Adair saw his helplessness and made the best of it. He was in Mr. North's hands, and if Mr. North was playing for delay, the delay would be forthcoming. None the less, he contrived to make Barclay uncomfortable. "I'm only a director in the Pacific Southwestern, and I suppose directors don't count," he said nonchalantly. "Yet, I presume, if I should ask it as a personal favor, I might get a conductor's or an engineer's head to take home with me for a souvenir. How would that be? Do you think I could make it win?" "You could do it, hands down, Mr. Adair. But I hope you won't feel as if you'd got to go into the head-hunting business. It's like the boy throwing stones into the pond; it's fun for the kid, but sort o' hard on the toad-frogs." Adair laughed. He was not one of those who find it easy to bear malice. "You don't talk half as bad as you act," he said genially. "Down at bottom I dare say you're a pretty good kind of a fellow. Had anything to eat?" Barclay shook his head. "No; we was laying off to get coffee and sinkers at Clapp's Mine, if we ever get there." "'Coffee and sinkers'," said Adair. "That doesn't sound very uplifting. Sit down here and help me out with my contract." Barclay did it, rather unwillingly. He was not accustomed to eating at the vice-president's table, but there was no resisting the curly-headed young man when he chose to make himself companionable. Barclay sat on the edge of his chair, ate with his knife or fork indifferently, and had small use for the extra spoons and cutlery. But he made a meal to be remembered. Afterward, the young man found a cigar-case, and his own box of Turkish cigarettes; and still the special was going at the same slow cow-gallop up the canyon. "How many are there of you up ahead?" asked Adair, when Barclay's cigar was going like a factory chimney. "Only Williams and his fireman." "Dinner-buckets?" "No; neither one of 'em, as it happens. Hurry call to go out with you, and both of 'em live too far to go home after the grub-cans." "Johnson," said the dispenser of hospitality, calling the second man. "Think you could climb over the coal with some dinner for the enginemen? No? Let me make it possible"--flipping a dollar into the ready palm. "Tell the cook it's an order, and if he stints it there'll be consequences." Barclay grinned his appreciation. The curly-headed young man was far enough removed from any species of railway official hitherto known to the conductor. But Adair was only paving the way. "Do you know," he said, after a little interval of tobacco-charmed silence, "one of the things I am most anxious to see is a real railroad wreck. Suppose you quicken up a little and let us have our dead time at the scene of this disaster you speak of." Barclay was tilting uneasily in his chair. "I reckon they've about got it picked up and cleaned out o' the way by this time, Mr. Adair. I shouldn't be surprised if we could hardly find the place when we get there."