“Mr. Sprague? He’s a whole team, and an extra horse hitched on behind, Shorty; that’s about what he is. Don’t you ever go around advertising your freshness in the Timanyoni by giving it out that you don’t know Mr. Calvin Sprague.”
“I reckon I’ve already done done it, haven’t I?” laughed the car-record man. “What if you fix me so I won’t have to do it again?”
Connolly held a lighted match to the blackened bowl of the corn-cob, and then put both match and pipe aside to take the “train-passing” report of the incoming westbound “Quick-step” as it was clicked through the sounder from the first telegraph station east of Brewster.
“Mr. Sprague is about the biggest man that ever walked into this office, Shorty,” he averred, after he had made the proper train-sheet entry for the approaching train. “Big up and down, big through the middle, big sideways, and biggest of all in his think-tank. He can look you over twice and tell you the exact size of the yellow spot on your liver; and if that won’t do, he’ll look you over again and tell you how all-fired near you came to breaking your bond record one night up at that little shack station you’ve been running in the mining country.”
The newly appointed car-record man bounded out of his chair as if he had been shot.
“I—I didn’t, Dan!” he protested, dry-lipped; “so help me God, I didn’t!” And then, curiosity getting the better of the sudden shock: “How in Sam Hill did you know?”
Connolly grinned good-naturedly and made a motion with the flat of his hand as if he would reach across the room and push Johnson back into his chair.
“Take it plumb easy, kid,” he laughed. “I was only talking through my hat—just hitting out in the dark to show you how Mr. Sprague could size you up if he wanted to. But you asked who he is: he’s a friend of Mr. Maxwell’s, and he lives in Washington when he’s at home—does chemical stunts in one of the Government offices. He’s happened to soak in here a couple of times when we were needing a bushel or two more brains than we could make out to rustle up among ourselves, and——”
The break came in an importunate chattering of the west-line sounder on Connolly’s table, and the despatcher righted his tilted chair with a thump and fell upon his key. The car-record man sat back with his hands locked at the nape of his neck and looked on absently. Out of the din and clatter of the several sounders he could easily have picked the story that was coming from the west over Connolly’s wire, but the trained operator’s habit of ignoring the irrelevant wire chatter was upon him, and his first intimation of the nature of the story came in the fading of the ruddy flush in Connolly’s full-moon cheeks and the uncontrollable trembling of the despatcher’s left and unbusied hand.
Instantly the short-legged car-record operator left his chair and crossed the room to hang over Connolly’s shoulder.