“Bob!” exclaimed the boy in desperation, “No. 9 has run past her meeting order at Point of Rocks with No. 2. They will meet head-on and kill everybody. My God! what can I do?”
In the dim light of the shaded oil lamp, Bucks, looking at the scout, stood the picture of despair. Scott picked up the poker and began to stir the fire and asked only a few questions and said little. However, when Bucks told him he was going to wake Stanley, whose sleeping-room adjoined his office at the end of the hall, Scott counselled no.
“He could do nothing,” said Scott reflecting. “Let us wait a while before we do anything like 311 that,” he added, coupling himself with the despatcher in the latter’s overwhelming anxiety. “The first news of the collision will come from Bitter Creek. It will be time enough then to call Stanley. Give your orders for a wrecking crew, get a train ready, and get word to Doctor Arnold to go with it.”
Bucks, steadying himself under the kindly common-sense of his older friend, followed each suggestion promptly. Scott, who ordinarily would himself have been running around on the job, made no move to leave the room, thinking he could be of more service in remaining with the unfortunate despatcher. The yard became a scene of instant activity. And although no organization to meet emergencies of this kind had been as yet effected on the new division, the men responded intelligently and promptly with the necessary arrangements.
Everyone summoned tried to get into the dispatchers’ room to hear the story repeated. Scott took it upon himself to prevent this, and standing in the anteroom made all explanations himself. 312 He rejoined Bucks after getting rid of the crowd, and the moment the relief train reported ready the despatcher sent it out, that help might reach the scene of disaster at the earliest possible moment. Bucks, calmed somewhat but suffering intensely, paced the floor or threw himself into his chair, while Scott picked up the despatcher’s old copy of “The Last of the Mohicans,” and smoking silently sat immovable, waiting with his customary stoicism for the call that should announce the dreaded wreck.
The moments loaded with anxiety went with leaden feet while the two men sat. It seemed as if the first hour never would pass. Then the long silence of the little receiver was broken by a call for the dispatcher. Bucks sprang to answer it.
Scott watched his face as he sent his “Ay, ay.” Without understanding what the instruments clicked, he read the expressions that followed one after the other across Bucks’s countenance, as he would have read a desert trail. He noted the perplexity on the despatcher’s face when the latter tried to get the sender of the call.
“Some one is cutting in on the line,” exclaimed Bucks, mystified, as the sounder clicked. “Bob, it is Bill Dancing.”
A pause followed. “What can it mean, his sending a message to me? He is between Bitter Creek and Castle Springs. Wait a moment!”