Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/144

 over the particular crowd of sweating foreigners that happened to be under his particular jurisdiction at the time. "What d'ye think! You can't run cuts an' fills with an outfit like this on soft soap an' candy sticks, can you? Well then—h'm?"

That last "h'm" was more or less conclusive—very few cared to pursue the argument any further. At a safe distance, the Big Fellows on the division, as a salve to their consciences when humanitarian ideas were in the ascendancy, would bombard Spirlaw with telegrams which were forceful in tone and direful in threat—but that's all it ever amounted to. Spirlaw's work report for a day on anything, from bridging a cañon to punching a hole in the bitter hard rock of the mountain-side, was a report that no one else on the division had ever approached, let alone duplicated—and figures count perhaps just a little bit more in the operating department of a railroad than they do anywhere else in the world. Spirlaw used the telegrams as spills to light a pipe as hard-looking as himself, whose bowl was down at the heels on one side from much scraping, and on such occasions it was more than ordinarily unfortunate for the sour-visaged Polack who should chance to arouse his ire.

Some men possess the love of a fight and their natures are tempestuous by virtue of their nationality, because some nationalities are addicted that way. This may have been the case with Spirlaw—or it may not. There's no saying, for Spirlaw's nationality was a question mark. He never delivered himself on the subject, and, certainly, there was no figuring it out from