American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, American -- Periodicals
"Will ye shut up?" This was something Martin did not want to hear. Out
of the house he plumped, to the waiting double-header of locomotives
attached to the rotary, and the other engines, parked on the switches,
with their wedge ploughs, jull-ploughs, flangers, and tunnel wideners.
The "high-ball" sounded. At daybreak, boring his way through the
snow-clogged transfer at Missouri City, Martin came out upon the main
line of the O.R. & T.--and to his duty of revenge.
On they went, a slow, deliberate journey, steam hissing, black smoke
curling, whistles tooting, wheels crunching, as the rotary bucked the
bigger drifts and the smaller ploughs eliminated the slighter raises,
a triumphant procession toward that thing which Martin knew he could
attack with all the seeming ferocity of desperation and yet fail--the
fifty-foot thickness of Bander Cut.
Face to face, in the gaunt sun of early morning he saw it--a little
shack, half covered with snow, bleak and forbidding in its loneliness,
yet all in all to the man who stared at it with eyes suddenly
wistful--his little old section house, where once the honour flag had
flown.
He gulped. Suddenly his hand tugged at the bell cord. Voices had come
from without, they were calling his name! He sought the door, then
gulped again. The steps and platform of his car were filled with
eager, homely-faced men, men he had known in other days, his old crew
of section "snipes."
All about him they crowded; Martin heard his voice answering their
queries, as though someone were talking far away. His eyes had turned
back to that section house, seeking instinctively the old flag, his
flag. It spoke for a man who gave the best that was in him, who
surpassed because he worked with his heart and with his soul in the
every task before him. But the flag was not there. The pace had not
been maintained. Then the louder tones of a straw boss called him
back:
"You'll sure need that big screw and all the rest of them babies,
Garrity. That ole Bander Cut's full to the sky--and Sni-a-bend Hill!
Good-night! But you'll make 'er. You've got to, Garrity; we've made up
a purse an' bet it down in Montgomery that you'll make 'er!"
Martin went within and the crew waited for a high-ball order that did
not come. In his private car, alone, Martin Garrity was pacing the
floor. The call of the old division, which he had loved and built, was
upon him, swaying him with all the force of memory.
"I guess we could sell the flivver----" he was repeating. "Then I've
got me diamond ... and Jewel ... she's got a bit, besides what we've
saved bechune us. And he'll win the test, anyhow ... they'll never
beat him over this division ... if I give him back what I've earned
... and if he wins anyhow------"
Up ahead they still waited. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. At last a figure
appeared in the cab of the big rotary, looking for a last time at that
bleak little section house and the bare flagpole. Then:
"Start 'er up and give 'er hell!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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