because they could operate it, wasn't
finished by a good deal, and construction camps were more numerous than
stations. Bridge gangs were still at work; temporary trestles were
being replaced with ones more permanent; there were cuts through the
gray of the mountain rock to be trimmed and barbered with dynamite; and
there were grades and approaches and endless things to struggle over;
and--well, Big Cloud was still the Mecca of the gamblers, the dive
keepers, and the purveyors of "red-eye," who had flocked there to feed
like vultures on the harvest of pay checks that were circling around.
It was a pretty hard place, Big Cloud--everything wide open--not much
of any law there in the far West in the shadow of the Rockies. It's
different to-day, of course; but that's the way it was then, when
Martin Bradley was firing on the Transcontinental.

Bradley from the first boarded with the MacQuigans. That's how,
probably, he came to think more of young Reddy MacQuigan, who was a
wiper in the roundhouse, than he did of any of the rest of the railroad
crowd. Perhaps not altogether for young Reddy's sake; perhaps on
account of Mrs. MacQuigan, and particularly on account of old John
MacQuigan--who wasn't any good on earth--a sodden parasite on the
household when he was drunk, and an ugly brute when there wasn't any
money forthcoming from the products of Mrs. MacQuigan's ubiquitous
washtubs to get drunk with. For old John MacQuigan, between whom and
Bradley there existed an armed truce, each regarding the other mutually
as a necessary evil, had no job--for two reasons: first, because he
didn't want one; and, second, because no one would have given him one
if he had. Mrs. MacQuigan, a patient, faded-out little woman, tireless
because she had to be tireless, shouldered the burden, and hid her
shame as best she could from her neighbors. Reddy? No; he didn't help
out much--then. Reddy used to stray a little from the straight and
narrow himself--far enough so that it was pretty generally conceded
that Reddy held his job in the roundhouse on account of his mother, who
did Regan's washing; and, as a matter of cold fact, that was about the
truth of it; and, as a matter of cold fact, too, that was why the
big-hearted master mechanic liked Martin Bradley.

"I dunno," Regan used to say, twiddling his thumbs over his fat paunch,
"I dunno; it's about the last place _I'd_ want to board, with that
drunken pickings from the scrap heap aroun