Then ensued two weeks of nothing to do but wait. Nothing to do but to pace the floor like some belligerent, red-faced caged animal, daring his Jewel to feel hurt because sneering remarks had been made about her husband's downfall. Two weeks--then came the summons. "Careful now, Martin! No wild throws, remember!" Lemuel Barstow was giving the final instructions. "We've got a big job ahead. I've brought you down here because you have the faculty of making men think they hate you--then going out and working their heads off for you, because well, to be frank, you're the biggest, blunderingest, hardest-working blusterer that I ever saw--and you're the only man who can pull me through. This road's in rotten shape, especially as concerns the roadbed. The steel and ties are all right, but the ballast is rotten. You've got to make it the best in Missouri, and you've got only eight months to do it in. So tear loose. Your job's that of special superintendent, with no strings on it. Pay no attention to any one but me. If you need equipment, buy it and tell the purchasing agent to go to the hot place. By March 1st, and no later, I want the track from St. Louis to Kansas City to be as smooth as a ballroom floor." "And why the rush?" "Just this: The O.R.& T. treated me like a dirty dog. I'm going to make 'em pay for it; I'm after my pound of flesh now! There's just one thing that road prizes above all else--it's St. Louis-Kansas City mail contracts. The award comes up again in March. The system that can make the fastest time in the government speed trials gets the plum. Understand?" "I do!" answered Martin, with the first real enthusiasm he had known in weeks. "'Tis me budget I'll be fixin' up immejiate at once. Ye'll get action, ye will." He departed for a frenzied month. Then he returned at the request of President Barstow. "You're doing wonderful work, Martin," said that official. "It's coming along splendidly. But--but----I understand there's a bit of a laugh going around among the railroad men about you." "About me?" Garrity's chest bulged aggressively. "An' who's laughin?" "Nearly everybody in the railroad game in Missouri. They say you let some slick salesman sting you for a full set of Rocky Mountain snow-fighting machinery, even up to a rotary snow plough. I----" "Sting me?" Martin bellowed the words. "That I did not!" "Good! I knew----" "I ordered it of me own free will. And if annybody laughs----" "But, Martin"--and there was pathos in the voice--"a rotary snow plough? On a Missouri railroad? Flangers, jull-ploughs, wedge ploughs--tunnel wideners--and a rotary? Here? Why--I--I thought better of you than that. We haven't had a snow in Missouri that would require all of those things, not in the last ten years. What did they cost?" "Eighty-three thousand, fi'hunnerd an' ten dollars," answered Martin gloomily. He _had_ pulled a boner. Mr. Barstow figured on a sheet of paper.