"He is the big boss," says the boy with awe, gazing after the spangle of the flying train.
"I would not envy Regan if I were you," advises Craney. "See how he has gone—with no friend to bid him godspeed because of the way he has kept us all under."
But the boy still gazes after the spangle in the dust. "Divil a bit will Regan care whether he be godspeeded or not," he says, so boldly that Craney considers him with respect.
"I see that yourself has ambition along of the rags," he says with meditation. "Then I know a job where you may use the ambition freely and never a chance to part with the rags," he says. "A job which is the equal of Regan's in every way, only on a smaller scale, you understand; where you will be general manager of a railroad and all the other officials to boot, including your own pay-master. Do I interest you?"
Tim nods in respect to the big words and Mr. Craney instructs him: "Whist! Arrange your running time to meet me passing the yard-limit post yonder at six one p.m."
And to make it official he scribbles a train order in his note-book for Tim to sign with his mark, as his drunken grandfather has educated him to do.
Then Mr. Craney strolls away to answer the signals of the engine that there are cars to be weighed, and Tim prowling professionally past the lunch counter in the waiting room, steals a banana and a sandwich, which he has for breakfast in the shade of a pile of ties. There he watches the making up of trains, the flying switches, the flatheads scuttling along packing the journal boxes; and far beyond he can see the machine shops with the forked tongues of blacksmiths' forges and the blink of brasses in the roundhouse.
A great groan of iron and steam and toil swells in the smoky light, and the bells call to him so that he begins prowling everywhere from end to end of the yards. The noon comes with blowing of whistles; and hungry again he goes back to the lunch counter while the waiter is busy and sandwiches are easy prey. But instead of stealing them he comes out on the platform with empty hands and stares back, not understanding why it is so, till the groan of the work hour swelling again calls up the memory of black-browed Regan who has been big boss of it all.
"'T is sure he would never run and hide from a policeman," says Tim, and ponders how Regan would act in his place. "He would go hungry if he was not strong enough to take what he wanted to their faces—that is what Regan would do," he says; and despising sandwiches and sinkers which have to be stolen in secret he struts proudly about with his rags and hunger till the six o'clock whistle blows and Mr. Craney meets him at the yard limit.
Now be it explained that just below this spot the Great Southwest had built its first freight house, abandoned as the village of Barlow grew away from it into a big town. Long ago the foundations have been wiped out, but in Regan's time it still stands, a ramshackle ruin on the edge of the right of way, which some official with economy has leased out instead of tearing down.