Part 17 (1/2)

”Never mind,” smiled Carleton. ”Report to Halstead in the next room to-morrow morning at seven o'clock.”

P. Walton hesitated, as though to complete his interrupted sentence, and then, with an uncertain look at Regan, turned and walked quietly from the room.

Regan wheeled around and stared after the retreating figure. When the door had closed he looked inquiringly at Carleton.

”Touched you for a loan, eh?” he volunteered quizzically.

”No,” said Carleton, still smiling; ”a job. I gave him the money as an advance.”

”More fool you!” said the blunt little master mechanic. ”Your security's bad--he'll never live long enough to earn it. What sort of a job?”

”Helping Halstead out to begin with,” replied Carleton.

”H'm!” remarked Regan. ”Poor devil.”

”Yes, Tommy,” said Carleton. ”Quite so--poor devil.”

Regan, big-hearted, good-natured for all his bluntness, walked to the front window and watched P. Walton's figure disappear slowly, and a little haltingly, down the platform. The fat little master mechanic's face puckered.

”We get some queer cards out here,” he said. ”He looks as though he'd had a pretty hard time of it--kind of a discard in the game, I guess.

Out here to die--pleasant, what? I wonder where he came from?”

”He didn't say,” said Carleton dryly.

”No,” said Regan; ”I dare say he didn't--none of 'em do. I wonder, though, where he came from?”

And in this the division generally were in accord with Regan. They didn't ask--which was outside the ethics; and P. Walton didn't say--which was quite within his rights. But for all that, the division, with Regan, wondered. Ordinarily, they wouldn't have paid much attention to a new man one way or the other, but P. Walton was a little more than just a new man--he was a man they couldn't size up.

That was the trouble. It didn't matter who any one was, or where he came from, if they could form an opinion of him--which wasn't hard to form in most instances--that would at all satisfactorily fill the bill.

But P. Walton didn't bear the earmarks of a hard case ”wanted” East, or show any tendency toward deep theological thought; therefore opinions were conflicting--which wasn't satisfying.

Not that P. Walton refused to mix, or held himself aloof, or anything of that kind; on the contrary, all hands came to know him pretty well--as P. Walton. As a matter of cold fact, they had more chances of knowing him than they had of knowing most new-comers; and that bothered them a little, because, somehow, they didn't seem to make anything out of their opportunities. As a.s.sistant clerk to the super, P. Walton was soon a familiar enough figure in the yards, the roundhouse and the shops, and genial enough, and pleasant enough, too; but they never got past the pure, soft-spoken, perfect English, and the kind of firm, determined swing to the jaw that no amount of emaciation could eliminate. They agreed only on one thing--on the question of therapeutics--they were unanimous on that point with Regan--P. Walton, whatever else he was, or wasn't, was out there to die. And it kind of looked to them as though P. Walton had through rights to the Terminal, and not much of any limit to speak of on his permit.

Regan put the matter up to Carleton one day in the super's office, about a month after P. Walton's advent to Big Cloud.

”I said he was a queer card the first minute I clapped eyes on him,”

observed the master mechanic. ”And I think so now--only more so. What in blazes does a white man want to go and live in a two-room pigsty, with a family of Polacks and about eighteen kids, for?”

Carleton tamped down the dottle in his pipe with his forefinger musingly.

”How much a week, Tommy,” he inquired, ”is thirty dollars a month, with about a third of the time out for sick spells?”

”I'm not a mathematician,” growled the little master mechanic. ”About five dollars, I guess.”

”It's a good guess,” said Carleton quietly. ”He bought new clothes you remember with the ten I gave him--and he needed them badly enough.”

Carleton reached into a drawer of his desk, and handed Regan an envelope that was torn open across the end. ”I found this here this afternoon after the paycar left,” he said.

Regan peered into the envelope, then extracted two five-dollar gold pieces and a note. He unfolded the note, and read the two lines written in a hand that looked like steel-plate engraving.