Martin Garrity Gets Even

"I do!" answered Martin, with the first real enthusiasm he had known in weeks. "'Tis me budget I'll be fixin' up immejiate at once. Ye'll get action, ye will." He departed for a frenzied month. Then he returned at the request of President Barstow.

"You're doing wonderful work, Martin," said that official. "It's coming along splendidly. But--but----I understand there's a bit of a laugh going around among the railroad men about you."

"About me?" Garrity's chest bulged aggressively. "An' who's laughin?"

"Nearly everybody in the railroad game in Missouri. They say you let some slick salesman sting you for a full set of Rocky Mountain snow-fighting machinery, even up to a rotary snow plough. I----"

"Sting me?" Martin bellowed the words. "That I did not!"

"Good! I knew----"

"I ordered it of me own free will. And if annybody laughs----"

"But, Martin"--and there was pathos in the voice--"a rotary snow plough? On a Missouri railroad? Flangers, jull-ploughs, wedge ploughs--tunnel wideners--and a rotary? Here? Why--I--I thought better of you than that. We haven't had a snow in Missouri that would require all of those things, not in the last ten years. What did they cost?"

"Eighty-three thousand, fi'hunnerd an' ten dollars," answered Martin gloomily. He had pulled a boner. Mr. Barstow figured on a sheet of paper.

"At three dollars a day, that would hire nearly a thousand track labourers for thirty days. A thousand men could tamp a lot of ballast in a month, Martin."

"That they could, sir," came dolefully. Then Garrity, the old lump in his throat, waited to be excused, and backed from the office. That rotary snow plough had been his own, his pet idea--and it had been wrong!

Gloomily he returned to Northport, his headquarters, there to observe a group of grinning railroad men gathered about a great, bulky object parked in front of the roundhouse. Behind it were other contraptions of shining steel, all of which Martin recognized without a second glance--his snow-fighting equipment, just arrived. Nor did he approach for a closer view. Faintly he heard jeering remarks from the crowd; then laughter. He caught the mention of his own name, coupled with derisive comment. His hands clenched. His red neck bulged. His big lungs filled--then slowly deflated; and Martin went slowly homeward, in silence.

"And is it your liver?" asked Jewel Garrity as they sat at dinner.

"It is not!" bawled Martin. He rose. He pulled his napkin from his chin with Garrity emphasis and dropped it in the gravy. He thumped about the table, then stopped.

One big freckled paw reached uncertainly outward and plunked with intended gentleness upon the woman's shoulder, to rest, trembling there, a second. Then silently Martin went on upstairs. For that touch had told her that it was--his heart!

A heart that ached with a throbbing sorrow which could not be downed as the summer passed and Martin heard again and again the reflexes brought about by the purchase of his snow ploughs. Vainly he stormed up and down the line of the Ozark Central with its thousands of labourers. Vainly he busied himself with a thousand intricacies of construction, in the hope of forgetfulness. None of it could take from his mind the fact that railroad men were laughing at him, that chuckling train-butchers were pointing out the giant machinery to grinning passengers, that even the railroad journals were printing funny quips about Barstow's prize superintendent and his mountain snow plough. Nor could even the news that Aldrich, over on the Blue Ribbon division, was allowing that once proud bit of rail to degenerate into an ordinary portion of a railroad bring even a passing cheer. They, too, were laughing! In a last doglike hope Martin looked up the precipitation reports. It only brought more gloom. Only four times in thirty years had there been a snowfall in Missouri that could block a railroad!

The summer crept into autumn; autumn to early winter, bringing with it the transformation of the rickety old Ozark Central to a smooth, well-cushioned line of gleaming steel, where the trains shot to and fro with hardly a tremor, where the hollow thunder of culvert and trestle spoke of sturdy strength, where the trackwalker searched in vain for loose plates or jutting joints; but to Garrity, it was only the fulfilment or the work of a mechanical second nature. December was gliding by in warmth and sunshine. January came, with no more than a hatful of snow, and once more Martin found himself facing the president.

"We'll win that contract, Martin!" It almost brought a smile to the superintendent's face. "I've just been over the road--on the quiet. We made eighty miles an hour with hardly a jolt!"

"Thankee, sir." A vague sense of joy touched Martin's aching heart--only to depart.

"By the way, I noticed when I went through Northport that you've still got that rotary where everybody can see it. I wish you'd move that stuff--behind the roundhouse, out of sight."

Then Martin, heavier at heart than ever, went back to Northport. There he said a quaking good-bye to his last hope--and executed the president's orders, trying not to notice the grins of the "goat" crew as they shunted the machinery into hiding. That night, after Jewel was asleep, and the cat outside had ceased yowling, Martin climbed stealthily out of bed and went on his knees, praying with all the fervour of his big being for snow. And the prayer was answered----

By the worst rain that a Missouri January had known in years, scattering the freshly tamped gravel, loosening the piles of trestles, sending Martin forth once more to bawl his orders with the thunder of the old days back at Glen Echo, even to leap side by side with the track labourers, a tamping bar in his big hands, that one more blow might be struck, one more impression made upon the giant task ahead.

January slid by; February went into the third week before the job was finished. Martin looked at the sky with hopeful eyes. It was useless. March the first--and Martin went into St. Louis to make his report, and to spend an uneasy, restless night with the president in his room at the hotel.

"It's only a few days off now"--they were in bed the next morning, finishing the conversation begun the night before--"and I want you to keep your eyes open every second! The mail marathon agreement reads that no postponement can be made on account of physical or mechanical obstacles. If a trestle should happen to go out--that would be our finish."

"I wish"--Martin rolled out of bed and groped for his shoes--"we'd been workin' with me old Blue Ribbon division. I know every foot o' ----"

"Oh, chase the Blue Ribbon division! Every time I see you you've got something on your chest about it. Why, man, don't you know it's the Blue Ribbon division that I'm counting on! Aldrich has let it run down until it's worse than a hog trail. If they can make forty-five an hour on it, I'm crazy. You can't win mail contracts with that. So forget it. Anyhow, you're working for the Ozark Central now."

Martin nodded, then for a long moment crouched silent humiliated, his thick fingers fumbling with the laces of his shoes. At last, with a sigh, he poked his shirt into his trousers and thumped across the room to raise the drawn shades.

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