"Who the hell is he?" roared Ed. Nobody answered: nobody knew. Bucks attempted to talk; Callahan lit his lighted pipe; but Ed Peeto stared at Hailey like a drunken man.
"Did you hear that?" he snorted at his superior.
Hailey nodded. The bridge foreman took his pipe from his mouth and dashed it into the stove. He got up and stamped across to the window and was like to have sworn the glass out before Hailey spoke.
"I'm glad we're up to high water at the Spider, Bucks," said he at last. "When they get in the Peace River work, the division will run itself for a year."
"Hailey," Bucks spoke slowly, "I don't need to tell you what I think of it, do I? It's a damned shame. But it's what I've said for a year--nobody ever knows what Omaha will do next."
Hailey rose to his feet. "Where you going, Phil?" asked Bucks.
"Going back to the Spider on Number Two."
"Not going back this morning--why don't you wait for Four, to-night?" suggested Bucks.
"Ed," Hailey raised his voice at the foreman, "will you get those stay-bolts and chuck them into the baggage-car for me on Number Two? I'm going over to the house for a minute." He forgot to answer Bucks; they knew what it meant. He was bracing himself to tell the folks before he left them. Preparing to explain why he wouldn't have the Sunday at home with the children. Preparing to tell the wife--and the old man--that he was out. Out of the railroad system he had given his life to help build up and make what it was. Out of the position he had climbed to by studying like a hermit and working like a hobo. Out--without criticism, or allegation, or reason--simply, like a dog, out.
Nobody at the Wickiup wanted to hear the telling over at the cottage; nobody wanted to imagine the scene. As Number Two's mellow chime whistle rolled down the gorge, they saw Hailey coming out of his house, his wife looking after him, and two little girls tugging at his arms as he hurried along; old Denis behind, head down, carrying the boy's shabby valise, trying to understand why the blow had fallen.
That was what Callahan up with Bucks at the window was trying to figure--what it meant.
"The man that looks to Omaha for rhyme or reason will beggar his wits, Callahan," said Bucks slowly, as he watched Ed Peeto swing the stay-bolts up into the car so they would crack the baggageman across the shins, and then try to get him into a fight about it. "They never had a man--and I bar none, no, not Brodie--that could handle the mountain-water like Hailey; they never will have a man--and they dump him out like a pipe of tobacco. How does it happen we are cursed with such a crew of blooming idiots? Other roads aren't."