Tom always should have had money, for your "rough-neck" on the
Zone has decidedly the advantage over the white-collared college
graduate when the pay-car comes around. But of course being a
genuine "rough-neck" Tom was always deep in debt, except on the
three days after pay-day, when he was rolling in wealth.

Once I fancied the bulk of my troubles was over. Tom disappeared,
leaving not a trace behind--except his working-clothes tumbled on
and about his cot. Then it turned out that he was not dead, but in
Ancon hospital taking the Keeley cure; and one summer evening he
blew in again, his "cure" effected--with a bottle in his coat
pocket and two inside his vest. So the next day there was Tom
celebrating his recovery all over House 47 and when next morning
he did finally go back to his shovel there were scattered about
the room six empty quart bottles each labeled "whiskey." Luckily
Tom ran a shovel instead of a passenger train and could claw away
at his hillside as savagely as he chose without any danger
whatever, beyond that of killing himself or an odd "nigger" or
two.

We had other treasures on exhibition in 47. There was "Shorty,"
for instance. "Shorty" was a jolly, ugly open-handed, four-eyed
little snipe of a roughneck machinist who had lost "in the line of
duty" two fingers highly useful in his trade. In consequence he
was now, after the generous fashion of the I.C.C., on full pay for
a year without work, providing he did not leave the Zone. And
while "Shorty," like the great majority of us, was a very
tolerable member of society under the ordinary circumstances of
having to earn his "three squares a day," paid leisure hung most