“Gilleen,” said he briskly, “you’ll have to take out Special Eighty-three. 1603’s ready with a full head on pit two.” “What’s that?” snapped Gilleen. “Take out a special _now?_ You know damn well I’m just in from a run. I’m tired. You’ll rub it in once too often, Regan.” “We’re all tired, aren’t we?” returned the master mechanic tartly. “Do you think you’re the only one? As for rubbing it in, you’d better draw your fire, my bucko. There’s no rubbing in being done except in your eye! Anyhow, that’s enough talk. Special Eighty-three’s carded on rush orders from down East, and she’s been in here an hour now.” “Well, why didn’t you let the crew that brought her in keep goin’ then?” snarled Gilleen. It was a fool question and he knew it; but, as he had said, he was tired, and his temper, never angelic, was now pretty well on edge. Regan glared at him a moment angrily. Regan, too, was tired and irritable, harassed beyond the limit that most men are harassed. The demand upon the motive power department for men and engines had kept him up more than one night trying to figure out a problem that was well-nigh impossible. “Let ‘em go on!” he snorted. “You know well enough I haven’t anything on the Prairie Division men. You know that--what d’ye say it for, h’m? You’re the first man in--and you go out first.” “It strikes me I’m _generally_ the first man in these days,” retorted Gilleen angrily; “an’ I’m sick of gettin’ the short end of it. I guess I won’t go out this time.” It took a breathing spell before the master mechanic could explode adequately. “You call yourself a railroad man!” he flung out furiously. “What are you whining about? Every man’s got his shoulder to the wheel and pushing without talk. We haven’t got any room here for quitters. I guess that blood of yours you’re so pinhead-brained proud----” Regan did not finish. With a bellow of rage the red-haired engineer went at the other like a charging bull, and the master mechanic promptly measured his length on the roundhouse floor from a wallop on the head that made him see stars. Regan scrambled to his feet. His heart was the heart of a fighter, even if his build was not. Straight at Gilleen he flew, and the passes and lunges and jabs he made--while the engineer played on the master mechanic’s paunch like a kettle-drum and delivered a second wallop on the head as a plaster for the first--are historic only for their infinitesimal coefficient of effectiveness. It is unquestionably certain that the master mechanic then and there would have proceeded to make up for some of his lost sleep, at least, if Gilleen’s fireman and a wiper or two hadn’t got in between the two men just when they did. Gilleen was boiling mad. “Well,” he bawled, “got anything more to say about quittin’ or that other thing? I guess I won’t go out this time, what?”