Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/98

 that here and there you'll find a man who isn't as modest about his own ability as he ought to be!

Spitzer's nocturnal habits, that were a matter of so much unconcern and of which the railroad crowd at Big Cloud were so densely in ignorance, have a part in this. The truth is that between the lunch-counter and the station is the baggage and freight-shed, and behind the freight-shed it is very dark; and also, not less pertinent, is the fact that Merla was possessed of no other quarters than those shared by her sister-in-arms in Dutchy's employ—which were neither propitious nor commodious. Hence—but the connection is obvious.

On Merla's night off at eight o'clock, Spitzer sneaked down through the fields and across the platform, weather permitting, and on those nights Merla donned her bonnet "for a walk"—at the same hour. When the station-clock struck ten and, coincidentally, Number One's mellow chime sounded down the gorge, Merla retraced her steps to the upstairs rear of the lunch-counter, and Spitzer retraced his across the platform to the fields in the direction of the town and his boarding-house; only, of late, Spitzer had taken to lingering on the platform way up at the far end where it was also very dark and equally as deserted.

Here he would gaze wistfully at the big mogul with valves popping and the steam drumming at her gauges, as she waited on the siding just in front of him—Big Cloud being a divisional point where the engines were changed—to back down onto Number One for the first stretch of the mountain run—Burke's run with 503,