Nan of Music Mountain | Page 3

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 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