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Page 22
The last bill was paid. Proprietor Ashby stiffened, his backbone,
trying to look game.
"Gentlemen," he inquired, "where are you going from here? Won't you let
me call the 'bus to take you?"
"Never mind the, 'bus, Ash," smilingly replied the leader of the
drummers, a man named Pritchard. "If you'll send the 'bus over to the
Cactus House with our trunks we'll be greatly obliged."
"Certainly, gentlemen, it's a pleasure to oblige you," murmured Ashby,
with a ghastly effort to look pleasant. He watched the eight men step
outside. Duff and his crowd had vanished. It would never do to try any
mob tricks on so many strangers who had done nothing. The most easy-
going citizens of an Arizona town would turn out to punish such a mob.
The three railroad men had their horses brought around, but they rode
slowly, chatting with the salesmen on the sidewalk.
In this order they reached the Cactus House, which, thirty years ago,
had been famous in and around the old Paloma of the frontier days. The
proprietor, a young man named Carter, had succeeded his father in the
ownership of the property. It was a neat hotel, but a small one. The
elder Carter had lost a good deal of money before his death, and the son
was now trying to build up the property with hardly any reserve capital.
At the Cactus there was a great flurry when five such important guests
arrived and the young railroad engineers were also most heartily
welcomed.
"Our meal time is nearly over, but I'll have something special cooked
for you right away, gentlemen," cried young Carter, bustling about, his
eyes aglow.
"Before you get that meal ready," said Pritchard, drawing young Carter
aside, "I want to ask you whether any man can ever be driven from this
hotel, just for being decent?"
"He certainly cannot," replied Proprietor Carter with emphasis.
"Live up to that, son," advised the drummer, "and I half suspect that
you'll prosper."
The meal finished, the three men from the railroad camp took leave of
their new salesmen friends, mounted and rode back to camp.
"The snakes are not all dead yet," mused Tom quizzically, as, in riding
through the "tough" street again they heard hisses from open windows at
which no heads appeared.
"There's a letter here for you, Mr. Reade," announced Foreman Payson,
who was sitting alone in the office.
"Who brought it?"
"I don't know his name. Never saw him before. He rode out here on
horseback."
The envelope, though a good one as to quality, was dirty on the outside.
Tom Reade hastily broke the seal and read:
"If you don't get away from Paloma pretty soon your presence will hold
the railroad up for a longtime to come! Get out, if you're wise, or the
railroad will suffer with you!"
"I reckon the fellow who wrote that was sincere enough," said Tom, as he
passed the letter over to his chum. "However, I don't like to feel that
I can be seared by any man who's too cowardly to sign his name to a
letter."
CHAPTER VI
THE GENERAL MANAGER "LOOKS IN"
Neither Tom nor Harry was stupid enough to be wholly unafraid over the
threats of the day. Both realized that Jim Duff and the latter's
associates were ugly and treacherous men who would fight sooner than be
deprived of their chance to fleece the railway workmen. Yet neither
young engineer had any intention of being scared into flight.
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