The old engineer swung down from the cab and allowed one of his firemen to take the machine out to the roundhouse. He had his lunch-can and coat with him. He stood like a whipped dog and took the tongue-lashing the supervisor gave to him. Ralph had to go away from there. He could not listen to it. Byron Marks did not possess a proper sense of his own position.
The young train dispatcher hoped that the old man would ask for a substitute for the next run. But he appeared at night in season to take the big locomotive out of the roundhouse. He had one virtue, at least. Stubbornness.
That day had been an anxious one around divisional headquarters. Ralph had gone home for supper as usual; but he had come right downtown again. The strikers were holding a continuous meeting in Beeman Hall and the police were in attendance to keep the speakers from going too far. It was told Ralph that many yardmen, switchmen and section men had attended the meeting and that the small unions of railroad workers were all but disorganized.
One shop was running with a crippled crew. The supervisor certainly was efficient himself. He could report that the wheels in that shop were turning. Ralph saw that Mr. Hopkins was on the job this evening. Plainclothes men, belonging to the railroad squad, were on duty about the terminal, roundhouse, and yard.
Every hour or so some part of the planned schedule for the trains on the division had to be scrapped. Ralph was glad he was on hand this evening when these changes had to be made. Johnny was a good man, but he was beginning to get rattled. And a train dispatcher who loses his head endangers everything.
It was along in the evening and the traffic was easing up for a while in the terminal yards when a message addressed to “Chief Dispatcher, Rockton” came over the wire, and Johnny took it off.
“Shadow Valley,” he said. “That is where the Midnight Flyer always loses time. What kind of country is that?”
“A wild place. The Shadow Valley Station is at this end; Oxford is at the far end. Some fifty miles long. The Midnight Flyer stops at both stations. Little but timber towns in between. Great tourist country in the summer. Hullo! What’s this?”
“It’s in code, I reckon,” said Johnny, seeing Ralph’s puzzled face. “Haven’t you got the key? It is aimed at you, all right.”
Ralph repeated the message aloud: