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Ebook has 152 lines and 15832 words, and 4 pages

Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark. This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.

Over the Wire

Snow and ice on that mountain. Nothing but snow. The wind drove it with a howl against the windows, where it stuck on the warm panes. Sometimes I could just make out the blur of the semaphore lights and sometimes I couldn't. All day the blizzard had dumped its swirling load about us, and now, when night closed down, the storm took the tower in its teeth, shaking it like you've seen a dog shake a rat.

Oh, we were warm and cozy enough with our stove red hot. Which was more than Donaldson, the agent at Hastings, could say. His wire talk was rotten, chattery, and he told us he'd run out of coal. Looked like he'd freeze to death, according to him. But Big Ben prophesied grimly that Donaldson could take care of himself, so we might as well save our worries.

I don't suppose you ever heard of Big Ben, but that is your loss. Every soul on the Mountain Division knew him. His Morse snapped out like a track torpedo, fast, too, but accurate, staccato, with a smooth flow as if a machine had hold of the key. Dots and dashes were part of him, for, after years of it, he could express himself better that way.

Sort of feeling for the language, I suppose. I've seen the same gift since, but never to the extent Ben possessed it. Why, he could come mighty close to telling the color of your eyes over a telegraph-wire.

He and I had worked tower BB-17 on the Mountain Division for three years, and during that time I never saw him flurried. Once a freight, running extra, got by us--dispatcher tangled up his train-sheet. Forty minutes later a relay came into stop her or she'd meet 87 on the big grade.

It takes just forty minutes to run from our tower to Hastings, further down the line. Hastings is the last station with a siding before the grade. In other words, the freight ought to have been getting her O. K. from Hastings right then.

Was Ben excited? Not one little bit.

Donaldson caught his first call. Clear as a bell it was. And Donaldson had time to flag the freight.

But the particular night I'm speaking of, my side partner appeared a bit uneasy, which was enough to set my think-tank working. He'd drop down alongside the key for a moment; then he'd wander over to the windows, trying to pierce the blizzard.

He was a big man with a hearty laugh and a mouth full of teeth and a whiskered chin full of determination. His red hair, as brilliant as the glow in his corn-cob pipe, usually stood on end. But his eyes were gray and pleasant; that is, generally they were. Yet I've noticed 'em hard as rocks, drilling into you with a gleam in 'em like you see jumping across a spark-gap. Right now they were anxious.

Perhaps that wasn't so strange, either, for all day long, from the length of the division, had come bunches of trouble. A snowshed out here; a freight ditched there; hell to pay everywhere.

Wires were down, too. Not a word could we get below Hastings or north of the junction. Toward night every siding was overflowing with deadheaded rolling stock. You see, the big grade--it's four and a half per cent in places--handicaps us because even our best oil-burners won't haul much tonnage on it in a blizzard. They can't make steam.

And this particular frolic of the elements promised to beat anything that had struck us in twenty years. At 10 P.M. the chief dispatcher ordered the line cleared for the night, barring No. 77 southbound, which was to make her run as usual. I reckon you've heard of that train--the Cumberland Limited, all steel and solid Pullman? She was to follow a snow-plow, and headquarters gossip filtering to us hinted she might find the blizzard a bit of a teaser.

Suddenly Big Ben turned on me. "Jim," said he, "I don't like it. What's the old man thinking of to let 77 through? Have you heard what she's carrying to-night?"

I allowed I hadn't.

"Well, there's something like one hundred thousand in gold in her express-car. Government consignment. I got it straight. What a chance for a hold-up! Remember that cut below Hastings?" He shook his massive head dubiously. "It's been done before."

About that time our call came over the wire: "N-H, N-H, N-H."

As Ben jumped in, I put down my paper to listen. I find it's a good thing to pay pretty strict attention to anything on a night like that. It keeps you from seeing shadows that aren't there, and hearing sounds which your common sense tells you must be the wind.

Presently came the professional dot and dash of Donaldson down at Hastings. Now Donaldson, next to Big Ben, was a star operator, and the two of 'em could talk better and with more satisfaction over a stretch of singing wire than if they were sitting together in a parlor.

"Freezing cold down here, Ben. Lonely, too. Damn lonely. What do you get on 77?"

The big man at the table cut in: "Brace up; 77 on time. Nothing to bother her to-night except the storm. All freight deadheaded."

The crispness of dots and dashes suggested excitement. Ben acknowledged deliberately, but when he closed the wire I saw a narrowing of his eyes.

Donaldson was in a hurry. "Going to quit to-morrow," he began. "Can't stand this joint. Say, there's two of you up there. You're lucky. Old man will have to come across with an assistant or I quit. Do you know you're the nearest white man to me? Just me alone here. No night for a man to be alone. Hold on, I think I hear somebody in the waiting-room. Maybe I'll have company."

But he opened up again the next moment with: "Good Lord, must be going off my nut. Nobody in the waiting-room. It's the wind. I tell you this place is like the north pole. If I could only hear a fire crackling. Say, there it goes again. No, I'm way off; that's a fact. I'll have to look around. Do you notice anything funny in the wind? I seem to. Why the devil didn't they put shades on these windows? What's the matter with me anyhow?"

Ben went back at him, calm as a summer's day. "Hold on, old man; take some whisky. It's your nerves. Get a grip on yourself."

"All right," answered Donaldson, his wire-talk becoming calmer. "Yes, I'll take the whisky. Let me know about 77."

Somehow I couldn't get rid of the picture of Hastings station--a little frame building backed up against a cliff, with a siding cutting in behind it and the banked curve of the main line stretching away before it. A few farmers used the station, but a water-tank was its real excuse for existence.

I could see how the snow had half-buried it, and how Donaldson, veteran that he was, might hear strange sounds in the gale. I could see a great many things right then, but the sight wasn't pleasant.

Snow, snow and more snow, and icy rails and low, hurrying clouds you felt were brushing against the tower. "Listen!" I snapped.

Ben jumped to his feet. "This won't do. Here, you quit listening or you'll be as bad as Donaldson." Then he came over to me. "I guess it's just as well there're two of us," he said very quietly. "Try the junction for a report on 77."

I took the key with a sense of awe--only a couple of slim wires between us and the world, and a thousand chances for the storm to tear 'em down. But if we felt it, what about Donaldson? What about Donaldson, anyway?

The junction answered after a bit, though there was no life in the sending. "McFlin," nodded Ben. "I know his style. Ask him whether the orders for 77 stand."

I did.

"Sure," clicked McFlin; "77 on time. Pass her through. Rotten night, isn't it? They got a plow leading the limited like a blind baby. So-long."

That was at eleven two. Twenty minutes later Donaldson started after us again, but it was a chattering, wild Donaldson; a new Donaldson who tumbled his letters over each other.

"N-H, N-H, N-H," he stuttered, even after I had opened the wire. "N-H, N-H."

I sent him a string of Rs a mile long before he acknowledged. Then:

"What's the matter with you up there?" he clicked. "Gone to sleep? But you can't sleep now; you've got to talk to me or I'll be ready for the queer house. Something is walking up and down outside my window. I've seen it twice. It can't be a man, and animals don't prowl about in a storm like this. Listen to that wind. I tell you it's walking around the station. What am I saying? Do you believe in ghosts? It was in the waiting-room a while back, but it got out before I had a shot at it. What would you do if you were down here alone, snowed in like a damned Eskimo? What would you do if it started to walk--"

Big Ben strode across the room. "Give me the key," he thundered. His eyes were hard gray now, like rock, with little points of fire in them, and it seemed he would smash the instrument as he crashed down with Donaldson's call.

"Stop that!" went the dots and dashes, clear cut, fast, but Lordy, they had a punch behind 'em. "Pull yourself together. Take some more whisky. Wake up. Remember you're an operator. You've got to handle the Limited to-night. No more of that. You know damn well nothing is walking around down there except you. Rub some snow in your face. Wake up, I say. I'll talk to you as much as you like, but no more spook stuff."

"You're right," came the slower response. "I won't bother you any more. Nevertheless, it's walking around here. Maybe I'll get a shot at it. I'll let you know if I do."

That was all, and Ben and I looked across the table into each other's eyes. "Well?" I questioned.

He shook himself as if trying to get rid of something clinging. "Oh, Donaldson is getting old," he muttered. "It's lonely down there, and his fire's out. That's what I make of it.

"When the wind howls, and you're on a night shift in a God-forsaken spot like Hastings, you're mighty apt to hear and see a little more 'an you've any business to."

"Ever see a face half black and half white?" stuttered our instrument. "I had a shot at it. It's still walking."

Ben waited an instant then sent "J-J," Donaldson's call, steady for three minutes. But he might as well have opened the window and yelled out into the storm. The wire was either dead or Hastings wouldn't answer.

Presently McFlin at the junction got busy. "Just O. K.'d 77," he said. "Devilish night. The Limited looked like a hunk of the mountain on wheels. Bet the snow on the car-roofs gets scraped off on the top of the tunnels. Happy dreams."

But we weren't to indulge in any happy dreams for some time to come. Hardly had McFlin shut up when "N-H, N-H, N-H" called Ben back. "Lord," he groaned, "hear that style? It's Donaldson, but what's happened to him? I hate to listen to it."

Dull, lifeless, flat, came the dots and dashes from Hastings. "No use," clicked Donaldson. "This hide-and-seek is beyond me. Its face is half black and half white, and bullets don't worry it. I'm a gone duck. Never mind me. Anyhow, hell is warm and not as lonesome as this. I'm freezing, and that's no ghost story."

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