Charley's talking that way brought out he wasn't there because he wanted to be, but because he was sent: coming to look things over for the English stockholders--who was about sick, he said, of dropping assessments in the slot and nothing coming out when they pushed the button--before they chipped in the fresh stake they was asked for to help along with the building of the road. He said he about allowed, though, the call was a square one, what he'd seen being in the road's favor and as much as was claimed for it; but when it come to the country and the people, he said, there was no denying they both was as beastly as they could be. Then he turned round sudden on Santa Fé and says: "I infer from your dress, sir, that you are in Orders; and I therefore assume that you represent what little respectability this town has. Will you kindly tell me if it is possible in this filthy place to procure a brandy-and-soda, and a bath, and any sort of decent food?" It always sort of tickled Santa Fé, same as I've said, when a tenderfoot took him for a fire-escape; and when it happened that way he give it back to 'em in right-enough parson talk. So he says to the little man, speaking benevolent: "In our poor way, sir, we can satisfy your requirements. At the Forest Queen Hotel, over there, you can procure the liquid refreshment that you name; and also food as good as our little community affords. As for your bath, we can provide it on a scale of truly American magnificence. We can offer you a tub, sir, very nearly two thousand miles long!" "A tub two thousand miles long?" says the little man. "Oh, come now, you're chaffing me. There can't be a tub like that, you know. There really can't!" "I refer, sir," says Santa Fé, "to the Rio Grande." The little man took his time getting there, but when he did ketch up he laughed hearty. "How American that is!" says he. And then he says over again: "How American that is!"--and he laughed some more. Then he said he'd start 'em to getting his grub ready while he was bathing in that two-thousand-mile bath-tub, and he'd have his brandy-and-soda right away; and he asked Charley--speaking doubtful, and looking at his white necktie--if he'd have one too? Charley said he just would; and it was seeing how sort of surprised the little man looked, he told the boys afterwards, set him to thinking he might as well kill time that hot day trying how much stuffing that sort of a tenderfoot would hold. He said at first he only meant to play a short lone hand for the fun of the thing; and it was the way the little man swallowed whatever was give him, he said, that made the game keep on a-growing--till it ended up by roping in the whole town. So off he went, explaining fatherly how it come that preachers and brandys-and-sodas in Palomitas got along together first class.