Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad LifeSpearman, Frank H. (Frank Hamilton)
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Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad Life
Spearman, Frank H. (Frank Hamilton)
Fiction; Railroad stories; Short stories, American
There were no rules to consult then. No way on earth of getting into the
office in time to do anything; to drag himself to the lunch room, twice
further than the station, was out of the question. But there was a way
to reach his key in spite of all bad things, and Bullhead knew the way.
He struggled fast around to the window. Raising himself with a frightful
twinge on one knee, he beat at the glass with his fist. Clutching the
sash, he drew himself up with a hand, and with the other tore away the
muntin, stuck his head and shoulders through the opening, got his hand
on the key, and called the first station east, Blaisdell, with the 19.
Life and death that call meant; the 19, the despatcher's call--hanging
over the key, stammering the 19 over the wire, and baptizing the call in
his own blood--that is the way Bullhead learned to be a railroad man.
For Blaisdell got him and his warning, and had Number One on the siding
just as the freight tore around the west curve, headed for Sackley.
While it was all going on, Bullhead lay on the wind-swept platform at
Goose River with a hole in his head that would have killed anybody on
the West End, or, for that matter on earth except James Gillespie Blaine
Lyons.
After Number Thirty had passed so impudently, Number One felt her way
rather cautiously to Goose River, because the despatchers couldn't get
the blamed station. They decided, of course, that Bullhead was asleep,
and fixed everything at the Wickiup to send a new man up there on Three
in the morning and fire him for good.
But about one o'clock Number One rolled, bad-tempered, into Goose River
Junction, and Bat Mullen, stopping his train, strode angrily to the
station. It was dark as a pocket inside. Bat smashed in the door with
his heel, and the trainmen swarmed in and began looking with their
lanterns for the nightman. The stove was red-hot, but he was not asleep
in the arm-chair, nor napping under the counter on the supplies. They
turned to his table and discovered the broken window, and thought of a
hold-up. They saw where the nightman had spilled something that looked
like ink over the table, over the order book, over the clip, and there
was a hand print that looked inky on an open letter addressed to the
superintendent--and a little pool of something like ink under the key.
Somebody said suicide; but Bat Mullen suddenly stuck his lamp out of the
broken window, put his head through after it, and cried out. Setting his
lantern down on the platform, he crawled through the broken sash and
picked up Bullhead.
Next morning it was all over the West End.
"And Bullhead!" cried everybody. "That's what gets me. Who'd have
thought it of _Bullhead_!"
When they all got up there and saw what Bullhead had done, everybody
agreed that nobody but Bullhead could have done it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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