not to be stopped: "Timkin springs, ball-bearing
axles--why, man, there is no vehicle in the world built like a Thief
River stage."

"You are some wagon-maker, Jeff," said de Spain, regarding him
ironically.

Jeffries ignored every sarcasm. "This road, as you know, owns the
line. And the net from the specie shipments equals the net on an
ordinary railroad division. But we must have a man to run that line
that can curb the disorders along the route. Calabasas Valley, de
Spain, is a bad place."

"Is it?" de Spain asked as naively as if he had never heard of
Calabasas, though Jeffries was nervily stating a fact bald and
notorious to both.

"There are a lot of bad men there," Jeffries went on, "who are bad
simply because they've never had a man to show them."

"The last 'general' manager was killed there, wasn't he?"

"Not in the valley, no. He was shot at Calabasas Inn."

"Would that make very much difference in the way he felt about it?"

Jeffries, with an effort, laughed. "That's all right, Henry! They
won't get you." Again he extended his finger dogmatically: "If I
thought they would, I wouldn't send you down there."

"Thank you."

"You are young, ambitious: four thousand a year isn't hanging from
every telegraph-pole; it is almost twice what they are paying me."

"You're not getting shot at."

"No man, Henry, knows the hour of his death. No man in the high
country knows when he is to be made a target--that you well
understand. Men are shot down in this country that have no more idea
of getting killed than I have--or you have."

"Don't include me. I have a pretty good idea of getting killed right
away--the minute I take this job."

"We have temporized with this Calabasas outfit long enough," declared
Jeffries, dropping his mask at last. "Deaf Sandusky, Logan, and that
squint-eyed thief, Dave Sassoon--all hold-up men, every one of them!
Henry, I'm putting you in on that job because you've got nerve,
because you can shoot, because I don't think they can get you--and
paying you a whaling big salary to straighten things out along the
Spanish Sinks. Do you know, Henry--" Jeffries leaned forward and
lowered his tone. Master of the art of persuading and convincing, of
hammering and pounding, of swaying the doubting and deciding the
undecided, the strong-eyed mountain-man looked his best as he held the
younger man under his spell. "Do you know," he repeated, "I suspect
that Morgan Gap bunch are really behind