O'Neill clutched the order book, but Glover looked at Morris Blood.

With the water trickling from his hair down his wrinkled face, beading

his mustache, and dripping from his chin he stood, haggard with sleep,

leaning over O'Neill's shoulder. A towel stuffed into his left hand

was clasped forgotten at his waist. From the east room, operators,

their instruments silenced, were tiptoeing into the archway. Above the

little group at the table the clock ticked. O'Neill, in a frenzy, half

rose out of his chair, but Morris Blood, putting his hand on the

despatcher's shoulder, forced him back.

"They're gone," cried the frantic man; "let me out of here."

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"No, Garry."

"They're gone."

"Not yet, Garry. Try Fort Rucker for the Special."

"There's no night man at Fort Rucker."

"But Burling, the day man, sleeps upstairs----"

"He goes up to Bear Dance to lodge."

"This isn't lodge night," said Blood.

"For God's sake, how can you get him upstairs, anyway?" trembled

O'Neill.

"On cold nights he sleeps downstairs by the ticket-office stove. I

spent a night with him once and slept on his cot. If he is in the

ticket-office you may be able to wake him--he may be awake. The

Special can't pass there for ten minutes yet. Don't stare at me. Call

Rucker, hard."

O'Neill seized the key and tried to sound the Rucker call. Again and

again he attempted it and sent wild. The man that could hold a hundred

trains in his head without a slip for eight hours at a stretch sat

distracted.

"Let me help you, Garry," suggested Blood, in an undertone. The

despatcher turned shaking from his chair and his superintendent slipped

behind him into it. His crippled right hand glided instantly over the

key, and the Rucker call, even, sharp, and compelling, followed by the

quick, clear nineteen--the call that gags and binds the whole

division--the despatchers' call--clicked from his fingers.

Persistently, and with unfailing patience, the men hovering at his

back, Blood drummed at the key for the slender chance that remained of

stopping the passenger train. The trial became one of endurance. Like

an incantation, the call rang through the silence of the room until it

wracked the listeners, but the man at the key, quietly wiping his face

and head, and with the towel in his left hand mopping out his collar,

never faltered, never broke, minute after minute, until after a score

of fruitless waits an answer broke his sending with the "I, I, Ru!"

As the reply flew from his fingers Morris Blood's eyes darted to the

clock; it was 3.17. "Stop Special 833, east, quick."

"You've got them?" asked Glover, from the counter.

"If they're not by," muttered Blood.

"Red light out," reported Rucker; then three dreadful minutes and it

came, "Special 833 taking water; O'Brien wants orders."




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