rom my own groaned--occasionally--under the
coarse-grained bulk of Tom. Tom was a "rough-neck" par excellence, so
much so that even in a houseful of them he was known as "Tom the
Rough-neck," which to Tom was high tribute. Some preferred to call him
"Tom the Noisy." He was built like a steam caisson, or an oil-barrel,
though without fat, with a neck that reminded you of a Miura bull with
his head down just before the estoque; and when he neglected to button
his undershirt--a not infrequent oversight--he displayed the hairy
chest of a mammoth gorilla.

Tom's philosophy of getting through life was exactly the same as his
philosophy of getting through a rocky hillside with his steam-shovel.
When it came to argument Tom was invariably right; not that he was
over-supplied with logic, but because he possessed a voice and the
bellows to work it that could rise to the roar of his own steam-shovel
on those weeks when he chose to enter the shovel competition, and would
have utterly overthrown, drowned out, and annihilated James Stewart
Mill himself.

Tom always should have had money, for your "rough-neck" on the Zone has
decidedly the advantage over the white-collared college graduate when
the pay-car comes around. But of course being a genuine "rough-neck"
Tom was always deep in debt, except on the three days after pay-day,
when he was rolling in wealth.

Once I fancied the bulk of my troubles was over. Tom disappeared,
leaving not a trace behind--except his working-clothes tumbled on and
about his cot. Then it turned out that he was not dead, but in Ancon
hospital taking the Keeley cure; and one summer evening he blew in
again, his "cure" effected--with a bottle in his coat pocket and two
inside his vest. So the next day there was Tom celebrating his recovery
all over House 47 and when next morning he did finally go back to his
shovel there were scattered about the room six empty quart bottles each
labeled "whiskey." Luckily Tom ran a shovel instead of a passenger
train and could claw away at his hillside as savagely as he chose
without any danger whatever, beyond that of killing himself or an odd
"nigger" or two.

We had other treasures on exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty," for
instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed little
snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of duty" two
fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he was now, after
the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on