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 and maintenance than the routine of their daily toil, nor cared to learn. They were land sailors who had learned the ropes; it was not for them to be captains, and they knew it very well.

Once in a while there was one to be met like Mike Quinn. Mike was a reading man, although as good a drinkin' man as ever breasted the bar. He could discourse about the Pyramids and the Missouri River; about Napoleon and Brigham Young. He followed politics, and read the prize-fight news to the jerries under the cottonwood trees at Mrs. Ryan's boarding house beside the track. It took a crafty man at an argument to get ahead of Mike, who would come around with unexpected quips and turns, sharper than Plato ever was in his life.

Trainmen were greatly amused by the sight of Tom Laylander in his big hat, humping over a tamping-pick; infinitely diverted by his pistol swinging on the handcar lever at the side of the track. They called him the "cow jerry"; the news of his presence on the section at McPacken went up and down the line.

Firemen stood in the cab doors to look at him as they passed, some of them making facetious gestures of drawing a gun or swinging a rope. Brakemen on the tops of freight trains varied these, to Tom, questionably comical antics, by whooping, and prancing around in imitation of a bronco.

All of these cracks at him on the part of the intellectuals, taken in addition to the general run of mockery and derision thrown at the jerries in passing, began to