Larry hung his head and said nothing.
“That is where you are making your mistake,” the chief went on. “If you wish to be a really big man, you must get rid of that class consciousness that you have brought up with you from the shops and the train service. Big Money needn’t make its possessors any more or less human than other people, and it doesn’t, usually. Those people to-day were really hurt because you denied them the common human privilege of thanking you for a thing that was far beyond all thanks. Will you try to remember that?”
“Yes, sir; I’ll try,” said Larry, and he was sincere enough in making the promise.
But later, after he had escaped and had found Dick Maxwell, the class consciousness that Mr. Ackerman had spoken of rose up in all its poverty-pride and once more had its innings. Dick had ridden as far as Pine Gulch on the special train, out-going, and Bess Holcombe had told him that the men of the party were making up a purse for the rescuer of the runaway Pullman.
“They can keep their money,” said Larry sullenly; “I don’t want any of it,”—this after Dick had told him.
And—such is the perversity of poor human nature—on a night when he should have gone to bed thankful that the day had afforded him a chance to save life, he rolled himself in his blankets and turned his face to wall with a strange bitterness for a bedfellow and a feeling that perhaps, after all, he had made a mistake in leaving the Brewster round-house and his job of wiping engines.
CHAPTER VIII
A FELLOW NAMED JONES
“Now then, men—together!” clang!
The material train had just pulled up to the present-moment end-of-track on the Extension with a flat-car load of rails, and the crew, directed by a big-voiced foreman, was unloading the car.