Ralph in the Switch Tower; Or, Clearing the Track Read online

  Produced by Al Haines.

  RALPH QUICKLY AND DEFTLY ATTENDED TO THE CALL FOR SEVERALSWITCHES.]

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  RALPH IN THE SWITCH TOWER

  OR

  CLEARING THE TRACK

  BY

  ALLEN CHAPMAN

  NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

  Made in the United States of America

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  COPYRIGHT, 1907 BY THE MERSHON COMPANY _Ralph in the Switch Tower_

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  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I--DOWN AND OUT CHAPTER II--UP THE LADDER CHAPTER III--A CLOSE GRAZE CHAPTER IV--A MYSTERY CHAPTER V--THE STOWAWAY CHAPTER VI--MRS. FAIRBANKS' VISITOR CHAPTER VII--"YOUNG SLAVIN" CHAPTER VIII--A BAD LOT CHAPTER IX--CALCUTTA TOM CHAPTER X--A MILE A MINUTE CHAPTER XI--SPOILING FOR A FIGHT CHAPTER XII--THE SUPERINTENDENT'S OPINION CHAPTER XIII--SQUARING THINGS CHAPTER XIV--A BUSY EVENING CHAPTER XV--A HERO DESPITE HIMSELF CHAPTER XVI--KIDNAPPED CHAPTER XVII--A MIDNIGHT VISITOR CHAPTER XVIII--A DESPERATE CHANCE CHAPTER XIX--THE DOUBLE WRECK CHAPTER XX--THE CRAZY ORDERS CHAPTER XXI--IKE SLUMPS "NUTCRACKER" CHAPTER XXII--A HEADSTRONG FRIEND CHAPTER XXIII--IKE SLUMP & CO. CHAPTER XXIV--FIRE! CHAPTER XXV--THE LITTLE TIN BOX CHAPTER XXVI--A CLEW! CHAPTER XXVII--SLAVIN GETS A JOB CHAPTER XXVIII--WHAT THE "EXTRA" TOLD CHAPTER XXIX--GUESSING CHAPTER XXX--PRECIOUS FREIGHT CHAPTER XXXI--HALF A MILLION DOLLARS CHAPTER XXXII--CONCLUSION

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  RALPH IN THE SWITCH TOWER

  CHAPTER I--DOWN AND OUT

  "Get out of here!" said Jack Knight, head towerman of the Great NorthernRailroad, at Stanley Junction.

  "Why, I ain't doing no harm," retorted Mort Bemis, ex-leverman of thedepot switch tower.

  "And stay out. Hear me?" demanded Knight, big as a bear, and quite asgruff.

  "What's the call for sitting down on a fellow this way, I'd like toknow!" muttered Bemis sullenly.

  "You're a bad lot, that's what," growled the veteran railroader. "Youalways were and you always will be. I'm through with you. So is therailroad company. What's the call, you meddlesome, malicious reprobate?That's the call!" fairly shouted the towerman, red of face and cholericof voice.

  He moved one arm as he spoke. It hung in a sling, and the hand wasswathed in bandages.

  "There's some of your fine, Smart-Aleck work," he went on angrily. "Comenow, take yourself out of here! This is a place for workers, notloafers."

  Mort Bemis gave Jack Knight a revengeful look. Then he moved towardsthe trap in the floor.

  The scene was the depot switch tower at Stanley Junction, in sight ofthe local passenger depot. It loomed up thirty feet in the air,glass-windowed on every side. It was neat, light, and airy. In itscenter, running nearly its length, was the row of long heavy levers thatcontrolled the depot and siding switches of the terminus of the GreatNorthern Railroad.

  The big-framed, business-faced man who bustled among these, keeping anangry eye meantime on an unwelcome visitor, was a veteran and a marvelin local railroad circles.

  When the Great Northern had come to Stanley Junction, ten years back, itbrought old Jack Knight with it,

  He had an eye like an eagle and the muscles of a giant. The inside ofhis head was popularly believed to be a vast railroad map. Hecontrolled the main rails, switches, and sidings, like a woman would thethreads of an intricate knitting piece. He directed the locomotives andtrains up and down that puzzling network of rails, like puppets moved bystrings. In ten years' service he had never been responsible for anaccident or a wreck.

  Old Jack, therefore, having never made a mistake in railroading, hadlittle patience with the careless, lazy specimen whom he had justordered out of the place.

  Mort Bemis had been his assistant in the tower. The fellow's record hadalways been full of flaws. He was slow and indifferent at the levers.He associated with a shiftless crowd outside. He borrowed money and didnot pay it back. He was unreliable, disagreeable, and unpopular.

  Three days previous, old Jack was adjusting a heavy weight bar on thelower story of the switch tower.

  Mort, upstairs, was supposed to safely hold back a spring-bar apparatuswhile his superior was fixing the delicate mechanism below.

  His mind everywhere except on his task, Mort for an instant took hishand off the bar to wave a recognition to a chosen chum, "flipping" apassing freight train.

  There was a frightful yell below. Mort, terrified, pulled back the bar.Then he stuck his head through the trap. There stood old Jack, pale asdeath, one hand crushed and mutilated through his helper's outrageouslapse of duty.

  The old railroader's rage was terrible, as he forgot his pain and hurtin the realization that for the first time in ten years he was crippledfrom active service.

  The frightened Mort made a dive for a window. He slid down thewater-spout outside, got to the nearest switch shanty, telephoned thedepot master about the accident,--and made himself scarce.

  Mort joined some chosen chums in one of the haunts of Railroad Street.He reported by 'phone "on the sick list" next morning. He did not showup until two days later, "after a good and easy rest," as he put it, andthen fancying old Jack's "grouch" had cooled down.

  Mort's reception has been related. He was informed that the railroadcompany had peremptorily discharged him. As to old Jack himself, Mortreadily discerned that the veteran railroader was aching to give him agood hiding.

  Mort did not wait to furnish an excuse for this. He now started downthe trap-door ladder, grumbling and growling.

  "Be careful!" rapidly but pleasantly warned someone whom Mort jostled afew feet from the bottom.

  Mort edged over and dropped to the floor. He gave the speaker a keenlook.

  "Hello! Oh; it's you?" he muttered with a scowl; "Ralph Fairbanks."

  The person addressed responded with a short nod. Then he continued tomount the ladder in an easy, agile way.

  "Hold on," challenged Bemis.

  He had planted his feet apart, and had fixed a fierce and malignantglance upon the newcomer.

  Suspicion, disappointment, and rage showed plainly in his coarse, sullenface.

  There was something in the striking contrast between himself and theother that galled Mort.

  He was "down and out," he realized, while the neat, cheery, ambitiouslad whom he had hailed, three years his junior, was "going up theladder" in more ways than one.

  The latter wore a new, clean working suit, and carried a dinner pail. Hesuggested the wholesome, energetic worker from top to toe.

  "I am holding on," he observed to Mort, stopping half-way up the ladder.

  "Thought you was working at the roundhouse?" said Mort.

  "I was," answered Ralph Fairbanks. "I have been promoted."

  "Where to?"

  "Here."

  "What!" flared out Mort. "What do you know about switch-tower duty?"

  "Not much, only what Mr. Knight has shown me for the past two days. ButI'll catch on, I guess."

  Mort Bemis struck a tragic pose and his voice quavered.

  "Oho! that's the game, eh? All cut and dried! My bread and buttertaken away from
me, to give to one of the master mechanic's pets. Augh!"

  Mort retreated with a grimace of disgust. He was standing under a floorgrating. Purposely or by accident, Knight, overhead, had dropped adipperful of water through the grating.

  Mort jumped outside the lower tower room, growling like a mad catamount.He shook his fist menacingly at Ralph.

  "Fairbanks," he cried, "I'll fix you for this!"

  Ralph did not even look at his enemy again. He completed his ascent ofthe ladder, and came up through the trap with a bright, cheery hail toold Jack, whom he liked and who liked him.

  "I report for active duty, Mr. Knight," he announced briskly.

  "Oh, do you?" retorted the old railroader, disguising his good natureunder his usual mask of grimness. "Well, you're ahead of time fifteenminutes, so just sit down and behave yourself till I get those freightsover yonder untangled. Anxious for work, are you?" he pursuedquizzically. "You'll have enough of it. I'm ordered up to thecrossings tower, and you'll have to take the first half-night shift herealone. Think you can manage it?"

  "I can try, Mr. Knight," was the modest but resolute reply.