Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/146

 eye could tell that he had to be kept out of doors. Thought he might be able to help Spirlaw out a little as assistant, h'm? Guess he'll pick up the work quick enough. He don't look strong."

"Mabbe it's just as well," grinned the master mechanic. "He won't be able to batter the gang any. One man doing that is enough—when it's Spirlaw."

Spirlaw heard about it before he saw Keating, and he swore fervently.

"What the hell!" he growled. "Think I'm runnin' a nursery or an outdoor sanatorium? I guess I've got enough to do without lookin' after sick kids, I guess I have. Fat lot of help he'll be—help my eye! I don't need no help."

But for all that, somehow, from the first minute when Keating got off the local freight, that stopped for him at the camp, and shoved out his hand to Spirlaw it was different—after that it was all Keating as far as the road boss was concerned.

Queer the way things go. Keating looked about the last man on earth you would expect to find rubbing elbows with an iron-fisted foreman whose tongue was rougher than a barbed-wire fence; the last man to hold his own with a slave-driven gang of ugly Polacks. He seemed too quiet, too shy, too utterly unfit, physically, for that sort of thing. The blood was all out of the boy—he got rid of it faster than he could make it. But his training stood him in good stead, and, within his limitations, he took hold like an old hand. That was what caught Spirlaw. He did what he was told, and he did what he could—did a little more than