On the Iron at Big Cloud

by Frank L. Packard

“My God!” he said hoarsely. “It was Coogan who was drunk that night—not you.”

“I figured that’s the way you’d read it, you or any other railroad man,” said Dahleen. “It was him or me and one of us drunk, in the eyes of any of the boys on the road, from the minute that flask showed up. There was only one thing would have made you believe different, and I couldn’t tell you—then. I’d have taken the same stand you did. But you’re wrong.. Coogan wasn’t drunk that night—he never touched a drop. I wouldn’t be telling you this now, if he had, would I?”

“Sit down,” said Carleton.

Dahleen took the chair beside the desk, and resting his feet on the window-sill stared out at the lights twinkling below him.

“Yes, I gave him the flask,” he said slowly, as though picking up the thread of a story, “for a wedding present. The day he came back to his run after the little woman and the baby died he had it in his pocket, and he handed it to me. ‘I’m afraid of it, Jimmy,’ he said. That was all, just that—only he looked at me. Then he got down out of the cab to oil round, me still holding it in my hand for the words kind of hit me—they meant a whole lot. Well, before he came back, I lifted up my seat and chucked it down in the box underneath. I don’t want to make a long story of this. You know how he took to brooding. Sometimes he wouldn’t say a word from one end of the run to the other. And once in a while he seemed to act a little queer. I didn’t think much of it and I didn’t say anything to anybody, figuring it would wear off. When we pulled out of Big Cloud the night of the wreck I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary about him, I’d kind of got used to him by then and if there was any difference I didn’t notice it. He never said a word all the way out until we hit the summit of the Devil’s Slide and started down. I had the fire-box door open and was throwing coal when he says so sudden as almost to make me drop my shovel:

“‘Jimmy, do you know what night this is?’”

“‘Sure,’ says I, never thinking, ‘it’s Thursday.’

“He laughed kind of softlike to himself.

“‘It’s my wedding night, Jimmy,’ he says. ‘My wedding night, and we’re going to celebrate.’

“The light from the fire-box was full on his face, and he had the queerest look you ever saw on a man. He was white and his eyes were staring and he was pushing his hand through his hair and rocking in his seat. I was scart. I thought for a minute he was going to faint, then I remembered that whisky and jumped for my side of the cab, opened the seat and snatched it up. I went back to him with it in my hand. I don’t think he ever saw it—I know he didn’t. He was laughing that soft laugh again, kind of as though he was crooning, and he reached out his hand and pushed me away.