wn to the roundhouse in the late afternoon an
hour before train time, just as he always did, puttered and oiled
around and coddled the 304 for an hour, just as he always did, just as
though he was always going to do it, took his train out, came back on
the early morning run, backed the 304 into the roundhouse, and trudged
up Main Street to where it began to straggle into the buttes, to where
his cottage and the little old lady were--just as he always did. And
the little old lady, with the debt paid, went about the town for those
two weeks happier-looking, younger-looking than Big Cloud had ever seen
her before. That was all.

But Regan, worrying, pulling at his mustache, put it up to little Billy
Dawes, old Dan's fireman, one day in the roundhouse near the end of the
two weeks.

"How's Dan take it in the cab, Billy?" he asked.

The little fireman rolled the hunk of greasy waste in his hands, and
swabbed at his fingers with it for a moment before he answered; then he
sent a stream of blackstrap juice viciously into the pit, and with a
savage jerk hurled the hunk of waste after it.

"By God!" he said fiercely.

Regan blinked--and waited.

"Just the same as ever he was," said Billy Dawes huskily, after a
silence. "Just the same--when he thinks you're not looking. I've seen
him sometimes when he didn't know I was looking."

Regan said: "H'm!"--kind of coughed it out, reached for his plug, as
was usual with him in times of stress, bit into it deeply, sputtered
something hurriedly about new piston rings for the left-hand head, and,
muttering to himself, left the roundhouse.

And that night old Dan MacCaffery took out the 304 and the local
passenger for the run west and the run back east--just as he always
did. And the next night, and for two nights after that he did the same.

Came then the night of the 31st.

It was the fall of the year and the dusk fell early; and by a little
after six, with the oil lamps lighted, that at best only filtered
spasmodic yellow streaks of gloom about the roundhouse, the engines
back on the pits were beginning to loom up through the murk in big,
grotesque, shadowy shapes, as Regan, crossing the turntable, paused for
a moment hesitantly. Why he was there, he didn't know. He hadn't
meant to be there. He was just a little early for his nightly game of
pedro with Carleton over in the super's office--it wasn't much more
than half past six--so he had had some time to put in--that m