_ CHAPTER XXVII. AN IRISHMAN AND AN ENGLISHMAN
Constable Williams cursed fervently, forgetting Helen. It was his way of rendering first aid. Mahon's mind was too busy for his lips. Therein lay the foundation of their respective ranks. In ten seconds he was running for the street.
Throwing the flash ahead of him as he ran, he wriggled at top speed down the winding path that led through the village; and Constable Williams stumbled behind. As the last of the deserted shacks fell behind, a luminous spot ahead led them straight to Murphy's tent. From forty yards Mahon shouted:
"How long to get steam up, Murphy? It's life and death, and we need the engine."
A bewhiskered face thrust itself through the opening, carefully pulling the flap below to cut off a fleeting glimpse of bare legs and loose shirt.
"What ye take us for? Night nurses? Think we're taking shifts keeping Mollie snuggled up warm o' nights? Go away and change yeer dhrinks. What's the hullabaloo anyway? Short o' tobacco? Or has the newest tenderfoot discovered the one lone flea in all this lousy village?"
"The bohunks are attacking the trestle! They've stolen our horses."
Murphy asked no more foolish questions; he was busy with his overalls.
"Dunno about getting you there right away," he grunted, tugging at a suspender, "but sure the next instant. Glory be! ain't we afther getting in late to-noight--and me blasting the hide o' me crew and old man Torrance? And 'Uggins didn't draw the fires, he was that lazy and cantankerous himself--"
"Call the crew!" ordered Mahon. "We'll need them."
"'Ere's 'Uggins," said a small voice from the edge of the cot.
The fireman was pulling on his second sock. He waited for nothing more. Shirt flapping about his short legs, he ran into the night, shouting at the top of his voice.
"Have you arms?" Mahon enquired of Murphy.
"Wish I had about three more o' thim for this collar-button," grumbled the engineer before the mirror.
"Have you a gun, I asked?"
"Well," said Murphy carefully, "if ye're enquir-ring to enfor-rce the law agin carrying arms, nary a jack-knife even. If it's help ye nade, I guess we might be able to scrape up a shooter apiece. We lug 'em along for ballast, ye understand, in the absence o' fire-water. If it's a foighter ye're talking like, ivery devil of a mother's son of us can make a bang like a gun, with a bullet t'rowed in--though for meself I prefer a shillalah. I'm going to be in this foight if I have to use a lead pencil. Ain't I Oirish?"
"For heaven's sake, let the collar and tie go!" groaned Mahon.
Murphy turned a disgusted face on the Policeman. "Niver go into a foight excited-like. It's dangerous. I wouldn't enjoy meself if it's too scrambly a show. 'Tain't ivery day a fellow has a chance out here to get into one. Anyway, 'Uggins has to get steam up. . . . Now I'm ready for anything from dam-sels to any other damn thing."
As they ran from the tent, the shacks the crews had taken to themselves were bustling with activity. Four half-clothed figures, pulling on jackets as they ran, fell in behind them and made for the siding where great gusts of flame revealed Huggins' frantic struggle with the engine.
The half-naked fireman was firing recklessly, madly. Limitless dry wood was at his hand, and from the live coals that remained from the day's work a mass of flame was already throwing heavy sparks against the smokestack guard. But Huggins was a fuming thing of cursing impatience. Mouthing unlisted oaths, his wet shirt lashing against his bare legs, he was repeatedly filling a small pail from a nearby barrel and, standing on the cab steps, was tossing its contents into the blazing fireplace. Great gushes of fire roared out in response, revealing him, face streaming perspiration, lips moving ceaselessly, one sock hanging in tatters, already swinging about for the next pail.
Murphy looked on in anxious admiration.
"Holy smoke! Here I been wor-rking five years to get a hustle on that Englishman, and him arguing coal oil was made for wiping engines and lighting lamps and smelling up a grocery store. . . . That's what I call a medal job. Anyway," he added, as a greater gush than usual burst out and seemed to lick about the frantic fireman, "there ain't much o' him to catch fire, if he don't tumble down them steps in time. . . . Poof! That must have been half the barrel. For the love of Mike!" he bawled, wiping the soot from his eyes, "Here, you crazy bat, go aisy. The cab'll be catching fire."
"Garn!" yelled Huggins, reaching for a fresh supply. "Look arfter yer own blinkin' cab, yu blighter!"
"Blighter, is it?" Murphy was dancing excitedly about--until he got in the fireman's way, to receive such a furious push that he went sprawling on his back. He lifted himself to his feet as if something new had entered his experience, and stood agitatedly chewing his beard.
"When this foight's over," he announced solemnly, "there's going to be another that'll make the one at the threstle look like a Sunday School picnic; and Oireland's going to put England over her knee and spank the place yeer shirt don't cover dacent. . . . Stop it, ye loon! Make a pair o' pants o' the rest o' the ile and look respectable. Ye don't seem to remember Mollie's sex. I'm ashamed o' ye. . . . Climb aboard, ye fools--and ithers. She'll do five miles on what she has, and in three miles she'll be cutting' out twenty. . . . For the sake o' me dead and buried mother, somebody sit on that barrel or we'll be one short in the foight! I got to work in this cab! He's gone daffy! He'll miss the fireplace some time and set the bush on fire!"
Huggins' blind haste was deaf to everything but the clang of the starting lever and the grind of the big wheels. Grabbing the rail, he swung aboard, a half-filled pail clutched tight. And Murphy had only time to knock it from his hand to save the seven of them from one last gush of flame. Huggins swore deeply, swept a black arm across his dripping eyes, and leaned out to estimate their speed.
Engine and tender chugged out from the siding. And Murphy leaned through the window and broke all traffic rules.
"Jump on, ye loon!" he yelled to the brakesman standing by the open switch. "Think I'm going to waste steam stopping for you?" The brakesman swung aboard. "All the specials are cancelled to-noight for the foight. We got three miles o' clear track. Go on, Mollie!"
But he was wrong. Lack of steam pressure alone saved them. Murphy, staring ahead into the beam of the headlight, suddenly grabbed a lever in either hand, yelling a warning:
"Hang on, b'ys!"
The wheels scraped the rails. Mahon unsupported, fell against the fireplace but rolled clear without injury. There was a sickening thump, and the engine sagged forward and stopped abruptly.
"Missed it, be the powers!" snarled Murphy. "Another foot and we'd have kept the rails. They've put one over on us. Bally fools we were not to look for it. How far's the foight away, it's hoofing it we are now."
A sputter of rifle fire burst from the woods and bullets rattled on the metal of engine and tender. No one was hurt, and the two Policemen silenced the fire immediately by returning it with surprising precision. A yell from the darkness told of a nip at least.
"Out behind the grade!" ordered Mahon. "I'll keep them down till you're covered."
A blaze from the trees, and he fired twice at it in rapid succession.
"And lave Mollie?" protested Murphy. "Not by a jugful!"
"To blazes with Mollie!" Mahon exploded, and threw the engineer through the cab door.
Murphy slowly picked himself up. "I see two foights on afther this one," he declared joyously. "And I'll lick the bohunk that stops a one o' thim, I will."
"Somebody st'ys with the engine, any'ow," muttered 'Uggins stubbornly. "'Ere, Murphy, we'll toss."
"What good's that?" asked Mahon. "It's human lives we're saving to-night, not engines."
"Gor lumme! Wots the use o' losin' the engine, too, I says. Any'ow, them rifles in there is more use to us 'ere than there at the trestle. An' I can't be savin' 'uman lives, women ones, in these togs."
Murphy climbed back into the cab. His purpose was the innocent one of letting off the rapidly accumulating steam; but Huggins was suspicious and followed closely.
"It's a toss, I tell yu," he insisted. "'Ere, len' me a tanner; I forgot my wallet."
Murphy extracted a coin from his pocket, and Huggins opened the fireplace door for light. There were to be no tricks in this toss. Three bullets thudded into the metal about them, but Murphy and his fireman were intent on a falling copper.
Huggins pulled his shirt back from the sucking draft of the flames. "'Eads!" he called.
The coin rattled to the floor and both men dropped to their knees. Another rifle tried for them.
"An' 'eads it is. I st'ys. Any'ow, it's warmer 'ere. Blimey, if them pants o' mine wasn't somethink to blow about after all. Sometimes it's the wind, then it's the bloomin' fire. I'll keep a bit o' steam up; looks as if I'll maybe need a bath when I get 'ome. S'long, ole sport! Tell Miss Tressa--" He broke into a convulsive chuckle, which another burst of rifle fire tried to interrupt. "Cripes! Wouldn't I 'a' been a d'isy for rescuin' lidies? Not 'arf!"
The farewell of the two men who ceaselessly fought and loved each other was nothing more than a pat on the back, Murphy's the more exuberant because it smacked louder on the thin shirt of the fireman. Then the latter was alone. "Mollie sends 'er love," he called into the darkness after the engineer.
For several minutes Huggins searched the tender for a comfortable spot for his unprotected body, but scratchy, knobby pieces of wood, with a foundation of sharp chunks of coal, was not conducive to rest. A bullet rattling against the engine added to his irritation, and he looked over the edge and fired his revolver petulantly.
"That'll larn 'em I'm no blinkin' Irishman with a stick."
He crawled painfully to the very back of the tender and fired again.
"In case they thort the first was a misfire," he growled, "or fright." After a minute or two he began to grin. "Unless them bohunks is bigger fools than they need be, I guess yer friend 'Uggins is due for a rosy wreath from his friend Murphy when the sky clears."
He busied himself with a sputtering return fire to show he was still alive and prepared to exchange compliments. Between intervals of a vain search for something smooth and soft he expressed his feelings by a blind banging into the trees. At last he carefully wiped over the floor, settled himself against the entrance to the tender, and began to doze. A bullet struck close to his ear.
"Always the w'y," he groaned, moving back to safer quarters. "There's a fly in every hointment. An' we're as apt to 'it each other as a woman at a cokernut shy."
A distant burst of firing came down the breeze from toward the trestle. Huggins leaped to his feet and climbed to the pile of wood, and recklessly on to the top of the water tank.
"'Urray!" he yelled, dancing in the cold night air and blazing three shots into the woods. "The charge o' the light brigade! Waterloo! Lidysmith! The Camperdown an' orl the rest! Yu got no traditions, yu sneakin' pups! If I 'it one o' yu yu'd think of nothink but the quickest w'y 'ome."
A bullet whistled past either ear, and he tumbled back into the tender, barking several fresh places on his sore body.
"Wots the use?" he growled. "They don't understand. . . . Lidysmith don't 'elp none if they 'it me, though she's orl right for--for tradition. I better lie low an' stop gassin' 'istory. . . . Any'ow, 'Uggins wouldn't sound right in 'istory." _