"I guess so."
"You're blue to-night. What's the matter?" He shifted and it wasn't like him to shift.
"I'm going to quit the West End."
"Quit? What do you mean? You're not going to throw over this trainmaster offer?"
"I'm going to quit."
"What's the use," he went on slowly. "How can I take charge of conductors, talk to conductors? How can I discharge a conductor for stealing when he knows I'm a thief myself? They know it; Bucks knows it. There's no place among men for a thief."
"Dave, you take it too hard; everything ran wide open here. You're the best railroad man on this division; everybody, old and new, admits that."
"I ought to be a railroad man. I held down a division on the Pan Handle when I was thirty years old."
"Were you a railroad superintendent at thirty?"
"I was a trainmaster at twenty-seven. I'm forty-nine now, and a thief. The woman that ditched me is dead: the man she ran away with is dead: my baby is dead, long ago." He was looking out, as he spoke, on the flying desert ashen in the moonlight. In the car the passengers were hard asleep and we heard only the slew of the straining flanges and the muffled beat of the heavy truck under us.