THE SPIDER WATER.

I.

Not officially: I don't pretend to say that. You might travel the West from fresh water to salt without ever locating the Spider Water, by map or by name.

But if you should happen anywhere in the West to sit among a gang of bridge carpenters, or get to confidence with a bridge foreman; or find the springy side of a road master's heart—then you might hear all you want about the Spider Water; maybe more.

The Sioux named it; and, whatever their faults, no man with sense ever attempted to improve on their names for things—whether birds, or braves, or winds, or waters; they know.

Unfortunately our managers hadn't always sense, and one of them countenanced a shameful change in the name of Spider Water. Some idiot dubbed it the Big Sandy; and the Big Sandy it is to this day on map and in folder. But not in the heart of the Sioux or the lingo of trackmen.

It was the only stream our bridge engineers could never manage. Bridge after bridge they threw across it—and into it. One auditor at Omaha, given to asthma and statistics, estimated, between spells, that the Spider Water had cost us more than all the other watercourses together from the Missouri to the Sierras.

Then came to the West End a masterful man, a Scotchman, pawky and hard. Brodie was his name, an Edinburgh man, with no end of degrees and master of every one. A great engineer, Brodie, but the Spider Water took a fall even out of him. It swept out a Howe truss bridge for Brodie almost before he got his bag opened.

Then Brodie tried—not to make friends with the Spider, for nobody could do that—but to get acquainted with it. For this he went to its oldest neighbors, the Sioux. Brodie spent weeks and weeks, summers, up the Spider Water, hunting. And with the Sioux he talked the Spider Water and drank fire water. That was Brodie's shame, the fire water.

But he was pawky, and he chinned unceasingly the braves and the medicine men about the uncommonly queer creek that took the bridges so fast. The river that month in and month out couldn't squeeze up water enough for a pollywog to bathe in, and then, of a sudden, and for a few days, would rage like the Missouri, and leave our bewildered rails hung up either side in the wind.

Brodie talked cloudbursts up country; for the floods came, times, under clear skies—and the Sioux sulked in silence. He suggested an unsuspected inlet from some mountain stream which, maybe, times, sent its stormwater over a low divide into the Spider—and the red men shrugged their faces.

Finally they told him the Indian legend about the Spider Water; took him away up where once a party of Pawnees had camped in the dust of the river bed to surprise the Sioux; and told Brodie how the Spider—more sudden than buck, fleeter than pony—had come down in the night and ambushed the Pawnees with a flood. And so well that next morning there wasn't enough material in sight for a ghost dance.

They took Brodie himself out into the ratty bed, and when he said heap dry, and said no water, they laughed, Indian-wise, and pointed to the sand. Scooping little wells with their hands, they showed him the rising and the filling; water where the instant before was no water; and a bigger fool than Brodie could see the water was all there, only underground.

"But when did it rise?" asked Brodie. "When the chinook spoke," said the Sioux. "And why?" persisted Brodie. "Because the Spider woke," answered the Sioux. And Brodie went out of the camp of the Sioux wondering.

And he planned a new bridge which should stand the chinook and the Spider and all evil spirits. And full seven year it lasted; and then the fire water spoke for the wicked Scotchman, and he himself went out into the night.

And after he died, miserable wreck of a man, the Spider woke and took his pawky bridge and tied up the main line for two weeks and set us crazy, for it cost us our grip on the California fast freight business. But at that time Healey was superintendent of bridges on the West End.

His father was a section foreman. When Healey was a mere kid, he got into Brodie's office doing errands. But whenever he saw a draughtsman at work he hung over the table till they kicked him downstairs. Then, by and by, Healey got himself an old table and part of a cake of India ink, and with some cursing from Brodie became a draughtsman, and one day head draughtsman in Brodie's office. Healey was no college man; Healey was a Brodie man. Single mind on single mind—concentration absolute. Mathematics, drawing, bridges, brains—that was Healey. All that Brodie knew, Healey had from him, and Brodie, who hated even himself, showed still a light in the wreck by moulding Healey to his work. For one day, said Brodie in his heart, this boy shall be master of these bridges. When I am dust he will be here what I might have been—this Irish boy—and they will say he was Brodie's boy. And better than any of these doughheads they send me out he shall be, if he was made engineer by a drunkard. And Healey was better, far, far better than the doughheads, better than the graduates, better than Brodie—and to Healey came the time to wrestle with the Spider.

Stronger than any man he was, before or since, for the work. All Brodie knew, all the Indians knew, all that a life's experience, eating, living, watching, sleeping with the big river, had taught him, that Healey knew. And when Brodie's bridge went out, Healey was ready with his new bridge for the Spider Water, which should be better than Brodie's, just as he was better than Brodie. A bridge like Brodie's, with the fire water, as it were, left out. And after the temporary structure was thrown over the stream, Healey's plans for a Howe truss, two-pier, two-abutment, three-span, pneumatic caisson bridge to span the Spider Water were submitted to headquarters.

But the cost! The directors jumped the table when they saw the figures. Our directors talked economy for the road and for themselves studied piracy. So Healey couldn't get the money for his new bridge, and was forced to build a cheap one which must, he knew, go some time. But the dream of his life, this we all knew—the Sioux would have said the Spider knew—was to build a final bridge over the Spider Water, a bridge to throttle it for all time.

It was the one subject on which you would get a rise out of Healey any time, day or night, the two-pier, two-abutment, three-span, pneumatic caisson Spider bridge. He would talk Spider bridge to a Chinaman. His bridge foreman, Ed Peeto, a staving big one-eyed French-Canadian, had but two ideas in life. One was Healey, the other the Spider bridge. And after many moons our pirate directors were thrown out, and a great and public-spirited man took control of our system, and when Ed Peeto heard it he kicked his little water spaniel in a frenzy of delight. "Now, Sport, old boy," he exclaimed riotously, "we'll get the bridge!" And after much effort by Healey, seconded by Bucks, superintendent of the division, and by Callahan, assistant, the new president did consent to put up the money for the good bridge. The wire flashed the word to the West End. Everybody at the wickiup, as we called the old division headquarters, was glad; but Healey rejoiced, Ed Peeto burned red fire, and his little dog Sport ate rattlesnakes.

There was a good bridge needed at one other point, the Peace River, a treacherous water, and Healey had told the new management that if they would give him a pneumatic caisson bridge there, he would guarantee the worst stretch on the system against tie-up disasters for a generation; and they had said go ahead; and Ed Peeto went fairly savage with responsibility and strutted around the wickiup like a Cyclops.

Early in the summer, Healey very quiet, and Peeto very profane, with all their traps and belongings, moved into construction headquarters at the Spider, and the first airlock ever sunk west of the Missouri closed over the heads of tall Healey and big Ed Peeto. Like a swarm of ants the bridge workers cast the refuse up out of the Spider bed. The blowpipes never slept, night and day the sand streamed from below, and Healey's caissons sank like armed cruisers foot by foot toward the bed-rock. When the masonry was crowding high-water mark, Healey and Peeto ran back to Medicine Bend to get acquainted with their families. Peeto was so deaf he couldn't hear himself sing, and Healey was as ragged and ratty as the old depot; but both were immensely happy.

Next morning, Sunday, they all sat up in Buck's office reading letters and smoking.

"Hello," growled Bucks, chucking a nine-inch official manila under the table, "here's a general order—Number Fourteen."

The boys drew their briars like one. Bucks read a lot of stuff that didn't touch our end, then he reached this paragraph:

"The Mountain and Inter-mountain divisions are hereby consolidated under the name of the Mountain Division, with J. F. Bucks superintendent, headquarters at Medicine Bend. C. T. Callahan is appointed assistant of the consolidated divisions."

"Good boy!" roared Ed Peeto, straining his ears.

"Well, well, well," murmured Healey, opening his eyes, "here's promotions right and left." Bucks read on:

"H. P. Agnew is appointed superintendent of bridges of the new division, with headquarters at Omaha, vice P. C. Healey."

Bucks threw down the order. Ed Peeto broke out first: "Did you hear that?"

Healey nodded.

"You're let out!" stormed Peeto. Healey nodded. The bridge foreman dashed his pipe at the stove, jumped up, stamped across to the window, and was like to have sworn the glass out before Healey spoke.

"I'm glad we're up with the Spider job, Bucks," said he. "When they get the Peace River work in, the division will run itself for a year."

"Healey," said Bucks, "I don't need to tell you what I think of it, do I? It's a shame. But it's what I've said for a year—nobody will ever know what Omaha is going to do next." Healey rose to his feet. "Where you going?"

"Back to the Spider on Number Two."

"Not going back this morning. Why don't you wait for Four to-night?"

"Ed, will you get those staybolts and chuck them into the baggage car for me when Two pulls in? I'm going over to the house for a minute."

They knew what that meant. He was going over to tell the folks he wouldn't be home for Sunday as he expected—as the children expected. Going to tell the wife—the old man—that he was out. Out of the railroad system he had given his life to help build up and to make what it was. Out of the position he had climbed to by studying like a hermit and working like a hobo. Out—without criticism or reason or allegation. Simply, like a dog, out.

Bucks and Callahan looked down on the departing train soon afterward, and saw Healey climbing into the smoker. Every minute he had before the new order beheaded him he spent at the Spider. One thing he meant to make sure of—that they shouldn't beat him out of the finish of the Spider bridge as he had planned it. One monument Healey meant to have; one he has.

After he let go on the West End, Healey wanted to look up something East. But Bucks told him frankly it would be difficult to get a place without a regular engineer's degree. It seemed as if there was no place for Healey but just the mountains, and after a time finding nothing, and Bucks losing a roadmaster, Healey—Callahan urging—agreed to take the little job and stay with his old superintendent. It was a big drop, but Healey took it.

Agnew meantime had stopped all construction work not too far along to discontinue. The bridge at the Spider was fortunately beyond his mandate; it was finished to a rivet as Healey had planned it. But the Peace River bridge was caught in the air, and Healey's great caissons gave way to piles, and the cost came down from a hundred to seventy-five thousand dollars. Incidentally it was breathed from headquarters that the day for extravagant appropriations on the West End was passed.

That year we had no winter till spring, and no spring till summer; and it was a spring of snow and a summer of water. The mountains were lost in snow even after Easter. When the snow let up, and it was no longer a matter of keeping the track clear, it was a matter of lashing it to the right-of-way to keep it from swimming clear. Healey caught it worse than anybody. He knew Bucks looked to him for the track, and he worked like two men, for that was his way in a pinch. He strained every nerve making ready for the time the mountain snows should go out.

There was nobody easy on the West End. Healey least of all, for that spring, ahead of the suns, ahead of the thaws, ahead of the waters, came a going out that unsettled the oldest calculator in the wickiup. Brodie's old friends began coming out of the up-country, out of the Spider Valley. Over the Eagle Pass and through the Peace Cañon came the Sioux in parties and camps and tribes. And Bucks stayed them and talked with them. But the Sioux did not talk, they grunted—and traveled. After Bucks Healey tried, for the braves knew him and would listen. But when he accused them of fixing for a fight, they denied and turned their faces to the mountains. They stretched their arms straight out under their blankets like stringers, and put their palms downward and muttered to Healey, "Plenty snow."

"I reckon they're lying," growled Bucks listening. Healey made no comment; only looked at the buried mountains.

Now the Spider wakes regularly twice; at all other times irregularly. Once in April; that is the foothills water. Once in June; that is the mountain water.

Now came an April without any rise; nothing rose but the snow, and May opened bleaker than April; even the trackmen walked with set faces. The dirtiest half-breed on the line knew now what the mountains held.

Section gangs were doubled, night walkers put on. Bypasses were opened, bridge crews strengthened, everything buckled for grief. Gullies began to race, culverts to choke, creeks to tumble, rivers to madden. From the Muddy to the Summit the water courses swelled and boiled; all but the Spider; the big river slept. Through May and into June the Spider slept. But Healey was there at the wickiup, with one eye always running over all the line and one eye turned always to the Spider, where two men and two, night and day, watched the lazy surface water trickle over and through the vagabond bed between Healey's monumental piers. Never an hour did the operating department lose the track. East and west of us everywhere railroads clamored in despair. The flood swept from the Rockies to the Alleghanies. Our trains never missed a trip; our schedules were unbroken; our people laughed; we got the business, dead loads of it! Our treasury flowed over; and Healey watched, and the Spider slept. But when May turned soft and hot into June, with every ditch bellying and the mountains still buried, it put us all thinking hard. It was the season for floods.

TO BE CONCLUDED.