Pete Farley's car was dropped off at Damascus by an east-bound passenger train that arrived toward the middle of the afternoon. Within a few minutes after the general superintendent's arrival the new company doctor had been installed in his office without ceremony.
This office was a dingy red freight car that had been lifted from its trucks and deposited on a bank of cinders near the main-line track, where it formerly had served as passenger depot and agent's office in the early days of Damascus. Later it had been occupied by the engineering crew which had surveyed the new roadbed now being graded west of town.
The side-doors of the car had been boarded up, a standard-size house door put in each end, four little windows cut high up in the sides near the eaves. A partition divided the car in two unequal portions, the larger of which was to be the doctor's office, the smaller his sleeping quarters, for it was one of the essentials of that position that the doctor be available at all hours of the day and night.
Pioneering in railroading is attended by many accidents, usually grave from the very nature of the weight and density of the materials and tools employed. There is nothing puny, or fashioned for grasping by delicate hands, in the mighty business of laying and surfacing track. At any hour the doctor might be called to piece together some unlucky fellow who had been caught under a falling rail, or splint and bandage breaks and wounds of the most distressing severity. They might come for him with a handcar, to take him five miles, or with the work-train engine, to take him fifty.
If prominence was to be desired in a doctor's beginning in a strange place, the freight-car office left nothing unsatisfied in that respect. It stood at the end of Custer Street, protruding more than half its length beyond the building line of that thoroughfare, a barrier that swerved and deflected the stream of incoming and outgoing business. The car had been ceiled with bright new lumber, making it snug against the winter winds.
Pete Farley, the superintendent, was a big, gentle-spoken man with an Irish fairness in his broad face, an Irish strength in his long neck, brown splotches and red hairs on the backs of his walloping big hands. He made no ceremony of installing the new company doctor in his office. He turned over the surgical chair, the box of miscellaneous new instruments and supplies sent on from Topeka, the granite-ware water pails and basins, with a mention of Little Jack Ryan, who would keep the office scrubbed and provided with two white lanterns hung on each side of the door at night. For anything else he needed, Farley said, put on a wire to Topeka. Farley put on a wire for anything and everything. Operators along the line said he ordered a chew of tobacco that way. There was no time for letters in his busy life.
Farley warned the new doctor against the graders who lived in tents by the river at the edge of town. They were employes of the grading contractor, and did not come under the doctor's ministration as railroad physician. Whatever Dr. Hall might do for them he would do at his own risk of being paid.
Graders were the Gypsies of the railroad world, here this month, far away the next, taking advantage of everybody that trusted them, although this outfit might be here all summer, and longer. The men were out on the dump farther west; these tents were the more or less permanent homes of the women and children, with the men who looked after the used-up horses and mules while they recuperated on the grass. Tough outfit. Entirely God-forsaken and without morals, Farley said.
While he was in admonitory mood, Farley spoke of Old Doc Ross. There might be some trouble from that quarter, although he did not believe Ross to be as rough as his reputation. Just now the old sinner was on a bat which might continue for many days. Ross went off that way frequently, generally when needed most, a fact responsible for his removal from company employment. He'd go as straight as a thirty-foot rail for weeks at a time, then break out on a souse. Farley had no advice to offer on the manner of handling Old Doc Ross, believing every man sufficient to his business, according to the hard exactions of railroad life.
Might find it pretty dull in Damascus, Farley thought. It would be for him if he had to stay there himself. He was lucky; he had a family back in Dodge, and a private car that he could go bumping around in from place to place, out on the road most of the time between Dodge and Trinidad. If Hall should want him for anything, put on a wire.
So saying, Farley went about his business, which, at that hour, had something to do with getting his battered old car hitched to the end of a passenger train and whisked away on some pressing matter farther west.
Across from Dr, Hall's freight-car office, the main line, a sidetrack for the work-train and a cinder-covered space of trodden ground lying between, a long string of boarding-cars stood on a siding. There were a dozen or more of these cars, with ladder steps leading up to their broad side-doors, glimpses of bunks to be seen in some of them, cooking activities going forward in one.
Dr. Hall stood on the cinder bank at his own door after Farley's departure, looking across at the boarding train. It was then about four o'clock in the afternoon, and quiet as if the last man had gone away from Damascus and given up the struggle of making a town where there seemed to be so little need of one. The wind was moving in the tender leaves of the cottonwood trees along the river, their newly unfolded gloss glittering like bits of enamell as they fluttered and turned toward the sun, with the soothing whisper of gently falling rain.
Smoke was rising in vigorous column from a stocky stovepipe through the top of the car which Hall took to be the kitchen. This car was the last but one in the string, the other being a tank car with the train's water supply, and almost directly opposite the doctor's own. There was a flitting of skirts across the open door as those who labored within hurried like building birds about their duties. Now and then a face was turned, an eye flashed in his direction, as the white-aproned figures dashed back and forth across the open door, which had a close-fitting wire screen, Hall crossed the track, thinking that, as they were to be neighbors, they would as well be friends from the start.
There were steps leading down from the kitchen door, battered by many a flight of those quick-scurrying feet which seemed going and coming on some endless task across the open door. A woman appeared suddenly on the threshold as Dr. Hall approached, smiling and nodding, wiping her hands on her apron, welcome radiating from her heat-inflamed face.
She was a spare little woman, an eager brightness in her eyes and smile. She gave the instant impression that her fitting office was welcoming strangers at the door. Her muscular short arms were bare to the elbow, her lowcut waist gave freedom and a look of comfort to her handsome neck and well carried head. Not an ordinary woman, in her genial self-possession, to meet in the door of a boarding-train kitchen, thought Dr. Hall.
"I was about to run over and make your acquaintance," she said. "Mr. Farley told us you'd be down to your office to-day—you're the new company doctor, ain't you?"
"Yes, I'm Dr. Hall."
"Glad you come over," said she, in her bustling, quick-arriving way. She came down the steps with a little rush, offering her hand. "I'm Mrs. Charles; glad you come over. Girls, come out and meet the new doctor."
The girls were not far away. Indeed, Dr. Hall was even then grinning at the sight of a neat foot and the flounce of a checked gingham skirt which their owner may or may not have fancied to be out of the line of vision of any male visitor outside the door. There was a little giggling within, a little delay as for adjustment of something or other that had become disarranged, such as hair or apron-strings. Then the girls dutifully appeared, not with the same ingenuous self-possession as their mother, yet with assurance enough to carry them along.
"Meet my daughter Mary, Dr. Hall," said Mrs. Charles, in the very best mode of railroad presentation. "Meet my daughter Annie, Dr. Hall."
Dr. Hall declared himself charmed, which was not strictly in accord with the railroad formula. Annie and Mary looked as if it plagued them a little to hear him say so, twisting and blushing and putting their hands behind them like backward little things who never had met a man.
But Mary and Annie were neither backward nor small. They knew just about when and how to put a fresh railroader in his proper place in relation to themselves, even to the extent of a bat on the ear. It had been done. They were rosy, big-mouthed, comely girls, after the style of those who eat much, work hard and do not hold their attractiveness long.
Mary's hair was dark-red, her skin clear of a blemish, white and fine-grained as if she had been nurtured in shady gardens behind inaccessible walls, instead of the corned-beef and cabbage steam of a boarding-train. There was a provoking, mocking humor in her wide mouth; her eyes were brown. Annie was a fluffy-haired blonde, a bit snub-nosed and sniffing of features, but she had a rolling blue eye that stole glances cornerwise at the new doctor, and a ready giggle that came over her suddenly, making her throw her hand to her mouth as if to catch her teeth.
Dr. Hall was not expressing a conventional commonplace when he declared himself charmed with Annie and Mary. The wholesome vigor, the sprightly manners, of the boarding-train ladies gave him an agreeable surprise. He had expected to find slap-heeled slovenliness in keeping with the dull-red, rough-handled appearance of the cars.
"I hope you'll like it here," said Annie, sighing to signify that she did not like it, and was pining for fairer places that she had known.
"She'd like to go back to Dodge," Mrs. Charles said, as if a big sigh such as that, rising from the bosom of youth, must be explained. She spoke aside, with sympathy for her child's yearning.
"Huh! Dodge!" Mary sniffed. "Dodge's as dead as a doornail."
"It beats bein' hung up out here on the road," Annie argued with spirit. "Nobody out here in this hole to's ociate with."
"Dodge is a division point," Mrs. Charles explained again. "Lots of trainmen lay over there. The girls used to have some good times at the dances down at Dodge."
"Do you dance, Dr. Hall?" Annie inquired hopefully.
"A little," Hall confessed.
"I'll bet you a little!" said Mary, her words full of complimentary meaning.
"Don't get too good opinion of me—I'd hate to disappoint you. Have you been in Damascus long?" This a general question, directed to the three.
"We've been here about four months—"
"About forty years!" said Annie, determined to show that she was above the limitations of that place.
"Well, I guess you'd better chase back and finish settin' the table," Mrs. Charles suggested, rather than ordered, her manner gentle, her face bright with smiles.
Mary and Annie mounted the steps, considerable giggling and pushing going on between them without any apparent cause. Mrs. Charles looked after them fondly, full of pride.
"They're good girls, good obedient girls," she said.
"I'm sure," said Dr. Hall. "And pretty," he added, "as pretty a pair of young ladies as I've seen in many a day."
"I'm glad to hear you say so," Mrs. Charles said, her pride swelling, pleased beyond bounds. "A mother always likes to hear a good word about her girls. Well, I've tried to bring them up right, Doctor, but they never had much of a chance."
"Have you been in this business some time?"
"I've been boardin' railroad men all my married life," Mrs. Charles replied, proud, rather than downcast, in the admission. "My old man was extra-gang boss when we was first married, out in Colorado. There wasn't no towns in that country like there is now, nowhere for men to board. The roadmaster got me to take charge of a boardin'-train, and I've been at it ever since. I lost my husband seven years ago. He was foreman of a steel-gang when he died—or was killed, I should say. A rail fell on him, nearly cut him in two. The company's been good to me, though; always kep' me in a boardin'-train when a good many others had to go beggin'. I've got along, brought up my girls—raised 'em on wheels, you might say—and done real well. Wouldn't you like to look over the train?"
Dr. Hall was keen for it, a traveling hotel of that magnitude being a thing unique in his experience. Mrs. Charles led the way up the kitchen steps, glowing with pleasure in having somebody to whom the commonplace of her daily life was wonderful. She pushed open the folding screen doors, fanning the waiting flies away with her apron.
"I'm feedin' between sixty and seventy men every day," she explained. "It takes a lot of grub to fill up that many railroaders."
"Why, it looks like a factory," said Dr. Hall, his amazement unfeigned.
An immense range occupied one end of the car, its commodious top filled with large copper boilers in which the evening meal was steaming with the mingled odor of potatoes, onions, cabbage and beef. A large dark woman was taking pies out of the oven, adding them to an astonishing array of their mates which stood on a long, narrow table close at hand.
"Angy and me do the cookin', all but the bread," Mrs. Charles explained. "Perry, her old man, he does the bakin' in a mud oven outside. He's a Mexican, his name's Perez, but everybody calls him Perry. We use close to a hundred loaves a day."
"That's a lot of bread for seventy men."
"The men say good bread's half the battle, 'specially the Irish. But they eat everything else accordin'. I buy more beef every day from the butcher in this town than all the rest of the people put together."
Mrs. Charles' cooking utensils hung around the walls near the stove, her thick cups and plates, classified like exhibits in a museum, filling many shelves in the other end of the car. Everything was orderly and convenient for speedy service.
"The girls wash the dishes and do what waitin' table we do, and that ain't much outside of spillin' 'em a cup of coffee when they want it. We set things on and let 'em pass the dishes. The men have to tidy up their own bunks and cars—I never let my girls set foot in the bunk-cars up ahead."
The dining-room, a sway-backed furniture car of extraordinary length, was connected to the kitchen by a covered passage, or vestibule, which was removed, Mrs. Charles explained, when the train was shifted from place to place. Here Mary and Annie were at work at a long plank table, upon which the plates and cutlery were spread without a cloth.
The girls were standing big stacks of bread at convenient spearing distance apart, stationing at regular intervals between them bowls of bright-red jelly, which they dipped from wooden firkins bearing ornate—and deceptive—pictures of luscious fruit. They worked with the precision, coördination and speed of practiced artisans setting a stage.
"We can set in seventy men at this table," Mrs. Charles explained. "If we have any more we have to set second table, but that don't happen unless we have a bridge-gang, or a surveyin'-gang, or something like that, temporary. We don't show much style, we've got work enough without that, but there's not a railroad man, high or low, on this division that wouldn't wait till second table any time rather than go to the hotel. I've got the name of givin' 'em good chuck, believe it or not from the looks of things."
"It looks good to me," Dr. Hall declared. "I think I'd like to sit in with them myself."
"They ain't got 'specially good table manners, I'm afraid," Mrs. Charles said doubtfully.
Annie lifted her head from bending over a bucket of jelly and laughed shrilly, stretching her mouth wide. Mary looked at her with comical surprise, a grin twitching the corners of her lips, then burst out in wild hilarity. They subsided with as startling suddenness as they had begun, bending over the jelly pails again, faces as red as the synthetic dessert which they were ladling out for the jerries' supper, with knowing glances passing between them, suppressed laughter breaking out of their merry mouths in sputters.
"Oh, you girls!" Mrs. Charles chided them, a little vexed by their unseemly behavior.
Dr. Hall could not forbear a broad grin along with the merry girls, wondering at the same time what pictures of uncouth feeding their mother's words had raised in their appreciative vision. Mrs. Charles led on, passing from the dining-car into the one ahead, connected by a similar vestibule.
"This is my commissary car," she explained, waving her hand toward a stock of such simple necessities as the jerries demanded from time to time, from overalls, jumpers and shoes, to peanuts, chewing gum and tobacco. A counter cut the stock off from the rest of the car, where there were chairs, and a number of books on a shelf.
It was a sort of gathering place for the jerries on winter nights, Mrs. Charles said. Here they smoked and read, such of them as were able and cared to put in the time that way. The books belonged to Mary, who rented them at ten cents a week.
"I don't allow no cards here," she said. "They do enough card-playin' and fightin' up ahead. You'll have a lot of patchin' and darnin' to do on 'em after pay-day. I don't sell 'em booze, either, like most of the commissary cars do; I never did. I've seen many a man cut out for better things kep' down to jerryin' on account of booze. We've got one or two of them on this gang; you'll find them everywhere."
"Do you expect to be here long? Mr. Farley didn't hint to me how long he expected the work to last around here."
"Bill Chambers, our work-train boss, was tellin' me last night he thought he'd throw in a spur about twenty miles west of here and move us out this fall. I don't know. I'd rather stay here for the winter, but you know we have to keep the boardin'-train as close to the work as we can. They're layin' new steel, straightenin' the line, and surfacin' all this part of the road. It's a big job."
"I don't think I'd care to move out any nearer the edge," Dr. Hall said. "This is bleak enough for me. But I don't see where my patients are to come from when you folks pull out of here—if I ever get any at all."
Mrs. Charles looked at the young doctor curiously, as if she had not yet made up her mind about him, and had to stand him off that way to size him up a little longer. He was standing before Mary's little shelf of books, running his eyes absently over the titles, his big black hat in his hand, his long legs spread in ungainly pose. He needed a hair-cut, Mrs. Charles thought, and he needed his neck shaved. A mane like that would go against him with the railroaders, who were great for the neck-shave. And a head of hair like his—it was thick as nature could sow it, black, smooth and long—a head of hair like his was something to bring him down to scorn in the critical railroad eye.
"If you'd get your neck shaved," she suggested, not at all delicately, nor with any feeling whatever of invading a private preserve, "that might—"
She broke off suddenly into a laugh, loud, unmistakably derisive, with a big stretch of mouth and display of teeth. The doctor had clapped his hand to the back of his neck with her suggestion, as if a bee had stung him. He looked so startled, so innocently shocked, as if he had been caught in some grave trespass on the conventions of railroad life, that Mrs. Charles would have blown her teeth out trying to hold back that laugh.
"And your hair cut," she said, stopping her laughter with that abruptness which seemed to be a family gift, just like shutting the oven door. She only smiled when the doctor ran his hand from his fuzzy mane to his long hair, forking it with his spread fingers like a farmer turning a windrow of hay.
"Gosh! I guess you're right," he said.
"They're talkin' of makin' this town a division point," Mrs. Charles informed him, as if her blunt suggestion for his personal adornment had been made to put him in line of preparation for the reward the future held. "If they do, it wouldn't be a bad place for a young doctor to settle down."
"I don't know. Everybody I talk with here gives the country a hard name. They say there's no chance for a man out here at anything but railroading—it's too far west of Dodge. Just as if Dodge was the place where you jump off the edge of the earth."
"It is—nearly, I guess," Mrs. Charles replied. "But I wouldn't let 'em bluff me by any such talk as that if I was you. I wouldn't even let—mercy save us! Here comes Old Doc Ross!"