“Hopkins’ tool! You wait a while, Ralph Fairbanks. You’ll see what’s going to happen.” Then he ran off at top speed.
Ralph did not attempt to follow the fellow. To punish the half-drunken Whitey Malone would be as useless as fencing with a windmill. If anything was to be done to avert trouble and put fear of the law into the bad element around the railroad yards and shops, those higher up must feel the weight of authority. Whitey and his ilk were quite irresponsible.
Ralph told his mother the tale at the supper table, relating the entire incident from the moment he had seen Cherry Hopkins attacked by the rowdies.
“Just the same, there is trouble brewing,” he added. “It will center about Mr. Bart Hopkins. And yet, I can’t blame the G. M. for backing the super up. Mr. Hopkins is a wonderfully able man. But discipline means more to him than the contentment and happiness of his employees.”
“I am sorry if there is going to be more trouble on the road, Ralph,” the widow said, with a sigh.
“Oh, it won’t affect me any,” he said cheerfully. “I have nothing to do with the shopmen or the maintenance of way men.”
“I thought you were safely out of trouble when you got in the train dispatchers’ department,” said Mrs. Fairbanks reflectively. “But just see what happened in war time. Your peril on that army train——”
“Shucks! Nothing like that is likely to happen again, Mother,” he interrupted. “I’m a regular stick-in-the-mud now. Youngest chief dispatcher of any division of the Great Northern system. Why! I’m an old man.”
“You are just as likely as ever to be tempted to do a reckless thing,” she said, but she smiled at him. “An old man! You are just a baby to me, Ralph, after all.”
He laughed; but he blushed, too.