" resumed Duck. "He
walked just like that fellow; only he was quicker. I reckon you fellows
don't know what a snap you have here now," he continued, addressing the
men around him. "Track fenced; ninety-pound rails; steel bridges; stone
culverts; slag ballast; sky-scrapers. No wonder you get chances to haul
such nobs as Lilioukalani and Schley and Dewey, and cut out ninety miles
an hour on tangents.

"When I was firing for Siclone the road-bed was just off the scrapers;
the dumps were soft; pile bridges; paper culverts; fifty-six-pound
rails; not a fence west of Buffalo gap, and the plains black with Texas
steers. We never closed our cylinder cocks; the hiss of the steam
frightened the cattle worse than the whistle, and we never knew when we
were going to find a bunch of critters on the track.

"The first winter I came out was great for snow, and I was a tenderfoot.
The cuts made good wind-breaks, and whenever there was a norther they
were chuck full of cattle. Every time a train ploughed through the snow
it made a path on the track. Whenever the steers wanted to move they
would take the middle of the track single file, and string out mile
after mile. Talk about fast schedules and ninety miles an hour. You had
to poke along with your cylinders spitting, and just whistle and
yell--sort of blow them off into the snow-drifts.

"One day Siclone and I were going west on 59, and we were late; for that
matter we were always late. Simpson coming against us on 60 had caught a
bunch of cattle in the rock-cut, just west of the Sappie, and killed a
couple. When we got there there must have been a thousand head of steers
mousing around the dead ones. Siclone--he used to be a cowboy, you
know--Siclone said they were holding a wake. At any rate, they were
still coming from every direction and as far as you could see.

"'Hold on, Siclone, and I'll chase them out,' I said.

"'That's the stuff, Duck,' says he. 'Get after them and see what you can
do.' He looked kind of queer, but I never thought anything. I picked up
a jack-bar and started up the track.

"The first fellow I tackled looked lazy, but he started full quick when
I hit him. Then he turned around to inspect me, and I noticed his horns
were the broad-gauge variety. While I whacked another the first one put
his head down and began to snort and paw the ties; then they all began
to bellow at once; it looked smoky. I dropped the jack-bar and started
for the engine, and about f