Any one on the Hill Division can tell you the story—they've reason to know it, and they do—to the last man. If you'd rather get it first hand in a roundhouse, or between trains from the operator at some lone station that's no more than a siding, or in the caboose of a way freight—if you are a big enough man to ride there, and that means being bigger than most men—or anywhere your choice or circumstance leads you from the super's office to a track-walker's shanty; if you'd rather get it that way, and you'll get it better, far better, than you will here, don't try any jolly business to make the boys talk—just say a good word for Coogan, Chick Coogan. That's the "open sesame"—and the only one.
There's no use talking about the logical or the illogical, the rational or the irrational, when it comes to Coogan's story. Coogan's story is just Coogan's story, that's all there is to it. What one man does another doesn't. You can't cancel the human equation because there's nothing to cancel it with; it's there all the time swaying, compelling, dominating every act in a man's life. The higher branches of mathematics go far, and to some men three dimensions are but elemental, but there is one problem even they have never solved and never will solve—the human equation. What Coogan did, you might not do—or you might.
Coogan didn't come to the Transcontinental a full-blown engineer from some other road as a good many of the boys have, though that's nothing against them; Coogan was a product of the Hill Division pure and simple. He began as a kid almost before the steel was spiked home, and certainly before the right of way was
