Dad?” Even after Georgle went to work Dad lay in the hospital. We knew he would never shovel coal again. It cost him his good back to lift Georgie loose, so that surgeon told us, and I it, for when they got the jacks under the cab ‘next morning, and Neighbor told the wrecking gang that Hamilton alone had lifted it six inches the night before, on his back, the wrecking boss fairly snorted at the statemeat; but Hamilton did, just the same. “Son,” muttered Dad one night to Georgle, sitting with him. “I want you to write a letter for me.” “‘Sure.”, “I've been sending money to my b back East,” explained Dad, feebly. “I told you he's 1n school.” “I know, Dad.” “I haven't been able to send any since I've been by, but I'm going to send some when I get my relief. Not so much as I used to sen I want you to kind of explain why. “What's his first name, Dad, and where does he Hve?” “It's a'lawyer that looks after him —a man that ’'tends to my business back there.” ‘Well, what's his name? caylor—Ephraim Scaylor.” “Scaylor?” echoed Georgle, In amaze- ment. “Yes. Why, do you know him?" ‘Why, that’s the man mother and I had so much trouble with. I wouldn't write to that man. He’s a rascal, Dad.” ““What did he ever do to you and your mother?” “I'll tell you, Dad; though it's a mat- ter I dor't talk about much. My father had trouble back there fifteen or six- teen years ago. He was running an engine, and had a wreck; there were some passengers killed. The dispatcher managed to throw the blame on father, and they indicted him for manslaugh- ter. He pretty near went crazy, and all of a sudden he disappeared, and we never heard of him from that day to this. But this man Scaylor, mether stuck to it, knew something about where father was; only he always de- nied it.” Trembling like a leaf, Dad raised up on his elbow. “What's your mother's name, son? What's your name?” Georgie looked confused. “I'Tl tell you, Dad; there's nothing to be ashamed of. I was foolish enough. I told you once, to go out on a strike with the engineers down there. I was only a kid, and we were all black- listed. So I used my middle name. McNeal; my full name is George Mc- Neal Sinclair.,” The old fireman made a painful ef- fort to sit up, to speak, “ut he choked. name is David Hamiltos had the trouble—Georgie. ed up like a child and Georgle Me- Neal went white and scared; then he grasped the gray-haired man in his arms. When I dropped in an hour later they were talking hysterically. Dad he had been send- lor every month, Georgie as contending that neither he nor his mother had ever seen a cent of it. But one great fact overshadowed all the villainy that night; father and son were united and happy and a message had already gone back to the old home from Geor- gie to his mother, telling her the good news. “And that indictment was wiped out long ago against father,” said Georgie to me, “but that rascal Scaylor kept writing him for money to fight it with and to pay my schooling—and this was the kind of schooling I was get- ting all the time. Wouldn't that kill you?” I couldn’t sleep till I had hunted up Neighbor and told him about it and next morning he wired back transpor- tation for Mrs. Sinclair to come out on. Less than a week afterward a gentle little old woman stepped off the fiyer at Zanesville and into the arms of Georgie clalr. A smart rig was In walting, to which her son hurried her and they were driven rapidly to the hospital. When they entered the old fireman’s room together the nurse softly closed the door behind them. But when they sent for Neighbor and me, I suppose we were the two biggest fools in the hospital, trying to look unconscious of all we saw in the faces of the group at Dad's bed. He never got his old strength back, yet Neighbor fixed him out, for all that. The skyscraper, once our pride, was so badly stove that we gave up hope of restoring her for a passenge> run. So Neighbor buiit her over into a- sort of dub engine for short rune, stubs and so on, and though Dad had vowed long ago, when unjustly con- demned, that he would never touch a throttle, we got him to take the sky- seraper and the Acton run. And when Georgle, who takes the fiver every other d is off duty, he climbs info Dad’'s cab, shoves the old gentleman aside and shoots around the yard in the rejuvenated skyscraper at a_halr-raising rate of speed. After awhile the old engine got so full of alkali that George gave her a new name— Water Sal—and it hangs to her ¥ We thought the best of her had gone in the Harvard wreck, but there came a time when Dad and Soda-Water Sal showed us we were very much mistaken.