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.”

“Nor I,” said Adair; and he sat back and chuckled.  “It’s considerably difficult to sit up and pull your imagination on a man who has been decently good to you, isn’t it, Barclay?  Let me ask you:  are you Mr. North’s man?”

“Mr. North is the big boss.”

“But this Plug Mountain division is a part of Mr. Ford’s line, isn’t it?”

“It used to be all his.  There’s a white man for you, Mr. Adair.”

Adair saw his opportunity and used it.

“Now see here, Barclay; I’m only a director, and I don’t cut much ice out this way.  But back in New York I’m one of three or four people who can tell Mr. North what he can do, and what he can’t.  You wouldn’t want to see Mr. Ford getting it in the neck, would you?”

“By Jacks!  There ain’t a man in the service that wouldn’t fight for him.  I tell you, he’s white.”

“Well, Mr. Ford is in trouble:  I don’t know but he is likely to lose his job, if I don’t see the president before the big ax comes down.  That is between us two.”

The conductor sprang out of his chair.