“I ain’t tellin’ no tales out o’ school, Mr. Sprague, not me,” he drawled.
“Get rid of that notion,” said the big man sharply. “You are working for Mr. Maxwell and his rules are your law and gospel. I’ll tell you what I’ve seen, and then you can tell me what you’ve seen. I counted sixteen men in one place on this railroad to-day who, within the half-hour that I was looking on, stopped work either to hit or to pass a pocket-flask. Now go on.”
“If you hold me up that-away, I reckon maybe there is a good many empty bottles layin’ round on the right-o’-way—more’n what the passengers throw out o’ the car windows,” was the reluctant admission.
“And more than there used to be, say, two or three months ago?”
“Yes; right smart more.”
“I thought so. We don’t need to look any further, Archer, for the disease itself. Your ‘dry rot’ is very pointedly a wet rot. Booze and the running of a railroad are two things that won’t mix. Now we’ll come to the nib of it. Why is there more drinking now than there used to be?”
The younger man took time to think about it before he said: “You got me goin’; I don’t know the answer to that.”
“I didn’t suppose you did,” was the curt rejoinder. “But you are going to learn the answer, Archer, my son. It is now four o’clock; by half-past seven this evening I want you to be back here prepared to tell me who has been letting down the fences for the railroad men in this matter of drinking.”
“Holy Smoke!” exclaimed the ex-cowboy, jarred for once out of his plainsman calm, “how am I goin’ to do that, Mr. Sprague?”
“That is for you to find out, my boy. If you don’t use your brain you’ll never know whether or no you’ve got any. That’s all—until half-past seven. You’ll find me here at the hotel.”