"Do you mean to say positively of your own knowledge," asked Peacocke, "that Ferdinand Lefroy died at that station?"
"Ask him; he's his brother, and he ought to know best."
"I tell you," said Robert, earnestly, "that we carried him on to 'Frisco, and there he died. If you think you know best, you can go to Utah City and wait there till you hear all about it. I guess they'll make you one of their elders if you wait long enough." Then they all went to bed.
It was now clear to Mr. Peacocke that the man as to whose life or death he was so anxious had really died. The combined evidence of these men, which had come out without any preconcerted arrangement, was proof to his mind. But there was no evidence which he could take back with him to England and use there as proof in a court of law, or even before the Bishop and Dr. Wortle. On the next morning, before Robert Lefroy was up, he got hold of the man who had been so positive that death had overtaken the poor wretch at the railway station which is distant from San Francisco two days' journey. Had the man died there, and been buried there, nothing would be known of him in San Francisco. The journey to San Francisco would be entirely thrown away, and he would be as badly off as ever.
"I wouldn't like to say for certain," said the man when he was interrogated. "I only tell you what they told me. As I was passing along somebody said as Ferdy Lefroy had been taken dead out of the cars on to the platform. Now you know as much about it as I do."
He was thus assured that at any rate the journey to San Francisco had not been altogether a fiction. The man had gone "West," as had been said, and nothing more would be known of him at St. Louis. He must still go on upon his journey and make such inquiry as might be possible at the Ogden Junction.
On the day but one following they started again, taking their tickets as far as Leavenworth. They were told by the officials that they would find a train at Leavenworth waiting to take them on across country into the regular San Francisco line. But, as is not unusual with railway officials in that part of the world, they were deceived. At Leavenworth they were forced to remain for four-and-twenty hours, and there they put themselves up at a miserable hotel in which they were obliged to occupy the same room. It was a rough, uncouth place, in which, as it seemed to Mr. Peacocke, the men were more uncourteous to him, and the things around more unlike to what he had met elsewhere, than in any other town of the Union. Robert Lefroy, since the first night at St. Louis, had become sullen rather than disobedient. He had not refused to go on when the moment came for starting, but had left it in doubt till the last moment whether he did or did not intend to prosecute his journey. When the ticket was taken for him he pretended to be altogether indifferent about it, and would himself give no help whatever in any of the usual troubles of travelling. But as far as this little town of Leavenworth he had been carried, and Peacocke now began to think it probable that he might succeed in taking him to San Francisco.
On that night he endeavoured to induce him to go first to bed, but in this he failed. Lefroy insisted on remaining down at the bar, where he had ordered for himself some liquor for which Mr. Peacocke, in spite of all his efforts to the contrary, would have to pay. If the man would get drunk and lie there, he could not help himself. On this he was determined, that whether with or without the man, he would go on by the first train;—and so he took himself to his bed.
He had been there perhaps half-an-hour when his companion came into the room,—certainly not drunk. He seated himself on his bed, and then, pulling to him a large travelling-bag which he used, he unpacked it altogether, laying all the things which it contained out upon the bed. "What are you doing that for?" said Mr. Peacocke; "we have to start from here to-morrow morning at five."
"I'm not going to start to-morrow at five, nor yet to-morrow at all, nor yet next day."