| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | The Passing of the Watchman | [1] |
| II. | Again the Reaper | [8] |
| III. | Sleeping out | [13] |
| IV. | The Flood | [21] |
| V. | Tommy’s Requisition | [30] |
| VI. | They hoist the Flag | [35] |
| VII. | The Labor Question | [40] |
| VIII. | Little Jack’s Promotion | [44] |
| IX. | Tommy flags the White Mail | [49] |
| X. | Tommy McGuire sees the City | [55] |
| XI. | The Hold-up at Casey’s Tank | [67] |
| XII. | McGuire goes West | [82] |
| XIII. | McGuire learns Telegraphy | [90] |
| XIV. | Station-master McGuire | [99] |
| XV. | The Coming of the Sioux | [108] |
| XVI. | McGuire goes Switching | [119] |
| XVII. | Snowbound | [132] |
| XVIII. | Breaking the Trail | [151] |
| XIX. | A New Line | [157] |
| XX. | Coming Home | [161] |
| XXI. | On a Rolling Sea | [171] |
| XXII. | The New President | [176] |
| XXIII. | The Maid of Erin | [184] |
| XXIII. | Over the Big Bridge | [194] |
The White Mail
CHAPTER I
THE PASSING OF THE WATCHMAN
Denis McGuire lived at Lick Skillet, on the ridge between the east and west forks of Silver Creek, midway between Troy and St. Jacobs, twenty-two miles east of St. Louis—Vandalia line. Denis McGuire was the section boss, Tommy McGuire was his only heir, Mrs. McGuire, in addition to being Tommy’s mother, made herself generally useful about the house.
Lick Skillet possessed a saw-mill and a blacksmith shop, and contained, if we count the “nigger” who drove Jim Anderson’s bull team at the mill, twenty-seven souls.
Denis McGuire was an honest Irishman, industrious and sober, except on Saturday nights, and possibly Sunday. He was unable to read or write, even his own name. Heidelberg, the station agent at St. Jacobs, the eastern terminus of McGuire’s section, kept his books and accounts and the time of the men. In return for this kindness McGuire used to do odd spurts of manual toil for Heidelberg. Sometimes, on a Saturday afternoon, he would set his car off at the end of his run, take his men over (between trains) and shovel snow and saw wood for the agent. In summer, when they had their scythes out, they invariably cut the weeds on the vacant lot between the station and Heidelberg’s house, clipped the lawn, and weeded the garden.
Down by West Silver Creek bridge there was a water tank and a pump, whose motive power was a mule. Close by the bank of the lazy little river stood the watchman’s shanty, narrow, high, and painted red, like the tank, and like hundreds of other shanties that were strung along the line from St. Louis to Indianapolis. Rain or shine old man Connor was always there to show his white light to the engineer of the Midnight Express, and a white flag to the men on the White Mail in the morning. Beyond the bridge, a round-faced lad of sixteen summers trudged after the mule, who appeared always to be going sidewise, as a boar goes to battle. The round-faced boy was the old watchman’s eldest son, a good-natured, lazy lad who could not whistle a tune, but who was forever singing, “The Hat Me Father Wore.”
When the old man had walked across the bridge and back, with his hands behind him, glanced at the block on the figure-board to see that the tank was full of water, filled his red light and his white light, polished the globes, and set them both burning by the door, he would light his pipe and sit and gaze down into the dirty delinquent river, that came cautiously under the bridge, crept noiselessly away and lost itself in the mournful, malarial forest.