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Ralph in the Switch Tower: or, Clearing the Track
Ralph in the Switch Tower Or Clearing the Track
CHAPTER I-DOWN AND OUT
"Get out of here!" said Jack Knight, head towerman of the Great Northern Railroad, at Stanley Junction.
"Why, I ain't doing no harm," retorted Mort Bemis, ex-leverman of the depot switch tower.
"And stay out. Hear me?" demanded Knight, big as a bear, and quite as gruff.
"What's the call for sitting down on a fellow this way, I'd like to know!" muttered Bemis sullenly.
"You're a bad lot, that's what," growled the veteran railroader. "You always were and you always will be. I'm through with you. So is the railroad company. What's the call, you meddlesome, malicious reprobate? That's the call!" fairly shouted the towerman, red of face and choleric of voice.
He moved one arm as he spoke. It hung in a sling, and the hand was swathed in bandages.
"There's some of your fine, Smart-Aleck work," he went on angrily. "Come now, take yourself out of here! This is a place for workers, not loafers."
Mort Bemis gave Jack Knight a revengeful look. Then he moved towards the trap in the floor.
The scene was the depot switch tower at Stanley Junction, in sight of the local passenger depot. It loomed up thirty feet in the air, glass-windowed on every side. It was neat, light, and airy. In its center, running nearly its length, was the row of long heavy levers that controlled the depot and siding switches of the terminus of the Great Northern Railroad.
The big-framed, business-faced man who bustled among these, keeping an angry eye meantime on an unwelcome visitor, was a veteran and a marvel in local railroad circles.