r of his desk. Brannahan, No. 81's conductor, kicked the
door open, and came in for his orders.

"Hello, Kid!" exclaimed Brannahan. "What you sitting in for? Where's
your mate?"

"Asleep," the Kid laughed at him. "Where do you suppose he is! We're
swopping tricks for a while for the sake of variety."

Brannahan stooped and lunged the stub of the cigar in his mouth over
the lamp chimney, and with the up-draft nearly extinguished the flame;
then he pulled up a chair, tilted back and stuck his feet up on the
desk.

"Guess most anything would be variety in this God-forsaken hole," he
observed between puffs. "What?"

"Oh, it's not so bad--when you get used to it," said the Kid.

He edged his own chair around to face Brannahan squarely--the wound in
the back of his head was bleeding again; perhaps it had never stopped
bleeding, he did not know.

Brannahan made small talk, waiting for the fast freight, east, to
cross; and the Kid smiled, while his fingers clutched desperately now
and then at the arms of his chair to keep himself from pitching over,
as those sickening, giddy waves, like hot and cold flashes, swept him.

Brannahan went at last, the fast freight roared by, No. 81 pulled out,
and the Kid went back to the wash-basin and put his bandage on again.

The morning came and went, the afternoon, and the evening; and by
evening the Kid was sick and dropping weak. That smash on his head
must have been more serious than he had thought at first; for, again
and again, and growing more frequent, had come those giddy flashes, and
once, he wasn't sure, but it seemed as though he had fainted for a
moment or two.

It was getting on to ten o'clock now, and he sat, or, rather, lay
forward with his head in his arms over the desk under the lighted lamp.
The sounder was clicking busily; the Kid raised his head a little, and
listened. There was a Circus Special, west, that night, and No. 2, the
eastbound Limited, was an hour off schedule, and, trying to make it up,
was running with clear rights while everything else on the train sheet
dodged to the sidings to get out of the way. The sounder stopped for
an instant, then came the dispatcher's "complete"--the Circus Special
was to cross the Limited at L'Aramie, the next station west of Angel
Forks. It had nothing to do with the Kid, and it would be another two
hours at least before the Circus Special was along.

The Kid's head dropped back on his arms again. What was