"It is curious," mused Callahan, as Morrison, the head operator, handed him some McCloud messages—"curious, that we get nothing from Sleepy Cat."
Sleepy Cat, it should be explained, is a new town on the West End; not only that, but a division town, and though one may know something about the Mountain Division he may yet be puzzled at Callahan's mention of Sleepy Cat. When gold was found in the Pilot range and camps grew up and down Devil's Gap like mushrooms, a branch was run from Sleepy Cat through the Pilot country, and the tortoise-like way station became at once a place of importance. It takes its name from the neighboring mountain around the base of which winds the swift Rat River. At Sleepy Cat town the main line leaves the Rat, and if a tenderfoot brakeman ask a reservation buck why the mountain is called Sleepy Cat the Indian will answer, always the same, "It lets the Rat run away."
"Now it's possible," suggested Hughie Morrison, looking vaguely at the stove, "that the wires are down."
"Nonsense," objected Callahan.
"It is raining at Soda Sink," persisted Morrison, mildly.
"What?" demanded the general superintendent, pulling his pipe from his mouth. Hughie Morrison kept cool. His straight, black hair lay boyishly smooth across his brow. There was no guile in his expression even though he had stunned Callahan, which was precisely what he had intended. "It is raining at Soda Sink," he repeated.
Now there is no day in the mountains that goes back of the awful tradition concerning rain at Soda Sink. Before Tom Porter, first manager; before Brodie, who built the bridges; before Sikes, longest in the cab; before Pat Francis, oldest of conductors, runs that tradition about rain at the Sink—which is desert absolute—where it never does rain and never should. When it rains at Soda Sink, this say the Medicine men, the Cat will fall on the Rat. It is Indian talk as old as the foothills.
Of course no railroad man ever gave much heed to Indian talk; how, for instance, could a mountain fall on a river? Yet so the legend ran, and there being one superstitious man on the force at Medicine Bend one man remembered it—Hughie Morrison.
Callahan studied the bulletin to which the operator called his attention and resumed his pipe sceptically, but he did make a suggestion. "See if you can't get Sleepy Cat, Hughie, and find out whether that is so."
Morris Blood was away with the Pittsburgers and Callahan had foolishly consented to look after his desk for a few days. At the moment that Morrison took hold of the key Giddings opened the door from the despatchers' room. "Mr. Callahan, there's a message coming from Francis, conductor of Number Two. They've had a cloudburst on Dry Dollar Creek," he said, excitedly; "twenty feet of water came down Rat Cañon at five o'clock. The track's under four feet in the cañon."