CONTRARY to Orrin Smith's fearful forebodings, Windy Moore did not make a report of the cow jerry's pleasant little diversion. If it had been left to Windy to give the incident publicity, nobody ever would have heard of it. But Windy's conductor was sitting with his head out of the caboose cupola to get the breeze when the local passed the overhauled jerries that evening. His appreciation of Windy's antics while fanning the bullets away from his ears with open hand was so keen that he could see no seriousness in the case at all. Within half an hour after the local's arrival, all the railroaders in McPacken had heard the story, and great was the roar of mirth at Windy Moore's expense.
For all that, Tom was fired. Smith was not running chances on getting called down by the roadmaster for having a gun-slinging wild fellow like that in his peaceful gang of terriers. Smith stopped at the hotel desk to write Tom's time check, his indignation and resentment, his severity and censure increasing as his rumbling mind turned the disturbing speculation of his own peril.
It was a terrifying thought to Smith that he might lose his fine job on account of a wild Texas boy who didn't know any better than to run the risk of damaging company property with his fool gun, even though he may not have tried to hit Windy Moore. Suppose he'd shot a hole in the side of that boxcar!
Tom's momentary exuberance, the thrill that had quickened him like old times, over seeing Windy Moore jump for the ladder, had died away to a cold and hopeless feeling when he corralled courage enough at last to go down to supper. He was depressed and ashamed; he could not have felt much worse if Windy Moore had pitched off into the ditch with a bullet through his neck.
To make the situation worse, several railroaders were at the long table. Somebody among them started clapping his hands when Tom appeared; the others took it up, leaning back in unctuous repletion, pie crumbs around their gills, as if the hero in the melodrama had arrived with the money to pay off the old farmer's mortgage.
Tom was as red as if fury had set its torch to his fur. He could not have suffered a more distressing pang if he had lost a leg. Shame hits some modest people that way, with a torture that is harder to bear than fire. But the railroaders were more than half in earnest, as Tom learned when several came to his table presently, clapped him on the back, shook hands with him and had their roaring laugh at this Texas joke, the humor of which seemed to grow as they carried it around.
They knew that Smith had discharged Tom. He was no longer a jerry, there was no degradation in the touch of his calloused hand. He had been only a sort of experimental jerry, anyway, never a serious one growing a hump on his back over a tamping-pick. Ford: Langley lingered a little after the others. He approached Tom's table picking his teeth.
"Hang around town till pay-day, kid," he advised, "and I'll see what I can do for you. Nearly always somebody drops out after pay-day."
Tom thanked him with so much gratitude and sincerity in his soft, slow-dragging voice that the roundhouse foreman went away swelled up with a feeling of magnanimity, just as if he had stooped and lifted some wreck of a jerry out of the ditch and taken him into the saloon and given him a drink.
Tom thought it would be a big and sudden jump for him if he intended to follow railroading, for a job in the roundhouse led to fireman, and fireman to engineer. In those days of much road building and quick promotion, the road from wiper to engineer was not a long one. Engineer was the top of consequence in McPacken. It combined dignity, affluence, high honor. An engineer could take the pick of anything in that town. It was the same in every little railroad center throughout the west in those days.
Louise waited until the congratulatory press had moved on, then approached Tom for his supper order. When she came from the kitchen with his order she brought her own supper also, the custom of taking this meal with the cow jerry being so well established that both looked upon it as a fixed event.
Tom told Louise about losing his job, and the reason for it, which she knew already. He mentioned the prospect leading to the right side of a locomotive cab which opened before him in Langley's friendly offer. Louise was not impressed by the magnificent future of this prospect. She sniffed; she tossed her head with lofty disdain.
"I'd rather see you a section boss than an engineer," she declared. "A man gets to be a hoghead, and there he stops; his ambition is fulfilled when he gets a passenger run, with all the silly girls along the line waving at him as he goes by."
"I suppose a man's got to stop somewhere, though," Tom ventured.
"But not hanging out of a cab window. There are not any traditions around here of engineers who rose to be presidents of railroads, or anything else. Once an engineer, always an engineer."
"Most men are satisfied when they hit a good thing, Louise. I think that accounts for engineers stayin' engineers, instead of any lack of ambition. They looked to me like a mighty fine class of men, seein' them ride past me while I was laborin' on the section. They never had a word of ridicule for us jerries."
"So much to their credit, anyway," she said. "Do you think you'll take the job if Ford Langley offers you one?"
"It'll be two weeks till pay-day; my case it'll come up in court and be settled befdre then. I can decide on the job after I know where I'm at. Court opens in five days from now. My lawyer says he'll bring my case to a hearin' not later than the second day."
"You can rest up till the trial, and not bother about a job. From what I hear these lily-handed aristocrats of railroad society say, section work must be a terrible strain on a man's physical and moral forces."
"It was hard at first, cruel hard," said Tom, reflectively. "But I got toughened to it so I didn't mind. If it wasn't for the remarks they pass on a man, jerryin' wouldn't be such a bad job at all."
"If you win your case, you'll sell your cattle in the fall and go back to Texas."
"I've always been aimin' to, Louise, till around here lately. I've been considerin' and plannin' on stayin' up here in the north if I can get something under my feet."
"It's bound to come right," she cheered him. "One way or another you'll come into your own again."
"I don't see how the judge can go against me when he learns the facts. There ain't one word in my father's records about a loan from Withers that stands unpaid, as far as mother has been able to find, and she's made a careful search. I believe that old rascal changed some paper bearin' my father's signature and made a note out of it."
"I think he might do even that, he's got a look about him of acrook. But if he wins in court, what then?"
"Time will have to answer that, Louise."
"It wouldn't do a bit of good to go and shoot him up, though," she said.
"We can think of enough disagreeable things every minute, Louise, without reachin' out ahead so far after them," he reminded her, gently.
"Then I've got something to tell you that's not so disagreeable," she said, coming brightly out of the gloomy cloud that always obscured her when she talked of violence between him and Withers. "I'm going to quit my job tomorrow."
"You don't tell me?" There was consternation, rather than joy, in Tom's voice. He felt the blood creeping down, down, out of his face. "Are you goin' to leave McPacken, Miss Louise?"
"I've got Maud Kelly's place in the court house. Maud's been plugging for me strong, backed by Mrs. Cowgill, who despairs of ever seeing me catch an engineer in my present lowly situation."
"She's a calculatin' lady," said Tom. "What kind of a situation will you have in the court house, if I'll be allowed to inquire?"
"A sort of cashier, taking in money and giving out tax receipts. Maud says there is no great rush of business."
"There will be, I'll bet you. When you begin' takin' in money they'll come in from away out on the edges to pay their taxes. When do you aim to begin?"
"Day-after-tomorrow, just getting the run of the ropes while Maud's there, but my pay doesn't start for nearly three weeks. Maud's vacation begins Saturday; she's allowed two weeks off with pay, and she's already arranged for one of the other girls in the office to fill her job. It's the custom for one to relieve the other. So Maud and I are going to visit her brother's family, down on his ranch somewhere between here and the Nation. Maud's impatient to get down there and ride around. She's a regular cowgirl—she was brought up on a big ranch."
"She sure steps along like a fresh-air lady. I always ad-mire that girl's gait."
"She's already spoken for, Tom; your case is hopeless."
"Ma'am?" Tom's blood was hot in his cheeks. He seemed to be mentally tip-toeing away from her, in his questioning, deferential, easily frustrated way.
"She's going to marry Mr. Cook, the baggage smasher."
"You don't tell me?" in expression of wonderment far greater than the subject, or Tom's own conscience, justified. "I've seen the gentleman," he continued, beginning to grow easy again, "enterin' a blue house down by the railroad yards."
"He lives there with his mother."
"He walks like a sheriff," said Tom, "with his chin held out from him so he can see his mustache."
"I never have made a study of the gait of sheriffs," Louise said, "but I fail to discover any of the fine points Maud sees in Mr. Cook, especially when he appears in the door of the baggage car as a background to a trunk."
"It's not a very exalted situation," Tom said thoughtfully, yet respectfully, remembering the humble job that was his own until that evening.
"Maybe he'll rise from baggage smasher with Maud to shove him."
"I bet he'll go clean through the top of the car," said Tom, with such warm assurance that Mr. Cook's future seemed to enlarge far beyond either the ambitions or the capabilities of a commonplace, fully satisfied man in a large brown mustache.
Louise had a trick of lifting her eyebrows and rolling up her eyes, as an elderly person does when looking over the rim of his glasses. She did this in a sly appraisement of the object under scrutiny, as if she veiled her appreciation, or perhaps her mirth. Tom was accustomed to that glance; he was always on the lookout for it, watching for the little grin that illuminated her rather lean and serious face with such a flash of humor that he felt laughter lift its wings to fly out of his mouth.
She looked at him that way now, her lips pressed in a line that trembled in the travail of a smile.
"Tom, you're the funniest kid!" she said.
"I wasn't aimin' to be," said he, feeling very boyish and immature.
"You never do—don't ever try to be. Just go on being natural and nice. You don't know how much I like you that way, so different from these fresh brakeys and firemen."
Tom was so confused, but in a delightful warm confusion that seemed the scented air of paradise, that he was not equal to any sort of immediate reply.
"I'd like to see Maud marry a better man." Louise returned to her subject abruptly. "She's a good girl. By all the ratings of McPacken society she ought to have a conductor, or a fireman, at the very lowest."
"There's Pap," Tom suggested, coming to his senses slowly again. "He seems to consider himself a high premium for any lady."
"I think Pap is training right now to rush the new deputy county treasurer. You can't imagine how my prospects have brightened in this town, Tom."
"Glory is broadenin' over you like sunrise."
Their talk came back to the cattle, after a while, as it nearly always did from whatever lighter matter that might lend them a recess of relief from the vexatious problem. Tom said he had to see the roadmaster the first thing in the morning, and get his time check signed. Then he intended to hire a horse and take a ride out into the country.
"Do you know where your cattle are?" Louise inquired.
"Down somewhere between here and the Nation—you know the line is only forty miles south of McPacken. The sheriff's grazin' them on the land I engaged from that bal' faced old liar to pasture 'em on this summer. I thought I'd take a look at them and see how they're fillin' out."
"It wouldn't be a bad idea," she assented, but as if she had conditions in reserve. Then her hand reached out and fell on his where it lay beside his plate, in that swift, arresting way she had of doing this. "Tom, you're not going to try to pull off anything tomorrow, are you?"
"No, Louise. I'll wait on the law like a gentleman. If it fails to give me my own, then I'll have to see what can be done."
"It will seem hopeless if the case goes against you, Tom. But I don't know; something may happen, it looks impossible that such a plain steal could be put through. When the time comes, I'm going to help you," she declared with sudden assurance, almost enthusiastic fervor. She looked up, her eyes bright. "It's too big a trick for one man."
"Why, Louise, you warm a person's heart when you talk that way!" said Tom, glowing with gratitude. "Your moral support will help me over a mighty high fence when the time comes to jump it."
"Moral support!" She discounted it for just what it would be worth against Cal Withers, and that was not the force of a sparrow's wing. "You'll need something more than moral support to get that herd back if the judge says Withers' claim is good, and I'm going to be right there to help you!"
"I couldn't fail if I had you to help me," he declared, with fervor equal to her own.
"Have you thought—have you decided, what you're going to do in case you lose in court, Tom?"
"Nothing has come plain to me yet, Louise. I'm like a man in a storm, waitin' to see a clearin'. It will come to me when it's needed, I expect. But whatever is to be done must wait on the law."
"Of course," she assented, gravely. "But there's one thing to remember, when you go down there to look at the cattle tomorrow, and all the time: If you meet Withers, don't start anything. If there's got to be trouble, let him begin it."
"I'll do my best to remember what you've said, Louise, now and at other times, on this subject."
"If you'll wait on Withers to pull his gun first, there'll not be any trouble," she advised him gravely. "I've been finding out a lot about him here lately."
"I'd go away around to keep from havin' open trouble with him, Louise, especially before my case comes off. A fuss might have a bad bearin' on my case."
"And after the case, if you lose it, Tom?"
"A way will be found," Tom answered, his eyebrows drawn, wrinkling his fighting forehead with determined frown.