The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1913-05-25

PRINT ABOUT inc enRiHSet, oh'"
Callahan dejectedly. What s
tic matter with the dispatcher
What S the matter with the man who
tells the engineer what to do--and just
what to dos How TO do it-and ex-
acty how TO do it, With the man
who sits shut in by brick walls and
hung up in Chinese puzzles, his ear
glued TO receiver, and his finger fast
TO key. and his eve riveted on train
register, The man who orders and an
nuls and stops. and starts everything
within 500 miles of him, and holds un-
der his thumb more lives every
minute than most brigadiers do in a
lfetime' For instance. asked Gala
han, in his tired way, what's the
matter with Bucks!'
Now. never knew Bucks myself
Tie left the west end before I went on.
Bucks is second vice president-which
means the boss-of a trsnscontinental
line now; aud very great swell. But
no mau from the west end that calls
on Bucks has to wait for an audience;
though bigger men do. They talk Of
him out there yet, Not of General
Superintendent Bucks, which he came to
be; nor of General Manager Bucks.
On the west end he is lust plain
Bucks: but Bucks means a whole lot
on the west end.
He saved the company 100000
that night the Ogallala train ran
avay, mused Callahan. Callahan
himself is assistant superintendent
now
''Three hundred thousand dollars is
good deal of money, Callahan" I OBJ
jccte1
"Figure 1t out yourself. To begin
with. fifty passengers liyes-that g
$4,000 apiece, ism Z it1'' Callahan had
a cold blooded way OF figuring pas
sengcr's life from company stand
point ''It would have killed over fifty
passengers if the runaway had ever
struck Fifty-nine. There wouldn t have
been enough of Fifty-nine left to
make a decent funeral. Then the
equipment, at least $4,000. But there
was whole lot more than the $780,
600 In it for Bucks.
"How so?'
% He told me once that il he hadn T
saved Fifty-nine that night he would
never have signed another order any
where on any road he d have quit the
service for good"
"Why7"
''Why7 Because, after it was all
aver he found oii+ that his or-n r,oiber
was aboard Fifty.nine. Didn't YOU
ever hear that7 Well, sir, it was
Christmas eve. and the year was
1884,
Christmas eve everywhere but on the
west end, where it was just plain De-
cember cath.
"High winds will prevail for eusu-
ing twenty-four hours. Station agents
will use extra care to secure cars or
sidings; brakemen must take care not
10 get blown from moving trains"
That's all Bucks said in his bulle-
fins that evening. not word about
Christmas or Merry Christmas In fact,
81 Christmas had come to McCIoud that
night they couldn 4 have hold it
twentyfour minutes, much less twenty
four hours; the wind was too high.
AL the week, ell the day, all the night
1t had blown-a December wind; dry
as an August noon, bitter as powdered
Zee. It was in the early days of our
western railrosding. when we had onlv
one fast train on the schedule-the st.
LouisNalifornia express; and only one
fast engine on the division-1o1: and
only one man on the whole west end
Bucks, Bucks was assistant superin-
tendent and master mechanic and train
master and chief dispatcher ard store.
keeper-and bully good fellow. There
were some boys In the service; among
them. Callahan. Callahan was seven.
teen, with hair like sunset and a
mind as quick as an air brake. II
was his first year at the key, and he
had night trick under Bucks.
Callahan claims it blew so hard that
night that it blew some of the color
out Of his hair Sod houses had sprung
up Ike dog towns in the buffalo grass
during tho fall But that day home
steaders crept into dugouts and smoth-
cred over buffalo chip fires. Horses and
cattle huddled into friendly pockets a
little out Of the worst of it, or froze
mutely in pitiless fence corners on the
divides. Sand drove grttiug down
from the Cheyenne hills like "A storm of