Big Cloud has had other celebrations, before and since, but none quite so unanimous as that one. Restraint never did run an overwhelmingly strong favorite with the town, but that night it was hung up higher than the arms on the telegraph poles. Men that the community used to hide behind and push forward as hostages of righteousness, when it was on its good behavior and wanted to put on a front, cut loose and outshone the best—or the worst, if you like that better—-of the crowd that never made any bones about being on the other side of the fence. They burned red flares, very many of them, that Carleton neglected to imagine had any connection with the storekeeper and the supply account; they committed indiscretions, mostly of a liquid nature, that any one but the trainmaster, who was temporarily blind in both eyes, could have seen; and, as a result, the Hill Division the next day was an eminently paralytic and feeble affair. This is a very general description of the event, because sometimes it is not wise to particularize—this is a case in point.
Coogan’s send-off was a send-off no other man, be he king, prince, president, sho-gun, or high mucky-muck of whatever degree, could have got—except Coogan. Coogan got it because he was Coogan, just Coogan—and the night was a night to wonder at.
Regan summarized it the next evening over the usual game of pedro with Carleton, upstairs over the station in the superb office.
“Apart from Coogan and me,” said the master mechanic, in a voice that was still suspiciously husky, “apart from Coogan and me and mabbe the minister—” the rest was a wave of his hand. Regan could wave his hand with a wealth of eloquence that was astounding. .
“Quite so,” agreed Carleton, with a grin. “Too bad to drag them into it, though. Both ‘peds’ to me, Tommy. It’s a good thing for the discipline of the division that bigamy is against the law, what?”
“They’ll be talking of it,” said Regan reminiscently, “when you and me are on the scrap heap, Carleton.”
“I guess that’s right,” admitted the super. “Play on, Tommy.”
But it wasn’t. They only talked of Coogan’s wedding for about a year—no, they don’t talk about it now. We’ll get to that presently.
The Imperial Limited was the star run on the division—Regan gave Coogan the thirty-third degree when he gave him that—that and 505, which was the last word in machine design. And Coogan took them, took them and the schedule rights that pertained thereto, which were a clear and a clean-swept track, and day after day, up hill and down, Number One or Number Two, as the case might be, pulled into division on the dot. Coogan’s stock soared—if that were possible; but not Coogan. The youngest engineer on the road and top of them all, would have been excuse enough for him to show his oats and, within decent limits, no one would have thought the worse of him for it—Coogan never turned a hair. He was still the friend of the ‘bo and the man in trouble, still the Coogan that had been a wiper in the roundhouse; and yet, perhaps, not quite the same, for two new loves had come into his life—his love for Annie Coogan, and his love, the love of the master craftsman, for 505. In the little house at home he talked to Annie of the big mountain racer and Annie, being an engineer’s daughter as well as an engineer’s wife, listened with understanding and a smile, and in the smile was pride and love; in the cab Coogan talked of Annie, always Annie, and one day he told his fireman a secret that made big Jim Dahleen grin sheepishly and stick out a grimy paw.
Fate is a pretty grim player sometimes—and always, it seems, the cards are stacked.