"Mabbe," said Regan, chewing absently on his blackstrap; and then, as a sort of afterthought: "What kind of a job?"
"A steady one," said Sammy Durgan doggedly. "I dunno just what, but——"
"H'm!" said Regan solicitously. "Well, don't make up your mind in a hurry, Durgan—I don't want to press you. When you've had a chance to look around a little more, mabbe you'll be able to decide better—what? Get out!"
Sammy Durgan backed to the door. There he paused, blinking fast again:
"Some day I'll show you, Regan, you and all the rest of 'em, and——"
"Get out!" said the little master mechanic peremptorily.
And Sammy Durgan got out. He was always getting out. That was his forte. When he got in, it was only to get out.
"Some day," said Sammy Durgan—and the Hill Division stuck its tongue in its cheek. But Sammy Durgan had his answer to the blunt refusal that invariably greeted his modest request for a fresh job.
"Listen here," said Sammy Durgan, with a firm hold on the overalls' strap of, it might be, the bridge foreman he was trying to wheedle a time check out of. "'Twas Regan fired me first, but he was in a bad humor at the time; 'twas the steam hose I was washing out boiler tubes with in the roundhouse got away from me, and it was accidental, though mabbe for the moment it was painful for him. It just shows that if you get fired once it sticks to you. And as for them baggage checks out to Moose Peak, they weren't no family, they was a tribe, about eighteen kids besides the pa and ma, and fourteen baggage cars full of trunks. He was a little bow-legged fellow with a scared look, and he whispers where he wants the checks for about three minutes before train time, then she comes in, bigger'n two elephants, scorches him through a pair of glasses she carries on a handle, and orders 'em checked somewhere else. Say, was I to blame if some of them checks in the hurry didn't get the first name I'd written on 'em scratched out? And over there to the station the time Regan's office got flooded 'twasn't my fault. If you get fired once, you keep on getting fired no matter what you do. I turned the tap off. It was one of them little devils of call boys turned it on again. But do you think any one would believe that? They would not—or I'd have mentioned it at the time. If there's any trouble anywhere and I'm around it's put onto me. And there's Mrs. Durgan back there to Big Cloud. She ain't very well. Cough's troubling her more'n usual lately, and worrying about the rent not being paid ain't helping her any. Say, you'll give me a job, won't you?"
Sammy Durgan got the job.