ere, but
she hadn't been stopping there, the night clerk said. He maintained,
however, that "number two-aught-eight"--as he called it--had come in
half an hour late with a cow's head on the pilot and brindle hair on the
runnin' gears of the tender.

So I went over to the station and found Brin's head there, whereupon I
went down the track in search of her, though I feared it would be
futile, as you once said about administering a half sole to your summer
pantaloons. Well, I was right about it, Henry. If I'd been in the futile
business for years I couldn't have been more so than I was on this
occasion. The old cow was dead and so identified with the right of way,
that her own mother would not have known her.

I spoke to the conductor about it and he said it wasn't on his run and
for me to see the other conductor. Time I found him he was on another
road and killed in a collision with a lumber train. Then I wrote to the
general traffic manager, using great care to spell all the words as near
right as possible, and he didn't reply at all. His hired man wrote me,
however, with a printing press, that my letter had been received and
contents duly noted. In reply would say that the general traffic manager
was then attending a tripartite reunion at Chicago, at which meeting
the subject of cows would come up. He said that there had been such
competition between the Milwaukee, the Northwestern and the Rock Island
in the matter of prices paid for shattered cows, that farmers got to
dragging their debilitated stock on the track at night and selling it to
the roads, after which they would retire from business on their
ill-gotten gains.

When the general traffic manager got back I went in to see him. He was
very pleasant with me, but said he had nothing to do with the dead cow
industry. "Go to the auditor or the general solicitor," said he, "they
run the morgue." But they were both away attending a large Eastern mass
meeting of auditors and general solicitors, where they where discussing
the practicability of a new garnishee-proof pay-car, that some party had
patented, they said.

So I went home and wrote to the auditor a nice, long, fluent letter in
relation to the cow and her merits. I told him that it wasn't the
intrinsic value of the cow that I cared about. Intrinsic value is a term
that I found in one of your letters and liked very much. I wrote him
that old Brin was an heir-loom and a noble brute. I said among other
things