"I dunno," he said. "I figure you must have been brought into the world for something, but I dunno what it is. You're not to blame for your father; but if I let a mother of mine, and nearing sixty years, slave out the little time she's got left, I'd want to crawl out somewhere amongst the buttes and make coyote meat of myself. Jump you before you've done anything—eh!" The little master mechanic's voice rose suddenly. "I saw you sneak uptown an hour ago when you left the pay car—one drink for a start—h'm! Well, you put another on top of it, and it'll be for a—finish! I'd do a lot for that fine old lady of a mother of yours, and that's why I've taken the trouble to come over here and warn you what'll happen if you put in the night you're heading for. 'Tisn't because I can't run the roundhouse without you, my bucko—mind that!"
Bradley was snapping his fingers in his queer, nervous way. Reddy MacQuigan made no answer; at least, Bradley did not hear any, but he heard Regan moving toward the door. He had no wish to talk to the master mechanic any more, not just at that moment anyhow, so he crunched through the engine cinders to another door, entering the roundhouse as Regan went out on the turntable and headed across the tracks for the station.
Two pits away, Reddy MacQuigan, with a black scowl on his face, leaned against the steam chest of the 1004. Bradley, pretending not to see him, swung through the gangway and into the cab of the 582. There, for half an hour, he busied himself in an aimless fashion; but with an eye out for the young wiper, as the latter moved about the roundhouse.
The whistle was blowing and Reddy was pulling off his overalls, as Bradley swung out of his cab again; and he was shading a match from the wind over the bowl of his pipe just across the turntable, as Reddy came out. He tossed away the match, puffed, and nodded at MacQuigan.
"Hello, Reddy," he said in his quiet way, and fell into step with the boy.
MacQuigan didn't answer. Bradley never spoke much, anyhow. They crossed the tracks and started up Main Street in silence. Here, the railroaders, in groups and twos and threes, filled the street; some hurrying homeward; others dropping in through the swinging doors, not infrequently located along the right of way, where gasoline lamps flared out over the gambling hells, and the crash of tin-pan pianos, mingled with laughter and shouting, came rolling out from the dance-hall entrances.
Bradley, with his eyes in front of him, walked along silently. Upon MacQuigan's young face had settled the black scowl again; and it grew blacker as he glanced, now and then, at the man beside him. Behind them came a knot of his cronies—and some one called his name.
MacQuigan halted suddenly.
"Well, so long, Martin," he said gruffly. "I'll be up a little later."
Bradley's hand went out and linked in the other's arm.