You are looking for promotion, arent 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 Ive 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 dont have to drive a stage. We supply you with good men for that, and good guardsmen 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 Statesnothing, I guess, in the worldthat 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. Youve 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 axleswhy, 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 naïvely 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 theyve never had a man to show them.
The last general manager was killed there, wasnt 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. Thats all right, Henry! They wont get you. Again he extended his finger dogmatically: If I
thought they would, I wouldnt send you down there.
Thank you.
You are young, ambitious: four thousand a year isnt hanging from every telegraph-pole; it is almost twice what they are paying me.
Youre 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 targetthat you well understand. Men are shot down in this country that have no more idea of getting killed than I haveor you have.
Dont include me. I have a pretty good idea of getting killed right awaythe 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 Sassoonall hold-up men, every one of them! Henry, Im putting you in on that job because youve got nerve, because you can shoot, because I dont think they can get youand 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 and beneath a lot of this deviltry around Calabasas? You take Gale Morgan: why, he trains with Dave Sassoon; take his uncle, Duke: Sassoon never is in trouble but what Duke will help him out. Jeffries exploded with a slight but forcible expletive. Was there ever a thief or a robber driven into Morgans Gap that didnt find sympathy and shelter with some of the Morgans? I believe they are in every game pulled on the Thief River stages.
As bad as that?
Jeffries turned to his desk. Ask John Lefever.
De Spain had a long talk with John. But John was a poor adviser. He advised no one on any subject. He whistled, he hummed a tune, if his hat was on he took it off, and if it happened to be off, which was unusual, he put it on. He extended his arm, at times, suddenly, as if on the brink of a positive assertion. But he decided nothing, and asserted nothing. If he talked, he talked well and energetically; but the end of a talk usually found him and de Spain about where they began. So it was on this trying dayfor Lefever was not able wholly to hide the upsetting of his confidence of victory, and his humiliation at the now more distant yells from the Calabasas and Morgan Gap victors.