ke Bradley would have let go at all? Well,
it's an easy matter and a very human one, to judge another from the
safe vantage ground of distance--isn't it? Some men take a thing one
way, and some another; and in some the feelings take deeper root than
in others--and find their expression in a different way. Ditched from
the start, Bradley hadn't much to cling to, had he--only the baby girl
he had dreamed about on the runs at night; only the little tot he had
slaved for, who some day was to make a home for him? But about the Rat
River Special----

It was midnight when they pulled out of Big Cloud; and Bradley, in the
caboose, glanced at Heney's tissue, which, as a matter of form, the
conductor gave him to read. The Special was to run twenty minutes
behind No. 17, the westbound mail train, and make a meeting point with
the through freight, No. 84, eastbound, at The Forks. The despatchers
had seized the propitious moment to send the rolling camp through in
the quiet hours of traffic, with an eye out to getting the foreigners
promptly on the job in the morning for fear they might draw an extra
hour or two of time--without working for it! The Special was due to
make Rat River at four o'clock.

Bradley handed back the order without comment, picked up his lantern,
and started for the door.

"No need of going forward to-night," said Heney, laying his arm on
Bradley's arm. "We've only a short train, a dozen cars, and we can
watch it well enough from the cupola. It's damn cold out there."

"Oh, I guess it's all right, Heney," Bradley answered--and went out
through the door.

There weren't any platforms to the box cars, just small end doors.
Once in camp, and stationary on a siding, the cars would be connected
up with little wooden gangways, you understand? Bradley, from the
platform of the caboose, stepped across the buffer, and made his way
through several cars. One was pretty much like another; a stove going,
and stuffy hot; the foreigners stretched out in their bunks, some of
them; some of them playing cards on the floor; some asleep; some
quarrelling, chattering, jabbering; a hard looking lot for the most
part, black-visaged, scowling, unshaven, gold circlets dangling in
their ears--bar the Swedes.

Bradley worked along with scarcely more than a glance at the occupants,
until, in the fourth car, he halted suddenly and shoved his lamp into
the face of a giant of a man, who squatted in the corner, sullen and
ap