Man of the Family (15 page)

“Was I to see ye takin' 'em, I'd have to drive ye off: 'tis orders. Can ye whistle ‘Kathleen Mavourneen' good and loud?”

I nodded my head.

“'Tis a good tune—times I like the lilt o' it.” He squeezed tight on both my arms for half a second, then let go and started to get up from the rail. I whistled “Kathleen Mavourneen” as loud as I could as I slid down the cinder bank. It's always easy to whistle good and loud when you know you've made a new friend.

Before I went home, I rode Lady up to the crossing north of Wolhurst. I was worried for fear Mr. McEnerney might be right about getting in jail if I dragged ties across the D. & R. G. tracks. But I was sure I could find some other way to get them out. I did, too. As it neared the crossing, the D. & R. G. grade—the one nearest the wagon road—lowered to about five feet, and the cinder bank wasn't very steep. With a light load, I knew Lady could pull our wagon right up over it. All I'd need would be some ramps, so that the wagon wheels would roll up over the rails. I measured their height on a thin stick, put it in my pocket, and rode home.

17

Hal Finds the Answer

R
IDING
home, I planned to hitch Lady right to the wagon, and go back for a load of ties before lunch. But I didn't do it. First, Mother wanted me to fix the henyard fence, and then she wanted me to go and take cookery orders. Grace and I both tried to get her to wait another week before she began cooking again, but Mother had her mind made up.

It was nearly half past four when I got home with the cookery orders; and nearly five before Philip and I had finished splitting out ramps and had Lady harnessed to the spring wagon. The sun was still pretty high, though, and I thought it might be better to try taking the first load of ties out after the section crew had gone home for the night. I wasn't too sure that Mr. McEnerney would like my idea about driving the wagon in over the D. & R. G. tracks . . . and, besides, I wouldn't have to whistle “Kathleen Mavourneen” after he'd gone home.

I didn't tell Mother about my talk with Mr. McEnerney; not that there was anything to hide from her, it was just that we were both too busy. I only said that Philip and I wanted to go after a load of ties before the section hands burned them. Muriel and Hal wanted to go with us, and Mother said they could.

To make the ramps, Philip and I had sawed a tie into foot lengths and split the pieces from corner to corner. We'd had to make eight of them, because there were double tracks on the D. & R. G. grade. When we had driven to the place where we were going to cross the tracks, I stopped Lady beside the road, and Philip and I went to set the ramps against the rails. To be sure we had them spaced right, we broke a stick that was as long as the distance between our wagon wheels. When everything was ready, I told the children to hold on tight, and drove up over the track. It was a little bumpy, but we didn't have a bit of trouble, and drove right down into the hollow between the two railroads.

The ties were kind of heavy, but we didn't have much trouble in loading them. We'd fasten a piece of rope to one end of a tie, then back Lady up, so that the end of the wagon was right over the rope. Muriel and Hal would stand on the tail gate and pull up on the rope while Philip and I boosted from the ground. Once we had an end resting on the tail gate, it wasn't too hard to pull and shove it along into the wagon body.

We would have been all right if I hadn't been too greedy. I knew Lady would be able to pull a load of six ties up over the D. & R. G. grade, but the sun was getting low. We wouldn't have had time to unload the first six at the wagon road, go back for six more, and then reload the others on top of them. And it seemed a shame to come clear out there, nearly to Wolhurst, for only six ties. I picked out three more almost-new ones, and we hauled them up on top.

When we got to the low part of the bank, where we had to drive up over, I was afraid the load might be a bit too heavy, and wanted the children to get off. Philip did, but Muriel and Hal didn't like the idea. They thought it would be lots of fun to ride up the bank and go jouncing over the rails, and I didn't want to say they couldn't; not after they'd helped us get the load on. They weren't very heavy anyway.

Before we started up the bank, I stopped Lady for a rest, while Philip and I moved the ramps to the near side of the rails.

I had Muriel and Hal sit right in the middle of the load, and hold on tight with both hands. Then I turned Lady in a wide curve to give her a good start up the bank, and snapped her rump with the end of a line. Lady wasn't very big, but she had lots of sense. I really didn't need to have snapped her. She pricked her ears forward, set her hind feet a little to get a good start, and hit the cinder bank with a rush. Going so fast, I couldn't guide Lady very well, and we didn't go straight up the bank. I was afraid our wheels might miss the ramps, so I pulled her hard to the right. Maybe it threw her a little off balance. She crossed the first rail, but stumbled on the second. She half fell, saved herself, and the front wheels rolled up the ramps and over the rail . . . then the back wheels skidded.

I was sure we'd get stuck if we ever stopped, so I yelled, “Gitup Lady!” and popped her with the line end. She lurched forward a step or two, but the right hind wheel missed its ramp and wedged tight against the high rail—right in between two ties. And then we heard the train whistle.

I thought I knew every train that went through Littleton. And there wasn't one due for an hour. But there it was—less than a quarter of a mile away, and coming down on us with the whistle screeching like a banshee.

I yelled to Muriel and Hal to jump—and I don't know what I yelled at Lady, or what I did with the lines. But I yelled louder than the train whistle. Lady crouched as though she were going to lie down, then threw herself into the collar with her hind hoofs braced against the rail. The wagon bucked like a wild bronco as the wheels bounced over the rails. I'd been standing on the load so I could see where I was driving, but the jouncing ties threw me out over the wheel as we went down the far bank. I lit on my shoulder, rolled over, and came up on my feet just as the engine slammed past.

Muriel and Hal were still on top of the load, and Hal's fingers were pinched in between two of the ties. Lady stood trembling as though she would shake herself to pieces—and Philip was nowhere in sight.

It was a short train—only a few flatcars and a wrecking crane. It couldn't have taken more than five seconds to go past. But in that five seconds I saw Philip in a thousand different scenes, heard his voice, and remembered how he always cuddled his knees up under me, spoon-fashion, when we were sleeping.

Then the caboose flashed by, and there stood Philip on the far side of the track. His mouth was wide open and his eyes were staring, but I know they weren't seeing a thing.

The sun was just going down, but we didn't go home until Lady had stopped trembling, and till Muriel and Hal could talk without crying. And then we didn't hurry very much. I don't think we ever loved each other as much as we did that night on the way home. Muriel always liked poetry. The gloaming was settling deeper and deeper as Lady plodded along, and Muriel had me say over, at least three times, the poem that goes: “The day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of Night . . .”

I didn't ask any of them not to tell Mother how close a call we'd had. I just knew they never would. But I promised myself I wouldn't try to haul any more ties out over the tracks.

Grace had brought our cow in from the picket, and as we turned into our lane from the highroad, we could hear Ducklegs mooing to be milked. Supper was all ready, and when we drove into the yard, Mother called from the kitchen door, “Where in the world have you children been till this hour? I've been nearly worried to death.”

Muriel's voice was as clear as a silver bell as she called back, “Oh, Ralph's been saying poetry for us all the way home, and I guess we forgot how late it was getting.”

All Mother said was, “Well, hurry right up and wash your faces and hands; supper's all ready. And, Ralph, you can milk Ducklegs after we've eaten.”

I lay awake for a long time after I went to bed that night. It was a warm night—there wasn't a bit of breeze—and Philip was hot. But he cuddled up as close against me as though it were the middle of the winter. Then, every little while, he'd jump all over and hug one arm tight around me.

It was at times like that when I used to think most about Father. I knew he'd have been able to tell me how to get the ties out of that hole, and he'd have been able to tell me the easy way to do it. He'd shown me how to drag ties out of a gulch and across railroad tracks when I was only eight. The trouble was that I didn't dare to drag these ties across the tracks.

I almost went to sleep and then woke up again a few times while we were lying there. Sometimes Father's face and voice would be as clear as though he were right there with me, and sometimes they were sort of hazy—as though I might already be starting to forget him. They weren't dreams I was having; they were rememberings: places Father and I had been together, ways he had shown me to work, or different things he had told me.

Later, when the moon looked like a big golden ball balanced on the peak of our barn, King whined from under my window. It was almost a pleading whine; I hadn't heard him make it since Father died. King had always been sort of a one-man dog, and Father had been the man.

It's funny how a sound, or a smell, or even the stillness that comes before a thundershower, will make you remember things you've almost forgotten. And, to me, it was always wonderful how so many of those rememberings came just when I needed them most. That's the way it was with King's whine.

When we'd first moved to Littleton, Father and I had been driving along the Colorado Springs wagon road. King had gone with us, and had scared up a jack rabbit at the foot of the high railroad grade north of Wolhurst. Before he chased it, he whined for Father to say it would be all right—the same sort of a whine he'd just made under my window. It hadn't been a very long chase, because the jack rabbit had raced back along the wagon road for a dozen rods or so, then turned sharply and disappeared into the cinder bank. King had followed him, but in a couple of minutes he'd come back across the top of the grade. Father had told me there must be a drainpipe under the cinder bank.

Lying there in bed with Philip snuggling against me, I'd just got that far in my remembering when it was as plain as day: To get the ties out of that hollow between the two tracks, all I'd have to do would be to drag them through the iron pipe where the jack rabbit had run . . . and I felt sure that—somehow—Father had made me remember all this so that he could show me the way. I lay there awake till after the moon set. By that time, I'd planned every move, and knew just how we'd bring the ties out, load, and unload them with hardly a bit of lifting. All I'd have to do would be to hook Lady to one end of Ducklegs' picket rope, and Mother's ice tongs to the other. Then, with a skidway to reach from the pipe end to the tailgate of our wagon, we could hook onto a tie, drag it through the pipe, and right up onto the wagon. And with Lady, the rope, and the tongs, we could drag the ties off into a neat pile after we had them hauled.

The next morning, when it was just light enough to see, I led Lady down into the hollow where the ties were. First, I crawled through the drain pipe to be sure it was big enough for ties, then I dragged twenty of them close to the end of it. Before the first section car came in sight, I'd led Lady back to the highroad, and was measuring to see how long a skidway we'd need. I got home just in time to milk Ducklegs before breakfast.

Right after we'd eaten, Muriel, Philip, and Hal helped me make the skidway from a two-by-twelve that we pried out of the barn floor. Then, driving out to the tracks, I explained to them just how we'd work: Philip would crawl through to the hollow between the tracks, whistle “Kathleen Mavourneen” the best he could, and hook the tongs onto a tie end. Muriel would lead Lady till the tie came through the pipe and onto the wagon. I'd fit it into place while Hal dragged the tongs back to Philip.

When the first tie came out of the pipe and hit the skidway, it stuck to the plank and knocked things galley-west in a hurry. At first we couldn't figure out what to do and thought we were licked, but Hal found us the answer without trying to.

While the rest of us were looking the mess over and trying to think what to do, Hal kept climbing part way up the cinder bank and sliding down on his bottom. I called to him to be careful or he'd skin himself on the cinders. “No, I won't,” he squealed. “They go round and round like little wheels.”

That's all we needed to know; the rest was easy. The reason the ties went through the pipe so well was that the bottom quarter of it was filled in with sand and cinders, and the ties were rolling on the cinders. All we had to do was to sprinkle some of them on the skidway.

Everything worked fine, and it didn't take us much more than half an hour to load fifteen ties. That was all I thought would be safe for the wagon springs. At Mr. Carey's house, they unloaded just as easy as I'd thought they would.

Mother and Grace were right in the middle of doing the washing when we got home for lunch. They'd been so busy, they didn't know it was noontime. As we came up to the kitchen door, the smell of fresh bread came out to meet us. Half a dozen big brown loaves were sitting on the table, and Grace was brushing the tops of them with butter so that they glistened like polished bronze. The kitchen was hot and steamy. Mother was turning clothes in the washboiler with a piece of broom handle. When I said, “Whew, that bread smells good, and I'm hungry as a pig,” she dropped the stick and turned as though she were frightened.

“Good Heavens,” she said, “how time flies! I haven't even thought about lunch. Well, there's some fresh bread. I thought I'd better bake it so as to get full use out of the fire while we were boiling clothes. If I open a can of strawberries, do you think you children can make out all right till supper time?” While I fed Lady, Mother made us a saucepan of cambric tea with ginger in it, and we all ate warm bread and strawberries till they nearly came out of our ears. We'd always rather have that than beefsteak.

We didn't take any longer than we had to for lunch—just long enough for Lady to rest and finish her hay. When we got home, I'd put her right in the stall with her harness on, but when she dried out, her sides were all frosted with dried-on salt. Before we went back for the next load of ties, I unharnessed her and let her have a good roll in the loose dirt behind the barn. It was quicker than currycombing and she liked it better. Before we started out again, I had Philip put a couple of gunny sacks on the wagon. Our first load had taken most of the ties I'd lined up at the end of the drainpipe that morning, and I thought I'd better line up some more before we began loading.