“There are four of them,” said the superintendent soberly, “and some others desperately hurt. We’re in a bad way, Sprague. This is the third smash within a week.”
Sprague dismounted stiffly and secured his saddle-bags containing the soil specimens gathered at the price of so much discomfort.
“Starbuck,” he said whimsically, “I’m willing to pay the price of a hundred-dollar guinea-pig, if necessary, to have this razor-back mustang shipped home in a palace stock-car to his stable in Brewster. Mr. Maxwell’s office-car is good enough for me from this on.”
Starbuck smiled grimly and took the abandoned horse in charge. “I’ll take care of the bronc’,” he agreed; and the big man limped around the station to board the service-car while Maxwell went into the office to do his telegraphing.
When the superintendent returned half an hour later he found his self-invited guest lounging luxuriously in the easiest of the big wicker chairs in the open compartment of the car, smoking the fattest of black cigars and reading a two-days-old Denver paper.
“This is something like,” he said. “I was never cut out for a pioneer, Richard; Starbuck has proved that to my entire satisfaction in these last two weeks. But that’s enough of me and my knockings. Sit down and tell me your troubles. I see the papers are making space-fillers out of your railroad to beat the band. Are you ready to come around to my point of view yet?”
Maxwell sat down like a man who was both worried and wearied.
“The Lord knows, I wish I could come around to your point of view, Calvin. If I could see any possibility of charging these things to outside influences.... But there isn’t any. The trouble is purely local and internal—and as unaccountable as the breaking out of an epidemic when the strictest kind of quarantine has been maintained.”
Sprague smiled incredulously.
“There never was a case of typhoid yet without its germ to account for it, Dick,” he asserted dogmatically.