out--if it hadn't been for Owsley the Limited would have gone into the
Elk that night with every soul on board. Owsley? That's the way he
wanted to go out, wasn't it?--with the 1601. Mabbe the Grand Master
thought of him, too."

III

THE APOTHEOSIS OF SAMMY DURGAN

The only point the Hill Division, from Carleton, the super, to the last
car tink, would admit it was at all hazy on as far as Sammy Durgan was
concerned, was why in the everlasting name of everything the man stuck
to railroading. When the Hill Division got up against that point it
was floored and took the count.

Sammy Durgan wore the belt. He held a record never equalled before or
since. Tommy Regan, the master mechanic, who had a warped gift for
metaphor, said the man was as migratory on jobs as a flock of crows in
a poor year for corn, only a blamed sight harder to get rid of.

As far back as anybody could remember they remembered Sammy Durgan.
Somewhere on the division you were bound to bump up against him--but
rarely twice in the same place. There wasn't any one in authority,
even so mild an authority as a section boss, who hadn't fired Sammy
Durgan so often that it had grown on them like a habit. Not that it
made much difference, however; for, ejected from the roundhouse, Sammy
Durgan's name would be found decorating the pay roll next month in the
capacity of baggage master, possibly, at some obscure spot up the line;
and here, for example, a slight mix-up of checks in the baggage of a
tourist family, that divided the family against itself and its baggage
as far as the East is from the West--and Sammy Durgan moved on again.
What the Hill Division said about him would have been complimentary if
it hadn't been for the grin; they said he was an _all-round_ railroad
man. Shops, roundhouse, train crews, station work and construction
gangs, Sammy Durgan knew them all; and they knew Sammy Durgan.
Eternally and everlastingly in trouble--that was Sammy Durgan.

Nothing much else the matter with him--just trouble. Brains all right;
only, as far as the Hill Division could make out, the last thing Sammy
Durgan ever thought of doing was to give his brains a little exercise
to keep them in condition. But, if appalling in his irresponsibility,
Sammy Durgan nevertheless had a saving grace--no cork ever bobbed more
buoyantly on troubled waters than Sammy Durgan did on his sea of
adversity. Sammy Durgan always came up smiling. He had a perennial