Whatever Brent had thought, he could not believe it when he heard it. He did not answer at once; then he said, very quietly, “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I won’t do it.”
“What do you mean, you won’t? It’s an order!”
“I won’t do it.” Brent’s voice had the firmness of certainty unclouded by any emotion.
“Are you refusing to obey an order?”
“I am.”
“But you have no right to refuse! And I’m not going to argue about it, either. It’s what I’ve decided, it’s my responsibility and I’m not asking for your opinion. Your job is to take my orders.”
“Will you give me that order in writing?”
“Why, God damn you, are you hinting that you don’t trust me? Are you... ?”
“Why do you have to go to Fairmount, Dave? Why can’t you telephone them about that Diesel, if you think that they have one?”
“You’re not going to tell me how to do my job! You’re not going to sit there and question me! You’re going to keep your trap shut and do as you’re told or I’ll give you a chance to talk—to the Unification Board!”
It was hard to decipher emotions on Brent’s cowboy face, but Mitchum saw something that resembled a look of incredulous horror; only it was horror at some sight of his own, not at the words, and it had no quality of fear, not the kind of fear Mitchum had hoped for.
Brent knew that tomorrow morning the issue would be his word against Mitchum’s; Mitchum would deny having given the order; Mitchum would show written proof that Engine Number 306 had been sent to Winston only “to stand by,” and would produce witnesses that he had gone to Fairmount in search of a Diesel; Mitchum would claim that the fatal order had been issued by and on the sole responsibility of Bill Brent, the chief dispatcher, it would not be much of a case, not a case that could bear close study, but it would be enough for the Unification Board, whose policy was consistent only in not permitting anything to be studied closely. Brent knew that he could play the same game and pass the frame-up on to another victim, he knew that he had the brains to work it out—except that he would rather be dead than do it.
It was not the sight of Mitchum that made him sit still in horror.
It was the realization that there was no one whom he could call to expose this thing and stop it—no superior anywhere on the line, from Colorado to Omaha to New York. They were in on it, all of them, they were doing the same, they had given Mitchum the lead and the method. It was Dave Mitchum who now belonged on this railroad and he, Bill Brent, who did not.
As Bill Brent had learned to see, by a single glance at a few numbers on a sheet of paper, the entire trackage of a division—so he was now able to see the whole of his own life and the full price of the decision he was making. He had not fallen in love until he was past his youth; he had been thirty-six when he had found the woman he wanted. He had been engaged to her for the last four years; he had had to wait, because he had a mother to support and a widowed sister with three children. He had never been afraid of burdens, because he had known his ability to carry them, and he had never assumed an obligation unless he was certain that he could fulfill it. He had waited, he had saved his money, and now he had reached the time when he felt himself free to be happy. He was to be married in a few weeks, this coming June. He thought of it, as he sat at his desk, looking at Dave Mitchum, but the thought aroused no hesitation, only regret and a distant sadness—distant, because he knew that he could not let it be part of this moment.
Bill Brent knew nothing about epistemology; but he knew that man must live by his own rational perception of reality, that he cannot act against it or escape it or find a substitute for it—and that there is no other way for him to live.
He rose to his feet. “It’s true that so long as I hold this job, I cannot refuse to obey you,” he said. “But I can, if I quit. So I’m quitting.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m quitting, as of this moment.”
“But you have no right to quit, you goddamn bastard! Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that I’ll have you thrown in jail for it?”
“If you want to send the sheriff for me in the morning, I’ll be at home. I won’t try to escape. There’s no place to go.”
Dave Mitchum was six-foot-two and had the build of a bruiser, but he stood shaking with fury and terror over the delicate figure of Bill Brent. “You can’t quit! There’s a law against it! I’ve got a law! You can’t walk out on me! I won’t let you out! I won’t let you leave this building tonight!”
Brent walked to the door. “Will you repeat that order you gave me, in front of the others? No? Then I will!”
As he pulled the door open, Mitchum’s fist shot out, smashed into his face and knocked him down.
The trainmaster and the road foreman stood in the open doorway.
“He quit!” screamed Mitchum. “The yellow bastard quit at a time like this! He’s a law-breaker and a coward!”
In the slow effort of rising from the floor, through the haze of blood running into his eyes, Bill Brent looked up at the two men. He saw that they understood, but he saw the closed faces of men who did not want to understand, did not want to interfere and hated him for putting them on the spot in the name of justice. He said nothing, rose to his feet and walked out of the building.
Mitchum avoided looking at the others. “Hey, you,” he called, jerking his head at the night dispatcher across the room. “Come here.
You’ve got to take over at once.”
With the door closed, he repeated to the boy the story of the Diesel at Fairmount, as he had given it to Brent, and the order to send the Comet through with Engine Number 306, if the boy did not hear from him in half an hour. The boy was in no condition to think, to speak or to understand anything: he kept seeing the blood on the face of Bill Brent, who had been his idol. “Yes, sir,” he answered humbly. Dave Mitchum departed for Fairmount, announcing to every yardman, switchman and wiper in sight, as he boarded the track motor car that he was going in search of a Diesel for the Comet.
The night dispatcher sat at his desk, watching the clock and the telephone, praying that the telephone would ring and let him hear from Mr. Mitchum. But the half-hour went by in silence, and when there were only three minutes left, the boy felt a terror he could not explain, except that he did not want to send that order, He turned to the trainmaster and the road foreman, asking hesitantly, “Mr. Mitchum gave me an order before he left, but I wonder whether I ought to send it, because I... I don’t think it’s right. He said—”
The trainmaster turned away; he felt no pity: the boy was about the same age as his brother had been.
The road foreman snapped, “Do just as Mr. Mitchum told you.
You’re not supposed to think,” and walked out of the room.
The responsibility that James Taggart and Clifton Locey had evaded now rested on the shoulders of a trembling, bewildered boy. He hesitated, then he buttressed his courage with the thought that one did not doubt the good faith and the competence of railroad executives. He did not know that his vision of a railroad and its executives was that of a century ago.
With the conscientious precision of a railroad man, in the moment when the hand of the clock ended the half-hour, he signed his name to the order instructing the Comet to proceed with Engine Number 306, and transmitted the order to Winston Station.
The station agent at Winston shuddered when he looked at the order, but he was not the man to defy authority. He told himself that the tunnel was not, perhaps, as dangerous as he thought. He told himself that the best policy, these days, was not to think.
When he handed their copies of the order to the conductor and the engineer of the Comet, the conductor glanced slowly about the room, from face to face, folded the slip of paper, put it into his pocket and walked out without a word.