Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/143

 bonfire and tacked them over the boards which he had picked up along the track, salved from the wreckage of boxcars, and appropriated by night from open loads of lumber which stopped convenient to his site.

In his domestic economy Ryan was a forehanded and original man. He had a wife, big as a feather bed, soft as dough, one of those half-Indian leavings which remained after the tribes were swept out of the way to make place for farms and towns. On these sunny spring days she could be seen from afar, moving ponderously about in a little fenced enclosure where Jack had spaded up the ground for a garden.

"You've come up in the world since then," Hall commended him. "This job is far and away better than jerrying. There's no telling where a man of your capabilities might go. Are you in line for another promotion?"

"There's nothing here for a man except the job of poompin' wather for the ingins. I'm no scientifical man; I'd do no good to set me heart on that job. It pays sivinty-five a month—it's a grand aisy job Tom Harris has, settin' in his nate little house watchin' the sthroke of the poomp, and never a lick of worruk to lay his hand to but shovelin' a bit of coal now and then. But it's not for me; I'm no scientifical man."

"There ought to be something else for a man of your merit, Jack. Why don't you strike Farley for a change?"

"No; I'm too far west of Dodge. There's no chance for a man to better himself out here, savin' he might be a brakey, or one of them fellys. I've thought of takin' me up a bit of land and goin' back to farmin', as I was brought up to in Donegal, but they tell me murphys won't