On advance of time

“Again I ask you, Elsie Macumber, will you marry me?”

“Me, Elsie Macumber, the daughter of a full time engineer on the Pennsy railroad, marry the likes of you, Sam Dobinski? You what’s only a hostler down at the round house! Isn’t it fine nerve you’re possessin’.”

“Because I’m a hostler y’ won’t marry me, eh?” Dobinski punctuated his sentence with a large stream of tobacco juice, as if he wanted to lay all the dust about the signal tower where they were standing. “Because you got fine black hair and pretty black eyes and a hell of a pride you won’t marry a Polack like me. Because you got a pretty face you think you can marry any man on the division, and so you snaps your fingers at a hostler. Tell me once, what was your father when he first went to work on this line?”

“No, Sammy, you’re a hostler. That’s bad enough, but it ain’t the real reason I won’t marry y’. It’s because I don’t love you, that’s what. I would marry the devil, or even a hostler if I was sure I loved him, but if I was dead sure I didn’t love him I wouldn’t marry the guardian angel of Saint Peter, if he was t’ ask me for me heart and hand, and offer me a crown of glory t’ boot. ’Tain’t pride, Sam Dobinski. It’s just me.”

“It’s five times I’ve asked you, and----”

“And if it was fifty times I’d still be sayin’ no, just as I do now. You better stick to that little Duch girl, Marie Gross, that I saw you cuddlin’ down in the park th’ other evening. The man I love has got to be taller than I am, and brave. Y’ ain’t neither.”

“Y’ say I’m not brave, eh?” Sam flushed to the roots of his hair, although his reaction was nearly obscured by his coat of grease and soot. His beady eyes narrowed down the dangerous slits, and the hammer he held in his hand swung dangerously back and forth. “What for do you say that?”

“You know why, Sam Dobinski. Last Saturday you let that young wop dare y’ to be seen again with Marie, an’ y’ didn’t knock his teeth out then and there. And here it is Wednesday an’ you ain’t had a date with her since, an’ what’s more y’ ain’t even asked her for one. She told me so herself. So be off with y’ now, and don’t ask me no more.”

A heavy freight, headed out of Toledo for Mansfield, Ohio, came slowly along the track, and as it passed Elsie handed a dinner pail up to one of the brakemen who boarded with her family. Sam, who had been waiting for clearance on this track in order to drive a free engine down to the round house, climbed deliberately up into the cab, but his blood was boiling furiously.

Elsie, with the long free stride of a big strong girl who has never learned the art of “cultured” walking, swung round the tender of the engine, and started across lots toward the high road. As she did so, Sam grasped the throttle and gave it a vicious jerk.

There was a snort of steam hissing through the valves, as the huge drivers slipped swiftly on the rails, unable to get traction so suddenly. Instead of easing up on the steam pressure, Sam Dobinski, furiously opening the sand pipes, poured sand on the rails. The huge drivers, hissing and screeching, tried to take hold, but went on spinning ineffectually.

Elsie, hearing the racket, glanced back over her shoulder, and remarked to herself, “The blame fool, treatin’ a perfectly good engine like that just because a woman tells him the truth about himself!” Then she continued along her path, ruminating as she went. “Imagine me, a strappin’ big Irish lass, married t’ a little runt of a Polack like Sam. Just picture the census taker a-comin’ to the door. ‘Sure now, and who are you that lives here,’ says he, polite like a raisin’ of his hat. And lookin’ at the likes o’ me he expects t’ hear a good soundin’ name that reeks o’ the Emerald Isle, somethin’ like--well, just for fun let’s say Mrs. Patrick O’Hara.”

If a certain young giant of a brakemen on the Toledo division had heard that last observation he would have made the fur fly proposing to Elsie Macumber. But then if he had been there the remark would never have been made.

Perhaps it was the fact that she had a date with Patrick for that evening that put his name in her mind, and there may have been a bit more to it than that.

“But instead of sayin’ Mrs. Patrick O’Hara,” Elsie said to herself, “I blushes an’ says, Mrs. Sam Dobinski. Then the census man gets even more polite because he thinks sure I’m lyin’ to him, but he writes the name in the book because it’s his business to record souls and not to save them. ‘And how many little Dobinski’s be there,’ he says. ‘Fourteen,’ says I, feelin’ a wee bit embarrassed.”

Elsie burst into a roar of laughter at the idea of herself as the mother of children named Dobinski, and continued across the lots, wondering how long it would be before Patrick O’Hara would have nerve enough to--well, to stop hesitating and get down to the business of buying a ring for her.

“If the great big handsome ox weren’t such a bashful, blushin’ thing, I could have lined him up weeks ago.”

Meanwhile Dobinski recovered sufficiently from his wrath to realize that he was abusing one of Mr. Baldwin’s best locomotives. He curtailed the steam until the drivers began to behave themselves as their inventor intended they should, and the engine moved smoothly off down the siding, crossed over onto the now vacated down track, and proceeded toward the round house.

When Dobinski put the engine in its stall he went about his customary duties, but his fellow workmen declared he swore even more viciously than usual, and they observed that he barked his knuckles by giving an extra hard jerk on a nut he was tightening.

Finally they saw him pick up his hammer and walk deliberately across the round house to a pit where a young Italian was working, and without any warning he fell upon his victim so viciously that the man had to be carried to the hospital for facial repairs.

Only the timely interference of the workmen prevented Dobinski from killing the fellow with the hammer. In the language of the round house “the runt Polack was in one hell of a rage.”

At noon, when Dobinski went off duty, instead of going to the “hash house” for grub, he proceeded to get royally drunk, and during the process gave public vent to uncomplimentary remarks about “that damned stuck up Macumber girl.” By the time his companions carried him to his room Dobinski was in a fine mood to commit murder.

II.

In the small hours of the morning the next day the Pittsburgh-Detroit Express, running on a seven hour schedule, drew into Mansfield, one hour behind time. Heavy weather on the first part of the run, had slowed the train down and forced Macumber, the engineer, to lose time.

At Mansfield the station master handed him an “advance of time” order, which meant that Macumber was to do his best to make up the lost hour, so that the crack express train could live up to its reputation for arriving on time in Detroit. Under such an order the engineer knew he would have clear track all the way, that all the block signals would flash “green eyes” at him as his train roared past.

Once out of Mansfield, Macumber opened up the throttle. For fifteen years he had made this run, and he knew every mile of the track thoroughly, knew just how much time he dared to make every inch of the way.

He sat with his hand on the throttle and watched the steam gage climb, while the fireman worked furiously keeping up the pressure. At every mile Macumber glanced at the block signals to be sure of his clearance ahead, although his orders practically assured him that his track was clear.

The white lights of one small town after another flashed into view, and quickly faded away in the rear of the on-rushing train. Sixty miles an hour the gage registered, and then slowly climbed to sixty-five, and still more slowly crept up toward seventy.

Passengers, asleep in their berths, woke up under the swift motion, and the more accustomed ones congratulated themselves on the fine time the train was making. Some, not so anxious for speed, lay nervously awake and worried over the furious pace, while the train plunged on through the gradually graying dawn towards Toledo, its first scheduled stop.

At five o’clock the train flashed past the Walbridge block that marks the entrance to the Toledo yards. A heavy fog hung low over the Maumee valley, making sight ahead impossible beyond a very short range.

Half way up the yards on the down track, waiting for clearance papers from the yard master, stood the early freight headed for Pittsburgh. Patrick O’Hara, the brakeman on this train, had walked forward to talk to the engineer until the train was ready to pull out. Both men heard the shriek of the whistle on the express as the train plunged through the yards.

“He’s making sixty, and all the time I’ve been on the road,” declared O’Hara, “I’ve never known him to go through the yards a mile above forty.”

“You’re allowed all the tracks will stand on an advance of time order,” replied his companion, “but I’d hate to be making that speed through all these switches.”

They both stared ahead into the fog to see the express shoot into view. At that instant, and much to his amazement, O’Hara thought he saw a free engine moving slowly along a switch track parallel with the up track along which the express was advancing. He knew the siding ran out onto the main not twenty yards ahead of the place where he was standing.

He calculated the speed of both the engine and the express and realized that the free engine would arrive on the main not very far in advance of the express, and too close to the express to allow time for stopping before a collision occurred.

He spoke to the freight engineer about it, but the man assured him that the up track switch signal showed a green eye, which meant that the derail on the siding would prevent anything from arriving on the main ahead of the express. But in spite of this assurance, O’Hara continued to strain his eyes as he gazed into the heavy fog ahead and watched the ghostly form of the free engine creeping over the rails.

Then he heard an ominous click which he instantly recognized as the lifting of the hand control of the derailing device.

Visibility was so low, due to the dense fog, that he could not distinguish the person who lifted the derailer. Was it possible the infernal fool did not know the express was thundering along the up track at that very instant?

Everybody in the yard had been discussing the speed which constant telegraphic reports indicated Macumber to be making. Yet here was some stupid hostler letting a free engine out onto the main at a moment when a wreck would be inevitable.

There was no doubt about the derailer having been lifted, because the free engine, without a pilot, glided out onto the up-track. The freight engineer turned pale as he realized what was about to happen.