Success by Samuel Hopkins Adams

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Success

BY SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Author of "The Clarion," "Common Cause," etc.

1921

CONTENTS

PART I. ENCHANTMENT

PART II. THE VISION

PART III. FULFILLMENT

SUCCESS

PART I

ENCHANTMENT

CHAPTER I

The lonely station of Manzanita stood out, sharp and unsightly, in the
keen February sunlight. A mile away in a dip of the desert, lay the
town, a sorry sprawl of frame buildings, patternless save for the one
main street, which promptly lost itself at either end in a maze of
cholla, prickly pear, and the lovely, golden-glowing roseo. Far as the
eye could see, the waste was spangled with vivid hues, for the rare
rains had come, and all the cacti were in joyous bloom, from the scarlet
stain of the ocatilla to the pale, dream-flower of the yucca. Overhead
the sky shone with a hard serenity, a blue, enameled dome through which
the imperishable fires seemed magnified as they limned sharp shadows on
the earth; but in the southwest clouds massed and lurked darkly for a
sign that the storm had but called a truce.

East to west, along a ridge bounding the lower desert, ran the railroad,
a line as harshly uncompromising as the cold mathematics of the
engineers who had mapped it. To the north spread unfathomably a forest
of scrub pine and pinon, rising, here and there, into loftier growth. It
was as if man, with his imperious interventions, had set those thin
steel parallels as an irrefragable boundary to the mutual encroachments
of forest and desert, tree and cactus. A single, straggling trail
squirmed its way into the woodland. One might have surmised that it was
winding hopefully if blindly toward the noble mountain peak shimmering
in white splendor, mystic and wonderful, sixty miles away, but seeming
in that lucent air to be brooding closely over all the varied loveliness
below.

Though nine o'clock had struck on the brisk little station-clock, there
was still a tang of night chill left. The station-agent came out,
carrying a chair which he set down in the sunniest corner of the
platform. He looked to be hardly more than a boy, but firm-knit and
self-confident. His features were regular, his fairish hair slightly
wavy, and in his expression there was a curious and incongruous
suggestion of settledness, of acceptance, of satisfaction with life as
he met it, which an observer of men would have found difficult to
reconcile with his youth and the obvious intelligence of the face. His
eyes were masked by deeply browned glasses, for he was bent upon
literary pursuits, witness the corpulent, paper-covered volume under his
arm. Adjusting his chair to the angle of ease, he tipped back against
the wall and made tentative entry into his book.

What a monumental work was that in the treasure-filled recesses of which
the young explorer was straightway lost to the outer world! No human
need but might find its contentment therein. Spread forth in its
alluringly illustrated pages was the whole universe reduced to the
purchasable. It was a perfect and detailed microcosm of the world of
trade, the cosmogony of commerce _in petto_. The style was brief, pithy,
pregnant; the illustrations--oh, wonder of wonders!--unfailingly apt to
the text. He who sat by the Damascus Road of old marveling as the
caravans rolled dustily past bearing "emeralds and wheat, honey and oil
and balm, fine linen and embroidered goods, iron, cassia and calamus,
white wool, ivory and ebony," beheld or conjectured no such wondrous
offerings as were here gathered, collected, and presented for the
patronage of this heir of all the ages, between the gay-hued covers of
the great Sears-Roebuck Semiannual Mail-Order Catalogue. Its happy
possessor need but cross the talisman with the ready magic of a postal
money order and the swift genii of transportation would attend, servile
to his call, to deliver the commanded treasures at his very door.

But the young reader was not purposefully shopping in this vast
market-place of print. Rather he was adventuring idly, indulging the
amateur spirit, playing a game of hit-or-miss, seeking oracles in those
teeming pages. Therefore he did not turn to the pink insert, embodying
the alphabetical catalogue (Abdominal Bands to Zither Strings), but
opened at random.

"Supertoned Banjos," he read, beginning at the heading; and, running his
eye down the different varieties, paused at "Pride of the Plantation, a
full-sized, well-made, snappy-toned instrument at a very moderate price.
12 T 4031/4."

The explorer shook his head. Abovestairs rested a guitar (the Pearletta,
12 S 206, price $7.95) which he had purchased at the instance of Messrs.
Sears-Roebuck's insinuating representation as set forth in catalogue
item 12 S 01942, "Self-mastery of the Guitar in One Book, with All
Chords, Also Popular Solos That Can Be Played Almost at Sight." The
nineteen-cent instruction-book had gone into the fire after three days
of unequal combat between it and its owner, and the latter had
subsequently learned something of the guitar (and more of life) from a
Mexican-American girl with lazy eyes and the soul of a capricious and
self-indulged kitten, who had come uninvited to Manzanita to visit an
aunt, deceased six months previously. With a mild pang of memory for
those dreamy, music-filled nights on the desert, the youth decided
against further experiments in stringed orchestration.

Telescopes turned up next. He lingered a moment over 20 T 3513, a
nickel-plated cap pocket-glass, reflecting that with it he could discern
any signal on the distant wooded butte occupied by Miss Camilla Van
Arsdale, back on the forest trail, in the event that she might wish a
wire sent or any other service performed. Miss Camilla had been very
kind and understanding at the time of the parting with Carlotta, albeit
with a grimly humorous disapproval of the whole inflammatory affair; as
well as at other times; and there was nothing that he would not do for
her. He made a neat entry in a pocket ledger (3 T 9901) against the time
when he should have spare cash, and essayed another plunge.

Arctics and Lumberman's Overs he passed by with a grin as inappropriate
to the climate. Cod Liver Oil failed to interest him, as did the
Provident Cast Iron Range and the Clean-Press Cider Mill. But he paused
speculatively before Punching Bags, for he had the clean pride of body,
typical of lusty Western youth, and loved all forms of exercise. Could
he find space, he wondered, to install 6 T 1441 with its Scientific
Noiseless Platform & Wall Attachment (6 T 1476) in the portable house
(55 S 17) which, purchased a year before, now stood in the clearing
behind the station crammed with purchases from the Sears-Roebuck
wonderbook. Anyway, he would make another note of it. What would it be
like, he wondered, to have a million dollars to spend, and unlimited
access to the Sears-Roebuck treasures. Picturing himself as such a
Croesus, he innocently thought that his first act would be to take train
for Chicago and inspect the warehoused accumulations of those princes of
trade with his own eager eyes!

He mused humorously for a moment over a book on "Ease in Conversation."
("No trouble about conversation," he reflected; "the difficulty is to
find anybody to converse with," and he thought first of Carlotta, and
then of Miss Camilla Van Arsdale, but chiefly of the latter, for
conversation had not been the strong point of the passionate,
light-hearted Spanish girl.) Upon a volume kindly offering to teach
astronomy to the lay mind without effort or trouble (43 T 790) and
manifestly cheap at $1.10, he bestowed a more respectful attention, for
the desert nights were long and lonely.

Eventually he arrived at the department appropriate to his age and the
almost universal ambition of the civilized male, to wit, clothing.
Deeply, judiciously, did he meditate and weigh the advantages as between
745 J 460 ("Something new--different--economical--efficient. An all-wool
suit embodying all the features that make for clothes satisfaction. This
announcement is of tremendous importance"--as one might well have
inferred from the student's rapt expression) and 776 J 017 ("A
double-breasted, snappy, yet semi-conservative effect in dark-green
worsted, a special social value"), leaning to the latter because of a
purely literary response to that subtle and deft appeal of the
attributive "social." The devotee of Messrs. Sears-Roebuck was an
innately social person, though as yet his gregarious proclivities lay
undeveloped and unsuspected by himself. Also he was of a literary
tendency; but of this he was already self-conscious. He passed on to
ulsters and raincoats, divagated into the colorful realm of neckwear,
debated scarf-pins and cuff-links, visualized patterned shirtings, and
emerged to dream of composite sartorial grandeurs which, duly
synthesized into a long list of hopeful entries, were duly filed away
within the pages of 3 T 9901, the pocket ledger.

Footsteps shuffling along the right of way dispelled his visions. He
looked up to see two pedestrians who halted at his movement. They were
paired typically of that strange fraternity, the hobo, one being a
grizzled, hard-bitten man of waning middle age, the other a vicious and
scrawny boy of eighteen or so. The boy spoke first.

"You the main guy here?"

The agent nodded.

"Got a sore throat?" demanded the boy surlily. He started toward the
door. The agent made no move, but his eyes were attentive.

"That'll be near enough," he said quietly.

"Oh, we ain't on that lay," put in the grizzled man. He was quite
hoarse. "You needn't to be scared of us."

"I'm not," agreed the agent. And, indeed, the fact was self-evident.

"What about the pueblo yonder?" asked the man with a jerk of his head
toward the town.

"The hoosegow is old and the sheriff is new."

"I got ya," said the man, nodding. "We better be on our way."

"I would think so."

"You're a hell of a guy, you are," whined the boy. "'On yer way' from
you an' not so much as 'Are you hungry?' What about a little hand-out?"

"Nothing doing."

"Tightwad! How'd you like--"

"If you're hungry, feel in your coat-pocket."

"I guess you're a wise one," put in the man, grinning appreciatively.
"We got grub enough. Panhandlin's a habit with the kid; don't come
natural to him to pass a likely prospect without makin' a touch."

He leaned against the platform, raising one foot slightly from the
ground in the manner of a limping animal. The agent disappeared into the
station, locking the door after him. The boy gave expression to a
violent obscenity directed upon the vanished man. When that individual
emerged again, he handed the grizzled man a box of ointment and tossed a
packet of tobacco to the evil-faced boy. Both were quick with their
thanks. That which they had most needed and desired had been, as it
were, spontaneously provided. But the elder of the wayfarers was
puzzled, and looked from the salve-box to its giver.

"How'd you know my feet was blistered?"

"Been padding in the rain, haven't you?"

"Have you been on the hoof, too?" asked the hobo quickly.

The other smiled.

"Say!" exclaimed the boy. "I bet he's Banneker. Are you?" he demanded.

"That's my name."

"I heard of you three years ago when you was down on the Long Line
Sandy," said the man. He paused and considered. "What's your lay, Mr.
Banneker?" he asked, curiously but respectfully.

"As you see it. Railroading."

"A gay-cat," put in the boy with a touch of scorn.

"You hold your fresh lip," his elder rebuked him. "This gent has treated
us _like_ a gent. But why? What's the idea? That's what I don't get."

"Oh, some day I might want to run for Governor on the hobo ticket,"
returned the unsmiling agent.

"You get our votes. Well, so long and much obliged."

The two resumed their journey. Banneker returned to his book. A freight,
"running extra," interrupted him, but not for long. The wire had been
practicing a seemly restraint for uneventful weeks, so the agent felt
that he could settle down to a sure hour's bookishness yet, even though
the west-bound Transcontinental Special should be on time, which was
improbable, as "bad track" had been reported from eastward, owing to the
rains. Rather to his surprise, he had hardly got well reimmersed in the
enchantments of the mercantile fairyland when the "Open Office" wire
warned him to be attentive, and presently from the east came tidings of
Number Three running almost true to schedule, as befitted the pride of
the line, the finest train that crossed the continent.

Past the gaunt station she roared, only seven minutes late, giving the
imaginative young official a glimpse and flash of the uttermost luxury
of travel: rich woods, gleaming metal, elegance of finish, and on the
rear of the observation-car a group so lily-clad that Sears-Roebuck at
its most glorious was not like unto them. Would such a train, the
implanted youth wondered, ever bear him away to unknown, undreamed
enchantments?

Would he even wish to go if he might? Life was full of many things to do
and learn at Manzanita. Mahomet need not go to the mountain when, with
but a mustard seed of faith in the proven potency of mail-order miracles
he could move mountains to come to him. Leaning to his telegraph
instrument, he wired to the agent at Stanwood, twenty-six miles
down-line, his formal announcement.

"O. S.--G. I. No. 3 by at 10.46."

"O. K.--D. S.," came the response.

Banneker returned to the sunlight. In seven minutes or perhaps less, as
the Transcontinental would be straining to make up lost time, the train
would enter Rock Cut three miles and more west, and he would recapture
the powerful throbbing of the locomotive as she emerged on the farther
side, having conquered the worst of the grade.

Banneker waited. He drew out his watch. Seven. Seven and a half. Eight.
No sound from westward. He frowned. Like most of the road's employees,
he took a special and almost personal interest in having the regal train
on time, as if, in dispatching it through, he had given it a friendly
push on its swift and mighty mission. Was she steaming badly? There had
been no sign of it as she passed. Perhaps something had gone wrong with
the brakes. Or could the track have--

The agent tilted sharply forward, his lithe frame tense. A long drawn,
quivering shriek came down-wind to him. It was repeated. Then short and
sharp, piercing note on piercing note, sounded the shrill, clamant
voice.

The great engine of Number Three was yelling for help.

CHAPTER II

Banneker came out of his chair with a spring.

"Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!" screamed the strident voice.

It was like an animal in pain and panic.

For a brief instant the station-agent halted at the door to assure
himself that the call was stationary. It was. Also it was slightly
muffled. That meant that the train was still in the cut. As he ran to
the key and sent in the signal for Stanwood, Banneker reflected what
this might mean. Crippled? Likely enough. Ditched? He guessed not. A
ditched locomotive is usually voiceless if not driverless as well.
Blocked by a slide? Rock Cut had a bad repute for that kind of accident.
But the quality of the call predicated more of a catastrophe than a mere
blockade. Besides, in that case why could not the train back down--

The answering signal from the dispatcher at Stanwood interrupted his
conjectures.

"Number Three in trouble in the Cut," ticked Banneker fluently. "Think
help probably needed from you. Shall I go out?"

"O. K.," came the answer. "Take charge. Bad track reported three miles
east may delay arrival."

Banneker dropped and locked the windows, set his signal for "track
blocked" and ran to the portable house. Inside he stood, considering.
With swift precision he took from one of the home-carpentered shelves a
compact emergency kit, 17 S 4230, "hefted" it, and adjusted it, knapsack
fashion, to his back; then from a small cabinet drew a flask, which he
disposed in his hip-pocket. Another part of the same cabinet provided a
first-aid outfit, 3 R 0114. Thus equipped he was just closing the door
after him when another thought struck him and he returned to slip a coil
of light, strong sash-cord, 36 J 9078, over his shoulders to his waist
where he deftly tautened it. He had seen railroad wrecks before. For a
moment he considered leaving his coat, for he had upwards of three miles
to go in the increasing heat; but, reflecting that the outward and
visible signs of authority might save time and questions, he thought
better of it. Patting his pocket to make sure that his necessary
notebook and pencil were there, he set out at a moderate, even,
springless lope. He had no mind to reach a scene which might require his
best qualities of mind and body, in a semi-exhausted state.
Nevertheless, laden as he was, he made the three miles in less than half
an hour. Let no man who has not tried to cover at speed the ribbed
treacheries of a railroad track minimize the achievement!

A sharp curve leads to the entrance of Rock Cut. Running easily,
Banneker had reached the beginning of the turn, when he became aware of
a lumbering figure approaching him at a high and wild sort of
half-gallop. The man's face was a welter of blood. One hand was pressed
to it. The other swung crazily as he ran. He would have swept past
Banneker unregarding had not the agent caught him by the shoulder.

"Where are you hurt?"

The runner stared wildly at the young man. "I'll soom," he mumbled
breathlessly, his hand still crumpled against the dreadfully smeared
face. "Dammum, I'll soom."

He removed his hand from his mouth, and the red drops splattered and
were lost upon the glittering, thirsty sand. Banneker wiped the man's
face, and found no injury. But the fingers which he had crammed into his
mouth were bleeding profusely.

"They oughta be prosecuted," moaned the sufferer. "I'll soom. For ten
thousan' dollars. M'hand is smashed. Looka that! Smashed like a bug."

Banneker caught the hand and expertly bound it, taking the man's name
and address as he worked.

"Is it a bad wreck?" he asked.

"It's hell. Look at m'hand! But I'll soom, all right. _I_'ll show'm ...
Oh! ... Cars are afire, too ... Oh-h-h! Where's a hospital?"

He cursed weakly as Banneker, without answering, re-stowed his packet
and ran on.

A thin wisp of smoke rising above the nearer wall of rocks made the
agent set his teeth. Throughout his course the voice of the engine had,
as it were, yapped at his hurrying heels, but now it was silent, and he
could hear a murmur of voices and an occasional shouted order. He came
into sight of the accident, to face a bewildering scene.

Two hundred yards up the track stood the major portion of the train,
intact. Behind it, by itself, lay a Pullman sleeper, on its side and
apparently little harmed. Nearest to Banneker, partly on the rails but
mainly beside them, was jumbled a ridiculous mess of woodwork, with here
and there a gleam of metal, centering on a large and jagged boulder.
Smaller rocks were scattered through the _melange_. It was exactly like
a heap of giant jack-straws into which some mischievous spirit had
tossed a large pebble. At one end a flame sputtered and spread
cheerfully.

A panting and grimy conductor staggered toward it with a pail of water
from the engine. Banneker accosted him.

"Any one in--"

"Get outa my way!" gasped the official.

"I'm agent at Manzanita."

The conductor set down his pail. "O God!" he said. "Did you bring any
help?"

"No, I'm alone. Any one in there?" He pointed to the flaming debris.

"One that we know of. He's dead."

"Sure?" cried Banneker sharply.

"Look for yourself. Go the other side."

Banneker looked and returned, white and set of face. "How many others?"

"Seven, so far."

"Is that all?" asked the agent with a sense of relief. It seemed as if
no occupant could have come forth of that ghastly and absurd
rubbish-heap, which had been two luxurious Pullmans, alive.

"There's a dozen that's hurt bad."

"No use watering that mess," said Banneker. "It won't burn much further.
Wind's against it. Anybody left in the other smashed cars?"

"Don't think so."

"Got the names of the dead?"

"Now, how would I have the time!" demanded the conductor resentfully.

Banneker turned to the far side of the track where the seven bodies lay.
They were not disposed decorously. The faces were uncovered. The
postures were crumpled and grotesque. A forgotten corner of a
battle-field might look like that, the young agent thought, bloody and
disordered and casual.

Nearest him was the body of a woman badly crushed, and, crouching beside
it, a man who fondled one of its hands, weeping quietly. Close by lay
the corpse of a child showing no wound or mark, and next that, something
so mangled that it might have been either man or woman--or neither. The
other victims were humped or sprawled upon the sand in postures of
exaggerated _abandon_; all but one, a blonde young girl whose upthrust
arm seemed to be reaching for something just beyond her grasp.

A group of the uninjured from the forward cars surrounded and enclosed a
confused sound of moaning and crying. Banneker pushed briskly through
the ring. About twenty wounded lay upon the ground or were propped
against the rock-wall. Over them two women were expertly working, one
tiny and beautiful, with jewels gleaming on her reddened hands; the
other brisk, homely, with a suggestion of the professional in her
precise motions. A broad, fat, white-bearded man seemed to be informally
in charge. At least he was giving directions in a growling voice as he
bent over the sufferers. Banneker went to him.

"Doctor?" he inquired.

The other did not even look up. "Don't bother me," he snapped.

The station-agent pushed his first-aid packet into the old man's hands.

"Good!" grunted the other. "Hold this fellow's head, will you? Hold it
hard."

Banneker's wrists were props of steel as he gripped the tossing head.
The old man took a turn with a bandage and fastened it.

"He'll die, anyway," he said, and lifted his face.

Banneker cackled like a silly girl at full sight of him. The spreading
whisker on the far side of his stern face was gayly pied in blotches of
red and green.

"Going to have hysterics?" demanded the old man, striking not so far
short of the truth.

"No," said the agent, mastering himself. "Hey! you, trainman," he called
to a hobbling, blue-coated fellow. "Bring two buckets of water from the
boiler-tap, hot and clean. Clean, mind you!" The man nodded and limped
away. "Anything else, Doctor?" asked the agent. "Got towels?"

"Yes. And I'm not a doctor--not for forty years. But I'm the nearest
thing to it in this shambles. Who are you?"

Banneker explained. "I'll be back in five minutes," he said and passed
into the subdued and tremulous crowd.

On the outskirts loitered a lank, idle young man clad beyond the glories
of Messrs. Sears-Roebuck's highest-colored imaginings.

"Hurt?" asked Banneker.

"No," said the youth.

"Can you run three miles?"

"I fancy so."

"Will you take an urgent message to be wired from Manzanita?"

"Certainly," said the youth with good-will.

Tearing a leaf from his pocket-ledger, Banneker scribbled a dispatch
which is still preserved in the road's archives as giving more vital
information in fewer words than any other railroad document extant. He
instructed the messenger where to find a substitute telegrapher.

"Answer?" asked the youth, unfurling his long legs.

"No," returned Banneker, and the courier, tossing his coat off, took the
road.

Banneker turned back to the improvised hospital.

"I'm going to move these people into the cars," he said to the man in
charge. "The berths are being made up now."

The other nodded. Banneker gathered helpers and superintended the
transfer. One of the passengers, an elderly lady who had shown no sign
of grave injury, died smiling courageously as they were lifting her.

It gave Banneker a momentary shock of helpless responsibility. Why
should she have been the one to die? Only five minutes before she had
spoken to him in self-possessed, even tones, saying that her
traveling-bag contained camphor, ammonia, and iodine if he needed them.
She had seemed a reliable, helpful kind of lady, and now she was dead.
It struck Banneker as improbable and, in a queer sense, discriminatory.
Remembering the slight, ready smile with which she had addressed him, he
felt as if he had suffered a personal loss; he would have liked to stay
and work over her, trying to discover if there might not be some spark
of life remaining, to be cherished back into flame, but the burly old
man's decisive "Gone," settled that. Besides, there were other things,
official things to be looked to.

A full report would be expected of him, as to the cause of the accident.
The presence of the boulder in the wreckage explained that grimly. It
was now his routine duty to collect the names of the dead and wounded,
and such details as he could elicit. He went about it briskly,
conscientiously, and with distaste. All this would go to the claim agent
of the road eventually and might serve to mitigate the total of damages
exacted of the company. Vaguely Banneker resented such probable
penalties as unfair; the most unremitting watchfulness could not have
detected the subtle undermining of that fatal boulder. But essentially
he was not interested in claims and damages. His sensitive mind hovered
around the mystery of death; that file of crumpled bodies, the woman of
the stilled smile, the man fondling a limp hand, weeping quietly.
Officially, he was a smooth-working bit of mechanism. As an individual
he probed tragic depths to which he was alien otherwise than by a large
and vague sympathy. Facts of the baldest were entered neatly; but in the
back of his eager brain Banneker was storing details of a far different
kind and of no earthly use to a railroad corporation.

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