Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad LifeSpearman, Frank H. (Frank Hamilton)
General
Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad Life
Spearman, Frank H. (Frank Hamilton)
Fiction; Railroad stories; Short stories, American
The picks swung, the derricks creaked, and all day with the heaving and
the calling they toiled; but the sun was sinking before they got to the
middle of it. Then Benedict Morgan, crawling under the drivers of the
hind mogul, partly uncovered, edged out with a set face; he swore he
heard breathing. It was alcohol to the veins of the double gang.
Neighbor himself went in and heard--and stayed to fasten a grapple to
pull the engine truck off the roof of a box car that was jammed over and
against the mogul stack.
The big derrick groaned as the slack drew and the truck crashed through
a tier of stays and swung whirling into the clear. A giant wrecker
dodged the suspended wheels and raising his axe bit a hole into the
jammed roof. Through that they passed a second grapple, and presently it
gave sullenly, toppled back with a crash, and the foremost axman,
peering into the opening, saw the heart of the wreck. Bending forward,
he picked up something struggling in his arms. They thought it was a
man; but it was a sheep, alive and uninjured, under all the horror: that
was the breathing they heard. Benedict Morgan threw the man and his
burden aside and stepped himself into the gap and through. One started
to follow, but the chief of the wreckers waved him back. Close by where
the sheep had been freed stood Delaroo. He stood as if with ear alert,
so closely did the counterfeit seem the real. So sure was the impression
of life that not until Morgan, speaking to the fireman, put his hand on
his shoulder did he realize that the Indian stood quite dead just where
the shock had caught him in his cab.
Stumbling over the wreckage, they passed him in the silence of the
sunset from hand to hand into the open. A big fellow, pallid and scared,
tottered after them, and when they laid the dead man down, half fell at
his side: it was Maje Sampson.
It surprised everybody the way Maje Sampson went to pieces after Delaroo
was killed. The Indian was carried back to the Bend and up to Sampson's
and laid out in the God-forsaken parlor; but Maje wasn't any good fixing
things up that time. He usually shone on like occasions. He was the
comforter of the afflicted to an extraordinary degree; he gave the usual
mourner no chance to let up. But now his day was as one that is
darkened. When Neighbor went up next night to see about some minor
matters connected with the funeral and the precedence of the various
dozen orders that were to march, he found Maje Sampson and Martie alone
in the darkness of the parlor with the silent Delaroo.
Maje turned to the master mechanic from where Delaroo lay. "Neighbor,
you might as well know it now as any time. Don't you say so, Martie?
Martie, what do you say?" Martie burst into tears; but through them
Neighbor caught the engineer's broken confession. "Neighbor--I'm color
blind." The master mechanic sat stunned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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