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 p