He is almost as gaunt as Tim and covered with the grime on the road.
"What? Are you not yet swallowed up by the cursed Suburban?" he asks, astonished. "Then you will give me word of Katy O'Hare, and I am gone by the through freight. Fortune was not in the direction I took," he adds by way of explaining; "so I am beating up west and south; 't is a far search and leaves me little time between trains."
"There is time enough!" Regan has him by the arm. "You are Craney of the Suburban. Come!"
And so terrible is the grip he is fallen into that Mr. Craney is dragged out and through the dark with hardly perceptible struggle.
Tim Cannon watches them out with ghastly nonchalance; once more fortune has declared against him and he takes his loss, biding only Craney's return to throw up his job and be gone.
The night passes and a faint iron rumor drifts down from the northern sky where the P. D. construction gangs are breaking camp; then a boom of dynamite. The campaign is on again; no need of concealment now, the Suburban has passed safely into Regan's hands.
The red coal in the rusty stove crumbles, the lantern smokes out.
"I was just too late; 't is little I know," thinks Tim Cannon.
A burly battered man enters the door and leads out the horse; the gang at his heels attack the old building with pick and bar; to a ripping of shingles the dawn twinkles through; the battle which the outcast had halted so long is passing over his body.
The battered man shakes the iron bar in his hand, pointing it significantly at walls and roof tumbling about; Tim looks at him scornfully, and the gang tear at the flooring with picks and axes.