Cañon City record., 1906-04-26
GUS approaches and railroad tangle

yet Thanks to what HALEY taught
them, there's good bridge there now
pneumatic caissons sunk to the bed
It's the more pity they haven't elimi-
mated the dread main line curves that
approach it through valley which
brief as canyon and the mauvaises
terres rolled into one single PROPOSE
ton.
Yet we do lots of business along that
stretch. Our engineers thread the cuts
and are glad to get safely through
them. Our roadmasters keep up the
elevations, hoping some night the
blooming right of way will tumble in
to perdition Our dispatchers, study
ing under shaded lamps, think of it
with their teeth clinched and hope
there never will be any trouble on that
stretch. Trouble is our portion. and
trouble we must get but not there
Let it come, but let it come anywhere
except on the Peace.
1t was in the golden days of the bat
tered old Wickiup that the story opens,
when Blackburn sat in the night chair,
the days when the old guard We're still
there before death and fame and cir
cumstance had stolen our first com
manders and left only us little fellows,
forgotten by every better fate. to tell
their greater stories.
HALEY had the bridges then, and
Wetmore the locating, and Neighbor
the roundhouses, and Bucks the super
intendency, and Callahan, so he claim
ed, the work. and Blackburn had the
night trick.
When Blackburn came from the
plains he brought record clean as the
book Of life. -Four years on station
key, then eight years at Omaha dis
patching, with never a blunder or a
break to the eight years. But it was
at Omaha that Blackburn lost the wife
whose face he carried in his watch.
never heard the story only some ru-
NOR Of how young she was and how
pretty and how he buried her and the
wee baby together. 1t was all Black
burn brought to the West End noun
tains-his record and the little face in
the watch. They said he had no kith
or kin on earth besides the wife and
the baby back on the bluffs of the Mis-
souri,, and so he came on the night
trick to US.
was just boy around the Wickiup
then. but remember the crowd. Who
could forget them? They were jolly
good fellows. Sometimes there We're
very high jinks. don't mean anybody
drunk or that sort, but good tobacco to
smoke and good songs to sing and good
stories to tell. and, Lord how they
could tell them! And when the pins
oIlD <t,lr
wrong as they will, there were clear
heads and pretty wits and stout hearts
to put things right.
Blackburn. as much as l can remem-
ber always enjoyed 1t. but in a differ
ent way. He had such times manner
like nobody else's--a silent. beaming
manner When Bucks would roll a
great white Panhandle yarn over his
fresh linen shirt front and down his
cool, clean white arms, one of them al
ways barred to the elbow, sanding his
points with the ash of a San Francisco
cigar. and Neighbor would begin to
heavc from the middle up like hippo
potamus, and Callahan would laugh his
whiskers full OF dew and HALEY would
yell with delight. and the slaves in the
at the story. Blackburn would sit with
his laugh all in II smile but never n
noise or IA word. He enjoyed 1t all, not
a doubt of that. only 1t was all tenn
pered. | reckon, by something that had
gone before. At least that's the way II
now strikes me. and watched those
big fellows pretty close-the fellows
who were to turn while was growing
up among them into managers and
presidents and magnates and some of
them from every day catch-as-catch-c can
men with the common alkali fecking
their boots into dead men for whom
marble never rose white enough or high
enough.
Blackburn was four years at the
Wickiup on the night trick. 1t wouldn't
have seemed natural TO see him there
In daylight 1t needed the yellow gloom
of the old Kerosene lamp in the room.
the specked. knotted, warped smoky
pine ceiling losing itself in black and
cobwebbed corners. the ,smodering
murk of the soft coal fire brooding in
the shabby old salamander and outside
in the darkness the wind screwing
down the gorge and rattling the shrunk-
en- easements to raise Blackburn in the
dispatcher's chair Blackburn and the
lamp and the stove and the ceiling and
the gloom-in word. Blackburn and
the night trick-they went together
Before the short line was opened the
No. and No. trains caught practical
ly all the coast passenger business.
They We're immensely heavy trains.
Month after month we sent out two
and three sections OF them each way,
and they always ran into our division
on the night trick. Blackburn handled
all that main line business with mile
age of SO5. besides the mountain