CHAPTER XIII
NEWS FROM SHADOW VALLEY
This was a day to be remembered in Rockton. Ralph passed a parade of the wildcat strikers and their sympathizers on his way to the office. A good many of the marchers were drunk. That was bad, for it showed that somebody was furnishing a supply of liquor forbidden under the prohibition régime.
“I’ve an idea,” Ralph thought to himself, “that McCarrey and Grif Falk have a secret place to store liquor in, in that old house where Zeph and I had our run-in with them the other night. Wish Zeph would show up. I’d like to know what he told Mr. Adair about it.”
He saw uniformed police at the yard gates and standing at the railroad crossing when he got downtown. But he observed none of the men in plain clothes he knew who belonged to the railroad police. Mr. Adair did not believe in making a show of force at a time of trouble like this, if it could be avoided.
Extras of the evening papers soon began to appear on the street. Wild rumors were rife. It was said that the maintenance of way men on other divisions of the Great Northern were about to walk out.
The day shifts of men in the Rockton shops had not even come to work. The yard crews, who were more closely affiliated with the big Brotherhoods, were remaining at work. And yet, as Ralph could easily sense, nothing was going right in the yard or around the offices.
The clerks in the freight offices had some kind of association with McCarrey’s new union, and when Ralph had occasion to go down the platform he saw these clerks buzzing like mad bees.
“If the super comes this way these fellows will get something in their ears they won’t want to hear,” Ralph remarked to one of the platform men. “How do you stand, Mandell?”
“I stand for my bread and butter. I’ve always got my wages regularly and been treated decently by the road; at least, until this Hopkins came. I’ve been here fifteen years and have seen five or six supers come and go. I may be here fifteen more and see as many supers in charge. If this Hopkins tells me I can’t spit on the platform, well, then, I’ll go spit over the side. Ha! Them shopmen last night boiling out of the shop because of a simple order like that! They’re a bunch of dumb-bells.”
All the employees did not feel the same way, however; and that Ralph right well knew. He believed it would not take much more to cause the yard workers, the switchmen, the freight clerks, and other employees, to desert their jobs.
He had very little time to give thought to this or other general matters. That wreck in the yard the night before had balled the service up badly.
The Midnight Flyer had got out ten minutes late and Byron Marks had been unable to make up even that small handicap in the four hours’ run to Hammerfest. There was a protest from the general manager about this. It did not touch Ralph’s department, of course; but it was sent to him in duplicate. He knew that the supervisor would be red hot.
When Marks brought his train back that day he had managed to make time. Ralph himself had kept the tracks clear for him, and the old fellow should have been thankful. But Mr. Hopkins met the express on the platform as it steamed to a stop.
In that cold voice of his, and with a careful selection of words that bit like acid on a man’s soul, the supervisor reprimanded the old engineer before his crew and all the idlers who had gathered around. It was an unkind thing to do; and yet, there was good reason for the supervisor’s anger.
Ralph stood by and listened. The locomotive that drew the flyer and this return train was practically new. It was the latest thing in a coal-burning, Class-A locomotive. Marks had every chance, it would seem, to make the schedule, close as it was. Another driver could have done it, Ralph was sure.
The old engineer swung down from the cab and allowed one of his firemen to take the machine out to the roundhouse. He had his lunch-can and coat with him. He stood like a whipped dog and took the tongue-lashing the supervisor gave to him. Ralph had to go away from there. He could not listen to it. Byron Marks did not possess a proper sense of his own position.
The young train dispatcher hoped that the old man would ask for a substitute for the next run. But he appeared at night in season to take the big locomotive out of the roundhouse. He had one virtue, at least. Stubbornness.
That day had been an anxious one around divisional headquarters. Ralph had gone home for supper as usual; but he had come right downtown again. The strikers were holding a continuous meeting in Beeman Hall and the police were in attendance to keep the speakers from going too far. It was told Ralph that many yardmen, switchmen and section men had attended the meeting and that the small unions of railroad workers were all but disorganized.
One shop was running with a crippled crew. The supervisor certainly was efficient himself. He could report that the wheels in that shop were turning. Ralph saw that Mr. Hopkins was on the job this evening. Plainclothes men, belonging to the railroad squad, were on duty about the terminal, roundhouse, and yard.
Every hour or so some part of the planned schedule for the trains on the division had to be scrapped. Ralph was glad he was on hand this evening when these changes had to be made. Johnny was a good man, but he was beginning to get rattled. And a train dispatcher who loses his head endangers everything.
It was along in the evening and the traffic was easing up for a while in the terminal yards when a message addressed to “Chief Dispatcher, Rockton” came over the wire, and Johnny took it off.
“Shadow Valley,” he said. “That is where the Midnight Flyer always loses time. What kind of country is that?”
“A wild place. The Shadow Valley Station is at this end; Oxford is at the far end. Some fifty miles long. The Midnight Flyer stops at both stations. Little but timber towns in between. Great tourist country in the summer. Hullo! What’s this?”
“It’s in code, I reckon,” said Johnny, seeing Ralph’s puzzled face. “Haven’t you got the key? It is aimed at you, all right.”
Ralph repeated the message aloud:
“What is Whitey M. doing in Shadow Valley? Wake up B. A.—X. Y. Z.”
“That is as mysterious as a hobo Mulligan,” remarked Johnny, grinning.
“What do you know about that!” muttered Ralph, and without explaining to his assistant he went to the telephone booth with the telegram in his hand.
He was so well acquainted with the vagaries of Zeph Dallas’ mind that he knew at once this was his signature. Zeph had just that twist to his mind that, if he were sent for a pail of milk, he would try to disguise both himself and the milk.
“There must be something doing over there at Shadow Valley,” muttered Ralph. “And ‘Whitey M.’ means just one person, and one only. I haven’t seen that fellow since we had the run-in with him that night in the alley. Humph!”
He called down to the supervisor’s office. If Bob Adair was in Rockton, Ralph believed the supervisor would know how to reach him. Ralph knew that Mr. Hopkins was in the building. But he was surprised to hear his voice almost immediately answer the telephone call.
The young fellow would have been even more surprised could he have seen who was with the supervisor at this hour. A man in a long dark coat and slouch hat had come into the supervisor’s office unannounced not many minutes before. Mr. Hopkins had evidently been expecting him.
“Well, what do you find?” asked Hopkins, pushing his cigar box toward the visitor and lighting a cigar himself. Somehow the supervisor did not consider the use of tobacco an inefficient thing.
“Nothing to put our finger on as yet, Mr. Hopkins,” was the reply. “Of course we might arrest McCarrey and his right-hand man, Falk. But we should have to let them go again for lack of holding evidence. There was a time—during the war—when we could have stopped them. But not now. Now a man can fire off his mouth about as much as he likes without getting into trouble. These fellows aim their talk at the railroad, not at the Government.”
“You should be able to get them on some count,” declared Hopkins, smoking energetically. “McCarrey is stirring up the strikers to make trouble. I have had a written threat that the express passenger trains will be stopped. You know what that would mean.”
“All bull,” said the other shortly.
“Perhaps. And perhaps not. I was hooted at by a gang as I came downtown to-night. They will soon begin to throw missiles and break windows.”
“Then we will have them, individually,” said the visitor, with some satisfaction.
“Ha!” grumbled Mr. Hopkins. “Somebody lights a fire and you retrieve the burned match. But you don’t stop the fire. The fellows you arrest for throwing stones—or cabbages—will not be the dangerous ones. McCarrey and Falk and those others go scot-free.”
“They are too sharp to really break the law—unless it is with their mouths,” the other admitted.
“You should be able to round up the whole gang of trouble-instigators and put them in jail.”
“You expect the impossible.”
“I do not know that. You have only just now come to Rockton——”
“I have had my men here. One of my helpers spotted that hide-out I tell you about—with the help of young Ralph Fairbanks.”
“Ha! That fellow?”
“The smartest boy working for the Great Northern,” declared the visitor promptly. “That old ranch McCarrey and his men hang out in is a storehouse for liquors, I believe—and perhaps worse. I am having the place watched. But one of McCarrey’s closest friends has disappeared. Would certainly like to know what has become of Whitey Malone.”
It was just at this moment that the supervisor’s telephone rang. At this hour there were no clerks to answer the call. Mr. Hopkins excused himself and went into the booth and closed the door.
When he came out he was red with anger and his pale blue eyes flashed. His visitor appeared to overlook the supervisor’s disturbance. He said:
“This Whitey Malone has been McCarrey’s messenger and dirt-carrier. From the moment the shopmen struck, Whitey disappeared, so they tell me. I am going to send out a general order to apprehend the fellow wherever he is found. We will risk a little something. I understand he is really on probation and the magistrate might send him to jail if he appears not to be working.”
The supervisor evidently had his own matters to think of. He did not even grunt.
“I wonder if Ralph Fairbanks knows anything about Whitey,” considered Hopkins’ visitor aloud, and slyly watching the supervisor.
The question finally brought the latter to life. He flushed up to his bald brow.
“That fellow? He is perfectly useless. I will put a flea into the directors’ ears about him,” Hopkins snarled, with unusual show of his feelings.
The other got up, lazily stretched himself and nodded. “Just so. Matter of opinion, Mr. Hopkins,” he said. “Some of us think quite well of Ralph. You see, we have known him since he was a kid-hostler about the roundhouse. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” returned Barton Hopkins shortly.