An "Eddie Sand" short story by Harry Bedwell, Part 2

"Eddie slid out of his coat, put on his eyeshade, and settled in the old
swivel chair before the dispatcher's table. The crisp chatter of the racing
sounders always stepped up your pulse. They babbled now of all the
struggling traffic out there on the iron highway in the swirling snow, kept it
flowing through the stubborn resistance of the storm. Schedules moved out
into the turmoil.
The long, dusky room faded away and he was absorbed in the inked
characters on the train sheet that kept the flickering picture of the east end
under his hand. The blasting trains out there along the way in the driven
snow moved in black lines of figures on the sheet. Snug and warm under the
cone of light, he directed them through the harsh elements, ranging his
district like a flitting ghost.
The wrecker pulled out of the west end of the yard, and shortly
thereafter the work train followed. Blair operator flipped the dispatcher's
call, and Eddie answered.
"31 - No. 69 to C&E ex 3838 E Sig Wilmar," the operator droned the
signature to a "31" order.
The boomer's eye raked the sheet as he sent a crisp, "Comp 3.32
P.M.," which put the order into effect. And then he asked, "Did Conductor
Wilmar ride his engine over?"
"Yes," Blair snapped back.
"Tell him," Eddie sent, "that I hope Santa Claus fills his socks with
everything he's asked for."
Wilmar was a good head. The skipper of a long drag, he'd had a
hunch that the dispatcher would have to change a meet here, and he'd ridden
his engine over from Norman so as to be able to drop off at the station at
Blair and save time picking up the order. There were a lot of good old heads
on the PC. It'd be a shame to bust up that kind of organization.

Wind shook the old station in sullen shudders. The storm was eating
into the schedules. Thirty-four had to double Smoky Hill in the face of first
Nineteen, stabbing the passenger train twelve minutes. Even as Eddie Sand
rearranged those threading lines of traffic, the image ran through his mind of
Thirty-four's brakeman out there in the lonely white gale, flagging.
The west-end trick man facing him on the other side of the glass
partition couldn't do much till the wreck was cleared. Just get the big hook
and the work train there as fast as they'd turn the wheels, then mostly sit and
wait till the jam broke and started the rush.
Eddie called the operators on his end in rapid succession all along the
line for another weather report. The storm was stepping up its power over
Smoky Hill. Farther east it seemed to fade. He crossed to the night chief's
table with the report. Walker studied it.
"Them brass hats always pick the worst time to clutter up the paying
schedules with their specials," he grumbled.
Walker was short and wire-strung, a little stooped from endless hours
over train sheets. He was waspish and cranky but he knew his job and could
keep his feet on the ground.
The skipper of Thirty-seven reported from Quincy, where he'd been
switching, that an empty gon had ridden a choked switch and got a pair of
trucks on the ground. It'd likely take forty minutes to get it back on the iron
again with a rerailer. There was a lull.
Funny how you kept running into men and officials you'd worked
with before, Eddie reflected. Maybe, at that, it wasn't so strange,
considering how much territory you covered and recovered on the boomer
trail. You couldn't miss bumping into former associates once in a while.
They were spread all over the country.
Now, here was Mr. Nickerson slamming across the Prairie Central
increasing the melancholy prospects by his sudden flight from Chicago,
causing considerable nervous shock.
There'd been that time out there on the ASL when three New York
bankers, inspecting the property with a view of further financial investment
in the line, had been snowbound on the jaw bone of the continent. That had
nearly ruined Mr. Nickerson's chances for a badly needed loan. Entirely cut
off from the world those tycoons had become irked and irksome. Eddie, in
charge of the situation, had tried to modify their discontent and keep them
reasonably reassured while Mr. Nickerson put the resources of his railroad to
work rescuing them. Eddie had evidently made a job of it, for Mr.
Nickerson had written him to that effect.
A blade plow that had been working Smoky Hill reported from Virgil
that the cuts were drifting badly in the high wind, that he'd had to back up
twice and take a header into them to break through and clear the way for
Seventy-two. They were getting a little more than he could manage.
Seventy-two had kept right behind him else she'd likely have stalled in
there.
Eddie asked the conductor whether or not he could get through if he,
Eddie, turned him around and sent him right back.
The skipper was dubious. Those drifts in the cuts had given him a
scare. The wind was getting ugly. Eddie urged him, and the skipper said
he'd try. But you had a hunch he wouldn't be aggressive about it. He
whipped his running orders together while the blade turned on the wye. The
he called across to Walker.
"We'd better send the rotary out now," he suggested, "instead of
waiting to tie her onto the head end of the 4-Spot. Those Smoky Hill cuts
are getting too much for the blade, and anyhow they ought to be flanged
out."
Walker puckered his brow. "Mr. Donby said to put her on the 4-
Spot," he objected.
"Okay," Eddie said.
"Hey wait!" the night chief protested. He had remembered Carter's
warning that Eddie propositioned only once. He shuffled irritably over to
the trick dispatcher's table and stared down at the sheet. "Aw, hell!" he
grumbled. "Do it any way you think."
He went back to his table and snatched the telephone irritably. An
assistant division engineer came in on the night chief's call. He checked the
situation over with them and gave his sanction to sending the rotary up at
once.
"Also," the assistant engineer added, "I've instructed all section
foreman to stay close to their nearest telegraph stations with their crews till
they're called or released. If you need any of them before I do, help
yourself."

It was like stringing beads to slip the rotary into the opposing streams
of traffic, fitting her into the eastbound flow, protecting her against the
counter current.
Here in the warm room with his long fingers on the quick pulse of the
east end, Eddie could feel the tension grow out there on the winding ribbon
of steel under the blanket of the rising storm. Everybody had been working
long hours at top speed during the holiday rush; and now they were all
tightened up to battle the elements that were trying to swamp them.
The rotary came up out of the yard and paused beside the station to
get her orders from the telegraph office below. She looked dogged and
sullen, the long, sleek body and the blunt nose of the hood showing its teeth
in a nine-foot cutting wheel, the big Mallet behind and a coach and caboose
trailing out into a diminishing tail. She pushed ruthlessly into the storm,
tossing plumes of snow which the wheel picked up from the light drifts
across the rails.
Thirty-seven had the derailed gon back on the iron and was ready to
move again. Eddie gave her time on Eighteen to get to Milan. The sounder
lapsed into silence.
His mind slipped back an instant along the careless road he'd come to
Christmas times in far places . . . down along the Missouri River and the
little towns crouched under the bluffs, with the swift traffic storming out of
the sharp starry night to Kansas City and St. Joe and Omaha . . . The rolling
Pennsylvania countryside that looked like a big, frosted cake, where the
trains threaded thickly on the double track.
You felt kind of edified this time of year if there wasn't a dark
outlook
ahead. When you stayed in one place too long things accumulated,
including your troubles.
The 4-Spot, the Limited, clanged in from the west. They'd take her
off and divert all connecting traffic to the Big Six if old Salt-and-Molasses
hadn't made a dicker for the PC. There was a brisk bustle of changing crews
and engines. Passengers flitted across the wind-swept platform. She rolled
on, the line of dim lights fading into a curtain of whirling snow, vague faces
showing from the blurred Pullman windows.
Hi Wheeler reported from Hugo that the wye there was drifted so he
couldn't turn his engine.
"What I mean, Eddie," he said through the lightning slinger, "is that
there's a drift as high as the stack, and that wye iron ain't heavy at all.
Should I go for to ramming around with this old Malley, the track's likely to
come apart."
Eddie told the trainman that he'd have the rotary plow it out for him.
Later, Bruce, in the Smoky Hill, snapped his call and reported that the blade
plow couldn't make it any farther through the cuts.
"One of them drifts just west of here stopped him dead," the brass
pounder rattled. "So he backed right out before he got stuck, and he came
back. He says they're too big for the blade to handle."
That skipper was a little too cautious. Conductor Blake was a dark,
sarcastic bender with a wandering eye. He'd been in trouble over on the
Katy before he came here. He figured the PC was on the rocks, and to hell
with 'um. He'd back out of a tough spot. Yet you couldn't go out on a limb
and order him into the drifts. He'd get his train stalled then just to be
contrary.
"Tell him to get in the clear there and wait," Eddie ordered.

The special was keeping close to her schedule. The storm out there on
the east end hadn't yet slowed her to speak of, and he'd kept her clear of
traffic. The Smoky Hill cuts would be the tight place to get her through.
Donby had arrived at the wreck. He was pestering Walker and the
west-end dispatcher with a ceaseless stream of queries and instructions. He
seemed to be rapidly coming apart. Walker wasn't offering him much
information.
The storm kept moving in. The operator at Cutter broke in on Eddie
to report that Eighteen was stuck in a drift two miles east of his station. The
brakeman had walked back to town to pass the word. He said that a ridge
angling off from the right-of-way had caught the shifting wind just right to
funnel the snow into a deep ridge across the main line.
Eighteen's hogger, anticipating a wind-cleared track here, had been
going at a high rate of speed and had been unable to distinguish the drift
through the storm. He'd driven into it and had been stalled before he was
fully aware of what was happening to him. Now he couldn't move either
way. He was trapped.
Every second the snow was piling in on the stalled trainload of
holiday passengers, increasing its stubborn grip. You had to move fast to
extricate her before she was hopelessly buried, blocking the line. The
brakeman said the track up to the rear end of the train was comparatively
clear for the moment.
He snapped Hugo's call and asked, "Is Hi Wheeler there in the
office?"
"And how," the brass pounder droned. "He's all wound up about a
blond named . . ."
"Tell him," Eddie interrupted, "to bust down to Cutter with his engine.
Eighteen is stuck in the snow a mile east of the station. It's up to him to
pull
her out. Tell him to move fast. Here's his order."
He got Cutter and Milan and sent it in a quick patter of Morse.
Later, Hugo reported Hi out, and added" "That guy is sure harassed
about his date with a gal named Sally, and he's got a suspicion in his mind
that you're juggling him around so's he'll miss out on the party. In fact, he
seems pretty sure of it."
Walker looked up from his sounder that had been babbling Donby's
worst fears, and called to Eddie.
"The super wants to know shouldn't we have waited and let the rotary
dig Eighteen out? He says the helper engine will likely get stuck in there
too, and that would sure tie things up."
"Tell him," the boomer answered, "that it's a freak drift and that
Eighteen's hind end isn't in it, but the whole train will be covered if we
leave her there long. The rotary wouldn't do her any good from this end."
He took another quick glance at the sheet. "And tell him we'd better hold
the rotary at Virgil till the special gets close up to her."
Walker sent and listened and shook his head.
"He says, Hell no!" Walker repeated. "The rotary's got her work cut
out for her plowing out the west end ahead of the special, and he wants her
turned around at Virgil and sent right back on the run."
"Okay," Eddie agreed, "if that's the way he wants it."
Walker looked at him dubiously, "That won't be so good."

Eddie thought of Hi Wheeler, and grinned. That long, limber goon
was a railroader. He'd not get himself trapped. Hi clowned a lot, but not at
his work. There he was quick and his judgment was seasoned. He'd always
handle any difficulty with a kind of bold caution.
The boomer's mind swung back to another Christmas they'd spent
down in Texas, in a construction camp. The boss wouldn't let his men have
an engine and coach to take them to town on that Christmas Eve after weeks
in grimy outfit cars. That boss had been a regular old Simon Legree. Eddie,
who'd been doing the telegraphing for the work trains, and Hi, who'd been
braking on them, had stolen an old maintenance of way coach, loaded it with
gandy dancers, and let it roll down the grade to a town they could celebrate
in. Next morning they'd notified the boss that if he wanted his crew back
he'd have to send an engine for them. Eddie chuckled at the recollection.
Then the storm played another trick. Both the wye at Hugo and the
long passing track were under the windy side of the graded main line, and
snow had drifted high over both. The rotary, on orders, paused here and
cleared both tracks and then pushed on, leaving howls of grief and distress.
For in plowing out the passing track the rotary had covered up Forty-eight, a
mixed freight waiting on the team track to follow the 4-Spot out.
"Mister," the brass pounder at Hugo lamented, "Forty-eight is sure
bogged down. The mechanic on the hood of the rotary musta' been asleep
or else he couldn't see the freight train over on the other side of the main
line, 'cause he turned the spout that way to throw the snow with the wind
and he covered her up complete from end to end. And I mean covered.
She'll have to be dug out, or else left there in refrigeration till springtime."
"Okay," Eddie sent imperturbably. "We'll dig her out."
The section crews, he found, were still on tap at Cutter and Milan and
Quincy, awaiting call. He instructed them to be ready with their tools.
Hugo reported the 4-Spot by. Cutter said there seemed to be
something moving out there in the snow to the east, and then that it was Hi's
Mallet dragging Eighteen into town by the tail, with possibly some help
from the passenger train's own engine. Hi snaked her into a siding and
reported.
"We blamed near blew the stack off this old Malley," he declared
through the operator. "But we brung her in. Now what do I do? Wait for
Thirty-three and help her in from here?"
Eddie told him at length.
"Eighteen'll wait there and follow the rotary and the 4-Spot out. You
follow the Eighteen to Quincy and pick up the section crew there. Then
return to Hugo, picking up the section gangs at Milan and Cutter. The rotary
covered Forty-eight at Hugo and the section men'll have to dig her out. I'll
fix you up with running orders."
"He says'" the brass pounder shot back, "how come you're makin
a messenger boy outa him and his Malley? You ain't got it in your mind to
hold him out here and step his gal Sally out to the party yourse'f, has you?"
he says.
"Tell him," Eddie reminded him glibly, "that he asked for work when
he came here," and sent the order.
The traffic was bunching up ahead of the special. There'd be too
much of it around Smoky Hill by the time she arrived there. And you
couldn't estimate with much certainty what time any of those trains would
make. It was not easy to outguess that storm.
In the next lull his mind swung back again along the way he'd come.
Suddenly he thought of Wallace Sterling, his all time pal and mentor. Last
year they'd spent Christmas on telegraph jobs down in Memphis. And that
night Walley had engaged a Negro quartet and they'd gone out serenading.
He'd hired a guitar player, too, and before the night was over Walley was
strumming the thing like a troubadour.

Eddie let Second Nineteen out of Latimer. Donby was still bearing
down on Walker and the cranky night chief was getting his back up.
He wondered where Walley was tonight. The last he'd heard of him,
in midsummer, he'd crossed over into Canada and was holding down a night
OS job up toward Prince Rupert on the Canadian National, and was
practicing up on that old guitar he'd bought from the colored boy. The big
lunk was likely now down on the Seaboard Air Line in the Sunny South
lazing it on white beaches and charming the girls with his music. Christmas
sure brought up memories of the darnedest things.
The wind howled and harried the snow in flapping sheets. Night had
shut down. Two of the operators signed off and went home. The west-end
dispatcher sat and sweated. Walker talked with the yard office. The
procession of trains moved east out of Cutter. You could feel the sharp edge
of the cold moving in across the countryside.
Clark reported the special by. Behind him, Norman OS'd the 5-Spot
twenty minutes late.
Quincy reported the rotary, the 4-Spot and Eighteen by, and Hi's light
engine in and turned and headed back with the section crew. Eddie followed
him back through Milan and Cutter to Hugo. He sent the blade plow down
to Quincy. He'd bring him back through the cuts to clear them just ahead of
the special.
Hi reported from Hugo: "You got anything more you want a boy on a
fast horse to do?" he inquired. "I just unbent them section crews from
around the boilerhead and put 'em to work minin' out Forty-eight. This
night is gettin' mighty cold."
The boomer checked the sheet as his mind dug into the impending
developments. Those Smoky Hill cuts would be pretty well filled again by
the time he'd send the blade up through them to meet the special. He hadn't
much confidence in Conductor Blake in charge of the plow. Blake would
stay out of trouble but he wouldn't accomplish much. Hi Wheeler was the
man to handle any tough situation that might hit them in the cuts.
Eddie sent: "Tell Hi to turn around and go back to Quincy and to
report to me there the minute he hits the telegraph office."
The brass pounder came back with a fair imitation of Hi's laments.
"Wheeler wants to know what the heck for?" he rattled. "He says the
way things are going he'll miss out helping Thirty-three in, and it looks to
him like just plain sharpshootin' on your part. Seems like it's got something
to do with a blonde but he's kind of scrambled in his speech."
"Tell him," Eddie sent back, "that Sally'll probably wait for him, if
she don't find another good partner. Anyhow, if he doesn't get back by the
time I'm off duty I'll go in his place to protect his interests."
"That's what he's afraid of," the operator pounded back. "He says
he'd as leave have a big gray timber wolf protecting his interests as you. It
seems to me he's tryin' to warn you to stay away from his girl. As I get it,
he don't trust you."
"Just tell him to proceed with speed and caution," Eddie sent blithely.
"I'll keep everything under control here."
Later, when the brass pounder reported Hi out, he added a note: "He
ain't a bit happy about the whole thing, and he's sure makin' some dire
threats ag'in' you."

That Christmas Eve in Yuma, down there on the Colorado River in
the grim desert. It hadn't seemed like holiday time with a platinum sun
glittering in a sliver sky. That was where Bill Knapke claimed he'd seen the
thermometer top out to 140-degrees above in his caboose. Or was it 150?
Anyhow, Bill had told that one defiantly, as if he dared you to dispute it.
And you wouldn't challenge his statement, not after you'd spent summer
days in that heat.
The hogger who was pulling Bill that night had been in a hurry to get
home to the festivities and coming in to town he'd started to take off his
overalls so he could light right out as soon as he hit the yard. His fireman
was even going to take the engine over to the roundhouse. The eagle-eye
was down on the deck with his pants draped about his feet, ready to kick
them off, just drifting into town, when the fireman yelled at him. The
hobbled hogger leaned over his seat and thrust his head out the window.
What the fireman had seen was a burro standing between the rails,
stubbornly refusing to move out of the way of the locomotive. They hit him
at the moment the hogger stuck his head out. He was fettered by his hanging
overalls and couldn't duck fast enough, and most of that desert jack came
into the cab from the right hand side. That eagle-eye was a mess going
home to celebrate . . . Yeah, Christmas reminded you of the darnedest
things.
The rotary was hurrying back through the cuts to answer Donby's call
to the west end. First Nineteen followed immediately behind her, and then
they both showed up through Quincy in good time. Thirty-three came down
the cuts next but she was a long time reaching Bruce, where the skipper
dropped a butterfly to report the snow piling up again. It might be worse
between Bruce and Quincy. It was going to be a tight one to get that special
through.
Hi made it to Quincy for First Nineteen and immediately queried
Eddie: "Do I turn the Malley and tie onto Thirty-three when she shows
here?"
"You get in the clear as you are," Eddie instructed him. "And don't
move till I tell you."
"Outa a couple dozen trainmen," Hi wailed, "and on this very night
you got to pick on me."
Time lagged then while they waited for Thirty-three to fight her way
out of the cuts. The hands of the big clock slid slowly in their inevitable
arc.
It was one of those times when a dispatcher sits helpless and sweats and
spraddles his fingers over the train sheet like dividers, seeking a hole he
might have overlooked.
But that never got you any place. The boomer leaned back and let his
mind drift. It did you no good to get overstrained and in an uproar when Mr.
Nickerson was out on the line. Fact was, Salt-and-Molasses didn't like to
see you flustered. Just figure them close and safe. The old man new
operations from all the angles. He knew what was sound. And he was hard
to fool. He expected a lot of you but he didn't want you to try the
impossible. A shrewd old brass collar!
Donby had Walker on the wire again, and it sounded from his tone as
if he were really coming untied.
"The super wants to know why you didn't hold Thirty-three at Bruce
instead of sending him on through the cuts ahead of the special," the night
chief bawled as he held his and at rest on the key.
"Yeah," Eddie nodded, "I guess he does."
"I gotta tell him something," Walker shouted. "What'll it be?"
"Ask him one right back," the boomer snickered. "Ask him is it better
to get Thirty-three stuck in there, or the special?"
Walker grunted and worked his key.

Since that September day in 1851 when Superintendent Minot of the
Erie issued the first telegraphic train order, many dispatchers had wished
they could hold back time by stopping the clock. But it couldn't be done.
Those inexorable black hands measured off the brisk seconds that you had to
work with and you couldn't delay them or store them up. Eddie waited till
the last one he could afford had fled into history and then put out and order
at Virgil holding the special there till the line cleared up ahead of her.
Walker listened to that order and turned slightly pale.
"This is sure getting tighter every minute," he complained. "Donby's
all frayed at the edges as it is. Now he'll come all unraveled."
The night chief's own cranky disposition wasn't improving. You
could feel him wind up tight with each tick of the clock as they waited for
Thirty-three to show.
And the clock kept walking away with the minutes while the hotshot
remained an item out there in the white hell somewhere between Bruce and
Quincy fighting the smothering drifts. You had to lean back and keep your
mind suspended waiting for the next move to come out of the storm.
Virgil reported the special in and standing by. That was going to be a
terrible shock to Donby. It would leave him a broken man. And Mr.
Nickerson would certainly dig into the delay if he were at all interested in
the PC. There'd sure be a lot of chills and fever on the Oberlin Division
caused by this check in his schedule. Eddie could hear the half-frozen
operator at the wreck trying to impart Donby's shredded feelings to Walker
as he ranted about it.
"He wants to know," Walker snarled, "why you didn't send the
special on down to Bruce while you waited for Thirty-three to show up at
Quincy."
Eddie said patiently that he'd send the special any place Donby told
him to. "But," he added, "we'd likely stick Mr. Nickerson in the cuts if we
sent him in there now, which wouldn't be good at all." He grinned at the
night chief's contorted expression. "The hotshot'll get something through, if
it's only a brakeman," he argued. "Bill Spunk is the skipper, and he usually
knows the score."
He listened to Walker's modified explanation. Then the congealed
brass pounder in the boxcar under a dim lantern put in a rejoinder while he
paused to collect more of Donby's protests.
"I'm glad Christmas comes only once a year," he chattered.
The west-end dispatcher brooded over his sheet. The big hook had
cleared away the wreckage and the extra gang and what section crews they'd
gathered were working at top speed in the blinding snow laying new track in
the gap that had been torn out of the main line. They were nearly set to
begin operations again.
"Donby's taking a light engine and coming in," Walker reported
bitterly. "Everything sure happens to us."
The rotary clanged in under the sheds from the east. A flickering blue
flare of the arc lights danced on the grinning teeth of the cutting wheel
through the whirling snow. The west-end dispatcher looked at Walker as the
skipper of the rotary asked for orders from the ticket office below.
The night chief turned on Eddie. "Look," he pleaded, "you've made
all the guesses that've been made so far tonight, so suppose you keep on.
Do you want to turn the rotary back and dig out Thirty-three and clear the
cuts for the special, or just let her ramble on down the west end as Donby
says to do? Donby is out of reach now, so we can use our own ideas. He'll
be sore whatever we do."

Eddie's eyes slid back to the clock. Maybe you'd call it a hunch.
More likely it was a decision that'd been forming in the back of his brain
from the facts he'd been storing up there: a feeling for the situation and the
men involved. A picture of what was happening in the wind-whipped snow
of Smoky Hill flitted through his mind. Bill Spunk, who skippered Thirty-
three that night, was a hard-bitten veteran of the iron pike. He'd experienced
all the mischances you met in keeping the traffic rolling, and he knew how
to handle any assignment with skill and energy. His answer to every
dilemma was, "Let's go!"
You could add that to the fact that Hi Wheeler was set there at Quincy
with his Mallet; and Hi would turn in a good job and not fool around about
it.
"Better send the rotary on west," he recommended. "It'll make
Donby happier."
"Okay," Walker grumbled. "But you can't make him happy that
easy." He nodded to the west-end trick man.
The rotary snarled back at the snarling storm as he pushed on into the
west. Meanwhile, in the dispatchers' office, the sounder went to sleep in the
resonator and the wind whooped under the eaves. You could stare at it, try
to make the little brass tongue break into a flutter of signals that announced
the arrival of the hotshot at Quincy. But that didn't get you anything except
strung nerves.
Virgil's operator wasn't saying anything about the special he had tied
up there. Eddie wondered what Mr. Nickerson was doing while he was
being delayed at that bleak little station. He was likely congratulating
himself that he hadn't taken over the PC. Otherwise he would be prowling
about, trying to find out what made the Oberlin Division tick at all. He
might look like a professor of ancient languages from a fresh-water college,
but he was hard to fool.
The night chief looked up again as his sounder chattered. His face
contorted.
"Donby's stopped his light engine at Charles," he called as he
listened, "and now he's raving because we didn't send the rotary back from
here."
"Yeah," Eddie nodded, "I expected it."
"You ain't a lot of help furnishing alibis," Walker complained.
He worked his key and listened. Then he got up and shuffled across
to the dispatcher's table and peered down at the sheet.
"Eddie," he moaned, "that man's going to blast us all right out of this
office the minute he arrives. He's sure in a top notch temper." The night
chief screwed up his brow. "And Thirty-three ain't showed at Quincy yet.
Looks to me like you run out of the right guesses about an hour ago."
The wind raised a derisive howl. Hard snow scratched at the
windows.
"Bill Spunk'll be showing any time now," the boomer commented.
Walker turned back to his table morosely. The he stopped and
stiffened as the dispatcher's sounder came unlatched and spat at them
viciously.
"DS Q 33 CMG," it snapped. Quincy was reporting the hotshot
coming into his yard.
"And sir," the operator continued, "she's plenty hard to distinguish
from the landscape. She looks like a phantom train. Even her bell is choked
up."
Walker swore with satisfaction down the back of Eddie's neck.
Eddie Sand flipped the key open and pounced: "Tell Hi Wheeler to
couple his engine in behind the blade plow's locomotive. Tell Hi that he is
in charge of that train in place of Blake till he's cleared the cuts. Tell
Blake
that, too. I'm sending the blade to Virgil where he'll turn around and come
back ahead of the special. Nineteen copy three."
Eddie snapped the running orders at the brass pounder in a brief ripple
of crisp Morse. The operator shot the repeat and caught Eddie's complete.
Then he came back: "Blake says he won't turn his train over to Wheeler."
"I knowd he'd do that," said Walker.
Eddie snapped back: "Tell Wheeler to move fast."
"He's movin'," the lightning slinger returned.
"Tell Blake he's out of luck," Eddie went on. "He can stay there at
your station till his train gets back and then I'll turn it over to him again."
"Blake says you've got no authority to pull him off his train. He acts
like he might make a scrap of it."
"He ought to have done his fighting with the drifts," Eddie replied
crisply. "Just remind him that I've got authority to sign the division
superintendent's name to any orders I see fit; and if he wants to make
something of it he'll have his chance to go higher in the morning."

The operator made some I's and sent: "I guess that's got him stopped.
He's gone into a corner and seems like he's thinking it over . . . but I don't
know what with . . . Wheeler's ready to move."
"Let him out," Eddie rapped.
Bill Spunk reported then. He'd had a time with those drifts. It'd
taken him forty minutes on a half mile of upgrade. Now, what about his
helper engine?
"He'll have to do the best he can without her," Eddie told him, "till I
can get Wheeler back from clearing the cuts. Tell Spunk to go as far as his
engine will take him, then clear and wait for the helper."
"He says okay," Virgil rattled.
Walker strode to the end of the dusky room and back.
"You can't take a skipper's train away from him out on the line
without a blamed good reason," he blew off. "Seems to me you're just
lookin' around to see how much grief you can have on hand when Donby
gets in."
Quincy came back to report the blade plow out with two engines.
"That boy Wheeler," the brass pounder added a foot note, "certainly
moves when he's in a hurry. He said to tell you he'd remember to put
cyanide in your coffee at the very first opportunity. That had something to
do with a blonde."
Eddie grinned and crossed to the telephone. He called a number and
talked amiably. He was still smiling when he sat back in the old swivel
chair.
Walker came with another worry. "It's a wonder we ain't heard any
complaints from Mr. Nickerson," he fretted. "Think we'd better call Virgil
and see what's happening?"
"I don't think so," Eddie decided. "Better not stir up any more trouble
than we've got."
"It ain't natural for a big brass hat to say nothing when his special
varnish is hung up on him," Walker persisted. "Do you suppose he's in bed
and sleepin' through it all?"
"I doubt it," Eddie said, He doesn't sleep much."
"Mister," mourned the night chief, "we sure gave him enough to
remember us by on this lovely evening. Between everything, we ain't likely
to spend a very happy Christmas on the old PC.
The dispatcher's office quieted at the faint chattering of a few
instruments. The wind lost its banshee howl. It moaned disconsolately.
Cold tightened its grip on the white world.
The blade plow slammed through Bruce half covering the station and
breaking out a bow window. That let winter air and a quantity of snow in on
the night operator who complained of it bitterly. Hi had inspired those two
hoggers to put some sock into their drive on the drifts. They were sure
tearing up the scenery.
Eddie went back to maneuvering the rest of the traffic. Donby
stopped his light engine at each telegraph station to plague Walker with
queries and unusable advice. He seemed reluctant to return to headquarters
and at the same time was drawn to it by an irresistible pull.
"He keeps remindin' me that we ought to have turned the rotary back
from here," Walker complained. "And the devil of it is that he may be right.
Hi Wheeler's quite considerable overdue at Virgil right now."
"The cuts at the upper end were pretty well filled again," Eddie
reasoned. "It'll take a time to swab 'em out."
From his old swivel chair he visioned the bob-tailed train, two engines
and a caboose, heading into the drifts, throwing snow from the blade high
over the stack. He could feel the shock and shudder as the snow checked
and halted them, smothered the power of the huge engines in a feathery
mass. They'd pull out and back up and then take a header, the engines
blasting, putting all their weight and power into the battering ram.

The boomer didn't have to glance at the clock to know the time.
When you dealt almost exclusively in fleeting minutes you developed a
sense that ticked off the seconds somewhere inside you. He felt them sliding
away while the special stood at Virgil, hung up there with the man who
could decide the fate of the Prairie Central, and Hi Wheeler in a desperate
drive with the blade plow to clear the way for him.
Walker shuffled back and stared pessimistically down at the sounder.
As if his morose eye had stung it, the brass tongue began abruptly to chatter.
Virgil was on the wire. The blade plow was in and heading through the wye.
Hi had dropped off at the station and he reported that the wind was down
and it would be easier going back. He'd be turned in five minutes and ready
to go down ahead of the special.
"Good work!" Eddie flashed at him, and made up his orders.
Virgil reported him headed west at once, and then ten minutes later
that the special had followed him.
The brass pounder added: "There was a little old thin man with big
glasses come into the office off that special," he narrated. "Seemed like a
very nice gent. Gave me a cigar as big as a corncob and, mister, didn't it
smoke like a million dollars! Then he sat right down at the table beside me
and talked just like home folks. He sure knew how to ask about the PC and
the way traffic was rollin'. I guess I told him everything you and me both
know. I hope he's part of the outfit they're talkin' about takin' us over.
He's a nice guy."
"He's that all right," Eddie agreed. "That was Mr. Nickerson
himself."
"Oh, no it wasn't," the operator contradicted. "Big brass hats don't
sit
and chin with lightning slingers."
"Some do," Eddie assured him.
Salt-and-Molasses had been gathering information in the most likely
places. You'd be surprised at how many important items he could get from
a casual conversation with an op or a section hand.
The blade plow swarmed down through the cuts without delay. She
pulled into the clear at Quincy to let the special by. Eddie ordered Hi to cut
his engine out, turn the blade plow back to Conductor Blake, and go in
behind the special with his light engine. Thirty-three would only make it to
Duncan, and Hi could help him in from there.
The operator reported Hi's glum reaction to those instructions: "He
says now that you've ruined his Christmas Eve party, you order him in. He
don't seem to think his Sally gal is ever goin' to speak to him from here out,
and he hopes Santa Claus puts rocks in your socks."

They heard the funereal clanging of Donby's light engine coming
down the siding behind the station at the same time the special hooted from
the lower end of the Oberlin yard.
Walker sat down at his table and snatched a file of correspondence
and pretended to study it. Eddie turned to the window. That wind had laid
and it was no longer snowing. The special came down the main line under
an easy throttle. Flickering blue arcs glinted on the churning rods.
Donby's impatient feet pattered on the stairs and he erupted into the
room.
"What about Mr. Nickerson?" he demanded breathlessly. "Did he
have any complaints because you delayed him so long at Virgil?" The super
snatched off his overcoat and hat and threw them on a chair. He thrust his
hands in his pockets and shook his loose shoulders.
"No sir," said Walker somberly. "He didn't say a word."
"He's bound to make a kick," Donby fretted, "and then somebody is
going to get hurt." He canted on one side and straddled his legs. "You'll
remember I told Carter he oughtn't leave Mr. Sand on second trick with
things popping the way they were, but Carter put him on anyhow."
Eddie said from the window: "It won't be necessary for anybody to
remember anything except that I was on the sheet in my regular turn and that
I did all the maneuvering. You can generally get out of a jam by naming a
goat and firing him. It's sound practice."
A man dropped off the observation platform of the private car and
skipped across the platform.
"It may be necessary to fire more than one in this case," Donby
complained and glanced at Walker. "If Mr. Nickerson hasn't taken over the
PC, the Big Six will, and that means a housecleaning either way. Any new
officials will hop on a thing like this . . . and dynamite."
"In case it's Mr. Nickerson," Eddie drawled, "I'd say from previous
experience it'd be best not to try to put anything over on him, 'cause it's
hard to do, and he don't like it when he finds out. Anyhow," he nodded,
"you'll likely have a chance to learn about him in the immediate future,
because he's coming up to call on us right now."
"You mean," Donby gasped, "that he's coming up here from his
private car at this time of night?"
"Yeah," Eddie admitted. "In fact, he's present among us now."
The door opened gently, almost reluctantly. A thin little old man in
derby hat and big spectacles slipped into the room and closed the door
quietly behind him.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he said amiably. "My name is
Nickerson." His round glasses searched the dim spaces of the room owlishly.
"I was looking for a telegraph operator, one of your dispatchers, by the name
of . . . Ah!" he broke off as his glasses focused on Eddie and glinted.
"There you are," he nodded genially, "and it is a pleasure to see you here,
Mr. Eddie Sand. The night operator at Virgil told me you were on this trick
tonight," he went on pleasantly, "so I came in a moment to wish you a Merry
Christmas."
It was pleasant to see the old gentleman again, fine to feel the intense
power in the quiet grip of his accurate fingers, to be reminded of the hard
benevolence in the spark of his quick eyes. He had picked the Virgil
operator's mind clean of any facts about the PC it contained. That was a
good sign.
Walker had come to his feet like a released spring and he stood rooted
by his table not missing anything. Donby stood on a bias and stared.
"That's mighty kind of you," Eddie acknowledged. "And the same to
you. I never did properly thank you for commending me to Mr. Welby over
on the Penn Eastern that time."
Mr. Nickerson's thin, dry face puckered in myriad wrinkles.
"Mr. Welby wrote me," he nodded, "that you merely wanted a
recommendation from me to strengthen your position with him so you could
save the job of a young fellow who'd just had a baby."
"At that," Eddie grinned, "it was a little dubious which was having the
baby at the time, Cy Frim or his wife. But everything came out all right'"
"I'm sure it did," Nickerson beamed.

The men of the Prairie Central would give a lot to know right now
who had won the fight for control of their railroad. It would be a prize
Christmas gift for them all if they could be assured that this thin dynamo had
out-maneuvered the Big Six. It'd be a real holiday if they were certain the
PC wouldn't be junked.
The newspapers hadn't been able to get any information at all on the
outcome of the Chicago session. Perhaps Mr. Nickerson had the figures but
hadn't yet reached his decision. That wouldn't take him long. He seldom
dallied. Maybe he had reached his decision on his way out. Eddie studied
him sharply and then probed him with a casual remark.
"All of us on the Prairie Central have been highly gratified that you're
interested in the company. We extend you full co-operation and wish you
the best of luck."
Mr. Nickerson gave him a quick, shrewd glint. Salt-and-Molasses
knew he was being reconnoitered. He smiled slightly. Then he glanced at
the dark window. It seemed as if his eyes were searching all the miles of
that ribbon of steel winding through the snowy landscape, and all the
personnel thereon, evaluating them with swift precision.
A choked silence crept into the room, broken a little by the sleepy
cluck of a lone sounder. The world of the PC stood still and braced itself for
the verdict. You knew that this thin, gray man held the fate of the men and
miles of iron highway in his lean, competent hands. He turned his head at
last and his big spectacles glowed.
"Interested in the Prairie Central?" he inquired softly. He shook his
head. "Involved is the word." He nodded. "I think we can make a railroad
out of this property. And I'm sure I will become interested as we develop
it." He smiled at the boomer. "Is that what you wanted to know?" he asked
slyly.
Chief Walker let go a long, whistling sigh. Superintendent Donby
rocked on his feet.
"Yes," said Eddie, "it is what we all hoped to hear. And in that case,"
he suggested, "you had better meet these two gentlemen."
Mr. Nickerson was suddenly brisk.
"Mr. Donby," he said, "I want to recommend Mr. Sand to you, and I
will tell you why." He glanced at Eddie with a distant twinkle in his eye.
"Mr. Sand had to keep three bankers pacified for two nights and a day while
they were snowbound in one of our trains on top of a mountain. It was a
very trying situation. But he was ingenious and patient and alert . . . and he
didn't get excited about it." The railroad magnate seemed to underline that
last heavily. "He never lost his head; and that was something of a chore
when three bankers were after it."
Donby began to pace, and then suddenly held his restless feet to the
floor. He stared at Mr. Nickerson.
"Why yes," he said at last. "I've noticed that about him. Equanimity
is a good trait in an operations man."
Mr. Nickerson looked at his division superintendent keenly.
"It is essential, Mr. Donby," he said, and there was a buzz-saw edge to
his voice. "The higher one goes, the more he must exercise his self-control."
He shook hands with Eddie again and turned toward the door.
"I wish you could find it convenient to remain with the Prairie
Central, Mr. Sand," he suggested. "I fancy we could use your talents to
good advantage . . . in the higher places." He opened the door. "A very
merry Christmas to you all," the new president called cheerfully, and closed
the door behind him.
Donby stared after him somberly for sixty deliberate seconds.
"I wonder now just what he meant by that?" he inquired uneasily.
Eddie went back to his table.
"From what I know, I'd say he meant exactly what he said."
The harried, impatient look drained slowly out of Donby's face. You
could feel his scattered thoughts focus. Slowly he paced to an arm chair and
then sat down deliberately. He put his feet on the chief's table. He relaxed,
brooding.
"Look at that!" Walker muttered in Eddie's ear. "What'd you reckon
Carter would say if he saw Donby with his feet up?.

From the top landing of the stair, above the trainsheds and the dim arc
lights of the town, Eddie could see sharp stars blinking through the rifting
clouds. There ought to be a moon somewhere behind that rolling black
mass. The sharp, still air snapped with frost. He snuggled inside his
overcoat as he went down the stairs to the platform. He was ticking like a
watch.
Thirty-three, with Hi's helper engine tied on as pusher, stamped into
the yard, the bellow of the two locomotives booming under the eves of the
station in solemn rhythm. From far out on the prairies to the east the 5-Spot
sent her clear challenge sliding through the stinging air, her keen whistle
shouting exultantly. A switch engine slammed down the ladder, the pinner
and the fielder, muffled to the eyes, draped over the pilot beam.
Across the continent trains moved out over the vast web of steel, the
clanking freights and swift, smooth-rolling passengers, threading the glinting
lines of rails.
Alert men in cab and caboose, luxurious Pullman and grimy caboose;
operators in towers and lonely station watches, in busy yard and relay office
and the quiet tension of the dispatcher's room; switchmen riding the cuts in
the restless yard.
The iron ribbons slipped through the dark green of upland timber and
skirted the bluffs above the roll of the bleak, cold seas; spanned long reaches
of desert solitude and climbed the hard grades of the high Rockies. You
could almost hear now the scream of the big jacks in deep gorges and the
steady bark of the narrow gauge engines as they climbed the four percent in
twisting curves over the roof of the world.
Church bells clamored suddenly, their clear tones ringing out merrily
in the crisp air. It was midnight.
Hi Wheeler was coming up through the yard under the flicker of the
arcs. Long and limber and swivel-jointed, his cap canted at that you-be-
damned angle, his feet lifting clean and quick.
"Christmas is sure hell on railroaders," he stated as they moved across
the platform.
They turned up a dim street, the snow squealing under their feet. A
big old-fashioned house glowing with light from top to bottom, came out of
the thin darkness. Eddie turned at the gate.
"Hey!" Hi protested, "Where'd you think you're goin' this time of
night."
"To make a Christmas call."
"Look," Hi pleaded. "I ain't dressed for Yuletide visits."
"Come on!" Eddie urged, and banged on a huge knocker.
The door swung wide, and Mrs. Cadagan greeted them with a spate of
words and arms thrown wide to engulf them both in a welcome.
"And why do you have to knock to enter this house?" she chided,
pulling them inside.
A fiddle scraped in the big room beyond, and feet stepped to the lively
tune. A blonde head came up over Mrs. Cadagan's shoulder. Sally waved
both arms invitingly.
Hi Wheeler seemed to come all apart in a sudden explosion as he
tossed his cap to the ceiling and shrugged out of his sheepskin coat with the
same gesture. He yipped once and seized the girl and they danced away to
join with the dancing couples in the living room.
"Eddie," said Mrs. Cadagan, beaming like a headlight, "I do love to
see folks have their fun, and that Hi does have the best time when he puts his
mind to it." Her eyes were slightly moist and she dabbed them with her
handkerchief. "It didn't seem as if Christmas would be so cheery this year,
what with Dan away and the future so uncertain for us all. But a little while
ago a feeling came over me that things will be bright for us this coming year
of grace."
"You can bet on that," Eddie assured her. "And take my word for it,
too. It was told to me this night by a man who really has the authority."