CHAPTER VIII
SMOKY CREEK BRIDGE
It was not alone that a defiance makes a bad dinner sauce: there was more than this for McCloud to feed on. He was forced to confess to himself as he walked back to the Wickiup that the most annoying feature of the incident was the least important, namely, that his only enemy in the country should be intrusted with commissions from the Stone Ranch and be carrying packages for Dicksie Dunning. It was Sinclair’s trick to do things for people, and to make himself so useful that they must like first his obligingness and afterward himself. Sinclair, McCloud knew, was close in many ways to Lance Dunning. It was said to have been his influence that won Dunning’s consent to sell a right of way across the ranch for the new Crawling Stone Line. But McCloud felt it useless to disguise the fact to himself that he now had a second keen interest in the Crawling Stone country––not alone a dream of a line, but a dream of a girl. Sitting moodily in his office, with his feet on the desk, a few nights after his encounter with Sinclair, he 72 recalled her nod as she said good-by. It had seemed the least bit encouraging, and he meditated anew on the only twenty minutes of real pleasurable excitement he had ever felt in his life, the twenty minutes with Dicksie Dunning at Smoky Creek. Her intimates, he had heard, called her Dicksie, and he was vaguely envying her intimates when the night despatcher, Rooney Lee, opened the door and disturbed his reflections.
“How is Number One, Rooney?” called McCloud, as if nothing but the thought of a train movement ever entered his head.
Rooney Lee paused. In his hand he held a message. Rooney’s cheeks were hollow and his sunken eyes were large. His face, which was singularly a night face, would shock a stranger, but any man on the division would have given his life for Rooney. The simple fellow had but two living interests––his train-sheets and his chewing tobacco. Sometimes I think that every railroad man earns his salary––even the president. But Rooney was a Past Worthy Master in that unnumbered lodge of railroad slaves who do killing work and have left, when they die, only a little tobacco to show for it. It was on Rooney’s account that McCloud’s order banishing cuspidors from his office had been rescinded. A few evenings of agony on the despatcher’s part when in consultation 73 with his chief, the mournful wandering of his uncomplaining eyes, his struggle to raise an obstinate window before he could answer a question, would have moved a heart harder than McCloud’s. The cuspidor had been restored to one corner of the large room, and to this corner Rooney, like a man with a jaw full of birdshot, always walked first. When he turned back to face his chief his face had lost its haunted expression, and he answered with solemn cheer, “On time,” or “Fourteen minutes late,” as the case might be. This night his face showed something out of the ordinary, and he faced McCloud with evident uneasiness. “Holy smoke, Mr. McCloud, here’s a ripper! We’ve lost Smoky Creek Bridge.”
“Lost Smoky Creek Bridge?” echoed McCloud, rising in amazement.
“Burned to-night. Seventy-seven was flagged by the man at the pump station.”
“That’s a tie-up for your life!” exclaimed McCloud, reaching for the message. “How could it catch fire? Is it burned up?”
“I can’t get anything on that yet; this came from Canby. I’ll have a good wire in a few minutes and get it all for you.”
“Have Phil Hailey and Hyde notified, Rooney, and Reed and Brill Young, and get up a train. Smoky Creek Bridge! By heavens, we are ripped 74 up the back now! What can we do there, Rooney?” He was talking to himself. “There isn’t a thing for it on God’s earth but switchbacks and five-per-cent. grades down to the bottom of the creek and cribbing across it till the new line is ready. Wire Callahan and Morris Blood, and get everything you can for me before we start.”