The west wire was good; east everything below Peace River was down. We had to get the eastern reports around by Omaha and the south—a good thousand miles of a loop—but bad news travels even around a Robin Hood loop.
And first came Wild Hat from the west with a stationary river and the Loup Creek falling—clear—good night. And Ed Peeto struck the table heavily and swore it was well in the west. Then from the east came Prairie Portage, all the way round, with a northwest rain, a rising river, and anchor ice running, pounding the piers bad—track in fair shape, and—and——
The wire went wrong. As Duffy knit his eyes and tugged and cussed a little, the wind outside took up the message and whirled a bucket of rain against the windows. But the wires wouldn't right, and stuff that no man could get tumbled in like a dictionary upside down. And Bucks and Callahan and Healey and Peeto smoked, silent, and heard the deepening drum of the rain on the roof.
Then Duffy wrestled mightily yet once more.
"Keep still," he exclaimed, leaning heavily on the key. "Here's something—from the Spider."
He snatched a pen and ran it across a clip; Bucks leaning over read aloud from his shoulder:
"Omaha.
"J. F. Bucks:
"Trainmen from No. 75 stalled west of Rapid City—track afloat in Simpson's Cut—report Spider bridge out—send——"
And the current broke.
Callahan's hand closed rigidly over the hot bowl of his pipe; Peeto sat speechless; Bucks read again at the broken message, but Healey sprang like a man wounded and snatched the clip from his hand.
He stared at the running words till they burned his eyes, and then, with an oath, frightful as the thunder that shook the mountains, he dashed the clip to the floor. His eyes snapped greenish, and he cursed Omaha, cursed its messages, and everything that came out of it. Slow at first, then fast and faster, until all the sting that poisoned his heart in his unjust discharge poured from his lips. It flooded the room like a spilling stream, and none put a word against it, for they knew he stood a wronged man. Out it came—all the rage, all the heart-burning, all the bitterness—and he dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands. Only the sounder clicking iron jargon and the thunder shaking the wickiup like a reed filled the ears of the men about him. They watched him slowly knot his fingers and loosen them, and saw his face rise dry and hard and old out of his hands.