town for the wrecking crew, and the 1018, big and capable, snorting
from a full head of steam, backed the tool car, a flat, and the
rumbling derrick from a spur to the main line, P. Walton still sat,
smiling strangely, clinging to the window sill of the laboring 229,
staring out into the night through the cab glass ahead.

"You see," said P. Walton to himself, as though summing up an argument
dispassionately, "ditching a train travelling pretty near a mile a
minute is apt to result in a few casualties, and Nulty might get hurt,
and if he didn't, the first thing they'd do would be to pass him out
for keeps, anyway, on Spud's account.  They're not a very gentle lot--I
remember the night back at Joliet that Larry and the Butcher walked out
with the guards' clothes on, after cracking the guards' skulls.
They're not a very gentle lot, and I guess they've been to some little
trouble fixing up for to-night--enough so's they won't feel pleasant at
having it spoiled.  I guess"--P. Walton coughed--"I won't need that
ticket for the _heat_ of Northern Queensland.  I guess"--he ended
gravely--"I guess I'm going to hell."

P. Walton put his head out through the window and listened--and nodded
his head.

"Sound carries a long way out here in the foothills," he observed.
"They ought to hear it on the mail train as soon as we get close--and I
guess we're close enough now to start it."

P. Walton got down, and, clutching at the cab-frame for support, lifted
up the cover of the engineer's seat--there was sure to be something
there among the tools that would do.  P. Walton's hand came out with a
heavy piece of cord.  He turned then, pulled the whistle lever down,
tied it down--and, screaming now like a lost soul, the 229 reeled on
through the night.

The minutes passed--and then the pace began to slacken.  Dalheen was
always rated a good fireman, and a wizard with the shovel, but even
Dalheen had his limitations--and P. Walton hadn't helped him out any.
The steam was dropping pretty fast as the 229 started to climb a grade.

P. Walton stared anxiously about him.  It must be eleven minutes now
since he had started from the Big Cloud yards, but how far had he come?
Was he going to stop too soon after all?  What was the matter?  P.
Walton's eyes on the track ahead dilated suddenly, and, as suddenly, he
reached for the throttle and slammed it shut--he was not going to stop
too soon--perhaps not soon enough.

Larry, the Butcher, Big Tom, and Dago Pete had chosen their position
well.  A hundred yards ahead, the headlight played on a dismantled
roadbed and torn-up rails, then shot off into nothingness over the
embankment as the right of way swerved sharply to the right they had
left no single loophole for Extra No. 34, not even a fighting
chance--the mail train would swing the curve and be into the muck
before the men in her cab would be able to touch a lever.

Screaming hoarsely, the 229 slowed, bumped her pony truck on the ties
where there were no longer any rails jarred, bounced, and thumped along
another half dozen yards--and brought up with a shock that sent P.
Walton reeling back on the coal in the tender.

A dark form, springing forward, bulked in the left-hand gangway--and P.
Walton recognized the Butcher.

"Keep out, Butch!" he coughed over the scream of the whistle--and the
Butcher in his surprise sort of sagged mechanically back to the ground.

"It's de Dook!" he yelled, with a gasp; and then, as other forms joined
him, he burst into a torrent of oaths.  "What de blazes are you doin'!"
he bawled.  "De train 'll be along in a minute, if you ain't queered it
already--cut out that cursed whistle!  Cut it out, d'ye hear, or we'll
come in there an' do it for you in a way you won't like--have you gone
nutty?"

"Try it," invited P. Walton--and coughed again.  "You won't have far to
come, but I'll drop you if you do.  I've changed my mind--there isn't
going to be any wreck to-night.  You'd better use what time is left in
making your getaway."

"So that's it, is it!" roared another voice.  "You dirty pup, you'd
squeal on your pals, would you, you white-livered snitch, you!  Well,
take that!"

There was a flash, a lane of light cut streaming through the darkness,
and a bullet lodged with an angry spat on the coal behind P. Walton's
head.  Another and another followed.  P. Walton smiled, and flattened
himself down on the coal.  A form leaped for the gangway--and P. Walton
fired.  There was a yell of pain and the man dropped back.  Then P.
Walton heard some of them running around behind the tender, and they
came at him from both sides, firing at an angle through both gangways.
Yells, oaths, revolver shots and the screech of the whistle filled the
air--and again P. Walton smiled--he was hit now, quite badly, somewhere
in his side.

His brain grew sick and giddy.  He fired once, twice more
unsteadily--then the revolver slipped from his fingers.  From somewhere
came another whistle--they weren't firing at him any more, they were
running away, and--P. Walton tried to rise--and pitched back
unconscious.

Nulty, the first man out from the mail train, found him there, and,
wondering, his face set and grim, carried P. Walton to the express car.
They made a mattress for him out of chair cushions, and laid him on the
floor--and there, a few minutes later, Regan and Carleton, from the
wrecker, after a look at the 229 and the wrecked track that spoke
eloquently for itself, joined the group.

Carleton knelt and looked at P. Walton--then looked into Nulty's face.

Nulty, bending over P. Walton on the other side, shook his head.

"He's past all hope," he said gruffly.

P. Walton stirred, and his lips moved--he was talking to himself.

"If I were you, Nulty," he murmured, and they stooped to catch the
words, "I'd look out for--for--that----"

The words trailed off into incoherency.

Regan, tugging at his mustache, swallowed a lump in his throat, and
turned away his head.

"It's queer!" he muttered.  "How'd he know--what?  I wonder where he
came from, and who he was?"

But P. Walton never said.  P. Walton was dead.

VI

THE AGE LIMIT

As its scarred and battle-torn colors are the glory of a regiment,
brave testimony of hard-fought fields where men were men, so to the
Hill Division is its tradition.  And there are names there, too, on the
honor roll--not famous, not world-wide, not on every tongue, but names
that in railroading will never die.  The years have gone since men
fought and conquered the sullen gray-walled Rockies and shackled them
with steel and iron, and laid their lives on the altar of one of the
mightiest engineering triumphs the world has ever known; but the years
have dimmed no memory, have only brought achievement into clearer
focus, and honor to its fullness where honor is due.  They tell the
stories of those days yet, as they always will tell them--at night in
the round-house over the soft pur of steam, with the yellow flicker of
the oil lamps on the group clustered around the pilot of a 1600-class
mountain greyhound--and the telling is as though men stood erect,
bareheaded, at "salute" to the passing of the Old Guard.

Heroes?  They never called themselves that--never thought of themselves
in that way, those old fellows who have left their stories.  Their
uniform was a suit of overalls, their "decorations" the grime that came
with the day's work--just railroad men, hard-tongued, hard-fisted,
hard-faced, rough, without much polish, perhaps, as some rank polish,
with hearts that were right and big as a woman's--that was all.

MacCaffery, Dan MacCaffery, was one of these.  This is old Dan
MacCaffery's story.

MacCaffery?  Dan was an engineer, one of the old-timers, blue-eyed,
thin--but you'd never get old Dan that way, he wouldn't look natural!
You've got to put him in the cab of the 304, leaning out of the window,
way out, thin as a bent toothpick, and pounding down the gorge and
around into the straight making for the Big Cloud yards, with a string
of buff-colored coaches jouncing after him, and himself bouncing up and
down in his seat like an animated piece of rubber.  Nobody ever saw old
Dan inside the cab, that is, all in--he always had his head out of the
window--said he could see better, though the wind used to send the
water trickling down from the old blue eyes, and generally there were
two little white streaks on his cheeks where no grime or coal dust ever
got a chance at a strangle hold on the skin crevices.  For the rest,
what you could see sticking out of the cab over the whirling rod as he
came down the straight, was just a black, greasy peaked cap surmounting
a scanty fringe of gray hair, and a wizened face, with a round little
knob in the center of it for a nose.

But that isn't altogether old Dan MacCaffery, either--there was Mrs.
MacCaffery.  Everybody liked Dan, with his smile, and the cheery way he
had of puckering up his lips sympathetically and pushing back his cap
and scratching near his ear where the hair was, as he listened maybe to
a hard-luck story; everybody liked Dan--but they swore by Mrs.
MacCaffery.  Leaving out the railroaders who worshipped her anyway,
even the worst characters in Big Cloud, and there were some pretty bad
ones in those early days, hangers-on and touts for the gambling hells
and dives, used to speak of the little old lady in the lace cap with a
sort of veneration.

Lace cap?  Yes.  Sounds queer, doesn't it?  An engineer's wife, keeping
his shanty in a rough and ready, half baked bit of an uncivilized town
in the shadow of the Rockies, and a lace cap don't go together very
often, that's a fact.  But it is equally a fact that Mrs. MacCaffery
wore a lace cap--and somehow none of the other women ever had a word to
say about her being "stuck up" either.  There was something patrician
about Mrs. MacCaffery--not the cold, stand-offish effect that's only
make-believe, but the real thing.  The Lord knows, she had to work hard
enough, but you never saw her rinsing the washtub suds from her hands
and coming to the door with her sleeves rolled up--not at all.  The
last thing you'd ever think there was in the house was a washtub.
Little lace cap over smoothly-parted gray hair, little black dress with
a little white frill around the throat, and just a glad look on her
face whether she'd ever seen you before or not--that was Mrs.
MacCaffery.

As far back as any one could remember she had always looked like that,
always a little old lady--never a young woman, although she and Dan had
come there years before, even before the operating department had got
the steel shaken down into anything that might with justice be called a
permanent right of way.  Perhaps it was the gray hair--Mrs.
MacCaffery's hair had been gray then, when it ought to have been the
glossy, luxuriant brown that the old-fashioned daguerreotype, hanging
in the shanty's combination dining and silting room, proclaimed that it
once was.

Big Cloud, of course, didn't call her patrician--because they didn't
talk that way out there.  They said there was "some class" to Mrs.
MacCaffery--and if their expression was inelegant, what they meant by
it wasn't.  Not that they ranked her any finer than Dan, for the last
one of them ranked Dan as one of God's own noblemen, and there's
nothing finer than that, only they figured, at least the women did,
that back in the Old Country she'd been brought up to things that Dan
MacCaffery hadn't.

Maybe that accounted for their sending young Dan East, and pinching
themselves pretty near down to bed rock to give the boy an education
and a start.  Not that Mrs. MacCaffery had any notions that railroading
and overalls and dirt was plebeian and beneath her--far from it!  She
was proud of old Dan, proud of his work, proud of his record; she'd
talk about Dan's engine to you by the hour just as though it were
alive, just as Dan would, and she would have hung chintz curtains on
the cab windows and put flower pots on the running boards if they had
let her.  It wasn't that--Mrs. MacCaffery wasn't that kind.  Only there
were limitations to a cab, and she didn't want the boy, he was the only
one they had, to start out with limitations of any kind that would put
a slow order on his reaching the goal her mother's heart dreamed of.
What goal?  Who knows?  Mothers always dream of their boy's future in
that gentle, loving, all-conquering, up-in-the-clouds kind of a way,
don't they?  She wanted young Dan to do something, make a name for
himself some day.

And young Dan did.  He handed a jolt to the theory of heredity that
should, if it didn't, have sent the disciples of that creed to the mat
for the full count.  When he got through his education, he got into a
bank and backed the brain development, the old couple had scrimped to
the bone to give him, against the market--with five thousand dollars of
the bank's money.  Old Dan and Mrs. MacCaffery got him off--Mrs.
MacCaffery with her sweet old face, and Dan with his grim old honesty.
The bank didn't prosecute.  The boy was drowned in a ferryboat accident
the year after.  And old Dan had been paying up ever since.

He was always paying up.  Five thousand dollars, even in instalments
for a whole lot of years, didn't leave much to come and go on from his
monthly pay check.  He talked some of dropping the benefit orders he
belonged to, and he belonged to most of them, but Mrs. MacCaffery
talked him out of that on account of the insurance, she said, but
really because she knew that Dan and his lodge rooms and his regalias
and his worshipful titles were just part and parcel of each other, and
that he either was, or was just going to be, Supreme High Chief
Illustrious Something-or-other of every Order in town.  Besides, after
all, it didn't cost much compared with the other, just meant pinching a
tiny bit harder--and so they pinched.

Old Dan and Mrs. MacCaffery didn't talk about their troubles.  You'd
never get the blues on their account, no matter how intimate you got
with them.  But everybody knew the story, of course, for everybody
knows a thing like that; and everybody knew that dollars were scarce up
at the MacCafferys' shanty for, though they didn't know how much old
Dan sent East each year, they knew it had to be a pretty big slice of
what was coming to him to make much impression on that five thousand
dollars at the other end--and they wondered, naturally enough, how the
MacCafferys got along at all.  But the MacCafferys got along somehow,
outwardly without a sign of the hurt that was deeper than a mere matter
of dollars and cents, got along through the years--and Mrs. MacCaffery
got a little grayer, a little more gentle and patient and sweet-faced,
and old Dan's hair narrowed to a fringe like a broken tonsure above his
ears, and--but there's our "clearance" now, and we're off with a
clean-swept track and "rights through" into division.

Dan was handling the cab end of one of the local passenger runs when
things broke loose in the East--a flurry in Wall Street.  But Wall
Street was a long, long way from the Rockies, and, though the papers
were full of it, there didn't seem to be anything intimate enough in a
battle of brokers and magnates, bitter, prolonged, and to the death
though it might be, to stir up any excitement or enthusiasm on the Hill
Division.  The Hill Division, generally speaking, had about all it
could do to mind its own affairs without bothering about those of
others', for the Rockies, if conquered, took their subjection with bad
grace and were always in an incipient state of insurrection that kept
the operating, the motive power and the maintenance-of-way departments
close to the verge of nervous prostration without much let-up to speak
of.  But when the smoke cleared away down East, the Hill Division and
Big Cloud forgot their bridge troubles and their washouts and their
slides long enough to stick their tongues in their cheeks and look
askance at each other; and Carleton, in his swivel chair, pulled on the
amber mouthpiece of his brier and looked at Regan, who, in turn, pulled
on his scraggly brown mustache and reached for his hip pocket and his
plug.  The system was under new control.

"Who's H. Herrington Campbell when he's at home?" spluttered Regan.

"Our new general manager, Tommy," Carleton told him for the second time.

Regan grunted.

"I ain't blind!  I've read that much.  Who is he--h'm?  Know him?"

Carleton took the pipe from his mouth--a little seriously.

"It's the P. M. & K. crowd, Tommy.  Makes quite an amalgamation,
doesn't it--direct eastern tidewater connection--what?  They're a
younger lot, pretty progressive, too, and sharp as they make them."

"I don't care a hoot who owns the stock," observed Regan, biting deeply
at his blackstrap.  "It's the bucko with the overgrown name in the
center that interests me--who's he?  Do you know him?"

"Yes," said Carleton slowly.  "I know him."  He got up suddenly and
walked over to the window, looked out into the yards for a moment, then
turned to face the master mechanic.  "I know him, and I know most of
the others; and I'll say, between you and me, Tommy, that I'm blamed
sorry they've got their fingers on the old road.  They're a cold,
money-grabbing crew, and Campbell's about as human as a snow man, only
not so warm-blooded.  I fancy you'll see some changes out here."

"I turned down an offer from the Penn last week," said the fat little
master mechanic reminiscently, "mabbe I----"

Carleton laughed--he could afford to.  There was hardly a road in the
country but had made covetous offers for the services of the cool-eyed
master of the Hill Division, who was the idol of his men down to the
last car tink.

"No; I guess not, Tommy.  Our heads are safe enough, I think.  When I
go, you go--and as the P. M. & K. have been after me before, I guess
they'll let me alone now I'm on their pay roll."

"What kind of changes, then?" inquired Regan gruffly.

"I don't know," said Carleton.  "I don't know, Tommy--new crowd, new
ways.  We'll see."

And, in time, Regan saw.  Perhaps Regan himself, together with Riley,
the trainmaster, were unwittingly the means of bringing it about a
little sooner than it might otherwise have come--perhaps not.
Ultimately it would have been all the same.  Sentiment and H.
Herrington Campbell were not on speaking terms.  However, one way or
the other, in results, it makes little difference.

It was natural enough that about the first official act of the new
directors should be a trip to look over the new property they had
acquired; and if there was any resentment on the Hill Division at the
change in ownership, there was no sign of it in Big Cloud when the word
went out of what was coming.  On the contrary, everybody sort of
figured to make a kind of holiday affair of it, for the special was to
lay off there until afternoon to give the Big Fellows a chance to see
the shops.  Anyway, it was more or less mutually understood that they
were to be given the best the Hill Division had to offer.

Regan kept his pet flyer, the 1608, in the roundhouse, and tinkered
over her for two days, and sent for Dan MacCaffery--there'd been a good
deal of speculation amongst the engine crews as to who would get the
run, and the men were hot for the honor.

Regan squinted at old Dan--and squinted at the 1608 on the pit beside
him.

"How'd you think she looks, Dan?" he inquired casually.

The old engineer ran his eyes wistfully over the big racer, groomed to
the minute, like the thoroughbred it was.

"She'll do you proud, Regan," he said simply.

And then Regan's fat little hand came down with a bang on the other's
overalled shoulder--that was Regan's way.

"And you, too, Dan," he grinned.  "I got you slated for the run."

"Me!" said MacCaffery, his wizened face lighting up.

"You--sure!"  Regan's grin expanded.  "It's coming to you, ain't it?
You're the senior engineer on the division, ain't you?  Well, then,
what's the matter with you?  Riley's doing the same for Pete
Chartrand--he's putting Pete in the aisles.  What?"

Old Dan looked at Regan, then at the 1608, and back at Regan again.

"Say," he said a little huskily, "the missus 'll be pleased when I tell
her.  We was talking it over last night, and hoping--just hoping, mind
you, that mabbe----"

"Go tell her, then," said the little master mechanic, who didn't need
any word picture to make him see Mrs. MacCaffery's face when she heard
the news--and he gave the engineer a friendly push doorwards.

Not a very big thing--to pull the latch of the Directors' Special?
Nothing to make a fuss over?  Well no, perhaps not--not unless you were
a railroad man.  It meant quite a bit to Dan MacCaffery, though, and
quite a bit to Mrs. MacCaffery because it was an honor coming to Dan;
and it meant something to Regan, too.  Call it a little thing--but
little things count a whole lot, too, sometimes in this old world of
ours, don't they?

There had been a sort of little programme mapped out.  Regan, as
naturally fell to his lot, being master mechanic, was to do the honors
of the shops, and Carleton was to make the run up through the Rockies
and over the division with the new directors: but at the last moment a
telegram sent the superintendent flying East to a brother's sick bed,
and the whole kit and caboodle of the honors, to his inward
consternation and dismay, fell to Regan.

Regan, however, did the best he could.  He fished out the black Sunday
suit he wore on the rare occasions when he had time to know one day of
the week from the other, wriggled into a boiled shirt and a stiff
collar that was yellow for want of daylight, and, nervous as a galvanic
battery, was down on the platform an hour before the train was due.
Also, by the time the train rolled in, Regan's handkerchief was
wringing wet from the sweat he mopped off his forehead--but five
minutes after that the earnest little master mechanic, as he afterwards
confided to Carleton, "wouldn't have given a whoop for two trainloads
of 'em, let alone the measly lot you could crowd into one private car."
Somehow, Regan had got it into his head that he was going on his mettle
before a crowd of up-to-the-minute, way-up railroaders; but when he
found there wasn't a practical railroad man amongst them, bar H.
Herrington Campbell, to whom he promptly and whole-heartedly took a
dislike, Regan experienced a sort of pitying contempt, which, if it
passed over the nabobs' heads without doing them any harm, had at least
the effect of putting the fat little master mechanic almost
superciliously at his ease.

Inspect the shops?  Not at all.  They were out for a joy ride across
the continent and the fun there was in it.

"How long we got here?  Three hours?  Wow!" boomed a big fellow,
stretching his arms lazily as he gazed about him.

"Let's paint the town, boys," wheezed an asthmatic, bowlegged little
man of fifty, who sported an enormous gold watch chain.  "Come on and
look the natives over!"

Regan, who had been a little hazy on the etiquette of chewing in select
company, reached openly for his plug--and kind of squinted over it
non-committingly, as he bit in, at H. Herrington Campbell, who stood
beside him.  Carleton had sized the new general manager up pretty
well--cold as a snow man--and he looked it.  H. Herrington Campbell was
a spare-built man, with sharp, quick, black eyes, a face like a hawk,
and lips so thin you wouldn't know he had any if one corner of his
mouth hadn't been pried kind of open, so to speak, with the stub of a
cigar.

"Go ahead and amuse yourselves, boys."  H. Herrington Campbell talked
out of the corner of his mouth where the cigar was.  "We pull out at
twelve-thirty sharp."  Then to Regan, curtly: "We'll look the equipment
and shops over, Mr. Regan."

"Yes--sure," agreed Regan, without much enthusiasm, and led the way
across the tracks toward the roundhouse as a starting point for the
inspection tour.

The whole blamed thing was different from the way Regan had figured it
out in his mind beforehand; but Regan set out to make himself
agreeable--and H. Herrington Campbell listened.  H. Herrington Campbell
was the greatest listener Regan had ever met, and Regan froze--and then
Regan thawed out again, but not on account of H. Herrington Campbell.
Regan might have an unresponsive audience, but then Regan didn't
require an audience at all to warm him up when it came to his
roundhouse, and his big mountain racers, and the shops he lay awake at
night planning and thinking about.  Here and there, H. Herrington
Campbell shot out a question, crisp, incisive, unexpected, and lapsed
into silence again--that was all.

They inspected everything, everything there was to inspect; but when
they got through Regan had about as good an idea of what impression it
had made on H. Herrington Campbell as he had when he started out, which
is to say none at all.  The new general manager just listened.  Regan
had done all the talking.

Not that H. Herrington Campbell sized up as a misfit, not by any means,
far from it!  Regan didn't make that mistake for a minute.  He didn't
need to be told that the other knew railroading from the ground up, he
could feel it; but he didn't need to be told, either, that the other
was more a high-geared efficiency machine than he was a man, he could
feel that, too.

One word of praise Regan wanted, not for himself, but for the things he
loved and worked over and into which he put his soul.  And the one
word, where a thousand were due, Regan did not get.  The new general
manager had the emotional instincts of a wooden Indian.  Regan, toward
the end of the morning, got to talking a little less himself, that is,
aloud--inwardly he grew more eloquent than ever, cholerically so.

It was train time when they had finished, and the 1608, with old Dan
MacCaffery, half out of the cab window as usual, had just backed down
and coupled on the special, as Regan and the new general manager came
along the platform from the upper freight sheds.  And Regan, for all
his inward spleen, couldn't help it, as they reached the big, powerful
racer, spick and span from the guard-plates up.

"I dunno where you'll beat that, East or West," said Regan proudly,
with a wave of his hand at the 1608.  "Wish we had more of that type
out here--we could use 'em.  What do you think of her, Mr.
Campbell--h'm?"

H. Herrington Campbell didn't appear to take any notice of the
masterpiece of machine design to speak of.  His eyes travelled over the
engine, and fixed on Dan MacCaffery in the cab window.  Dan had an old,
but spotless, suit of overalls on, spotless because Mrs. MacCaffery,
who was even then modestly sharing her husband's honors from the back
of the crowd by the ticket-office window, had made them spotless with a
good many hours' work the day before, for grease sticks hard even in a
washtub; and on old Dan's wizened face was a genial smile that would
have got an instant response from anybody--except H. Herrington
Campbell.  H. Herrington Campbell didn't smile, neither did he answer
Regan's question.

"How old are you?" said he bluntly to Dan MacCaffery.

"Me?" said old Dan, taken aback for a moment.  Then he laughed: "Blest
if I know, sir, it's so long since I've kept track of birthdays.
Sixty-one, I guess--no, sixty-two."

H. Herrington Campbell didn't appear to hear the old engineer's answer,
any more than he had appeared to take any notice of the 1608.  He had
barely paused in his walk, and he was pulling out his watch now and
looking at it as he continued along the platform--only to glance up
again as Pete Chartrand, the senior conductor, gray-haired,
gray-bearded, but dapper as you please in his blue uniform and brass
buttons, hurried by toward the cab with the green tissue copy of the
engineer's orders in his hand.

Regan opened his mouth to say something--and, instead, snapped his jaws
shut like a steel trap.  The last little bit of enthusiasm had oozed
out of the usually good-natured little master mechanic.  Two days'
tinkering with the 1608, the division all keyed up to a smile,
everybody trying to do his best to please, a dozen little intimate
plans and arrangements talked over and worked out, were all now a
matter of earnest and savage regret to Regan.

"By Christmas," growled Regan to himself, as he elbowed his way through
the crowd on the platform--for the town, to the last squaw with a
papoose strapped on her back, had turned out to see the Directors'
Special off--"by Christmas, if 'twere not for Carleton's sake, I'd tell
him, the little tin god that he thinks he is, what _I_ think of him!
And mabbe," added Regan viciously, as he swung aboard the observation
car behind H. Herrington Campbell, "and mabbe I will yet!"

But Regan's cup, brimming as he held it to be, was not yet full.  It
was a pretty swell train, the Directors' Special, that the crowd sent
off with a burst of cheering that lasted until the markers were lost to
view around a butte; a pretty swell train, about the swellest that had
ever decorated the train sheet of the Hill Division--two sleepers, a
diner and observation, mostly mahogany, and the baggage car a good
enough imitation to fit into the color scheme without outraging even
the most esthetic taste, and the 1608 on the front end, gold-leafed,
and shining like a mirror from polished steel and brass.  As far as
looks went there wasn't a thing the matter with it, not a thing; it
would have pulled a grin of pride out of a Polack section hand--which
is pulling some.  And there wasn't anything the matter with the
send-off, either, that was propitious enough to satisfy anybody; but,
for all that, barring the first hour or so out of Big Cloud, trouble
and the Directors' Special that afternoon were as near akin as twin
brothers.  Nothing went right; everything went wrong--except the 1608,
that ran as smooth as a full-jewelled watch, when old Dan, for the
mix-up behind him, could run her at all.  The coupling on the diner
broke--that started it.  When they got that fixed, something else
happened; and then the forward truck of the baggage car developed a
virulent attack of hot box.

The special had the track swept for her clean to the Western foothills,
and rights through.  But she didn't need them.  Her progress was a
crawl.  The directors, in spite of their dollar-ante and the roof of
the observation car for the limit, began to lose interest in their game.

"What is this new toy we've bought?" inquired one of them plaintively.
"A funeral procession?"

Even H. Herrington Campbell began to show emotion--he shifted his cigar
stub at intervals from one corner of his mouth to the other.  Regan was
hot--both ways--inside and out; hotter a whole lot than the hot box he
took his coat off to, and helped old Pete Chartrand and the train crew
slosh buckets of water over every time the Directors' Special stopped,
which was frequently.

It wasn't old Pete's fault.  It wasn't anybody's fault.  It was just
blamed hard luck, and it lasted through the whole blamed afternoon.
And by the time they pulled into Elk River, where Regan had wired for
another car, and had transferred the baggage, the Directors' Special,
as far as temper went, was as touchy as a man with a bad case of gout.
As they coupled on the new car, Regan spoke to old Dan in the
cab--spoke from his heart.

"We're two hours late, Dan--h'm?  For the love of Mike, let her out and
do something.  That bunch back there's getting so damned polite to me
you'd think the words would melt in their mouths--what?"

Old Dan puckered his face into a reassuring smile under the peak of his
greasy cap.

"I guess we're all right now we've got rid of that car," he said.  "You
leave it to me.  You leave it to me, Regan."

Pete Chartrand, savage as though the whole matter were a personal and
direct affront, reached up with a new tissue to the cab window.

"Two hours and ten minutes late!" he snapped out.  "Nice, ain't it!
Directors' Special, all the swells, we're doing ourselves proud!  Oh,
hell!"

"Keep your shirt on, Pete," said Regan, somewhat inconsistently.
"Losing your hair over it won't do any good.  You're not to blame, are
you?  Well then, forget it!"

Two hours and ten minutes late!  Bad enough; but, in itself, nothing
disastrous.  It wasn't the first time in railroading that schedules had
gone aglimmering.  Only there was more to it than that.  There were not
a few other trains, fast freights, passengers, locals and work trains,
whose movements and the movements of the Directors' Special were
intimately connected one with the other.  Two hours and ten minutes was
sufficient, a whole lot more than sufficient, to play havoc with a
despatcher's carefully planned meeting points over a hundred miles of
right of way, and all afternoon Donkin had been chewing his lips over
his train sheet back in the despatcher's office at Big Cloud, until the
Directors' Special, officially Special 117, had become a nightmare to
him.  Orders, counter orders, cancellations, new orders had followed
each other all afternoon--and now a new batch went out, as the
rehabilitated Special went out of Elk River, and Bob Donkin, with a
sigh of relief at the prospect of clear sailing ahead, pushed the hair
out of his eyes and relaxed a little as he began to give back the
"completes."

It wasn't Donkin's fault; there was never so much as a hint that it
was.  The day man at Mitre Peak--forgot.  That's all--but it's a hard
word, the hardest there is in railroading.  There was a lot of traffic
moving that afternoon, and with sections, regulars, and extras all
trying to dodge Special 117, they were crowding each other pretty
hard--and the day man at Mitre Peak forgot.

It was edging dusk as old Pete Chartrand, from the Elk River platform,
lifted a finger to old Dan MacCaffery in the cab, and old Dan, with a
sort of grim smile at the knowledge that the honor of the Hill
Division, what there was left of it as far as Special 117 was
concerned, was up to him, opened out the 1608 to take the "rights"
they'd given him afresh for all there was in it.

From Elk River to Mitre Peak, where the right of way crosses the
Divide, it is a fairly stiff climb--from Mitre Peak to Eagle Pass, at
the cañon bed, it is an equally emphatic drop; and the track in its
gyrations around the base of the towering, jutting peaks, where it
clings as a fly clings to a wall, is an endless succession of short
tangents and shorter curves.  The Rockies, as has been said, had been
harnessed, but they had never been tamed--nor never will be.  Silent,
brooding always, there seems a sullen patience about them, as though
they were waiting warily--to strike.  There are stretches, many of
them, where no more than a hundred yards will blot utterly one train
from the sight of another; where the thundering reverberations of the
one, flung echoing back and forth from peak to peak, drown utterly the
sounds of the other.  And west of Mitre Peak it is like this--and the
operator at Mitre Peak forgot the holding order for Extra Freight No.
69.

It came quick, quick as the winking of an eye, sudden as the crack of
doom.  Extra Freight No. 69 was running west, too, in the same
direction as the Directors' Special; only Extra No. 69 was a heavy
train and she was feeling her way down the grade like a snail, while
the Directors' Special, with the spur and prod of her own delinquency
and misbehavior, was hitting up the fastest clip that old Dan, who knew
every inch of the road with his eyes shut, dared to give within the
limits of safety on that particular piece of track.

It came quick.  Ten yards clear on the right of way, then a gray wall
of rock, a short, right-angled dive of the track around it--and, as the
pilot of the 1608 swung the curve, old Dan's heart for an instant
stopped its beat--three red lights focussed themselves before his eyes,
the tail lights on the caboose of Extra No. 69.  There was a yell from
little Billy Dawes, his fireman.

"My God, Dan, we're into her!" Dawes yelled.  "We're into her!"

Cool old veteran, one of the best that ever pulled a throttle in any
cab, there was a queer smile on old Dan MacCaffery's lips.  He needed
no telling that disaster he could not avert, could only in a measure
mitigate, perhaps, was upon them; but even as he checked, checked hard,
and checked again, the thought of others was uppermost in his mind--the
train crew of the freight, some of them, anyway, in the caboose.  Dawes
was beside him now, almost at his elbow, as nervy and as full of grit
as the engineer he'd shovelled for for five years and thought more of
than he did of any other man on earth--and for the fraction of a second
old Dan MacCaffery looked into the other's eyes.

"Give the boys in the caboose a chance for their lives, Billy, in case
they ain't seen or heard us," he shouted in his fireman's ear.  "Hold
that whistle lever down."

Twenty yards, fifteen between them--the 1608 in the reverse bucking
like a maddened bronco, old Dan working with all the craft he knew at
his levers--ten yards--and two men, scurrying like rats from a sinking
ship, leaped from the tail of the caboose to the right of way.

"Jump!"  The word came like a half sob from old Dan.  There was nothing
more that any man could do.  And he followed his fireman through the
gangway.

It made a mess--a nasty mess.  From the standpoint of traffic, as nasty
a mess as the Hill Division had ever faced.  The rear of the freight
went to matchwood, the 1608, the baggage and two Pullmans turned
turtle, derailing the remaining cars behind; but, by a miracle, it
seemed, there wasn't any one seriously hurt.

Scared?  Yes--pretty badly.  The directors, a shaken, white-lipped
crowd, poured out of the observation car to the track side.  There was
no cigar in H. Herrington Campbell's mouth.

It was dark by then, but the wreckage caught fire and flung a yellow
glow far across the cañon, and in a shadowy way lighted up the
immediate surroundings.  Train crews and engine crews of both trains
hurried here and there, torches and lanterns began to splutter and
wink, hoarse shouts began to echo back and forth, adding their quota to
a weird medley of escaping steam and crackling flame.

Regan, from a hasty consultation with old Dan MacCaffery and old Pete
Chartrand, that sent the two men on the jump to carry out his orders,
turned--to face H. Herrington Campbell.

"Nobody hurt, sir--thank God!" puffed the fat little master mechanic,
in honest relief.

H. Herrington Campbell's eyes were on the retreating forms of the
engineer and conductor.

"Oh, indeed!" he said coldly.  "And the whole affair is hardly worth
mentioning, I take it--quite a common occurrence.  You've got some
pretty old men handling your trains out here, haven't you?"

Regan's face went hard.

"They're pretty good men," he said shortly.  "And there's no blame
coming to them for this, Mr. Campbell, if that's what you mean."

H. Herrington Campbell's fingers went tentatively to his vest pocket
for a cigar, extracted the broken remains of one--the relic of his own
collision with the back of a car seat where the smash had hurled
him--and threw it away with an icy smile.

"Blame?" expostulated H. Herrington Campbell ironically.  "I don't want
to blame any one; I'm looking for some one to congratulate--on the
worst run division and the most pitiful exemplification of
near-railroading I've had any experience with in twenty years--Mr.
Regan."

For a full minute Regan did not speak.  He couldn't.  And then the
words came away with a roar from the bluff little master mechanic.

"By glory!" he exploded.  "We don't take that kind of talk out here
even from general managers--we don't have to!  That's straight enough,
ain't it?  Well, I'll give you some more of it, now I've started.  I
don't like you.  I don't like that pained look on your face.  I've been
filling up on you all morning, and you don't digest well.  We don't
stand for anything as raw as that from any man on earth.  And you
needn't hunt around for any greased words, as far as I'm concerned, to
do your firing with--you can have my resignation as master mechanic of
the worst run division you've seen in twenty years right now, if you
want it--h'm?"

H. Herrington Campbell was gallingly preoccupied.

"How long are we stalled here for--the rest of the night?" he inquired
irrelevantly.

Regan stared at him a moment--still apoplectic.

"I've ordered them to run the forward end of the freight to Eagle Pass,
and take you down," he said, choking a little.  "There's a couple of
flats left whole that you can pile yourselves and your baggage on, and
down there they'll make up a new train for you."

"Oh, very good," said H. Herrington Campbell curtly.

And ten minutes later, the Directors' Special, metamorphosed into a
string of box cars with two flats trailing on the rear, on which the
newly elected board of the Transcontinental sat, some on their baggage,
and some with their legs hanging over the sides, pulled away from the
wreck and headed down the grade for Eagle Pass.  Funny, the transition
from the luxurious leather upholstery of the observation to an angry,
chattering mob of magnates, clinging to each others' necks as they
jounced on the flooring of an old flat?  Well perhaps--it depends on
how you look at it.  Regan looked at it--and Regan grinned for the pure
savagery that was in him.

"But I guess," said Regan to himself, as he watched them go, "I guess
mabbe I'll be looking for that job on the Penn after all--h'm?"

Everybody talked about the Directors' Special run--naturally.  And,
naturally, everybody wondered what was going to come from it.  It was
an open secret that Regan had handed one to the general manager without
any candy coating on the pill, and the Hill Division sort of looked to
see the master mechanic's head fall and Regan go.  But Regan did not
go; and, for that matter, nothing else happened--for a while.

Carleton came back and got the rights of it from Regan--and said
nothing to Regan about his reply to H. Herrington Campbell's letter, in
which he had stated that if they were looking for a new master mechanic
there would be a division superintendency vacant at the same time.  The
day man at Mitre Peak quit railroading--without waiting for an
investigation.  Old Dan MacCaffery and Billy Dawes went back to their
regular run with the 304.  And the division generally settled down
again to its daily routine--and from the perspective of distance, if
the truth be told, got to grinning reminiscently at the run the Big
Bugs had had for their money.

Only the grin came too soon.

A week or so passed, pay day came and went--and the day after that a
general order from the East hit the Hill Division like a landslide.

Carleton slit the innocent-looking official manila open with his paper
knife, chucked the envelope in the wastebasket, read the communication,
read it again with gathering brows--and sent for Regan.  He handed the
form to the master mechanic without a word, as the latter entered the
office.

Regan read it--read it again, as his chief had--and two hectic spots
grew bright on his cheeks.  It was brief, curt, cold--for the good of
the service, safety, and operating efficiency, it stated.  In a word,
on and after the first of the month the services of employees over the
age of sixty years would no longer be required.  Those were early days
in railroading; not a word about pensions, not a word about half-pay;
just sixty years and--out!

The paper crackled in Regan's clenched fists; Carleton was beating a
tattoo on his teeth with the mouthpiece of his pipe--there wasn't
another sound in the office for a moment.  Then Regan spoke--and his
voice broke a little.

"It's a damned shame!" he said, through his teeth.  "It's that skunk
Campbell."

"How many men does it affect?" asked Carleton, looking through the
window.

"I don't know," said the little master mechanic bitterly; "but I know
one that it'll hit harder than all the rest put together--and that's
old Dan MacCaffery."

There was hurt in the super's gray eyes, as he looked at the
big-hearted little master mechanic's working face.

"I was thinking of old Dan myself," he said, in his low, quiet way.

"He hasn't a cent!" stormed Regan.  "Not a cent--not a thing on earth
to fall back on.  Think of it!  Him and that little old missus of his,
God bless her sweet old face, that have been scrimping all these years
to pay back what that blasted kid robbed out of the bank.  It ain't
right, Carleton--it ain't right--it's hell, that's what it is!  Sixty
years!  There ain't a better man ever pulled a latch in a cab, there
ain't a better one pulling one anywhere to-day than old Dan MacCaffery.
And--and I kind of feel as though I were to blame for this, in a way."

"To blame?" repeated Carleton.

"I put him on that run, and Riley put old Pete Chartrand on.  It kind
of stuck them under Campbell's nose.  The two of them together, the two
oldest men--and the blamedest luck that ever happened on a run!  H'm?"

Carleton shook his head.

"I don't think it would have made any difference in the long run,
Tommy.  I told you there'd be changes as soon as the new board got
settled in the saddle."

Regan tugged viciously at his scraggly brown mustache.

"Mabbe," he growled fiercely; "but Campbell's seen old Dan now, or I'd
put one over on the pup--I would that!  There ain't any birth register
that I ever heard of out here in the mountains, and if Dan said he was
fifty I'd take his word for it."

"Dan wouldn't say that," said Carleton quietly, "not even to hold his
job."

"No, of course he wouldn't!" spluttered the fat little master mechanic,
belligerently inconsistent.  "Who said he would?  And, anyway, it
wouldn't do any good.  Campbell asked him his age, and Dan told him.
And--and--oh, what's the use!  I know it, I know I'm only talking,
Carleton."

Neither of them said anything for a minute; then Regan, pacing up and
down the room, spoke again:

"It's a clean sweep, eh?  Train crews, engine crews, everything--there
ain't any other job for him.  Over sixty is out everywhere.  A white
man--one of the whitest"--Regan sort of said it to himself--"old Dan
MacCaffery.  Who's to tell him?"

Carleton drew a match, with a long crackling noise, under the arm of
his chair.

"Me?" said Regan, and his voice broke again.  He stopped before the
desk, and, leaning, over, stretched out his arm impulsively across it.
"I'd rather have that arm cut off than tell him, Carleton," he said
huskily.  "I don't know what he'll say, I don't know what he'll do, but
I know it will break his heart, and break Mrs. MacCaffery's
heart--Carleton."  He took another turn the length of the room and back
again.  "But I guess it had better be me," said the little master
mechanic, more to himself than to Carleton.  "I guess it had--I'd hate
to think of his getting it so's it would hurt any more than it had to,
h'm?"

And so Tommy Regan told old Dan MacCaffery--that afternoon--the day
after pay day.

Regan didn't mean to exactly, not then--he was kind of putting it off,
as it were--until next day--and fretting himself sick over it.  But
that afternoon old Dan, on his way down to the roundhouse--Dan took out
the regular passenger local that left Big Cloud at 6.55 every evening,
and to spend an hour ahead of running time with the 304 was as much a
habit with Dan as breathing was--hunted Regan up in the latter's office
just before the six o'clock whistle blew.  For an instant Regan thought
the engineer had somehow or other already heard the news, but a glance
at Dan's face dispelled that idea as quickly as it had come.  Dan was
always smiling, but there was a smile on the wizened, puckered, honest
old face now that seemed to bubble out all over it.

"Regan," said old Dan, bursting with happy excitement, "I just had to
drop in and tell you on the way over to the roundhouse, and the missus,
she says, 'You tell Mr. Regan, Dan; he'll be rightdown glad.'"

Regan got up out of his chair.  There seemed a sense of disaster coming
somehow that set him to breathing heavily.

"Sure, Dan--sure," he said weakly.  "What is it?"

"Well," said Dan, "you know that--that trouble the boy got into
back--back----'

"Yes, I know," said Regan hastily.

"Well," said Dan, "it's taken a long time, a good many years, but
yesterday, you know, was pay day; and to-day, Regan, we, the missus and
me, Regan, sent the last of that money East, interest and all, the last
cent of it, cleaned it all up.  Say, Regan, I feel like I was walking
on air, and you'd ought to have seen the missus sitting up there in the
cottage and smiling through the tears.  'Oh, Dan!' she says, and then
she gets up and puts her two hands on my shoulders, and I felt blamed
near like crying myself.  'We can start in now, Dan, to save up for old
age,' she says, smiling.  Say, Regan, ain't it--ain't it fine?  We're
going to start in now and save up for old age."

Regan didn't say a word.  It came with a rush, choking him up in his
throat, and something misty in front of his eyes so he couldn't
see--and he turned his back, searching for his hat on the peg behind
his desk.  He jammed his hat on his head, and jerked it low down over
his forehead.

"Ain't you--glad?" said old Dan, a sort of puzzled hurt in his eyes.

"I'll walk over a bit of the way to the roundhouse with you, Dan," said
Regan gruffly.  "Come on."

They stepped out of the shops, and across a spur--old Dan, still
puzzled, striding along beside the master mechanic.

"What's the matter, Regan?" he asked reproachfully.  "I thought you'd
be----"

And then Regan stopped--and his hand fell in a tight grip on the
other's shoulder.

"I got to tell you, Dan," he blurted out.  "But I don't need to tell
you what I think of it.  It's a damned shame!  The new crowd that's
running this road don't want anybody helping 'em to do it after the
first of the month that's over sixty years of age.  You're--you're out."

Old Dan didn't seem to get it for a minute; then a whiteness kind of
crept around his lips, and his eyes, from Regan, seemed to circuit in a
queer, wistful way about the yards, and fix finally on the roundhouse
in front of him; and then he lifted his peaked cap, in the way he had
of doing, and scratched near his ear where the hair was.  He hit Regan
pretty hard with what he said.

"Regan," he said, "there's two weeks yet to the end of the month.
Don't tell her, Regan, and don't you let the boys tell her--there's two
weeks she don't need to worry.  I'd kind of like to have her have them
two weeks."

Regan nodded--there weren't any words that would come, and he couldn't
have spoken them if there had.

"Yes," said old Dan, sort of whispering to himself, "I'd kind of like
to have her have them two weeks."

Regan cleared his throat, pulled at his mustache, swore under his
breath, and cleared his throat again.

"What'll you do, Dan--afterwards?"

Old Dan straightened up, looked at Regan--and smiled.

"I dunno," he said, shaking his head and smiling.  "I dunno; but it'll
be all right.  We'll get along somehow."  His eyes shifted to the
roundhouse again.  "I guess I'd better be getting over to the 304," he
said--and turned abruptly away.

Regan watched him go, watched the overalled figure with a slight
shoulder stoop cross the turntable, watched until the other disappeared
inside the roundhouse doors; and then he turned and walked slowly
across the tracks and uptown toward his boarding house.  "Don't tell
her"--the words kept reiterating themselves insistently--"don't let the
boys tell her."

"I guess they won't," said Regan, muttering fiercely to himself.  "I
guess they won't."

Nor did they.  The division and Big Cloud kept the secret for those two
weeks--and they kept it for long after that.  The little old lady in
the lace cap never knew--they ranked her high, those pioneering women
kind of hers in that little mountain town, those rough-and-ready
toilers who had been her husband's mates--she never knew.

But everybody else knew, and they watched old Dan as the days went by,
watched him somehow with a tight feeling in their throats, and kept
aloof a little--because they didn't know what to say--kept aloof a
little awkwardly, as it were.  Not that there seemed much of any
difference in the old engineer; it was more a something that they
sensed.  Old Dan came down to the roundhouse in the late afternoon an
hour before train time, just as he always did, puttered and oiled
around and coddled the 304 for an hour, just as he always did, just as
though he was always going to do it, took his train out, came back on
the early morning run, backed the 304 into the roundhouse, and trudged
up Main Street to where it began to straggle into the buttes, to where
his cottage and the little old lady were--just as he always did.  And
the little old lady, with the debt paid, went about the town for those
two weeks happier-looking, younger-looking than Big Cloud had ever seen
her before.  That was all.

But Regan, worrying, pulling at his mustache, put it up to little Billy
Dawes, old Dan's fireman, one day in the roundhouse near the end of the
two weeks.

"How's Dan take it in the cab, Billy?" he asked.

The little fireman rolled the hunk of greasy waste in his hands, and
swabbed at his fingers with it for a moment before he answered; then he
sent a stream of blackstrap juice viciously into the pit, and with a
savage jerk hurled the hunk of waste after it.

"By God!" he said fiercely.

Regan blinked--and waited.

"Just the same as ever he was," said Billy Dawes huskily, after a
silence.  "Just the same--when he thinks you're not looking.  I've seen
him sometimes when he didn't know I was looking."

Regan said: "H'm!"--kind of coughed it out, reached for his plug, as
was usual with him in times of stress, bit into it deeply, sputtered
something hurriedly about new piston rings for the left-hand head, and,
muttering to himself, left the roundhouse.

And that night old Dan MacCaffery took out the 304 and the local
passenger for the run west and the run back east--just as he always
did.  And the next night, and for two nights after that he did the same.

Came then the night of the 31st.

It was the fall of the year and the dusk fell early; and by a little
after six, with the oil lamps lighted, that at best only filtered
spasmodic yellow streaks of gloom about the roundhouse, the engines
back on the pits were beginning to loom up through the murk in big,
grotesque, shadowy shapes, as Regan, crossing the turntable, paused for
a moment hesitantly.  Why he was there, he didn't know.  He hadn't
meant to be there.  He was just a little early for his nightly game of
pedro with Carleton over in the super's office--it wasn't much more
than half past six--so he had had some time to put in--that must be
about the size of it.  He hadn't meant to come.  There wasn't any use
in it, none at all, nothing he could do; better, in fact, if he stayed
away--only he had left the boarding house early--and he was down there
now, standing on the turntable--and it was old Dan's last run.

"I guess," mumbled Regan, "I'll go back over to the station.  Carleton
'll be along in a few minutes.  I guess I will, h'm?"--only Regan
didn't.  He started on again slowly over the turntable, and entered the
roundhouse.

There wasn't anybody in sight around the pit on which the 304 stood,
nobody puttering over the links and motion-gear, poking here and there
solicitously with a long-spouted oil can, as he had half, more than
half, expected to find old Dan doing; but he heard some one moving
about in the cab, and caught the flare of a torch.  Regan walked down
the length of the engine, and peered into the cab.  It was Billy Dawes.

"Where's Dan, Billy?  Ain't he about?" inquired Regan.

The fireman came out into the gangway.

"Yes," he answered; "he's down there back of the tender by the fitters'
benches.  He's looking for some washers he said he wanted for a loose
stud nut.  I'll get him for you."

"No; never mind," said Regan.  "I'll find him."

It was pretty dark at the rear of the roundhouse in the narrow space
between the engine tenders on the various pits and the row of
workbenches that flanked the wall, and for a moment, as Regan reached
the end of the 304's tender, he could not see any one--and then he
stopped short, as he made out old Dan's form down on the floor by the
end bench as though he were groping for something underneath it.

For a minute, two perhaps, Regan stood there motionless, watching old
Dan MacCaffery.  Then he drew back, tiptoed softly away, went out
through the engine doors, and, as he crossed the tracks to the station
platform, brushed his hand hurriedly across his eyes.

Regan didn't play much of a game of pedro that night--his heart wasn't
in it.  Carleton had barely dealt the first hand when Regan heard the
304 backing down and coupling on the local, and he got up from his
chair and walked to the window, and stood there watching until the
local pulled out.

Carleton didn't say anything--just dealt the cards over again, and
began once more as Regan resumed his seat.

An hour passed.  Regan, fidgety and nervous, played in a desultory
fashion; Carleton, disturbed, patiently correcting the master
mechanic's mistakes.  The game was a farce.

"What's the matter, Tommy?" asked Carleton gravely, as Regan made a
misdeal twice in succession.

"Nothing," said Regan shortly.  "Go on, play; it's your bid."

Carleton shook his head.

"You're taking it too much to heart, Tommy," he said.  "It won't do you
any good--either of you--you or Dan.  He'll pull out of it somehow.
You'll see."

There was a queer look on Regan's face as he stared for an instant at
Carleton across the table, and he opened his lips as though to say
something--and closed them again in a hard line instead.

Carleton bid.

"It's yours," said Regan.

Carleton led--and then Regan, with a sweep of his hand, shot his cards
into the center of the table.

"It's no good," he said gruffly, getting up.  "I can't play the blamed
game to-night, I----"  He stopped suddenly and turned his head, as a
chair scraped sharply in the despatchers' room next door.

A step sounded in the hall, the super's door was flung open, and Spence
put in his head.

One glance at the despatcher, and Carleton was on his feet.

"What's the matter, Spence?" he asked, quick and hard.

Regan hadn't moved--but Regan spoke now, answering the question that
was addressed to the despatcher, and answering it in a strangely
assertive, absolute, irrefutable way.

"The local," he said.  "Number Forty-seven.  Dan MacCaffery's dead."

Both men stared at him in amazement--and Spence, sort of unconsciously,
nodded his head.

"Yes," said Spence, still staring at Regan.  "There was some sort of
engine trouble just west of Big Eddy in the Beaver Cañon.  I haven't
got the rights of it yet, only that somehow MacCaffery got his engine
stopped just in time to keep the train from going over the bridge
embankment--and went out doing it.  There's no one else hurt.  Dawes,
the fireman, and Conductor Neale walked back to Big Eddy.  I've got
them on the wire now.  Come into the other room."

Regan stepped to the door mechanically, and, with Carleton behind him,
followed Spence into the despatchers' room.  There, Carleton,
tight-lipped, leaned against the table; Regan, his face like stone,
took his place at Spence's elbow, as the despatcher dropped into his
chair.

There wasn't a sound in the room for a moment save the clicking of the
sender in a quick tattoo under Spence's fingers.  Then Spence picked up
a pencil and began scribbling the message on a pad, as the sounder
spoke--Billy Dawes was dictating his story to the Big Eddy operator.

"It was just west of Big Eddy, just before you get to the curve at the
approach to the Beaver Bridge," came Dawes' story, "and we were hitting
up a fast clip, but no more than usual, when we got a jolt in the cab
that spilled me into the coal and knocked Dan off his seat.  It all
came so quick there wasn't time to think, but I knew we'd shed a driver
on Dan's side, and the rod was cutting the side of the cab like a knife
through cheese.  I heard Dan shout something about the train going over
the embankment and into the river if we ever hit the Beaver curve, and
then he jumped for the throttle and the air.  There wasn't a chance in
a million for him, but it was the only chance for every last one of the
rest of us.  He made it somehow, I don't know how; it's all a blur to
me.  He checked her, and then the rod caught him, and----"  The sounder
broke, almost with a human sob in it, it seemed, and then went on
again: "We stopped just as the 304 turned turtle.  None of the coaches
left the rails.  That's all."

Regan spoke through dry lips.

"Ask him what Dan was like in the cab to-night," he said hoarsely.

Spence looked up and around at the master mechanic, as though he had
not heard aright.

"Ask him what I say," repeated Regan shortly.  "What was Dan like in
the cab to-night?"

Spence bent over his key again.  There was a pause before the answer
came.

"He says he hadn't seen Dan so cheerful for months," said Spence
presently.

Regan nodded, kind of curiously, kind of as though it were the answer
he expected--and then he nodded at Carleton, and the two went back to
the super's room.

Regan closed the door behind him.

Carleton dropped into his chair, his gray eyes hard and full of pain.

"I don't understand, Tommy," he said heavily.  "It's almost as though
you knew it was going to happen."

Regan came across the floor and stood in front of the desk.

"I did," he said in a low way.  "I think I was almost certain of it."

Carleton pulled himself forward with a jerk in his chair.

"Do you know what you are saying, Tommy?" he asked sharply.

"I'll tell you," Regan said, in the same low way.  "I went over to the
roundhouse to-night before Dan took the 304 out.  I didn't see Dan
anywhere about, and I asked Dawes where he was.  Dawes said he had gone
back to the fitters' benches to look for some washers.  I walked on
past the tender and I found him there down on the floor on his knees by
one of the benches--but he wasn't looking for any washers.  He was
praying."

With a sharp exclamation, Carleton pushed back his chair, and,
standing, leaned over the desk toward Regan.

Regan swallowed a lump in his throat--and shook his head.

"He didn't see me," he said brokenly, "he didn't know I was there.  He
was praying aloud.  I heard what he said.  It's been ringing in my head
all night, word for word, while I was trying to play with those"--he
jerked his hand toward the scattered cards on the desk between them.
"I can hear him saying it now.  It's the queerest prayer I ever heard;
and I guess he prayed the way he lived--as though he was kind of
intimate with God."

"Yes?" prompted Carleton softly, as Regan paused.

Regan turned his head away as his eyes filled suddenly--and his voice
was choked.

"What he said was this, just as though he was talking to you or me:
'You know how it is, God.  I wouldn't take that way myself unless You
fixed it up for me, because it wouldn't be right unless You did it.
But I hope, God, You'll think that's the best way out of it.  You see,
there ain't nothing left as it is, but if we fixed it that way there'd
be the fraternal insurance to take care of the missus, and she wouldn't
never know.  And then, You see, God, I guess my work is all done,
and--and I'd kind of like to quit while I was still on the pay
roll--I'd kind of like to finish that way, and to-night's the last
chance.  You understand, God, don't You?'"

Regan's lips were quivering as he stopped.

There was silence for a moment, then Carleton looked up from the
blotter on his desk.

"Tommy," he said in his big, quiet way, as his hand touched Regan's
sleeve, "tell me why you didn't stop him, then, from going out
to-night?"

Regan didn't answer at once.  He went over to the window and stared out
at the twinkling switch lights in the yards below--he was still staring
out of the window as he spoke.

"He didn't put it up to me," said Regan.  "He put it up to God."

VII

"THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS"

Maguire was a little, washed-out, kind of toil-bent hostler in the
roundhouse--and he married old.  How old?  Nobody knew--not even old
Bill himself--fifty something.  Mrs. Maguire presented him with a son
in due course, and the son's name was Patrick Burke Maguire--but the
Hill Division, being both terse and graphic by nature and education,
called him "Noodles."

Noodles wasn't even a pretty baby.  Tommy Regan, who was roped in to
line up at the baptismal font and act as godfather because old Bill was
a boiler-washer in the roundhouse, which was reason enough for the
big-hearted master mechanic, said that Noodles was the ugliest and most
forbidding looking specimen of progeny he had ever seen outside a
zoological garden.  Of course, be it understood, Regan wasn't a family
man, and god-fathering wasn't a job in Regan's line, so when he got
outside the church and the perspiration had stopped trickling nervously
down the small of his back and he'd got a piece of blackstrap clamped
firmly home between his teeth, he told old Bill, by way of a grim sort
of revenge for the unhappy position his good nature had led him into,
that the offspring was the dead spit of its father--and he
congratulated Noodles.

The irony, of course, was lost.  The boiler-washer walked on air for a
week.  He told the roundhouse what Regan had said--and the roundhouse
laughed.  Bill thought the roundhouse thought he was lying, but that
didn't dampen his spirits any.  It wasn't everybody could get the
master mechanic of the division to stand up with _their_ kids!
Everybody was happy--except Noodles.  Noodles, just about then,
developed colic.

Noodles got over the colic, got over the measles, the mumps, the
whooping cough, and the scarlet fever--that may not have been the order
of their coming or their going, but he got over them all.  And when he
was twelve he got over the smallpox; but he never got over his
ugliness--the smallpox kind of put a stop-order on any lurking tendency
there might have been in that direction.  Also, when he was twelve, he
got over all the schooling the boiler-washer's limited means would
span, which wasn't a university course; and he started in railroading
as a call boy.

There was nothing organically bad about Noodles, except his
exterior--which wasn't his fault.  One can't be blamed for hair of a
motley red, ubiquitous freckles wherever the smallpox had left room for
them, no particular colored eyes, a little round knob of uptilted nose,
and a mouth that made even the calloused Dutchy at the lunch counter
feel a little mean inwardly when he compared it with the mathematically
cut slab of contract pie, eight slabs to the pie plate, and so much so
that he went to the extent of--no, he never gave Noodles an extra
piece--but he went to the extent of surreptitiously pocketing Noodles'
nickel as though he were obtaining money under false pretenses--which
was a good deal for Dutchy to do--and just shows.

There was nothing _organically_ bad about Noodles--not a thing.
Noodles' troubles, and they came thick and fast with the inauguration
of his railroad career, lay in quite another direction--his
irrepressible tendency to practical jokes, coupled with a lack of the
sense of the general fitness of things, consequences and results, and
an absence of even a bowing acquaintance with responsibility that was
appalling.

The first night Noodles went on duty as call boy, armed with a nickel
thriller--that being only half the price of a regular dime novel--and
visions of the presidency of the road being offered him before he was
much older, Spence was sitting in on the early night trick.  There was
a lot of stuff moving through the mountains that night, and the train
sheet was heavy.  And even Spence, counted one of the best despatchers
that ever held down a key on the Hill Division, was hard put to it,
both to keep his crowding sections from treading on each other's heels,
and to jockey the east and westbounds past each other without letting
their pilots get tangled up head-on.  It was no night or no place for
foolishness--a despatcher's office never is, for that matter.

Noodles curled himself up in a chair behind the despatcher--and started
in on the thriller.  His first call was for the crews of No. 72, the
local freight east, at 8.35, and there was nothing to do until then
unless Spence should happen to want him for something.  The thriller
was quite up to the mark, even "thriller" than usual, but Noodles left
the hero at the end of the first chapter securely bound to the
mill-wheel with the villain rushing to open the gate in the dam--and
his eyes strayed around the room.

It wasn't altogether the novelty of his surroundings--no phase of
railroading was altogether a novelty to any Big Cloud youngster--there
was just a sort of newness in his own position that interfered with any
protracted or serious effort along literary lines.  From a circuit of
the room, his eyes went to the fly-specked, green-shaded lamp on the
despatcher's table, then from the lamp to the despatcher's back--and
fixed on the despatcher's back.

His eyes held there quite a long time--then his fingers went stealthily
to the lapel of his coat.  Spence had a habit when hurried or anxious
of half rising from his chair, as though to give emphasis to his orders
every time he touched the key.  Spence was both hurried and anxious
that night and the key was busy.  In the somewhat dim light, Spence, to
Noodles' fancy, assumed the aspect of an animated jumping jack.

Deftly, through long experience, Noodles coiled his pin with a wicked
upshoot to the center of attack, cautiously lowered his own chair,
which had been tilted back against the wall, to the more stable
position of four legs on the floor, leaned forward, and laid the pin at
a strategic point on the seat of Spence's chair.  Two minutes later,
kicked bodily down the stairs, Noodles was surveying the Big Cloud
yards by moonlight from the perspective of the station platform.

Noodles' career as a call boy had been brief--and it was ended.  Old
Bill, the boiler-washer, came to the rescue.  He explained to Regan who
the godfather of the boy was and what bearing that had on the case, and
how he'd larruped the boy for what he'd done, and how the boy hadn't
meant anything by it--and could the boy have another chance?

Regan said, "Yes," and said it shortly, more because he was busy at the
time and wanted to get rid of Old Bill than from any predisposition
toward Noodles.  Noodles wasn't predisposing any way you looked at him,
and Regan had a good look at his godson now for about the first time
since he'd sponsored him, and he didn't like Noodles'
looks--particularly.  But Regan, not taking too serious a view of the
matter, said yes, and put Noodles at work over in the roundhouse under
the eye of his father.

Here, for a month, in one way or another, Noodles succeeded in making
things lively, and himself cordially disliked by about everybody in the
shops, the roundhouse, and the Big Cloud yards generally.  And there
was a hint or two thrown out, that reached Regan's ears, that old Bill
had known what he was doing when he got one of the "big fellows" as
godfather for as ugly a blasted little nuisance as the Hill Division
had known for many a long day.  Regan got to scowling every time he saw
Noodles' unhandsome countenance, and he took pains on more than one
occasion to give a bit of blunt advice to both Noodles and Noodles'
father--which the former received somewhat ungraciously, and the latter
with trepidation.

And then one night as it grew dark, just before six o'clock, while Bill
and the turner and the wipers were washing up and trying to put in the
time before the whistle blew, Noodles dropped into the turntable pit
and wedged the turntable bearings with iron wedgings.  Half an hour
later, when the night crew came to swing it for the 1016, blowing hard
from a full head of steam and ready to go out and couple on to No. 1
for the westbound run, they couldn't move it.  It took them a few
minutes before they could find out what the matter was, and another few
to undo the matter when they did find out--and No. 1 went out five
minutes late.

Nobody asked who did it--it wasn't necessary.  They just said
"Noodles," and waited to see what Noodles' godfather would do about it.

They did not have long to wait.  The Limited five minutes late out of
division and the delay up to the motive-power department, which was
Regan's department, would have been enough to bring the offender,
whoever he might be, on the carpet with scant ceremony even if it had
been an _accident_.  Regan was boiling mad.

Noodles didn't show up the next day.  Deep in Noodles' consciousness
was a feeling that his nickel thriller and a certain spot he knew up
behind the butte, where many a pleasant afternoon had been passed when
he should have been at school, was more conducive to peace and
quietness than the center of railroad activities--also Noodles ached
bodily from his father's attentions.

Old Bill, too, kept conveniently out of sight down in a pit somewhere
every time the master mechanic showed his nose inside the roundhouse
during the morning--but by afternoon, counting the edge of Regan's
wrath to have worn smooth, he followed Regan out over the turntable
after one of the master mechanic's visits.

"Regan," he blurted out anxiously, "about the bhoy, now."

"Well?" snapped Regan, whirling about.

The monosyllable was cold enough in its uncompromise to stagger the
little hostler, and drive all thoughts of the carefully rehearsed
oration he had prepared from his head.  He scratched aimlessly at the
half circle of gray billy-goat beard under his chin, and blinked
helplessly at the master mechanic.  Noodles lacked much, and in Noodles
was much to be desired perhaps--but Noodles, for all that, had his
place in the Irish heart that beat under the greasy jumper.

"He's the only wan we've got, Regan," stammered the harassed roundhouse
man appealingly.

"It's a wonder, then, you've not holes in the knees of your overalls
giving thanks for it," declared Regan grimly.  "That's enough,
Bill--and we've had enough of Noodles.  Keep him away from here."

"Ah, sure now, Regan," begged the little hostler piteously, "yez don't
mean ut.  The bhoy's all right, Regan--'tis but spirit he has.  Regan,
listen here now, I've larruped him good for fwhat he's done--an' 'twas
no more than a joke."

"A joke!" Regan choked; then brusquely: "That'll do, Bill.  I've said
my last word, and I'm busy this afternoon.  Noodles is out--for keeps."

"Ah, Regan, listen here"--Noodles' father caught the master mechanic's
arm, as the latter turned away.  "Regan, sure, ut's the bhoy's
godfather yez are."

The fat little master mechanic's face went suddenly red--this was the
last straw--_Noodles' godfather_!  Regan had been catching more
whispers than he had liked lately anent godfathers and godfathering.
His eyes puckered up and he wheeled on the boiler-washer--but the hot
words on the tip of his tongue died unborn.  There was something in the
dejected droop of the other's figure, something in the blue eyes
growing watery with age that made him change his mind--old Bill wasn't
a young man.  As far back as the big-hearted, good-natured master
mechanic could remember, he remembered old Bill--in the roundhouse.
Always the same job, day after day, year after year--boiler-washing,
tinkering around at odd jobs--not much good at anything else--church
every Sunday in shiny black coat, and peaked-faced Mrs. Maguire in the
same threadbare, shiny black dress--not that Regan ever went to church,
but he used to see them going there--church every Sunday, Maguire was
long on church, and week days just boiler-washing and tinkering around
at odd jobs--a dollar-sixty a day.  Regan's pucker subsided, and he
reached out his hand to the boiler-washer's shoulder--and he grinned to
kind of take the sting out of his words.

"Well, Bill," he said, "as far as that goes, I renounce the honor."

"Raynownce ut!"  The boiler-washer's eyes opened wide, and his face was
strained as though he had not heard aright.  "Raynownce ut!  Ut's an
Irish Protystant yez are, Regan, the same as me an' the missus, an' did
yez not say the words in the church!"

"I did," admitted Regan; "though I've forgotten what they were.  It was
well enough, no doubt, for a kid in swaddling clothes--but it's some
time since then."  Then, with finality: "Go back to your work, Bill--I
can't talk to you any more this afternoon."

"Raynownce ut!"  The words reached Regan as he turned away and started
across the tracks toward the platform, and in their tones was something
akin to stunned awe that caused him to chuckle.  "Raynownce ut!--an'
yez said the words forninst the priest!"

Regan's chuckle, however, was not of long duration, either literally or
metaphorically.  During the rest of the afternoon the boiler-washer's
words got to swinging through Regan's brain until they became an
obsession, and somewhere down inside of him began to grow an
uncomfortable foreboding that there might be something more to the
godfathering business than he had imagined.  He tackled Carleton about
it before the whistle blew.

"Carleton," said he, walking into the super's office, and picking up a
ruler from the other's desk, "don't laugh, or I'll jam this ruler down
your throat.  If you can answer a straight question, answer
it--otherwise, let it go.  What's a godfather, anyhow?"

Carleton grinned.

"You ought to know, Tommy," he said.

"I was running without a permit and off schedule at the time, and I was
nervous," said Regan.  "What happened, or what the goings-on were, I
don't know.  What is it?"

Carleton shook his head gravely.

"I'm afraid not, Tommy," he said.  "You're in the wrong shop.
Information bureau's downstairs to the right of the ticket office."

"Thanks!" said Regan.

And that was all the help he got from Carleton--then.  But that night
over their usual game of pedro in the super's office, it was a little
different.  Carleton, as he pulled the cards out of the desk drawer and
tossed them on the table, pulled a small book from his pocket and
tossed it to Regan.

"What's this?" inquired the master mechanic.

"It's not to your credit to ask--it's a prayer book," Carleton informed
him.  "Be careful of it--I borrowed it."

"You didn't need to say so," said Regan softly.

"Page two hundred and eight," suggested Carleton.  "See if that's what
you were looking for, Tommy."

Regan thumbed the leaves, found the place and began to read--and a
sickly sort of pallor began to spread over his face.

"'You are his sureties that he will renounce the devil and all his
works,'" he mumbled weakly.

"Yes," said Carleton cheerfully.  "There's some _little_ responsibility
there, you see.  But don't skip the parenthesis; get it all,
Tommy--'_until he come of age to take it upon himself_.'"

Regan didn't say a word--nor was the smile he essayed an enthusiastic
success.  He read the "articles" over again word by word, pointing the
lines with his pudgy forefinger.

"Well," inquired Carleton, "what do you make of the running orders,
Tommy?"

"The devil and all his works!"--it came away from Regan now with a rush
from his overburdened soul.  "D'ye mean to say that--that"--Regan
choked a little--"that I'm responsible for that brick-topped,
monkey-faced kid?"

"'Until he come of age,'" Carleton amplified pleasantly.

Regan's Celtic temper rose.

"I'll see him hung first!" he roared suddenly.  "'Twas no more than to
please Maguire that I stood up with the ugly imp!  And mabbe I said
what's here and mabbe I didn't, but in any event 'tis no more than a
matter of form to be repeated parrot-fashion--and it means nothing."

"Oh, well," said the super slyly, "if you feel that way about it, don't
let it bother you."

"It will not bother _me_!" said Regan defiantly, with a scowl.

But it did.

Regan slept that night with an army corps of red-headed, pocked, and
freckled-faced little devils to plague his rest--and their name was
Noodles.  His thoughts were unpleasantly more on Noodles than his razor
when he shaved the next morning, and the result was an unsightly gash
across his chin--and when he made his first inspection of the
roundhouse an hour later he was in a temper to be envied by no man.
His irritability was not soothed by the sight of Maguire, who rose
suddenly in front of him from an engine pit as he came in.

"Regan," said the old fellow, "about the bhoy----"

"Maguire," said Regan, in a low, fervent voice, "you bother me about
that again and I'll fire you, too!"

"Wait, Regan."  There was a quaver in the little hostler's voice, and
he appeared to stand his ground only by the aid of some previously
arrived at, painful resolution that rose superior to his nervousness.
"Wait, Regan--mabbe yez'll not have to.  I talked ut over wid the
missus last night.  I've worked well for yez, Regan, all these
years--all these years, Regan, I've worked for yez here in the
roun'house--an' I've worked well, though ut's mesilf that ses ut."

"That's nothing to do with it," snapped the master mechanic.

"Mabbe ut has, an' mabbe ut hasn't."  The watery-blue eyes sought the
toes of their owner's grease-smeared, thickly-patched brogans.  "I
talked ut over wid the missus.  Sure now, Regan, yez weren't thinkin'
fwhat yez said, an' yez didn't mean fwhat yez said yisterday about
raynowncin' the word ye'd passed.  Yez'll take ut back, Regan?"

"Take it back?  I'll be damned if I do!" said Regan earnestly.

The little hostler's body stiffened, the watery-blue eyes lifted and
held steadily on the master mechanic, and for the first time in his
lowly life he raised a hand to his superior--Maguire pointed a
forefinger, that shook a little, at Regan.

"'Tis blasphymus yez are, Regan!" he said in a thin voice.  "An' 'tis
no blasphymay I mean, God forbid, fwhen I say yez'll be damned if yez
don't.  Before a priest, Regan, an' in the church av God, Regan, yez
swore fwhat yez swore--an' 'tis the wrath av God, Regan, yez'll bring
down on your head.  Mind that, Regan!  Fire me, is ut?"  The little
hostler's voice rose suddenly.  "All these years I've worked well for
yez, Regan, but I'll work no more for a man as 'ud do a thing loike
thot--an' the missus ses the same.  Poor we may be, but rayspect for
oursilves we have.  Yez'll niver fire me, Regan--I fire mesilf.  I'm
through this minute!"

Regan glared disdainfully.

"Have you been drinking, Maguire?" he inquired caustically.

Noodles' father did not answer.  He brushed past the master mechanic,
walked through the big engine doors, and halted just outside on the
cinders.

"'Tis forsworn yez are, Regan," he said heavily.  "Yez may make light
av ut now, but the day'll come, Regan, fwhen yez'll find out 'tis no
light matter.  'Tis the wrath av God, Regan, 'll pay yez for ut, yez
can mark my words."

Regan stared after the old man, his eyes puckered, his face a little
red; stared after the bent form in the old worn overalls as it picked
its way across the tracks--and gave vent to his feelings by
expectorating a goodly stream of blackstrap juice savagely into the
engine pit at his side.  This did not help very much, and for the rest
of the morning, while he inwardly anathematized Noodles, Noodles'
father and the whole Noodles family collectively, he made things both
uncomfortable and lively for those who were unfortunate enough to be
within reach of his displeasure.

"The wrath of God!" communed Regan angrily.  "I always said Noodles
took after his father, both by disposition and looks!  It'll be a long
time before the old man gets another job--a long time."

And therein Regan was right.  It _was_ a long time--quite a long
time--measured by the elasticity of the boiler-washer's purse, which
wasn't very elastic on the savings from a dollar-sixty a day.

Old Bill Maguire, perhaps, was the only one who hadn't got quite the
proper angle on the "rights" he carried--which were worse than those of
a mixed local when the rails were humming under a stress of through
traffic and the despatchers were biting their nails to the quick trying
to take care of it.  Not, possibly, that it would have made any
difference to the little worn-out hostler if he had; for, whether from
principle, having deep-seated awe for the church and its tenets that
forbade even a tacit endorsement of what he considered Regan's
sacrilege, or because of the public slight put upon his family--the
roundhouse hadn't failed to hear his first conversation with Regan, and
hadn't failed to let him know that they had--or maybe from a mixture of
the two, Maguire was beyond question in deadly earnest.  But if old
Bill hadn't got his signals right, and was reading green and white when
it should have been red, the rest of the Hill Division wasn't by any
means color blind; it was pretty generally understood that for several
years back all that stood between Maguire and the scrap heap--was
Regan.  Not on account of any jolly business about godfather or
godfathering, but because that was Regan's way--old Bill puttered
around the roundhouse on suffrance, thanks to Regan, and didn't know
it, though everybody else did, barring patient little Mrs. Maguire and
Noodles, who didn't count anyhow.

Nor did the little hostler even now pass the color test.
Short-tongued, a hard, grimy lot, just what their rough and ready life
made them, they might have been, those railroaders of the Rockies, but
their hearts were always right.  In the yards, in the trainmaster's
office, in the roadmaster's office they pointed Maguire to the quiet
times, to the extra crews laid off, to the spare men back to their old
ratings, to the section gangs pared down to a minimum, and advised him
to ask Regan for his job back again--they never told him he couldn't do
a man's work any more.

"Ask Regan!" stuttered the old boiler-washer, and the gray billy-goat
beard under his chin, as he threw his head up, stuck out straight like
a belligerent _chevaux de frise_.  "Niver!  Mind thot, now!
Niver--till he takes back fwhat he said--not av I starrve for ut!"

Regan, during the first few days, the brunt of his temper worn off,
experienced a certain relief, that was no little relief--he was rid,
and well rid, of the Noodles combination.  But at the end of about a
week, the bluff, big-hearted master mechanic began to suck in his under
lip at moments when he was alone, as the stories of old Bill's futile
efforts after a job, and old Bill's rather pitiful defiance began to
sift in to him.  Regan began to have visions of the little three-room
shack way up in the waste fields at the end of Main Street.  A
dollar-sixty a day wasn't much to come and go on, even when the
dollar-sixty was coming regularly every pay day--and when it wasn't,
the cost of food and rent didn't go down any.

Regan got to thinking a good deal about the faded little old drudge of
a woman that was Mrs. Maguire, and the bare floors as he remembered
them even in the palmy days of Noodles' birth when he had attended the
celebration, bare, but scrubbed to a spotless white.  She hadn't been
very young then, and not any too strong, and that was twelve years ago.
And he got to thinking a good deal about old Bill himself--not much
good any more, but good enough for a dollar-sixty a day from a company
he'd served for many a long year--in the roundhouse.  There had never
been over much of what even an optimistic imagination could call luxury
in the Maguire's home, and the realization got kind of deep under the
worried master mechanic's skin that things were down now to pretty near
a case of bread to fill their mouths.

And Regan was right.  Even a week had been long enough for that--a man
out of a job can't expect credit on the strength of the pay car coming
along next month.  Things were in pretty straitened circumstances up at
the Maguires.

And the more Regan thought, the hotter he got under the collar--at
Noodles.  Where he had formerly disliked and submitted to Noodles'
existence in a passive sort of way, he now hated Noodles in a most
earnest and whole-hearted way--and with an unholy desire in his soul to
murder Noodles on sight.  For, even if Noodles was directly responsible
and at the bottom of the pass things had come to, Regan's uncomfortable
feeling grew stronger each day that indirectly he had his share in the
distress and want that had moved into headquarters up at the top of
Main Street.  It wasn't a nice feeling or a nice position to be in, and
Regan writhed under it--but primarily he cursed Noodles.

There was nothing small about Regan--there never was.  He wasn't small
enough not to do something.  He couldn't very well ask the yardmaster
or the section boss to give Maguire a job when he wouldn't give the old
man one himself, so he sent word up to Maguire to come back to work--in
the roundhouse.

Maguire's answer differed in no whit from the answer he had made to
Gleason, the yardmaster, and every one else to whom he had applied for
a job--Maguire was in deadly earnest.

"Niver!" said he, to the messenger who bore the olive branch.  "Mind
thot, now!  Niver--till he takes back fwhat he said--not av I starrve
for ut!"

Regan swore--and here Regan stuck.  _Noodles_!  His gorge rose until he
choked.  Kill the brat?  Yes--murder was in Regan's soul.  But to
proclaim Noodles as a godson--_Noodles as a godson_!  He had done it
once not knowing what he was doing, and to do it now with the years of
enlightenment upon him--Regan choked, that was all, and grew
apoplectically red in the face.  It wasn't the grins and laughs of the
Hill Division that he knew were waiting for him if he did--it was just
_Noodles_.

When Regan had calmed down from this explosion, he inevitably, of
course, got back to the old perspective--and for another week the
Maguire family up Main Street occupied a reserved seat in his mind.

Carleton only spoke to him once about it, and that was along toward the
end of the second week, as they were walking uptown together at the
dinner hour.

"By the way, Tommy," said the super, "how's Maguire getting along?"

Regan's thoughts having been on the same subject at that moment, he
came back a little crossly.

"Blamed if I know!" he growled.

Carleton smiled.  Moved by the same motive perhaps, he had gone into
the Cash Grocery Store on the corner the day before and found that
Maguire's credit was re-established--thanks to Regan--though Timmons,
the proprietor, had been sworn to secrecy.

"One of you two will have to capitulate before very long," he said,
with a side glance at Regan.  "And I don't think it will be Maguire."

"Don't you!" Regan flung out.  "You think it will be me?"

"Yes," laughed Carleton.

"When I'm dead," said Regan shortly.  "Had any word from those
Westinghouse fittings yet?  I'm waiting for them now."

"I'll see about them," said Carleton.  "I'm going East this afternoon."

And there wasn't any more said about Maguire.

Meanwhile, if Regan's rancor against Noodles had reached a stage that
was acute, Noodles had reached a stage of reciprocative hatred that was
positively deadly.  So far as elemental passion and savagery had
developed in twelve years, and Noodles was not a backward boy, just so
far had he developed his malevolence against Regan.  Things were in a
pretty strained condition in the environment of the Maguire shack;
Noodles was unhappy all the time, and hungry most of the time.  He
heard a good deal about Regan and the depths a man could sink to, and
enough about the immutable inviolability of church tenets and
ordinances to satisfy the most fanatic disciple of orthodoxy--to say
nothing of the deep-seated conviction of the wrath of God that must
inevitably fall upon one who had the sacrilegious temerity to profane
those tenets.

Mostly, Noodles imbibed this at twilight over the sparsely set table,
and when the twilight faded and it grew dark--they weren't using
kerosene any more at the Maguires--he could still sense the look on his
mother's face that mingled anxiety and gentle reproof; and he edged
back his chair out of reach of his father's cuffs, which he could dodge
in the daylight and couldn't in the dark--for on one point Regan and
the old hostler were in perfect accord.

"An' yez are the cause av ut!" old Bill would shout, swinging the flat
of his hand in the direction of Noodles' ear every time his violent
oratory reached a climacteric height where a period became a physical
necessity.

Take it all round, what with the atmosphere of gloom, dodging his
father's attentions, his mother's tears when he had caught her crying
once or twice, and an unsatisfied stomach, black vengeance oozed from
every pore of Noodles' body.  His warty little fists clenched, and his
unlovely face contorted into a scowl such as Noodles, and only Noodles,
thanks to the background that nature had already furnished him to work
upon, could scowl.

Noodles set his brains to work.  What he must do to Regan must be
something awful and bloodcurdling; and, realizing, perhaps, that, being
but twelve, he would be handicapped in coping with the master mechanic
single-handed, he sought the means of assistance that most logically
presented itself to him.  Noodles lay awake nights trying to dovetail
himself and Regan into the situations of his nickel thrillers.  There
wasn't any money with which to buy new nickel thrillers, but by then
Noodles had accumulated quite a stock, and he knew them all off pretty
well by heart, the essentials of them, anyhow.

Noodles racked his brain for a week of nights--and was in despair.  Not
that the nickel thrillers did not offer situations harrowing enough to
glut even his blood-thirsty little soul--they did--they were
peaches--he could see Regan's blood all over the bank vault that the
master mechanic had been trying to rob--he could see Regan walking the
plank of a pirate ship, while the pirates cheered hoarsely--and he
fairly revelled in every one of them--until cold despair would clutch
again at his raging heart.  They were peaches all right, but somehow
they wouldn't fit into Big Cloud--he couldn't figure out how to get
Regan to rob a bank vault, and there weren't any pirates in the
immediate vicinity that he had ever heard of.

Then inspiration came to Noodles one night--and he sat bolt upright in
bed.  He would _shadow_ Regan!  A fierce, unhallowed joy took hold of
Noodles.  Noodles had grasped the constructive technique of the
thriller!  Every hero in every nickel thriller shadowed every villain
to his doom.  Regan's doom at the end was sure to take care of itself
once he had found Regan out--but the shadowing came first.

Noodles slept feverishly for the rest of the night, and the following
evening he snooped down Main Street and took up his position in a
doorway on the opposite side of the street from Regan's boarding house.
In just what dire deed of criminal rascality he expected to trap the
master mechanic he did not know, but that Regan was capable of
anything, and that he would catch him in something, Noodles now had no
doubt--that was what the shadowing was for--he grimly determined that
he would be unmoved by appeals for mercy--and his heart beat high with
optimistic excitement.

Regan came out of the boarding house; and, bare-footed in lieu of
gum-shoes, and hugging the shadows a block behind--Noodles had
refreshed his memory on the most improved methods--Noodles trailed the
master mechanic down the street.  Two blocks down, Regan halted on the
corner and began to peer around him.  Noodles' lips thinned
suddenly--it began to look promising already--what was Regan up to?  A
man came down the cross street, joined Regan, and the two started on
again toward the station.  A little disappointed, Noodles, still
hugging the shadows, resumed the chase--it was only Carleton, the
superintendent.

From the platform, Noodles watched the two men disappear through the
far door of the station.  Free from observation now, he hurried along
the platform past the station, and was in time to see a lamp lighted
upstairs in the side window of the super's office.  Noodles waited a
moment, then he tiptoed back along the platform, and cautiously pushed
open the door through which the others had disappeared.  The door of
the super's room on the upper story opened on the head of the stairs
and, still on tiptoe, Noodles reached the top.  Here, on his knees, his
eyes glued to the keyhole, he peered into the room--Regan and the super
were engaged in their nightly game of cards.  There was nothing to
raise Noodles' hopes in that, so he descended the stairs and took up
his position behind the rain barrel at the corner of the building,
where he could watch both the window and the entrance.

At half past ten the light went out, Regan and Carleton came down the
stairs and headed uptown.  Noodles, not forgetting the shadows, trailed
them.  At the corner where Carleton had joined Regan, Carleton left
Regan, and Regan went on two blocks further and disappeared inside his
boarding house.  Noodles, being a philosopher of a sort, told himself
that none of the heroes ever succeeded the first night--and went home.

The next night, and the three following night, Noodles shadowed Regan
with the same results.  By the fifth night, with no single differing
detail to enliven this somewhat monotonous and unproductive programme,
it had become dispiriting; and though Noodles' thirst for vengeance had
not weakened, his faith in the nickel thrillers had.

But on the sixth night--at the end of the second week since Noodles and
Noodles' father had turned their backs upon the roundhouse--things were
a little different.  Noodles, in common with every one else in Big
Cloud, was quite well aware that the super's private car had been
coupled on No. 12 that afternoon, and that Carleton had gone East.

Regan came out of his boarding house at the same hour as usual, and
Noodles dodged along after him down the street--Noodles by this time,
for finesse, could have put a combination of Nick Carter and Old Sleuth
on the siding until the grass sprouted between the ties.  Noodles
dodged along--in the shadows.  Regan didn't stop at the corner this
time, but he kept right along heading down for the station.  Regan
passed two or three people going in the opposite direction up the
street of the sleepy little mountain town, but this did not confuse
Noodles--Noodles kept right along after Regan.  There was no Carleton
to-night, and Regan's criminal propensities would have full
scope--Noodles' hopes ran high.

Regan reached the station, went down the platform, and disappeared as
usual through the same door. A little perplexed, Noodles followed along
the platform; but, a moment later, from his coign of vantage behind the
rain barrel, he saw the light flash out from the super's window--and
his heart almost stood still.  What was Regan doing in the super's
office--_alone_!  Noodles' face grew very white--_Carleton had a safe
there_--he had got Regan at last!  It had taken a lot of time, but none
of the heroes ever got the villain until after pages and pages of
trying to get him.  He had got Regan at last!

Noodles crept from the shelter of the rain barrel stealthily as a cat,
and, with far more caution than he had ever exercised before, pushed
the outside door open and went up the stairs.  There wasn't any hurry;
he would give Regan time to drill through the safe, and perhaps even
let the master mechanic get the money before giving the alarm--Noodles
bitterly bemoaned the fact that he would have to give the alarm at all
and let anybody else in on it, but, owing to the fact that he had been
unable to finance a revolver with which to hold up the master mechanic
red-handed and cover himself with glory at the same time, there
appeared to be nothing else to do.

It was just a step from the head of the stairs to the door of the
super's room across the hall.  Noodles negotiated it with infinite
circumspection, and, on his knees as usual, his heart pounding like a
trip hammer, got his eye to the keyhole.  He held it there a very long
time, until he couldn't see any more through hot, scalding, impotent
tears; then he edged back across the hall, and sat down on the top
step--_Regan was playing solitaire_.

Hands dug disconsolately in his pockets, playing mechanically with a
bit of cord that was about their sole contents, Noodles sat there--and
his faith in nickel thrillers was shaken to the core.  Noodles'
thoughts were too complex for coherency--that is, for coherency in any
but one of his thoughts--he hated Regan worse than ever, for he
couldn't altogether expurgate the nickel thrillers from his mind on
such a short notice, and he could hear Regan gloat and hiss "Foiled!"
in his ear.

Noodles' hands came out of his pocket--with the cord.  He wound one end
around the bannisters, and began to see-saw it back and forth aimlessly
in the darkness.  There wasn't any good of shadowing Regan any
more--but he wasn't through with Regan.  Noodles had a soul above
discouragement.  Only what was he to do?  If the nickel thrillers had
failed him in his hour of need, he would have to depend on
himself--only what was he to do?  Noodles stopped see-sawing the cord
suddenly--and stared at it through the darkness, though he couldn't see
it.  Then he edged down another step, turned around on his knees, and
knotted one end of the cord--it was a good stout one--to one side of
the bannisters, about six inches from the level of the hall floor.
There was a bannister railing on each side, and he stretched the cord
tightly across to the other bannister, and knotted it there.  That
would do for a beginning!  It didn't promise as gory a dénouement as he
thirsted for, and he was a little ashamed of the colorlessness of his
expedient compared with those he'd read about, but there wasn't anybody
else likely to use those stairs before Regan did, and it would do for a
beginning--Regan would get a jolt or two before he reached the bottom!

Noodles retreated down the stairs and retired to the rain barrel.
Waits had been long there before, but to-night the time dragged
hopelessly--he didn't expect to see very much, but he would be able to
hear Regan coming down the stairs, so he waited, curbing his impatience
by biting anxiously on the ends of his finger nails.

Suddenly Noodles leaned head and shoulders far out from behind the rain
barrel to miss no single detail of this, the initial act of his
revenge, that he could drink in, his eyes fastened on the station
door--the light in the window above had gone out.  Very grim was
Noodles' face, and his teeth were hard set together--there was no
foolishness about this.  The super's door upstairs opened and
shut--Noodles leaned a little farther forward out from the rain barrel.

Meanwhile, Regan, upstairs, was not in a good humor.  Regan, when
alone, played a complicated and somewhat intricate species of
solitaire, a matter of some pride to the master mechanic, and that
evening he had had no luck--his combinations wouldn't work out.  So,
after something like fifteen abortive attempts that consumed the better
part of an hour and a half, and victory still remaining an elusive
thing, Regan chucked the cards back into Carleton's drawer in disgust,
knocked the ashes out of his pipe, refilled the pipe for company
homeward, and, growling a little to himself, blew out the super's lamp.
He walked across to the door, opened and shut it, and stepped out into
the hall.  Here, he halted and produced a match, both because his pipe
was as yet unlighted, and because the stairs were dark.  He struck the
match, applied it to the tamped tobacco, puffed once--and his eyes,
from the bowl of his pipe, focused suddenly downward on the head of the
stairs.  Regan's round, fat little face went a color that put the
glowing end of the match, still held mechanically over the pipe bowl,
to shame, and the fist that wasn't occupied with the match clenched
with the wrath that engulfed him--_Noodles_!

For a moment, breathing heavily with rage, Regan glared at the
cord--then the match, burning his fingers, did not soothe him any, and
he dropped it hastily, swearing earnestly to himself.  Then he bent
down, cut away the cord with his knife, and in grim, laborious
silence--Regan was a heavy man, and the stairs had a tendency to creak
that was hard to suppress--descended step by step.  Regan was consumed
with but one desire for the present or the hereafter--to get his hands
on Noodles.

Where Noodles had been stealthy, Regan was now positively devilish in
his caution and cunning.  Step by step he went down, testing each
foothold much after the fashion of a cat that stretches out its paw,
and, finding something not quite to its liking, draws it back, and,
shaking it vigorously, tries again more warily--and the while a fire
unquenchable burned within him.

He reached the door at the bottom, found the knob, waited an
instant--then suddenly flung the door wide open and sprang out on the
platform.  Noodles' form, projecting eagerly far out from the rain
barrel not five yards away, was the first thing his eyes lighted upon.
Regan had no time to waste in words.  He made a dash for the rain
barrel--and Noodles, with a sort of surprised squeak of terror, turned
and ran.

A fat man, ordinarily, cannot run very fast, and neither can a
twelve-year-old boy; but, with vengeance supplying wings to the one,
and terror imparting haste to the other, the time they made from the
rain barrel along the platform past the baggage room and freight shed,
off the platform to the ground, and up the track to the construction
department's storehouse, a matter of a hundred and fifty yards, stands
good to-day as a record in Big Cloud.

It was pretty near a dead heat.  Noodles had five yards' start when he
left the rain barrel; and when he reached the end of the storehouse he
had five yards' lead--no more.  A premonition of disaster began to
twine itself around Noodles' heart in a sickly, dispiriting way.  He
dashed along beside the wall of the building--and after him lunged
Regan, grunting like a grampus, a threat in every grunt.

It was a long, low, windowless building, and halfway up its length was
the door--Noodles had known the door to be unlocked at nights for the
purpose of loading rush material for the bridge gangs in the mountains
to go out by the early morning freight west at 4.10--and his hope lay
in the door being open now.  The place was full to the ceiling with
boxes, bales, casks, barrels and kegs, and amongst them in the
darkness, being of small dimensions himself, he could soon lose Regan.
He reached the door, snatched at the latch--the door was unlocked--and
with an uplift immeasurable upon his young soul, that gave vent to
itself in a hoot of derision, Noodles flung himself inside.

Regan, still panting earnestly, the beads on his brow now embryonic
fountain-heads that sent trickling streams down his face, lurched,
pretty well winded, through the door five yards behind Noodles--and
then Regan stopped--and the thought of Noodles was swept from Regan's
mind in a flash.

The smell of smoke was in his nostrils, and like a white, misty cloud
in the darkness it hung around him--and through it, up toward the far
end of the shed, a fire showed yellow and ugly, that with a curious,
hissing, sibilant sound flared suddenly bright, then died to yellow
ugliness again.

Grim-faced now, his jaws clamped hard, Regan sprang forward toward the
upper end of the shed.  What was afire, he did not know, nor what had
caused it--though the latter, probably, by a match dropped maybe hours
ago by a careless Polack, that had caught and set something smoldering,
and that was now breaking into flame.  All Regan knew, all Regan
thought of then, was the--_powder_.  There were fifty kegs of giant
blasting powder massed together there somewhere ahead, and just beyond
where the fire was flinging out its challenge to him--enough to wreck
not only the shed, but half the railroad property in Big Cloud as well.

Up the little handcar tracks between the high-piled stores Regan
ran--and halted where a spurt of flame, ending in a vicious puff of
smoke, shot out beside him, low down on the ground.  It was light
enough now, and in a glance the master mechanic caught the black grains
of powder strewing the floor where a broken keg had been rolled along.
A little alleyway had been left here running to the wall, and the fire
itself was bursting from a case in the rear and bottom tier of stores
on one side of this; on the other side were piled the powder kegs--and
the space between, the width of the alleyway, was no more than a bare
five or six feet.

There was no time to wait for help, the powder grains crunched under
his feet, and ran little zigzag, fizzy lines of fire like a miniature
inferno as the sparks caught them; at any moment it might reach the
kegs, and then--Regan flung himself along the alleyway to the rear tier
of cases, they were small ones here, though piled twice the height of
his head--if he could wrench them away, he could get at the burning
case below!  Regan bent, strained at the cases--they were light and
moved--he heaved again to topple them over--and then, as a rasping,
ripping sound reached him from above, he let go his hold to jump
back--too late.  A heavy casting, that had been placed on top of the
cases, evidently for economy of space, came hurtling downward, struck
Regan on the head, glanced to his shoulder and arm, slid with a thump
to the ground--and Regan dropped like a log.

A minute, perhaps two, it had all taken--no more.  Noodles, crouched
down against a case just inside the door, had seen the master mechanic
rush by him; and Noodles, too, had seen the flame and smelt the smoke.
Noodles' first impulse was to make his escape, his next to see if he
could not turn this unexpected intervention of fate to his own account
anent the master mechanic.  Noodles heard Regan moving about, and he
stole silently in that direction; then Noodles heard the heavy thump of
iron, the softer thud of Regan's fall, and something inside him seemed
to stop suddenly, and his face went very white.

"Mr. Regan!  Mr. Regan!" he stammered out.

There was no answer--no sound--save an ominous crackle of burning wood.

Noodles stole further forward--and then, as he reached the spot where
Regan lay, he stood stock-still for a second, petrified with fear--but
the next instant, screaming at the top of his voice for help, he threw
himself upon Regan, pounding frantically with the flat of his hands at
the master mechanic's shoulder, where the other's coat was beginning to
blaze.  Somehow, Noodles got this out, and then, still screaming for
help, began to drag Regan away from the side of the blazing case.

But Regan was a heavy man--almost too much for Noodles.  Noodles,
choking with the smoke, his eyes fascinated with horror as they fixed,
now on the powder kegs--whose unloading, in company with a dozen other
awe-struck boys, he had watched a few days before--now on the
sparkling, fizzing grains of powder upon the floor, tugged, and
wriggled, and pulled at the master mechanic.

Inch by inch, Noodles won Regan to safety--and then, on his hands and
knees, he went back to sweep the grains away from the edge of the kegs.
They burnt his hands as he brushed them along the floor, and he moaned
with the pain between his screams for aid.  It was hot in the narrow
place, so narrow that the breath of flame swept his face from the
case--but there was still some powder on the floor to brush back out of
the way, little heaps of it.  Weak, and swaying on his knees, Noodles
brushed at it desperately.  It seemed to spurt into his face, and he
couldn't breathe any more, and he couldn't see, and his head was
swirling around queerly.  He staggered to his feet as there came a rush
of men, and Clarihue, the turner, with the night crew of the roundhouse
came racing up the shed.

"Good God, what's this!" cried Clarihue.

"It's--it's a fire," said Noodles, with a sob--and fell into Clarihue's
arms.

They told Regan about it the next day when they had got his head
patched up and his arm set.  Regan didn't say very much as he lay in
his bed, but he asked somebody to go to Maguire's and ask old Bill to
come down.

And an hour later Maguire entered the room--but he halted a good yard
away from the foot of Regan's bed.

"Yez sint for me, Regan," observed the little hostler, in noncommittal,
far-away tones.

"I did, Maguire," said Regan diplomatically.  "Things haven't been
going as smooth as they might have over in the roundhouse since you
left, and I want you to come back.  What do you say?"

"'Tis not fwhat _I_ say," said Maguire, and he moved no nearer to the
bed.  "'Tis whether yez unsay fwhat yez said yersilf.  Do yez take ut
back, Regan?"

"I do," said Regan in grave tones--but his hand reached up to help the
bandages hide his grin.  "I take it all back, Maguire--every word of
it."

"Thot's all right, thin," said the little hostler, not arrogantly, but
as one justified.  "I'm sorry to see yez are sick, Regan, an' I'm glad
to see yez are better--but did I not warn yez, Regan?  'Twas the wrath
av God, Regan, thot's the cause av this."

"Mabbe," said Regan softly.  "Mabbe--but to my thinking 'twas the devil
and all his works."

"Fwhat's thot?" inquired Maguire, bending forward.  "I didn't catch
fwhat yez said, Regan."

"I said," said Regan, choking a little, "that Noodles is a godson any
godfather would be proud to have."

"Sure he is," said Noodles' father cordially.  "He is thot."

VIII

ON THE NIGHT WIRE

Tommy Regan speaks of it yet; so does Carleton; and so, for the matter
of that, does the Hill Division generally--and there's a bit of a smile
goes with it, too, but the smile comes through as a sort of feeble
thing from the grim set of their lips.  They remember it--it is one of
the things they have never forgotten--Dan McGrew and the Kid, and the
night the Circus Special pulled out of Big Cloud with Bull Coussirat
and Fatty Hogan in the cab.

Neither the Kid nor McGrew were what you might call born to the Hill
Division; neither of them had been brought up with it, so to speak.
The Kid came from an Eastern system--and McGrew came from
God-knows-where.  To pin McGrew down to anything definite or specific
in that regard was something just a little beyond the ability of the
Hill Division, but it was fairly evident that where railroads were
there McGrew had been--he was old enough, anyway--and he knew his
business.  When McGrew was sober he was a wizard on the key--but
McGrew's shame was drink.

McGrew dropped off at Big Cloud one day, casually, from nowhere, and
asked for a job despatching.  A man in those days out in the new West
wasn't expected to carry around his birth certificate in his vest
pocket--he made good or he didn't in the clothes he stood in, that was
all there was to it.  They gave him a job assisting the latest new man
on the early morning trick as a sort of test, found that he was better,
a long way better than the latest new man, gave him a regular
despatcher's trick of his own--and thought they had a treasure.

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