"My God, Bull," he whispered, "do you know what that means? Something's wrong. She's against our order."
They found the Kid and Dan McGrew, and they got the Kid into little Doctor McTurk's hands at Big Cloud—but it was eight weeks and more, while the boy raved and lay in stupor, before they got the story. Then the Kid told it to Carleton in the super's office late one afternoon when he was convalescent—told him the bald, ugly facts in a sort of hopeless way.
Carleton listened gravely; it had come near to being a case of more lives gone out on the Circus Special and the Limited that night than he cared to think about. He listened gravely, and when the Kid had finished, Carleton, in that quiet way of his, put his finger instantly on the crux of the matter—not sharply, but gently, for the Kid had played a man's part, and "Royal" Carleton loved a man.
"Was it worth it, Keene?" he asked. "Why did you try to shield McGrew?"
The Kid was staring hard at the floor.
"He was my father," he said.
IX
THE OTHER FELLOW'S JOB
There is a page in Hill Division history that belongs to Jimmy Beezer. This is Beezer's story, and it goes back to the days of the building of the long-talked-of, figure-8-canted-over-sideways tunnel on the Devil's Slide, that worst piece of track on the Hill Division, which is to say, the worst piece of track, bar none, on the American continent.