THE YOUNG OPERATORS
Tom Mickey, chief lineman of the Ohio division of the P. & O., was, like most other human beings, subject to fluctuations of temper; only, with Tom, the extremes were much farther apart than usual. This was due, perhaps, to his mixed ancestry, for his father, a volatile Irishman, had married a phlegmatic German woman, proprietress of a railroad boarding-house, where Mickey found a safe and comfortable haven, with no more arduous work to do than to throw out occasionally some objectionable customer—and Mickey never considered that as work, but as recreation pure and simple. It was into this haven that Tom was born; there he grew up, alternating between the chronic high spirits of his father and the chronic low ones of his mother, and being, on the whole, healthy and well-fed and contented.
He had entered the service of the road while yet a mere boy, preferring to go to work rather than to school, which was the only alternative offered him; and he soon became an expert lineman, running up and down the poles as agile as a monkey and dancing out along the wires in a way that earned him more than one thrashing from his boss. Advancing years had tempered this foolhardiness, but had only served to accentuate the eccentric side of his character. He would be, one day, buoyant as a lark and obliging to an almost preposterous degree, and the next day, ready to snap off the head of anybody who addressed him, and barely civil to his superior officers.
These vagaries got him into hot water sometimes; and more than once he was “on the carpet” before the superintendent; but the greatest punishment ever meted out to him was a short vacation without pay. The road really could not afford to do without him, for Tom Mickey was the best lineman in the middle west. The tangle of wires which were an integral part of the system was to him an open book, to be read at a glance. Was any wire in trouble, he would mount his tricycle, a sort of miniature hand-car, spin out along the track, and in a surprisingly short time the trouble was remedied and the wire in working order. Tom was a jewel—in the rough, it is true, and not without a flaw—but a jewel just the same.
Luckily he was in one of his buoyant moods when Jim Anderson approached him on the morning following his conversation with Allan. Perhaps it is only right to say that this was not wholly luck, for Jim had reconnoitred thoroughly beforehand, and had not ventured to approach the lineman until assured by one of his helpers that he was in a genial humour.
Mickey was just loading up his tricycle with wire and insulators, preparatory to a trip out along the line, when Jim accosted him.
“Mr. Mickey,” he began, “another fellow named Allan West and myself want to rig up a little telegraph line from my house, out near the two bridges, to his, just back of the yards here, and we were wondering if you would let us string our wire on the company’s poles. There seem to be some vacant places, and of course we’d be mighty careful not to interfere with the other wires.”
He stopped, eying Mickey anxiously, but that worthy went on with his work as though he had not heard. He was puffing vigorously at a short clay pipe, and with a certain viciousness that made Jim wonder if he had approached him at the wrong moment, after all.
“What ’d ye say th’ other kid’s name is?” Mickey asked, after what seemed an age to the waiting boy.
“Allan West.”