Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/33

 "And have the whole crew quit, too? It's no use, Carleton, he's got to go. That's all there is to it."

Carleton shook his head doubtfully. "I don't like the idea of you two getting up there together. There's no need of you going, and you'd better not go. You don't know the man; if you think he'll forget"

"You're wrong, I do. I told you so before; anyway, it's too late now—we're off. Here's Spence with the orders."

Before Carleton could reply, Holman had grabbed the tissue and was running for the train. As he swung himself into the cab of the engine and handed Hurley, the driver, his orders, Rafferty climbed in from the other side.

At sight of Holman, Rafferty hesitated and half turned around in the gangway to go back to the caboose; but Holman reached out and caught his arm.

"Stay where you are, Rafferty," he said quietly. And during the nerve-racking thirty-mile run to Eagle Pass no other words passed between them. Sometimes in the mad slur of the locomotive as she hit the tangents their bodies touched; that was all.

Holman, by virtue of railroad etiquette, had climbed to the fireman's seat and once or twice he had glanced around at the great bulk of the man behind him, at the grim, set features, at the eyes that would not meet his, and wondered at his own temerity in inviting a physical encounter. And what good had it done? Was Carleton right after all? Perhaps. And yet behind the stubbornness, the self-will, the purely physical,