The Clerk, in a desperate aside: "Heavens! I wish the old man would come!"—and aloud—"Say, I don't believe we could better the passenger schedule, even with a light engine. It's fast—four hours and twenty-five"—
Bartrow: "Make it two hundred."
Jeffard counted out the money while the office operator was calling the engine-dispatcher; and at eight-twenty they were pacing the station platform, waiting for the ordered special. Bartrow looked at his watch.
"If you get away from here at eight-thirty, you'll have three hours and thirty-five minutes for the run, which is just fifty minutes better than the regular schedule. It'll be nip and tuck, but if your engineer is any good he'll make it. Do you know what to do when you reach Aspen?"
"Why, yes; I'll meet Garvin when his train arrives, cut him out of the tangle with the sharks, get him on a horse and ride for life across the range."
"That's the scheme. But what if the other fellows object?"
Jeffard straightened himself unconsciously. "I'm not uncertain on that side; I can fight for it, if that is what you mean."
Bartrow looked him up and down with a smile which was grimly approbative. "Your summer's done you a whole lot of good, Jeffard. You look like a grown man."
"As I didn't when you last saw me. But I'm afraid I am neither better nor worse, Dick,—morally."