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 was taking 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