“It’s a damned shame!” he muttered under his breath. And then: “If I were half as loyal to him as he is to Grillage, I’d blow the whole gaff--tell him exactly what he is up against on this crooked job, and at least give him a chance to fight with his eyes open. Maybe I shall, some day--after it’s everlastingly too late.” XIV The Mucker For some little time after his chief had gone to sleep, Silas Plegg bent thoughtfully over his task at the trestle-table. It was said of him that he could live and work with less sleep than any other man on the staff, and his nightly vigils proved it. Now and again the midnight workers on some remote section of the job would look up to find the first assistant staring down at them from some coign of vantage, and the shirkers never knew at what moment the cool, crisp voice of the under-boss would come crackling out of the shadows with a snap like that of a whip lash. With the slipping of the rubber band over the last of the field-books, Plegg rose noiselessly and left the car as if to begin another of his nocturnal rounds. In the shadow of the cement sheds he overtook the yard watchman. “Anything stirring, Mac?” he asked. “Nothin’ but that tunnel mucker they call ‘Simmy’. Early in the evenin’ I caught him prowlin’ ’round the big boss’s private car. I asked him what he was doin’ and he said he couldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t ’a’ thought nothin’ of it if you hadn’t told me to keep an eye out for him.” “Anything else?” “Nothin’ much, ’cept that the next time I come around I catch him snoopin’ under the windows of yours and Mr. Vallory’s sleep-wagon. This time I takes him by the ear and runs him over to his bunk shack and tells him to stay there till his shift’s called.” “How long ago was that?” Plegg inquired. “’Bout a half-hour, I reckon. He--Well, I’ll be dog-goned! Look yonder!” Plegg had already seen. The sputtering light of a distant masthead showed a lop-shouldered figure making off across the yard, dodging as it went to keep within the shadows cast by the scattered material cars. “I’ll go after him,” said the watchman; but Plegg stopped him. “No, Mac; stay on your job. I think this may be what I’ve been waiting for.” And as craftily as if he had been trained in Indian warfare, the first assistant set out to trail the dodging figure.