Central High School - Almanac Yearbook (Toledo, OH)

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train had rolled into that God-forsaken land, that the cases were as light as air, as destitute of nourishment as the little grove of scrub, dying away where the level of the desert was broken by a ragged scar of clay and sand, biscuit only rivaled by the tinned meats and fruit, ready to burst their cerements with expanding heat. But the gang was used to such-the gang worked dog- gedly ahead, a machine running on poor fuel as well as on good. Fraser, G. E. Was the life of that little settlement of toilersg he shared their fearful labors,-his hands were as hard and calloused as big Doolan's, or the wiry, witty little Franey'sg he shared their food,-his cheeks were as blood- less as the thinnest and were furrowed by the care and unremitting worry attendant upon his office, poor fellow, his maiden enterprise was not a task for his few years of engineering. Fraser's right-hand man,-when he had been on his pins, as Franey said, he was both hands almost,-was a little, nervous Scotsman, McLeod, a mere boy, but a genius in calling out the energies of a despairing gang, and always, with a cheery word and helping hand, brightening the hardest dayg he had left Edinburgh just fourteen months before to follow his tutor, friend and idol into that weary, unending slavery upon the three hundred mile extension of the great Indian Peninsular Railway, Incorporated 1888g he had bravely said farewell to a Hbonnie, sousie lassie, who waited for him yet over the seas, and here he lay, among these rude but warm-hearted gangmen, prostrated at last by those weeks of burning sand and fever-heated air, tenderly watched and cared for by the sympathetic boys. The hazy glare in the western sky grew thicker, soft- ened, and as a ghost of a breeze,-a scorching breeze,- began to stalk slowly over the parched waste, the last crimson ribands tinged the grey cloud-banks with a hue

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McLeod. BY NORMAN L. HANSON. HERE were days when their ears refused to communi- cate aught but the ceaseless hum of the wires overhead to their throbbing brains, when the interminable glint ot the steel rails was multiplied and duplicated by their seared and aching eyesg when the clank of bar and shovel seemed the riveting of torturing manacles about their wearied limbs, when the resin of the cracked and splintered poles, -silent, suffering sentinels over that infernal waste of livid, undulating brown,-started in sticky, boiling streams from yawning seams, tie by tie, laid by bending, toiling bodies Whose minds and souls Were in a sodden stupor, rail by rail, the great iron road crept at a taunting, maddening pace toward completion, toward Singhpa,-one hundred and twenty miles more of incarnate drouth and desolation, still, it moved on, leaving here and there along the way a dusty, unmarked grave,-the men courted this last relief from that nightmare. They finished their evening lunch under the shed of loosely-nailed, gleaming, yellow-pine boards,-wan, emaci- ated faces, eyes whose lustre had long ago iied away as the sun rolled back mile after mile of waving heat from blis- tered, warping rails, eyes in which there was no hope or future,-only the blind devotion of Irish gangmen upon whom depended the honor of Fraser, G. E., and the fulfill- ment of the hopes of the company, which held him to his bond. Silently they passed that meal,--a meal of biscuits so dried by the sun of those three weeks since last the supply

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that boded another evil morrow to the patient little band in the center of the Indian desert. Gettin' his domid fangs ready for t'morrow,W senten- tiously muttered Doolan from behind his reeking pipe- tobacco was a wonderful tonic for those sleepless, spirit- killing nights. Shh! The men tip-toed up to look at the tossing rag of humanity whose fevered moan was echoed feebly by the crouching figure of a dog, lying at his feet. A lump rose in the throat of every man, little Franey turned away and made a pitiable attempt to conceal the tear that trickled down his cheek. The poor dawg ll have to go soon, whispered one, poor little Trip. The moan broke out again-the tossing figure rose upon one shaking arm, and, with beseeching eye, McLeod began a heart-rending appeal for his little collie, he told them with quivering lip how the dog had been the only tie which held him in touch with the native heaths of the home-land, he interspersed his tearful remonstrance with rambling monologue and relapsed into the sweet, old tongue that he had used as a wee bairny' in the white cot on his iather's patch of ground. Na', na', men, ye would na' tak my wee collie awa' from me, would ye noo? Maybe tonicht Pm goin' awa' from ye,-maybe Fm goin' hame,-an' I'll tak him off wi' me, ye knaw,-I'm goin' back timy Ed'nbro' an' my ain lass-Tam, promise me, Tam, dear old Tam,'7 and he clasped the whim- pering collie in his arms and buried his head on his pillow. The men turned away with moistened eyes as Fraser gently soothed the sobbing boy, and stole away as he dropped asleep, murmuring incoherently of his far-off home. Just as they dropped into troubled rest they heard his broken voice again, repeating the poems of his native bard, Bonnie Doon, sae sweet and gloarnin, Fare thee weel before I gang! it