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at it Mr. Mendez said.)
    A month ago, then, when Mr. James Russell died, the word was passed to John Russell through Mr. Mendez that he had been left Russell’s place outside Contention. Mr. Mendez wanted to put him on a coach and send him down there in style, but Russell kept backing off. Finally, when he didshow up willing, there were no more stagecoaches. As I have explained.
    Hatch & Hodges was leaving Sweetmary partly because there wasn’t enough business from here south; partly because the railroad was taking too much business other places. But that day, all of a sudden, you’d never know we were hard up for business.
    First the McLaren girl had come. Then John Russell. Then, right after he and Mr. Mendez left, a mustered-out soldier from Thomas came in looking for passage to Bisbee. He was going to get married in a week and anxious to get there. I told him how it was and he left, walking over to the hotel.
    It wasn’t long after that Dr. Favor came.
    I had never seen him before, but I had heard of him. So when he came in and introduced himself, I knew this was Dr. Alexander Favor, the Indian Agent at San Carlos.
    His name was heard because San Carlos was so close, but not too much. You heard of Indian Agents if they were very good, like John Clum, or if they were bad and got caught dealing poorly with the Indians for their own personal gain. You heard when they weren’t at the reservation anymore and you heard of the new man arriving. So I didn’t know much about Dr. Favor. Only that he had been up at San Carlos about two years andhad a wife that was supposed to be very pretty and about fifteen years younger than he was.
    He came in so unexpectedly I probably acted dumb at first. He stood with his hands and his hat on the counter which separated the waiting room from the office part, looking straight at me and never away. He was a big man, not so tall but heavy, with kind of reddish-brown hair—what there was of it—and a finely-kept half-moon beard on his chin. But no mustache. You have probably seen the style I am talking about.
    He knew the stage line had stopped running. But what about hiring a rig and driver? I told him we were out of business, even for hiring. He said, but what was the possibility? We talked about that for a while and that was when I got the idea of using the mud wagon. Not just for him but for the McLaren girl too, and just like before I could see myself sitting in it with her.
    That’s when I started to get excited about the idea. I wanted to get away from here. Why not in the mud wagon? I could talk to Dr. Favor on the way to Bisbee, which was where he wanted to go, and ask his advice about what business to get into. A man like Dr. Favor would know, and maybe he would even have some good connections. Between that and the idea of seeing the McLaren girl, it sounded better and better and finally I got theMexican boy, who was out front again, and sent him after Mr. Mendez.
    About fifteen minutes passed. Dr. Favor came through the gate at the end of the counter and sat at Mr. Mendez’s desk. We didn’t talk much and I felt dumb again. Finally Mr. Mendez came in.
    He came right through the gate. I introduced them and Mr. Mendez nodded. Dr. Favor didn’t rise or even reach out his hand.
    He said, “We’re talking about hiring a coach.”
    Mr. Mendez looked at me. “Didn’t Carl tell you? This office is closed.”
    “But you still have a coach here,” Dr. Favor said. “He called it a mud wagon.”
    “That.” Mr. Mendez leaned back against the counter. “We move our office records in it when we leave.”
    “Come back to get them,” Dr. Favor said.
    I said, “They have to be in Bisbee Friday.” That was in three days. I even added, “If they don’t get there, it’ll be too late.”
    Mr. Mendez just shrugged. “If I could do something—”
    I said, “Why not use the mud wagon and come back? We could do that without any trouble.”
    Mr. Mendez was probably already mad