I hold him not up for a model, neither glory in his wickedness. When I was friendless, he was my friend: his story is told. The Yellow Mail Story JIMMIE THE WIND There wasn't another engineer on the division that dared talk to Doubleday the way Jimmie Bradshaw talked. [Illustration: Jimmy the Wind.] But Jimmie had a grievance, and every time he thought about it, it made him nervous. Ninety-six years. It seemed a good while to wait; yet in the regular course of events on the Mountain Division there appeared no earlier prospect of Jimmie's getting a passenger run. "Got your rights, ain't you?" said Doubleday, when Jimmie complained. "I have and I haven't," grumbled Jimmie, winking hard; "there's younger men than I am on the fast runs." "They got in on the strike; you've been told that a hundred times. We can't get up another strike just to fix you out on a fast run. Hang on to your freight. There's better men than you in Ireland up to their belt in the bog, Jimmie." "It's a pity they didn't leave you there, Doubleday." "You'd have been a good while hunting for a freight run if they had." Then Jimmie would get mad and shake his finger and talk fast: "Just the same, I'll have a fast run here when you're dead." "Maybe; but I'll be alive a good while yet, my son," the master mechanic would laugh. Then Jimmie would walk off very warm, and when he got into the clear with himself, he would wink furiously and say friction things about Doubleday that needn't now be printed, because it is different. However, the talk always ended that way, and Jimmie Bradshaw knew it always would end that way. The trouble was, no one on the division would take Jimmie seriously, and he felt that the ambition of his life would never be fulfilled; that he would go plugging to gray hairs and the grave on an old freight train; and that even when he got to the right side of the Jordan there would still be something like half a century between him and a fast run. It was funny to hear him complaining about it, for everything, even his troubles, came funny to him, and in talking he had an odd way of stuttering with his eyes, which were red. In fact, Jimmie was nearly all red; hair, face, hands--they said his teeth were sandy.