Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/277

 A voice came out of the darkness from the other side of the track over by the roundhouse. "Where's Haggerty?" it demanded anxiously.

Then Haggerty tumbled, and his face went red with rage. He leaned far out over the rail, and, forgetful that the pantomime was lost in the darkness, shook his clinched fist in the direction from whence the voice had come.

"You go to he-ee-ll-lll!" he bawled, the exclamation shaken into syllables by reason of the car wheels jolting over the siding switches at that precise moment. And then, his senses being very acute, from where the light shone in the dispatcher's window he thought he heard, above the momentarily increasing rattle of the train, a laugh—a laugh that produced anything but a quieting effect on his already outraged sensibilities.

Now Haggerty was not the nature of those who can pass lightly over a joke at their own expense, especially if that joke be too prolonged and carries with it a hint of underlying venom. Therefore, as the "one on Haggerty" spread over the division, and scarcely an hour of the day passed that the cry "Where's Haggerty?" did not reach his ears, he began to sulk and treasure up his injury. The division was rubbing it in pretty hard. But the curious part of it all was that his bitterness was not directed against himself who was the direct cause of his discomfiture, nor against Spence who was the indirect cause, but against Hale, who was no cause at all.

Just once had Haggerty seen the superintendent. Hale was pointed out to him on the platform at Big