ittle, "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