"It's the same old thing. I promised him, yesterday, I'd get the extension on his ticket, and now he says he won't leave Denver till it's done. He 'ah-protests' that I sha'n't go to Silver Plume with the party; wants me to stay in Denver and put in the day telegraphing."

"Of course, you'll do it; you do anything anybody asks you to."

"Oh, I suppose I'll have to—to keep the peace. And if I don't go and 'personally conduct' the others, there'll be the biggest kind of a row. Isn't it enough to wear the patience of a good-natured angel to frazzles?"

"It is, just that. Have a cigar?"

"No, thank you. I don't smoke before breakfast."

"Neither do I, normally; but like most other people, I leave all my good habits at home when I travel. But about Jordan and the thirty-odd; how are you going to dodge the row?"

"The best way I can. There is a good friend of mine on the train—Mr. John Burton, the general agent of the C. & U., in Salt Lake—and perhaps I can get him to go up the canyon for me."

"Think he will do it?"

"I guess so; to oblige me. He'd lose only a day; and he'd make thirty-odd friends for the C. & U., don't you see."

"I must confess that I don't see, from a purely business point of view," was the rejoinder. "We are all ticketed out and back, and we can't change our route if we want to."

Brockway laughed. "The business of passenger soliciting is far-reaching. Some of you—perhaps most of you—will go again next year; and if the general agent of the C. & U. is particularly kind and obliging, you may remember his line."

"Dear me—why, of course! You say your friend is on the train?"

"Yes."

"Very well; you go and see him, and I'll help you out by breaking the news to the thirty-odd."

Brockway struggled into his coat and shook hands with the friendly one. "Mr. Somers, you're my good angel. You've undertaken a thankless task, though."

The womanish face under the band of the skull-cap broke into a smile which was not altogether angelic. "I shall get my pay as I go along; our friend with the bad case of ticket dementia will be carrying the entire 

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