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I knew he was talking about the safe in the room below. We all did what we could for him, which was little enough. The doctor had gone away weeks before. He grew worse during the night. The train had come in that day, and I asked Burrdock if he did not think it would be best to send him away on it in the morning to his friends at St. Paul, where he could get proper care.
They had tried to ride on top of the cars of his train without paying fare, and he had thrown them all off, one by one, while the train was going. The fireman told me about it. Burrdock was taking me out to Track's End because he said it was a live town, and a good place for a boy to grow up in. He had first wanted me to join him in braking on the railroad, but I judged the work too hard for me.
A dozen men with shovels stood beside it stamping their feet and swinging their arms to keep from freezing. There were faces at the car-windows, and Burrdock and Tom Carr were walking up and down the depot platform. We came up to them looking pretty well astonished, I guess.
He went back with me, and there were Burrdock and Sours and Allenham and some others, all shoveling at the cut with the men; and in the car was Mr. Clerkinwell, now recovered from his sickness, but weak from the lack of food. I won't try to tell how glad they were to see me; but I was gladder to see them.
Burrdock, who had now been promoted to conductor, said he had bumped against it about six miles down the track. The little end door had been broken open from the inside with a coupling-pin, which Pike must have found in the car and kept concealed. With the window open it was no trick at all to crawl out, set the brake, and stop the car.
"When I got to the Junction yesterday I got orders to take another train and come back here and get you folks," said Burrdock in answer to our looks. "Just got here after shoveling all night, and want to leave as soon as we can, before it gets to drifting any worse. This branch is to be abandoned for the winter and the station closed. Hurry up and get aboard!"
Paul, and then out to Dakota with Burrdock. The snake's-heads delayed us so that it was eleven o'clock at night before we reached Track's End. Ours was the only train that ran on the road then, and it came up Mondays and Thursdays, and went back Tuesdays and Fridays. It was a freight-train, with a caboose on the end for passengers, "and the snake's-heads," as the fireman said.
"They're not going to starve here," I said, getting better control of my voice. "Call Andrew back this minute. You've neither of you the right to touch a thing that's there." "But surely you're going with the rest of us?" said Tom. "No, I'm not," I answered. Tom turned and started toward the town. "Now, don't make a fool of yourself, young man," said Burrdock.
"This here town is closed up for the winter. You won't see the train here again before next March." "The train won't see me, then, before next March," I said. "Jim, are you going with the rest of them?" "Well, I'm not the fellow to do much staying," he answered. I turned and started for the hotel; Burrdock muttered something which I didn't catch.
Poor man, he had a game leg as long as I knew him, which was only natural, since when the rail burst through the floor it struck him fair. I was traveling free, as the friend of one of the brakemen whom I had got to know in St. Paul. He was a queer fellow, named Burrdock. The railroad company set great store by Burrdock on account of his dealings with some Sioux Indians.
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