and sure things, Bat, but
I can make out to guess a guess, once in a while, when I have to. If
that little tailor-made man don't get his finger mashed, or something,
and have to go home and get somebody to poultice it, things are goin' to
have a spell of happenings on this little old cow-trail of a railroad.
That's my ante."

"What sort of things?" demanded Williams.

"When it comes to that, your guess is as good as mine, but they'll
spell trouble for the amatoors and the trouble-makers, I reckon. I ain't
placin' any bets yet, but that's about the way it stacks up to me."

Williams let the 266 out another notch, hung out of his window to look
back at the smoking hot box, and, in the complete fulness of time, said,
"Think he's got the sand, Andy?"

"This time you've got me goin'," was the slow reply. "Sizing him up one
side and down the other when he called me back to pull my ear, I said,
'No, my young bronco-buster; you're a bluffer--the kind that'll put up
both hands right quick when the bluff is called.' Afterward, I wasn't so
blamed sure. One kind o' sand he's got, to a dead moral certainty. When
he saw what was due to happen back yonder at the culvert, he told me
'23,' all right, but he took time to hike up ahead and yank that Jap
cook out o' the car-kitchen before he turned his own little handspring
into the ditch."

The big engineer nodded, but he was still unconvinced when he made the
stop for the siding at Last Chance. After the fireman had dropped off to
set the switch for the following train, Williams put the unconvincement
into words.

"That kind of sand is all right in God's country, Andy, but out here in
the nearer edges of hell you got to know how to fight with pitchforks
and such other tools as come handy. The new boss may be that kind of a
scrapper, but he sure don't look it. You know as well as I do that men
like Rufford and 'Cat' Biggs and Red-Light Sammy'll eat him alive, just
for the fun of it, if he can't make out to throw lead quicker'n they
can. And that ain't saying anything about the hobo outfit he'll have to
go up against on this make-b'lieve railroad."

"No," agreed Bradford, ruminating thoughtfully. And then, by way of
rounding out the subject: "Here's hopin' his nerve is as good as his
clothes. I don't love a Mongolian any better'n you do, Bat, but the way
he hustled to save that little brown man's skin sort o' got next to me;
it sure did. Says I, 'A man that'll do that won't go rou