Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/244

 "I said good-by before I came down to work,"—he spoke as though talking to himself.

"Oh!" said Carleton, and looked at Marley sharply, "I suppose you know what she went East for?"

"Yes," said Marley gruffly. That was all—just "yes." And with that he turned abruptly and started across the tracks for the roundhouse.

Carleton, taken aback, watched him in angry amazement, then the scowl that had settled on his face broke in a smile, and he shrugged his shoulders.

"Guess Tommy is right," he muttered, as he went on toward the office. "Marley's all in a class by himself. We've never had anything like him in the mountains before."

It was four days before Mrs. Coogan and the master mechanic came back. Days during which Marley slipped into Dutchy's lunch counter at deserted moments for his meals, and, if that were possible, drew into himself closer than ever.

The boys were curious about Mrs. Coogan, naturally; curious enough even to question Marley. He had one answer, only one. "She's sick, I guess," he said. They got nothing more out of him than that.

One thing Marley did, though, that Clarihue, while he thought nothing of it at the time, remembered well enough afterwards. He asked the turner to give him a sheet of railroad paper and a manila, and in his spare moments the night before Mrs. Coogan came back he labored, bent over the little desk where the engine crews signed on and off, scratching painstakingly with a pen. Clarihue caught a glimpse of the sheet in