Engineer Monsoon was a new man, who had been over the division only twice before in his life, both times in daylight. For that emergency Abe Monsoon was the man of all others, because it takes more than an ordinary moon to scare a thoroughbred West End engineer. But Monsoon and his moon headlight had between them saved De Molay Four from the scrap.
The relief arrangements and Monsoon's headlight were the fun of it, but there was more. Martin Duffy lay eleven weeks with brain fever before they could say moon again to him. Bob had skipped into the mountains in the very hour that he had disgraced himself. He has never shown up at Medicine since; but Martin is still Chief, and they think more of him on the Mountain district than ever.
Bucks got the whole thing when De Molay Four reached Rat River that night. Bucks and Callahan and Moore and Oyster and Pat Francis got it and smiled grimly. Nobody else on Special 326 even dreamed of leaving a bone that Sunday night in the Cinnamon cut. All the rest of the evening Bucks smiled just the same at the Knights and the Knightesses, and they thought him for a bachelor wonderfully entertaining.
A month later, when the old boys more or less ragged came straggling back from 'Frisco, Bucks's crowd stayed over a train, and he told his Pennsylvania cronies what they had slipped through in that delay at Rock Point.
"Just luck," laughed one of the Eastern superintendents, who wore on his watch chain an enormous Greek cross with "Our Trust is in God" engraved on it. "Just luck," he laughed, "wasn't it?"
"Maybe," murmured Bucks, looking through the Wickiup window at the Teton peaks. "That is—you might call it that—back on the Penn. Out here I guess they'd call it, Just God."
The Trainmaster's Story
OF THE OLD GUARD
I never found it very hard to get into trouble: as far back as I can remember that has come dead easy for me.