Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/208

 about quittin' or that other thing? I guess I won't go out this time, what?"

Regan was equally mad. And as he felt tenderly of his forehead, where a lump was rapidly approximating the formation of a goose egg, he grew madder still.

"You won't go out, won't you?" he roared. "Well I guess you will; and, what's more, you'll go out now—and get your time! I fire you, understand?"

"You bet!" said "King" Gilleen—and that's all he said. He looked at the master mechanic for a minute, but didn't say anything more—just laughed and walked out of the roundhouse.

Naturally enough, the story got up and down the division, and everybody talked about it. With their rough and impartial justice they put both men in the wrong, but mostly Gilleen for insubordination. The affront Gilleen had suffered was not so big and momentous, a long way from being the vital thing in their eyes that it was in his. Gilleen was just nutty on that point, that was all there was to that. Regan's judgment had been bad and the moment he had seized for his thrust and fling was by no manner of means a psychological one; but, for all that, Gilleen had no business to strike the master mechanic. He had got what was coming to him—that was the verdict. He was out and out for good. It was pretty generally conceded that it would be a long while before he pulled a throttle on the Hill Division again.

What sympathy the engineer got, for he got some, wasn't on his own account. It was on account of his family—not the ancestral end of it, however. Six kids