XII

THE ENTERING WEDGE

Has civilized humanity, in the plenitude of twentieth century sophistication, fully determined that there is no such thing as luck?—­that all things are ordered, if not by Providence, at least by an unchangeable sequence of cause and effect?

Stuart Ford was a firm believer in the luck of the energetic; which is to say that he regarded obstacles only as things to be beaten down and abolished.  But in the dash to overtake and pass the general manager’s one-car special, the belief was shaken almost to its reversal.

He knew the Pacific Southwestern locomotives—­and something of the men who ran them.  The 1016 was one of the fast eight-wheelers; and Olson, the engineer, who had once pulled passenger on the Plug Mountain, was loyal and efficient.  Happily, both the man and the machine were available; and while Frisbie was calling up the division superintendent at his house to ask the loan of his private car for the assistant to the president, Ford was figuring the schedule with the despatcher, and insisting upon speed—­more speed.

“What’s come over you big bosses, all at once?” said Darby, to whom Ford’s promotion was no bar to fellowship or free speech.  “First Mr. North wants me to schedule a special that will break the record; and now you want to string one that will beat his record.”

“Never mind my troubles, Julius,” was the evasive reply.  “Just you figure to keep things out of my way and give me a clear track.  Let’s see—­where were we?  Cheyenne Crossing at 2 a.m., water at Riddle Creek, coal at Brockton—­”

The schedule was completed when Frisbie came back to say that the 1016, with the superintendent’s car attached, was waiting on track Six.  Ford went down, looked the gift horse in the mouth, and had the running gear of the car overhauled under his own supervision before he would give Olson the word to go, pressing the night car inspectors into service and making them repack the truck journals while he waited.

“I’m taking no chances,” he said to Frisbie; and truly it seemed that all the hindrances had been carefully forestalled when he finally boarded the “01” and ordered his flagman to give Olson the signal.  Yet before the one-car train was well out of the Denver yards there was a jolting stop, and the flagman came in to report that the engine had dropped from the end of an open switch, blocking the main line.

Ford got out and directed the reenrailment of the 1016, carefully refraining from bullying the big Swede, whose carelessness must have been accountable.  It was the simplest of accidents, with nothing broken or disabled.  Under ordinary conditions, fifteen minutes should have covered the loss of time.  But the very haste with which the men wrought was fatal.  Enrailing frogs have a way of turning over at the critical instant when the wheels are climbing, and jack-screws bottomed on the tie-ends do not always hold.