Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/333

 So Speckles descended the stairs to the platform and irresolutely began to cross the tracks in the direction of the running-shed. He reached the roundhouse and skirmished cautiously along its front. No Healy was in sight, so he dived in between two engines and made his way to the rear of the shed. Here, by peering around the end of a tender, he could see Healy's cubby-hole—Healy called it an office—a bit of space about four by six partitioned off from the back wall in the corner, with a greasy book the engine-crews signed, and two or three others, equally greasy, in which Healy kept tabs on things in general.

In spite of his trepidation, Speckles grinned. Healy was there, bending over a very flimsy, spindle-legged table that he had wheedled out of the claim-agent some months before. His brows were puckered into a ferocious scowl, and he growled and muttered to himself, now laboring furiously with a stubby pencil on the sheets of paper in front of him, now pausing to bite that unoffending article almost in two in his desperation.

Healy was working on his invention. All the division knew about Healy's ideas on Westinghouse and "air," and that these ideas, when perfected, were to be patented. As to what the consensus of opinion of their value was is neither here nor there, except that in Healy's presence, when referred to at all, the subject was treated with dignity and respect, for Healy's physical powers were beyond the ordinary, and dearest to Healy's heart and most sacred in his eyes was this