The Night Operator

by Frank L. Packard

"Some day," said Sammy Durgan sadly, "some day, Maria, you'll be sorry for this. You'll break your heart for it, Maria! You wait! 'Tis no fault of mine, the trouble. Everybody's against me—and now my wife. But you wait. Once in the life of every man he gets his chance. Mine ain't come yet. But you wait! It's the man who rises to an emergency that counts, and——"

There was a gurgling sound from Mrs. Durgan's throat. Then the window slammed down—hard.

Sammy Durgan stared, stared a little blankly as the lamp retreated from the window and the front of the house grew black.

"I guess," said Sammy Durgan a little wistfully to himself, "I guess I'm fired all around for fair." He turned and walked slowly out to the street and headed downtown toward the railroad yards. And as he walked he communed with himself somewhat bitterly: "Any blamed little thing that comes up, that, if 'twere anybody else, nobody'd pay any attention to it, and everybody yells 'fire Sammy Durgan.' That's me——'fire Sammy Durgan.' And why? Because I never get a chance—that's why!" Sammy Durgan grew earnest in his soliloquy. "Some day," said he, as he reached the station platform, "I'll show 'em—I'll show Maria! It'll come, every man gets his chance. Give me the chance to rise to an emergency, that's all I ask—just give me that and I'll show 'em!"

Sammy Durgan walked up the deserted platform with no very definite destination in view, and stopped abruptly in front of the freight shed as he suddenly remembered that it was very late. He sat down on the edge of the platform, and kicked at the main-line rail with the toe of his boot. Sammy Durgan was bedless, penniless, wifeless and jobless. It was a very black night indeed for Sammy Durgan.

Sammy Durgan's mind catalogued those in authority in Big Cloud in whose gift a job was, and he went over the list—but it did not take him long, as he had need to hesitate over no single name. Big Cloud and a job for Sammy Durgan were separated by a great gulf. Sammy Durgan, however, his perennial optimism gaining the ascendancy again, found solace even in that fact. In view of his present marital difficulties a job in Big Cloud would be an awkward thing anyhow. In fact, for the first time in his life, he would have refused a job in Big Cloud. Sammy Durgan had a certain pride about him. Given the opportunity, the roundhouse, the shops, the yards, and the train crews, once they discovered the little impasse that had arisen in the Durgan family, might be safely trusted to make capital out of it—at his expense.

Sammy Durgan's mind in search of a job went further afield. This was quite a different proposition, for the mileage of the Hill Division was big. For an hour Sammy Durgan sat there, scratching at his red hair, puckering his leathery face, and kicking at the rail to the detriment of the toe-cap of his boot. He knew the division well, very well—too well. At the moment, he could not place any spot upon it that he did not know, or, perhaps what was more to the point, that was not intimately acquainted with him. Road work, bridge work, yard work, station work passed in review before him, but always and with each one arose a certain well-remembered face whose expression, Biblically speaking, was not like unto a father's on the prodigal's return.

And then at last Sammy Durgan sighed in relief. There was Pat Donovan! True, he and Pat Donovan had had a little misunderstanding incident to the premature explosion of a keg of blasting powder that had wrecked the construction shanty, but that was two years ago and under quite different conditions. Pat Donovan now was a section boss on a desolate stretch of track about five stations up the line, and his only companions were a few Polacks who spoke English like parrots—voluble enough as far as it went, but not entirely soul-filling to an Irishman of the sociable tendencies of Pat Donovan. He could certainly get a job out of Pat Donovan.

The matter ultimately settled, Sammy Durgan stood up. Across the yards they were making up the early morning freight. That solved the transportation question. A railroad man, whether he was out of a job or not, could always get a lift in any caboose that carried the markers or the tail lights of old Bill Wallis' train. Sammy Durgan got a lift that morning up to Dam River; and there, a little further along the line, he ran Pat Donovan and his Polacks to earth where they were putting in some new ties.

Donovan, a squat, wizened, red eye-lidded little man, with a short, bristling crop of sandy whiskers circling his jaws like an ill-trimmed hedge, hurriedly drew back the hand he had extended as he caught the tail end of Sammy Durgan's greeting.