“Well, I reckon he wouldn't have been very pleasant company if you'd got him,” said one of the men consolingly, when we had told our tale of the search for a guest.
“I suspect he would be less disagreeable in here than out with his gang,” I returned dryly, and turned the subject. I did not care to discuss my plan to get a hostage now that it had failed.
The gray day plashed slowly toward nightfall. The rain fell by fits and starts, now with a sudden dash, now gently as though it were only of half a mind to fall at all. But the wind blew strong, and the clouds that drove up from the far south were dark enough to have borne threats of a coming deluge.
As the time wore on I suspected that my men grew uneasy, wondering what we were there for, and why I did not make some move. Then I reflected that this could not be. It was I who was wondering. The men were accustomed to let me do their thinking for them, and could be troubled no more here than in San Francisco. But what was I expected to do? Where could my orders be? Had they gone astray? Had the plans of the Unknown come to disaster through the difficulty of getting the telegraph on Sunday? The office here was closed. The Unknown, being a woman, I ungallantly reflected, would have neglected to take so small a circumstance into consideration, and she might even now be besieging the telegraph office in San Francisco in a vain effort to get word to Livermore.
On this thought I bestirred myself, and after much trouble had speech with the young man who combined in his person the offices of telegraph operator, station master, ticket seller, freight agent and baggage handler for the place. He objected to opening the office “out of office hours.”
“There might be inducements discovered that would make it worth your while, I suppose?” I said, jingling some silver carelessly in my pocket.
He smiled.
“Well, I don't care if I do,” he replied. “Whatever you think is fair, of course.”
It was more than I thought fair, but the agent thawed into friendship at once, and expressed his readiness to “call San Francisco” till he got an answer if it took till dark.
I might have saved my trouble and my coin. San Francisco replied with some emphasis that there was nothing for me, and never had been, and who was I, anyhow?