Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/179

 "He ain't talkative," Dahleen answered shortly.

"What the hell," growled the master mechanic deep in his throat, to conceal his emotion. Tain't doing him any good going up there afternoons. God knows it's natural enough, but 'tain't doing him any good, not a mite—nor them either, as far as I can see, h'm? You got to make him talk, Jim. Wake him up."

"Why don't you talk to him?" demanded the fireman.

"H'm, yes. So I will. I sure will," Regan answered.

And he meant to, meant to, honestly. But, somehow, Coogan's eyes and Coogan's face said "no" to him as they did to every other man, and as the days passed, almost a month of them, Regan shook his head, perplexed and troubled, for he was fond of Coogan.

Then, one night, it happened.

Regan and Carleton were alone over their pedro at headquarters, except for Spence, the dispatcher, in the next room. It was getting close on to eleven-thirty. The Imperial Limited, West-bound, with Coogan in the cab, had pulled out on time an hour and a half before. The game was lagging, and, as usual, the conversation had got around to the engineer, introduced, as it always was, by the master mechanic.

"I sure don't know what to do for the boy," said he. "I'd like to do something. Talking don't amount to anything, does it, h'm?—even if you can talk. I can't talk to him, what?"

"A man's got to work a thing like that out for himself, Tommy," Carleton answered, "and it takes time.