A Slip on a Special

Glover's train pulled into Medicine Bend, in the rain, at half-past two
o'clock. The face in the Lalla Rookh had put an end to thoughts of
sleep, and he walked up to his office in the Wickiup to work until
morning on his report. He lighted a lamp, opened his desk with a clang
that echoed to the last dark corner of the zigzag hall, and, spreading
out his papers, resumed the figuring he had begun at Wind River
station. But the combinations which at eleven o'clock had gone fast
refused now to work. The Lalla Rookh curtains intruded continually
into his problems and his calculations dissolved helplessly into an
idle stare at a jumble of figures.

He got up at last, restless, walked through the trainmaster's room,
into the despatcher's office, and stumbled on the tragedy of the night.

It came about through an ambition in itself honorable--the ambition of
Bud Cawkins to become a train-despatcher.

Bud began railroading on the Wind River. In three months he was made
an agent, in six months he had become an expert in station work, an
operator after a despatcher's own heart, and the life of the line; then
he began looking for trouble. His quest resulted first in the
conviction that the main line business was not handled nearly as well
as it ought to be. Had Bud confided this to an agent of experience
there would have been no difficulty. He would have been told that
every agent on every branch in the world, sooner or later, has the same
conviction; that he need only to let it alone, eat sparingly of brain
food, and the clot would be sure to pass unnoticed.