Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/129

 the humor of which seemed to grow as they carried it around.

They knew that Smith had discharged Tom. He was no longer a jerry, there was no degradation in the touch of his calloused hand. He had been only a sort of experimental jerry, anyway, never a serious one growing a hump on his back over a tamping-pick. Ford: Langley lingered a little after the others. He approached Tom's table picking his teeth.

"Hang around town till pay-day, kid," he advised, "and I'll see what I can do for you. Nearly always somebody drops out after pay-day."

Tom thanked him with so much gratitude and sincerity in his soft, slow-dragging voice that the roundhouse foreman went away swelled up with a feeling of magnanimity, just as if he had stooped and lifted some wreck of a jerry out of the ditch and taken him into the saloon and given him a drink.

Tom thought it would be a big and sudden jump for him if he intended to follow railroading, for a job in the roundhouse led to fireman, and fireman to engineer. In those days of much road building and quick promotion, the road from wiper to engineer was not a long one. Engineer was the top of consequence in McPacken. It combined dignity, affluence, high honor. An engineer could take the pick of anything in that town. It was the same in every little railroad center throughout the west in those days.

Louise waited until the congratulatory press had moved on, then approached Tom for his supper order.