There was an interval; then Callahan asked, "What's the matter?"
I got up and walked over to the water-tank for a drink. Blackburn again pressed the key, and repeated to Callahan precisely the words he had used before: "Come down."
His face was drawn into the very shape of fear and his eyes, bent hard on me, were looking through me and through the shivering window—I know it now—and through the storming night, horror-set, into the cañon of the Peace River.
The sounder broke and he turned back, listened a moment; but it was stray stuff about time freight. He pushed the chair from behind him, still like a man listening—listening; then with an effort, plain even to me, he walked across the office, pushed open the door of Callahan's private room, and stood with his hand on the knob, looking back at the lamp. It was as if he still seemed to listen, for he stood undecided a moment; then he stepped into the dark room and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone and dumb with fear.
The mystery lay, I knew, in the order book. Curiosity gradually got the better of my fright, and I walked from the cooler over to the counter to get courage, and shoved the train register around noisily. I crossed to the despatchers' table and made a pretence of arranging the pads and blanks. The train order book was lying open where he had left it under the lamp. With my eyes bulging, I read the last two orders copied in it:
C. and E. No. One, Ames.
No. One, Eng. 871, will hold at O'Fallon'sfor Special 202.
C. and E. Special 202, Rosebud.
Special 202, Eng. 636, will run to Salt Rocks regardless of No. One.
SALT ROCKS! I glared at the words and the letters of the words.
I re-read the first order and read again the second. O'Fallon's for Number One. That was right. O'Fallon's it should be for the Special 202, of course, to meet her. But it wasn't: it was the first station east of O'Fallon's he had ordered the Special to run to. It was a lap order. My scalp began to creep. A lap order for the Irving Special and the Number One passenger, and it doomed them to meet head on somewhere between O'Fallon's and the Salt Rocks, in the Peace River cañon.
My mouth went sticking dry. The sleet outside had deepened into a hail that beat the west glass sharper and the window shook again in the wind. I asked myself, afraid to look around, what Blackburn could be doing in Callahan's room. The horror of the wreck impending through his mistake began to grow on me; I know what I suffered; I ask myself now what he suffered, inside, alone, in the dark.