"You'll be doing it a long time, then," said Regan bluntly, laying a few inches of engine dust with blackstrap juice; "a long time, Beezer—till I'm dead."
But it wasn't. Regan was wrong about that, dead wrong. It's unexplainable the way things work out sometimes!
That afternoon, after a visit from Harvey, who had been promoted from division engineer to resident and assistant-chief on the Devil's Slide tunnel, Carleton sent for Regan.
"Tommy," said he, as the master mechanic entered his office, "did you see Harvey?"
"No," said Regan. "I didn't know he was in town."
"He said he didn't think he'd have time to see you," said Carleton; "I guess he's gone back on Number Seven. But I told him I'd put it up to you, anyway. He says he's along now where he is handling about half a dozen dump trains, but that what he has been given to pull them with, as near as he can figure out, is the prehistoric junk of the iron age."
"I saw the engines when they went through," Regan chuckled. "All the master mechanics on the system cleaned up on him. I sent him the old Two-twenty-three myself. Harvey's telling the truth so far. What's next?"
"Well," Carleton smiled, "he says the string and tin rivets they're put together with come off so fast he can't keep more than half of them in commission at once. He wants a good fitter sent up there on a permanent job. What do you say?"
"Say?" Regan fairly shouted. "Why, I say, God bless that man!"
"H'm?" inquired Carleton.