"Maybe you can, and maybe you can't. We'll try you out on the railroad
desk, and Peters 'll show you what you don't know. Peel your coat and
jump in. Hours eight to six; pay, sixty dollars a month: more bimeby if
you're worth it."
Robert Louis Stevenson's cheerful little opening verse:
"Light foot and tight foot,
And green grass spread;
Early in the morning,
And hope is on ahead,"
was ringing in my ears when I squared myself at the railroad desk and
attacked the first big bunch of "flimsies," as the tissue copies of the
waybills are called. It was almost unbelievable that my luck had turned
so soon, and yet the fact seemed undeniable. I had a job to which I had
been recommended by the one man in the city who knew my record. No
questions had been asked, and the inference seemed to be that none were
going to be asked.
I was all of a busy week getting a firm working hold upon the routine of
my desk, and during that time I didn't exchange a dozen words with
Mullins, who appeared to be the head and front of Consolidated Coal,
locally, at least, and whose word, in the office and about the yards, was
law. None the less, the little mystery connected with this easy finding
of a job in a strange city persisted, and it kept me from dwelling too
pointedly upon the object for which I meant to live and work; namely, the
squaring of accounts with Abel Geddis and Abner Withers.
Singularly enough, it took me, trained accountant as I was, a full month
to find out what I had been let in for, and why the job I was holding
down had been given to an ex-convict. It was my duty to check the
railroad waybills on consignments of coal, to correct the weights, and to
make claims for overcharges and shortages. I made these claims as I had
been told to make them, taking the figures of the weights from Peters,
who, in turn, took them from the scale men in the yard. It was Peters
who gave the snap away one night when we two were working overtime in the
otherwise deserted offices.
"Say, Weyburn; you've got about the coldest nerve of any fellow I've ever
run up against," he said, looking up from his place across the
flat-topped desk.
"What makes you say that, Tommy?" I asked.
"Because it's so. I've been watching you. You've been sitting on the
lid for an even month, now, and never batting an eye when these railroad
fellows come at you and make their little roar about the overcharges.
Believe me, it takes nerve to do that--and carry it off as if you were
reading 'em a verse out o' the Bible. Blaisdell, the lad who was here
before you, went batty and talked in his sleep. Told me once he couldn't
see anything but stripes, any way he looked."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, with a sudden sinking
of the heart. "Why should it take nerve to tell a railroad agent he's
been overcharging us?"
Peters's laugh was a cackle. "You're the traffic man of this outfit: do
you know the rates on coal from the mines to Western Central common
points?"
"Of course I do."
"Got 'em all down in the printed tariff, so you can't help knowing 'em,
eh? Consolidated Coal pays these rates, doesn't it?--all according to
Hoyle and the Interstate Commerce laws?"
"I suppose we pay them. I check the bills as they are presented."
"Exactly. But every little so-while you have to make a whaling big claim
on the railroad company for overcharges, and maybe you've noticed that
these claims are always paid--or maybe you haven't?"