Thus Harlan, speaking, as it were, in his capacity of a public dispenser of the facts. But for himself he was admitting a growing curiosity about the disappearing workmen, and this curiosity broke ground one evening when he chanced to meet Brouillard at the club.
"Somebody was telling me that you let out another batch of your Buckskin ditch diggers to-day, Brouillard," he began. And then, without any bush beating, the critical question was fired point-blank: "What becomes of all these fellows you are dropping? They don't stay in town or go to the mines—not one of them."
"Don't they?" said Brouillard with discouraging brevity.
"You know mighty well they don't. And they don't even drift out like other people; they go in bunches."
"Anything else remarkable up your sleeve?" was the careless query.
"Yes; Conlan, the railroad ticket agent, started to tell me yesterday that they were going out on government transportation—that they didn't buy tickets like ordinary folks; started to tell me, I say, because he immediately took it back and fell all over himself trying to renege."
"You are a born gossip, Harlan, but I suppose you can't help it. Did no one ever tell you that a part of the government contract with these laborers includes transportation back to civilization when they are discharged?"
"No, not by a jugful!" retorted the newspaper man. "And you're not telling me so now. For some purpose of your own you are asking me to believe it without being told. I refuse. This is the closed season, and the fish are not biting."
Brouillard laughed easily.
"You are trying mighty hard to make a mountain out of a mole-hill. You say the men clear out when they are discharged—isn't that about what you'd do if you were out of a job?"