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By Root 4718 0

longer than many men who had advanced beyond him; this, he said, was proof of the social system’s injustice—though he never explained just what he meant by “the social system.” He had worked for many railroads, but had not stayed long with any one of them. His employers had had no specific misdeeds to charge against him, but had simply eased him out, because he said, “Nobody told me to!” too often. He did not know that he owed his present job to a deal between James Taggart and Wesley Mouch: when Taggart traded to Mouch the secret of his sister’s private life, in exchange for a raise in rates, Mouch made him throw in an extra favor, by their customary rules of bargaining, which consisted of squeezing all one could out of any given trade. The extra was a job for Dave Mitchum, who was the brother-in-law of Claude Slagenhop, who was the president of the Friends of Global Progress, who were regarded by Mouch as a valuable influence on public opinion. James Taggart pushed the responsibility of finding a job for Mitchum onto Clifton Locey. Locey pushed Mitchum into the first job that came up—superintendent of the Colorado Division—when the man holding it quit without notice. The man quit when the extra Diesel engine of Winston Station was given to Chick Morrison’s Special.

“What are we going to do?” cried Dave Mitchum, rushing, half-dressed and groggy with sleep, into his office, where the chief dispatcher, the trainmaster and the road foreman of engines were waiting for him.

The three men did not answer. They were middle-aged men with years of railroad service behind them. A month ago, they would have volunteered their advice in any emergency; but they were beginning to learn that things had changed and that it was dangerous to speak.

“What in hell are we going to do?”

“One thing is certain,” said Bill Brent, the chief dispatcher. “We can’t send a train into the tunnel with a coal-burning engine.”

Dave Mitchum’s eyes grew sullen: he knew that this was the one thought on all their minds; he wished Brent had not named it.

“Well, where do we get a Diesel?” he asked angrily.

“We don.‘t,” said the road foreman.

“But we can’t keep the Comet waiting on a siding all night!”

“Looks like we’ll have to,” said the trainmaster. “What’s the use of talking about it, Dave? You know that there is no Diesel anywhere on the division.”

“But Christ Almighty, how do they expect us to move trains without engines?”

“Miss Taggart didn.‘t,” said the road foreman. “Mr. Locey does.”

“Bill,” asked Mitchum, in the tone of pleading for a favor, “isn’t there anything transcontinental that’s due tonight, with any sort of a .Diesel?”

“The first one to come,” said Bill Brent implacably, “will be Number 236, the fast freight from San Francisco, which is due at Winston at seven-eighteen A.M.” He added, “That’s the Diesel closest to us at this moment. I’ve checked.”

“What about the Army Special?”

“Better not think about it, Dave. That one has superiority over everything on the line, including the Comet, by order of the Army. They’re running late as it is—journal boxes caught fire twice. They’re carrying munitions for the West Coast arsenals. Better pray that nothing stops them on your division. If you think we’ll catch hell for holding the Comet, it’s nothing to what we’ll catch if we try to stop that Special.”

They remained silent. The windows were open to the summer night and they could hear the ringing of the telephone in the dispatcher’s office downstairs. The signal lights winked over the deserted yards that had once been a busy division point.

Mitchum looked toward the roundhouse, where the black silhouettes of a few steam engines stood outlined in a dim light.

“The tunnel—” he said and stopped.

“—is eight miles long,” said the trainmaster, with a harsh emphasis.

“I was only thinking,” snapped Mitchum.

“Better not think of it,” said Brent softly.

“I haven’t said anything!”

“What was that talk you had with Dick Horton before he quit?” the road foreman asked too innocently, as if the subject were irrelevant. “Wasn’t it something about the