"Too bad. Can't you go uptown and 'phone out to the stockyards? Or if you want to take a street-car out there you'll have time to hop one at Stout Street. Last one goes about midnight."
In those days the telephone was not a universal necessity. Dave had never used one and did not know how to get his connection. He spent several minutes ringing up, shouting at the operator, and trying to understand what she told him. He did not shout at the girl because he was annoyed. His idea was that he would have to speak loud to have his voice carry. At last he gave up, hot and perspiring from the mental exertion.
Outside the drug-store he just had time to catch the last stockyards car.
His watch told him that it was two minutes past twelve.
He stepped forty-five minutes later into an office in which sat two men with their feet on a desk. The one in his shirt-sleeves was a smug, baldish young man with clothes cut in the latest mode. He was rather heavy-set and looked flabby. The other man appeared to be a visitor.
"This the office of the Denver Terminal Stockyards Company?" asked Dave.
The clerk looked the raw Arizonan over from head to foot and back again.
The judgment that he passed was indicated by the tone of his voice.
"Name's on the door, ain't it?" he asked superciliously.
"You in charge here?"
The clerk was amused, or at least took the trouble to seem so. "You might think so, mightn't you?"
"Are you in charge?" asked Dave evenly.