"What sort of things?" demanded Williams.

"When it comes to that, your guess is as good as mine, but they'll
spell trouble for the amatoors and the trouble-makers, I reckon. I ain't
placin' any bets yet, but that's about the way it stacks up to me."

Williams let the 266 out another notch, hung out of his window to look
back at the smoking hot box, and, in the complete fulness of time, said,
"Think he's got the sand, Andy?"

"This time you've got me goin'," was the slow reply. "Sizing him up one
side and down the other when he called me back to pull my ear, I said,
'No, my young bronco-buster; you're a bluffer--the kind that'll put up
both hands right quick when the bluff is called.' Afterward, I wasn't so
blamed sure. One kind o' sand he's got, to a dead moral certainty. When
he saw what was due to happen back yonder at the culvert, he told me
'23,' all right, but he took time to hike up ahead and yank that Jap
cook out o' the car-kitchen before he turned his own little handspring
into the ditch."

The big engineer nodded, but he was still unconvinced when he made the
stop for the siding at Last Chance. After the fireman had dropped off to
set the switch for the following train, Williams put the unconvincement
into words.

"That kind of sand is all right in God's country, Andy, but out here in
the nearer edges of hell you got to know how to fight with pitchforks
and such other tools as come handy. The new boss may be that kind of a
scrapper, but he sure don't look it. You know as well as I do that men