The Rainy Day Railroad War.

by Holman Day.

CHAPTER ONE

THE TRYING-OUT OF ONE RODNEY PARKER, a.s.sISTANT ENGINEER

All at once the stump-dotted, rocky hillside became clamorous and animated. From the little shacks sheathed with tarred paper, from the sodded huts, from burrows sunk into the hillside men suddenly came popping out with shrill cries.

Three men, shouldering surveying instruments, stopped in their tracks on the freshly-heaped soil of a new railroad embankment, and gazed up at the hillside. The railroad skirted its foot and the sudden activity on the slope was in full view. "Your lambs seem to be blatting around the fodder-rack once more, Parker," observed the man who lugged the transit.

He was a thin, elderly man and his tone was somewhat satirical.

The men were running toward a common center, uttering cries in shrill staccato and sounding like yelping dogs.

Parker drove the spurs of his tripod into the soft soil and stared up at the hillside, his tanned brow puckering with apprehension.

"I don't think there's much of the lamb to that rush," observed the third man; "they sound to me more like hyenas after raw meat."

"It will be Dominick they'll eat, then," said the elderly man.

"I'm afraid you put the Old Harry into 'em last week when you took their part and straightened out Dominick's bill of fare," he went on. "They probably think they can get quail on toast now if they yap for it."

"I believe in letting dagoes fight it out among themselves," announced the third man with much derision. "Helping one of 'em is like picking a hornet out of a puddle. You'll get stung while doing it."

The men on the hillside had knotted themselves into a jostling group before the door of a long, low structure sheathed with tarred paper like the shacks. In the sunshine an occasional glint flashed above their heads.

"Yes, their stingers are out," remarked the elderly man drily. "If they've got Dominick cornered in that eating camp I'm thinking this will be the day that he'll get his----whatever it is, they've laid up for him."

"He promised me there should be no more weevils and no more spoiled meat," cried the one who had been addressed as Parker, a young man whose earnest face now expressed deep trouble. "As matters were going, those Italians were half starved and doing hardly half a day's work in nine hours. Their padrone was putting the food rake-off into his own pocket."

"I'm not backing up Dominick," said the other. "But when you took the men's part and laid down the law to him on the grub question you gave them their cue for general rebellion. Ten chances to one the padrone has done as he agreed. I reckon you scared him enough for that. Now they're probably around with knives looking for napkins and sparkling red wine.

I tell you, Parker, you're inviting trouble when you go to boosting up what you call the oppressed mult.i.tude."

"That's a pretty hard view to take of the world and the people in it, Mr. Searles," replied the youth. "There ought to be a bit of merit and encouragement in a man's going out of his way to right a wrong."

"Well, Parker, I'm hired as construction engineer on the P. K. & R.

railroad system and I've worked for the road a good many years and found that I get along best when I am attending strictly to my own business in my own line. I told you at the time you b.u.t.ted into that dago row you were laying up trouble either for yourself or for some one else--and I guess it's some one else."

A series of pistol shots popped smartly on the hillside, the reports partly m.u.f.fled by the thin walls of the shack. The cries of the men outside became shrieks. The next instant the side wall bellied outward and then burst asunder. A man came hustling through the opening, evidently self-propelled, for he struck lightly on his feet and began to run down the steep hill. A soiled canvas ap.r.o.n fluttered at his waist.

Stones rained after him. The knot of men at the door scattered like quicksilver and howling runners pursued him.

Probably fear helped him as much as agility, for he kept well ahead of the rout, leaped a low fence at the bottom of the hill, scurried across a little valley and came floundering up the soft soil of the railroad embankment, scrambling toward the little group of engineers.

"It's Dominick," said Searles. "There seems to be a little more work cut out for you in your side line of philanthropist."

"I do it whatta you say," screamed the man as his head came over the edge of the embankment. "Nice! Good! All good to eat. But they want mucha more--too mucha!"

He struck himself repeated blows on the breast with one fist and pointed with the other hand at the men who came swarming up the side of the graded road bed.

"You coma look--look to the nice br-read, meat all good, beer--plenty much to eat, dr-rink!" the padrone gasped in appeal, as he circled about Parker to put him between the rioters and himself.

The men who came after, screaming and cursing, jerking their arms above their heads, rolling back their lips from their yellow teeth, were apparently so many lunatics whose frenzy was not to be stayed. But undisciplined natures whose excesses spring from lack of self control are all the more ready to respond to the masterful control of others.

First of all the men recognized in Parker the champion who had won their first rights from the padrone.

They stopped their shrill vituperation and, crowding about him, began to bleat their explanations and appeals. But he threw out his arms, pushed them back a safe distance from the panting Dominick and roared them into silence, brandishing his fists, as he would have quelled a noisy school.

When they understood that he wished them to be quiet they were silent, all leaning forward, their eyes shining, their lips apart, their fists clinched as tho they were holding their tongues in leash by that means, their dark, brown faces alight with wistful, almost palpitating eagerness. The regard they fixed on his face was baleful in its intentness.

"Looka what they do," yelled Dominick rushing to his side. He had stripped his sleeve back from his arm. Blood was trickling from a knife gash.

Then the tumult broke out again from the crowd. Two men leaped forward shaking their hats in their hands and screaming a.s.sertions and pointing quivering fingers at bullet holes in the crowns.

"Shut up!" barked the young man. The presence of the satiric and unsympathetic old engineer nerved him to settle the dispute, if he might. The hint from the other that he had been meddling in what was outside his business gave him an uncomfortable sense of responsibility.

"About face and back to the camp," he shouted. "I will look at your dinner and we shall see!"

They hesitated a moment, but he went among them, pushing them down the bank.

He followed with the padrone behind the jabbering throng, and the two engineers came along at his earnest request.

"Mr. Searles," said Parker after a little while, as they walked side by side, "being an older and wiser man than I am you are probably right in suggesting that I did wrong in interfering in this affair at the outset.

But," he half-chuckled, "I am going to lay the blame on my professor in sociology. He set me to thinking pretty hard in college and I guess I haven't been out from under his influence long enough to get hardened into the selfish views of my fellowman."

There was earnestness under his smile.

"My boy," said the elder, "I am not blaming you for what you have done for the poor devils. But I have been all for business in my life.

Business hasn't seemed to mix well with philanthropy. I haven't dared to think of what I ought to do. I have thought only of what I had to do, to earn a living for my family."

"Well," said Parker, "if the P. K. & R. folks decide that I've been meddling in matters that are none of my business I have no family to suffer for my indiscretion--but I have prospects and I know that a discharged man is worse off than a man who has started."

The elder man patted Parker's arm.

"As it stands now--and I'm speaking as a friend, young man, and not as a captious critic--you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful Parker, that they don't trample you down when they rush for the trough."

The young man walked along up the hillside in silence. But just as they arrived in front of the long camp the scowl of puzzled hesitation disappeared from his forehead.

"As old Uncle Flanders used to say," he muttered, "'When a man sticks his finger into a tight knot-hole he'd better pull it out mighty quick, before it swells, even if he does leave some skin on the edges.'"

The men halted and grouped themselves about the door. Their eager looks and nudgings of each other showed plainly that they expected their champion to take up their cause against the padrone once more.

Dominick prudently halted at a little distance.

"You go look for yourself, Sir Engineer," he shouted; "on the kettle, in the table all about and you see whatta I feed to those beasts when I try to satisfy."

The men retorted in shrill chorus leaping about and gesticulating till their joints snapped.

Parker resolutely pushed through the throng without trying to understand what they were saying to him and slammed the door in the faces of the few who attempted to crowd in with him. Those who anxiously peered through the windows saw him examine the food set out on the table for the noon meal, lift the covers from the stew pans on the rusty stove and then pa.s.s into the little building behind the main camp. The great stone ovens for the bread-baking were located there.