That was Mr. Charles Edward Adair’s care-free phrasing of it; but three hours later, when the cook of the “01” served him the most appetizing of luncheons in the big open compartment, and the steeply pitched walls of the lower Blue Canyon were still stinting the outlook from the car windows, he began to grow impatient.

“Whereabouts are we now, Johnson?” he asked of the cook’s second man.

“Between Cutcliff and No-Horse; yes, sah.  ’Bout forty mile from Denver.”

“Great Scott!  Fifteen miles an hour?  Say, Johnson, what do you do when you want ’em to run faster—­pull this string?”

“Yes, sah; dat’s it,” grinned the negro.

Adair pulled the air-cord, and it brought results—­of a kind.  Only the train came to a sudden stop, instead of going ahead faster; and Conductor Barclay, who had been riding on the engine, came back to see what had happened.

“Did you stop us, Mr. Adair?” he asked pleasantly.

“Not meaning to, you may be sure,” said Adair.  “But now you’re here, I’ll ask if there is any objection to my getting off and walking.  I could stop and rest and let you overtake me now and then, you know.”

The conductor tweaked the air-cord and the train moved on again.

“I’ve been expecting you’d shout at us,” he said good-naturedly.  “But we’re doing the best we can.  There’s a freight wreck on ahead, and we’ve been dallying along, hoping they’d get it picked up by the time we reach it.  I thought you’d rather keep moving than to be hung up for three or four hours at the wreck.”

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.”