Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/76

 ever polluted the West, and that's using pretty strong language. Don't ask me how Breen got to Big Cloud that night away from the others waiting to begin their hellish work. Don't ask me. I don't know. Why he did it—is different. That, I can tell you. What they wanted him to do, to have a part in, was that one thing I was speaking about, the one thing he couldn't do. Breen was a railroad man, railroading was in his blood, that's all—but it's everything—railroading was in his blood. As for the rest, maybe he didn't know what they were really up to until the last moment, and then stole away from them. Maybe they found it out, suspected him, and some of them followed him, tried to stop him, tried to keep him from reaching here. But what's the use of speculating? I never knew, I never will know. Breen can't tell me, can he? And all that I can tell you is what I saw and heard that night.

I had the night trick then—Breen's job—they gave me Breen's job. It seemed somehow at first like sacrilege to take it—as though I was robbing him of it, taking it away from him, wronging, stripping, impoverishing the man to whom I owed even the knowledge that made me fit, that made it possible, to hold down a key—his key. Of course, that was only sensitiveness, but you understand, don't you? It caught me hard when I first "sat in," but gradually the feeling wore off; not that I ever forgot, I haven't yet for that matter, only time blunts the sharp edges, and routine, habit, and custom do the rest. I don't need to tell you that I remember that night. Remember it!