Bud looked back into the room he was leaving. Glover stepped through
the railing gate and caught the boy by the shoulder. "What's the
matter, my lad?"
He shook and questioned, but from the dazed operator he could get only
one word, "O'Neill," and stepping to the hall door Glover called out
"O'Neill!"
It has been said that Glover's voice would carry in a mountain storm
from side to side of the Medicine Bend yard. That night the very last
rafter in the Wickiup gables rang with his cry. He called only once,
for O'Neill came bounding up the long stairs three steps at a time.
"Look to your train sheet, Garry," said Glover, peremptorily. "This
boy is scared to death. There's trouble somewhere."
He supported the operator to a chair, and O'Neill ran to the inner
room. The moment his eye covered the order book he saw what had
happened. "Extra 81 is against a passenger special," exclaimed
O'Neill, huskily, seizing the key. "There's the order--Extra 81 from
Cambridge to meet Number 50 at Sumter and Special 833 has orders to
Cambridge, and nothing against Extra 81. If I can't catch the freight
at Red Desert we're in for it--wake up Morris Blood, quick, he's in
there asleep."
Blood, working late in his office, had rolled himself in a blanket on
the lounge in Callahan's old room, and unfortunately Morris Blood was
the soundest sleeper on the division. Glover called him, shook him,
caught him by the arm, lifted him to a sitting position, talked
hurriedly to him--he knew what resource and power lay under the thick
curling hair if he could only rouse the tired man from his dreamless
sleep. Even Blood's own efforts to rouse himself were almost at once
apparent. His eyes opened, glared helplessly, sank back and closed in
stupor. Glover grew desperate, and lifting Morris to his feet, dragged
him half way across the dark room.
O'Neill, rattling the key, was looking on from the table like a
drowning man. "Leave your key and steady him here against the
door-jamb, Garry," cried Glover; "by the Eternal, I'll wake him." He
sprang to the big water-cooler, cast away the top, seized the tank like
a bucket, and dashed a full stream of ice-water into Morris Blood's
face.
"Great God, what's the matter? Who is this? Glover? What? Give me a
towel, somebody."
The spell was broken. Glover explained, O'Neill ran back to the key,
and Blood in another moment bent dripping over the nervous despatcher.
The superintendent's mind working faster now than the magic current
before him, listened, cast up, recollected, considered, decided for and
against every chance. At that moment Red Desert answered. No breath
interrupted the faint clicks that reported on Extra 81. O'Neill looked
up in agony as the sounder spelled the words: "Extra 81 went by at
3.05." The superintendent and the despatcher looked at the clock; it
read 3.09.