Introductory material (continued 5)

For a month they were warranted in their belief, for all that McGrew personally appeared to be a rather rough card—and then McGrew cut loose. He went into the Blazing Star Saloon one afternoon—and he left it only when deposited outside on the sidewalk as it closed up at four o'clock on the following morning. This was the hour McGrew was supposed to sit in for his trick at the key; but McGrew was quite oblivious to all such considerations. A freight crew, just in and coming up from the yards, carried him home to his boarding house. McGrew got his powers of locomotion back far enough by late afternoon to reach the Blazing Star again—and the performance was repeated—McGrew went the limit. He ended up with a week in the hands of little Doctor McTurk.

McTurk was scientific from the soles of his feet up, and earnestly professional all the rest of the way. When McGrew began to get a glimmering of intelligence again, McTurk went at him red-headed.

"Your heart's bad," the little doctor flung at McGrew, and there was no fooling in his voice. "So's your liver—cirrhosis. But mostly your heart. You'll try this just once too often—and you'll go out like a collapsed balloon, out like the snuffing of a candle wick."

McGrew blinked at him.

"I've heard that before," said he indifferently.

"Indeed!" snapped the irascible little doctor.

"Yes," said McGrew, "quite a few times. This ain't my maiden trip. You fellows make me tired! I'm a pretty good man yet, ain't I? And I'm likely to be when you're dead. I've got my job to worry about now, and that's enough to worry about. Got any idea of what Carleton's said about it?"

"You keep this up," said McTurk sharply, refusing to sidestep the point, as, bag in hand, he moved toward the door, "and it won't interest you much what Carleton or anybody else says—mark my words, my man."

It was Tommy Regan, fat-paunched, big-hearted, good-natured, who stepped into the breach. There was only one place on this wide earth in Carleton's eyes for a railroad man who drank when he should have been on duty—and that was a six-foot trench, three feet deep. In Carleton's mind, from the moment he heard of it, McGrew was out. But Regan saved McGrew; and the matter was settled, as many a matter had been settled before, over the nightly game of pedro between the superintendent and the master mechanic, upstairs in the super's office over the station. Incidentally, they played pedro because there wasn't anything else to do nights—Big Cloud in those days wasn't boasting a grand-opera house, and the "movies" were still things of the future.

"He's a pretty rough case, I guess; but give him a chance," said Regan.

"A chance!" exclaimed Carleton, with a hard smile. "Give a despatcher who drinks a chance—to send a trainload or two of souls into eternity, and about a hundred thousand dollars' worth of rolling stock to the junk heap while he's boozing over the key!"

"No," said Regan. "A chance—to make good."

Carleton laid down his hand, and stared across the table at the master mechanic.

"Go on, Tommy," he prompted grimly. "What's the answer?"

"Well," said Regan, "he's a past master on the key, we know that—that counts for something. What's the matter with sending him somewhere up the line where he can't get a drink if he goes to blazes for it? It might make a man of him, and save the company a good operator at the same time—we're not long on operators."

"H'm!" observed Carleton, with a wry grin, picking up his cards again one by one. "I suppose you've some such place as Angel Forks, for instance, in mind, Tommy?"

"Yes," said Regan. "I was thinking of Angel Forks."

"I'd rather be fired," submitted Carleton dryly.

"Well," demanded Regan, "what do you say? Can he have it?"

"Oh, yes," agreed Carleton, smiling. "He can have that—after I've talked to him. We're pretty short of operators, as you say. Perhaps it will work out. It will as long as he sticks, I guess—if he'll take it at all."

"He'll take it," said Regan, "and be glad to get it. What do you bid?"

McGrew had been at Angel Forks—night man there—for perhaps the matter of a month, when the Kid came to Big Cloud fresh from a key on the Penn. They called him the Kid because he looked it—he wasn't past the stage of where he had to shave more than once a week. The Kid, they dubbed him on the spot, but his name was Charlie Keene; a thin, wiry little chap, with black hair and a bright, snappy, quick look in his eyes and face. He was pretty good on the key, too; not a master like McGrew, he hadn't had the experience, but pretty good for all that—he could "send" with the best of them, and there wasn't much to complain about in his "taking," either.

The day man at Angel Forks didn't drink—at least his way-bill didn't read that way—and they gave him promotion in the shape of a station farther along the line that sized up a little less tomb-like, a little less like a buried-alive sepulcher than Angel Forks did. And the Kid, naturally, being young and new to the system, had to start at the bottom—they sent him up to Angel Forks on the morning way freight the day after he arrived in Big Cloud.

There was something about the Kid that got the train crew of the way freight right from the start. They liked a man a whole lot and pretty sudden in their rough-and-ready way, those railroaders of the Rockies in those days, or they didn't like him well enough to say a good word for him at his funeral; that's the way it went—and the caboose was swearing by the Kid by the time they were halfway to Angel Forks, where he shifted from the caboose to the cab for the rest of the run.

Against the rules—riding in the cab? Well, perhaps it is—if you're not a railroad man. It depends. Who was going to say anything about it? It was Fatty Hogan himself, poking a long-spouted oil can into the entrails of the 428, while the train crew were throwing out tinned biscuits and canned meats and contract pie for the lunch counter at Elk River, who invited him, anyhow.

That's how the Kid came to get acquainted with Hogan, and Hogan's mate, Bull Coussirat, who was handling the shovel end of it. Coussirat was an artist in his way—apart from the shovel—and he started in to guy the Kid. He drew a shuddering picture of the desolation and the general lack of what made life worth living at Angel Forks, which wasn't exaggerated because you couldn't exaggerate Angel Forks much in that particular respect; and he told the Kid about Dan McGrew and how headquarters—it wasn't any secret—had turned Angel Forks into what he called a booze-fighter's sanatorium. But he didn't break through the Kid's optimism or ambition much of any to speak of.

By the time the way freight whistled for Angel Forks, the Kid had Bull Coussirat's seat, and Coussirat was doing the listening, while Hogan was leaning toward them to catch what he could of what was going on over the roar and pound of the 428. There was better pay, and, what counted most, better chances for a man who was willing to work for them out in the West than there was in the East, the Kid told them with a quiet, modest sincerity—and that was why he had come out there. He was looking for a train despatcher's key some day after he had got through station operating, and after that—well, something better still.

There wasn't any jolly business or blowhard about the Kid. He meant what he said—he was going up. And as far as McGrew was concerned, he'd get along with McGrew. McGrew, or any other man, wouldn't hold him back from the goal he had his eyes set upon and his mind made up to work for. There was perhaps a little more of the youthful enthusiasm in it that looked more buoyantly on the future than hard-headed experience would; but it was sincere, and they liked him for it—who wouldn't? Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan in the days to come had reason to remember that talk in the cab.

Desolate, perhaps, isn't the word to describe Angel Forks—for Angel Forks was pretty enough, if rugged grandeur is counted pretty. Across the track and siding, facing the two-story wooden structure that was the station, the bare gray rock of a cut through the mountain base reared upward to meet a pine-covered slope, and then blend with bare, gray rock once until it became a glaciered peak at the sky line; behind the station was a sort of plateau, a little valley, green and velvety, bisected by a tumbling, rushing little stream, with the mountains again closing in around it, towering to majestic heights, the sun playing in relief and shadow on the fantastic, irregular, snow-capped summits. It was pretty enough, no one ever disputed that! The road hung four-by-five-foot photographs of it with eight-inch-wide-trimmed-with-gilt frames in the big hotel corridors East, and no one who ever bought a ticket on the strength of the photographer's art ever sent in a kick to the advertising department, or asked for their money back—it looked all right from the car windows.

But sign of habitation there was not, apart from the little station—not even a section man's shanty—just the station. Angel Forks was important to the Transcontinental on one count, and on one count only—its siding. Neither freight nor passenger receipts were swelled, twelve months in or twelve months out, by Angel Forks; but, geographically, the train despatcher's office back in Big Cloud never lost sight of it—in the heart of the mountains, single-tracked, mixed trains, locals, way freights, specials, and the Limiteds that knew no "rights" on earth but a clean-swept track with their crazy fast schedules, met and crossed each other as expediency demanded.

So, in a way, after all, perhaps it was desolate—except from the car windows. Horton, the day man that the Kid was relieving, evidently had found it so. He was waiting on the platform with his trunk when the way freight pulled in, and he turned the station over to the Kid without much formality.

"God be with you till we meet again," was about the gist of what Horton said—and he said it with a mixture of sympathy for another's misfortune and an uplift at his own escape from bondage struggling for the mastery, while he waved his hand from the tail of the caboose as the way freight pulled out.

There was mighty little formality about the transfer, and the Kid found himself in charge with almost breathtaking celerity. Angel Forks, Dan McGrew, way freight No. 47, and the man he had relieved, were sort of hazy, nebulous things for a moment. There wasn't time for them to be anything else; for, about one minute after he had jumped to the platform, he was O.S.-ing "out" the train that had brought him in.

It wasn't quite what he had been used to back in the more sedate East, and he grinned a little to himself as his fingers tapped the key, and by the time he had got back his O. K. the tail of the caboose was swinging a curve and disappearing out of sight. The Kid, then, had a chance to look around him—and look for Dan McGrew, the man who was to be his sole companion for the days to come.

He found McGrew upstairs—after he had explored all there was to explore of the ground floor of the station, which was a sort of combination kitchen, living room and dining room that led off from the office—just the two rooms below, with a ladder-like staircase between them leading up above. And above there was just the one room under the eaves with two bunks in it, one on either side. The night man was asleep in one of these, and the Kid did not disturb him. After a glance around the rather cheerless sleeping quarters, he returned downstairs, and started in to pick up the threads of the office.

Dusk comes early in the fall in the mountains, and at five o'clock the switch and semaphore lamps were already lighted, and in the office under a green-shaded lamp the Kid sat listening to some stray time stuff coming over the wire, when he heard the night man moving overhead and presently start down the stairs. The Kid pushed back his chair, rose to his feet, and turned with outstretched hand to make friends with his new mate—and his outstretched hand drew back and reached uncertainly to the table edge beside him.

For a long minute neither man spoke—staring into each other's eyes. In the opening through the partition at the foot of the stairs, Dan McGrew seemed to sway a little on his feet, and his face, what could be seen of it through the tawny beard that Angel Forks had offered him no incentive to shave, was ashen white.

It was McGrew who broke the silence.

"Hello, Charlie!" he said in a sort of cheerful bravado, that rang far from true.

"So you are Dan McGrew! The last time I heard of you your name was Brodie." The Kid's lips, as he spoke, hardly seemed to move.

"I've had a dozen since then," said McGrew, in a pleading whine, "more'n a dozen. I've been chased from place to place, Charlie. I've lived a dog's life, and——"

The Kid cut him short, in a low, passionate voice:

"And you expect me to keep my mouth shut about you here—is that it?"

McGrew's fingers plucked nervously, hesitantly at his beard; his tongue circled dry lips, and his black eyes fell from the Kid to trace aimlessly, it seemed, the cracks in the floor.

The Kid dropped back into his chair, and, elbows on the table, chin in hands, stared out across the tracks to where the side of the rock cut was now no more than a black shadow.

Again it was McGrew who broke the silence.

"What are you going to do?" he asked miserably. "What are you going to do? Use the key and put them wise? You wouldn't do that, would you—Charlie? You wouldn't throw me down—would you? I'm—I'm living decent here."

The Kid made no answer—made no movement.

"Charlie!" McGrew's voice rose in a high-pitched, nervous appeal. "Charlie—what are you going to do?"

"Nothing!" The Kid's eyes were still on the black, rock shadow through the station window, and the words came monotonously. "Nothing! As far as I am concerned, you are—Dan McGrew."

McGrew lurched heavily forward, relief in his face and voice as he put his hands on the Kid's shoulders.

"You're all right, Charlie, all right; I knew you wouldn't——"

The Kid sprang to his feet, and flung the other's hands roughly from his shoulders.

"Keep your hands off me!" he said tensely. "I don't stand for that! And let's understand each other. You do your work here, and I do mine. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want you to talk to me. I don't want anything to do with you—that's as straight as I know how to put it. The first chance I get I'll move—they'll never move you, for I know why they sent you here. That's all, and that's where we stand—McGrew."

"D'ye mean that?" said McGrew, in a cowed, helpless way.

The Kid's answer was only a harsh, bitter laugh—but it was answer enough. McGrew, after a moment's hesitation, turned and went silently from the room.

A week passed, and another week came and went, and neither man spoke to the other. Each lived his life apart, cooked for himself, and did his work; and it was good for neither one. McGrew grew morose and ugly; and the Kid somehow seemed to droop, and there was a pallor in his cheeks and a listless air about him that was far from the cheery optimism with which he had come to take the key at Angel Forks.

Two weeks passed, and then one night, after the Kid had gone to bed, two men pitched a rough, weather-beaten tent on the plateau below the station. Hard-looking specimens they were; unkempt, unshaven, each with a mount and a pack horse. Harvey and Lansing they told McGrew their names were, when they dropped in for a social call that night, and they said that they were prospectors—but their geological hammers were bottles of raw spirit that the Indians loved, and the veins of ore they tapped were the furs that an Indian will sell for "red-eye" when he will sell for no other thing on earth. It was against the law—enough against the law to keep a man's mouth who was engaged in that business pretty tightly shut—but, perhaps recognizing a kindred spirit in McGrew, and warmed by the bottle they had hospitably brought, before that first night was over no secret of that sort lay between them and McGrew.

And so drink came to Angel Forks; and in a supply that was not stinted. It was Harvey and Lansing's stock in trade—and they were well stocked. McGrew bought it from them with cash and with provisions, and played poker with them with a kitty for the "red-eye."

There was nothing riotous about it at first, not bad enough to incapacitate McGrew; and it was a night or two before the Kid knew what was going on, for McGrew was cautious. Harvey and Lansing were away in the mountains during the daytime, and they came late to fraternize with McGrew, around midnight, long after the Kid was asleep. Then McGrew began to tipple steadily, and signs of drink came patently enough—too patently to be ignored one morning when the Kid relieved McGrew and went on for the day trick.

The Kid said nothing, no word had passed between them for two weeks; but that evening, when McGrew in turn went on for his trick, the Kid went upstairs and found a bottle, nearly full, hidden under McGrew's mattress. He took it, went outside with it, smashed it against a rock—and kept on across the plateau to the prospectors' outfit. Harvey and Lansing, evidently just in from a day's lucrative trading, were unsaddling and busy over their pack animals.

"Hello, Keene!" they greeted in chorus; and Lansing added: "Hang 'round a bit an' join in; we're just goin' TO cook grub."

The Kid ignored both the salutation and the proffered hospitality.

"I came down here to tell you two fellows something," he said slowly, and there was a grim, earnest set to his lips that was not to be misunderstood. "It's none of my business that you're camping around here, but up there is railroad property, and that is my business. If you show your faces inside the station again or pass out any more booze to McGrew, I'll wire headquarters and have you run in; and somehow, though I've only met you once or twice, I don't fancy you're anxious to touch head-on with the authorities." He looked at the two steadily for an instant, while they stared back half angrily, half sheepishly. "That's fair warning, isn't it?" he ended, as he turned and began to retrace his steps to the station. "You'd better take it—you won't get a second one."

They cursed him when they found their tongues, and did it heartily, interwoven with threats and savage jeers that followed him halfway to the embankment. But their profanity did not cloak the fact that, to a certain extent, the Kid's words were worthy of consideration.

The extent was two nights—that night, and the next one.

On the third night, or rather, far on in the early morning hours, the Kid, upstairs, awakened from sleep, sat suddenly up in his bunk. A wild outburst of drunken song, accompanied by fists banging time on the table, reached him—then an abashed hush, through which the click of the sounder came to him and he read it mechanically—the despatcher at Big Cloud was making a meeting point for two trains at the Bend, forty miles away, nothing to do with Angel Forks. Came then a rough oath—another—and a loud, brawling altercation.

The Kid's lips thinned. He sprang out of his bunk, pulled on shirt and trousers, and went softly down the stairs. They didn't hear him, they were too drunk for that; and they didn't see him—until he was fairly inside the room; and then for a moment they leered at him, suddenly silent, in a silly, owl-like way.

There was an anger upon the Kid, a seething passion, that showed in his bloodless face and quivering lips. He stood for an instant motionless, glancing around the office; the table from the other room had been dragged in; on either side of it sat Harvey and Lansing; at the end, within reach of the key, sat Dan McGrew, swaying tipsily back and forth, cards in hand; under the table was an empty bottle, another had rolled into a corner against the wall; and on the table itself were two more bottles amongst greasy, scattered cards, one almost full, the other still unopened.

"S'all right, Charlie," hiccoughed McGrew blandly. "S'all right—jus' havin' little game—good boy, Charlie."

McGrew's words seemed to break the spell. With a jump the Kid reached him, flung him roughly from his seat, toppling him to the floor, and stretched out his hand for the key—but he never reached it. Harvey and Lansing, remembering the threat, and having more reason to fear the law than on the simple count of trespassing on railroad property, lunged for him simultaneously. Quick as a cat on his feet, the Kid turned, and his fist shot out, driving full into Lansing's face, sending the man staggering backward—but Harvey closed. Purling oaths, Lansing snatched the full bottle, and, as the Kid, locked in Harvey's arms, swung toward him, he brought the bottle down with a crash on the back of the Kid's head—and the Kid slid limply to the floor.

White-faced, motionless, unconscious, the Kid lay there, the blood beginning to trickle from his head, and in a little way it sobered the two "prospectors"—but not McGrew.

"See whash done," said McGrew with a maudlin sob, picking himself up from where the Kid had thrown him. "See whash done! Killed him—thash whash done."

It frightened them, McGrew's words—Harvey and Lansing. They looked again at the Kid and saw no sign of life—and then they looked at each other. The bottle was still in Lansing's hand, and he set it back now on the table with a little shudder.

"We'd better beat it," he croaked hoarsely. "By daylight we want to be far away from here."

Harvey's answer was a practical one—he made for the door and disappeared, Lansing close on his heels.

McGrew alternately cursed and pleaded with them long after they were out of earshot; and then, moved by drunken inspiration, started to clear up the room. He got as far as reaching for the empty bottles on the floor, and that act seemed to father a second inspiration—there were other bottles. He reeled to the table, picked up the one from which they had been drinking, stared at the Kid upon the floor, brushed the hair out of his eyes, and, throwing back his head, drank deeply.

"Jus'er steady myself—feel shaky," he mumbled.

He stared at the Kid again. The Kid was beginning to show signs of returning consciousness. McGrew, blinking, took another drink.

"Nosh dead, after all," said McGrew thickly. "Thank God, nosh dead, after all!"

Then drunken cunning came into his eyes. He slid the full bottle into his pocket, and, carrying the ether in his hand, stumbled upstairs, drank again, and hid them craftily, not beneath the mattress this time, but under the eaves where the flooring met and there was a loose plank.

When he stumbled downstairs again, the Kid was sitting in a chair, holding his swimming head in his hands.

"S'all right, Charlie," said McGrew inanely.

The Kid did not look at him; his eyes were fixed upon the table.

"Where are those bottles?" he demanded suspiciously.

"Gone," said McGrew plaintively. "Gone witsh fellows—fellows took 'em an' ran 'way. Whash goin' to do 'bout it, Charlie?"

"I'll tell you when you're sober," said the Kid curtly. "Get up to your bunk and sleep it off."

"S'my trick," said McGrew heavily, waving his hand toward the key. "Can't let nusher fellow do my work."

"Your trick!" The words came in a withering, bitter rush from the Kid. "Your trick! You're in fine shape to hold down a key, aren't you!"

"Whash reason I ain't? Held it down all right, so far," said McGrew, a world of injury in his voice—and it was true; so far he had held it down all right that night, for the very simple reason that Angel Forks had not been the elected meeting point of trains for a matter of some three hours, not since the time when Harvey and Lansing had dropped in and McGrew had been sober.

"Get up to your bunk!" said the Kid between his teeth—and that was all.

McGrew swayed hesitantly for a moment on uncertain legs, blinked soddenly a sort of helpless protest, and, turning, staggered up the stairs.

For a little while the Kid sat in his chair, trying to conquer his dizzy, swimming head; and then the warm blood trickling down his neck—he had not noticed it before—roused him to action. He took the lamp and went into the other room, bathed his head in the wash-basin, sopping at the back of his neck to stop the flow, and finally bandaged it as best he could with a wet cloth as a compress, and a towel drawn tightly over it, which he knotted on his forehead.

He finished McGrew's abortive attempt at housecleaning after that, and sat in to hold down the rest of the night trick, while McGrew in sleep should recover his senses. But McGrew did not sleep. McGrew was fairly started—and McGrew had two bottles at command.

At five-thirty in the morning, No. 81, the local freight, west, making a meeting point, rattled her long string of flats and boxes on the Angel Forks siding; and the Kid, unknotting his bandage, dropped it into a drawer of his desk. Brannahan, No. 81's conductor, kicked the door open, and came in for his orders.

"Hello, Kid!" exclaimed Brannahan. "What you sitting in for? Where's your mate?"

"Asleep," the Kid laughed at him. "Where do you suppose he is! We're swopping tricks for a while for the sake of variety."

Brannahan stooped and lunged the stub of the cigar in his mouth over the lamp chimney, and with the up-draft nearly extinguished the flame; then he pulled up a chair, tilted back and stuck his feet up on the desk.

"Guess most anything would be variety in this God-forsaken hole," he observed between puffs. "What?"

"Oh, it's not so bad—when you get used to it," said the Kid.

He edged his own chair around to face Brannahan squarely—the wound in the back of his head was bleeding again; perhaps it had never stopped bleeding, he did not know.

Brannahan made small talk, waiting for the fast freight, east, to cross; and the Kid smiled, while his fingers clutched desperately now and then at the arms of his chair to keep himself from pitching over, as those sickening, giddy waves, like hot and cold flashes, swept him.

Brannahan went at last, the fast freight roared by, No. 81 pulled out, and the Kid went back to the wash-basin and put his bandage on again.

The morning came and went, the afternoon, and the evening; and by evening the Kid was sick and dropping weak. That smash on his head must have been more serious than he had thought at first; for, again and again, and growing more frequent, had come those giddy flashes, and once, he wasn't sure, but it seemed as though he had fainted for a moment or two.

It was getting on to ten o'clock now, and he sat, or, rather, lay forward with his head in his arms over the desk under the lighted lamp. The sounder was clicking busily; the Kid raised his head a little, and listened. There was a Circus Special, west, that night, and No. 2, the eastbound Limited, was an hour off schedule, and, trying to make it up, was running with clear rights while everything else on the train sheet dodged to the sidings to get out of the way. The sounder stopped for an instant, then came the dispatcher's "complete"—the Circus Special was to cross the Limited at L'Aramie, the next station west of Angel Forks. It had nothing to do with the Kid, and it would be another two hours at least before the Circus Special was along.

The Kid's head dropped back on his arms again. What was he to do? He could stick out the night somehow—he must stick it out. If he asked for a relief it was the sack for the man upstairs—it was throwing McGrew cold. It wouldn't take them long to find out what was the matter with McGrew! And surely McGrew would be straight again by morning—he wasn't any better now, worse if anything, but by morning surely the worst of the drink would be out of him. McGrew had been pretty bad all day—as bad as the Kid had ever seen a man. He wondered a little numbly about it. He had thought once that McGrew might have had some more drink hidden, and he had searched for it during the forenoon while McGrew watched him from the bunk; but he had found nothing. It was strange, too, the way McGrew was acting, strange that it took so long for the man to get it out of his system, it seemed to the Kid; but the Kid had not found those last two bottles, neither was the Kid up in therapeutics, nor was he the diagnostician that Doctor McTurk was.

"By morning," said the Kid, with the moan, "if he can't stand a trick I'll have to wire. I'm afraid to-night 'll be my limit."

It was still and quiet—not even a breeze to whisper through the cut, or stir the pine-clad slope into rustling murmurs. Almost heavily the silence lay over the little station buried deep in the heart of the mighty range. Only the sounder spoke and chattered—at intervals—spasmodically.

An hour passed, an hour and a half, and the Kid scarcely moved—then he roused himself. It was pretty near time for the Circus Special to be going through to make its meeting point with the Limited at L'Aramie, and he looked at his lights. He could see them, up and down, switch and semaphore, from the bay window of the station where he sat. It was just a glance to assure himself that all was right. He saw the lights through red and black flashes before his eyes, saw that the main line was open as it should be—and dropped his swooning, throbbing head back on his arms once more.

And then suddenly he sat erect. From overhead came the dull, ominous thud of a heavy fall. He rose from his chair—and caught at the table, as the giddiness surged over him and his head swam around. For an instant he hung there swaying, then made his way weakly for the stairs and started up.

There was a light above—he had kept a lamp burning there—but for a moment after he reached the top nothing but those ghastly red and black flashes met his eyes—and then, with a strange, inarticulate cry, he moved toward the side of the room.

Sprawled in a huddled heap upon the floor beneath the eaves, collapsed, out like the snuffing of a candle wick, as Doctor McTurk had said some day he would go out, dead, lay Dan McGrew—the loose plank up, two empty bottles beside him, as though the man had snatched first one and then the other from their hiding place in the wild hope that there might be something left of the supply drained to the last drop hours before.

The Kid stooped over McGrew, straightened up, stared at the lifeless form before him, and his hands went queerly to his temples and the sides of his head—the room spun dizzily around and around, the lamp, the dead man on the floor, the bunks, a red-and-black flashed whirl—the Kid's hands reached grasping into nothingness for support, and he slipped inertly to the floor.

From below came the sharp tattoo of the sounder making the Angel Forks call, quick, imperative at first—then like a knell of doom, in frantic appeal, the despatchers' life and death, the seventeen—and, "Hold Circus Special." Over and over again the sounder spoke and cried and babbled and sobbed like a human soul in agony; over and over again while the minutes passed, and with heavy, resonant roar the long Circus Special rumbled by—but the man on the night wire at Angel Forks was dead; and the Kid was past the hearing—there were to come weeks, while he raved in the furious delirium and lay in the heavy stupor of brain fever, before a key meant anything to him again.

It's queer the way things happen! Call it luck, if you like—maybe it is—maybe it's something more than luck. It wouldn't be sacrilege, would it, to say that the hand of God had something to do with keeping the Circus Special and the Limited from crashing head-on in the rock-walled, twisting cañon, four miles west of Angel Forks, whatever might be the direct means, ridiculous, before-unheard-of, funny, or absurd, that saved a holocaust that night? That wouldn't be sacrilege, would it? Well, call it luck, if you like—call it anything you like. Queer things happen in railroading—but this stands alone, queerest of all in the annals of fifty roads in a history of fifty years.

The Limited, thanks to a clean-swept track, had been making up time, making up enough of it to throw meeting point with the Circus Special at L'Aramie out—and the despatcher had tried to Hold the Circus Special at Angel Forks and let the Limited pass her there. There was time enough to do it, plenty of it—and under ordinary circumstances it would have been all in the night's work. But there was blame, too, and Saxton, who was on the key at Big Cloud that night, relieving Donkin, who was sick, went on the carpet for it—he let the Limited tear through L'Aramie before he sent his order to Angel Forks, with the Circus Special in the open cutting along for her meeting point with nothing but Angel Forks between her and L'Aramie.

That was the despatcher's end of it—the other end is a little different. Whether some disgruntled employee, seeking to revenge himself on the circus management, loosened the door of one of the cars while the Special lay on the siding waiting for a crossing at Mitre Peak, her last stop, or whether it was purely an accident, no one ever knew—though the betting was pretty heavy on the disgruntled employee theory—there had been trouble the day before. However, be that as it may, one way or the other, one thing was certain, they found the door open after it was all over, and—but, we're over-running our holding orders—we'll get to that in a minute.

Bull Coussirat and Fatty Hogan, in the 428, were pulling the Special that night, and as they shot by the Angel Forks station the fireman was leaning out of the gangway for a breath of air.

"Wonder how the Kid's making out?" he shouted in Hogan's ear, retreating into the cab as they bumped over the west-end siding switch with a shattering racket. "Good kid, that—ain't seen him since the day he came up with us."

Hogan nodded, checking a bit for the curve ahead, mindful of his high-priced, heavily insured live freight.

"Did ever you hear such a forsaken row!" he ejaculated irrelevantly. "Listen to it, Bull. About three runs a year like this and I'd be clawing at iron bars and trying to mimic a menagerie. Listen to it!"

Coussirat listened. Every conceivable kind of an animal on earth seemed to be lifting its voice to High Heaven in earnest protest for some cause or other—the animals, beyond any peradventure of doubt, were displeased with their accommodations, uncomfortable, and indignantly uneasy. The rattle of the train was a paltry thing—over it hyenas laughed, lions roared, elephants trumpeted, and giraffes emitted whatever noises giraffes emit. It was a medley fit for Bedlam, from shrill, whistling, piercing shrieks that set the ear-drums tingling, to hoarse, cavernous bellows like echoing thunder.

"Must be something wrong with the animals," said Coussirat, with an appreciative grin. "They weren't yowling like that when we started—guess they don't like their Pullmans."

"It's enough to give you the creeps," growled Fatty Hogan.

Coussirat reached for the chain, and with an expert flip flung wide the furnace door—and the bright glow lighted up the heavens and shot the black of the cab into leaping, fiery red. Coussirat swung around, reaching for his shovel—and grabbed Hogan's arm instead, as a chorus of unearthly, chattering shrieks rent the air.

"For the love of Mike, for God's sake, Fatty," he gasped, "look at that!"

Perched on the tender, on the top of the water tank, just beyond the edge of the coal, sat a well-developed and complacent ape—and, as Coussirat looked, from the roof of the property car, behind the tender, another swung to join the first.

"Jiminy Christmas!" yelled Hogan, screwed around in his seat. "The whole blasted tribe of monkeys is loose! That's what's wrong with the rest of the animals—the little devils have probably been teasing them through the barred air-holes at the ends of the cars. Look at 'em! Look at 'em come!"

Coussirat was looking—he hadn't stopped looking. Along the roof of the property car they came, a chattering, jabbering, swaying string of them—and on the brake wheel two sat upright, lurching and clinging for dear life, the short hair blown straight back from their foreheads with the sweep of the wind, while they peered with earnest, strained faces into the cab. And the rest, two dozen strong now, massed on the roof of the property car, perilously near the edges for anything but monkeys, inspected the cab critically, picked at each other's hides, made gestures, some of which were decidedly uncomplimentary, and chattered volubly to their leaders already on the tender. The tender seemed to appeal. Down came another monkey via the brake-rod, and swung by its tail with a sort of flying-trapeze effect to the tender—and what one did another did—the accommodation on the water tank was being crowded—the front rank moved up on the coal.

"Say!" bawled Coussirat to his mate. "Say, Fatty, get up and give 'em your seat—there's ladies present. And say, what are we going to do about it? The little pets ought to be put back to bed."

"Do nothing!" snapped Hogan, one wary eye on the monkeys, and the other on the right of way ahead. "If the circus people don't know enough to shut their damned beasts up properly it's their own lookout—it's not our funeral, whatever happens."

The advance guard of the monkeys had approached too close to the crest of the high-piled coal, and as a result, while they scrambled back for firmer footing, they sent a small avalanche of it rolling into the cab. This was touching Coussirat personally—and Coussirat glared.

Coussirat was no nature faker—he knew nothing about animals, their habits, peculiarities, or characteristics. He snatched up a piece of coal, and heaved it at the nearest monkey.

"Get out, you little devil—scut!" he shouted—and missed—and the effect was disconcerting to Coussirat.

Monkeys are essentially imitative, earnestly so—and not over-timid when in force—they imitated Coussirat. Before he could get his breath, first one and then another began to pick up hunks of coal and heave them back—and into the cab poured a rain of missiles. For an instant, a bare instant, Coussirat stood his ground, then he dove for the shelter of his seat. Soft coal? Yes—but there are some fairish lumps even in soft coal.

Crash went the plate-glass face of the steam gauge! It was a good game, a joyous game—and there was plenty of coal, hunks and hunks of it—and plenty of monkeys, "the largest and most intelligent collection on earth," the billboards said.

Crash went the cab glass behind Fatty Hogan's head—and the monkeys shrieked delight. They hopped and jumped and performed gyrations over each other, those in the rear; while those on the firing line, with stern, screwed up, wizened faces, blinking furiously, swung their hairy arms—and into the cab still poured the hail of coal.

With a yell of rage, clasping at his neck where the glass had cut him, Fatty Hogan bounced forward in his seat.

"You double-blanked, blankety-blanked, triple-plated ass!" he bellowed at Coussirat. "You—you damned fool, you!" he screamed. "Didn't you know any better than that! Drive 'em off with the hose—turn the hose on them!"

"Turn it on yourself," said Coussirat sullenly; he was full length on his seat, and mindful that his own glass might go as Hogan's had. "D'ye think I'm looking for glory and a wreath of immortelles?"

Funny? Well, perhaps. Is this sacrilege—to say it wasn't luck?

Crash! There was a hiss of steam, a scalding stream of water, and in a moment the cab was in a white cloud. Mechanically, Hogan slammed his throttle shut, and snatched at the "air." It was the water glass—and the water glass sometimes is a nasty matter. Coussirat was on his feet now like a flash, and both men, clamped-jawed, groped for the cock; and neither got off scathless before they shut it—and by then the train had stopped, and not a monkey was in sight.

Jimmie Burke, the conductor, came running up from the rear end, as Coussirat and Hogan swung out of the gangway to the ground.

"What's wrong?" demanded Burke—he had his watch in his hand.

"Monkeys," said Hogan, and he clipped the word off without any undue cordiality.

"How?" inquired Burke.

"Monkeys," said Hogan—a little more brittle than before.

"Monkeys?" repeated Burke politely.

"Yes, monkeys!" roared Hogan, dancing up and down with the pain of his scalded hands. "Monkeys—that's plain enough, ain't it? Monkeys, blast you!—MONKEYS!"

To the group came one of the circus men.

"The door of the monkey car is open!" he announced breathlessly. "The monkeys have escaped."

"You don't say!" said Coussirat heavily.

"Yes," said the circus man. "And, look here, we'll have to find them; they couldn't have got away from the train until it stopped just now."

"Are they intelligent," inquired Coussirat in a velvet voice, "same as the billboards say?"

"Of course," said the circus man anxiously.

"Well, then, just write them a letter and let them know when to be on hand for the next performance," said Coussirat grimly. "There's lots of time—we can hang around here and stall the line for another hour or two, anyway!"

Burke and Hogan were in earnest consultation.

"We're close on the Limited's time as it is," said Hogan. "And look at that cab."

"We'd better back up to the Forks, then, and let her cross us there, that's the safest thing to do," said Burke—and swung his lamp.

"Look here," said the circus man, "we've got to find those monkeys."

Burke looked at him unhappily—monkeys had thrown their meeting point out—and there was the trainmaster to talk to when they got back to Big Cloud.

"Unless you want to spend the night here you'd better climb aboard," he snapped. "All right, Hogan—back away!" And he swung his lamp again.

Ten minutes later, as the Circus Special took the Angel Forks siding and the front-end brakeman was throwing the switch clear again for the main line, a chime whistle came ringing long, imperiously, from the curve ahead. Fatty Hogan's face went white; he was standing up in the cab and close to Coussirat, and he clasped the fireman's arm. "What's that?" he cried.

The answer came with a rush—a headlight cut streaming through the night, there was a tattoo of beating trucks, an eddying roar of wind, a storm of exhausts, a flash of window lights like scintillating diamonds, and the Limited, pounding the fish-plates at sixty miles an hour, was in and out—and gone.

Hogan sank weakly down on his seat, and a bead of sweat spurted from his forehead.

"My God, Bull," he whispered, "do you know what that means? Something's wrong. She's against our order."

They found the Kid and Dan McGrew, and they got the Kid into little Doctor McTurk's hands at Big Cloud—but it was eight weeks and more, while the boy raved and lay in stupor, before they got the story. Then the Kid told it to Carleton in the super's office late one afternoon when he was convalescent—told him the bald, ugly facts in a sort of hopeless way.

Carleton listened gravely; it had come near to being a case of more lives gone out on the Circus Special and the Limited that night than he cared to think about. He listened gravely, and when the Kid had finished, Carleton, in that quiet way of his, put his finger instantly on the crux of the matter—not sharply, but gently, for the Kid had played a man's part, and "Royal" Carleton loved a man.

"Was it worth it, Keene?" he asked. "Why did you try to shield McGrew?"

The Kid was staring hard at the floor.

"He was my father," he said.

IX

THE OTHER FELLOW'S JOB

There is a page in Hill Division history that belongs to Jimmy Beezer. This is Beezer's story, and it goes back to the days of the building of the long-talked-of, figure-8-canted-over-sideways tunnel on the Devil's Slide, that worst piece of track on the Hill Division, which is to say, the worst piece of track, bar none, on the American continent.

Beezer, speaking generally, was a fitter in the Big Cloud shops; Beezer, in particular, wore a beard. Not that there is anything remarkable in the fact that one should wear a beard, though there are two classes of men who shouldn't—the man who chews tobacco, and the man who tinkers around a railroad shop and on occasions, when major repairs are the order of the day, is intimate with the "nigger-head" of a locomotive. Beezer combined both classes in his person—but with Beezer there were extenuating circumstances. According to Big Cloud, Beezer wore a beard because Mrs. Beezer said so; Mrs. Beezer, in point of size, made about two of Beezer, and Big Cloud said she figured the beard kind of took the cuss off the discrepancy.

Anyway, whether that is so or not, Beezer wore a beard, and the reason it is emphasized here is because you couldn't possibly know Beezer without it. Its upper extremity was nicotine-dyed, in spots, to a nut brown, and from thence shaded down to an indeterminate rust color at its lower edge—when he hadn't been dusting off and doing parlor-maid work with it in the unspeakable grime of a "front-end." In shape it never followed the prevailing tonsorial fashions—as far as any one knew, no barber was ever the richer for Beezer's beard. Beezer used to trim it himself Sunday mornings—sort of half moon effect he always gave it.

He was a spare, short man, all jump and nerves, and active as a cat. He had shrewd, brown, little eyes, but, owing to the fact that he had a small head and wore a large-size, black, greasy peaked cap jammed down as far over his face as it would go, the color of his eyes could hardly be said to matter much, for when you looked at Beezer, Beezer was mostly just a round knob of up-tilted nose—and beard.

Beezer's claims to immortality and fame, such as they are, were vested in disease. Yes; that's it, you've got it right—disease. Beezer had a disease that is very common to mankind in general. There's a whole lot of men like Beezer. Beezer envied the other fellow's job.

Somebody has said that the scarcest thing on earth is hen's teeth, but the man who hasn't some time or other gone green-eyed over the other chap's trick, and confidentially complained to himself that he could "sit in" and hold it down a hanged sight better himself, has the scarcity-of-hen's-teeth-oracle nailed to the mast from the start. And a curious thing about it is that the less one knows of what the men he envies is up against the more he envies—and the better he thinks he could swing the other's job himself. There's a whole lot like Beezer.

Now Beezer was an almighty good fitter. Tommy Regan said so, and Regan ought to know; that's why he took Beezer out of the shops where the other had grown up, so to speak, and gave Beezer the roundhouse repair work to do. And that's where Beezer caught the disease—in the roundhouse. Beezer contracted a mild attack of it the first day, but it wasn't bad enough to trouble him much, or see a doctor about, so he let it go on—and it got chronic.

Beezer commenced to inhale an entirely different atmosphere, and the more he inhaled it the more discontented he grew. An engine out in the roundhouse, warm and full of life, the steam whispering and purring at her valves, was a very different thing from a cold, rusty, dismantled boiler-shell jacked up on lumbering blocks in the erecting shop; and the road talk of specials, holding orders, tissues, running time and what-not had a much more appealing ring to it than discussing how many inches of muck No. 414 had accumulated on her guard-plates, the incidental damning of the species wiper, and whether her boxes wanted new babbitting or not. Toiling like a slave ten hours a day for six days a week, and maybe overtime on Sundays, so that the other fellow could have the fun, and the glory, and the fatter pay check, and the easy time of it, began to get Beezer's goat. The "other fellow" was the engineer.

Beezer got to contrasting up the two jobs, and the more he contrasted the less he liked the looks of his own, and the more he was satisfied of his superior ability to hold down the other over any one of the crowd that signed on or off in the grease-smeared pages of the turner's book, which recorded the comings and goings of the engine crews. And his ability, according to Beezer's way of looking at it, wasn't all swelled head either; for there wasn't a bolt or a split-pin in any type of engine that had ever nosed its pilot on the Hill Division that he couldn't have put his finger on with his eyes shut. How much, anyhow, did an engineer know about an engine? There wasn't a fitter in the shops that didn't have the best engineer that ever pulled a throttle pinned down with his shoulders flat on the mat on that count—and there wasn't an engineer but what would admit it, either.

But a routine in which one is brought up, gets married in, and comes to look upon as a sort of fixed quantity for life, isn't to be departed from offhand, and at a moment's notice. Beezer grew ardent with envy, it is true; but the idea of actually switching over from the workbench to the cab didn't strike him for some time. When it did—the first time—it took his breath away—literally. He was in the pit, and he stood up suddenly—and the staybolts on the rocker-arm held, and Beezer promptly sat down from a wallop on the head that would have distracted the thoughts of any other man than Beezer.

Engineer Beezer! He had to lift the peak of his cap to dig the tears out of his eyes, but when he put it back again the peak was just a trifle farther up his nose. Engineer Beezer—a limited run—the Imperial Flyer—into division on the dot, hanging like a lord of creation from the cab window—cutting the miles on the grades and levels like a swallow—roaring over trestles—diving through tunnels—there was excitement in that, something that made life worth living, instead of everlastingly messing around with a hammer and a cold chisel, and pulling himself thin at the hips on the end of a long-handled union wrench. Day dreams? Well, everybody day-dreams, don't they? Why not Beezer?

It is not on record that any one ever metamorphosed himself into a drunkard on the spot the first time he ever stepped up to a bar; but as the Irishman said: "Kape yer foot on the rail, an' yez have the makin's av a dombed foine bum in yez!"

Of course, the thing wasn't feasible. It sounded all right, and was mighty alluring, but it was all dream. Beezer put it from him with an unctuous, get-thee-behind-me-Satan air, but he purloined a book of "rules"—road rules—out of Pudgy MacAllister's seat in the cab of the 1016. He read up the rules at odd moments, and moments that weren't odd—and gradually the peak of his cap crept up as far as the bridge of his nose. Beezer was keeping his foot on the rail.

Mrs. Beezer found the book. That's what probably started things along toward a showdown. She was, as has been said, a very large woman; also she was a very capable woman of whom Beezer generally stood in some awe, who washed, and ironed, and cooked for the Beezer brood during the day, and did overtime at nights on socks and multifarious sewing, including patches on Beezer's overalls—and other things, which are unmentionable. The book fell out of the pocket of one of the other things, one evening. Mrs. Beezer examined it, discovered MacAllister's name scrawled on it, and leaned across the table under the paper-shaded lamp in their modest combination sitting and dining room.

"What are you doing with this, Mr. Beezer?" she inquired peremptorily; Mrs. Beezer was always peremptory—with Beezer.

Beezer coughed behind his copy of the Big Cloud Daily Sentinel.

"Well?" prompted Mrs. Beezer.

"I brought it home for the children to read," said Beezer, who, being uncomfortable, sought refuge in the facetious.

"Mr. Beezer," said Mrs. Beezer, with some asperity, "you put down that paper and look at me."

Mr. Beezer obeyed a little doubtfully.

"Now," continued Mrs. Beezer, "what's got into you since you went into the roundhouse, I don't know; but I've sorter had suspicions, and this book looks like 'em. You might just as well make a clean breast of what's on your mind, because I'm going to know."

Beezer looked at his wife and scowled. He felt what might be imagined to be somewhat the feelings of a man who is caught sneaking in by the side entrance after signing the pledge at a Blue Ribbon rally. It was not a situation conducive to good humor.

"There ain't anything got into me," said he truculently. "If you want to know what I'm doing with that book, I'm reading it because I'm interested in it. And I've come to the conclusion that a fitter's job alongside of an engineer's ain't any better than a mud-picking Polack's."

"You should have found that out before you went into the shops ten years ago," said Mrs. Beezer, with a sweetness that tasted like vinegar.

"Ten years ago!" Beezer flared. "How's a fellow to know what he's cut out for, and what he can do best, when he starts in? How's he to know, Mrs. Beezer, will you tell me that?"

Mrs. Beezer was not sympathetic.

"I don't know how he's to know," she said, "but I know that the trouble with some men is that they don't know when they're well off, and if you're thinking of——"

"I ain't," said Beezer sharply.

"I said 'if,' Mr. Beezer; and if——"

"There's no 'if' about it," Beezer lied fiercely. "I'm not——"

"You are," declared Mrs. Beezer emphatically, but with some wreckage of English due to exceeding her speed permit—Mrs. Beezer talked fast. "When you act like that I know you are, and I know you better than you do yourself, and I'm not going to let you make a fool of yourself, and come home here dead some night and wake me up same as poor Mrs. Dalheen got her man back week before last on a box car door. Don't you know when you're well off? You an engineer! What kind of an engineer do you think you'd make? Why——"

"Mrs. Beezer," said Beezer hoarsely, "shut up!"

Mrs. Beezer caught her breath.

"What did you say?" she gasped.

"I said," said Beezer sullenly, picking up his paper again, "that I'd never have thought of it, if you hadn't put it into my head; and now the more I think of it, the better it looks."

"I thought so," sniffed Mrs. Beezer profoundly. "And now, Mr. Beezer, let this be the last of it. The idea! I never heard of such a thing!"

Curiously enough, or perhaps naturally enough, Mrs. Beezer's cold-water attitude had precisely the opposite effect on Jimmy Beezer to that which she had intended it should have. It was the side-entrance proposition over again. When you've been caught sneaking in that way, you might just as well use the front door on Main Street next time, and have done with it. Beezer began to do a little talking around the roundhouse. The engine crews, by the time they tumbled to the fact that it wasn't just the ordinary grumble that any man is entitled to in his day's work, stuck their tongues in their cheeks, winked surreptitiously at each other—and encouraged him.

Now it is not to be implied that Jimmy Beezer was anybody's fool—not for a minute—a first-class master fitter with his time served is a long way from being in that class right on the face of it. Beezer might have been a little blinded to the tongues and winks on account of his own earnestness; perhaps he was—for a time. Afterwards—but just a minute, or we'll be running by a meeting point, which is mighty bad railroading.

Beezer's cap, when he took the plunge and tackled Regan, had got tilted pretty far back, so far that the peak stood off his forehead at about the same rakish angle that his upturned little round knob of a nose stuck up out of his beard; which is to say that Beezer had got to the stage where he had decided that the professional swing through the gangway he had been practising every time, and some others, that he had occasion to get into a cab, was going to be of some practical use at an early date.

He put it up to Regan one morning when the master mechanic came into the roundhouse.

Regan leaned his fat little body up against the jamb of one of the big engine doors, pulled at his scraggly brown mustache, and blinked as he listened.

"What's the matter with you, Beezer, h'm?" he inquired perplexedly, when the other was at an end.

"Haven't I just told you?" said Beezer. "I want to quit fitting and get running."

"Talks as though he meant it," commented Regan sotto voce to himself, as he peered earnestly into the fitter's face.

"Of course, I mean it," declared Beezer, a little tartly. "Why wouldn't I?"

"No," said Regan; "that ain't the question. The question is, why would you? H'm?"

"Because," Beezer answered promptly, "I like a snap as well as the next man. It's a better job than the one I've got, better money, better hours, easier all around, and one I can hold down with the best of them."

Regan's eyebrows went up.

"Think so?" he remarked casually.

"I do," declared Beezer.

"Well, then," said Regan, "if you've thought it all out and made up your mind, there's nothing I know of to stop you. Want to begin right away?"

"I do," said Beezer again. It was coming easier than he had expected—there was a jubilant trill in his voice.

"All right," said Regan. "I'll speak to Clarihue about it. You can start in wiping in the morning."

"Wiping?" echoed Beezer faintly.

"Sure," said Regan. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it? Wiping—a dollar-ten a day."

"Look here," said Beezer with a gulp; "I ain't joking about this."

"Well, then, what are you kicking about?" demanded Regan.

"About wiping and a dollar-ten," said Beezer. "What would I do with a dollar-ten, me with a wife and three kids?"

"I don't know what you'd do with it," returned Regan. "What do you expect?"

"I don't expect to start in wiping," said Beezer, beginning to get a little hot.

"You've been here long enough to know the way up," said Regan. "Wiping, firing—you take your turn. And your turn'll come for an engine according to the way things are shaping up now in, say, about fifteen years."

"Fifteen years!"

"Mabbe," grinned Regan. "I can't promise to kill off anybody to accommodate you, can I?"

"And don't the ten years I've put in here count for anything?" queried Beezer aggressively. "Why don't you start me in sweeping up the round-house? Wiping! Wiping, my eye! What for? I know all about the way up. That's all right for a man starting in green; but I ain't green. Why, there ain't a year-old apprentice over in the shops there that don't know more about an engine than any blooming engineer on the division. You know that, Regan—you know it hanged well, don't you?"

"Well," admitted the master mechanic, "you're not far wrong at that, Beezer."

"You bet, I'm not!" Beezer was emphatic. "How about me, then? Do I know an engine, every last nut and bolt in her, or don't I?"

"You do," said Regan. "And if it's any satisfaction to you to know it, I wouldn't ask for a better fitter any time than yourself."

"Then, what's the use of talking about wiping? If I've put in ten years learning the last kink there is in an engine, and have forgotten more than the best man of the engine crews 'll know when he dies, what's the reason I ain't competent to run one?"

Regan reached into his back pocket for his chewing, wriggled his head till his teeth met in the plug, and tucked the tobacco back into his pocket again.

"Beezer," said he slowly, spitting out an undesirable piece of stalk, "did it ever strike you that there's a whole lot of blamed good horse doctors that'd make damn poor jockeys—h'm?"

Beezer scowled deeply, and kicked at a piece of waste with the toe of his boot.

"All I want is a chance," he growled shortly. "Give me a chance, and I'll show you."

"You can have your chance," said Regan. "I've told you that."

"Yes," said Beezer bitterly. "It's a hell of a chance, ain't it? A dollar-ten a day—wiping! I'd be willing to go on firing for a spell."

"Wiping," said Regan with finality, as he turned away and started toward the shops; "but you'd better chew it over again, Beezer, and have a talk with your wife before you make up your mind."

Somebody chuckled behind Beezer—and Beezer whirled like a shot. The only man in sight was Pudgy MacAllister. Pudgy's back was turned, and he was leaning over the main-rod poking assiduously into the internals of the 1016 with a long-spouted oil can; but Beezer caught the suspicious rise and fall of the overall straps over the shoulders of the fat man's jumper.

Beezer was only human. It got Beezer on the raw—which was already pretty sore. The red flared into his face hard enough to make every individual hair in his beard incandescent; he walked over to Pudgy, yanked Pudgy out into the open, and shoved his face into the engineer's.

"What in the double-blanked, blankety-blanked blazes are you grinning at?" he inquired earnestly.

"H'm?" said Pudgy.

"Yes—h'm!" said Beezer eloquently. "That's what I'm asking you."

Whether Pudgy MacAllister was just plain lion-hearted, or a rotten bad judge of human nature isn't down on the minutes—all that shows is that he was one or the other. With some labor and exaggerated patience, he tugged a paper-covered pamphlet out of his pocket from under his jumper. It was the book of rules Beezer had "borrowed" some time before.

"Mrs. Beezer," said Pudgy blandly, "was over visiting the missus this morning, and she brought this back. From what she said I dunno as it would do any good, but I thought, perhaps, if you were going to take Regan's advice about talking to your wife, you and Mrs. Beezer might like to look it over again together before you——"

That was as far as Pudgy MacAllister got. Generally speaking, the more steam there is to the square inch buckled down under the valve, the shriller the whistle is when it breaks loose. Beezer let a noise out of him that sounded like a green parrot complaining of indigestion, and went at MacAllister head-on.

The oil can sailed through the air and crashed into the window glass of Clarihue's cubby-hole in the corner. There was a tangled and revolving chaos of arms and legs, and lean and fat bodies. Then a thud. There wasn't any professional ring work about it. They landed on the floor and began to roll—and a pail of packing and black oil they knocked over greased the way.

There was some racket about it, and Regan heard it; so did Clarihue, and MacAllister's fireman, and another engine crew or two, and a couple of wipers. The rush reached the combatants when there wasn't more than a scant thirty-second of an inch between them and the edge of an empty pit—but a thirty-second is a whole lot sometimes.

When they stood them up and got them uncoupled, MacAllister's black eye was modestly toned down with a generous share of what had been in the packing bucket, but his fist still clutched a handful of hair that he had separated from Beezer's beard—and Beezer's eyes were running like hydrants from the barbering. Take it all around, thanks mostly to the packing bucket, they were a fancy enough looking pair to send a high-class team of professional comedians streaking for the sidings all along the right of way to get out of their road.

It doesn't take very much, after all, to make trouble, not very much; and, once started, it's worse than the measles—the way it spreads.

Mostly, they guyed Pudgy MacAllister at first; they liked his make-up better owing to the black eye. But Pudgy was both generous and modest; what applause there was coming from the audience he wanted Beezer to get—he wasn't playing the "lead."

And Beezer got it. Pudgy opened up a bit, and maybe drew on his imagination a bit about what Mrs. Beezer had said to Mrs. MacAllister about Jimmy Beezer, and what Beezer had said to Regan, and Regan to Beezer, not forgetting Regan's remark about the horse doctor.

Oh, yes, trouble once started makes the measles look as though it were out of training, and couldn't stand the first round. To go into details would take more space than a treatise on the manners and customs of the early Moabites; but, summed up, it was something like this: Mrs. Beezer paid another visit to Mrs. MacAllister, magnanimously ignoring the social obligation Mrs. MacAllister was under to repay the former call. Mrs. MacAllister received Mrs. Beezer in the kitchen over the washtubs, which was just as well for the sake of the rest of the house, for when Mrs. Beezer withdrew, somewhat shattered, but in good order, by a flank movement through the back yard, an impartial observer would have said that the kitchen had been wrecked by a gas explosion. This brought Big Cloud's one lawyer and the Justice of the Peace into it, and cost Beezer everything but the odd change on his month's pay check—when it came.

Meanwhile, what with a disturbed condition of marital bliss at home, Beezer caught it right and left from the train crews, engine crews and shop hands during the daytime. They hadn't anything against Beezer, not for a minute, but give a railroad crowd an opening, and there's no aggregation on earth quicker on the jump to take it. They dubbed him "Engineer" Beezer, and "Doctor" Beezer; but mostly "Doctor" Beezer—out of compliment to Regan. And old Grumpy, the timekeeper in the shop, got so used to hearing it that he absent-mindedly wrote it down "Doctor Beezer" when he came to make up the pay roll. That put it up to Carleton, the super, who got a curt letter from the auditors' office down East, asking for particulars, and calling his attention to the fact that all medical services were performed by contract with the company. Carleton scowled perplexedly at the letter, scrawled Tommy Regan's initials at the bottom of the sheet, plus an interrogation mark, and put it in the master mechanic's basket. Regan grinned, and wrote East, telling them facetiously to scratch out the "Doctor" and squeeze in a "J" in front of the "Beezer" and it would be all right; but it didn't go—you can't get by a high-browed set of red-tape-bound expert accountants of unimpeachable integrity, who are safeguarding the company's funds like that. Hardly! They held out the money, and by the time the matter was straightened out the pay car had come and gone, and Beezer got a chance to find out how good his credit was. Considering everything, Beezer took it pretty well—he went around as though he had boils.

But if Beezer had a grouch, and cause for one, it didn't make the other fellow's job look any the less good to Beezer. Mrs. Beezer's sharp tongue, barbed with contemptuous innuendo that quite often developed into pointed directness as to her opinion of his opinions, and the kind of an engineer he'd make, which he was obliged to listen to at night, and the men—who didn't know what an innuendo was—that he was obliged to listen to by day, didn't alter Beezer's views on that subject any, whatever else it might have done. Beezer had a streak of stubbornness running through the boils.

He never got to blows again. His tormentors took care of that. They had MacAllister as an example that Beezer was not averse to bringing matters to an intimate issue at any time, and what they had to say they said at a safe distance—most of them could run faster than Beezer could, because nature had made Beezer short. Beezer got to be a pretty good shot with a two-inch washer or a one-inch nut, and he got to carrying around a supply of ammunition in the hip pocket of his overalls.

As for MacAllister, when the two ran foul of each other, as the engineer came on for his runs or signed off at the end of one, there wasn't any talking done. Regan had warned them a little too hard to take chances. They just looked at each other sour enough to turn a whole milk dairy. The men told Beezer that MacAllister had rigged a punching bag up in his back yard, and was taking a correspondence course in pugilism.

Beezer said curried words.

"Driving an engine," said they, "is a dog's life; it's worse than pick-slinging, there's nothing in it. Why don't you cut it out? You've had enough experience to get a job in the shops. Why don't you hit Regan up and change over?"

"By Christmas!" Beezer would roar, while he emptied his pocket and gave vent to mixed metaphor, "I'd show you a change over if I ever got a chance; and I'd show you there was something to running an engine besides bouncing up and down on the seat like balls with nothing but wind in them, and grinning at the scenery!"

A chance—that's all Beezer asked for—a chance. And he kept on asking Regan. That dollar-ten a day looked worse than ever since Mrs. Beezer's invasion of Mrs. MacAllister's kitchen. But Regan was obdurate, and likewise was beginning to get his usually complacent outlook on life—all men with a paunch have a complacent, serene outlook on life as a compensation for the paunch—disturbed a little. Beezer and his demands were becoming ubiquitous. Regan was getting decidedly on edge.

"Firing," said Beezer. "Let me start in firing—there's as much in that as in fitting, and I can get along for the little while it'll be before you'll be down on your knees begging me to take a throttle."

"Firing, eh!" Regan finally exploded one day. "Look here, Beezer; I've heard about enough from you. Firing, eh? There'd have been some firing done before this that would have surprised you if you hadn't been a family man! Get that? The trouble with you is that you don't know what you want or what you're talking about."

"I know what I want, and I know what I'm talking about," Beezer answered doggedly; "and I'm going to keep on putting it up to you till you quit saying 'No.'"

"You'll be doing it a long time, then," said Regan bluntly, laying a few inches of engine dust with blackstrap juice; "a long time, Beezer—till I'm dead."

But it wasn't. Regan was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's unexplainable the way things work out sometimes!

That afternoon, after a visit from Harvey, who had been promoted from division engineer to resident and assistant-chief on the Devil's Slide tunnel, Carleton sent for Regan.

"Tommy," said he, as the master mechanic entered his office, "did you see Harvey?"

"No," said Regan. "I didn't know he was in town."

"He said he didn't think he'd have time to see you," said Carleton; "I guess he's gone back on Number Seven. But I told him I'd put it up to you, anyway. He says he's along now where he is handling about half a dozen dump trains, but that what he has been given to pull them with, as near as he can figure out, is the prehistoric junk of the iron age."

"I saw the engines when they went through," Regan chuckled. "All the master mechanics on the system cleaned up on him. I sent him the old Two-twenty-three myself. Harvey's telling the truth so far. What's next?"

"Well," Carleton smiled, "he says the string and tin rivets they're put together with come off so fast he can't keep more than half of them in commission at once. He wants a good fitter sent up there on a permanent job. What do you say?"

"Say?" Regan fairly shouted. "Why, I say, God bless that man!"

"H'm?" inquired Carleton.

"Beezer," said Regan breathlessly. "Tell him he can have Beezer—wire him I'll send up Beezer. He wants a good fitter, does he? Well, Beezer's the best fitter on the pay roll, and that's straight. I always liked Harvey—glad to do him a good turn—Harvey gets the best."

Carleton crammed the dottle down in the bowl of his pipe with his forefinger, and looked at Regan quizzically.

"I've heard something about it," said he. "What's the matter with Beezer?"

"Packing loose around his dome cover, and the steam spurts out through the cracked joint all over you every time you go near him," said Regan. "He's had me crazy for a month. He's got it into his nut that he could beat any engineer on the division at his own game, thinks the game's a cinch and is sour on his own. That's about all—but it's enough. Say, you wire Harvey that I'll send him Beezer."

Carleton grinned.

"Suppose Beezer doesn't want to go?" he suggested.

"He'll go," said Regan grimly. "According to the neighbors, his home life at present ain't a perennial dream of delight, and he'll beat it as joyful as a live fly yanked off the sheet of fly paper it's been stuck on; besides, he's getting to be a regular spitfire around the yards. You leave it to me—he'll go."

And Beezer went.

You know the Devil's Slide. Everybody knows it; and everybody has seen it scores of times, even if they've never been within a thousand miles of the Rockies—the road carried it for years on the back covers of the magazines printed in colors. The Transcontinental's publicity man was a live one, he played it up hard, and as a bit of scenic effect it was worth all he put into it—there was nothing on the continent to touch it. But what's the use?—you've seen it hundreds of times. Big letters on top:

"INCOMPARABLE GRANDEUR OF THE ROCKIES", and underneath: "A SCENE ON THE LINE OF THE TRANSCONTINENTAL—THE COAST TO COAST ROUTE."

There wasn't anything the matter with the electrotypes, either—nature backed up those "ads" to the last detail, and threw in a whole lot more for good measure—even a pessimist didn't hold a good enough hand to call the raise and had to drop out. Pugsley, the advertising man, was an awful liar, and what he said may not be strictly true, but he claimed the road paid their dividends for one quarter through the sale to a junk and paper-dealer of the letters they got from delighted tourists telling how far short anything he could say came to being up to the reality. Anyway, Pugsley and the passenger-agent's department were the only ones who weren't enthusiastic about the double-loop tunnel—it spoiled the scenic effect.

This is Beezer's story. Beezer has "rights" through to the terminal, and pictures of scenery however interesting, and a description of how Harvey bored his holes into the mountain sides however instructive, should naturally be relegated to the sidings; but there's just a word or two necessary before Beezer pulls out into the clear.

One thing the electrotypes didn't show was the approach to the Devil's Slide. It came along the bottoms fairly straight and level, the track did, for some five miles from the Bend, until about a mile from the summit where it hit a long, stiff, heavy climb, that took the breath out of the best-type engine that Regan, representing the motive-power department, had to offer. And here, the last few hundred yards were taken with long-interval, snorting roars from the exhaust, that echoed up and down the valley, and back and forward from the hills like a thousand thunders, or the play of a park of artillery, and the pace was a crawl—you could get out and walk if you wanted to. That was the approach of the Devil's Slide—on a westbound run, you understand? Then, once over the summit, the Devil's Slide stretched out ahead, and in its two reeling, drunken, zigzag miles dropped from where it made you dizzy to lean out of the cab window and see the Glacier River swirling below, to where the right of way in a friendly, intimate fashion hugged the Glacier again at its own bed level. How much of a drop in that two miles? Grade percentages and dry figures don't mean very much, do they? Take it another way. It dropped so hard and fast that that's what the directors were spending three million dollars for—to divide that drop by two! It just dropped—not an incline, not by any means—just a drop. However——

When it was all over the cause of it figured out something like this—we'll get to the effect and Beezer in a second. Engine 1016 with Number One, the Imperial Limited, westbound, and with MacAllister in the cab, blew out a staybolt one afternoon about two miles west of the Bend. And quicker than you could wink, the cab was all live steam and boiling water. The fireman screamed and jumped. MacAllister, blinded and scalded, his hands literally torn from the throttle and "air" before he could latch in, fell back half unconscious to the floor, wriggled to the gangway and flung himself out. He sobbed like a broken-hearted child afterwards when he told his story.

"I left her," he said. "I couldn't help it. The agony wasn't human—I couldn't stand it. I was already past knowing what I was doing; but the thought went through my mind that the pressure'd be down, and she'd stop herself before she got up the mile climb to the summit. That's the last I remember."

Dave Kinlock, the conductor, testified that he hadn't noticed anything wrong until after they were over the summit—they'd come along the bottoms at a stiff clip, as they always did, to get a start up the long grade. They had slackened up almost to a standstill, as usual, when they topped the summit; then they commenced to go down the Slide, and were speeding up before he realized it. He put on the emergency brakes then, but they wouldn't work. Why? It was never explained. Whether the angle-cock had never been properly thrown into its socket and had worked loose and shut off the "air" from the coaches, or whether—and queerer things than that have happened in railroading—it just plain went wrong, no one ever knew. They found the trouble there, that was all. The emergency wouldn't work; and that was all that Dave Kinlock knew then.

Now, Beezer had been out on the construction work about two weeks when this happened, about two of the busiest weeks Beezer had ever put in in his life. Harvey hadn't drawn the long bow any in describing what the master mechanics had put over on him to haul his dump carts with. They were engines of the vintage of James Watt, and Beezer's task in keeping them within the semblance of even a very low coefficient of efficiency was no sinecure. Harvey had six of these monstrosities, and, as he had started his work at both ends at once, with a cutting at the eastern base of the Devil's Slide and another at the summit, he divided them up three to each camp; and it kept Beezer about as busy as a one-handed paper-hanger with the hives, running up and down answering "first-aid" hurry calls from first one and then the other.

The way Beezer negotiated his mileage was simple. He'd swing the cab or pilot of the first train along in the direction, up or down, that he wanted to go—and that's how he happened to be standing that afternoon on the track opposite the upper construction camp about a hundred yards below the summit, when Number One climbed up the approach, poked her nose over the top of the grade, crawling like a snail that's worn out with exertion, and then began to gather speed a little, toboggan-like, as she started down the Devil's Slide toward him.

Beezer gave a look at her and rubbed his eyes. There wasn't anything to be seen back of the oncoming big mountain racer's cab but a swirling, white, vapory cloud. It was breezing pretty stiff through the hills that day, and his first thought was that she was blowing from a full head, and the wind was playing tricks with the escaping steam. With the next look he gulped hard—the steam was coming from the cab—not the dome. It was the 1016, MacAllister's engine, and when he happened to go up or down on her he always chose the pilot instead of the cab—Beezer never forced his society on any man. But this time he let the pilot go by him—there was something wrong, and badly wrong at that. The cab glass showed all misty white inside, and there was no sign of MacAllister. The drivers were spinning, and the exhaust, indicating a wide-flung throttle, was quickening into a rattle of sharp, resonant barks as the cab came abreast of him.

Beezer jumped for the gangway, caught the rail with one hand, clung there an instant, and then the tools in his other hand dropped to the ground, as, with a choking gasp, he covered his face, and fell back to the ground himself.

By the time he got his wits about him again the tender had gone by. Then Beezer started to run, and his face was as white as the steam he had stuck his head into in the empty cab. He dashed along beside the track, along past the tender, past the gangway, past the thundering drivers, and with every foot the 1016 and the Imperial Limited, Number One, westbound, was hitting up the pace. When he got level with the cylinder, it was as if he had come to a halt, though his lungs were bursting, and he was straining with every pound that was in him. He was barely gaining by the matter of inches, and in about another minute he was due to lose by feet. But he nosed in over the tape in a dead heat, flung himself sideways, and, with his fingers clutching at the drawbar, landed, panting and pretty well all in, on the pilot. A minute it took him to get his breath and balance, then he crawled to the footplate, swung to the steam chest and from there to the running board.

Here, for the first time, Beezer got a view of things and a somewhat more comprehensive realization of what he was up against, and his heart went into his mouth and his mouth went dry. Far down below him in a sheer drop to the base of the cañon wall wound the Glacier like a silver thread; in front, a gray, sullen mass of rock loomed up dead ahead, the right of way swerving sharply to the right as it skirted it in a breath-taking curve; and with every second the 1016 and her trailing string of coaches was plunging faster and faster down the grade. The wind was already singing in his ears. There was a sudden lurch, a shock, as she struck the curve. Beezer flung his arms around the handrail and hung on grimly. She righted, found her wheel base again, and darted like an arrow along the opening tangent.

Beezer's face was whiter now than death itself. There were curves without number ahead, curves to which that first was but child's play, that even at their present speed would hurl them from the track and send them crashing in splinters through the hideous depths into the valley below. It was stop her, or death; death, sure, certain, absolute and quick, for himself and every man, woman and child, from colonist coach to the solid-mahogany, brass-railed Pullmans and observation cars that rocked behind him.

There was no getting into the cab through the gangway; his one glance had told him that. There was only one other way, little better than a chance, and he had taken it. Blue-lipped with fear—that glance into the nothingness almost below his feet had shaken his nerve and turned him sick and dizzy—Beezer, like a man clinging to a crag, edged along the running board, gained the rear end, and, holding on tightly with both hands, lifted his foot, and with a kick shattered the front cab-glass; another kick and the window frame gave way, and, backing in feet first, Beezer began to lower himself into the cab.

Meanwhile, white-faced men stood at Spence's elbow in the despatchers' office at Big Cloud. Some section hands had followed Number One out of the Bend in a handcar, and had found MacAllister and his fireman about two hundred yards apart on opposite sides of the right of way. Both were unconscious. The section hands had picked them up, pumped madly back to the Bend, and made their report.

Carleton, leaning over Spence, never moved, only the muscles of his jaw twitched; Regan, as he always did in times of stress, swore to himself in a grumbling undertone. There was no other sound in the room save the incessant click of the sender, as Spence frantically called the construction camp at the summit of the Slide; there was a chance, one in a thousand, that the section hands had got back to the Bend before Number One had reached the top of the grade.

Then, suddenly, the sounder broke, and Spence began to spell off the words.

"Number One passed here five minutes ago."

Regan went down into a chair, and covered his face with his hands.

"Wild," he whispered, and his whisper was like an awe-stricken sob. "Running wild on the Devil's Slide. No one in the cab. Oh, my God!"

There was a look on Carleton's face no words could describe—it was gray, gray with a sickness that was a sickness of his soul; but his words came crisp and clear, cold as steel, and without a tremor.

"Clear the line, Spence. Get out the wrecking crew, and send the callers for the doctors—that's all that's left for us to do."

But while Big Cloud was making grim preparations for disaster, Beezer in no less grim a way was averting it, and his salvation, together with that of every soul aboard the train, came, in a measure at least, from the very source wherein lay their danger—the speed. That, and the fact that the pressure MacAllister had thought would drop before the summit was reached, was at last exhausting itself. The cab was less dense, and the speed whipping the wind through the now open window helped a whole lot more, but it was still a swirling mass of vapor.

Beezer lowered himself in, his foot touched the segment, and then found the floor. The 1016 was rocking like a storm-tossed liner. Again there came the sickening, deadly slew as she struck a curve, the nauseating pause as she hung in air with whirring drivers. Beezer shut his eyes and waited. There was a lurch, another and another, fast and quick like a dog shaking itself from a cold plunge—she was still on the right of way.

Beezer wriggled over on his back now, and, with head hanging out over the running board, groped with his hands for the levers. Around his legs something warm and tight seemed to clinch and wrap itself. He edged forward a little farther—his hand closed on the throttle and flung it in—a fierce, agonizing pain shot through his arm as something spurted upon it, withering it, blistering it. The fingers of his other hand were clasped on the air latch and he began to check—then, unable to endure it longer, he threw it wide. There was a terrific jolt, a shock that keeled him over on his side as the brake-shoes locked, the angry grind and crunch of the wheel tires, and the screech of skidding drivers.

He dragged himself out and crouched again on the running board. Behind him, like a wriggling snake, the coaches swayed and writhed crazily, swinging from side to side in drunken, reeling arcs. A deafening roar of beating flanges and pounding trucks was in his ears—and shriller, more piercing, the screams of the brake-shoes as they bit and held. He turned his head and looked down the right of way, and his eyes held there, riveted and fascinated. Two hundred yards ahead was the worst twist on the Slide, where the jutting cliff of Old Piebald Mountain stuck out over the precipice, and the track hugged around it in a circle like a fly crawling around a wall.

Beezer groaned and shut his eyes again. They say that in the presence of expected death sometimes one thinks of a whole lot of things. Engineer Beezer, in charge of Number One, the Imperial Limited, did then; but mostly he was contrasting up the relative merits of a workbench and a throttle, and there wasn't any doubt in Beezer's mind about which he'd take if he ever got the chance to take anything again.

When he opened his eyes Old Piebald Mountain was still ahead of him—about ten feet ahead of him—and the pony truck was on the curve. But they had stopped, and Dave Kinlock and a couple of mail clerks were trying to tear his hands away from the death grip he'd got on the handrail. It was a weak and shaken Beezer, a Beezer about as flabby as a sack of flour, that they finally lifted down off the running board.

There was nothing small about Regan—there never was. He came down on the wrecking train, and, when he had had a look at the 1016 and had heard Kinlock's story, he went back up to the construction camp, where Beezer had been outfitted with leg and arm bandages.

"Beezer," said he, "I didn't say all horse doctors wouldn't make jockeys—what? You can have an engine any time you want one."

Beezer shook his head slowly.

"No," said he thoughtfully; "I guess I don't want one."

Regan's jaw dropped, and his fat little face puckered up as he stared at Beezer.

"Don't want one!" he gasped. "Don't want one! After howling for one for three months, now that you can have it, you don't want it! Say, Beezer, what's the matter with you—h'm?"

But there wasn't anything the matter with Beezer. He was just getting convalescent, that's all. There's a whole lot of men like Beezer.

X

THE RAT RIVER SPECIAL

This is Martin Bradley's story; an excerpt, if you will, from the pages of railroading where strange and grim things are, where death and laughter lock arms in the winking of an eye, and are written down as though akin. There have been better men than Martin Bradley—and worse. Measure him as you will, that is one matter; in the last analysis frailty is a human heritage, and that is another. On the Hill Division they called him a game man.

Bradley was a fireman, a silent, taciturn chap. Not sullen or surly—don't get that idea—more quiet than anything else, never much of anything to say. When a laugh was going around Bradley could appreciate the fun, and did; only his laugh seemed tempered somehow by something behind it all. Not a wet blanket, not by any means—they didn't understand him then, perhaps, didn't pretend to—he never invited a confidence or gave one—but the boys would crowd up and make room for Bradley any time, as they dragged at their pipes and swopped yarns in the murk of the roundhouse at the midnight lunch hour, about the time Bradley used to stroll in, snapping his fingers together softly in that curious, absent-minded way he had of doing—for Bradley was firing for Smithers then on the 582, that took the local freight, west, out of Big Cloud in the small morning hours.

Well set-up, jumper tucked in his overalls, the straps over husky shoulders, thick through the chest, medium height, stocky almost, steady black eyes, a clean-shaven, serious face, the black hair grizzled a little and threading gray—that was Martin Bradley. A bit old to be still firing, perhaps, but he had had to take his turn for promotion with the rest of the men when he came to the Hill Division. He'd have gone up in time, way up, to the best on the division, probably, for Regan had him slated for an engine even then, only——But we'll come to that in a moment; there's just a word or two to "clear" the line before we have "rights" through to the terminal.