Frank Spearman - The Mountain Divide

Night had fallen and a warm rain drifting down from the mountains hung in a mist over the railroad yards and obscured the lights of Medicine Bend. Two men dismounting from their drooping horses at the foot of Front Street threw the reins to a man in waiting and made their way on foot across the muddy square to the building which served the new railroad as a station and as division head-quarters. In Medicine Bend, the town, the railroad, everything was new; and the broad, low pine building which they entered had not yet been painted.

The public waiting-room was large, roughly framed, and lighted with hanging kerosene lamps. Within the room a door communicated with the agent’s office, and this was divided by a wooden railing into a freight office and a ticket and telegraph office.

It could be seen, as the two men paused at the door of the inner room, that the first wore a military fatigue-cap, and his alert carriage as he threw open his cape-coat indicated the bearing of an American army officer. He was of medium height, and his features and eyes implied that the storms and winds of the plains and mountains were familiar friends. This was Park Stanley, charged at that time with the construction of the first transcontinental railroad.

The agent’s office, which he and his companion now looked into, was half-filled with a crowd of frontiersmen, smoking, talking, disputing, asking questions, and crowding against the fence that railed off the private end of the room; while at the operator’s table next to the platform window a tall, spindling boy was trying in the confusion behind him to get a message off the wire.

Stanley, eying the lad, noticed how thin his face was and what a bony frame spread out under the roundabout jacket that he appeared already to have outgrown. And he concluded this must be the new operator, Bucks, who for some days had been expected from the East.

The receiver clicked insistently and Bucks endeavored to follow the message, but the babel of talking made it almost impossible. Stanley heard the boy appeal more than once for less noise, but his appeals were unheeded. He saw symptoms of fire in the operator’s eyes as the latter glared occasionally at the crowd behind him, but for what followed even Stanley was unprepared. Bucks threw down his pen and coming forward with angry impatience ordered the crowd out of the room.

He pushed the foremost of the intruders back from the rail and followed up his commands by opening the wicket gate and driving those ahead of him toward the door of the waiting-room. “Get out where you belong,” he repeated, urging the crowd on. Stanley turned to the man at his side. “I will go upstairs to write my message. This must be the new boy, Bob,” he added; “he acts as if he might make things go.”

His companion, Bob Scott, smiled as he followed Stanley out upon the platform and up the narrow stairway leading to the division offices. But Bob Scott was conservative. He never spoke above an undertone and naturally took the conservative side: “If he only doesn’t make them go too fast, Colonel,” was his comment.

A tall young man, spare but almost gigantic in stature, standing back in one corner of the agent’s office as the men about him were hustled along, likewise regarded Bucks with surprise as he saw him start single-handed to expel the intruders. This was the mountain telegraph lineman, Bill Dancing, as simple as he was strong, and ready at any time to be surprised, but not often disconcerted. In this instance, however, he was amazed, for almost before he realized it the energetic operator was hustling him out with the others.

When Bucks thought the room cleared he turned to go back to his table, but he saw that one man had been overlooked. This man was still sitting on a stool in the farthest corner of the dimly lighted room. The spindling operator without hesitation walked over to him and laid his hand on the man’s shoulder. Dancing, looking back through the door, held his breath.

“Move out of here, please,” said Bucks, “into the public waiting-room.” The man rose with the utmost politeness. “Sorry to be in your way,” he returned mildly, though there was a note not quite pleasant in his voice.

“Your place is outside,” continued the operator. “I can’t do anything with a mob in here all talking at once.”

“I haven’t done my talking yet,” suggested the man, with a shade of significance. This, however, was lost on Bucks, who looked sharply at the stool from which the man had risen.

“I think this stool is mine,” said he, picking it up and examining it. “It is mine,” he added, after a moment’s inspection. “Please move on.”

“Perhaps before I go,” returned the man with the same unpleasant irony, “you will tell me whether you have an express package here for Harvey Levake.”

“Of course I will, Harvey,” responded the operator in a matter-of-fact way. “Just wait a minute.”

Levake’s lips stretched into a ghost of a smile, and his white-lashed gray eyes contracted with an effort at amiability.

The operator, going inside the railing, ran over the express way-bills which, not yet entered up, lay on the freight desk.

“There is a package here for you,” he announced a moment later, and turning to a heap of parcels thrown under the desk he searched among them until he found and produced the one he sought.

“Here it is–a box of cartridges.”

“What are the charges?” asked the man.

“Four dollars and sixty cents.”

The man laid down a twenty-dollar bank-bill. The operator hesitated: “I haven’t the change.”

Levake showed no sympathy: “That is not my fault,” he returned.

The operator looked at him: “Do you want the package to-night?”

“If I didn’t, do you suppose I would waste an hour here waiting for it?”

The boy considered a moment and made a decision, but it chanced to be the wrong decision. “Take the package along. Bring me the charges in the morning.”

Levake made no response beyond a further glance at the boy somewhat contemptuous; but he said nothing and picking up his package walked out. No one opposed him. Indeed, had the operator been interested he would have noticed with what marked alacrity every man, as he passed through the waiting-room, got out of Levake’s way. Dancing, standing at the door and with his hair on end, awaited the close of the incident. He now re-entered the inner office and shut the waiting-room door behind him with an audible bang. Bucks, who had returned to his table, looked around. “Well, who are you?” he demanded as he regarded Dancing. “And what are you doing here?”

“Who are you?” retorted Dancing bluntly. “And what are you doing here?”

“My name is Bucks and I am the new night operator.”

“You look new. And you act all-fired new. My name is Bill Dancing and I am the telegraph lineman.”

“Why, you are the man I am looking for.”

“So I thought, when you pushed me out of here with the rest of your visitors.”

“Why didn’t you speak up, Bill?” demanded Bucks calmly.

A quizzical expression passed over Dancing’s face. “I didn’t want to break the calm. When I see a man walking around a powder magazine I hate to do anything that might set it off.

“So your name is Bucks,” continued Dancing, as he walked through the wicket and threw his wet hat among the way-bills on the freight desk. “Well, Mr. Bucks, do you know what was most likely to happen to you any minute before you got through with that crowd, just now?”

“No, I don’t know. Why?” asked Bucks, busy with his messages.

“Have you ever seen a shooting mix-up in Medicine Bend?” demanded Dancing in a tone of calculated indifference.