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 he could make of the creature who posed as his master on the load of bones.

Tom knew there was nothing he could do to make the stubborn cuss move on. The best thing, he decided, was to take him out, tie his mate's end of the double-tree and drive the short distance without him. Accordingly he got down and began to unhitch the rebel.

At that point in the balky horse's act the station agent entered. He came on with spirit, adding considerably to the entertainment of the small crowd of men and boys who had collected out of the town's apparently barren possibilities in surprisingly short time. They wondered why a man would want to unhitch his team and leave his wagon straddle of an active piece of railroad like that.

"Git that wagon off of there!" the agent yelled, his voice cracked by what seemed to be a sense of outrage against his dignity. "Don't you see that board? Git 'em to hell off of there!"

He pointed to the semaphore signal, a red sheetiron contrivance at the end of a rod protruding to the edge of the platform from above the depot's bay window. Tom looked at it, curiously interested, it seemed.

"Very pretty," he said.

The bystanders laughed, a derisive haw-haw directed at the agent like a volley of excrement, station agents being almost invariably unpopular men in towns the size and stamp of Drumwell. This set the agent at Tom with redoubled charge of authority.

"She's due in less 'n a minute," he said, his shallow passion splitting about equally between anger and fear. "He's got to git to that tank,"—apparently making a