The Wreckers

by Francis Lynde

Kirgan didn't say a word—not to me. He just took one look at the rubbed rails and then yelled back to Gorcher to run out on the "Y." What followed went like clockwork. There were tools, a spike-puller and a driving-maul, on the light engine's tender, and while the two firemen were throwing them off, Kirgan made a couple of swift measurements with his pocket tape.

"These two, right here, boys," he ordered, indicating a pair of rails in the other leg of the "Y," and in less than no time the two rails were up and relaid to bridge the gap of the broken connection.

Gorcher moved the engine carefully over the temporary connection, with Kirgan watching to see that she didn't ditch herself. When the crossing was safely made we all climbed on, and Gorcher began to feel his way cautiously out over the saw-mill track. Kirgan hadn't explained anything, but that didn't matter. We didn't know where we were going, but we were on our way.

I suppose we poked along into the black heart of the Timber range for as much as five or six miles before the engine headlight showed us the remains of the old saw-mill camp lying in a little pocket-like valley from the sides of which all the mill timber had been cut. The camp had been long deserted. There were perhaps a dozen shacks of all sizes and shapes, and with a single exception they were all dilapidated and dismantled, some with the roofs falling in.

The one exception was the stout log building which had probably served as the mill-gang commissary and store. It stood a little back on the slope, and was on the opposite side of the creek from the mill site and sleeping-shacks. The ties at this end of the line were so rotten with age that our engine was grinding a good half of them to powder as she edged up, and a little below the switch that had formerly led in to the mill, Kirgan gave Gorcher the stop signal.

After we had piled off, there wasn't any question raised as to what we should do. Kirgan had taken a hammer from Gorcher's tool-box, and he was the one who led the way straight across the little creek and up the hill to the commissary. I had the lantern, but it wasn't needed. From where the engine was standing, the headlight flooded the whole gulch basin with its electric beam, picking out every detail of the deserted saw-mill camp.

When we reached the log commissary we found the windows all boarded up and the door fastened with a strong hasp and a bright new brass padlock—the only new thing in sight. Kirgan swung his hammer just once and the lock went spinning off down the slope and fell with a splash into the creek. Then he pushed the door open with his foot, and shoved in; and for just one half-second I was afraid to follow—afraid of what we might find in that gloomy looking log warehouse, with its blinded windows and locked door.

I thank the good Lord I had my scare for nothing. While I was nerving myself and stumbling over the threshold behind Kirgan with the lantern, I heard the boss's voice, and it wasn't the voice of any dead man, not by a long shot! From what he said, and the way he was trimming it up with hot ones, it was evident that he took us for some other crowd that he'd been cussing out before.

The light of the lantern showed us a long room, bare of furnishings, and dark and musty from having been shut up so tight. In the far end there were a couple of bunks built against the log wall. On what had once been the counter of the commissary there was a lot of canned stuff and a box of crackers that had been broken open, and on a bench by the door there was a bucket of water and a tin cup.

The boss was sitting up in one of the bunks, and he was still tearing off language in strips at us when we closed in on him. He recognized Kirgan first, and then Gorcher. I guess he couldn't see me very well because I was holding the lantern. When he found out who we were, he stopped swearing and got up out of the bunk to put his hand on Mart Kirgan's shoulder. That was the only break he made to show that he was a man, like the rest of us. The next minute he was the Big Boss again, rapping out his orders as if he had just pushed his desk button to call us in.