The Pulaskian., 1915-12-31
"HE ALSO SERVES"
By IzoLA FORESTER.

i Bellamy was assigned to the Black Creek station in February He went to it grimly, knowing all it's demands and dangers. It was not only black by name, but it held the blackballed place of honor with every operator in Wisconsin. Timber stretches, then the river, black and turbulent, then the embankment and railroad tracks and his lone eyrie perched near the water tower-that was Black Creek station. Back in the hills, if you fol lowed the corduroy road, you came to a few houses. Bellamy boarded at one the first week. but tired of it, and he heard of Ma Appley's from Operator No. 10.
 She was stationed down at Sweet water, eight miles below Black Creek. After the frs. week she would an- lswer questions, and when he com Iplained of the food and lodging up at the halfbreeds house, she told him to hang on to the 7:20 local and drop off at Sweetwater and she'd take him
 
 lover to Ma Appley's.
 That was the beginning for Bellamy. All his life he remembered the picture she made waiting for him on the plat form. It wasn't that she was so beau tiful. Bellamy only knew that she was infinitely tender and womanly. He found himself telling her all his hopes and plans the third night, after he had become a regular down at Ma Appley's. And when he had fin ished she had nodded her head.
 q know. I think every one should set something ahead of him and then run for it. I'd rather be anything than quitter.''
 The thought of that had made him hang on to his nerve through six months of Black Creek, with it's lone Illness and hard work.
 The river had been high all day. When he took the station over at six, Tucker, the day operator, told him he had tried for an hour to get an an- swer from Packers Grove, twenty-two miles north along the river.
 If there's washout up there we'll get it here during the night, and Sweetwater and you'll have to hold back the trains
 Sweetwater and he. He called her as soon as he was alone, his Sweet water sweetheart, as he laughingly named her to himself, Madge Lowell on the companys pay roll
 Keep at the key" she called. "No matter what happens. don't go away. There are two passenger trains be- sides the express, and it's up to us, because we're at the top of the val ley and will get the first alarm
 It was a quarter of eleven when he heard the roar up the valley. He leaned out of the little side window and saw the river dashing below It was over the siding tracks now and rising. He called Sweetwater and told her the flood was booming down the valley and the tracks were going under. And in five minutes she called back that the express had left Chip pewa Junction already, but she was signaling it from her station. If it passed he must call for help.
 How can it pass you?"
 ''The river may get me first"
 Then he understood He was in tower, but her little shack was on a level with the tracks, a few pine boards with water tank on one side and semaphore on the other. The river would pick it up like a chip. He begged her to go away-to leave the station and summon help. She said there wasn't time. The express was on the way up. And then Bel lamy tried to make the key carry his message to her, all that he had meant to say, all that she was to him. And she called back just this:
 T know, dear. Here comes the ex- press. The waters up to my door. Good-by."
 He staggered to the window and hung out, listening as if he could have made the night tell him what was happening out in the heart of it. There came the call of the express as it swung around the curve below her; above the roar of the waters it came faintly, a far-off, broken shriek, it seemed to him, for help. Then si lence. He called Sweetwater dog gedly, but no answer came. His wire was still alive, though, and he caught the first big town south, asking help for Sweetwater and the express.
 Through u slow, dread hours till dawn broke l sat head down on his arms at his table. Yet she had told him to stick and he lived up to her measure of him, answering each call that came up the valley, warning each town along the river, stopping each train at, the points of safety, as she would have begged him to do.
 Tucker came an hour earlier, cheery and riotously overjoyed to find the station safe