The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-03-11

Away TO the west was 1.-The hill" the
last spur of the Rockies, black and
threatening in the deepening twilight,
With a path of steel clinging to its side
to the very top and double row OF
switch lights shining on the ralls
through the yard. It was a stiff climb
to the summit. u grade of 100 feet to
the mf1e. where drawheads and pins
strained and groaned with the soul
trying pull; where metal, weak and
cryStallized like an old mans bones,
would give way. and all behind would
go down the singing rails faster, fast
er. faster. until, perhaps, the roaring
dust cloud, with its core OF Jumping,
jostling cars, would refuse the road
and take the ditch More tractaDle, II
might if fates were prOpitiOus, trundle
along the fat at the foot of the grade
with diminishing speed until it stopped
with blazing journal boxes in Missoula
yard. Or. most dreaded finality, it
might find a train lahoring up the hill
behind it-then surgeons as well as
mechanics would be called to go with
the wrecking outfit
Jack Everett grimly regarded this
black rampant as, tolling the BIS bell,
they rumbled through the yard to the
upper end, where they would wait the
coming of No. 1.
Two years before he had been the
crack train dispatcher of the road.
Then his mother died, and not long
after, without word of warning, he
handed in his resignation, and left for
parts unknown. Some said 1t was be-
cause of a girls Indifference Jack
said never a word, and long after the
men bewailed his fitting. and told of
what he had done and what he could
do Even now some cranky old eagle
eye" laid out on a blind siding through
a train dispatcher's poor mathematics,
would say: well, Jack Everett never
messed things like that. He was a
train dispatcher and not a dude train
delayer'' And all this might have
pleased Jack if he had known it.
Poor fellow, he had chased hard
times to the Atlantic slope, through the
south. and back again to the shadow
of the Rockies, only to find superin-
tendent and train master who didn't
know him and didn't want to. More
over, they had no work for him.
He had come back willing to play his
part in the prodigal son, but his friends
had gone, and the fatted calf had not
been roped. He had come to stay, just
the same. If he might not direct the
movements of trains, he could at least
fire an engine, and to the motive power
department he went and heated up his
own welcome.
Now the thought of the miles of
mountain grade to be climbed and the
appetite the thirty-two had for coal
got on his nerves and whispered of the
backache to come, and he sputtered to
himself:
Mice state of affairs. Fine way to
rise in the world this tobogganing
from train dispatcher to be wet nurse
for a Hinkley hog.
Then the air brake sighed ponderous-
~ and the big machine halted just clear
of the street CT ssing, where the OIL
soaked ties told of engines that had
waited there before.
Old Barney McFee damned the throt-
tie tight, pulled the reverse lever to
the center, and, kicking open the cyl
inder cocks, swung to the ground with
torch and oil can, while Jack hauled
the slash-bar from the tender and
broke open his fire.
The baked crust of coal shot out
tongues of flame as he poked and prod
ded, and, coaxed by the draught of the
blower, the fiery tongues joined and
scuttIed through the f1ues until the
blaze spread evenly and the hand be-
gan to creep slowly up the face of the
steam gauge.