nted air, he
proceeded to light a fire in the little round caboose stove, and prepare a
pot of coffee for supper, leaving Rodman's case to be managed by Conductor
Tobin as he thought best.

The latter told the boy that the young tramp, as they called him, was
billed through to New York, to look after some cattle that were on the
train; but that he was a worthless, ugly fellow, who had not paid the
slightest attention to them, and whose only object in accepting the job
was evidently to obtain a free ride in the caboose. Smiler, whom he had
been delighted to find on the train when it was turned over to him, had
taken a great dislike to the fellow from the first. He had growled and
shown his teeth whenever the tramp moved about the car, and several times
the latter had threatened to teach him better manners. When he and
Brakeman Joe went to the forward end of the train, to make ready for
side-tracking it, they left the dog sitting on the rear platform of the
caboose, and the tramp apparently asleep, as Rod had found him, on one of
the lockers. He must have taken advantage of their absence to deal the dog
the cruel kick that cut his ear, and landed him, stunned and bruised, on
the track where he had been discovered.

"I'm glad he's gone," concluded Conductor Tobin, "for if he hadn't left,
we would have fired him for what he did to Smiler. We won't have that dog
hurt on this road, not if we know it. It won't hurt him to have to walk
to New York, and I don't care if he never gets there. What worries me,
though, is who'll look after those cattle, and go down to the stock-yard
with them, now that he's gone."

"Why couldn't I do it?" asked Rod eagerly. "I'd be glad to."

"You!" said Conductor Tobin incredulously. "Why, you look like too much
of a gentleman to be handling cattle."

"I hope I am a gentleman," answered the boy with a smile; "but I am a very
poverty-stricken one just at present, and if I can earn a ride to the
city, just by looking after some cattle, I don't know why I shouldn't do
that as well as anything else. What I would like to do though, most of all
things, is to live up to my nickname, and become a railroad man."

"You would, would you?" said Conductor Tobin. Then, as though he were
propounding a conundrum, he asked: "Do you know the difference between
a railroad man and a chap who wants to be one?"

"I don't know that I do," answered the boy.

"Well, the difference is, that the latter gets what he de