Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/202

 since the last clash, realizing that any slip would be instantly and mercilessly turned against him by the grinning master mechanic—"if 'twere not for them, Regan, you listen to me, I'd bash your face an' then ram the measly job you give me down your throat, I would that!"

"Well," Regan would return, "when you get to sitting on a dinky, gilded throne, sunk to the crown-sheet in the bogs though it will be, I'd ask no more nor as much from your hands as you get from mine—which is more than your deserts. Who but me would do as much for you? You ought to be back wiping. I've thought some seriously of it, h'm? Six, is it now?—well, it's a grand race!"

Whereupon Gilleen would say hot words and say them fervently, while he shook his fist at the master mechanic.

"I'll show you some day, Regan," was his final word. "I'll show you what kind of a race it is, an' don't you forget it!"

All of which is neither very interesting nor in any degree witty—it simply shows where Gilleen's nickname came from. Everybody on the division called him "King"—not to his face, they do now, but they didn't then. Queer the way a little thing like that acts on a man sometimes. Gilleen was well enough liked in a way, but no one ever really took him seriously in anything. Associate a man with a joke and henceforward and forever after, usually, the two are inseparable. He may have aspirations, ambitions, what you will, but he is given no credit for having them—with