There on the platform stood Britt, clutching the limp and soggy Tommy Eye by the slack of his jacket. The Honorable Pulaski, jealous of every second of time, had remained in conversation to the last with his birch foreman. He stepped aboard just as Tommy, jarred from his feet, was pitching off the other side of the platform. The Honorable Pulaski snatched for him and held on, at the imminent risk of his own life. Already both of them were leaning far out, for Tommy Eye, in the blissful calm of his spirit, was making no effort to help himself.
In an instant MacLeod was down the car aisle and had pulled both back to safety.
“Why in blastnation ain’t you staying in this hog-car here, where you belong, you long-legged P.I. steer?” roared the old man, his anger ready the moment his fright subsided. “What do I hire you for? You came near letting me lose the best teamster in my whole crew. Now get into that car and stay in that car till we get to the end of this railroad.”
He put his hands against MacLeod’s breast and shoved him backward into the door, where Tommy Eye, grinning in fatuous ignorance of the danger he had passed through, had just disappeared ahead of him. The angry shame of a man cruelly humiliated twisted MacLeod’s features, but he allowed his imperious despot to push him into the car, casting a last appealing look at the girl. Britt slammed the door and stood on the platform, bracing himself by a hand on either side the casing, and peered through the dingy glass to make sure that his crew was now under proper discipline.
“He’s a driver and a master,” piped up Grizzly Whiskers, with the appositeness of a Greek chorus.
“There’s the song about him, ye know:
“Oh, the night that I was married,
The night that I was wed,
Up there come Pulaski Britt
And stood at my bed-head.
Said he, ‘Arise, young married man,
And come along with me.
Where the waters of Umcolcus
They do roar along so free.’”
“I’ll bet he went, at that,” volunteered a man farther back in the car. “When Britt is after men he gits’ em, and when he gits ’em he uses ’em.”
“Mr. Britt,” he shouted down the car aisle as the old man entered, “that was brave work you done in savin’ Tommy’s life!”