"He's rather a bad lot, I guess," wrote Bucks to Callahan, "but I am satisfied of one thing-you can't run that yard with a Sunday-school superintendent. He won't make you any trouble unless he gets to drinking. If that happens, don't have any words with him." Bucks underscored three times. "Simply crawl into a cyclone cellar and wire me. Sending you eighteen loads of steel to-night, and six cars of ties. Blair reports section 10 ready for track layers and Mear's outfit moving into the Palisade Ca on. Push the stuff to the front." It was getting dark, and Callahan sat in that part of the Benkleton depot he called the office, pulling at a muddy root that went unaccountably hot in sudden flashes. He took the pipe from his mouth, leaving his foot on the table, and looked at the bowl resentfully, wondering again if there could be powder in that infernal tobacco of Rubedo's. The mouthpiece he eyed as a desperate man might ponder a final shift.
After all the tragic adventures which Frank Nelson had passed through, since entering the service of his country, which we have attempted to describe in the preceding volume of this series, he found himself surrounded by his relatives and friends, petted and f ted, enjoying all the comforts of his old and well-beloved home.
