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"I always go over to the crossing switch shanty about twelve o'clock to eat my lunch. The old switchman lends me his night key. I put my lunch in on the bench when I come on duty, and he always leaves the stove full of splinters to warm up the coffee quick. When I let myself in at midnight, the lantern here was right as a beacon I particularly noticed it."
But he was conscious of no spirit of elation as he stepped through the gate and passed on into that glass-fronted cage where Pyott, the managing editor, sat like a switchman in his many-levered tower. Trotter saw, seated at a desk before him, a thin-featured, thin-haired man of forty, with the crumpled-up eye-corners peculiar to the face that masks a circuitous and secretive mind.
I was foreman in the yards at Buffalo, had a scrap with the yard-master who had boasted that he would not have a switchman he couldn't curse, an' got fired." "Did you lick him?" "Yes." "Good and plenty?" "Yes." "Go on with your story." "Well," said the man, seating himself in the door of the car, "I started out to get work had my card from the Union and felt sure of success.
In a railway station, where the movements of trains represent the daily whirl of traffic in men, things, and ideas, every switch is a delicate instrument which may cause a derailment. The railway management places a switchman on duty at this delicate post.
I tell him it would be a good plan to examine the teeth of all these banner men fellows before he joins them out, just the same as you would when you're buying a horse. Don't you think so?" "By the way, I almost forgot to tell you. We ran over a switchman in the night last night. I don't think it hurt the car any." "Well, good-bye. I'll write again when there is some news. How's January?
Its proprietor was one Silas Green, once a switchman, later a prize fighter, always a hard drinker, and latterly so crippled with rheumatism and liquor that he was just able to get about. Bart went into the place to find its proprietor just opening up for the day. The dead, tainted air of the den made the young express agent almost faint.
Having heard such things all his life, Hal's first impulse was of distrust. He felt like the one-legged old switchman who had given him a place to sleep, after his beating at Pine Creek, and who had said, "Don't you talk no union business to me!" Seeing Hal's emotion, the organiser gave an uneasy laugh. "While you're hoping I'm not a 'dick, I trust you understand I'm hoping you're not one."
The switchman stationed there heard the cry I was able to utter, and came to my assistance. He carried me up to his signal-room and laid me on the floor by the stove; he had nothing to give me except warmth and shelter; but these were now all I asked. I sank into a comatose condition shot through with pain.
I got a switchman and started out to limber up the "III." I asked him to let me out on the main line, took a five-mile spin, and sidetracked for a freight train. While the man was unlocking the switch, I looked into the eyes and wondered what their owner was, or could be, or had been, to "Scar Faced" Hopkins, and ran off the switch.
The switchman had carelessly left the switch open after this train went by, and when we came along afterward, our train, instead of running in by the platform, went crashing into the freight train. If we had been going fast, great damage might have been done.
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