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Donkin put his hand quickly to his mouth and coughed. "Um-m!" said he pleasantly. "Super hard on you this morning Hoogan?" And with the words Toddles' heart went out to the big dispatcher: "Hoogan" and a man-to-man tone. "No," said Toddles cordially. "Say, I thought you were on the night trick." "Double-shift short-handed," replied Donkin. "Come from New York, don't you?" "Yes," said Toddles.
In another hour now he'd be up in the dispatcher's room at Big Cloud for his nightly sitting with Bob Donkin. He could see Bob Donkin there now; and he could hear the big dispatcher growl at him in his bluff way: "Use your head use your head Hoogan!" It was always "Hoogan," never "Toddles."
Donkin, after all, was like all the rest of them. "Well?" prompted the dispatcher. "You go to blazes!" said Toddles bitterly, and started for the door. Donkin halted him. "You're only fooling yourself, Hoogan," he said coolly. "If you wanted what you call a real railroad job as much as you pretend you do, you'd get one." "Eh?" demanded Toddles defiantly; and went back to the table.
The smile was back on Donkin's face as he pushed his chair from the table, stood up, and held out his hand man-to-man fashion. "I will," he said. "I liked your grit last night, Hoogan. And if you want to be a railroad man, I'll make you one before I'm through. I've some old instruments you can have to practice with, and I've nothing to do in my spare time. What do you say?"
On the first run that Christopher Hyslop Hoogan ever made, Hawkeye looked him over for a minute, said, "Toddles," shortlike and, shortlike, that settled the matter so far as the Hill Division was concerned. His name was Toddles. Piecemeal, Toddles wouldn't convey anything to you to speak of.
First he wasn't a man at all; second, he wasn't, strictly speaking, on the company's pay roll; third, which is apparently irrelevant, everybody said he was a bad one; and fourth because Hawkeye nicknamed him Toddles. Toddles had another name Christopher Hyslop Hoogan but Big Cloud never lay awake at nights losing any sleep over that.
"What's your name Toddles?" inquired Donkin, as Toddles halted before the dispatcher's table. Toddles froze instantly hard. His fists doubled; there was a smile on Donkin's face. Then his fists slowly uncurled; the smile on Donkin's face had broadened, but there wasn't any malice in the smile. "Christopher Hyslop Hoogan," said Toddles, unbending.
"Use your head, Hoogan" that's the way Donkin talked "anybody can learn a key, but that doesn't make a railroad man think quick and think right. Use your " Toddles stepped out on the platform and walked on ice. But that wasn't Toddles' undoing. The trouble with Toddles was that he was walking on air at the same time.
Toddles, with the idea of getting a lay-over on a siding, even went to the extent of signing himself in full Christopher Hyslop Hoogan every time his signature was in order; but the official documents in which he was concerned, being of a private nature between himself and the News Company, did not, in the very nature of things, have much effect on the Hill Division.
And as Toddles answered, back in Big Cloud, Regan, the sweat still standing out in great beads on his forehead, fierce now in the revulsion of relief, glared over Donkin's left shoulder, as Donkin's left hand scribbled on a pad what was coming over the wire. Regan glared fiercely then he spluttered: "Who's Christopher Hyslop Hoogan h'm?" Donkin's lips had a queer smile on them.
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