RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER

THE FIRE WAS SWEEPING CLOSER AND CLOSER.

RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER CHAPTER ITHE TROUBLE-MAKER

“What do you think, Ralph? Would any of our Great Northern employees be foolish enough to join this wildcat strike?”

“Well, what do you think yourself?” asked Ralph Fairbanks, with some impatience in his tone. “You know these roughnecks as well as I do.”

The general manager, in whose office at Rockton they were sitting, threw up both hands and fairly snorted his disgust.

“I’ve been a long time at the railroad game,” he declared; “but I never yet understood the psychology of a maintenance of way man. No, sir. In some things they are as loyal to the road as I am myself. And then they suddenly go off at a tangent because of something that, for the life of me, I cannot see is important.”

“There lies the difficulty—the germ of the whole trouble,” Ralph Fairbanks said thoughtfully.

He was a young fellow of attractive personality—good looking, too. The girls had begun to notice the young railroader, and had he not been so thoroughly devoted to his calling—and to the finest mother a fellow ever had—Ralph might have been somewhat spoiled by the admiration accorded him in certain quarters.

Just now, however, having been called in from the train dispatchers’ department where he worked, the young fellow’s attention was deeply engaged in the subject the general manager had brought up. Ralph was an extraordinary employee of the Great Northern. His superiors trusted him thoroughly. And having worked his way up from the roundhouse, switch tower, as fireman and engineer, to the train dispatcher’s grade, he was often called upon by the railroad officials for special duties.

The general manager stared at the young fellow after his last remark for fully a minute before asking:

“What do you mean by that? What is the germ of the whole trouble?”

“The fact that the officials cannot see things just as the men see them.”

“Oh!”

“No getting away from the fact that the laborer seldom looks at a thing as his superior looks at it,” Ralph pursued earnestly. “A rule promulgated by some officer of the road seems to him the simplest way of getting at a needed result. But after it is spread on the board at the roundhouse, for instance, it creates a riot.”

“So it does. And I am hanged if I have been able to understand in some cases why the men go off half-cocked over some simple thing.”

“Not simple at all to them. It is often a rule that lops off some cherished privilege. It may be something that looks as though it were aimed at the laborer’s independence.”

“Bah!” ejaculated the general manager with more than a little disdain in his tone.

“You see!” laughed Ralph. “You can’t see it in the same way that I can, for instance. You make an order, say, changing the style of the caps the men wear around the roundhouse and switch towers, and see what a row you’ll have on your hands. Some ‘lawyer’ among ’em will see a deliberate attempt for somebody to graft—or worse. Those caps they get for a quarter and can buy in the little stores that crop up around every railroad yard. The hogheads and firemen wear them. Everybody wears them. You order that the cap hereafter worn shall be quite different from the present cap, and you’ll start something that you’ll never be able to stop save by buckling down to the boys.”

“But why?” demanded the official. “Tell me! What is the reason? Another cap might not cost them a penny more——”

“Or might not cost them as much. That would make no difference. You strike at his independence in changing the style of the cap. And his independence is the most cherished possession of the railroader. You should know that.”

“I know that they think they are independent,” growled the general manager. “But like the rest of us, they are just about as independent as the hog on the cake of ice.”

The young train dispatcher laughed again. He could really appreciate the mental attitude of both the disgruntled railroad workers, at this time stirred up all over the country from ocean to ocean, and the higher officials of the road, who realized fully that unless all branches of the railroad pulled together during the next few months there would surely come financial wreckage to many systems.

The Great Northern was really in better circumstances than many trunk lines at the time. But on the division the headquarters of which were here in Rockton, friction had developed. The shopmen talked strike; the yardmen were disgruntled; the section hands of the division talked more than they worked. Altogether the situation was so serious that the general manager himself found it necessary to look the field over.

And it was not strange that he should have called Ralph Fairbanks into conference. Young as the latter was, he was a link between the officials and the workmen at large.

“Look here, Ralph,” said the general manager suddenly, swinging about in his chair with one leg over its arm and pointing his lighted cigar at the young fellow, “I’m going to ask you a pointed question. What do you think of Bart Hopkins?”

“Mr. Hopkins—the division super?” returned Ralph briskly and looking straight into the general manager’s face. “I think that Mr. Hopkins has a lovely daughter. As the boys say, she’s a peach!”

“No,” replied the general manager gloomily, “she’s a Cherry—a different kind of fruit. But I am not asking your opinion of Cherry Hopkins. How about Bart?”

“I guess I haven’t been thinking much about him,” confessed Ralph slowly. “He has been here in charge for three months, and to tell the truth I have not spoken to him half-a-dozen times. He has nothing to do, of course, with the dispatchers’ department. Mr. Hopkins is a pleasant-spoken man.”

“You know blamed well that I am not asking, either, about Bart Hopkins’ social qualities,” said the exasperated general manager. “What do you think of him as a railroad man? What is he doing here?”

A flash of feeling came into Ralph Fairbanks’ face and he looked steadily at his old friend and superior.

“What did you expect him to do here?”

“Confound it all! I don’t want to be catechised. I want you to answer me. I want to know what you think of the man’s work?”

“You want it straight, then, do you?” asked Ralph sharply.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then I think he will end in setting everybody by the ears and bringing on a strike that may spread to every division of the Great Northern. You have forced this answer from me. Remember, you must not quote me.”

“I won’t snitch,” said the general manager, with a wry grin. “I understand. Then you take the men’s view of Bart? You believe he is a trouble-maker?”

“As sure as you are two feet high!” exclaimed Ralph, with conviction.

“Huh! He has already brought about changes that have saved the division a mint of money.”

“The other changes he has made will cost the road a good deal more—if there is a strike.”

“Actually, do you believe there will be a strike, Ralph?”

“If Andy McCarrey has his way, there will be. And Mr. Hopkins is playing right into McCarrey’s hands.”

“I can’t believe that Bart would deliberately do anything to bring on trouble.”

“No. But he’s been bitten by the efficiency bug. The swelling is a terrible one,” said Ralph, smiling again. “Mr. Hopkins can’t seem to see things at all from the men’s standpoint. As I said before, an inability to see the effect of an order on the men’s minds is the germ of most friction between the laborers and the railroad heads. McCarrey is a bad man. He wants to lead a strike. Naturally a strike will put a lot of money in McCarrey’s hands. These strike leaders do as they please with strike funds—there is never any check on them.

“Besides, as I believe, he has a personal enmity for Mr. Hopkins. Somewhere in the East, where Hopkins came from, McCarrey got a grudge against him.”

“Yes, I understand Barton Hopkins was in the middle of some trouble on the Eastern Shore Railroad. He is a stormy petrel. But he is making good here. He has saved us money,” reiterated the general manager.

“Well, if money is more to the Great Northern than a loyal band of employees,” said Ralph with some bitterness, as he got up from his chair, “then you have got just what you want in Mr. Hopkins. I’m telling you that I see trouble ahead. And it is coming soon.”

Ralph Fairbanks felt deeply regarding the situation which had arisen in Rockton. When he walked down past the railroad shops a little later on his way home and looked in at the open windows, he could not fail to notice that the shopmen were talking together in groups instead of being busy at their various jobs.

“Looks bad,” muttered Ralph. “I hated to knock the new super. Especially when he has got such a pretty daughter,” and he smiled reminiscently.

Suddenly he started and then quickened his steps. Ahead of him he saw a trimly dressed figure crossing the railroad at Hammerby Street. He could not mistake the girl. Not when she had been in his mind the previous instant.

Miss Cherry Hopkins was a pronounced blonde. It was at the time when bobbed hair was popular, and bobbed hair added to Cherry’s chic appearance. She was slim, and of good figure. She wore a silk sweater, a sport skirt, and a hat that was in keeping.

The girl crossed the tracks and reached the sidewalk on the other side. There were no dwellings near; only warehouses. And save for a group of roughly dressed men loitering behind the flagman’s shanty, there were few people near the crossing.

Suddenly Ralph saw something that caused him to dart forward, shouting angrily:

“Look out, Miss Cherry! Look out!”

The girl flashed a look behind her. Fortunately she dodged involuntarily at Ralph Fairbanks’ cry, for the next instant a missile flew over her shoulder and crashed against the end of the warehouse. Had it struck the girl it would have hurt her seriously.

CHAPTER IIDISCIPLINE

An over-ripe cabbage may be a dangerous missile. This one exploded almost like a bomb against the warehouse, spattering Cherry Hopkins all over. She screamed and ran back toward Ralph Fairbanks. A harsh voice shouted:

“Poor shot! Yer oughter smashed that Hopkins gal, Whitey.”

Ralph saw that the group of fellows behind the flagman’s shack had scattered. One long-legged fellow was ahead and evidently in some fear of apprehension.

“You wait right here, Miss Cherry!” the young dispatcher cried. “I’m going to try to get that fellow.”

He dashed along the tracks and through an alley of which he knew. He hoped to head off the fellow called “Whitey,” who he was quite sure had thrown the cabbage.

But when he came out upon North Main Street he could not see any sign of the hoodlum. He looked into several small stores and tenement house halls, but the fellow had made good his escape.

When he returned by the way of Hammerby Street he saw Cherry Hopkins trying to wipe the decayed vegetable matter off her sweater and skirt. Her pretty hat was likewise stained. When Ralph came near enough he saw that the girl had been crying.

No man or boy likes to see a girl weep.

Ralph hesitated, not knowing what to say to Cherry Hopkins. He had never been more than casually acquainted with the supervisor’s daughter; but he did admire her.

Ralph could not have failed to attract the young girl’s attention during the three months she had spent in Rockton. In the first place, almost everybody in the small but thriving city knew the young train dispatcher.

In the first story about Ralph, “Ralph of the Roundhouse,” the young fellow’s beginnings on the Great Northern were fully related. His father had been one of the builders of the Great Northern, but through unfortunate speculations he had died poor and left Ralph and his mother to struggle along as best they could. In addition, Mr. Fairbanks’ partner, Gaspar Farrington, had been dishonest, and had Ralph and his widowed mother at his mercy.

How Ralph checkmated Farrington as well as the exciting incidents of his career in the roundhouse is all narrated in that first volume of the series.

In ensuing volumes the young fellow’s career as towerman, fireman, engineer, and in the different grades of dispatcher, is told in full. The sixth volume, “Ralph on the Army Train,” is the story of the youth’s work in that great part which the railroaders took in the war. By Ralph’s individual effort, a heavily loaded train of our boys bound for the embarking port was taken through to safety in spite of a plot to wreck the train.

He was now, some months later, back on his old job as chief dispatcher of this division of the Great Northern. He might have had a good position on the main line; but, in taking it, he would have had to sacrifice some independence and, more than all, must have given up the little home he and his mother owned in Rockton and removed the widow from surroundings that she loved.

“My chance to get a good thing will come again,” Ralph had told Mrs. Fairbanks. “And really, I am my own boss here. Even Barton Hopkins can’t tell me where to get off.”

For divisional supervisor Hopkins had soon become very much disliked. He was a good railroader—no doubt of that. But he should have been a drill-master in a military school rather than the head of a division of a railroad at a time when almost every railroad employee felt that he had been whipsawed between the Government and his employing railroad.

Hopkins lacked tact; he saw nothing but the job and what he could make of it. His god was discipline! He was upright and honest, but, as the saying goes, he bent over backwards when he stood erect. And Ralph Fairbanks was pretty thoroughly convinced that grave trouble was brewing because of Mr. Hopkins’ methods.

Just at this moment, however, it was Cherry Hopkins in whose affairs the young dispatcher was deeply interested. As she tried to wipe the stains from her skirt and “sniffled” back her tears, Ralph approached slowly.

“Now, Miss Cherry,” he begged, “don’t cry about it. If I could have caught that fellow I would have handed him over to one of the road’s policemen. It didn’t really hurt you——”

“I’m just as mad, Ralph Fairbanks, as I can be!” interrupted the girl, with heat. “And it is always the way wherever we go. The railroad men seem to hate us all.”

“Indeed?” rejoined Ralph thoughtfully. “Have you been troubled in Rockton before this?”

“Of course I have. And mother, too. We have been followed on the street, and booed and hissed. Father doesn’t mind——”

“I am quite sure he has not reported it to the chief detective of the road, Mr. Bob Adair.”

“Father would not report such a thing. He considers it beneath notice.”

“I’ll say that cabbage was not beneath notice!” cried Ralph. “If it had hit you—well! Come along, Miss Cherry. Let me see you home.”

“Oh, I don’t want to trouble you, Mr. Fairbanks.”

“You know I live in your direction,” said Ralph, pleasantly. “We’ll walk along together. And you tell me, Miss Cherry, who these fellows are who have insulted your mother and you.”

“Oh, dear me, how do I know who they are?” cried the girl, despairingly. “They are low fellows, of course. And many of them are just boys—loafers. They do not even work for the Great Northern.”

“But their fathers and brothers do, I suppose?” ruminated Ralph.

“I suppose so. You see, we have to cross the railroad to do our shopping. When we come into this district, if there is a group of idlers hanging around they are almost sure to call after us. It is not pleasant.”

“It should be reported. But, of course, it is your father’s business,” said Ralph thoughtfully. “I might speak to Mr. Adair. He is a friend of mine. But unless Mr. Hopkins sanctioned any move against the rowdies, I am afraid——”

“I wish you would come in and talk to father about it,” Cherry cried eagerly. “He might listen to you.”

“Is he at home at this hour?” asked the young dispatcher doubtfully. “I don’t know about saying anything to him regarding a private matter.”

“I want him to know how you drove those fellows away,” she said. “Do come in. You know my father, don’t you?”

“Slightly. We do not come in contact much,” Ralph said slowly.

“You will like him, Mr. Fairbanks,” said the girl earnestly. “He is really a wonderful man. Wherever he has held a position the company has been glad of his services. He is marvelously efficient. And he is forever planning improvements and scheming out ways of saving money for the road. Oh, yes, they all admire him.”

“The men, too?” Ralph asked shrewdly.

“Oh! The laborers? I don’t know about that.”

“Quite an important point, I assure you,” said Ralph grimly. “No matter how much money an official saves the road, if he doesn’t hold the confidence and liking of the general run of railroad workers, he is distinctly not a success.”

“Oh! Do you believe that?” she cried.

“I know it. Railroad workers are the most clannish men in the world. If they have worked long for a particular road they are as loyal to that road as though they owned it. And they resent any meddling with the usual routine of affairs. You have got to handle them with gloves. I fancy, Miss Cherry,” added Ralph somewhat grimly, “that your father has thrown away his gloves.”

They just then came to the Hopkins house. It was one of the best houses in the section of Rockton in which Ralph and his mother lived. It was rather far from the railroad and the railroad tenements; so supervisor Hopkins’ employees were not likely to be seen often.

“Come in—do,” urged Cherry, opening the gate. “There’s father at the library window.”

The young dispatcher saw Barton Hopkins looking through the pane. He was a man with a very high forehead, colorless complexion, a high-arched nose upon which were set astride a pair of shell-rimmed eyeglasses, which masked pale blue eyes. One could warm up to a chunk of ice about as readily as one could to Mr. Barton Hopkins.

And yet, Ralph was sure, there was not a thing the matter with the supervisor save that he was not human! He was a machine. His mental powers were not lubricated with either charity or an interest in the personal affairs of his fellow men.

He stared without a semblance of emotion at Ralph Fairbanks as Cherry urged the latter into the library and introduced the young fellow.

“Oh, yes. I know Mr. Fairbanks,” said Mr. Hopkins, and looked the visitor over as though he questioned if he might not in some way show Ralph how to be more efficient in his job.

When Cherry explained volubly how she had been attacked by the rowdies at the railroad crossing and Ralph had come to her assistance, Mr. Hopkins rose and shook hands with the visitor again. But his second handshake was exactly like the first one. Ralph thought of grasping a dead fish!

“There are too many unemployed men hanging about the yards,” said the supervisor in his decisive way, after Cherry had excused herself in order to change to a clean dress. “I am about to point that out to our police department. They should either be given a sentence to the farm or be run out of town.”

“A good many of those idlers have been employees of the road. Their homes are here. It is not exactly their fault that they have been thrown out of work. And they do not understand why they should be idle.”

“What is that to the Great Northern?” demanded the supervisor with some hauteur. “A railroad is a corporation doing business for gain. It is not a charitable organization.”