He found her there--found her with a little bundle lying in the crook of her outstretched arm. She moaned and held it toward him--but Flannagan had gone his limit, his work was done, the tension broke. And when they worked their way to the far end of the car after him, those hard, grim-visaged followers of Flannagan, they found a man squatted on an up-ended seat, a woman beside him, death and desolation and huddled shapes around him, dandling a tiny infant in his arms, crooning a lullaby through cracked lips, crooning a lullaby--to a little one long hushed already in its last sleep. Opinions differ. But Big Cloud to-day sides about solid with Regan. "Flannagan?" says the master mechanic. "Flannagan's a pretty good wrecking boss, pretty good, I don't know of any better--since the Almighty had him on the carpet. He's got a plot up on the butte behind the town, he and Daisy, with a little mound on it. They go up there together every Sunday--never've known 'em to miss. A man ain't likely to fall off the right of way again as long as he does that, is he? Well, then, forget it, he's been doing that for a year now--what?" V THE MAN WHO SQUEALED Back in the early days the payroll of the Hill Division was full of J. Smiths, T. Browns and H. Something-or-others--just as it is to-day. But to-day there is a difference. The years have brought a certain amount of inevitable pedigree, as it were--a certain amount of gossip, so to speak, over the back fences of Big Cloud. It's natural enough. There's a possibility, as a precedent, that one or two of the passengers on the _Mayflower_ didn't have as much blue blood when they started on the voyage as their descendants have got now--it's possible. The old hooker, from all accounts, had a pretty full passenger list, and there may have been some who secured accommodations with few questions asked, and a subsequent coat of glorified whitewash that they couldn't have got if they'd stayed at home where they were intimately known--that is, they couldn't have got the coat of glorified whitewash. It's true that there's a few years between the landing of the _Mayflower_ and the inception of Big Cloud, but the interval doesn't count--the principle is the same. Out in the mountains on the Hill Division, "Who's Who" begins with the founding of Big Cloud--it is verbose, unprofitable and extremely bad taste to go back any farther than that--even if it were possible. There's quite a bit known about the J. Smiths, the T. Browns and the H. Something-or-others now, with the enlightenment of years upon them--but there wasn't then. There were a good many men who immigrated West to help build the road through the Rockies, and run it afterwards--for reasons of their own. There weren't any questions asked. Plain J. Smith, T. Brown or H. Something-or-other went--that was all there was to it.