CHAPTER XII
McGUIRE GOES WEST
Havingsaved the White Mail from a watery grave in the washout at West Silver Creek, and having also been instrumental in preventing the robbery of the Midnight Express at Casey’s Tank, Tommy McGuire, the pump boy, was the most celebrated employee in the service of the Vandalia Line. The head of the average boy would have been turned with so much attention, but Tommy had inherited the democratic simplicity of his plain parents, and, with the exception of a scarcely perceptible throwing out of his chest, there was no apparent change in his mien when he stepped from the train at St. Jacobs after his eventful visit to East St. Louis. His mother had come up from the bridge to meet him.
“Ah, Tommy, darlint,” she cried, clasping the boy in her arms, “they do be afther makin’ a regular little jude uv ye, so they do, so they do.”
Tommy kissed his mother, and put her from him as though she had been a child. He straightened his hat, that had been displaced, buttoned the top button on his store coat, and offered his hand to the agent, who now came forward to congratulate the young hero. It is to the boy’s credit that he invariably colored a little when complimented upon his heroism in preventing the Casey robbery. He could not help recalling the fact that he was himself hiding from the police when he overheard the desperadoes planning to hold up the train. To be sure, he and his friend, little Jack, had committed no offence, but they thought they had.
Tommy had been home but a few days when he was ordered to report to the President of the road at Indianapolis. The President was favorably impressed by the boy’s modesty. He sent him to the General Passenger Agent, who, finding that Tommy could read fairly well, set him reading the newspapers, clipping out and pasting on a broad piece of cardboard the daily comments of the press upon the road and its management. Upon another card he pasted the market and stock reports, and upon stillanother the railway news of the day, the name of the paper from which the cutting came being written at the bottom of each item. All this was for the convenience of busy officials. Tommy was greatly interested in his new work, and in a little while became expert. When he opened a newspaper his eye swept the page, and if there were a cap. “V” or an “R” he would catch it almost instantly and read what was said of the Vandalia or of railroads in general. There is no work in the passenger department of a railroad that does not sharpen the intellect and quicken the eye. The office of the General Passenger Agent is a school of itself, and a boy beginning with a very limited education will come out of such an office in a few years with an edge on him that would let him pass for at least a high school graduate. Tommy read constantly. He read the advertisements of the Vandalia and of other roads as well, and made comparisons. He ventured one day to call the attention of the Assistant General Passenger Agent to the plain, prosy unattractiveness of the company’s advertising matter. He showed the ads. of a number of other lines,and famous soap display ads., and suggested a picture of the White Mail. The cut was made and proved very attractive, for the reason that nobody had ever seen a train of white cars in print before.
The editorial page of a New York daily, famous then as now for its clean type and clean English, attracted the boy’s notice, and he read it religiously every day. The General Passenger Agent remembered distinctly that the boy had declared with characteristic frankness at their first meeting that he “didn’t know nothing about the passenger business.”
He noticed that the young man’s form of speech had undergone a wonderful change. This was due to the fact that Tommy McGuire was remarkably observing. His daily intercourse was with the higher clerks and officials of the road. These men were his teachers,—these and the great editor in Nassau Street, whom he had never seen.
When winter and the dull times came, the General Passenger Agent persuaded Tommy to go to school. He objected to losing so much time, but, when assured that he could have hisold place back in the spring, with an increase of pay, he consented. He attended a little college for boys, in St. Louis.
Tommy was as industrious in school as he had been in the office, and came back to his desk much improved. For three years he attended school in winter and worked in the office of the General Passenger Agent in summer. He was no longer the office boy, but the “Advertising Manager” for the passenger department of the line.
His friend, little Jack, having outgrown the clothes of a messenger boy, was now braking on a through passenger run, and so the boys renewed their acquaintance. Jack was also a great reader. His leisure hours were devoted to the study of the labor problem. He was much worried over the prospects of the workingman. He was one of those good, misguided souls who are ever on the alert for a grievance. Peace appeared to trouble his mind. “But what’s the good of it all?” Tommy would ask.
“Mutual protection to elevate the general tone of the workingman.”
“But, if everybody works and succeeds, we’llall be at the front, Jack, old boy. My notion is that a great deal depends upon individual effort.”
But Jack would not be comforted. He gave so much time and thought to his brother brakemen that he neglected his own job. He would forget his flags, and one night went out on the Midnight Express with no oil in his lamps. He had been reported by the conductor, but the trainmaster, knowing the sad history of his family, let him off with a sharp lecture. But a man in train service must have his mind on his work, and so it fell out that the pale, thoughtful Jack forgot to close the switch at Greenville one night, and put a fast freight, that was following the express, in the ditch.
For that inexcusable carelessness he was discharged, and it was not until Tommy had almost exhausted his influence at the general office that he was re-employed as flagman on a work-train.
Mary, Jack’s sister, had written Tommy from the convent at St. Louis, urging him to help her unfortunate brother, who seemed to be in bad repute with the officials, who apparently had forgotten that poor Jack “had risked his life”to save the Midnight Express from train robbers when a mere boy.
Tommy, remembering the sad face of the girl who had been the one close friend of his brief childhood, did what he could for her brother, but he would have done that without the letter.
Out of his savings Tommy had helped his father to build a new house at Silver Creek, and when he saw the old folks comfortably settled in it, he was contented, or as nearly so as an ambitious, aspiring youth looking for promotion can be.
Alas, for the uncertainty of railroading! Eternal vigilance, it may be said, is the price of a job. A man must so live and work, that when he leaves one road another will be waiting for him.
The Vandalia elected a new President. A new General Manager was appointed and a general cleaning out followed.
The Passenger Agent, who had taken so much interest in Tommy, retired for a time, and Tommy determined to go West and grow up with the railroads of that region.
He made a long visit at St. Jacobs, and found that his little sweetheart was dead to the world. She had taken the veil, and so shut herself away from the world that had ever seemed hard and heartless to her.
It was with a sense of pride and a shade of sadness that the agent at St. Jacobs said good-bye to hisprotégé, who boarded the Highland accommodation with a heart full of hope and a ticket for Denver.