Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1907-01-02

u@@MM0u 1.-The Dispatcher's Story"
v@9N9ze is true it may be well to
state frankly at the out
set that this tale in it's ineXplicable
psychological features is a transcript
from the queer things in the railroad
life. 1t is based ON an extraordinary
happening that fell within the expert
ence of the president of a large west
ern railway system. Whether the
story, suggestive from any point of
view of mystery, can be regarded as a
demonstration of the efficacy of prayer
may be a disputable question. In pass
ing, however, it is only fair to say that
the circumstance ON which the tale is
based was so regarded by the dispatch
er himself and by those familiar with
the circumstance.
A hundred times if once the thing
had been, on appeals for betterment,
before the board of directors. 1t was the
one piece of track on the mountain
division that trainmen shook their
heads over = the Peace river stretch.
To run any sort of line through that
canyon would take the breath of an en-
gineer. Give him all the money he
could ask and it would stagger Wet
more himself. Brodie in his day said
there was nothing worse in the Andes,
and Brodie, before he drifted into the
Rockies, had seen, first and last, pretty
much all of the Chilean work.
But our men had the job to do with
one-half the money they needed-the
lines to run, the grades to figure, the
culverts to put in, the fills to make,
the blasting to do, the tunnel to bore,
the bridge. to build, in a limit; that
was the curse of 1.-THE limit. And
they did the best they could. But l
will be candid-if a sectio = and eleva-
tion of Rosamond's bower and a Sec
ton and elevation of our Peace river
work were put up to stand for prize
at a civil engineers cakewalk the de-
cision would CO. and quick, to the
Peace river track There are only
eight miles of 1t, but our men would
back it against any eighty on earth for
whipping curves, tough grades, villain
Gus approaches and railroad tangle
generally.
The directors alway -
to improve it. and they are promising
vet. Thanks to what Haley taught
them, there's a 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 a canyon and the mauvaises
terres rolled into one single PROPOSE
tion.
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 were 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. l
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 were
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
slipped, as they would, and things went
wrong, as they will, there were clear
heads and pretty wits and stout hearts
to put things right.
Blackburn, as much as 1 can remem-