While the discussion deepens and even rages in the Wickiup, Monsoon himself is silent. Brave men are modest men. Among ourselves we don't use adjectives; where Monsoon is known it is not necessary to put anything ahead of his name--except, may be, once a month on the payroll when the cross-eyed accountant adds A. or Abe or Abraham, just as he happens to be fixed for time. Monsoon's name in itself stands for a great deal. When his brother engineers, men who have grown seamy and weather-beaten in the service, put up their voices for Monsoon's headlight; or when talkative storekeepers, who servilely jump at headquarters' experiments in order to court the favor of the high, speak for electricity, Abe Monsoon himself is silent. His light is there; let them take it or leave it as they will. If the Superintendent of Motive Power should attempt to throw it out for the new-fangled arrangement, Monsoon would doubtless feel that it was not the first time Omaha had gone wrong--and, for that matter, that neither he nor anybody else had assurance it would be the last. However--
The story opens on Bob Duffy. Bob, right from the start, was what I call a good-looker, and, being the oldest boy, he had more of the swing anyway. When Martin came along, his mother hadn't got over thinking about Bob. Doubtless she thought, too, of Martin; but he was kind of overshadowed. Bob began by clerking in the post-office and delivering mail to all the pretty girls. His sympathy for the girls was so great that after a while he began passing out letters to them whether they were addressed to the girls or to somebody else. This gradually weakened his influence with the government.
Martin began work in the telegraph office; he really learned the whole thing right there at the Bend under Callahan. Began, carrying Western Unions stuck at his waist under a heavy leather belt. He wore in those days, when he had real responsibility, a formidable brown Stetson that appeared bent on swallowing his ears: it was about the time he was rising trousers and eleven. Nobody but Sinkers ever beat Martin Duffy delivering messages, and nobody, bar none--Bullhead, McTerza, anybody--ever beat him eating pie. It was by eating pie that he was able to wear the belt so long--and you may take that either way. But I speak gladly of the pie, because in the usual course of events there isn't much pie in a despatcher's life. There is, by very large odds, more anxiety than pie, and I introduce the pie, not to give weight to the incidents that follow but rather to lighten them; though as Duffy has more recently admitted this was not always the effect of the pie itself.