Читать книгу Hands Up! онлайн

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"How do, sir?" said the boss. "Englishman?"

"How do you do?" I said. "No, I'm——"

"Oh—a Scotsman," he broke in. "That's better. Well, Mr. Dunnage, he told me you want a job. You want it badly?"

"Yes," I said.

"Um!" he said, and shook his head. "The trouble is that I've got only a gang of Dagoes to work for me and I never heard of a white man working with Dagoes before. The money's all right, two and a half, just as if they were white, but maybe you wouldn't care to tackle that—even temporar'y till the white gang comes up?"

"There is a white gang?" I asked.

We were standing near the operator's door and the light showed Douglas's face. I thought he gave a quick, keener look at me, as if thinking I was none so eager for work after all; and we in the Old Country are told to look eager in the States!

"In about a month," he said.

"Good," I said. "I can work in the Dago gang till then."

I saw that they both felt a little bad about it, then, as if they liked me for taking the job on, but felt some remorse for having nothing better to offer me. Still—I had to work and, as I have explained, being green to the country, there seemed to me to be no other work in the country but railroad work. The place looked, to my new eyes, wholly a void—with the railroad running through it.