Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1906-05-15

| A guess" wrote Bucks to
Callahan, but l am
- satisfied of one thing
HEGIU@N you can't run that yard
kHSlH with Sunday school
superintendent. He
won't make you any trouble unless he
gets to drinking. II that happens, don't
have any words with him" Bucks un-
derscored three times. Simply crawl
into a cyclone cellar and wire me.
Sending you eighteen loads Of steel to-
night and six cars of ties. Blair re-
ports section 10 ready for track layers
and Mear's outfit moving into the Pal
isade canyon. Push the stuff to the
| front"
1t was getting dark, and Callahan sat
in that part Of the Benkleton depot he
called the Office, pulling at q muddy
root that went unaccountably hot In
sudden flashes. He took the pipe from
his mouth, leaving his foot on the ta-
BILE, and looked at the bowl resentfully,
wondering again II there could be pow
der In that Internal tobacco Of Rube-
dos. The mouthpiece he eyed as a
desperate man might ponder final
shift.
The pipe had originally come from
Gods country, with a beautiful am
Der mouthpiece and beautiful bowl,
but it was present from his sister
and had been bought ut dry goods
store. Once when thinking-or, If you
please, when not thinking-Callahan
had held lighted match to the beau
tiful amber mouthpiece instead Of to
the tobacco, and In the fire that ensued
they had hard work to save the depot.
Callahan never wrote his sister about
it. Ho thought only about buying
pipes at dry goods stores and about
being, when they exploded. thousand
miles from the man who sold them.
There was plenty in that to think
about. What he now brought his teeth
reluctantly together ON was part Of
the rubber tube of dismantled ato-
mizer, In happier post Christmas days
toilet fixture. But Callahan had
abandoned the use Of bay rum after
shaving. His razor had gone to the
scrap, and ON Sunday morning he mere
" ran a pair Of scissors over the high
joints-for Callahan was railroading-
and on the front.
After losing the mouthpiece he would
have been completely in the air but for
little Chris Oxen. Chris was Callahan's
section gang. His name was once
Ochsner, but that wasn't in Benkleton.
Callahan was hurried when he made up
the payroll and put 1t Oxen, as being
better United States. I say United
States because Callahan said United
States in preference to English.
Chris had been In America only three
years. but he had been In Russia 300
and in that time had learned many
ways of getting something out Of moth
ing. When the red haired dispatcher,
after the explosion, cast away with bit
terness the remains of the pipe, Chris
picked It up and by judicious action
on the atomizer figured out a new
mouthpiece no worse than the original,
for, while the second, like the first, was
of rubber it was not of the explosive
variety.
Chris presented the remodeled root
to Callahan as surprise. Callahan, IN
burst of gratitude, promoted him on
the spot. He made little Chris fore
man. 1t didn't bring any advance In
pay, but there was the honor. To be
foreman was an honor. and, as little
Chris was the only man on the yard
force. he became by promotion foreman
of himself.
So Callahan sat thinking Of the In
genuity of Chris, rejecting on the sting
Of construction tobacco and studying
over Bucks letter.
The yard was his worry-not that 1t
was much of yard: just dozen runs
off the lend to take the construction ma
terial for Callahan to distribute fast as
the grade was pushed westward. The
trouble ut the Benk!eton yard came
from without. not from within.
The road was being pushed into the
cattle country, and 1t was all easy till
they struck Benileton. Benkleton was
just hard knot on the Yellow Grass
trail, sQually. sandy cattle town.
There were some bad men In Benkle-
ton. They didn't bother often. But
there were some men In Benkleton who
thought they were bad. and these were
a source Of constant bedevilment to the
railroad men.
Southwest Of the yard, where the riv.
er breaks sheer into the bottoms, there
hived and still hives colony Of rail-
road laborers. Russians. They have
squatted there. burrowed into the face
of the bench like sand swallows and
scraped caves out for themselves. and
the name Of the place is Little Russia.
This was in the troublous days when
the cowboys, homesick for evil, would
ride around Little Russia with rope
and gun and scare the pioneers cross
eyed. The cattle fellows spent the en-.