The Project Gutenberg eBook of Flesh

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Title: Flesh

Author: Karl W. Detzer

Release date: September 6, 2026 [eBook #79518]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: The Butterick Publishing Company, 1928

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79518

Credits: Prepared by volunteers at BookCove (bookcove.net)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLESH ***

FLESH

By Karl W. Detzer

Paddy Maguire was born on the tailboard, as they say in the fire department. His father, proud old Ham Maguire, served as foreman of a hose company near the South Water Street docks for twenty years before the Great Fire in 1871. Paddy remembered the Great Fire; he was ten years old then. It was during that three-day catastrophe he decided he would be a fireman.

Old Ham sat at supper when the church bells rang the alarm that warm October afternoon. He drank his coffee hurriedly and ran south on State Street, pulling a hose reel. Paddy saw him once, early next morning, advancing stubbornly against the flames. Ham was killed the second afternoon. On the third day, General Phil Sheridan, leading his ragged militia, ended the fire with gunpowder. Paddy remembered him, too. General Phil and old Ham were the heroes of the Great Fire.

When Paddy was seventeen, he joined Engine 10. Hand drawn reels, leather hose and gooseneck pumps with the long rocking brakes were disappearing from the department in those days. Horseflesh, steam and hard rubber line were coming in. Paddy, with the willingness of youth, greeted the new order enthusiastically. Let old men grumble that steam engines were not yet fully tested, that they’d break down when a crisis faced them!

Forty hot, smoky years Paddy served. He watched the slow pendulum of politics sway left and right, saw good marshals and bad marshals, saw efficiency come and efficiency go. But he never played with votes. He was a fireman, he said fiercely, and flame wasn’t concerned with ward boundaries and election days.

Pipeman and ladderman he labored—Engine 10, Engine 1, Engine 13, Engine 98, Truck 9. He drove squad wagon and hose cart and steamer in turn, “buggies” of battalion chiefs, light single horse rigs, heavy teams and majestic three horse hitches. They still tell the story in the department of the time Paddy pushed his wide-shouldered grays on a slow gallop from the Loop to the Yards, a stiff five miles, breaking through traffic, and not a speck of foam on their flanks when they got there.

A hard-headed horseman was Paddy Maguire. Early in the spring of 1907 he became a lieutenant, second in command of Engine 189. His hair was whitening then, and his beard, which he parted into two sharp prongs.

“There’s talk of horseless wagons in the business,” his senior pipeman, Jim Casey, told him one summer night. “Automobiles.”

“Aye, talk, devil ’em,” Paddy answered.

He was standing in front of the alarm board. A gentle wind from the lake found its way through dusty streets and into the wide, open front doors. Paddy had unbuttoned his shirt at the throat to get full advantage of the breeze.

“Gasoline in the fire business? It ain’t to be trusted. Takes flesh. Flesh and steam.”

He snorted fiercely. Like a blue-shirted, gray-bearded Canute he scorned the rising mechanical tide. Fight fire with gasoline? Without the throb of steamy pistons to tune your heart? Run without horses? It was a pretty mess those young Johnny-jump-ups were getting into down at the city hall!

In spite of him, gasoline found its way into the department. Paddy Maguire growled and talked on. At least they’d not try to foist such nonsense on him! Steamer 189 was safe for a while yet. And these gasoline rigs often didn’t get there. He did not hide his delight at a stalled ladder truck, halted on its way to a fire with the whole crew tampering with the motor. He rang his bell joyfully and galloped past in a triumphant clatter of hooves. He sulked whenever a veteran, some man his own age, retired; whenever young blood came into the department. Mechanics. Fools who talked horsepower and didn’t know horses. Who spoke of rotary pumps and centrifugals, nozzle tip pressures and gallons per minute. Of cylinders and shafts. Of sixty miles an hour. They intruded into his own company, alert-eyed, upstanding youths with capable hands.

“You’d best tend the hocks of that off horse on the wagon,” he would say chidingly. Or, “A currycomb ain’t a blasted ornament, boys. It’s to be used.” Then to himself as he stamped away, “Devil ’em.”

At last in 1918, with only a score of horse-drawn rigs in the department, he couldn’t find a driver to his liking.

“I’ll drive engine myself,” he told his men finally, “and I’ll break the way with her. There ain’t one o’ you got the feel of a rein in your fingers. A three-horse hitch, men, it’s got to be handled expert. No, I’ll drive, and I’ll break with the steamer. The cart can follow.”

The old steam engine, its tall brass air chamber still flashing defiance at the crimson march of progress, stood stoutly upon its high rear wheels on the right of the hose wagon in Paddy’s quarters. The uplifted snap collars still gaped over the double tongue, brass buckled harness ready to drop on broad dappled backs. At the rear of the quarters the five horses scuffed their stalls, bit at each other playfully, and clanked their slip chains. Under the alarm stand the kick board stood ready to trip open the stable doors. When an alarm rattled in, the drum of hooves and the snorts of the animals as they charged to their places made music in Paddy’s ears.

Other old men, retired firemen and men who loved the past, made a habit of coming to Engine 189 to smoke a reflective pipe and breathe gratefully the pungent odor of saddle soap, leather and sweat, of loose hay and hot metal, to saturate their souls in the rich, ammoniac breath of the barns.

Then one hot day in 1920 the order arrived, brief, soulless as the very cylinders of the new engines. It told Paddy Maguire to prepare for a thousand-gallon motor pumper.

“You will place the new pumper, serial number to be assigned, in operation in your company immediately upon delivery and acceptance by department engineers,” it directed. “The machine will arrive tomorrow. Old apparatus will at once be turned in as salvage to department shops. You will appoint a member of your company to serve as driver and operator. The horses, after inspection by city veterinary, will be assigned to city barns, for auction to the highest bidder.”

It bore the signature of the chief of department.

Paddy Maguire had prepared for this emergency. Many nights he had lain wakeful in resentful anticipation of it. He was hard-headed; he knew it would come. The last two months, aye the last twelve, he had steeled himself against it. He read the cruel words a second time and a third. Then he crumpled the paper in his hand, concealed it in his wide palm as if it were something shameful, and walked to the rear of the quarters.

There he spoke to the five horses, calling each by name. He offered them scrap tobacco, which they accepted greedily. He patted their noses, swore at them affectionately, as was his habit, then with feet that were heavy and rebellious he climbed to his office on the second floor. He wrote painfully for half an hour while his crew waited, ill at ease, below. When he descended the stair he wore his dress uniform.

“Take charge, Jim,” he instructed. “I’m going out a bit.”

At the city hall he walked through echoing corridors to the calm, orderly office of the chief of department. He was admitted at once. The chief was a younger man than Paddy Maguire.

“I got your message,” the lieutenant said.

“And you’ve come to argue it,” his superior predicted. “No, Paddy, it’s no good. I’m sorry. Know how you feel. We held off on you to the last.”

“I ain’t arguin’. I brung you something. Here’s my resignation.”

“Now, Paddy—”

“Aye, it’s final.”

“But you’re a good man—”

“Aye, you’ll have the devil of a time findin’ better, if I do say it. But you best start huntin’. I’m out. Me and the beasts, we go together, and you can have your blasted tin pumps. See how long they last, ’side of good horseflesh. As for the rest o’ you, askin’ your pardon, sir, you can go to hell.”

So Paddy Maguire left the city fire department. He was fifty-seven years old, and had served faithfully forty battling years. The pension board met at once, in extraordinary session, and the chief appeared before it personally with his recommendation, which the board accepted. Paddy was retired, without examination, on two-thirds pay for the remainder of his life.

He did not go back to quarters that day. Next morning he returned, in spite of himself. He came to clear out his desk. He explained gruffly to the crew. But he waited, wasting time on one pretext or another, till the new apparatus arrived. Sour of face, he watched the new resplendent, crimson pumper back into the house. He stood aside, chewing his tongue, when the stall doors were tripped for the last time and the horses trotted out. He did not speak. Only turned fiercely and started for his rooming house.

As he crossed the Rush Street bridge, where Great Lakes steamers lay at their berths, he hung a moment, with apparent laziness, watching their trim reflections in the oily current. Stokers were getting up steam in two of them. Bound somewhere or other. Didn’t make much difference where, Paddy reflected. He’d always hankered for a good long boat ride.

Listlessly he shuffled down the steps to the lower level. Unaccustomed freedom lay heavily upon him. He inquired of a man in uniform at the gangplank as to rates and ports of call.

“Northern peninsula this trip,” the official replied. “All ports along the north shore.”

So ex-Lieutenant Maguire bought a stiff straw hat and an umbrella, and with civilian clothes in his handbag and a broken heart in his chest, embarked on his first vacation in forty years. That night he leaned against the rail and watched the city sink beneath its clouds of industrial smoke, saw its lights flash on and sparkle as gaily as if they did not know that Paddy Maguire, son of proud old Ham, had left the fire department.

“They can burn an’ fry, for what I care!” he growled. “Devil ’em!”

He was up next morning early. In the engine room companionway he stared down the black iron steps into the brilliant glare of nickel and brass and white paint. The drum of the engine warmed his tired heart. The smell of steam and oil arose to his nostrils; he was grateful for it. No gasoline fol-de-rol here! At noon another vessel crawled up from behind and passed.

“A Diesel,” some one explained. “Internal combustion, like a big automobile engine. Great compression. They’re taking the place of steam.”

Paddy, listening, swore a rich string of oaths across the blue water.

It was suppertime when the ship docked at Glidden on the north shore. The town drowsed in the declining light, a dilapidated, sprawling panorama, unpainted and falling to disrepair. There was something appropriate about sunset here, Paddy thought. Gaunt gray mills with sagging roofs spotted the riverbank. The black scars of fire were everywhere. A dying town, seen in the fading light of a dying day.

“We lie over here three hours,” a steward told old Paddy. “Loading tan bark. Give you time to stretch your legs ashore.”

Paddy walked up the mouldering pier. Halfbreeds were lazily trundling hand barrows over the ragged planks. A few piles of old gray lumber spotted the shore line. A mill town, this. And no more timber. Paddy felt that he was entering the gates of a dead community as he stepped into the long, lonely street. It reminded him of himself, somehow. It had served its splendid purpose, had known heroic days. It had lived its glamorous moment. Now only fading memories remained.

A lank dog slunk past. A pair of children played noisily farther on. Under foot the flimsy rails of lumber tramways crisscrossed on their way to the shore. The sun was falling behind the high, gaunt roofs of silent mills. Paddy walked the length of the first street. He’d not go far. Just stretch his legs, as the steward said. He had already turned back when a bell rattled behind him.

A hose wagon charged past. Paddy stopped. A good sorrel team there. Light—not more than twenty-four hundred pounds. One man on the seat, a lad on the tailboard. Then the engine; a big fellow, an old Nott. A five-hundred gallon tea kettle, bless her! Thirty years, if a day, in service. Her driver was of Paddy’s age. His chin was whiskered like Paddy’s own. Another man, past middle age, jolted on the hearth, flinging the first scattered coal into the fire door. Paddy stood motionless while the two teams charged down the street in a gay racket of hooves, brass bells and iron tires. The tang of pine kindling assailed his nostrils pleasantly after the engine went by, trailing sparks and light blue smoke. Paddy followed.

The town had come to life suddenly. Men and boys were running down the steep street. Paddy hurried. He carried his umbrella on his arm. He felt sorry for that fire company. Three men and a boy! How could you put out a fire with three men and a boy? And volunteers at that, very likely.

“Devil ’em!” Paddy growled. “Volunteers is a nuisance!”

He smelled the fire; smelled it before he saw it. It was down beside the wharves, not so far from the loading ship. Flame rolled in sulky clouds out of an old warehouse, black smoke screened it or hung with gilded edges about the windows. The Glidden fire department shouted feebly as it went at its unequal task. The old Nott steamer straddled a manhole in a crumbling wooden bridge and the engineer crammed coal into the firebox.

Paddy stood back and watched. He felt distasteful admiration as the fight started; admiration for the crew—three men and a boy!—distaste for the miserable equipment. It was a disgrace even to volunteers—stiff hose that leaked at every coupling and spouted geysers from a score of holes, bent leather nozzles, warped ladders. Only the engine, that stout old-timer, stirred the cooling blood in his heart.

Its faithful pistons pounded up and down with a wheezy, steamy note, its whole iron frame vibrated in the ecstasy of its labors. Like suppressed laughter the vibration sounded, laughter at the fumbling crew. It had taken them three minutes to lay two lines—lay two lines and stand one ladder insecurely against the front of the two-story warehouse. Paddy growled to himself. The boy and one of the men had started to throw water in the front door. The other two were clumsily lifting hose up the ladder.

“That ain’t the way!” Paddy complained. He pressed his straw hat tight upon his head. “Best get other side—there’s the fire—other side—”

He found himself running, shouting. Vehemently he usurped command. A volunteer blockaded him. Paddy beat him with the umbrella.

“Give me that pipe!” he roared. “Drag that there ladder here. Never mind who I am, give ’er here! Now—up—lean ’er ag’in’ the side. Now the pipe! Boost, will you? Up! Now water! Water, devil ’em! Charge the line! Ye blasted apes, charge the line!”

Astonished townsmen saw the passenger from the steamer, the stiff straw hat clinging somehow to his head, on the top rung of the ladder, pelting water into the fire. They saw smoke turn from black to purple under his ferocious attack, from purple to gray. They heard him curse the fire with satisfying gusto, saw him crawl boldly upward. Flame gave way before him. Not once did he rest, till his chin touched the steaming sill.

“Give me more line now, you apes!” he howled. “Line, and a boost. I’m going in.”

It was the middle of the evening and the lights of the departed steamer were drifting down the bay when Paddy Maguire, ex-lieutenant, climbed from the warehouse, wet, smoky and triumphant. He still wore a drenched and dirty straw hat. On the ground he gave up his hose.

“Gotta go now,” he said, “miss my boat, first thing.”

He took off the ruined hat and looking at it once, tossed it indignantly into the lake.

“End o’ that.”

He stared at the empty wharf.

“Hey!” he demanded. “Where’s me boat?”

No one answered. He repeated the question.

“We was telling you—” a man began.

“You left me miss my boat?” Paddy bellowed. “All my duds on it? How’m I to dry off?”

“Dunno,” said the man.

Paddy roared. The lights of the steamer looked back at him unconcernedly. He turned angrily on the first individual who approached. It was the mayor, it happened. Paddy heard impatiently all that he had to say. He didn’t care for the gratitude of this town. The mayor, an ex-lumberman, was short and stocky and less experienced in oratory than Paddy himself.

“You saved the town,” he admitted. “Raised a lot o’ hell doin’ it, but saved it. But you got no call hollerin’ about your boat. Nobody was holding you. There’ll be another ’un in three, four days.”

“From what I see of it, the blasted town wasn’t worth savin’,” Paddy answered honestly. “But these firemen o’ yours! Why, devil ’em, they was standin’ outside. Somebody’s got to go in, so I took over the job. I was a fireman wanst,” he added.

He accepted the mayor’s invitation for the night. So far as he could see there was no place else to sleep. Next morning, having nosed about the streets for two hours, he returned with unimproved temper and told the official and his astonished clerk what he thought of Glidden.

“It’s nothing but fire traps. Ain’t you got a prevention bureau? Nobody ever make inspection? If there was such conditions in my district I’d ’a’ got ten days without pay every week in the year and throwed out in the bargain. What kind o’ chief’d let dirty rubbish lay around loose like I seen today?”

“Chief’s dead,” the mayor said. “Been dead ten year. He got blowed up in a boiler explosion. Capt’n’s a good man. Can’t see as we need a chief.”

“No chief?” Paddy objected. “Who’s boss?”

“I am,” the mayor answered.

Paddy departed, scowling. No chief. The town deserved to burn up. He’d only been a lieutenant himself. The head of this department ranked a captain, and what did he know? Not much. Not half what he should. Old Paddy Maguire, ex-company commander of Steamer 189, had thrown exactly three recruits out of his engine house for knowing more than this captain did. Nor was he a volunteer. It had been a shock when Paddy discovered this was a paid, full-time organization. Captain and crew, who knew nothing about fighting fire except to stand outside and pour water, and lots of it, in exchange for this ignorance received good, negotiable money.

Irresistibly, he sought the engine house. Twice this morning he had been there. Its warm rich color of horses and harness was the only pleasant thing in town. The big room was empty this time as he opened the door; the only sound was the scuff-scuff of horses.

“Hey!” Paddy called, and receiving no response, repeated, “Hey!” He waited a moment before he bellowed.

The four horses looked out at him reproachfully through the bars in the stable doors. A boy, attracted by his howling, stepped in from the street.

“Looking for somebody, mister? Lunch time. They’ve all gone home.”

“All?” Paddy screamed. “Ow, devil ’em! All at once? Nobody on watch? Well, the quicker this town burns the better.”

The boy retreated. Paddy grunted, and looked at his watch. The boy was right. It was noon. They’d left the alarm stand useless as a run-down clock. Well, maybe that was the way they did it here in Glidden.

He stared about the room appraisingly. There were a good many things he could teach this crew! His eyes came to rest on the worn snap collars pendant above the engine tongue. A right fancy pair they had been once; gone to ruin now. Their creased leather, the knotting padding, protruding rivets angered him.

He stalked out to the stalls. The pair of grays reared nervously as he approached. Speaking softly—crooning almost—with the tips of his short hard fingers he stroked the soft skin of their noses. They quieted under his gentle touch. Their pink nostrils trembled and one drew back its lips.

Friendly beasts, he remarked; near enough like his own dapples on 189 to be twins. He guessed their age as seven or eight, their weight around twenty-six hundred. Well fed, but a mite too light. He spoke aloud.

“Twenty-eight hundred’s light enough. Ought to be twenty-eight for any tea kettle.”

Back of the stalls, in the men’s loafing rooms, he sat down at a round table, painted dingy green, and stared dejectedly at the floor. He couldn’t see the horses from here; only a long, well-brushed tail swished into sight occasionally. Paddy lighted his pipe. He was homesick. Three days away from his own team, and missing ’em worse than he did his own bed! He arose hopefully and offered tobacco to each horse in turn. They refused it, snorting. Paddy growled. Had nobody taught these horses any manners?

He returned heavily to the apparatus room and looked at his own reflection in the round-bellied boiler. He was out of the fire business. The cold fact lodged uncomfortably in him. He hadn’t felt its full weight before. Out. No more four-eleven alarms. No more smoke to eat. Never again the yank and jerk of a loping team that’s minding the bell. Two-thirds pay for life. And idleness. He looked again into the brassy mirror. Not so old. A lot of good fight left in him yet.

The crew was a long time absent. By the dingy green table Paddy smoked three pipes; twice arose from the split chair and tried to feed the dapples tobacco. It seemed unreasonable that they would not eat it. The off horse on the hose wagon, one of the sorrels, sidled to the left once as he approached and went down to his knees cautiously. Paddy observed the slip chain tighten and pull up its head. He growled, significantly; when the first man entered Paddy was ready with complaint.

“Chain on this horse is too short,” he said. “Can’t lay down comfortable.”

It was the captain who had come in, a fat little man named Hicks.

“Ain’t supposed to lay down,” he answered.

“Ain’t supposed?” Paddy retorted. “Free country, ain’t it? Horse got a right to lay down if he wants. If you was a horse, think you wouldn’t get sick and tired o’ standin’ around all day? Add two foot to that chain.” He spoke with command; immediately went on, “Your dapples there, look at ’em—collar sores on both. Noticed when I come in them snap collars ain’t right. No horse born ever had a neck to fit one o’ them. Might’ve been made by a barn carpenter. Rivets sticking clear through. Elegant with brass trimmings, all right, but I never knowed a horse yet as was particular about the outside of a collar.”

“We was aimin’ to fix ’em,” the captain said.

“I’ll fix ’em,” Paddy declared. “Right now. Won’t wait to aim.”

He walked forward, passing around the low right-hand wheel of the steamer.

“Trip that team,” he ordered.

Reluctantly the captain obeyed. With his right foot he kicked the board pivoted vertically under the alarm stand. There was a squeak of tightening wires, a snap of metal latches at the rear of the house. The stable doors flapped open and the two engine horses trotted forward sleepily. Their shod hooves thumped the floor with a hollow drumming sound. Opposite the tongue of the engine they halted, and each backed expertly into place under the suspended harness. Paddy jerked down on the gaping collars and snapped them over the necks of the team.

“Look-ee,” he shouted. “Tighter’n a number six shoe. Like to choke ’em to death, let alone wear their skin off. Know how to wear your own collar, mister? Give me a hammer and nail set!” He drove two rivets deeper; with his fists kneaded the padding. “What you call these beasts?”

“Tom and Jerry.”

“What’s the sorrels?”

“Peter and Paul.”

“Knowed a Tom and Jerry once,” Paddy said. “Me own three hitch had a Tom. Tom, Dick and Harry.”

Again, gently, he stroked their soft noses. Their gray manes hung close to his face. He patted their dappled, well-fed sides, once each; then felt his own gray beard thoughtfully.

“We’re of a color,” he told the pair confidentially. “We matches, me and you. Dappled. The three of us. I guess I’ll drive this team.”

He left the house without explanation.

“I’ll be your blasted chief,” he told the mayor. “For nothin’. They ain’t a town north o’ Evanston can pay me what I’m worth. I’m volunteerin’, see? My old man was a volunteer. Ever hear of Ham Maguire?” The mayor shook his head. “You ain’t been around much,” Paddy decided.

Ex-Lieutenant Maguire became Glidden fire chief on September first. He was sworn in, with distressing solemnity, at one o’clock in the afternoon. At fifteen minutes past two, the members of his crew, including the captain, were feverishly active with mops, brooms and whitewash brushes. At four the mayor had received a requisition for one thousand feet of new two-and-a-half inch hose, two new smoothbore nozzles, spare parts for the steamer, new harness for the hose cart and leather helmets all round. At five the new chief had placed his recommendation for a new alarm circuit.

Paddy fought three fires that autumn, three stiff battles, not to mention grass fires and a dozen chimneys, one blazing tar kettle, and other minor chores. When snow piled down he watched it gratefully; not only did it give protection to warped, brittle old shingle roofs, but it proved to him conclusively that horses in this country never would be supplanted by motor apparatus. Owners of cars put them away promptly at the first snow squall. Drifts piled waist deep in the streets. The few runs Chief Paddy made were fought through high white barriers.

Each time, returning to quarters, he rubbed down the horses himself and examined the calks on their shoes.

“Good run you made, Tom,” he came in the habit of saying. “Good run, Jerry. See how I held your head up? It’s confidence you got. I won’t leave you fall. Goin’ to hold your heads up tight every foot the way. ’Baccy?”

He poured scrap tobacco into his palm. Tom learning to eat it, snuffed and munched seriously. Jerry laid back his ears and jerked away his head.

“I’ll teach you ’fore we’re through knowin’ each other,” Paddy predicted. “Ain’t no beast o’ mine goin’ to have less bad habits ’n I got myself.”

It was early spring when the next stranger arrived in Glidden. His name was John Baxter Crump and he remained a week, asking questions. Paddy disliked him at once. He was young, for one thing. And the first night at supper—Frenchie Pete’s old bar was the only place in Glidden to eat—he talked magnificently of machines. This was a machine age, he told the three men at his table, one of whom was Paddy. Take furniture, for instance; men no longer built tables and chairs by hand.

Paddy left the pork chops uneaten on his plate and, stamping out to the street, kicked up slush with his boots. He knew that kind of talk. It was bad. Wherever he heard it he could expect trouble. The next week, gloomily, he read in the Thursday paper that the Crump Table and Chair Company would build its new plant in Glidden.

Paddy questioned Captain Hicks. He was getting on better with Hicks. The man didn’t know horses. He didn’t know the feel of reins. He couldn’t lay a line without kinking it. But he knew how to listen. Paddy liked good listeners. From Hicks he learned that John Baxter Crump had appeared personally before Glidden’s city council and demanded, in return for bringing his plant to Glidden, that they furnish him with suitable and cheap houses for his workmen and adequate police and fire protection. Paddy retired to the alarm stand to think that news over. Well, horse flesh was adequate. But he had an uncomfortable idea that Crump might not think so.

Before midsummer the walls of the new furniture works were rising. By fall the factory was under roof and the drying sheds steamed and smoked as the first birch was ready to season. Before winter, craftsmen began to arrive with their families, stolid Dutch cabinetmakers from Grand Rapids who objected to the town as much as Paddy had. Paddy, grudgingly, had to admit that business picked up during the fall and winter. A new restaurant opened. The mayor put an extra team at work grading the new roadway to the plant. The county supervisors advertised for bids for a new bridge. The council, after months of discussion, in which young Crump participated as heartily as old Paddy, bought five hundred feet of new hose for Paddy’s fire department.

In the spring there could be no argument. Glidden was on the boom. Steamships added an extra hour to their stops at the pier while they loaded crated tables. Fresh paint flashed a message of prosperity from the old frame buildings on Front Street. A real estate subdivision was laid out. And on May thirtieth one of the drying kilns at the Crump table factory caught fire.

Crump was perturbed; even nervous about the blaze. He howled more loudly than Paddy Maguire, while Paddy hurled two streams of water and cursed the heat. The fire was stubborn. Paddy led in the first line. His three men followed with the second. The steamer trembled and spit a high column of sparks. The new hose throbbed. Smoke hung ominously over the plant. Paddy drank it in thirstily and after a half-hour workout had the blaze subdued.

At the next council meeting Crump appeared. He seemed displeased at the way Paddy had put out his fire. He complained to the officials that they had promised fire protection. The council sent for Paddy. He took his time in getting there. But he opened the door to hear Crump say:

“And I nearly burn up while a horse-drawn engine—horse-drawn—my Lord, in this age—stumbles out to the plant. We need motor apparatus and high pressure mains. This department is a disgrace. Whoever heard of a volunteer chief? If you want me to put up a second unit at the factory—”

“Did you ever try to run a blasted automobile through a snow drift neck deep, mister?” Paddy flared. “High pressure mains is the berries, so much I admit. But they’s damn’ little water flows through them when they’s froze tighter’n a eskimo’s ear. This here’s the north country, it ain’t Floridy or nothing. You can be modern as to who pulls the whistle, mister, but you can’t get rid of them horses!”

The council listened to Paddy. Then they listened to Mr. Crump, and found him more eloquent. After all, one can’t ignore threats to take away business. Hadn’t Glidden been idle for years? They invited equipment salesmen. For weeks the discussion went on; in its midst a deserted mill burned. Fire, discovered early in the morning, was howling through the roof before the alarm bell struck.

The newspaper said: “Flames were beyond control when discovered,” but Crump merely pointed to the ruin and said it spoke for itself. Two of Paddy’s company, on a ladder against the north end, fell with the wall. They were dragged out, blistered and beaten.

The men who took their places reminded Paddy unpleasantly of the mechanics who supplanted his old crew on Steamer 189. They belonged in garages by trade. About the quarters they talked incessantly of motors, of miles per gallon. Paddy found work aplenty for them in the stable.

“A blasted motor ain’t got sense, devil ’em, and it ain’t got feelin’s,” he would say. “But you’d heap it with motherly love, to hear you talk, and that near horse on the cart ain’t had a good rubdown in a week!”

Hicks, suddenly becoming talkative, was inclined to side in with the newcomers. Paddy silenced him.

“The less you say the better I like your talk,” he affirmed. He became personal. “How’d you look takin’ exams for captain? A captain! Wouldn’t know you from a ree-cruit!”

He stuffed his pipe with tobacco, which he forgot to light, glowered, and stamped out into the street.

At the council meeting that was to decide on the new apparatus, the omnipotent Crump repeated his demands. Again the council listened with attention. Paddy had argued publicly with Crump the night before in Frenchie Pete’s place. He had called him a blasted tablemaker and been dubbed a volunteer fireman in return. The council of Glidden, declaring that John Baxter Crump and no one else had brought back their declining town to the high estate of its timber days, went on record five to two for a new motor pump. The citizens already had voted by a four-fifths majority to issue bonds and put in high pressure water mains.

Paddy clumped up the aisle.

“I quit a better job’n this, wanst, for less excuse,” he said combatively. “They ain’t room in the same quarters for me and one o’ them gasoline rigs. If you think they’s anybody else in this town can fight fire better’n me, all right, hire ’em. I’m out. Here’s my resignation and be damned to you. Pay some money for somebody else. I won’t starve. I got a pension.”

He added insultingly:

“Hire some smart fireman like Hicks. Let him crank your blasted tin pumper. Not me! I’ll be on hand some snowy day to laugh. Takes flesh to buck snow.”

He stamped out of the hall.

“Sorry I’m leavin’,” he told Tom and Jerry. “They’ll be sellin’ you for a milk wagon, mebbe. Kick ’em, I say. Kick ’em right out their corduroys. Half a cent I’d turn fire bug!”

He returned to his lodgings and got the handbag down from the closet shelf. He packed it that night. But for some reason or other that he couldn’t explain, he did not leave Glidden. Boats came and went; he planned each time to take the next one. He was uncomfortable in civilian clothes. Hands in pockets, he moped about town, watching mains for the high pressure system extend, new hydrants thrust out of freshly dug earth, rusty at first and then crimson and resplendent. He saw the new motor pump, a handsome five-hundred gallon outfit, back into the doors of the engine house, and the inefficient Hicks rise from his undeserved rank of captain to the dignity of Paddy’s badge of chief.

He confided in no one. What was the use? He could predict to himself what would happen. Wait until there were four feet of loose blowing snow some winter night.

One day, walking past the engine house, he discovered with a swift pain in his heart that the old Nott steamer had been trundled into the lean-to at the rear. The four horses, confused and disheartened, were working in the department of streets and alleys. Paddy often saw them, patiently standing by the curb. Always he offered them tobacco, patted their noses and cursed them affectionately.

At the demand of Crump, two additional men were sworn into the fire department, making a crew of six. Paddy read the news in the paper.

“Aye, and they’ll need ’em, devil ’em,” he growled. “Some nice cold winter night they’ll need all the bright lads they can find. Takes a lot o’ good old-fashioned elbow grease to push that pumper uphill. Think I won’t laugh? Ha! They’ll hear me if they’re a-bed with pillers on their ears.”

He fished some that summer, without enthusiasm or much luck. He hunted rabbits all winter, shot one red fox and spent occasional evenings by the stove in the harness room of the livery barn. What else was there for a decent man to do? His two-prong beard lost its stiff severity. His shoulders sagged. The city officials bought a snow plow in November, and to Paddy’s consternation, the streets were kept clear. The new pumper rushed out with midsummer ease in dead of winter. Paddy swallowed fiercely and waited. Time would come!

He was disappointed in December. Weather was cold, but not unpleasant enough to make transportation difficult. There were a dozen thaws instead of one in January. Then, on February twenty-sixth, a great blow out of the north pushed snow before it.

It began at night and pounded the coast for three howling, bitter days. Down in the river the current, that struggled so energetically to reach the lake, gave up the effort and muddy water thickened into ice. High glistening bergs piled tenaciously on the shore of the bay and draped themselves in fantastic shapes across the piers.

The temperature went down—down—zero—ten below—fifteen...

Light snow, swept in from the hills, piled in great ridges in the streets. Paddy watched the sorrel team and the grays dragging grading blades on Front Street. The new rotary plow was laid up for repairs, eh? No surprise in that. He noticed Jerry was limping on the right front leg; he crossed the road and examined the hoof.

“That the kind of footwear they give you, is it?” he objected. “Shoe don’t fit you no better’n’d it would me.”

At the engine house Chief Hicks and his five men labored industriously, shoveling a track left and right from the doors.

“Devil ’em,” Paddy snorted. “They’ve been lucky!”

On the fourth morning at eight o’clock the temperature stood at eighteen below. The wind had fallen, leaving a sharp, quiet cold. It bit deep into Paddy’s hard face as he thrust it exploringly out of doors. The town lay in snow-packed panorama before him. Kitchen chimneys spouted small jets of blue vapor.

The air was glassy, sounds magnified, distant rustlings took on noisy importance. Voices from far up the street floated clear and sharp. Paddy sniffed suspiciously; then ripped off his ear muffs.

He smelled smoke. And from Front Street, blocks away, shrilled the cry of a siren. The new motor pump was going out. Paddy looked at his watch. It was eighteen minutes past seven. He hurried back into the house and reappeared quickly in an extra sweater. He broke a path along the drifted sidewalk. It was hard going; snow piled over his boots. The siren cried enthusiastically for another moment; then its sound trailed off.

“They’re shovelin’, devil ’em,” Paddy snorted. This was the day of his laugh.

Again the siren squealed. Again stopped. Hit a snow bank, eh? In high spirits the ex-chief turned into the main street. Men were laboring frantically a block away. The great red pumper had burrowed deep into the side of a high drift. Paddy hurried. He saw snow shovels flashing. Citizens were helping. Let ’em if they wanted to. The town could burn. He’d not lift a hand.

Over the bundled heads of the crowd, beyond the low skyline of the business section, he noticed for the first time the ugly blue smoke cloud rising. From the Crump table works! He laughed, unsteadily. Hicks, at the wheel of the pumper, heard the sound. He glanced Paddy’s way, scowled, and looked aside quickly. The machine jerked forward. It plunged on doggedly, its immense power thrusting aside the breastworks of snow. Hicks grinned over his shoulder. Paddy sobered. He’d laughed too soon, maybe. The pumper made better time now. Down the steep hill and around the corner. Paddy began to run.

In the lowlands at the harbor side a warehouse stuffed with finished product smoked energetically. No blaze showed yet. Workmen in black, huddled groups, wavered in the snow. They scattered out of the way and the spirited pumper plunged toward one of the high-pressure hydrants that poked through the drifts. Its red frost box, filled with straw, was flung off.

Firemen were hooking up the hose, two lines to each valve, each line siamesed, to give four nozzles. Paddy nodded; he’d taught Hicks something; he’d do it that way himself. The black hose of the old department and Paddy’s five hundred feet of new white line were yanked through drifts toward the warehouse.

Slow. Mighty slow. Paddy stamped his feet. A good crew could lay ten lines of hose while these johnny-jump-ups were fumbling there. From the six men of the company and their anxious volunteers floated back cries for help and exclamations of distress. Paddy saw the hydrantman jerking frantically at his spanner. No water.

The shrill, unsteady laugh of the ex-chief rang across the lowlands. The high pressure mains were frozen. Crump’s own mains!

“Devil ’em, now will you learn?” screamed Paddy Maguire. “You and your kids with their tin toys. Modern, eh? Hey, water!”

Crump panted down the road. Townsmen were milling about. The table maker shouted incoherently at the new chief. Hicks was arguing. Arguing? Hicks? Paddy chuckled. Hicks wouldn’t argue, he didn’t know how! The ex-chief moved closer.

A second hydrant was tapped; it, too, was frozen. Flame broke through the north end of the warehouse. Timidly at first, in a cloud of black smoke, it tested the cold air, then leaped up exuberantly.

“Get that pumper to the river, down to the river!” Crump was shouting.

“Can’t make it!” It was Hicks. “That road—can’t get over it—snow—loose gravel. Can’t get near—”

Crump recognized Paddy as he charged by. He glared indignantly. Paddy chuckled again; with effort this time. It was his day to laugh, all right. They needed water. Needed it quick. He could tell them a thing or two yet if they asked him...

“Let ’em go, devil ’em!” Paddy told himself grimly. “Learn ’em a bit or two. That gang of chauffeurs never et smoke!”

Fire ran along the ridge of the warehouse. Heat, rolling down past the eaves, started the snow to sliding. Paddy, observing the fire critically, gave it ten minutes. Then it would burst through all four sides. The roof must fall. The warehouse stood close to the main building; too close. They’d better get water on the bigger building. Wet it down.

Again he tried to laugh. It was harder than before. He must look pretty standing here on the sidewalk; must look like a blasted cop. Him, a fireman! Sight of Crump, staring up toward town, kindled his spleen once more. He swore, mightily. He’d not help. Heaven be witness, he’d not help!

“That plug’s froze, too!” a volunteer charged past him shouting.

“You’re losing time!” Crump bellowed.

“Do it yourself then!” Hicks retorted.

Paddy laughed, disagreeably. Hicks was learning, all right; learning to talk back. He’d believe Crump next time, would he?

“Mains is froze,” the new chief was crying. “Can’t get the pumper to the river, can’t drive there. I sent for the old steamer. Maybe horses can pull through.”

“Aye, maybe, devil ’em!” Paddy howled.

He plowed back to the corner. For a moment he could see only more men tracking down the steep highway. Then the team. His team! His heart clawed fiercely into his ribs. Here they came! On a slow, rocking horse gallop.

The driver, a young mechanic from the new department, was leaning far forward, feverishly tapping the bell. The horses plunged out of step. The reins lay slack upon their backs.

“Hey, you damned housemaid!” Paddy yelled. The team was still a block away. “Hold ’em, I say. Hold ’em! Lean back! Hold up their head! Hold ’em!”

“They’ll go—on that corner. Ow, and look at the ape!”

He plunged through the drifts toward the steamer. Smoke seeped out of its funnel above the vertical boiler. A fat volunteer in a red cap was stoking the fire on the swaying hearth. Tom and Jerry, heads up, heads down, galloped fiercely. The bell tapped excitedly—too excitedly.

They reached the corner. The huge engine carriage swayed on its high rear wheels and short front ones. Snow flew up in opaque screens at both sides. The driver yanked desperately on the rein for the turn. The horses, heads free, tried to swing.

“Ow, you’ll kill ’em!” Paddy yelled.

The off horse went down first. The near followed. The weight of the steamer pressed them forward through the drift. They pawed furiously, became confused, kicked up a vigorous cloud of snow and lay still. Paddy halted, to his knees in a snow drift.

“Blaggards!” he howled. “Blaggards!”

The young driver leaped down wildly from his seat. Forgetting his fire, the stoker jumped from the hearth, and running around the engine, began impotently to pull at the bridle of the off horse. The crowd pushed in, hampering.

Paddy flung out his arms and climbed from the snow bank. A short grumble sounded behind him. Without turning his head, he knew that a wall had puffed out. Cries of the crowd, warning shouts, hoarse commands, oaths, floated up the hill, louder than the rumble of the idling motor of the pumper. Crump charged past. Chief Hicks ran at his heels.

“Put a blanket under ’em!” Hicks was crying. “Give ’em foothold. Blanket—”

“Devil ’em!” Paddy muttered. “What they know about them beasts?”

He discovered his own feet moving. He reached the circle about the fallen team. Men were shouting unreasonably, straining, yanking upward on the horses. Helpless they lay in the snow, immobile except for the rolling of their great bloodshot eyes and the heaving of their flanks. Useless harness draped across their backs.

“Get ’em up,” Crump bade.

“Trying,” Hicks retorted.

They tugged again. Crump it was who kicked at the horse nearer him. Paddy screamed and jumped forward. His split white beard took on threatening ferocity as he reached for Crump’s collar. He seized the fur piece with both hands and lifting his foot, booted the younger man into a snow drift.

“Kick a horse, will you?” he shouted. “I’ll show you, devil ’em!”

He bent over the warm, heaving sides of the team. His cold, knotty fingers jerked familiarly this way and that. The tangle of harness somehow righted itself; one buckle open—another tightened. Then Paddy set his foot on the short forward wheel and swung up to the snug seat. He held the reins a second in his bare palms.

“Get down, you crazy fool!”

This was Crump. He arose from the drift, spitting snow.

“One side,” Paddy commanded.

He thrust his wrists through the grip loops, twisted the reins one about each forearm. His face had a pinched, fierce look. His lips sucked in. Frosty breath blew about his nostrils. His cap hung over his right eye.

“One side, everybody! Like to get hurt.”

He pulled back slowly on the reins.

“Up, Tom,” he bade softly. The harshness had melted from his voice. Words rolled out smoothly. “Up, Tom. Tom—Jerry—” There was something crooning in the voice, like a mother’s, singing a lullaby. “Up, Tom!—Jerry—we’re goin’ somewheres—up—”

His right foot was braced on the steel guard of the footboard. His left, searching, came to rest contentedly on the trip of the old single tapper bell. He pressed, and one short note sounded quietly. Then another.

“Up, Tom—up, Jerry—”

It was command now. He was dragging backward on the reins. His shoulders, rounded under his thick sweaters and coat, strained, pulled—strained backward, a quarter inch—another quarter.

The team scuffed its hooves. Ears shot up, stiff as the two sharp horns of Paddy’s beard. The voice was familiar; the touch on the reins was right. Nostrils dilated. Bloodshot eyes rolled. Flanks heaved mountainously.

“Up, Tom—Jerry.”

The voice persisted. The bell tapped faster. Snow screened the miracle. There was a riotous tangle of hooves, manes, tails, a quick writhing motion. Then the drift scattered; came the clang of sharp calks on cobblestones.

“Up, Tom—up, Jerry—goin’ somewheres.”

Paddy, from his high seat, peered down sharply at the harness, a short, expert appraisal. It would do. Get them there. Ruined, but do this trip.

“Out the way, you blasted tripe! Where’s that lazy stoker? Get on! Get to work!”

The bell set up a quick, nervous cadence. The horses pawed. Paddy leaned forward.

“Careful, Tom. That’s it! Head up, Jerry. That’s steppin’. Care—ful—that’s the boy—easy—easy—now—”

The old tea kettle rolled triumphantly down the sharp decline toward the river. Its bell rattled a curt, contemptuous greeting to the helpless motor pumper. Paddy drew in cautiously as he reached the bridge. The rear end of his steamer swung to the left, caught, threatened to turn over, and righted itself.

The team left the road, stepping confidently. They had hold of themselves now. Smoke in brown and yellow clouds streaked over their high heads, shutting out the light of the morning sky. It enveloped Paddy in its kindly embrace, Paddy and the steam engine and his team. The river lay ahead, a treacherous surface of weak, snow-covered ice. Heat pelted down the wind.

The engine turned, backed, turned again, once more backed.

“Good enough, Tom. Thankee, Jerry.” Paddy relaxed in his seat, eyed the blazing warehouse for five seconds, then leaped down.

As he ran alongside he glanced at the steam gage.

“Pound ’er,” he commanded the man on the rear step. “Give ’er hell. Hand on that suction there. Gimme the ax. Here, you—you fool, take this ax, cut hole in ice.” He stared closely. “You, is it? You’re a good runner. Cut hole, I tell you.”

He thrust the ax forward and Crump took it. Paddy yanked open the stiff buckle of the suction pipe strap and jerked up the brass screen from the rear step. With the pipe between his knees he spun the screen into place at its lower end. The other he threaded into the intake valve. Sound of the ax ceased. Small cakes of ice floated in the break on the hard surface of the stream. Crump was crawling up the bank. Paddy thrust the screen down toward him.

“Take this. Stick it in—under, I say. Never mind gettin’ wet. That’s it!” He glanced again hastily at the steam gage. “Line now—two lines—bit o’ help here—”

Firemen and townsmen dragged the hose from the frozen high-pressure hydrant. Clumsily, with fingers stiff inside their thick knit mittens, they passed the lines into Paddy’s bare, outstretched hands. He accepted them without thanks.

“Turn loose that team,” he cried suddenly. “Unhitch it!”

He gave the order without a bend of his head. The lines were in place. Slowly the pistons of the pumps began to travel. Like short legs dancing to a quick uncomfortable cadence they kicked up and down. Steam wheezed. Water gurgled. The hose line leaped full of life. Leaky couplings spurted, while over the face of the sky hung the dark cloud of smoke, whipping past on the new gentle wind, like black pennants of destruction.

“Hey, you!” Paddy’s voice pitched up again. Command was in it, command usurped by the fierce heat of anger. “Hey, you! Didn’t you hear? Exercise them beasts. Blankets on ’em! Walk ’em up and down! Up and down! Cool ’em gradual. Want ’em to die?”

A bookkeeper from the table factory had been standing in front of him. The order fell first upon him; he obeyed instinctively. Disobey this maniac? He gripped the team’s reins awkwardly.

“All right, men!” Paddy bellowed.

He charged the fire with the first sputtering nozzle. Flame leaped with triumphant exclamations from the tottering warehouse. It played in spirals about the northern eaves of the main building, stole subtly into windows on the second floor. Paint blistered on the long wooden sign above the ridgepole. Bursting glass fell in slices.

Paddy’s arms hugged the brass nozzle. He ran ahead forty paces. Heat assaulted him. He hesitated long enough to look back. Second line was following, all right. His hard stream lifted in a stiff arc and raked the side of the main building. Steam burst in jets from the hot brick. Brown smoke turned gray. The second line came abreast of the first.

“Wet that roof!” Paddy commanded the men who carried it. “Keep ’er wet.”

Again he slashed the hot side. There was less steam now. The warehouse roof still held, but fire broke through its four walls. Nothing could save this structure; only if he could cool the near end, make it burn slowly, he might save the main building.

“Lift her up,” he bellowed. “Give me a hand here—here—the nozzle—up!”

He turned the force of his stream upon the warehouse. The second line could keep the main building wet. Crouched in the snow, assailed by cold that gnawed his fingers and toes and heat that chewed his face, he aimed. Twice he turned his head. Tom and Jerry, under their blankets, were walking slowly up and down. Cooling off gradually. It was like these blasted mechanics never to think of the horses, let ’em stand stock-still after all that workout.

“Up a bit with that nozzle,” he bade.

Volunteers sprawled submissively behind him. The north wall of the warehouse had fallen. Then the east wall. The new wind was shifting, pulling around from the lake. There was less heat.

“No layin’ back!” Paddy commanded hoarsely. “Up a bit. Goin’ to drown it.”

Speech caught in his baked mouth. Indistinctly he saw the second line, released from the main building by the veer of wind, pull in beside him. One hour passed, two. The north end of the roof fell.

The south end held.

Fire retreated before the onslaught of water. Paddy eased closer.

It was late afternoon, with a gray hood buckling over the sky when the ex-chief released his nozzle. A heap of black cinders, shaken down through the grates of the old Nott firebox, steamed in the snow. Sparks still shot from the wide mouth of its stack. Its faithful pistons still kicked up and down in their monotonous, dancing cadence. In a barn close by, Tom and Jerry scuffed their hooves contentedly, each belted warmly in a blanket.

“Thankee, Tom. Thankee, Jerry,” Paddy said. “Good run you made, Tom. Good run, Jerry.” He patted their noses with his left hand; his right was frozen, he had discovered. From his pouch he drew a fistful of scrap tobacco. “Here y’ are,” he croaked. “Eatin’ terbaccy, devil ’em.”

The team chewed solemnly. Both had learned.

“Ah—Chief.”

It was Crump’s voice. The mayor followed him.

“I owe you an apology,” the table maker said. Paddy stared at him sharply. The man’s face was haggard; he might have been fighting fire himself, the way he looked. “An apology,” Crump repeated.

“About a dozen or so,” Paddy answered. He kept his hand fondly on Jerry’s back. “An’ the same amount to the beasts here.”

“We were a little—I might say—precipitous in our action regarding the horses,” Crump went on. “I realize that, ah, perhaps.”

“They ain’t no perhaps to it!”

“But let that be. Here’s a proposition. You go back. Take over the job. Those are good boys there, but we need a man with experience.”

“That’s what you do, mister. Experience and some sense.”

“So if you’ll take over the job....”

“Me? I quit. Me and the beasts quit. We was just lendin’ a hand.”

“Good enough,” Crump agreed. “You did just that. But we want to be sure you and the beasts will be on the job next time. Keep the horses. Oh, yes, keep the modern equipment, too. But we might need that steam engine again, and I know we need you. I’ve sent a man up to get the stalls ready. If you’ll have one of the boys drive them back—”

“Drive my horses? Nigh kilt them comin’ down.”

“You mean—”

Paddy stuffed tobacco into his own mouth.

“If the beasts go back, I got to go too,” he consented. “Them ree-cruits don’t understand good flesh. They think brass and nickel plate and gasoline puts out fire. What they know about horses? Tom and Jerry don’t relish a lot o’ clumsy mechanics rubbin’ ’em down. They like me. Me and them is friends. I got to go back if they do, to keep ’em comfortable in their mind. We’re built same way. No gasoline in us. We got the stuff.” He turned on the mayor. “Know what saved your good for nothing town?”

“You!”

“Flesh,” Paddy corrected viciously. “Not me. Flesh.”

NOTES ON THE TEXT

This story appeared in Adventure Magazine, August 15, 1928. It is believed to be in the public domain in the United States; copyright status may differ in other countries.

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