Brockway was up betimes the following morning, though not of his own free will. Two hours before the "Flying Kestrel" was due in Denver, the porter of the Tadmor awakened him at the command of the irascible gentleman with the hock-bottle shoulders and diaphanous nose. While the passenger agent was sluicing his face in the wash-room some one prodded him from behind, and a thin, high-pitched voice wedged itself into the thunderous silence.

"Mr. ah—Brockway; I understand that you are purposing to take the party to ah—Feather Plume or ah—Silver Feather, or some such place to-day, and I ah—protest! I have no desire to leave Denver until my ticket is made to conform to my stipulations, sir."

Brockway had soap in his eyes, and the porter had carefully hidden the towels; for which cause his reply was brief and to the point.

"Please wait till I get washed and dressed before you begin on me, won't you?"

"Wait? Do you say ah—wait? I have been doing nothing but wait, sir, ever since my ah—stipulations were ignored. It's an outrage, sir, I——"

Brockway had found a towel and was using it vigorously as a counter-irritant.

"For Heaven's sake, go away and let me alone until I can get my clothes on!" he exclaimed. "I promised you yesterday you should have the thirty days that you don't need."

The aggrieved one had his ticket out, but he put it away again in tremulous indignation. "Go away? Did I ah—understand you to tell me to go away, sir? I ah-h-h——" but words failed him, and he shuffled out of the wash-room, cannoning against the little gentleman in the grass-cloth duster and velvet skull-cap in the angle of the vestibule.

"Good-morning, Mr. Brockway," said the comforter, cheerily. "Been having a tilt with Mr. Ticket-limits to begin the day with?"

"Oh, as a matter of course," Brockway replied, flinging the damp towel into a corner, and brushing his hair as one who transmutes wrath into vigorous action.

"Find him a bit trying, don't you? What particular form does his mania take this morning?"

"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 responsibility for your absence before I get through."

"Good! pile it on thick," said Brockway, chuckling. "Make 'em understand that I'd give all my old shoes to go—that I'm so angry with Jordan for spoiling my day's pleasure that I can't see straight."

"I'll do it," the little man agreed. "Take a cigar to smoke after breakfast"—and the gray duster and velvet skull-cap disappeared forthwith around the angle in the vestibule.

Not until he was ready to seek Burton did the passenger agent recollect that the Naught-fifty was between the Tadmor and the Ariadne, and that it would be the part of prudence to go around rather than through the President's car. When he did remember it he stepped out into the vestibule of the Tadmor to get a breath of fresh air while he waited for the train to come to a station. Mrs. Dunham was on the Naught-fifty's rear platform, and she nodded, smiled, and beckoned him to come across.

"I'm glad to know that somebody else besides a curious old woman cares enough for this grand scenery to get up early in the morning," she said, pleasantly.

"You mustn't make me ashamed," Brockway rejoined. "I'm afraid I should have been sound asleep this minute if I hadn't been routed out by one of my people."

Mrs. Dunham smiled. "Gertrude was telling me about some of your troubles. Do they get you up early in the morning to ask you foolish questions?"

"They do, indeed"—and Brockway, glad enough to find a sympathetic listener, told the story of the pertinacious human gadfly masquerading under the name of Jordan.

"Dear, dear! How unreasonable! Will you have to give up the Silver Plume trip and stay in Denver with him?"

"I suppose so. I'm going forward presently to try to get Mr. Burton and his wife to take my place with the party for the day."

"Not Mr. John Burton, of the Colorado & Utah?"

"Yes; do you know him?"

"Only through Gertrude; she met them when she was out here last year, and she likes Mrs. Burton very much indeed."

"I'm glad of that," said Brockway, with great naÏvetÉ; "they are very good friends of mine."

In the pause that succeeded he was reminded that his way and Gertrude's would shortly diverge again, and in the face of that thought he could not well help asking questions.

"I suppose you are going straight on to Utah," he said, not daring to hope for a negative reply.

"Not to-day. I believe it is Mr. Vennor's plan to go on to-morrow morning."

When he realized what this meant for him, Brockway forgave his evil genius in the Tadmor. Then he gasped to think how near he had come to missing his last chance of seeing Gertrude. But he must know more of the movements of the President's party.

"Will you go to a hotel?" he inquired.

"I think not. I heard Mr. Vennor order dinner in the car, so I presume we shall make it our headquarters during the day."

Brockway reflected that the private car would doubtless be side-tracked on the spur near the telegraph office in the Union Depot, and wrote it down that prearrangement itself could do no more. When the train drew up at Bovalley a little later, he excused himself and ran quickly forward to board the Ariadne. Come what might, Burton must be over-persuaded; the thirty-odd must be given no chance to defeat the Heaven-born opportunity made possible by the pertinacity of the gadfly.

So marched the intention, but the fates willed delay. Bovalley is but a flag-station, and the passenger agent had barely time to swing up to the rear platform of the regular sleeper when the train moved on. Then he found that he had circumvented one obstacle only to be hampered by another. The rear door of the Ariadne was locked, and the electric bell was out of repair. Wherefore it was forty minutes later, and Denver was in sight, when the rear brakeman opened the door and admitted him.