“I haven’t a penny.”
“Because if you have ten plunks, you’re up against your emergency, don’t you make any mistake.”
“I haven’t a farthing.”
“Hell!” the man said, “I was cleaned out at pinochle myself, only last night, by that dam’ Dutchman. Hell!” He climbed from his perch, readjusted his foothold and clambered back.
“Dam’ that Dutchman’s soul and that dam’ Las Palomas Pilsener.” He seemed to be busy with his hands and eyes: soon he spoke again.
“Say, Kid, you gotta get out-a here. Watch-a doing? Digging?”
“Yes.”
“Is the roof ceiled inside? I see it is. Hold on, then, till I have a try.”
Sard heard him heave himself up on to the roof, where he seemed to lie prone, working busily, with very little noise, for ten minutes. It was still siesta time, but Sard judged that someone in the barracks might see or hear at any moment. Mutterings, mainly curses, came from the man on the roof, with the scraping and raking of tiles. For all the attempt to keep quiet, a good deal of force was being used; soon pieces of tile went slithering down the roof with what seemed to Sard a devilish tumult. Then the man seemed to get a purchase on a key-tile and wrench it this way and that, with the noise of a riveter’s yard. Sard felt that any sleeper within a hundred yards must be roused by the racket. Worse followed, for the tile broke; some of it flew off into the yard and smashed upon a stone, the rest bounced on the roof and then slithered down it and off it: the train-hand cursed it and its parents.
One of the soldiers, who had been sleeping in the barton, came into the yard, looked about him, saw the man on the roof and challenged.