"Nor the hussy," the little woman snapped, apparently at the mud- hens paddling on the surface of the lagoon.
"I've been travelling toward the nugget right along - ""There was never no reason for you to stay in that dangerous country," his wife snapped in on him.
"Now, Sarah," he appealed."I was working for you right along." And to me he explained: "The risk was big, but so was the pay.Some months I earned as high as five hundred gold.And here was Sarah waiting forme back in Nebraska - "
"An' us engaged two years," she complained to the Tower of Jewels.
" - What of the strike, and me being blacklisted, and getting typhoid down in Australia, and everything," he went on."And luck was with me on that railroad.Why, I saw fellows fresh from the States pass out, some of them not a week on their first run.If the diseases and the railroad didn't get them, then it was the Spiggoties got them.But it just wasn't my fate, even that time I rode my engine down to the bottom of a forty-foot washout.I lost my fireman; and the conductor and the Superintendent of Rolling Stock (who happened to be running down to Duran to meet his bride) had their heads knifed off by the Spiggoties and paraded around on poles.But I lay snug as a bug under a couple of feet of tender coal, and they thought I'd headed for tall timber - lay there a day and a night till the excitement cooled down.Yes, I was lucky.The worst that happened to me was I caught a cold once, and another time had a carbuncle.But the other fellows!They died like flies, what of Yellow Jack, pneumonia, the Spiggoties, and the railroad.The trouble was I didn't have much chance to pal with them.No sooner'd I get some intimate with one of them he'd up and die - all but a fireman named Andrews, and he went loco for keeps."I made good on my job from the first, and lived in Quito in a 'dobe house with whacking big Spanish tiles on the roof that I'd rented.And I never had much trouble with the Spiggoties, what of letting them sneak free rides in the tender or on the cowcatcher.Me throw them off?Never!
I took notice, when Jack Harris put off a bunch of them, that I attended his funeral MUY PRONTO - ""Speak English," the little woman beside him snapped.
"Sarah just can't bear to tolerate me speaking Spanish," he apologized."It gets so on her nerves that I promised not to.Well, as I was saying, the goose hung high and everything was going hunky-dory, and I was piling up my wages to come north to Nebraska and marry Sarah, when I run on to Vahna - ""The hussy!" Sarah hissed.
"Now, Sarah," her towering giant of a husband begged, "I just got to mention her or I can't tell about the nugget.- It was one night when I wastaking a locomotive - no train - down to Amato, about thirty miles from Quito.Seth Manners was my fireman.I was breaking him in to engineer for himself, and I was letting him run the locomotive while I sat up in his seat meditating about Sarah here.I'd just got a letter from her, begging as usual for me to come home and hinting as usual about the dangers of an unmarried man like me running around loose in a country full of senoritas and fandangos.Lord! If she could only a-seen them.Positive frights, that's what they are, their faces painted white as corpses and their lips red as - as some of the train wrecks I've helped clean up.
"It was a lovely April night, not a breath of wind, and a tremendous big moon shining right over the top of Chimborazo.- Some mountain that.The railroad skirted it twelve thousand feet above sea level, and the top of it ten thousand feet higher than that.
"Mebbe I was drowsing, with Seth running the engine; but he slammed on the brakes so sudden hard that I darn near went through the cab window.
"'What the - ' I started to yell, and 'Holy hell,' Seth says, as both of us looked at what was on the track.And I agreed with Seth entirely in his remark.It was an Indian girl - and take it from me, Indians ain't Spiggoties by any manner of means.Seth had managed to fetch a stop within twenty feet of her, and us bowling down hill at that! But the girl.She - "I saw the form of Mrs.Julian Jones stiffen, although she kept her gaze fixed balefully upon two mud-hens that were prowling along the lagoon shallows below us."The hussy!" she hissed, once and implacably.Jones had stopped at the sound, but went on immediately.
"She was a tall girl, slim and slender, you know the kind, with black hair, remarkably long hanging, down loose behind her, as she stood there no more afraid than nothing, her arms spread out to stop the engine.She was wearing a slimpsy sort of garment wrapped around her that wasn't cloth but ocelot skins, soft and dappled, and silky.It was all she had on - ""The hussy!" breathed Mrs.Jones.
But Mr.Jones went on, making believe that he was unaware of theinterruption.
"'Hell of a way to stop a locomotive,' I complained at Seth, as I climbed down on to the right of way.I walked past our engine and up to the girl, and what do you think? Her eyes were shut tight.She was trembling that violent that you would see it by the moonlight.And she was barefoot, too.
"'What's the row?' I said, none too gentle.She gave a start, seemed to come out of her trance, and opened her eyes.Say! They were big and black and beautiful.Believe me, she was some looker - ""The hussy!" At which hiss the two mud-hens veered away a few feet.But Jones was getting himself in hand, and didn't even blink.
"'What are you stopping this locomotive for?' I demanded in Spanish.Nary an answer.She stared at me, then at the snorting engine and then burst into tears, which you'll admit is uncommon behaviour for an Indian woman.
"'If you try to get rides that way,' I slung at her in Spiggoty Spanish (which they tell me is some different from regular Spanish), 'you'll be taking one smeared all over our cowcatcher and headlight, and it'll be up to my fireman to scrape you off.'
