mething--and, instead, snapped his jaws
shut like a steel trap. The last little bit of enthusiasm had oozed
out of the usually good-natured little master mechanic. Two days'
tinkering with the 1608, the division all keyed up to a smile,
everybody trying to do his best to please, a dozen little intimate
plans and arrangements talked over and worked out, were all now a
matter of earnest and savage regret to Regan.

"By Christmas," growled Regan to himself, as he elbowed his way through
the crowd on the platform--for the town, to the last squaw with a
papoose strapped on her back, had turned out to see the Directors'
Special off--"by Christmas, if 'twere not for Carleton's sake, I'd tell
him, the little tin god that he thinks he is, what _I_ think of him!
And mabbe," added Regan viciously, as he swung aboard the observation
car behind H. Herrington Campbell, "and mabbe I will yet!"

But Regan's cup, brimming as he held it to be, was not yet full. It
was a pretty swell train, the Directors' Special, that the crowd sent
off with a burst of cheering that lasted until the markers were lost to
view around a butte; a pretty swell train, about the swellest that had
ever decorated the train sheet of the Hill Division--two sleepers, a
diner and observation, mostly mahogany, and the baggage car a good
enough imitation to fit into the color scheme without outraging even
the most esthetic taste, and the 1608 on the front end, gold-leafed,
and shining like a mirror from polished steel and brass. As far as
looks went there wasn't a thing the matter with it, not a thing; it
would have pulled a grin of pride out of a Polack section hand--which
is pulling some. And there wasn't anything the matter with the
send-off, either, that was propitious enough to satisfy anybody; but,
for all that, barring the first hour or so out of Big Cloud, trouble
and the Directors' Special that afternoon were as near akin as twin
brothers. Nothing went right; everything went wrong--except the 1608,
that ran as smooth as a full-jewelled watch, when old Dan, for the
mix-up behind him, could run her at all. The coupling on the diner
broke--that started it. When they got that fixed, something else
happened; and then the forward truck of the baggage car developed a
virulent attack of hot box.

The special had the track swept for her clean to the Western foothills,
and rights through. But she didn't need them. Her progress was a
crawl. The directors, i