Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/299

 "Hold on a minute, Mac," Noonan cried, afraid that he had overstepped himself. "Don't get whiffy. I swear, I believe you're right. Let's see how you figure it."

And McQueen, mollified, figured it. Figured it with the stub of a pencil in greasy, scrawling characters on the back of a time order. As to the process by which the conclusion was arrived at, that was something of which Noonan was in profound and utter ignorance. Whether it was right or wrong, he did not know. He never knew—and cared less! Certainly the result was there.

McQueen completed the last figure of his calculation with a flourish. "There!" he cried exultingly. "How about it now, eh?"

Noonan took the paper, wrinkled his brows, pursed his lips, and stared at it with the air of a connoisseur of calculus. "H'm," said he slowly, "are you dead sure it's right, Mac?"

"Right!" McQueen fairly yelled, touched in another tender spot. "Right! Confound you, it's there in black and white, ain't it? Figures don't lie, do they? Well, what in thunder's wrong with you, then?"

"I wanted to be sure, Mac, that's all. Holy fishplates, I knew it was bad, rotten bad, but I didn't think they were handing it to us like this."

"You bet it's bad. It's the worst ever. There's more kinds of coal than there are spikes in the right of way from here to Big Cloud and back again, but