“It’s the Corcoran coal mine—about half-way between Corona and the first station this side, and a half-mile up the gulch. They’ve got a private wire, but they ain’t got any night operator.”
Davis overheard the whisper and shook his head.
“Dan’s got his wits with him,” he said, in open admiration. “There’s a young time-keeper that sleeps in the coal company’s office shack, and he’s learning to plug in on the wire a little. If Dan can only wake him——” And then, in sudden sharp self-accusation: “God forgive me! why didn’t I think of it and save all the time that’s been wasted?” Then, as Connolly closed the circuit and a halting reply clicked through the receiving instrument: “He’s got him! Thank the Lord, he’s got him! If he can only make him understand what’s wanted, there’s a chance—just one chance in a thousand!”
With the very seconds now freighted with disaster, and with only the crudest of amateur telegraphers at the other end of the wire, nine men out of ten would have blown up and lost the thousandth part of a chance remaining. But Connolly was the tenth man. With his left hand shaking until it was beating a tattoo on the glass table top he hitched his chair closer and began to spell out, letter by letter, the brief call for help upon which so much depended. Tarbell translated for Sprague, word by word. “Hurry—down—to—main-line—and—throw—your—switch—to—red. Then—run—west—and—flag—passenger.”
The key-switch clicked on the final word, and for five long, dragging seconds the silence was a keen agony. Then the sounder began hesitantly: dot—pause—dot; dash—dot—dash, it spelled; and Tarbell translated under his breath, “He says ‘O K’. Now, if he can only chase his feet fast enough——”
How Maxwell managed to live and not die through the interminable twenty minutes that followed; how Davis and Tarbell and Connolly hung breathless over the wire-table, while the throng outside of the railing, augmented now to a jammed crowd of sympathetic watchers, rustled and moved and whispered in awed undertones—are themes upon which the rank and file of the Nevada Short Line still enlarge in the roundhouse tool-rooms and in the switch shanties when the crews are waiting for a delayed train.
The dreadful interval seemed as if it would never be outworn, but the end came at last when the hesitant clicking of the sounder was resumed.
“Call it out, Dan,” shouted somebody among the waiting trainmen, and Connolly pronounced the words slowly as the amateur at the end of the private wire ticked them off.
“Both—trains—safe—freight—backing—to—blind—siding—at—Quentin—switch—passenger—following—under—flag.”
A shout went up that drowned the feeble patter of the telegraph instruments and made the windows rattle. “Bully for the kid at the coal mine!” “Bully for Danny Connolly!” “Come out here, Danny, till we get a chanst at you!”