Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/112

 of recommendation from pastors of churches in the East. I ain't got anything. My name's Shanley, an' I haven't even got anything to prove that."

"You've got your nerve," said Carleton, leaning back in his swivel chair and tucking a thumb in the armhole of his vest. "Ever worked on a railroad?"

"No," answered Shanley, a little less assertively, as he saw his chances of a job vanishing into thin air, and already regretting his hasty speech—a few odd nickels wasn't a very big stake for a man starting out in a new country, and that represented the sum total of Shanley's worldly wealth. "No, I never worked on a railroad."

"H'm," continued Carleton. "Well, my friend, you can report to the trainmaster in the morning and tell him I said to put you on breaking. Get out!"

It came so suddenly and unexpectedly that it took Shanley's breath. Carleton's ways were not Shanley's ways, or ways that Shanley by any peradventure had been accustomed to. A moment before he wouldn't have exchanged one of his nickels for his chances of a job, therefore his reply resolved itself into a sheepish grin; moreover—but of this hereafter—Shanley back East was decidedly more in the habit of having his applications refused with scant ceremony than he was to receiving favorable consideration, which was another reason for his failure to rise to the occasion with appropriate words of thanks.

Incidentally, Shanley, like a select few of his fellow creatures, had his failings; concretely, his particular strayings from the straight and narrow way, not