Glover's train pulled into Medicine Bend, in the rain, at half-past two o'clock. The face in the Lalla Rookh had put an end to thoughts of sleep, and he walked up to his office in the Wickiup to work until morning on his report. He lighted a lamp, opened his desk with a clang that echoed to the last dark corner of the zigzag hall, and, spreading out his papers, resumed the figuring he had begun at Wind River station. But the combinations which at eleven o'clock had gone fast refused now to work. The Lalla Rookh curtains intruded continually into his problems and his calculations dissolved helplessly into an idle stare at a jumble of figures.
He got up at last, restless, walked through the trainmaster's room, into the despatcher's office, and stumbled on the tragedy of the night.
It came about through an ambition in itself honorable—the ambition of Bud Cawkins to become a train-despatcher.
Bud began railroading on the Wind River. In three months he was made an agent, in six months he had become an expert in station work, an operator after a despatcher's own heart, and the life of the line; then he began looking for trouble. His quest resulted first in the conviction that the main line business was not handled nearly as well as it ought to be. Had Bud confided this to an agent of experience there would have been no difficulty. He would have been told that every agent on every branch in the world, sooner or later, has the same conviction; that he need only to let it alone, eat sparingly of brain food, and the clot would be sure to pass unnoticed.
Unfortunately, Bud concealed his conviction, and asked Morris Blood to give him a chance at the Wickiup. The first time, Morris Blood only growled; the second time he looked at the handsome boy disapprovingly.
"Want to be a despatcher, do you? What's the matter with you? Been reading railroad stories? I'll fire any man on my division that reads railroad stories. Don't be a chump. You're in line now for the best station on the division."
But compliments only fanned Bud's flame, and Morris Blood, after reasonable effort to save the boy's life, turned him over to Martin Duffy.
Now, of all severe men on the West End, Duffy is most biting. His smile is sickly, his hair dry, and his laugh soft.
"Despatcher, eh? Ha, ha, ha; I see, Bud. Coming down to show us how to do business. Oh, no. I understand; that is all right. It is what brought me here, Bud, when I was about your age and good for something. Well, it is a snap. There is nothing in the railroad life equal to a despatcher's trick. If you should make a mistake and get two trains together they will only fire you. If you happen to kill a few people they can't make anything more than manslaughter out of it—I know that because I've seen them try to hang a despatcher for a passenger wreck—they can't do it, Bud, don't ever believe it. In this state ten years is the extreme limit for manslaughter, and the only complication is that if your train should happen to burn up they might soak you an extra ten years for arson; but a despatcher is usually handy around a penitentiary and can get light work in the office, so that he's thrown more with wife poisoners and embezzlers than with cutthroats and hold-up men. Then, too, you can earn nearly as much in State's prison as you can at your trick. A despatcher's salary is high, you know—seventy-five, eighty, and even a hundred dollars a month.
"Of course, there's an unpleasant side of it. I don't want to seem to draw it too rosy. I imagine you've heard Blackburn's story, haven't you—the lap-order at Rosebud? I helped carry Blackburn out of that room"—Duffy pointed very coldly toward Morris Blood's door—"the morning we put him in his coffin. But, hang it, Bud, a death like that is better than going to the insane asylum, isn't it, eh? A short trick and a merry one, my boy, for a despatcher, say I; no insane asylum for me."