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The old man
drummed on the counter-top in the telegraph office, and then
picked up a pad and wrote a wire to his assistant:—
"Cancel
general order No. 13."
The night man
slipped out in the dawn and called the day man who was the
station master, explaining that the old man was at the station
and evidently unhappy.
The agent
came on unusually early and endeavored to arrange for a light
engine to carry the superintendent back to the Junction.
At the end of
three hours they had a freight engine that had left its train
on a siding thirty miles away and rolled up to rescue the
stranded superintendent.
Now, every
railway man knows that when one thing goes wrong on a
railroad, two more mishaps are sure to follow; so, when the
rescuing crew heard over the wire that the train they had left
on a siding, having been butted by another train heading in,
had started back down grade, spilled over at the lower switch,
and blocked the main line, they began to expect something to
happen at home.
However, the
driver had to go when the old man was in the cab and the G.M.
with a whole army of engineers and workmen waiting for him at
Pee-Wee; so he rattled over the switches and swung out on the
main line like a man who was not afraid.
Two miles up
the road the light engine, screaming through a cut,
encountered a flock of sheep, wallowed through them, left the
track, and slammed the four men on board up against the side
of the cut.
Not a bone
was broken, though all of them were sore shaken, the engineer
being unconscious when picked up.
"Go back and
report," said the old man to the conductor. "You look after
the engineer," to the fireman.
"Will you
flag west, sir?" asked the conductor.
"Yes,—I'll
flag into Pee-Wee," said the old man, limping down the line.
To be sure,
the superintendent was an intelligent man and not the least
bit superstitious; but he couldn't help, as he limped along,
connecting these disasters, remotely at least, with general
order No. 13.
In time the
"unseen signal" came to be talked of by the officials as well
as by train and enginemen. It came up finally at the annual
convention of General Passenger Agents at Chicago and was
discussed by the engineers at Atlanta, but was always
ridiculed by the eastern element.
"I helped
build the U.P.," said a Buffalo man, "and I want to tell you
high-liners you can't drink squirrel-whiskey at timber-line
without seein' things nights."
That ended
the discussion.
Probably no
road in the country suffered from the evil effects of the
mysterious signal as did the Inter-Mountain Air Line.
The regular
spotters failed to find out, and the management sent to
Chicago for a real live detective who would not be predisposed
to accept the "mystery" as such, but would do his utmost to
find the cause of a phenomenon that was not only interrupting
traffic but demoralizing the whole service.
As the
express trains were almost invariably stopped at night, the
expert traveled at night and slept by day. Months passed with
only two or three "signals." These happened to be on the train
opposed to the one in which the detective was traveling at
that moment. They brought out another man, and on his first
trip, taken merely to "learn the road," the train was stopped
in broad daylight. This time the stop proved to be a lucky
one; for, as the engineer let off the air and slipped round a
curve in a cañon, he found a rock as big as a box car resting
on the track.
The detective
was unable to say who sounded the signal. The train crew were
overawed. They would not even discuss the matter.
With a
watchman, unknown to the trainmen, on every train, the
officials hoped now to solve the mystery in a very short time.
The old
engineer, McNally, who had found the rock in the cañon, had
boasted in the lodge-room, in the round-house and out, that if
ever he got the "ghost-sign," he'd let her go. Of course he
was off his guard this time. He had not expected the
"spook-stop" in open day. And right glad he was, too, that he
stopped that day.
A fortnight
later McNally, on the night run, was going down Crooked Creek
Cañon watching the fireworks in the heavens. A black cloud
hung on a high peak, and where its sable skirts trailed along
the range the lightning leaped and flashed in sheets and
chains. Above the roar of wheels he could hear the splash, and
once in a while he could feel the spray, of new-made cataracts
as the water rushed down the mountain side, choking the
culverts.
Continued Next Page
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