Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/310

 "Gentlemen, this is no time for mirth!" he cried. "We are the victims of a swindle. We are in the clutch of an octopus—that is to say, a food trust, composed of Dutchy and the dining-car conductors of Numbers One and Two. It is my painful duty to assert that I recognize this bone as the identical bone on which I fed two nights ago coming up the line on Number One."

Dutchy entered, staggering under the load of the replenished pot, when Thornley solemnly demanded a rebate on the spot.

"Vat iss it?" said Dutchy, halting and peering anxiously into the pot; then, evidently reassured that no essential ingredient had been forgotten, he looked up at the ring of faces that were regarding him with grave inquiry. "Vat iss a repate?" he demanded. "It something iss mit der bread und butter for twenty cents to go, yess?"

The crowd roared, and up and down the division train-crews, engine-crews, and section-gangs got the joke and passed it on until the lunch-counter became known to every man on the system as "The Rebate."

They did not explain the joke to Dutchy, and for days he endured the chaff stolidly, though with much bewilderment, until, one afternoon, MacDonald patiently and ploddingly acquainted him with the unhallowed baseness of one Thornley—helping himself, by way of compensation, to the heap of doughnuts under the glass cover.

Dutchy listened, his cheeks getting redder and