“Have a cigar,” said the chief clerk, laying one on the glass-topped wire-table. Calmaine, eastern trunk-line bred, had been inclined to cockiness when he came West, but a year with Maxwell, whose standing was that of the Short Line’s best-beloved tyrant, had taken a good deal of it out of him.
“Thanks,” returned Connolly, with a fat man’s grin, “not for me when I’m despatching trains. The corn-cob goes with the job. Sit in here on the wire for a minute while I go up to the bunk-room and look in my other coat.”
Calmaine took the vacated chair and ran his eye along the latest additions to the many columns of figures on the train-sheet. Bolton in his far corner was still loafing, though his night’s work of taking and typing the wire car reports from the various stations on the double division was scarcely begun. “You think you’re a little tin god on wheels, don’t you?” he muttered under his breath, blinking and scowling across at the well-groomed young man sitting in Connolly’s chair. “You can let down with Dan Connolly all right, but when it comes to throwin’ a bone to the other new dog, you ain’t it. One o’ these times I’m goin’ to jump up and bite you.”
The object of this splenetic outburst was still bending over the train-sheet, abstractedly unconscious of Bolton’s presence. From the conductors’ room beyond the wire office three or four trainmen drifted in to look over the bulletin-board notices; and still Connolly did not return.
Suddenly the sounder in front of the substitute set up a furious chatter, clicking out a monotonous repetition of the “G.S.” call, breaking at intervals with the signature “Ag,” the code letters for Angels, the desert-edge town from which the Apache Limited had been last reported. Calmaine flicked his key-switch and cut in quickly with the answering signal. Then, reaching for pad and pen, he wrote out the message that came boiling over the wire.
“G.S.
“Apache Limited in ditch at Lobo Cut four miles west. Both engines crumpled up. Two enginemen, one route agent, under wreck. Everything off but rear Pullman. Train on fire and lot of passengers pinned down. Hurry help quick.
“Ag.”
Calmaine was an alert young man, well abreast of his job and altogether capable. But before he could yelp twice Connolly had come in, and it was the fat despatcher who gave the alarm.
“My Lord, Bolton—see here!” he shouted, pushing Calmaine aside as an incumbrance. And then, when the car-record man came over to stare vacantly at the fateful message: “Get a move! Send somebody after Mr. Maxwell, quick! Then get busy on that yard wire and turn out the wrecking crew. Get Dawson on the ’phone and tell him I’ll have a clear track for him by the time his wreck-wagons are ready! Jump at it, man! Your wife isn’t the only one that’s needing help! Wake up!”