e were still a good many--was one of
derision at de Spain's galling defeat. When he at length consented to
talk with Jeffries about coming to Sleepy Cat, the interview was of a
positive sort on the one side and an obstinate sort on the other. De
Spain raised one objection after another to leaving Medicine Bend, and
Jeffries finally summoned a show of impatience.

"You are looking for promotion, aren't you?" he demanded threateningly.

"Yes, but not for motion without the 'pro,'" objected de Spain. "I
want to stick to the railroad business. You want to get me into the
stage business."

"Temporarily, yes. But I've told you when you come back to the
division proper, you come as my assistant, if you make good running
the Thief River stages. Think of the salary."

"I have no immediate heirs."

"This is not a matter for joking, de Spain."

"I know that, too. How many men have been shot on the stages in the
last six months?"

"Why, now and again the stages are held up, yes," admitted Jeffries
brusquely; "that is to be expected where the specie shipments are
large. The Thief River mines are rotten with gold just now. But you
don't have to drive a stage. We supply you with good men for that, and
good guards--men willing to take any kind of a chance if the pay is
right. And the pay is right, and yours as general manager will be
right."

"I have never as yet generally managed any stage line," remarked de
Spain, poking ridicule at the title, "no matter how modest an
outfit."

"You will never learn younger. There is a fascination," declared
Jeffries, ignoring the fling, and tilting his chair eloquently back to
give ease and conviction to his words, "about running a good stage
line that no railroad business can ever touch. There is, of course,
nothing in the Rocky Mountains, for that matter in the United
States--nothing, I guess, in the world--that approaches the Thief
River line in its opportunities. Every wagon we own, from the lightest
to the heaviest, is built to order on our particular specifications by
the Studebaker people." Here Jeffries pointed his finger sharply at de
Spain as if to convict him of some dereliction. "You've seen them! You
know what they are."

De Spain, bullied, haltingly nodded acquiescence.

"Second-growth hickory in the gears," continued Jeffries encouragingly,
"ash tongues and boxes----"

"Some of those old buses look like ash-boxes," interposed de Spain
irreverently.

But Jeffries was