w that straw-pile's apt to blow
over if ye disturb the air about it. Ye just saved yeer skin by about
four inches. If ye'd let me run out on that toy I'd have t'rown ye
over it, that I would."

The brakesman continued to grin.

"Ye can slit yeer face all up and think ye're laughing, ye can, but be
the time ye'd struck a few t'ousand o' these bean-poles and
clothes-line props that Torrance here calls a threstle, ye'd be looking
like a pin-cushion dress-making day. It's dangerous, I call it, to
lave splinters like thim with their ends up. Some day a thoughtless
brakesman like yeerself will take a careless breath in the
vicinity--and there ain't an undertaker this side o' Saskatoon."

Torrance, half nettled, laughed carelessly.

"If you'd sharpen up your wits more, Murphy, hustling along here in
reasonable hours, instead of insulting a work you're not big enough to
understand, you'd get away sooner to a softer job."

"Softer, is it? Sure I nade something softer soon or I'll get as tough
as a railway contractor. I suppose ye'd call it a soft job running a
train where a herd of--no, ye didn't hear what I called them, Miss
Tressa--where a filthy, low-down gang of craters dressed up like men
and walking on their hind legs, is running loose. Lifted about four
miles of rail, they did. This locomotive engineer's been doing railway
building for half a day; and if ye could do my job as well as I can do
yours, Torrance, there'd be no nade o' the two of us. If I had a
rowdy, dyed-in-the-wool mob like them under me I'd shoot the lot and
have a better stand in with St. Peter than I'm going to have as an
engineer. I'd die happy if I could catch one of thim in the act and he
wasn't too big for the fire-door."

Torrance looked grave. "Another? That's the second this week. If
this--"

"Indade, it was another. Ye didn't think it was the same rail I've
been putting down every day for six years or so. When I fix a rail it
stays, it does."

"Leave the train there till morning," urged Torrance; "we'll unload it
first thing."

"Lave thim, is it?" shouted Murphy. "Lave thim on the main line! Not
likely! When I lave this man-trap, they go too."

"Murphy, you're a bad-tempered little stickler to rules that don't mean
a cuss. There isn't another train within a hundred miles or so, except
west; there won't be one this way for days."

"I didn't know ye'd done so well as a bridge builder they'd made ye
train-despatcher