Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/241

 that's fool enough to do anything else now will do it with his eyes open, and it's his own funeral."

Those of the night crew in the roundhouse were evidently of the same mind. They received him, it is true, with little evidence of cordiality, but their aloofness was decidedly pronounced, and they looked askance at the queer figure as it dodged in and out of the shadows cast by the big mountain racers, or, at times, stood silently by one of the engine doors under the dim light of an oil lamp staring out across the black of the turntable to the twinkling switch lights in the yard. They didn't like him, but they had learned their lesson well; and, as the weeks slipped away, they practised it—he was to be left alone.

One thing they grudgingly admitted—Marley could work, and did. Clarihue, the night turner, was man enough to give another his due any time, no matter what his own personal feelings might be, and there was some talk, after a bit, between him and the master mechanic about Marley getting the next spare run firing.

Clarihue even went so far as to hint at it as a possibility to Marley, and for his pains got a surprise—he wasn't used to seeing the chance of promotion turned down. Marley had shaken his head and would have none of it. He was satisfied where he was. That was all there was to that. Clarihue drew back into his shell after that. Marley could wipe till his hair was gray for all he cared.

So Marley wiped; but at Mrs. Coogan's cottage, as the summer waned, there wasn't as much washing done