Nan of Music Mountain | Page 3

am at Sleepy
Cat holding down a division. But now that you've brought Henry up
here, we'll keep him."
"What do you mean, keep him?" demanded Lefever, starting in protest.

"What do I mean?" thundered Jeffries, who frequently thundered even
when it didn't rain in the office. "I mean I need him. I mean the time to
shoot a bear is when you see him. John, what kind of a fellow is de
Spain?" demanded the superintendent, as if he had never heard of him.
"Henry de Spain?" asked Lefever, sparring innocently for time.
"No, Commodore George Washington, General Jackson, Isaac Watts
de Spain," retorted Jeffries peevishly. "Don't you know the man we're
talking about?"
"Known him for ten years."
"Then why say Henry de Spain, as if there were a dozen of him? He's
the only de Spain in these parts, isn't he? What kind of a fellow is he?"
Lefever was ready; and as he sat in a chair sidewise at the table, one
arm flung across the green baize, he looked every inch his
devil-may-care part. Regarding Jeffries keenly, he exclaimed with
emphasis: "Why, if you want him short and sharp, he's a man with a
soft eye and a snapturtle jaw, a man of close squeaks and short-arm
shots, always getting into trouble, always getting out; a man that can
wheedle more out of a horse than anybody but an Indian; coax more
shots out of a gun than anybody else can put into it if you want him flat,
that's Henry, as I size him."
Jeffries resumed his mildest tone: "Tell him to come in a minute, John."
De Spain himself expressed contemptuous im patience when Lefever
told him the superintendent wanted him to go to work at Sleepy Cat. He
declared he had always hated the town; and Lefever readily understood
why he should especially detest it just now. Every horseman's yell that
rang on the sunny afternoon air through the open windows and from up
the street and down there 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 f profit," objected de Spain. "I
want to stick to the rail road 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 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