FullReads

Where was he? Was he near any help? He’d have to get help somewhere, or–or with the cold and–and everything he’d probably die out here before morning. Toddles shouted out–again and again. Perhaps his voice was too weak to carry very far; anyway, there was no reply.

He looked up at the top of the embankment, clamped his teeth, and started to crawl. If he got up there, perhaps he could tell where he was. It had taken Toddles a matter of seconds to roll down; it took him ten minutes of untold agony to get up. Then he dashed his hand across his eyes where the blood was, and cried a little with the surge of relief. East, down the track, only a few yards away, the green eye of a switch lamp winked at him.

Where there was a switch lamp there was a siding, and where there was a siding there was promise of a station. Toddles, with the sudden uplift upon him, got to his feet and started along the track–two steps–and went down again. He couldn’t walk, the pain was more than he could bear–his right ankle, his left shoulder, and his back–hopping only made it worse–it was easier to crawl.

And so Toddles crawled.

It took him a long time even to pass the switch light. The pain made him weak, his senses seemed to trail off giddily every now and then, and he’d find himself lying flat and still beside the track. It was a white, drawn face that Toddles lifted up each time he started on again–miserably white, except where the blood kept trickling from his forehead.

And then Toddles’ heart, stout as it was, seemed to snap. He had reached the station platform, wondering vaguely why the little building that loomed ahead was dark–and now it came to him in a flash, as he recognized the station. It was Cassil’s Siding–and there was no night man at Cassil’s Siding! The switch lights were lighted before the day man left, of course. Everything swam before Toddles’ eyes. There–there was no help here. And yet–yet perhaps–desperate hope came again–perhaps there might be. The pain was terrible–all over him. And–and he’d got so weak now–but it wasn’t far to the door.

Toddles squirmed along the platform, and reached the door finally–only to find it shut and fastened. And then Toddles fainted on the threshold.

When Toddles came to himself again, he thought at first that he was up in the dispatcher’s room at Big Cloud with Bob Donkin pounding away on the battered old key they used to practice with–only there seemed to be something the matter with the key, and it didn’t sound as loud as it usually did–it seemed to come from a long way off somehow. And then, besides, Bob was working it faster than he had ever done before when they were practicing. “Hold second”–second something–Toddles couldn’t make it out. Then the “seventeen”–yes, he knew that–that was the life and death. Bob was going pretty quick, though. Then “CS–CS–CS”–Toddles’ brain fumbled a bit over that–then it came to him. CS was the call for Cassil’s Siding. Cassil’s Siding! Toddles’ head came up with a jerk.

A little cry burst from Toddles’ lips–and his brain cleared. He wasn’t at Big Cloud at all–he was at Cassil’s Siding–and he was hurt–and that was the sounder inside calling, calling frantically for Cassil’s Siding–where he was.

The life and death–the seventeen–it sent a thrill through Toddles’ pain-twisted spine. He wriggled to the window. It, too, was closed, of course, but he could hear better there. The sounder was babbling madly.

“Hold second—-“

He missed it again–and as, on top of it, the “seventeen” came pleading, frantic, urgent, he wrung his hands.

“Hold second”–he got it this time–“Number Two.”

Toddles’ first impulse was to smash in the window and reach the key. And then, like a dash of cold water over him, Donkin’s words seemed to ring in his ears: “Use your head.”