He closed the book with a sharp snap, and grinned at the rest. "Well," he said reflectively, "that's 'bout enough for me. I'm stuck on the Shasta, too. Seems to me the men who run her mean to do the straight thing by us."
The rest concurred with this, and several of them instanced cases where carriers had in due time put the screw upon producers who had been supinely content to pocket a big rebate until there was no longer any competition. The rancher with the notebook smiled at them.
"Then we've no use round here for a man like Mr. Barbison," he said. "The one question is—what we're going to do with him before we start him back to the blame philanthropist who sent him?"
They made ingenious suggestions, which varied from painting him with red-lead to teaching him to swim; but it was the one offered by Fleming of the Shasta that most pleased them.
"What he wants is exercise, and if you will bring him off to the steamer I'll see he gets it," he said. "I've quite a few tons of coal to trim, and there's a pile of old grease he could clean out of her bilges."
"The blame insect will offer to pay his passage when he comes round," said one of the company.
"That is easily fixed," said another, who had been rummaging Barbison's pockets. "See this wallet, Jake? Well, you're going in to the railroad, and you'll express it to Mr. Merril, care of the fruit agency, with a line to say the gentleman was sick and left it behind him. That strike you all as workable? Then all we have to do is to decorate him."
They did it as well as they were able, and four of them afterward carried him to a Siwash canoe. They had some difficulty in doing it, and fell down once or twice on the way; but just before the Shasta went to sea Barbison was put aboard her, with his face rouged with red-lead and a garland of cedar sprays about his head. It was almost dark then. Wheelock was on his bridge, the deck-hands were busy stowing the anchor, and as the two ranchers who brought the drummer laid him beneath a boat where he tranquilly resumed his sleep, some little time had passed before anybody concerned himself about him. Then a grinning seaman brought Jimmy down from his bridge, and held up a lantern while he gazed in blank astonishment at his prostrate passenger.
"Tell Mr. Fleming I want him. He was ashore," he said.