Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/142

 "It's lucky the big stiff has the arrum of him broke," he said to Dr. Hall.

"The jerries seem to think you've got a pretty soft job of it, Jack," the doctor remarked.

"They're jillis. There's not a man on Bill Chambers's gang that has the brains in 'im to do me worruk. Wasn't I a jerry myself before I got me fut crooshed innunther the han'kyar and Pete Farley put me here to compinsate me for me sooferin'? I was. Many a year I hoomped me back over a tampin'-pick, dhrivin' rocks innunther the ties."

Ryan sighed over the recollection, in no hurry to get up and hump his back over the mop. Dr. Hall knew his habits very well; Ryan had explained the routine of his day many a time before. One hour every third day Ryan dedicated—that was the word he used—to the scrubbing of the car. He spent ten minutes in the actual work, the rest of the time getting ready to begin, and easing his tremendous energies down to stop.

Just then he was sitting as he had adjusted himself in his cold scorn of Mickey Sweat, back squarely against the car. Now he shifted a little to plant himself in the door, shoulders against the jamb. By degrees he would work around to the job that way, talking all the time. Dr. Hall sat in his surgical chair, never tired of Ryan, his plaints and self-praising, his views on the activities and ambitions of other men, always in relation to his own importance among them.

Ryan lived in a little tin house down the railroad. Snug on the bank of the river it stood, contrived out of cans from which railroaders and others in Damascus drew their chief sustenance. He had melted the tins apart in a