"Sp'iled me aim! Thot engineer's savin' of the Sooz tribe! ...

Drill, ye terriers, drill! Drill, ye terriers, drill! ... Shane, I

don't hear yez shootin'."

"How'n hell can I shoot whin me eye is full of blood?" demanded

Shane.

Neale then saw blood on Shane's face. He crawled quietly to the

Irishman.

"Man, are you shot? Let me see."

"Jist a bullet hit me, loike," replied Shane.

Neale found that a bullet, perhaps glancing from the wood, had cut a

gash over Shane's eye, from which the blood poured. Shane's hands

and face and shirt were crimson. Neale bound a scarf tightly over

the wound.

"Let me take the rifle now," he said.

"Thanks, lad. I ain't hurted. An' hev Casey make me loife miserable

foriver? Not much. He's a harrd mon, thot Casey."

Shane crouched back to his port-hole, with his bloody bandaged face

and his bloody hands. And just then the train stopped with a

rattling crash.

"Whin we git beyond thim ties as was scattered along here mebbe

we'll go on in," remarked McDermott.

"Mac, yez looks on the gloomy side," replied Casey. Then quickly he

aimed the shot. "I loike it better whin we ain't movin'," he

soliloquized, with satisfaction. "Thot red-skin won't niver scalp a

soldier of the U. P. R.... Drill, ye terriers! Drill, ye terriers,

drill!"

The engine whistle shrieked out and once more the din of conflict

headed to the front. Neale lay there, seeing the reality of what he

had so often dreamed. These old soldiers, these toilers with rail

and sledge and shovel, these Irishmen with the rifles, they were the

builders of the great U. P. R. Glory might never be theirs, but they

were the battle-scarred heroes. They were as used to fighting as to

working. They dropped their sledges or shovels to run for their

guns.