themselves, "a New York gutter snipe."

But, for all that, the name stuck. Up and down through the Rockies it
was--Toddles. Toddles, with the idea of getting a lay-over on a
siding, even went to the extent of signing himself in full--Christopher
Hyslop Hoogan--every time his signature was in order; but the official
documents in which he was concerned, being of a private nature between
himself and the News Company, did not, in the very nature of things,
have much effect on the Hill Division. Certainly the big fellows never
knew he had any name but Toddles--and cared less. But they knew him as
Toddles, all right! All of them did, every last one of them! Toddles
was everlastingly and eternally bothering them for a job. Any kind of
a job, no matter what, just so it was real railroading, and so a fellow
could line up with everybody else when the paycar came along, and look
forward to being something some day.

Toddles, with time, of course, grew older, up to about seventeen or so,
but he didn't grow any bigger--not enough to make it noticeable! Even
Toddles' voice wouldn't break--it was his young heart that did all the
breaking there was done. Not that he ever showed it. No one ever saw
a tear in the boy's eyes. It was clenched fists for Toddles, clenched
fists and passionate attack. And therein, while Toddles had grasped
the basic truth that his nickname militated against his ambitions, he
erred in another direction that was equally fundamental, if not more so.

And here, it was Bob Donkin, the night despatcher, as white a man as
his record after years of train-handling was white, a railroad man from
the ground up if there ever was one, and one of the best, who set
Toddles-- But we'll come to that presently. We've got our "clearance"
now, and we're off with "rights" through.

No. 83, Hawkeye's train--and Toddles'--scheduled Big Cloud on the
eastbound run at 9.05; and, on the night the story opens, they were
about an hour away from the little mountain town that was the
divisional point, as Toddles, his basket of edibles in the crook of his
arm, halted in the forward end of the second-class smoker to examine
again the fistful of change that he dug out of his pants pocket with
his free hand.

Toddles was in an unusually bad humor, and he scowled. With exceeding
deftness he separated one of the coins from the others, using his
fingers like the teeth of a rake, and dropped the rest back jingling
into his po