Jack received considerable attention because of his part in the capture, and the affair still forms one of the popular yarns among trainmen on that division of the Middle Western.
XV
THE DUDE OPERATOR
Alex Ward, like most vigorous, manly boys of his type, had a fixed dislike for anything approaching foppishness, especially in other boys. Consequently when on reporting at the Exeter office one evening he was introduced to Wilson Jennings, Alex treated him with but little more than necessary courtesy. For the newcomer, an operator but little older than himself, was distinctly a “dude”—from his patent-leather shoes and polka-dotted stockings to his red-and-yellow banded white straw hat. His carefully-pressed suit was the very latest thing in light checked gray, he wore a collar which threatened to envelope his ears, and his white tie was of huge dimensions. Also he possessed the fair pink-and-white complexion of a girl.
Alex was not alone in his derisive attitude toward the stranger. Shortly following the appearance of the night chief Mr. Jennings nodded everyone a good-evening, and departed, and immediately there was a general roar of laughter in the operating-room.
“Where did he fall from?” “Whose complexion powder is he advertising?” “Did you get onto his picture socks?” were some of the remarks bandied about.
When the chief announced that the new operator was from the east, and was being sent to the little foothills tank-station of Bonepile, there was a fresh outburst of hilarity.
“Why, that cowboy outfit near there will string him up to the tank spout,” declared the operator on whose wire Bonepile was located. “It’s the toughest proposition on the wire.”