"Good man!" commended the prospector. "Bring along another jugful, bar-tender."
The attendant glanced at the three men admiringly, for the speaker was plainly sober, and he knew how much money Black had paid him. He went back to his bottles, and there was nobody to see the other prospector, who had kept himself in the background, pour something from a little phial beneath his hand, into Black's liquor.
"Not quite so good as last one. I know 'Frisco. Great time at China Joe's, you an' me," murmured Black as he collapsed with his head upon the table. He was soon snoring heavily.
"Your climate has been too much for him," one of the men declared, when the saloon-keeper came in. "Say, hadn't you better help us heave him in some place where he can sleep, unless you'd prefer to keep him as an advertisement?"
Black was stored away with some difficulty, and two hours later he was wheeled on a baggage-truck into the station, where half the inhabitants of the settlement assembled to see him off. The big cars were already clanging down the track, when a tall man riding a lathered horse appeared among the scattered pines on the shoulder of the hill above the settlement. A bystander commented:
"Thurston's foreman coming round for some of his packages. As usual he's in an almighty hurry. That place is 'most as steep as a roof, and he's coming down it at a gallop."
The prospectors glanced at each other, and one of them said, "Lend me a hand, somebody, to heave our sick partner aboard."
Black was unceremoniously deposited upon the platform of the nearest car, where he sat blinking vacantly at the assembly, while the conductor, leaning out from the door of the baggage-car, looked back towards the rider who was clattering through a dust cloud down the street, as he asked: "Anybody else besides the tired man? Is that fellow yonder coming?"
"No," answered the prospector. "He's only wanting one of those cases you've just dumped out. Likes to fancy his time's precious. I know him."
The conductor waved his hand, the big bell clanged, and the train had just rolled with a rattle over a trestle ahead, when Mattawa Tom, grimed with thick red dust, flung himself down beside the agent's office.