Goose River Junction is not a lively place. It has been claimed that even the buzzards at Goose River Junction play solitaire. But apart from the utter loneliness it was hard to hold operators there on account of Nellie Cassidy. A man rarely stayed at Goose River past the second pay-check. When he got money enough to resign he resigned; and all because Nellie Cassidy despised operators. The lunch counter that Matt Cassidy, Nellie's father, ran at the Junction was just an adjunct for feeding train crews and the few miners who wandered down from the Glencoe spur. Matt himself took the night turn, but days it was Nellie who heated the Goose River coffee and dispensed the pie--contract pie made at Medicine Bend, and sent by local freight classified as ammunition, loaded and released, O. R. It was Nellie's cruelty that made the frequent shifts at Goose River. Not that she was unimpressible, or had no heroes. She had plenty of them in the engine and the train service. It was the smart-uniformed young conductors and the kerchiefed juvenile engineers on the fast runs to whom Nellie paid deference, and for whom she served the preferred doughnuts. But this was nothing to Bullhead. He had his head so full of things when he took his new position that he failed to observe Nellie's contempt. He was just passing out of the private detective stage; just getting over dental beginnings; just rising to the responsibility of the key, and a month devoted to his immediate work and the study of the rules passed like a limited train. Previous to the coming of Bullhead, no Goose River man had tried study of the rules as a remedy for loneliness; it proved a great scheme; but it aroused the unmeasured contempt of Nellie Cassidy. She scorned Bullhead unspeakably, and her only uneasiness was that he seemed unconscious of it. However, the little Goose River girl had no idea of letting him escape that way. When scorn became clearly useless she tried cajolery--she smiled on Bullhead. Not till then did he give up; her smile was his undoing. It was so absolutely novel to Bullhead--Bullhead, who had never got anything but kicks and curses and frowns. Before Nellie's smiles, judiciously administered, Bullhead melted like the sugar she began to sprinkle in his coffee. That was what she wanted; when he was fairly dissolved, Nellie like the coffee went gradually cold. Bullhead became miserable, and to her life at Goose River was once more endurable.