The conductor refused to "back up for a coon," but offered to send in a sleeping-car porter as a temporary substitute. As he started to go, Fosdick, who had been incessantly consulting his watch, checked him to ask: "Oh, conductor, when do we get to the State-line of dear old Utah?" "Dear old Utah!" the conductor grinned. "We'd 'a' been there already if we hadn't 'a' fell behind a little." "Just my luck to be late," Fosdick moaned. "What you so anxious to be in Utah for, Fosdick?" Ashton asked, suspiciously. "You go on to 'Frisco, don't you?" Fosdick was evidently confused at the direct question. He tried to dodge it: "Yes, but--funny how things have changed. When we started, nobody was speaking to anybody except his wife, now----" "Now," said Ashton, drily, "everybody's speaking to everybody except his wife." "You're wrong there," Little Jimmie interrupted. "I wasn't speaking to my wife in the first place. We got on as strangersh and we're strangersh yet. Mrs. Well'n'ton is a----" "A queen among women, we know! Dry up," said Ashton, and then they heard the querulous voice of the porter of their sleeping car: "I tell you, I don't know nothin' about the buffet business." The conductor pushed him in with a gruff command: "Crawl in that cage and get busy." Still the porter protested: "Mista Pullman engaged me for a sleepin' car, not a drinkin' car. I'm a berth-maker, not a mixer." He cast a resentful glance through the window that served also as a bar, and his whole tone changed: "Say, is you goin' to allow me loose amongst all them beautiful bottles? Say, man, if you do, I can't guarantee my conduck." "If you even sniff one of those bottles," the conductor warned him, "I'll crack it over your head." "That won't worry me none--as long as my mouf's open." He smacked his chops over the prospect of intimacy with that liquid treasury. "Lordy! Well, I'll try to control my emotions--but remember, I don't guarantee nothin'." The conductor started to go, but paused for final instructions: "And remember--after we get to Utah you can't serve any hard liquor at all." "What's that? Don't they 'low nothin' in that old Utah but ice-cream soda?" "That's about all. If you touch a drop, I'll leave you in Utah for life." "Oh, Lordy, I'll be good!" The conductor left the excited black and went his way. Ashton was the first to speak: "Say, Porter, can you mix drinks?" The porter ruminated, then confessed: "Well, not on the outside, no, sir. If you-all is thirsty you better order the simplest things you can think of. If you was to command anything fancy, Lord knows what you'd get. Supposin' you was to say, 'Gimme a Tom Collins.' I'd be just as liable as not to pass you a Jack Johnson." "Well, can you open beer?" "Oh, I'm a natural born beer-opener." "Rush it out then. My throat is as full of alkali dust as these windows."