O'Neill seized the key and tried to sound the Rucker call. Again and again he attempted it and sent wild. The man that could hold a hundred trains in his head without a slip for eight hours at a stretch sat distracted. "Let me help you, Garry," suggested Blood, in an undertone. The despatcher turned shaking from his chair and his superintendent slipped behind him into it. His crippled right hand glided instantly over the key, and the Rucker call, even, sharp, and compelling, followed by the quick, clear nineteen--the call that gags and binds the whole division--the despatchers' call--clicked from his fingers. Persistently, and with unfailing patience, the men hovering at his back, Blood drummed at the key for the slender chance that remained of stopping the passenger train. The trial became one of endurance. Like an incantation, the call rang through the silence of the room until it wracked the listeners, but the man at the key, quietly wiping his face and head, and with the towel in his left hand mopping out his collar, never faltered, never broke, minute after minute, until after a score of fruitless waits an answer broke his sending with the "I, I, Ru!" As the reply flew from his fingers Morris Blood's eyes darted to the clock; it was 3.17. "Stop Special 833, east, quick." "You've got them?" asked Glover, from the counter. "If they're not by," muttered Blood. "Red light out," reported Rucker; then three dreadful minutes and it came, "Special 833 taking water; O'Brien wants orders." And the order went, "Siding, quick, and meet Extra 81, west, at Rucker," and the superintendent rose from the chair. "It's all over, boys," said he, turning to the operators. "Remember, no man ever got to a railroad presidency by talking; but many men have by keeping their mouths shut. Lay Cawkins on the lounge in my room. Duffy said that boy would never do." "What was Burling doing, Morris," asked Glover, sitting down by the stove. "Ask him, Garry," suggested Blood. They waited for the answer. "Were you asleep on your cot?" asked the despatcher, getting Rucker again. "If that fellow woke on my call, I'll make a despatcher of him," declared Morris Blood, with a thrill of fine pride. "No," answered Rucker, "I slept upstairs tonight." The two men at the stove stared at one another. "How did you hear your call?" asked the despatcher. Again their ears were on edge. And Rucker answered, "I always come down once in the night to put coal on the fire." "Another illusion destroyed," smiled Morris Blood. "Hang him, I'll promote him, anyway, for attending to his fire." "But you couldn't do that again in a thousand years, Mr. Blood," ventured a young and enthusiastic operator who had helped to lay out poor Bud Cawkins. The mountain man looked at him coldly. "I sha'n't want to do that again in a thousand years. In the railroad life it always comes different, every time. Go to your key."