"So?" the man muttered with a sidelong glance. He had a pleasant face, rough but good humored, and the lad took to him instinctively. "You're an Easterner, ain't yeh?"
"Yes, and proud of it."
"That's all right. I'm from the East, too, only I've been here so long that yeh wouldn't think it. I guess yeh'd better hop up behind me, pardner. Betsy's a game chicken—she's carried three before now."
"You going to Silver Bridge, then?" Phil queried as the cowboy stroked the unprepossessing broncho fondly.
"I should smile. I'm cattle tender to the ore-crushing plant there."
Phil received this information with a start, but made no remark. In silence he mounted behind the man, who gave his name as Idaho Bart, and felt with some surprise the plain bumping rapidly away beneath them, as the broncho, becoming a bunch of throbbing muscles, pounded eastward with the regularity of tirelessness of a steam engine.
The mail rider did not seem disposed to let the silence continue. Out West curiosity about another man's affairs is usually the signal for gun play, but Idaho Bart proceeded to break the rule by a series of interrogations of the most pointed and particular description.
Phil Clode, however, was old for his years, and he met him at every point, giving a false name, and a reason for his arrival at Silver Bridge that was so obviously wide of the truth that the mail carrier, having turned in the saddle to fix him with a twinkling eye, emitted a short laugh, and relapsed into taciturnity.
This muteness remained undisturbed until they were in sight of Silver Bridge, the big ore-crushing town, the shares of which, back in Wall Street, were at a premium. It appeared suddenly as they topped a swelling hill that surrounded two sides of the city like a wall, and Phil surveyed it with the curiosity of first acquaintance. It reminded him of a battle ship out of action—of something Titanic which is wrapped in incongruous slumber. Though only midday, not a sound rose from the vast collection of shacks and wooden buildings. The mighty ore crushers and distributors were idle, the men lounged listlessly round the two hotels, and the river swirled past unstained by the red of washed metal.
The river? In those two words lay the tragedy—the reason of the inaction that spelled ruin to thousands, including the canvas-coated men who diced and gambled and swore in the saloons. For the river was now a mere meandering stream, and the power that worked the mills was gone, leaving the great plant worse than useless, for it would cost more than it was worth to entrain it to any place where there would be the likelihood of a buyer.