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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Empire Builders, by Francis Lynde,
+Illustrated by Jay Hambidge
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Empire Builders
+
+
+Author: Francis Lynde
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 31, 2005  [eBook #16630]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMPIRE BUILDERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Janet Blenkinship, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 16630-h.htm or 16630-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/6/3/16630/16630-h/16630-h.htm)
+      or
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+
+
+
+
+
+EMPIRE BUILDERS
+
+by
+
+FRANCIS LYNDE
+
+Author of
+The Quickening, The Grafters
+A Fool for Love, etc.
+
+With Illustrations by Jay Hambidge
+
+Indianapolis
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+Publishers
+Press of
+Braunworth & Co.
+Bookbinders and Printers
+Brooklyn, N.Y.
+
+1907
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "I won't attempt to apologize--it's beyond all that"]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                               PAGE
+
+    I A MASTER OF MEN                    1
+
+   II A SPIKED SWITCH                   13
+
+  III LOSS AND DAMAGE                   30
+
+   IV COLD STORAGE                      38
+
+    V WANTED: THIRTY-FIVE MILLIONS      47
+
+   VI THE AWAKENING OF CHARLES EDWARD   59
+
+  VII HAMMER AND TONGS                  66
+
+ VIII THE AUTOMATIC AIR                 75
+
+   IX THE RACE TO THE SLOW              90
+
+    X THE SINEWS OF WAR                100
+
+   XI HURRY ORDERS                     120
+
+  XII THE ENTERING WEDGE               141
+
+ XIII THE BARBARIANS                   155
+
+  XIV THE DRAW-BAR PULL                166
+
+   XV AN UNWILLING HOST                177
+
+  XVI THE TRUTHFUL ALTITUDES           186
+
+ XVII A NIGHT OF ALARMS                198
+
+XVIII THE MORNING AFTER                217
+
+  XIX THE RELUCTANT WHEELS             238
+
+   XX THE CONSPIRATORS                 254
+
+  XXI THE MILLS OF THE GODS            271
+
+ XXII THE MAN ON HORSEBACK             285
+
+XXIII THE DEADLOCK                     311
+
+ XXIV RUIZ GREGORIO                    325
+
+  XXV THE SIEGE OF THE NADIA           336
+
+ XXVI THE STAR OF EMPIRE               362
+
+
+
+
+EMPIRE BUILDERS
+
+
+I
+
+A MASTER OF MEN
+
+
+Engine Number 206, narrow gauge, was pushing, or rather failing to push,
+the old-fashioned box-plow through the crusted drifts on the uptilted
+shoulder of Plug Mountain, at altitude ten thousand feet, with the
+mercury at twelve below zero. There was a wind--the winter day above
+timber-line without its wind is as rare as a thawing Christmas--and it
+cut like knives through any garmenting lighter than fur or leather. The
+cab of the 206 was old and weather-shaken, and Ford pulled the collar of
+his buffalo coat about his ears when the grunting of the exhaust and the
+shrilling of the wheels on the snow-shod rails stopped abruptly.
+
+"Gar-r-r!" snarled Gallagher, the red-headed Irish engineer, shutting
+off the steam in impotent rage. "The power is not in this dommed ould
+camp-kittle sewin' machine! 'Tis heaven's pity they wouldn't be givin'
+us wan man-sized, fightin' lokimotive on this ind of the line, Misther
+Foord."
+
+Ford, superintendent and general autocrat of the Plug Mountain branch of
+the Pacific Southwestern, climbed down from his cramped seat on the
+fireman's box and stood scowling at the retracting index of the
+steam-gauge. When he was on his feet beside the little Irishman, you saw
+that he was a young man, well-built, square-shouldered and athletic
+under the muffling of the shapeless fur greatcoat; also, that in spite
+of the scowl, his clean-shaven face was strong and manly and good to
+look upon.
+
+"Power!" he retorted. "That's only one of the hundred things they don't
+give us, Mike. Look at that steam-gauge--freezing right where she
+stands!"
+
+"'Tis so," assented Gallagher. "She'd be dead and shtiff in tin minutes
+be the clock if we'd lave her be in this drift."
+
+Ford motioned the engineer aside and took the throttle himself. It was
+the third day out from Cherubusco, the station at the foot of the
+mountain; and in the eight-and-forty hours the engine, plow and crew of
+twenty shovelers had, by labor of the cruelest, opened eleven of the
+thirteen blockaded miles isolating Saint's Rest, the mining-camp
+end-of-track in the high basin at the head of the pass.
+
+The throttle opened with a jerk under the superintendent's hand. There
+was a snow-choked drumming of the exhaust, and the driving-wheels spun
+wildly in the flurry beneath. But there was no inch of forward motion,
+and Ford gave it up.
+
+"We're against it," he admitted. "Back her down and we'll put the
+shovelers at it again while you're nursing her up and getting more
+steam. We're going to make it to Saint's Rest to-day if the Two-six has
+to go in on three legs."
+
+Gallagher pulled the reversing lever into the back gear and sent the
+failing steam whistling into the chilled cylinders with cautious little
+jerks at the throttle. The box-plow came out of the clutch of its snow
+vise with shrillings as of a soul in torment, and the bucking outfit
+screeched coldly down over the snowy rails to the "let-up," where the
+shovelers' box-car had been uncoupled.
+
+Ford swung off to turn out the shoveling squad; and presently the
+laborers, muffled to the eyes, were filing past the 206 to break a path
+for the plow. Gallagher was on the running-board with his flare torch,
+thawing out an injector. He marked the cheerful swing of the men and
+gave credit where it was due.
+
+"'Tis a full-grown man, that," he commented, meaning Ford. "Manny's the
+wan would be huggin' the warm boiler-head these times, and shtickin' his
+head out of the windy to holler, 'G'wan, boys; pitch it out lively now,
+and be dommed to yez!' But Misther Foord ain't built the like o' that.
+He'll be as deep in that freezin' purgatory up yander in th' drift as
+the foremist wan of thim."
+
+The Irishman's praise was not unmerited. Whatever his failings,
+and he groaned under his fair human share of them, Stuart Ford had
+the gift of leadership. Before he had been a month on the branch
+as its "old man" and autocrat, he had won the good-will and loyalty
+of the rank and file, from the office men in the headquarters to the
+pick-and-shovel contingent on the sections. Even the blockade-breaking
+laborers--temporary helpers as they were--stood by him manfully in the
+sustained battle with the snow. Ford spared them when he could, and they
+knew it.
+
+"Warm it up, boys!" he called cheerily, climbing to the top of the
+frozen drift to direct the attack. "It's been a long fight, but we're in
+sight of home now. Come up here with your shovels, Olsen, and break it
+down from the top. It's the crust that plugs Mike's wedge."
+
+He looked the fighting leader, standing at the top of the wind-swept
+drift and crying on his shovelers. It was the part he had chosen for
+himself in the game of life, and he quarreled only when the stake was
+small, as in this present man-killing struggle with the snowdrifts. The
+Plug Mountain branch was the sore spot in the Pacific Southwestern
+system; the bad investment at which the directors shook their heads, and
+upon which the management turned the coldest of shoulders. It barely
+paid its own operating expenses in summer, and the costly snow blockades
+in winter went to the wrong side of the profit and loss account.
+
+This was why Ford had been scheming and planning for a year and more to
+find a way of escape; not for himself, but for the discredited Plug
+Mountain line. It was proving a knotty problem, not to say an insoluble
+one. Ford had attacked it with his eyes open, as he did most things; and
+he was not without a suspicion that President Colbrith, of the Pacific
+Southwestern, had known to the full the hopelessness of the mountain
+line when he dictated the letter which had cost one of the great Granger
+roads its assistant engineer in charge of construction, transferring an
+energetic young man with ambitions from the bald plains of the Dakotas
+to the snow-capped shoulders of the Rockies.
+
+Originally the narrow gauge had been projected and partly built by a
+syndicate of Denver capitalists, who were under the hallucination, then
+prevalent, that any railroad penetrating the mountains in any direction,
+and having Denver for its starting point, must necessarily become at
+once a dividend-paying carrier for the mines, actual or to be
+discovered.
+
+Failing to tap their bonanza freight-producer on the route up Blue
+Canyon, the projectors--small fish in the great money-pool--had talked
+vaguely of future extensions to Salt Lake, to San Francisco, to Puget
+Sound, or to some other of the far-beyonds, and had even gone the length
+of surveying a line over Plug Pass and down the valley of the Pannikin,
+on the Pacific slope of the range. But they had prudently stopped
+building; and the pause continued until the day of the great silver
+strike at Saint's Rest.
+
+The new carbonate beds chanced to lie within easy rifle-shot of the
+summit of Plug Pass; in other words, they were precisely on the line of
+the extension survey of the narrow gauge. The discovery was a piece of
+sheer luck for the amateur railroad builders. For a time, as all the
+world knows, Saint's Rest headed the mining news column in all the
+dailies, and the rush for the new camp fairly swamped the meager
+carrying facilities of the incomplete line and the stages connecting its
+track-end with the high-mountain Mecca of the treasure-seekers.
+
+Then, indeed, the Denver syndicate saw its long deferred opportunity and
+grasped it. Long purses might be lacking, but not shrewd heads. The
+unfinished Plug Mountain was immediately bonded for more than it ever
+promised to be worth, and in the hottest heat of the forwarding strife
+it was extended at the rate of a mile a day until the welcome screech of
+its locomotive whistles was added to the perfervid clamor of the new
+camp in the Plug Pass basin.
+
+The goal reached, the Denver folk took a fresh leaf out of the book of
+shrewdness. Holding the completed line only long enough to skim the
+cream of the rush earnings, they sold their stock at a sound premium to
+the Pacific Southwestern, pocketed their winnings cannily, and escaped a
+short half-year before the slump in silver, and the consequent collapse
+of Saint's Rest, came to establish the future Waterloo for Napoleonic
+young superintendents in the Southwestern's service.
+
+This was all ancient history when Ford left the Granger road to climb,
+at President Colbrith's behest, into the Plug Mountain saddle; and a
+round half-dozen of the young Napoleons had been broken before he put
+foot in stirrup for the mounting. While his attacking of the problem had
+been open-eyed, he had not stopped to specialize in the ancient history
+of the Plug Mountain branch. When he did specialize, his point of view
+was pretty clearly defined in a letter to Mr. Richard Frisbie, of St.
+Paul, written after he had been for six months the master of the Plug
+Mountain destinies.
+
+"I'm up against it, good and solid," was the way he phrased it to
+Frisbie. "My hundred and fifty miles of 'two streaks of rust and a
+right-of-way' has never paid a net dollar since the boom broke at
+Saint's Rest, and under present conditions it never will. If I had known
+the history of the road when President Colbrith went fishing for me--as
+I didn't--I wouldn't have touched the job with a ten-foot pole.
+
+"But now I'm here, I'm going to do something with my two streaks of rust
+to make them pay--make a spoon or spoil a horn. Just what shall be done
+I haven't decided fully, but I have a notion in the back part of my
+head, and if it works out, I shall need you first of all. Will you come?
+
+"Have I told you in any of my earlier letters that I have personally
+earned the ill-will of General Manager North? I have, and it is distinct
+from and in addition to his hostility for the unearning branch for which
+I am responsible. I'm sorry for it, because I may need his good word for
+my inchoate scheme later on. It came up over some maintenance-of-way
+charges. He is as shrewd as he is unscrupulous, and he knows well how to
+pile the sins of the congregation on the back of the poor scapegoat. To
+make a better showing for the main line, and at the same time to show
+what a swilling pig the Plug Mountain is, he had the branch charged up
+with a lot of material we didn't get. Naturally, I protested--and was
+curtly told to mind my own business, which had no ramifications reaching
+into the accounting department. Then I threatened to carry it over his
+head to President Colbrith; whereupon I gained my point temporarily, and
+lost a possible stepping-stone to success.
+
+"None the less, I am going to win out if it costs me the best year of
+my life. I'm going to swing to this thing till I make something out of
+it, if I have to put in some more winters like the one I have just come
+through--which was Sheol, with ice and snow in the place of the
+traditional fire and brimstone. If I have one good quality--as I
+sometimes doubt--it's the inability to know when I am satisfactorily and
+permanently licked."
+
+Stuart Ford was shivering through the second of the winters on the gray,
+needle-winded day when he stood on the crusted drift, heartening his men
+who were breaking the way for further rammings of the scrap-heap 206 and
+her box-plow. During the summer which lay behind the pitiless storms and
+the blockading snows he had explored and planned, studied and schemed;
+and now a month of good weather would put the finishing touches
+preparatory upon the "notion" hinted at in the letter to Frisbie.
+
+"That'll do, boys; we'll let Gallagher hit it a few times now," he sang
+out, when he saw that the weaker ones among the shovelers were stumbling
+numbly and throwing wild. "Get back to the car and thaw yourselves out."
+
+The safety-valve of the 206 was stuttering under a gratifying increase
+of steam pressure when the superintendent climbed to the canvas-shrouded
+cab.
+
+"Ha! two hundred and fifty pounds! That looks a little more like it,
+Michael. Now get all the run you can and hit her straight from the
+shoulder," he ordered, mounting to his seat on the fireman's box, and
+bracing himself for what should come.
+
+Gallagher released the driver-brakes and let the 206 and the plow drift
+down the grade until his tender drawhead touched the laborers' car. Then
+the reversing lever went forward with a clang, and the steam squealed
+shrilly in the dry-pipe. For a thunderous second or two the
+driving-wheels slipped and whirled futilely on the snowy rails.
+Gallagher pounced upon the sand lever, whereat the tires suddenly bit
+and held and a long-drawn, fire-tearing exhaust sobbed from the stack.
+
+"You've got her!" shouted Ford. "Now hit it--hit it hard!"
+
+Swiftly the huge mass of engine and plow gathered headway, the pounding
+exhausts quickening until they blended in a continuous roar. The little
+Irishman stayed himself with a foot against the boiler brace; the
+fireman ducked under the canvas curtain and clung to the coal bulkhead;
+and Ford held on as he could.
+
+The shock came like the crashing blow of a collision. The box-plow
+buckled and groaned with fine cracklings as of hard-strained timbers,
+and an avalanche of snow thrown up from its inclined plane buried engine
+and cab and tender in a smothering drift. Ford slid his window and
+looked out.
+
+"Good work, Michael; good work! You gained a full car-length that time.
+Try it again."
+
+Gallagher backed the plow carefully out of the cutting, and the fireman
+opened the blower and nursed his fire. Again and again the wheeled
+projectile was hurled into the obstruction, and Ford watched the
+steadily retrograding finger of the steam-gauge anxiously. Would the
+pressure suffice for the final dash which should clear the cutting? Or
+would they have to stop and turn out the wretched shovelmen again?
+
+The answer came with the fourth drive into the stubborn barrier. There
+was the same nerve-racking shock of impact; but now the recoil was
+followed by a second forward plunge, and Gallagher yelled his triumph
+when the 206 burst through the remaining lesser drifts and shot away on
+the clear track beyond.
+
+Ford drew a long breath of relief, and the engineer checked the speed of
+the runaway, stopped, and started back to couple on the car-load of
+laborers.
+
+Ford swung around and put his back to the open window.
+
+"Let's hope that is the worst of it and the last of it for this winter,
+Mike," he said, speaking as man to man. "I believe the weather will
+break before we have any more snow; and next year--"
+
+The pause was so long that Gallagher took his chance of filling it.
+
+"Don't be tellin' me the big boss has promised us a rotary for next
+winter, Misther Foord. That'd be too good to be thrue, I'm thinking."
+
+"No; but next winter you'll be doing one of two things, Michael. You
+will be pulling your train through steel snow-sheds on Plug Mountain--or
+you'll be working for another boss. Break her loose, and let's get to
+camp as soon as we can. Those poor devils back in the box-car are about
+dead for sleep and a square meal."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A SPIKED SWITCH
+
+
+Ford's hopeful prophecy that the snow battles were over for the season
+proved true. A few weeks later a warm wind blew up from the west, the
+mountain foot-trails became first packed ice-paths and then slippery
+ridges to trap the unwary; the great drifts began to settle and melt,
+and the spring music of the swollen mountain torrents was abroad in the
+land.
+
+At the blowing of the warm wind Ford aimed the opening gun in his
+campaign against fate--the fate which seemed to be bent upon adding his
+name to the list of failures on the Plug Mountain branch. The gun-aiming
+was a summons to Frisbie, at the moment a draftsman in the engineering
+office of the Great Northern at St. Paul, and pining, like the Plug
+Mountain superintendent, for something bigger.
+
+"I have been waiting until I could offer you something with a
+bread-and-meat attachment in the way of day pay," wrote Ford, "and the
+chance has come. Kennedy, my track supervisor, has quit, and the place
+is yours if you will take it. If you are willing to tie up to the most
+harebrained scheme you ever heard of, with about one chance in a
+thousand of coming out on top and of growing up with a brand new country
+of unlimited possibilities, just gather up your dunnage and come."
+
+This letter was written on a Friday. Frisbie got it out of the carriers'
+delivery on the Sunday morning; and Sunday night saw him racing
+westward, with the high mountains of Colorado as his goal. Not that the
+destination made any difference, for Frisbie would have gone quite as
+willingly to the ends of the earth at the crooking of Ford's finger.
+
+It was the brightest of May days when the new supervisor of track
+debarked from the mountain-climbing train at Saint's Rest, stretched his
+legs gratefully on _terra firma_, had his first deep lungful of the
+ozonic air of the high peaks, and found his welcome awaiting him. Ford
+would have no talk of business until he had taken Frisbie across to the
+little shack "hotel," and had filled him up on a dinner fresh from the
+tin; nor, indeed, afterward, until they were smoking comfortably in the
+boxed-off den in the station building which served as the
+superintendent's office.
+
+"I've been counting on you, Dick, as you know, ever since this thing
+threatened to take shape in my head," Ford began. "First, let me ask
+you: do you happen to know where you could lay hands on three or four
+good constructing engineers--men you could turn loose absolutely and
+trust implicitly? I'm putting this up to you because the Plug Mountain
+exile has taken me a bit out of touch."
+
+"Why--yes," said Frisbie, taking time to call the mental roll. "There
+are Major Benson and his son Jack--you know 'em both--just in off their
+job in the Selkirks. Then there is Roy Brissac; he'd be a pretty good
+man in the field; and Chauncey Leckhard, of my class,--he's got a job in
+Winnipeg, but he'll come if I ask him to, and he is the best office man
+I know. But what on top of earth are you driving at, Stuart?"
+
+Ford cleared his pipe of the ash and refilled it.
+
+"I'll go into the details with you a little later. We shall have plenty
+of time during the next month or six weeks, and, incidentally, a good
+bit more privacy. The thing I'm trying to figure out will burst like a
+bubble if it gets itself made public too soon, and"--lowering his
+voice--"I can't trust my office force here. _Savez?_"
+
+"I _savez_ nothing as yet," laughed the new supervisor, "but perhaps I
+shall if you'll tell me what is going to happen in the next month or six
+weeks."
+
+"I'm coming to that, right now. How would you like to take a hunting
+trip over on the wilderness side of the range? There are big woods and
+big game."
+
+Frisbie grinned. He was a little man, with sharp black eyes shaded by
+the heaviest of black brows, and it was his notion to trim his mustaches
+and beard after the fashion set by the third Napoleon and imitated
+faithfully by those who sing the part of Mephistopheles in _Faust_.
+Hence, his grin was handsomely diabolic.
+
+"You needn't ask me what I'd like; you just tell me what you want me to
+do," he rejoined, with clansman loyalty.
+
+"So I will," said Ford, taking the reins of authority. "We leave here
+to-morrow morning for a trip over the Pass and down the Pannikin on the
+other side, and if anybody asks you why, you can say that we expect to
+kill a deer or two, and possibly a bear. Your part of the outsetting,
+however, is to pack your surveying instruments on the burro saddles so
+they'll pass for grub-boxes, tent-poles, and the like."
+
+"Call it done," said Frisbie. "But why all this stage play? Can't you
+anticipate that much without endangering your bubble?"
+
+Ford lowered his voice again.
+
+"I gave you the hint. Penfield, my chief clerk--his desk is just on the
+other side of that partition--is an ex-main-line man, shoved upon me
+when I didn't want him. He was General Manager North's stenographer.
+For reasons which will be apparent to you a little later on, I want to
+blow my bubble in my own way; or, to change the figure, I'd like to fire
+the first volley myself."
+
+Frisbie's grin was rather more than less diabolic.
+
+"Then I'd begin by firing Mr. Penfield, himself," he remarked.
+
+"No, you wouldn't," said Ford. "There are going to be obstacles enough
+in the way without slapping Mr. North in the face as a preliminary.
+Under the circumstances, he'd take it that way; Penfield would make sure
+that he took it that way."
+
+It was at this point in the low-toned conference that the ingenious
+young man in the outer office put down the desk telephone ear-piece long
+enough to smite with his fist at some air-drawn antagonist. Curiosity
+was this young man's capital weakness, and he had tinkered the wires of
+the private telephone system so that the flicking of a switch made him
+an auditor at any conversation carried on in the private office. He was
+listening intently and eagerly again when Ford said, still in the same
+guarded tone:
+
+"No, I can't fire Penfield, and I don't particularly want to. He is a
+good office man, and loyal to his salt: it's my misfortune that it is
+Mr. North's salt-cellar, and not mine, that he dips into. Besides, I'd
+have trouble in replacing him. Saint's Rest isn't exactly the paradise
+its name implies--for a clean-cut, well-mannered young fellow with
+social leanings."
+
+"Now, what in the mischief does all that mean?" mused the chief clerk,
+when Ford and his new track man had gone out. "A month's hunting trip
+over the range, with the surveying instruments taken along. And last
+summer Mr. Ford spent a good part of his time over there--also hunting,
+so he said. Confound it all! I wish I could get into that private drawer
+of his in the safe. That would tell the story. I wonder if Pacheco
+couldn't make himself an errand over the Pass in the morning? By
+George!" slapping his thigh and apostrophizing the superintendent, "I'll
+just go you once, Mr. Ford, if I lose!"
+
+Now the fruit, of which this little soliloquy was the opening blossom,
+matured on the second day after Ford and Frisbie had started out on the
+mysterious hunting trip across the range. Pacheco, the half-breed
+Mexican who freighted provisions by jack train to the mining-camps on
+the head waters of the Pannikin, came in to report to the chief clerk.
+
+"Well, 'Checo, what did you find out?" was the curt inquiry.
+
+The half-breed spread his palms.
+
+"W'at I see, I know. Dey'll not gone for hunt much. One day out, dey'll
+make-a da camp and go for squint t'rough spy-glass, so"--making an
+imaginary transit telescope of his hands. "Den dey'll measure h-on da
+groun' and squint some more, so."
+
+Penfield nodded and a gold piece changed hands silently.
+
+"That's all, 'Checo; much obliged. Don't say anything about this over in
+the camp. Mr. Ford said he was going hunting, and that's what we'll say,
+if anybody asks us."
+
+That night the chief clerk sent a brief cipher telegram to the general
+manager at Denver.
+
+     Ford and his new track supervisor, who is really a high-priced
+     constructing engineer, gone over the range for a month's absence.
+     Gave it out here that they were going after big game, but they took
+     a transit and are picking up the line of the old S. L. & W.
+     extension in the upper Pannikin.
+
+It was late in the month of June when Ford and Frisbie, tanned,
+weathered and as gaunt as pioneers, returned to Saint's Rest; and for
+those who were curious enough to be interested, there were a couple of
+bear-skins and one of a mountain lion to make good the ostensible object
+of the absence.
+
+But the most important trophies of the excursion were two engineers'
+note-books, well filled with memoranda; and these they did not exhibit.
+On the contrary, they became a part of the collection of maps,
+statistics, estimates and private correspondence which Chief Clerk
+Penfield was so anxious to examine, and which Ford kept under lock and
+key when he and Frisbie were not poring over some portion of it in the
+seclusion of the private office.
+
+None the less, Penfield kept his eyes and ears open, and before long he
+had another detail to report by cipher telegram to the general manager.
+Ford was evidently preparing for another absence, and from what the
+chief clerk could overhear, he was led to believe that the pseudo
+supervisor of track would be left in charge of Plug Mountain affairs.
+
+It was on the day before Ford's departure for Denver that a letter came
+from General Manager North. Ford read it with a scowl of disapproval and
+tossed it across the double desk to Frisbie.
+
+"A polite invitation for me to stay at home and to attend to my
+business," he commented.
+
+"Had you written him that you were going away?" inquired Frisbie.
+
+"No; but evidently somebody else has."
+
+Frisbie read the letter again.
+
+"'So that all heads of departments may be on duty when the president
+makes his annual inspection trip over the lines,'" he quoted. "Is Mr.
+Colbrith coming out this early in the summer?"
+
+"No, of course not. He never comes before August."
+
+"Then this is only a trumped-up excuse to make you stay here?"
+
+"That's all," Ford replied laconically.
+
+Mr. Richard Frisbie got up and walked twice the length of the little
+room before he said:
+
+"This Denver gentleman is going to knock your little scheme into a
+cocked hat, if he can, Stuart."
+
+"I am very much afraid we'll have to reckon upon that. As a matter of
+fact, I've been reckoning upon it, all along."
+
+"How much of a pull has he with the New York money-people?"
+
+"I don't know that: I wish I did. It would simplify matters somewhat."
+
+Frisbie took another turn up and down the room, with his head down and
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Stuart, I believe, if I were in your place, I'd enlist Mr. North, if I
+had to make it an object for him," he said, at length.
+
+"Certainly, I mean to go to him first," said Ford. "That is his due. But
+I am counting upon opposition rather than help. Wait a minute"--he
+jerked the door open suddenly and made sure that the chief clerk's chair
+was unoccupied. "The worst of it is that I don't trust North," he went
+on. "He is a grafter in small ways, and he'd sell me out in a minute if
+he felt like it and could see any chance of making capital for himself."
+
+"Then don't go to him with your scheme," urged Frisbie. "If you enlist
+him, you won't be sure of him; and if you don't, you'll merely leave an
+active opponent behind you instead of a passive one."
+
+"I guess you're right, Dick; but I'll have to be governed by conditions
+as I find them. Aside from North's influence with Mr. Colbrith, which is
+considerable, I believe, he can't do much to help. But he can do a
+tremendous lot to hinder. I think I shall try to choke him with butter,
+if I can."
+
+Notwithstanding the general manager's letter, Ford took the train for
+Denver the following morning, and the chief clerk remarked that he
+checked a small steamer trunk in addition to his hand baggage.
+
+"Going to be gone some time, Mr. Ford?" he asked, when he brought the
+night mail down for the superintendent to look over.
+
+"Yes," said Ford absently.
+
+"You'll let me know where to reach you from time to time, I suppose?"
+ventured Penfield.
+
+Ford looked up quickly.
+
+"It won't be necessary. You can handle the office work, as you have
+heretofore, and Mr. Frisbie will have full charge out of doors."
+
+Penfield looked a little crestfallen.
+
+"Am I to take orders from Mr. Frisbie?" he asked, as one determined to
+know the worst.
+
+"Just the same as you would from me," said the superintendent, swinging
+up to the step of the moving car. And the chief clerk went back to his
+office busily concocting another cipher message to the general manager.
+
+On the way down the canyon Ford was saying to himself that he was now
+fairly committed to the scheme over which he had spent so many toilful
+days and sleepless nights, and that he would have it out with Mr. North
+to a fighting conclusion before he slept.
+
+But a freight wreck got in the way while the down passenger train was
+measuring the final third of the distance, and it was long after office
+hours in the Pacific Southwestern headquarters when Ford reached Denver.
+
+By consequence, the crucial interview with the general manager had to be
+postponed; and the enthusiast was chafing at his ill luck when he went
+to his hotel--chafing and saying hard words, for the waiting had been
+long, and now that the psychologic moment had arrived, delays were
+intolerable.
+
+Now it sometimes happens that seeming misfortunes are only blessings in
+disguise. When Ford entered the hotel cafe to eat his belated dinner, he
+saw Evans, the P. S-W. auditor, sitting alone at a table-for-two. He
+crossed the room quickly and shook hands with the man he had meant to
+interview either before or after the meeting with North.
+
+It was after they had chatted comfortably through to the coffee that
+the auditor said, blandly: "What are you down for, Ford?--anything
+special?"
+
+"Yes. I am down to get leave of absence to go East," said Ford warily.
+
+"But that isn't all," was the quiet rejoinder. "In fact, it's only the
+non-committal item that you'd give to a _Rocky Mountain News_ reporter."
+
+Ford was impatient of diplomatic methods when there was no occasion for
+them.
+
+"Give it a name," he said bluntly. "What do you think you know, Evans?"
+
+The auditor smiled.
+
+"There is a leak in your office up at Saint's Rest, I'm afraid. What
+sort of a bombshell are you fixing to fire at Mr. North?"
+
+Ford grew interested at once.
+
+"Tell me what you know, and perhaps I can piece it out for you."
+
+"I'll tell you what Mr. North knows--which will be more to the purpose,
+perhaps. For a year or more you have been figuring on some kind of a
+scheme to pull the company's financial leg in behalf of your
+good-for-nothing narrow gauge. A month ago, for example, you went all
+over the old survey on the other side of the mountains and verified the
+original S. L & W. preliminaries and rights-of-way on its proposed
+extension."
+
+Ford's eyes narrowed. He was thinking of the warning letter he would
+have to write to Frisbie. But what he said was:
+
+"I'd like to know how the dickens you guessed all that. But no matter;
+supposing I did?"
+
+"It's no good," said the auditor, shaking his head. "I'm talking as a
+friend. North doesn't like you, personally; and if he did, you couldn't
+persuade him to recommend anything in the way of an experiment on the
+Plug Mountain. So far from extending your two-by-four branch--if that is
+what you have in mind--he'd be much more likely to counsel its
+abandonment, if the charter didn't require us to keep it going."
+
+Ford found a cigar for the auditor, and lighted one for himself.
+
+"From all of which I infer that the semiannual report of the Pacific
+Southwestern is going to be a pretty bad one," he said, with carefully
+assumed indifference.
+
+Evans regarded him shrewdly.
+
+"Are you guessing at that? Or is there a leak at our end of the line as
+well as at yours?"
+
+"Oh, it's a guess," laughed Ford. "Call it that, anyhow. At least, I
+haven't any of your confidential clerks in my pay. But just how bad is
+the report going to be?"
+
+The auditor shook his head.
+
+"Worse than the last one. Perhaps you have noticed that the stock has
+dropped six points in the past week. You're one of the official family:
+I don't mind telling you that we are in the nine-hole, Ford."
+
+"Of course we are," said Ford, with calm conviction. "That much is
+pretty evident to a man who merely reads the Wall Street news bulletins.
+What is the matter with us--specifically, I mean?"
+
+Evans shrugged.
+
+"Are you a division superintendent on the system and don't know?" he
+demanded. "We are too short at both ends. With our eastern terminal only
+half-way to Chicago, we can't control the east-bound grain which grows
+on our own line; and with the other end stopping short here at Denver,
+we can't bid for west-bound transcontinental business. It's as simple as
+twice two. Our competitors catch us going and coming."
+
+"Precisely. And if we don't get relief?"
+
+The auditor smiled grimly.
+
+"As I've said, you're one of us, Ford, and I don't mind speaking freely
+to you. A receivership is looming in the distance, and the not very dim
+distance, for the P. S-W."
+
+"I thought so. How near is it?"
+
+"I don't know--nobody knows definitely. If we had a man of resources at
+the head of things--as we have not--it might be stood off for another
+six months."
+
+"I'm on the way to stand it off permanently, if I can get any backing,"
+said Ford quietly.
+
+"You!" was the astonished reply.
+
+"Yes, I. Listen, Evans. For two years I have been buried up yonder in
+the hills, with not enough to do in the summer season to keep me out of
+mischief. I am rather fond of mathematics, and I am telling you I have
+this thing figured out to the fourth decimal. If President Colbrith and
+his associates can be made to see that the multiplication of two by two
+gives an invariable resultant of four, there will be no receivership for
+the P. S-W. this year, or next."
+
+"Show me," said the auditor.
+
+Ford hesitated for a moment. Then he took a packet of papers, estimates,
+exhibits and fine-lined engineer's maps from his pocket and tossed it
+across the table.
+
+"That is for you, personally--for David Evans; not the P. S-W. auditor.
+You've got to keep it to yourself."
+
+The auditor went through the papers carefully, shifting his cigar slowly
+from one corner of his mouth to the other as he read and examined. When
+he handed them back he was shaking his head, almost mournfully.
+
+"It's a big thing, Ford; the biggest kind of a thing. And it is
+beautifully worked out. But I know our people, here and in New York.
+They will simply give you the cold stare and say that you are crazy."
+
+"Because it can't be financed?"
+
+"Because it doesn't come from Hill or Harriman or Morgan, or some other
+one of the big captains. You'll never be able to stand it upon its feet
+by your single-handed lonesome."
+
+Ford set his teeth, and his clean-cut face seemed to grow suddenly older
+and harder as the man in him came to the fore.
+
+"By heavens! if I put my back under it, it's got to stand upon its feet!
+I'm not going into it with the idea that there is any such thing in the
+book as failure."
+
+The auditor looked darkly into the cool gray eyes of the man facing him.
+
+"Then let me give you a word of advice before you start in. Skip North,
+absolutely; don't breathe a word of it to him. Don't ask me why; but do
+as I say. And another thing: drop into my office to-morrow before you
+leave. I'll show you some figures that may help you to stir things up
+properly at the New York end. Do you go direct from here?"
+
+"No; I shall have to stop over a few days in Chicago. I know pretty well
+where to put my hands on what I need; I have laid the foundations from
+the bottom up by correspondence. But I want to go over the situation on
+the ground before I make my grand-stand play before Mr. Colbrith and the
+board of directors."
+
+"Well, come in and get the figures, anyway: come to the private door of
+my office and rap three times. It will be just as well if it isn't
+generally known that you are confabbing with me. Our semiannual report
+will probably be in New York ahead of you, but it won't hurt if you have
+the information to work with." Evans was pushing his chair from the
+table when he added: "By the way, you happened upon the exact
+psychological moment to make your raid; the report coming out, and
+things going to the dogs generally."
+
+Ford's laugh was genially shrewd.
+
+"Perhaps it wasn't so much of a happening as it appears. Didn't I tell
+you that I had figured this thing out to the fourth decimal place?
+Psychological moments are bigger arguments than dollars and cents,
+sometimes."
+
+The auditor had taken his hat from the waiter and was shaking hands with
+his dinner companion.
+
+"I'd like to believe you're a winner, Ford; you deserve to be. Come and
+see me--and make your call upon Mr. North as brief as possible. He'll
+probe you if you don't."
+
+This was how it came about that the next morning, when Ford went to call
+upon the sallow, heavy-faced, big-bodied man who sat behind the glass
+door lettered "General Manager, Private,"--this after half an hour spent
+in Auditor Evans' private office,--it was only to ask for leave of
+absence to go East--on business of a personal nature, he explained, when
+Mr. North was curious enough to ask his object.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+LOSS AND DAMAGE
+
+
+At this period of his existence, Stuart Ford troubled himself as little
+as any anchorite of the desert about the eternal feminine.
+
+It was not that he was more or less than a man, or in any sense that
+anomalous and impossible thing called a woman-hater. On the contrary,
+his attitude toward women in the mass was distinctly and at times
+boyishly sentimental. But when a young man is honestly in love with his
+calling, and is fully convinced of its importance to himself and to a
+restlessly progressive world, single-heartedness becomes his watchword,
+and what sentiment there is in him will be apt to lie comfortably
+dormant.
+
+For six full working-days Ford had been immersed to the eyes in the
+intricacies of his railway problem, acquiring in Chicago a valiseful of
+documentary data that demanded to be classified and thoroughly digested
+before he reached New York and the battle-field actual. This was why he
+was able to ride all day in studious abstraction in his section of the
+Chicago-New York Pullman, without so much as a glance for the young
+woman in the modest gray traveling coat directly across the aisle.
+
+She was well worth the glance, as he admitted willingly enough
+afterward. She was the dainty type, with fluffy bright brown hair, eyes
+the color of wood violets, a nose tilted to the precise angle of
+bewitching piquancy, and the adorable mouth and chin familiarized to two
+continents by the artistic pen of the Apostle of the American Girl. How
+he could have ridden within arm's reach of her through all the daylight
+hours of a long summer day remained as one of Ford's unanswered enigmas;
+but it required an accident and a most embarrassing _contretemps_ to
+make him aware of her existence.
+
+The accident was one of the absurd sort. The call for dinner in the
+dining-car had been given, and Ford was just behind the young woman in
+the rear of the procession which filed forward out of the Pullman. The
+train had at that moment left a way station, and the right-hand
+vestibule door was still open and swinging disjointedly across the
+narrow passage. Ford reached an arm past the young woman to fold the
+two-leaved door out of her way. As he did it, the door-knob hooked
+itself mischievously in the loop of her belt chatelaine, snatched it
+loose, and flung it out into the backward-rushing night.
+
+Whereupon: "Oh!--my purse!" with a little gasp of sudden bereavement,
+and a quick turning to face the would-be helper.
+
+Ford was honestly aghast when the situation fully enveloped him.
+
+"Heavens and earth! Did you ever see such idiotic clumsiness!" he
+ejaculated. And then, in deepest contrition: "I won't attempt to
+apologize--it's beyond all that. But you must let me make your loss
+good."
+
+In all the pin-pricking embarrassment of the moment, he did not fail to
+remark that she quickly recovered the serenity which belongs to the
+well-bred. She was even smiling, rather ruefully, when she said:
+
+"Fortunately, the conductor has my passes. But really"--and now she
+laughed outright--"I am afraid I shall have to go hungry if I can't
+borrow enough to pay for my dinner."
+
+Another man, a man less purposefully lost in the purely practical
+labyrinth of professional work, would have found something fitting to
+say. But Ford, having discovered a thing to do, did it painstakingly and
+in solemn silence. There was an unoccupied table for two in the
+dining-car; he seated her, gave her his purse, called a waiter, and
+would have betaken himself forthwith to another table if she had not
+detained him.
+
+"No," she said decisively, with a charming little uptilt of the adorable
+chin. "I do not forget that you were trying to do me a kindness. Please
+sit down here and take your purse. I'm sure I don't want it."
+
+He obeyed, still in somber silence, gave his dinner order after she had
+given hers, and was wondering if he might venture to bury himself in a
+bundle of the data papers, when she spoke again.
+
+"Are you provoked with yourself, or with me?" she asked--rather
+mockingly, he thought.
+
+"Neither," he said promptly. "I was merely saying to myself that my
+wretched awkwardness didn't give me an excuse for boring you."
+
+"It was an accident--nothing more or less," she rejoined, with an air of
+dismissing finally the purse-snatching episode. Then she added: "I am
+the one who ought to be embarrassed."
+
+"But you are not," he returned quickly. "You are quite the mistress of
+yourself--which is more than most women would be, under the
+circumstances."
+
+"Is that a compliment?" she asked, with latent mockery in the violet
+eyes. "Because if it is, I think you must be out of the West; the--the
+unfettered West: isn't that what it is called?"
+
+"I am," Ford acknowledged. "But why do you say that? Was I rude? I beg
+you to believe that I didn't mean to be."
+
+"Oh, no; not rude--merely sincere. We are not sincere any more, I think;
+except on the frontier edges of us. Are we?"
+
+Ford took exceptions to the charge for the sheer pleasure of hearing her
+talk.
+
+"I'd be sorry to believe that," he protested. "The conventions account
+for something, of course; and I suppose the polite lie which deceives no
+one has to have standing-room. But every now and then one is surprised
+into telling the truth, don't you think?"
+
+"If I can't fully agree with you, I can at least admire your point of
+view," she said amiably. "Is it Western--or merely human?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Shall we assume that the one implies the other? That would be in
+accordance with your point of view, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Yes; but it would be a distinct reversal of yours. Truth belongs to
+another and simpler time than ours. We are conventional first and
+everything else afterward."
+
+"Are we?" he queried. "Some few hundreds or thousands of us may be; but
+for the remainder of our eighty-odd millions the conventions are things
+to be put on and off like Sunday garments. And even the chosen few of
+us brush them aside upon occasion; ignore them utterly, as we two are
+ignoring them at this moment."
+
+She proved his assertion by continuing to talk to him, and the
+dining-car was emptying itself when they realized that there is an end
+even to a most leisurely dinner. Ford paid the steward as they left the
+car, but in the Pullman he went back to first principles and insisted
+upon some kind of a definite accounting for the lost purse.
+
+"Now you will tell me now much I threw away for you, and I'll pay my
+debt," he said, when she had hospitably made room for him in the
+opposing seat of her section.
+
+"Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind!" she asserted. "You will give
+me your card--we're going back to the conventions now--and when we reach
+the city you may lend me enough money to take me up-town. And to-morrow
+morning my brother will pay you back."
+
+He gave in because he had to.
+
+"You are much more lenient than I deserve. Really, you ought to stick me
+good and hard for my awkwardness. It would serve me right."
+
+"I am considering the motive," she said almost wistfully, he fancied.
+"We have drifted very far from all those quiet anchorages of courtesy
+and helpfulness. If we lived simpler lives--"
+
+He smiled at the turn she was giving it.
+
+"Are you, too, bitten with the fad of the moment, 'the simple life'?" he
+asked. "Let me assure you that it is beautiful only when you can look
+down upon it from the safe altitude of a comfortable income. I know,
+because I've been living it for the past two years."
+
+She looked as if she were sorry for him.
+
+"That is rank heresy!" she declared. "Our forefathers had the better of
+us in many ways, and their simpler manner of living was one of them.
+They had time for all the little courtesies and kindnesses that make
+life truly worth living."
+
+Ford's laugh was boyishly derisive.
+
+"Yes; they certainly had plenty of time; but they didn't have much else.
+Why, just think, for a moment, of what our own America would be if
+merely one of the modern civilizers, the railroads, had never existed.
+There simply wouldn't be any America, as we know it now."
+
+"How can you say that?"
+
+"Because it is so. For nearly two centuries we stood still, because
+there were no means of locomotion--which is another word for progress
+and civilization. But in less than fifty years after the first railroad
+was built we had become a great nation."
+
+She was silenced, if not wholly convinced; and a few minutes later the
+train drew into the Forty-second Street Station. When the parting time
+came, Ford dutifully gathered her belongings, said good-by, and put her
+on a north-bound subway; all this without remembering that he did not
+know her name. The recollection came, however, when the subway train
+shot away into the tunnel.
+
+"Of all the blockheads!" he growled, apostrophizing his own unreadiness.
+"But I'll find her again. She said she'd send her brother to the hotel
+with the dinner money, and when I get hold of him it will go hard with
+me if I don't manage some way to get an introduction."
+
+This was what was in his mind when he sought the down-town hotel whose
+name he had written on his card for her; it was his latest waking
+thought when he went to sleep that night, and his earliest when he awoke
+the following morning.
+
+But when he went to the clerk's desk, after a leisurely breakfast, to
+get his mail, he found that the sure thread of identification had broken
+in his fingers. There was a square envelope among the other letters in
+his key-box containing the exact amount of the young woman's
+indebtedness to him; this, with a brief note of thanks--unsigned.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+COLD STORAGE
+
+
+If courage, of the kind fitted to lead forlorn hopes, or marchings
+undaunted up to the muzzles of loaded cannon, be a matter of gifts and
+temperament, it is also in some degree a matter of environment.
+
+Stuart Ford was Western born and bred; a product of the wider breathing
+spaces. Given his proper battle-field, where the obstacles were
+elemental and the foes to be overcome were mere men of flesh and blood
+fighting freely in the open, he was a match for the lustiest. But New
+York, with its submerging, jostling multitudes, its thickly crowding
+human vastness, and, more than all, its atmosphere of dollar-chasing,
+apparent and oppressive even to the transient passer-by, disheartened
+him curiously.
+
+It was not that he was more provincial than he had to be; for that
+matter, there is no provincialism so rampant as that of the thronging,
+striving, self-sufficient city. But isolation in any sort is a thing to
+be reckoned with. The two pioneering years in the Rockies had done their
+work,--of narrowing, as well as of broadening,--and the plunge into the
+chilling sea of the money-mad metropolis made him shiver and wish he
+were out.
+
+This feeling was really at the bottom of the late rising and the
+leisurely breakfast, making him temporize where he had meant to be
+prompt, energetic and vigorously aggressive. Having pocketed the young
+woman's unsigned note, he glanced at his watch and decided that it was
+still too early to go in search of President Colbrith.
+
+"I don't suppose he'll be in his office for an hour yet," he mused
+reflectively; "and anyway, I guess I'd better go over the papers again,
+so I can be sure to speak my piece right end to. By Jove! I didn't
+suppose a couple of thousand miles of easting would take the heart out
+of things the way it does. If I didn't know better, I should think I'd
+come here to float the biggest kind of a fake, instead of a life-boat
+for the shipwrecked people in the Pacific Southwestern. It is beginning
+to look that way in spite of all I can do."
+
+Going once again over his carefully tabulated argument did not help
+matters greatly. He was beginning to realize now how vastly, antipodally
+different the New York point of view might be from his own. It came to
+him with the benumbing effect of a blow that his own ambitions had
+persistently looked beyond the mere money-making results of his scheme.
+Also, that President Colbrith and his fellow-investors might very easily
+refuse to consider any other phase of the revolutionary proposition he
+was about to lay before them.
+
+By ten o'clock postponement was no longer a tenable city of refuge: the
+plunge had to be taken. Accordingly, he fared forth to present himself
+at the Broadway address given in the Pacific Southwestern printed matter
+as the New York headquarters of the company.
+
+The number proved to be a ground floor, with the business office of the
+eastern traffic representative in front, and three or four private
+desk-rooms in the rear, one of them labeled "President" in inconspicuous
+gilt lettering. Entering, with less assurance than if he had been the
+humblest of place-seekers out of a job, Ford was almost relieved to find
+only a closed desk, and a young man absently scanning a morning paper.
+
+Inquiry developed a few facts, tersely stated but none the less
+enlightening. Mr. Colbrith was not in: the office was merely his nominal
+headquarters in the city and he occupied it only occasionally. His
+residence? It was in the Borough of the Bronx, pretty well up toward
+Yonkers--locality and means of access obligingly written out on a card
+for the caller by the clerk. Was Mr. Ford's business of a routine
+nature? If so, perhaps, Mr. Ten Eyck, the general agent, could attend to
+it. Ford said it was not of a routine nature, and made his escape to
+inquire his way to the nearest subway station. To pause now was to lose
+the precious impetus of the start.
+
+It was worth something to be whirled away blindly out of the stifling
+human vortex of the lower city; but Ford's first glimpse of the Colbrith
+mansion depressed him again. The huge, formal house had once been the
+country residence of a retired dry-goods merchant. It fronted the river
+brazenly, and the fine old trees of a ten-acre park shamed its
+architectural stiffness. Ford knew the president a little by family
+repute and more particularly as a young subordinate knows the general in
+command. It struck him forcibly that the aspect of the house fitted the
+man. With the broad river and the distant Palisades to be dwelt upon,
+its outlook windows were narrow. With the sloping park and the great
+trees to give it dignity, it seemed to assume an artificial, plumb-line
+dignity of its own, impressive only as the product of rigid measurements
+and mechanical uprightness.
+
+From the boulevard there was a gravelled driveway with a stone portal.
+The iron gates were thrown wide, and at his entrance Ford stood aside to
+let an outgoing auto-car have the right of way. Being full of his
+errand, and of the abstraction of a depressed soul, Ford merely remarked
+that there were two persons in the car; a young man driving, and a young
+woman, veiled and dust-coated, in the mechanician's seat beside him.
+None the less, there floated out of the mist of abstraction an instantly
+vanishing phantom of half-recognition for the Westerner. Something in
+the pose of the young woman, the way she leaned forward and held her hat
+with the tips of her gloved fingers, was, for the fleeting moment,
+almost reminiscent.
+
+If Ford had wished to speculate upon abstruse problems of identity,
+there was neither time nor the mental aptitude. A little later he had
+given his card to the servant at the door and was waiting in a darkened
+and most depressive library for the coming of the master of the house.
+The five minutes of waiting nearly finished him. As the absurdly formal
+clock between the book-cases ticked off the leaden-winged seconds, his
+plan for the rescue of Pacific Southwestern took the form of a crass
+impertinence, and only the grim determination to see a lost cause
+decently coffined and buried kept the enthusiast with his face to the
+front.
+
+After all, the beginning of the interview with the tall, thin,
+gray-haired and hatchet-faced old man, who presently stalked into the
+library and gave his hand with carefully adjusted cordiality to the son
+of one of his college classmates, was only a little more depressing: it
+was not mortal. Ford had been born in Illinois; and so, something better
+than a third of a century earlier, had the president. Moreover, Mr.
+Colbrith had, in the hey-day of his youth, shared rooms with the elder
+Ford in the fresh-water university which had later numbered the younger
+Ford among its alumni. These things count for somewhat, even when the
+gap to be bridged is that between the president of a railroad and one of
+his minor officials.
+
+But when the revolutionary project was introduced, the president's
+guarded cordiality faded like a photographic proof-print in the
+sunlight, and the air of the darkened library grew coldly inclement.
+
+"So you came to talk business, did you?" said the high, rasping voice
+out of the depths of the easy-chair opposite; and Ford raged inwardly at
+the thought that he had clearly placed himself at a disadvantage by
+becoming even constructively the guest of the president. "As a rule, I
+positively refuse to discuss such matters outside of their proper
+environment; but I'll make an exception for Douglas Ford's son. Your
+plan is simply impossible. I can understand how it may appear possible,
+and even attractive, to a young man, and especially to the young man who
+has invented it. But as an investment for capital--my dear young sir, go
+back to your division, and strive by faithful service to rise in the
+accepted and time-honored way. You are wasting your time in New York."
+
+Curiously enough, Ford found his evaporated courage recrystallizing
+under opposition.
+
+"I can not believe that I have made the plan, and the present condition
+of the system, sufficiently clear to you," he insisted; whereupon he
+went patiently and good-naturedly over the argument again, emphasizing
+the desperate straits to which the Pacific Southwestern was reduced.
+
+"We know all that, Mr. Ford," was the unyielding reply. "But granting it
+to be the fact, don't you see the absolute futility of asking for
+thirty-five millions additional capital at such a crisis?"
+
+"No, I don't," said Ford stubbornly. "I know--as I can not explain to
+you in detail in a half-hour interview--that this plan of mine can be
+made successful. For two years, Mr. Colbrith, I have been the man on the
+ground: no word that I am saying to you is speculative. Every clause of
+the proposition has a carefully established fact behind it."
+
+"No doubt it seems so to you," came the rasping voice from the
+chair-depths. "But thirty-five millions!"--with a quavering gasp. "And
+at a time when our earnings are falling off steadily and the stock is
+going down day by day. It's--it's simply preposterous! I must really
+decline to discuss it any further."
+
+Ford had his packet of data in hand.
+
+"I have all the exhibits here, carefully tabulated and condensed. Won't
+you reconsider far enough to examine them, Mr. Colbrith?"
+
+A thin white hand of negation and protest waved out of the depths of
+the engulfing easy-chair.
+
+"I am sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Ford. I knew your father, and we were
+great friends. You are like him," he added reminiscently. "He might have
+died rich if he had gone into corn-buying with me when we were
+graduated, as I wanted him to. But he was too enthusiastic. He wanted to
+turn the world upside down--just as you do, my dear young man; just as
+you do."
+
+Ford got upon his feet. The time had arrived for the firing of the shot
+of last resort, and he aimed it deliberately.
+
+"I came first to you, Mr. Colbrith, because it was my duty as a
+subordinate, and your own appointee, and because you were my father's
+friend so many years ago. I may say, frankly, that I did it against good
+advice. Men who profess to know you have counseled me to appeal directly
+to the board. What I wish to know now is if you are willing to take the
+entire responsibility of turning this plan of mine down. Will it not
+relieve you of all responsibility if you will call a meeting of the
+directors, and let me lay this absurd proposal of mine before it? You
+can surely have no fears for the result."
+
+The shot told. The president struggled to his feet and took a nervous
+turn up and down the long room. When he replied, it was with the
+indecisive man's reluctance to commitment of any sort.
+
+"If I call the meeting, I shall be ridiculed; and if I don't call it, I
+suppose you'll go to Brewster and Magnus and tell them I've muzzled you.
+Have it your own way. I'll issue the call for ten o'clock, the day after
+to-morrow, in McVeigh and Mackie's offices in Broad Street. But I warn
+you in advance, Mr. Ford, I shall not be able to help you in the least.
+And I may add this: that when you reach that part of your proposal where
+you call for thirty-five millions additional capital, you may as well
+put on your hat and go home. That will be the end of it."
+
+"And of me," laughed the enthusiast. But in spite of the cold comfort,
+and of the still colder promise of opposition, he took his leave with a
+lighter heart, refusing Mr. Colbrith's rather perfunctory invitation to
+stay to luncheon.
+
+And on the gravelled drive, where he again had to make way for the
+auto-car purring in on its return, he did not so much as look up at the
+pair in the driving-seat.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+WANTED: THIRTY-FIVE MILLIONS
+
+
+The offices of McVeigh and Mackie, brokers and financial agents, are in
+Broad Street, and the windows of the room used for board meetings look
+down upon the angle where beats the money pulse of the nation.
+
+Ford had successfully resisted the temptation to lobby for his scheme
+during the one-day interval between his conference with Mr. Colbrith and
+the date of the called meeting of the directors. It was not any mistaken
+sense of loyalty to the president that restrained him; on the contrary,
+he decided that Mr. Colbrith's declaration of war left him free to fight
+as he would. But upon due consideration he concluded to set the
+advantage of an assault _en masse_ over against the dubious gain of an
+advanced skirmish line, and when he turned out of Broadway into Wall
+Street on the morning of destiny the men whom he was to meet and
+convince were still no more to him than a list of names in the _Poor's
+Manual_, consulted within the hour for the purpose.
+
+He was early on the battle-ground; much too early, he thought, when a
+clerk ushered him into the board room in the rear of the brokers'
+offices. As yet there was only one person present--a young man who was
+lounging in the easiest of the leather-covered chairs and yawning
+dismally. At the first glance the face seemed oddly and strikingly
+familiar; but when the young man marked the new-comer's entrance, the
+small hand-bag in which the amateur promoter carried his papers, and got
+up to shake hands, Ford found the suggestive gropings baffled.
+
+"My name is Adair," said the lounger genially; "and I suppose you are
+the Mr. Ford Uncle Sidney has been telling us about. Pull up a chair and
+sit by the window. It's the only amusement you'll have until the clan
+gathers."
+
+Ford looked at his watch.
+
+"I seem to be ahead of time," he remarked. "I understood Mr. Colbrith to
+say that the meeting would be called for ten o'clock."
+
+"Oh, that's all right; and so he did," rejoined the other cheerfully.
+"But that means anything up to noon for a directors' meeting in New
+York." Then, after a pause: "Do you know any of us personally, Mr.
+Ford?"
+
+Ford was rummaging in his memory again. "I ought to know you, Mr.
+Adair. It isn't very decent to drag in resemblances, but--"
+
+"The resemblance is the real thing, this time," said Adair. "You saw me
+day before yesterday, driving out of the Overlook grounds as you were
+going in."
+
+Ford shook his head.
+
+"No; it goes back of that; sometime I'll remember how and where. But to
+answer your question: I know Mr. Colbrith slightly, but I've never met
+any of the directors."
+
+"Well, you are meeting one at this moment," laughed the young man,
+crossing his legs comfortably. "But I am the easiest mark of the lot,"
+he added. "I inherited my holdings in Pacific Southwestern."
+
+Ford was crucially anxious to find out how the battle was likely to go,
+and his companion seemed amiably communicative.
+
+"Since you call Mr. Colbrith 'Uncle Sidney,' I infer that you know what
+I am here for, Mr. Adair. How do you think my proposition is likely to
+strike the board?"
+
+Again the young man laughed.
+
+"Fancy your asking me!" he said. "I haven't talked with any one but
+Uncle Sidney; and the most I could get out of him was that you wanted
+thirty-five million dollars to spend."
+
+"Well," said the Westerner anxiously, "am I going to get it?"
+
+"You can search me," was the good-natured rejoinder. "But from my
+knowledge of the men you are going presently to wrestle with, I should
+say 'no' and italicize it."
+
+"Perhaps it might help me a little if I could know in advance the
+particular reason for the italics," Ford suggested.
+
+"Oh, sure. The principal reason is that your name isn't Hill or Harriman
+or Morgan or Gates. Money is ridiculously sheepish. It will follow a
+known leader blindly, idiotically. But if it doesn't hear the familiar
+tinkle of the leader's bell, it is mighty apt to huddle and run back."
+
+Ford's smile was grim.
+
+"I don't mind saying to you, Mr. Adair, that this is one of the times
+when it will be much safer to huddle and run forward. Have you seen the
+half-yearly report?"
+
+"I? Heaven forbid! I have never seen anything out of the Pacific
+Southwestern--not even a dividend."
+
+Ford would very willingly have tried to share his enthusiasm with the
+care-free young man, whose face was still vaguely but persistently
+remindful of some impression antedating the automobile passing; but now
+the other members of the board were dropping in by twos and threes, and
+privacy was at an end.
+
+Just before President Colbrith took his place at the head of the long
+table to call the meeting to order, Adair leaned forward to say in low
+tones: "I couldn't give you the tip you wanted, Mr. Ford, but I can give
+you another which may serve as well. If your good word doesn't win out,
+scare 'em--scare 'em stiff! I don't know but you could frighten half a
+million or so out of me if you should try."
+
+"Thank you," said Ford. "I may take you at your word,"--and just then
+Mr. Colbrith rose in his place, fingering his thin white beard rather
+nervously, Ford thought, and rapping on the table for silence.
+
+It was admitted on all hands that the president of the Pacific
+Southwestern was a careful man and a thrifty. It was these qualities
+which had first determined his election. There were many small
+stock-holders in the company, and it is the foible of small
+stock-holders to believe that rigid economy counts for more than
+adventurous outreachings in the larger field.
+
+"Gentlemen," he began, his high, raucous voice rasping the silence like
+the filing of a saw, "this meeting is called, as you have probably been
+informed, for the purpose of considering a plan for betterments
+submitted by Mr. Stuart Ford, who is at the present time superintendent
+of our Plug Mountain Division.
+
+"In making this unusual innovation, and in introducing Mr. Ford, I
+desire to say that I have been actuated by that motive of prudence
+which, while it stands firmly upon its own feet, is willing to consider
+suggestions from without, even when these suggestions appear to be
+totally at variance with a policy of careful and judicious financiering.
+
+"In presenting Mr. Ford as the son of an old friend, long since gone to
+his reward, I wish it distinctly understood that I am in no sense
+committed to his plan. The policy of this company under the present
+administration has been uniformly cautious and prudent: Mr. Ford would
+throw caution and prudence to the winds. Our best efforts have been
+directed toward the saving of the ultimate dollar of expense: Mr. Ford
+urges us to spend millions. We have been trying to dispose of some of
+our non-paying branches: Mr. Ford would have us acquire others and build
+new lines."
+
+While Mr. Colbrith was speaking, Adair was rapidly characterizing the
+members for Ford, checking them off upon his fingers.
+
+"The little man at Uncle Sidney's right is Mackie, and the miserly
+looking one next to him is McVeigh," he whispered. "One of them will
+furnish your coffin, and the other will drive the nails into it. The big
+man with the beard is Brewster--a multimillionaire; and the one who
+looks like Senator Bailey is Magnus, president of the Mohican National.
+Connolly, the fat Irishman, is a politician--wads of money, but not much
+interest in the game. The other three--"
+
+But now the president had made an end and was beckoning to Ford.
+
+The young engineer rose, feeling much as if a bucket of ice-water had
+been suddenly emptied down the back of his neck. But one of his saving
+qualities was the spring-like resilience which responds instantly to a
+shock. Spreading his papers on the table, he began with a little
+apology.
+
+"I didn't come here this morning prepared to make a promoter's speech;
+and perhaps it is just as well, since my gift, if I have one, lies in
+doing things rather than in talking about them. But I can lay a few
+facts before you which you may deem worthy of consideration."
+
+From this as a beginning he went on swiftly and incisively. The Pacific
+Southwestern, in its present condition, was a failure. It was an
+incomplete line, trying vainly to hold its own against great and
+powerful systems overlapping it at either end. The remedy lay in
+extension. The acquisition of a controlling interest in three short
+roads, which, pieced together, would bridge the gap between the Missouri
+River and Chicago, would place the Pacific Southwestern upon an equal
+footing with its competitors as a grain carrier. By standardizing the
+Plug Mountain narrow gauge and extending it to Salt Lake and beyond, the
+line would secure a western outlet, and would be in a position to demand
+its share of transcontinental business.
+
+To finance these two extensions a capital of thirty-five million
+dollars would be needed; five million dollars for the purchase of the
+majority stock in the three short roads, and the remainder for the
+western outlet. These assertions were not guesses: by referring to
+exhibits marked "a" "b" and "f," his hearers would find accurate
+estimates of cost, not only of construction, but also of stock
+purchases.
+
+As to the manner of providing the capital, he had only a suggestion to
+offer. The five million dollars necessary for the acquirement of a
+controlling interest in the three short roads would be a fair
+investment. It could be covered immediately by a reissue--share for
+share--of the reorganization stock of the P. S-W., which would amply
+secure the investors, since the stock of the most prosperous of the
+three local roads was listed at twenty-eight, ten points lower than the
+present market quotation of P. S-W.
+
+The thirty million dollar extension fund might be raised by issuing
+second mortgage bonds upon the entire system, or the new line itself
+could be bonded mile for mile under a separate charter. Ford modestly
+disclaimed any intention of dictating the financial policy; this was not
+in his line. But again he would submit facts. The grain crop in the West
+was phenomenally large in prospect. With its own eastern terminal in
+Chicago, the Pacific Southwestern could control the grain shipments in
+its own territory. With the moving of the grain, the depressed P. S-W.
+stock would inevitably recover, and on a rising market the new issue of
+bonds could doubtless be floated.
+
+The enthusiast closed his argument with a hasty summing-up of the
+benefits which must, in the nature of things, accrue. From being an
+alien link in the great transcontinental chain, the Pacific Southwestern
+would rise at a bound to the dignity of a great railway system; a power
+to be reckoned with among the other great systems gridironing the West.
+Its earnings would be enhanced at every point; cross lines which now fed
+its competitors would become its allies; the local lines to be welded
+into the eastern end of the system would share at once in the prosperity
+of a strong through line.
+
+For the western extension he could speak from personal knowledge of the
+region to be penetrated. Apart from the new line's prime object--that of
+providing an outlet for the system--there was a goodly heritage of local
+business awaiting the first railroad to reach the untapped territory.
+Mines, valueless now for the lack of transportation facilities, would
+become abundant producers; and there were many fertile valleys and mesas
+to attract the ranchman, who would find on the western slopes of the
+mountains an unfailing water supply for his reservoirs and ditches. Ford
+did not hesitate to predict that within a short time the extension would
+earn more, mile for mile, than the grain-belt portion of the system.
+
+When he sat down he felt that his cause was lost. There was no
+enthusiasm, no approval, in the faces of his auditors. After a short and
+informal discussion, in which the engineer was called on to explain his
+plans and estimates in detail to one and another of the members, Magnus,
+the bank president, sufficiently summed up the sense of the meeting when
+he said:
+
+"There is no question about the ingenuity of your plan, Mr. Ford. You
+must have given a great deal of time and thought to it. But it is rather
+too large for us, I'm afraid, and there are too many contingencies. Your
+province, I understand, is the building and operating of railroads, and
+it is nothing to your discredit that you are unfamiliar with the
+difficulties of financing an undertaking as vast as this proposal of
+yours."
+
+"I don't deny the difficulties," said Ford. "But they wouldn't seem to
+be insuperable."
+
+"Not from your point of view," rejoined the banker suavely. "But you
+will admit that they are very considerable. The opposition on the part
+of the competing systems would be something tremendous. No stone would
+be left unturned in the effort to dismount us. To go no further into the
+matter than the proposed purchase of the majority stocks in the three
+short roads: at the first signal in that field you would find those
+stocks flying skyward in ten-point advances, and your five millions
+wouldn't be a drop in the bucket. In view of the difficulties, I think I
+voice the conviction of the board when I say that the plan is too
+hazardous."
+
+The nods of assent were too numerous to leave Ford any hope of turning
+the tide in his favor. He rose, gathered up his papers, and reached for
+his hat.
+
+"It is very pointedly your own funeral, gentlemen," he said curtly.
+"'Nothing venture, nothing have' is an old proverb, but it is as true
+now as it was when it was coined. With P. S-W. stock at thirty-eight and
+steadily declining; with another dividend about to be passed; and with
+the certainty that the July interest on the bonds will have to be
+defaulted unless some compromise can be effected with the bondholders--"
+
+"What's that you're saying?" broke in Mackie, whose P. S-W. holdings were
+large.
+
+Ford drew a folded paper from his pocket and laid it on the table.
+
+"I was merely quoting from the auditor's semiannual report, of which
+that is a summary," he said, indicating the folded paper. "The report
+itself will doubtless reach you in a day or two. It would seem to an
+unprejudiced observer that the present condition spells something like a
+receivership, unless you have the bondholders with you."
+
+"One moment, Mr. Ford," interposed the banker member; but Ford was
+working up to his climax and refused to be side-tracked.
+
+"Of course, as an officer of the company, I have felt in duty bound to
+bring my grist first to the company's mill. But if you gentlemen don't
+wish to grind it, it will be ground, notwithstanding. I could very
+easily have found a market for my proposal without coming to New York."
+
+With which parting shot, and a word of apology for having taken the time
+of the board to no good purpose, he bowed himself out, closing the door
+upon a second attempt on the part of the banker member to renew the
+argument.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE AWAKENING OF CHARLES EDWARD
+
+
+Ford went directly to his hotel from the meeting in the Broad Street
+board room, paid his bill, and had himself shot up to the fifth floor to
+prepare for a swift retreat from the scene of his humiliating defeat. It
+was hardly in keeping with his boast of persistence that he should
+suffer himself to be thus routed by a single reverse, however crushing.
+But in a world where every problem contains its human factor, red wrath
+accounts for much that is otherwise unaccountable.
+
+Ford was thoroughly and unreasoningly angry and disgusted when he began
+to fling his belongings into the small steamer trunk, and it was only
+natural that he should turn with a little brow-wrinkling of resentment
+when, a little later, Mr. Charles Edward Adair, following his card up to
+the fifth floor front, lounged good-naturedly into the room.
+
+"Beg pardon, I'm sure," said the intruder easily. "Didn't know you were
+busy. I thought maybe you'd like to know the effect of your little
+double-headed bombshell, and I couldn't be sure Uncle Sidney would take
+the trouble to tell you."
+
+Ford made no effort to conceal his contempt for the financial gods.
+
+"I don't imagine it will take you very long to tell it," he retorted.
+"Nothing short of a combined earthquake and volcanic eruption would have
+any effect upon that crowd."
+
+"Oh, but you're wrong!" protested Adair. "That shot of yours with the
+semiannual summary for a projectile stirred 'em up good. It seems that
+Uncle Sidney and Hertford and Morelock--they're the executive committee,
+you know--have had the auditor's figures for some days, but they hadn't
+thought it necessary to harrow the feelings of the other members of the
+board with the cataclysmic details. So there was a jolly row. Magnus
+wanted to know, top-loftily, why a small official from the farther end
+of the system should be the first to bring the news; and Mackie was so
+wrathy that he inadvertently put the hot end of his cigar in his mouth.
+Even Connolly woke up enough to say that it was blanked bad politics."
+
+"But nothing came of it?" said Ford, hope rising in spite of the
+negative query.
+
+"No; nothing but a general hand-out of pretty sharp talk. What was
+needed right then was a unifier--somebody who could take command and
+coax or bully the scrapping factions into line. Magnus tried it, but
+he's too smooth. Brewster was the man, but he has too many other and
+bigger irons in the fire to care much about P. S-W. Connolly could have
+done it if the scrap had been a political split, but he was out of his
+element."
+
+"Humph!" growled Ford. "It didn't occur to me that there were any
+differences of opinion to be reconciled. The entire board sat on my
+proposition--as a unit."
+
+Adair laughed with imperturbable good-humor.
+
+"The factions were there, just the same. You see, it's like this:
+Brewster and Magnus and two or three more are pretty well-to-do, and
+their holdings in P. S-W. don't cut much of a figure with them, one way
+or another. The others have more stock in the company, and fewer
+millions. When the jangle came, Brewster and the heavy men said, 'Oh,
+let it go; it isn't worth bothering with.' Naturally, the little
+fellows, with more to lose and less money-nerve, said, 'No.'"
+
+"It spells the same word for me, in any event," Ford commented, and went
+on pitching things into his steamer trunk.
+
+Adair got upon his feet and strolled away to the window.
+
+When he turned again to face the beaten one he said:
+
+"If I wasn't so infernally lazy, Mr. Ford, I more than half believe that
+I could pull this thing off for you, myself. But that is the curse of
+being born with too much money. I can take a plunge into business now
+and then--I've done it. But my best friend couldn't bet on me two days
+in succession."
+
+Ford looked up quickly.
+
+"Then don't put your hand to this plow, Mr. Adair. I'll be frank with
+you. I can fit the mechanical parts of this scheme of mine together, so
+that they will run true and do business. But I, or any man in my place,
+would have to have solid backing here in New York; a board that would be
+as aggressive as a handful of rebels fighting for life, and every man of
+it determined to win out or smash something. Mr. Magnus spoke of the
+opposition we should encounter from our competitors. He might have said
+more. What the Transcontinental, for example, wouldn't do to obliterate
+us needn't be catalogued. How do you suppose the present P. S-W. board
+would fare in such a fight?"
+
+The youngest member of the flouted board laughed again.
+
+"You mustn't say in your wrath that all men are liars--or cowards. There
+is plenty of fight in our crowd; and plenty of money, too, if you could
+only get it sufficiently scared."
+
+"I've done my best," said Ford, slamming the lid of the trunk and
+buckling the straps vigorously. "The next time I'll find my market first
+and build my scheme afterward."
+
+"Well, if I can say it without offense, I'm honestly sorry for you, Mr.
+Ford; you've been butchered to make a Broad Street holiday," said Adair,
+lounging toward the door. "You are going back to the West, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What line?"
+
+"Pennsylvania; five-ten this afternoon."
+
+"That is a long time between drinks. Suppose you come up to the club and
+have luncheon with me?"
+
+Ford hesitated, watch in hand.
+
+"I was about to lie to you, Mr. Adair, and plead business; but I shan't.
+I'll tell you the plain truth. I'm too sore just now to be any good
+fellow's good company."
+
+"Which is precisely the reason why I asked you," laughed the golden
+youth. "Come on; let's go now. You can take it out on me as much as you
+like, you know. I shan't mind."
+
+But the club luncheon ignored the business affair completely, as Adair
+intended it should. Ford came out of the shell of disappointment with
+the salad course, and by way of reparation for his former attitude
+talked rather more freely of himself than he was wont to do on such
+short acquaintance with any one. The young millionaire met him quite
+half-way on this road to a better understanding, contrasting with mild
+envy Ford's well-filled, busy life with his own erratic efforts at
+time-killing.
+
+"You make me half sorry for myself," he said, when they went to the
+smoking-room to light their cigars. "It's no less than a piteous
+misfortune when a fellow's father has beaten all the covers of
+accomplishment for him."
+
+Ford could laugh now without being bitter.
+
+"The game isn't all corralled, even for you, Mr. Adair. There was
+excellent good shooting for you in that directors' meeting this morning,
+but you wouldn't take the trouble."
+
+"That's the fact," was the easy-going rejoinder. "That is just what my
+sister is always telling me--that I won't take the trouble. And yet I do
+take the trouble to begin a lot of things; only they never seem worth
+while after a few days' dip into them."
+
+"Pick out bigger ones," suggested Ford. "My trouble is just the other
+way about; I am always tackling things that are worlds too big for
+me--just as I have this time."
+
+"It isn't too big for you, Mr. Ford. It was too big for Colbrith,
+Magnus, _et al_. And, besides, you're not going to give it up. You'll
+drop off in Chicago, hunt up some meat-packer or other Croesus, and
+land your new railroad independently of the P. S-W."
+
+It was a measure of the sincerity of Ford's liking for his host when he
+said: "That little shot of mine at your colleagues was merely a long
+bluff. If my scheme can't be worked with the P. S-W., it can't well be
+worked without it. We are lacking the two end-links in the chain--which
+I could forge. But my two end-links without the middle one wouldn't
+attract anybody."
+
+It was quite late in the afternoon when they left the club, and Ford had
+no more than time to check his luggage and get to his train. He wondered
+a little when Adair went with him to the ferry, and was not ungrateful
+for the hospitality which seemed to be directed toward a lightening of
+the burden of failure. But Adair's word of leave-taking, flung across
+the barrier when the chains of the landing-stage were rattling to their
+rise, was singularly irrelevant.
+
+"By the way, Mr. Ford; what time did you say your train would reach
+Chicago?"
+
+"At eight forty-five to-morrow evening," replied the beaten one; and
+then the boat swung out of its slip and the retreat without honor was
+begun.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+HAMMER AND TONGS
+
+
+It was raining dismally the evening of the following day when Ford saw
+from his Pullman window the dull sky-glow of the metropolis of the
+Middle West. It had been a dispiriting day throughout. When a man has
+flung himself at his best into a long battle which ends finally in
+unqualified loss, the heavens are as brass, and the future is apt to
+reflect only the pale light of the past failure.
+
+It was after the train had entered the suburbs of Chicago that a
+blue-coated messenger boy came through the Pullman, with the car
+conductor for his guide. Ford saw himself pointed out, and a moment
+later was reading a telegram, with a tumult, not of the drumming car
+wheels, roaring in his ears.
+
+     Had a talk with my sister and made up my mind to see you
+     through--if I don't get tired and quit, as usual. Secure
+     options on that short-road stock quick, and wire me care McV. & M.
+     Funds to your credit in Algonquin National, Chicago. Another
+     directors' meeting to-day, and things look a little less chaotic.
+     Answer.                           ADAIR.
+
+For some time Ford could only read and re-read the exciting telegram,
+scarcely trusting the evidence of his senses. That the coldly
+indifferent members of the P. S-W. board, with a man like President
+Colbrith at their head, could be swung into line in the short space of a
+single day by a young fellow who seemed to be little more than a spoiled
+son of fortune, was blankly incredible.
+
+But he was not long in realizing that the cherished scheme for which he
+had studied and struggled was actually beginning to stagger to its feet;
+or in reaching the equally stirring conclusion that his part in the
+suddenly reopened game called instantly for shrewd blows and the
+swiftest possible action.
+
+The stock-holders in the three local roads which were to be united to
+bridge the Chicago-Missouri River gap were scattered all over the Middle
+West. To secure the necessary options on working majorities of the stock
+would be a task for a financial diplomat, and one who could break the
+haste-making record by being in a dozen different places at one and the
+same moment. Moreover, secrecy became a prime factor in the problem. If
+the opposition, and particularly the Transcontinental people, should
+get wind of the move, it would take fifteen millions to do the work of
+five, as Banker Magnus had intimated.
+
+Notwithstanding the thickly marshaled obstacles, Ford had his plan of
+campaign pretty well thought out by the time his train was slowing into
+the Union Station. Before going to New York he had painstakingly
+"located" the required holdings of the three stocks. Some of them were
+in Chicago, but the greater number of the men to be bargained with were
+local capitalists living in the smaller cities along the lines of the
+three short railroads.
+
+In his bag was a carefully compiled list of these stock-holders, with
+their addresses and the amounts of their respective holdings. At the
+worst, he concluded, it should mean nothing more formidable than a deal
+of quick traveling, some anxious bargaining, perhaps, and a little
+finesse to keep his object in securing the options safely in the
+background.
+
+This was how it appeared in the prospect; and the young engineer had yet
+to learn that the securing of options is a trade by itself--a trade by
+no means to be caught up in passing, even by the most gifted of tyros.
+
+Hence, it was extremely fortunate for this particular tyro--more
+fortunate than he could possibly know at the moment--that his telephone
+message sent from the first telephone he could reach after his train
+stopped in the Union Station, caught Kenneth at the Green Bag Club. It
+was a mere chance that he knew that Kenneth, the senior member of the
+firm of attorneys having general oversight of the Pacific Southwestern's
+legal department, was at the moment in Chicago; a chance hanging upon
+the fact that he had met Kenneth as he was passing through on his way
+eastward. But it was not by chance that the first familiar face he saw
+on entering the rotunda of the Grand Pacific Hotel was that of Kenneth.
+The sight was merely the logical result of Ford's urgent request
+telephoned to the lawyer's club.
+
+"By Jove, Kenneth; this comes within two inches of being a miracle!--my
+catching you here before you had started West," Ford ejaculated. And
+then: "When are you going back?"
+
+"I am supposed to be on the way now," was the lawyer's reply. "I had
+made all my arrangements to start back to-night on the slow train, but I
+dined with some friends on the North Side and made a miss. Where have
+you been?"
+
+"I'm just in from New York. Let me register and get a room; and you put
+away any lingering notion you may have of heading westward to-night.
+I've got to have your ear for a few hours to begin with, and the whole
+of you for the next few days. No; don't probe me here. Wait, and I'll
+unload on you gradually. You won't be sorry you missed your train."
+
+Fifteen minutes later Ford had his adviser safely behind a closed door,
+and had put him succinctly in possession of the world-subverting facts,
+as far as they went. When he concluded, the lawyer was shaking his head
+dubiously, just as Auditor Evans had done.
+
+"Ford, have you any adequate idea of what a tremendous proposition you
+are up against?" he asked quietly, helping himself to a cigar out of the
+engineer's freshly opened box.
+
+"I don't believe I have underrated the difficulties, any of them," said
+Ford, matching the attorney's gravity. "There are bones all the way
+along, but I think I have struck the biggest of them just here. I ought
+to be in a dozen places at once, and not later than to-morrow noon.
+That's something I can't quite compass."
+
+"Getting these options, you mean? That is very true; but it isn't all of
+it, by long odds. There are the thousand and one mechanical details to
+be worked out: the coupling up of these three local lines at their
+connecting points, the securing of proper trackage or trackage rights at
+these junctions, the general ordering of things so that a through line
+may be opened immediately when the stock is secured. If there were ten
+of you, you couldn't get things licked into shape in time to get in on
+the grain carrying this season."
+
+Ford had relighted his cigar, which had gone out in the explanatory
+interval, and was blowing smoke-rings toward the ceiling.
+
+"I may be the biggest ass this side of the jack trails, and the most
+conceited, Kenneth; but you're over on my side of the ring when you talk
+about the mechanical obstacles. What I'm worrying about now is the fact
+that I can't do two things at once. The options must be secured before
+we can make the fifth part of a move in the other field; and the Lord
+only knows how long that will take. To hurry is to lose out."
+
+The lawyer nodded. "And not to hurry is to lose out, too," he qualified.
+Then he smoked in thoughtful silence for five full minutes before he
+said, abruptly: "Give me your list of stock-holders and turn the option
+business over to the legal department, where it properly belongs. That
+will leave you foot-loose to go after the mechanical matter. How does
+that suit you?"
+
+Ford sprang to his feet.
+
+"By Jove, Kenneth, you're a man and a brother; I'm not forgetting that
+you are taking this entire fairy tale on my personal say-so; and I
+shan't forget it, either. It's what I wanted to ask--and was afraid to
+ask, after I got you safely jailed up here."
+
+The attorney's smile was grim but friendly.
+
+"I'm not forgetting how you took a sick man over into the Pannikin
+wilderness on a two-months hunting trip last fall and made a well man of
+him, Ford," he said. "Any man who can shoot as straight as you do
+wouldn't be sitting here telling me lies about a trifling little matter
+involving the expenditure of a beggarly thirty-five millions. But to
+come down to earth again: you haven't shifted any considerable part of
+the burden, you know. I can do this bit of routine work; but the main
+thing is up to you, just as it was before I said yes."
+
+Ford rose, stretching himself like a man who has just been relieved of a
+burden whose true weight was appreciable only in its lifting.
+
+"I know," he said cheerfully. "It has been up to me, all along. In the
+morning we'll go around to the Algonquin National, and I'll put you into
+the financial saddle. Then I'll get out on the line, and by the time you
+have the stock corralled, we'll be practically ready to pull through
+freight--if not passengers--from Denver to Chicago. Oh, I know what I am
+talking about," he added, when the general counsel smiled his
+incredulity. "This is no affair of yesterday with me. I have every mile
+of these three short roads mapped and cross-sectioned; I have copies of
+all their terminal and junction-point contracts. I know exactly what we
+can do, and what we can't do."
+
+The lawyer's comment was frankly praiseful, not to say flattering.
+
+"You're a wonder, Ford--and that's no figure of speech. How on earth did
+you manage to do it all at such long range?"
+
+Ford's smile was reminiscent of the obstacles.
+
+"It would take me all night to tell you in detail, Kenneth. But I did
+it. It's no mere brag to say that I could walk into the Chicago, Peoria
+& Davenport general offices here to-morrow morning and organize a
+through service over the P. S-W. and the three stub lines within
+twenty-four hours, if I had to."
+
+"Well, that part of it is far enough beyond me," said the attorney. "The
+stock-chasing is more in my line. I hope we can keep quiet enough about
+it so that the opposition won't guess what we are trying to do. You're
+sure it won't be given away from the New York end?"
+
+It was the engineer's turn to shake his head and to look dubious.
+
+"Now you are shouting, Kenneth. I can't tell anything about it. You'll
+remember that when I left New York the board had turned the plan down,
+definitely and permanently, as I supposed. I should say that our only
+safety lies in lightning speed. When you get the options on those
+controlling stock majorities snugly on deposit in the Algonquin
+National, we can draw our first long breath. Isn't that about the way it
+strikes you?"
+
+"It is, precisely," agreed the general counsel, rising and finding his
+hat. "And because it does strike me that way, I think I'll go down and
+do a little telegraphing to-night."
+
+"Hold on a minute," said Ford, "and I'll give you a message to take
+down, if you don't mind. I must answer Adair, and it won't do any harm
+to prod him a little--on the secrecy side."
+
+Kenneth waited, with his hand on the door-knob, as it chanced. Hence the
+opening of the door a minute or two later was quite without any
+preliminary stir of warning in the room of conference. That was possibly
+the reason why the lawyer almost fell over a man crouching in the
+corridor.
+
+"Hello, there!" said Kenneth; "I beg your pardon."
+
+The man got upon his feet, exhibiting all the signs of intoxication.
+
+"Beg yoursh, I'm sure," he mumbled, and was lurching crookedly away when
+the lawyer suddenly came to his senses and grabbed at him. The clutching
+hand fell short, and there was an agile foot-race down the corridor,
+fruitless for Kenneth, since the fugitive suddenly developed sobriety
+enough to run like a deer. Beaten in the foot-race, Kenneth went back
+for a word with Ford.
+
+"The battle is on," was the form the word took. "There was a man here,
+listening at the key-hole, when I opened the door. How much he overheard
+we'll be likely to find out to-morrow when we begin to pull the strings.
+Thought I'd give you the pointer. Good night, again."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE AUTOMATIC AIR
+
+
+Set out in cold type, Ford's itinerary for the four days following his
+conference with Kenneth would read like the abbreviated diary of a man
+dodging the sheriff. His "ticker" memorandum for that period is still in
+existence, but the notes are the hurried strokes of the pen of haste,
+intelligible, we may say, only to the man who made them. To quote:
+
+"Thursday, nine a.m., Peoria--see Sedgwick; ten--make trackage
+contract with T.P. & W.; eleven a.m., Davenport--inventory
+motive power--see chief despatcher--get profiles and maps--get copies of
+yard contracts--get crossing rights--get total tonnage of grain cars.
+Three p.m., Hannibal--see Berdan and whip him into line--inspect
+shops--get contracts--get--"
+
+But the string of "gets" fills the page, and is vital now to no living
+soul of man, least of all to us who are interested only in finding out
+if our young captain of industry actually did make good his boast of
+flogging the three short roads into some semblance of a through line in
+the brief interval at his disposal; and this without advertising to the
+railroad world at large who he represented and what he was doing.
+
+He did it, and without a slip for which he could be held responsible. It
+was a wire from the chief office of the Transcontinental in New York, a
+telegram inspired by sundry leakages from Pacific Southwestern sources,
+that gave him a silent and observant follower in all of his dodgings. Of
+this, however, he was in blissful ignorance. Twice, indeed, he sat in
+the same Pullman section with his "shadow," quite without suspecting it;
+and once he was saved from disaster--also without suspecting it.
+
+It was at a way station in Missouri, and the section-sharing traveling
+companion, who had paid only for an hour's ride in the Pullman, was
+leaving the train. His hand-bag chanced to be the exact counterpart of
+Ford's: what more natural than that he should make the mistake of taking
+the wrong one? Ford caught him in the vestibule, and there was a
+reexchange, accompanied by grateful acknowledgments and profuse
+apologies from the debarking one. Ford, immersed fathoms deep in his
+problems, thought nothing of it; but a moment lost would have been a
+cause lost, if he had guessed it. For the mistake was no mistake, and
+the hand-bag rescued contained documents for which the Transcontinental
+Company would have paid a month's salary of its board of
+vice-presidents, charging the amount, not to profit and loss, but rather
+to salvage.
+
+It was on the fourth day of the campaign, while Ford was working his way
+on an inspection trip over the third link in the short-lines chain, that
+two telegrams overtook him.
+
+One was from Adair, announcing the tardy, but now certain triumph of the
+expansionist faction in the board of P. S-W. directors, and begging
+pathetically for news of the option-getting. The other was signed "K,"
+and Ford had a sharp attack of joy when he read it. The attorney had
+been successful at all points. The necessary stock majorities were
+secured and the certificates were safely on deposit in the Algonquin
+National Bank, in Chicago. What remained was only a matter of routine,
+provided the P. S-W. bidders would furnish the capital for the purchases.
+
+Ford swamped the local operator at the next way station with a thick
+sheaf of "rush" telegrams, left the west-bound train at the first
+cross-road junction, and caught a night express on a fast line for
+Chicago. Kenneth was waiting for him at the hotel; and after breakfast
+there was another telegram from Adair. Matters were still progressing
+favorably, and President Colbrith, traveling in his private car,
+"Nadia," _via_ the Lake Shore, would be in Chicago the following
+morning to take final action in the stock purchases.
+
+Ford gave the message to Kenneth, and the attorney drummed softly on the
+table with his finger-tips when he read the announcement.
+
+"We are in for it now," he said with a grimace of dismay. "If Mr.
+Colbrith doesn't manage to queer the whole deal, it will be because he
+has suffered a complete change of heart."
+
+Ford answered the grimace with a scowl, and the masterful side of him
+came uppermost.
+
+"What in the name of common sense were they thinking of to send him out
+here?" he gritted.
+
+The general counsel laughed.
+
+"You don't know Mr. Colbrith as well as I do, I fancy," he suggested.
+"He is rather hard to suppress. He'll be president until his successor
+is elected--or he'll know all the reasons why."
+
+"Well, I hope you've got everything straight in the option business,"
+said Ford. "If there is so much as a hair displaced, he will be sure to
+find it."
+
+"It is all straight enough," was the confident rejoinder. "Only I had to
+bid five points over the market on odd lots of the stock. I'm not sure,
+but I think the Transcontinental people got wind of us during the last
+day or two and bid against us."
+
+"But you have safe majorities?"
+
+"Oh, yes; we are all in."
+
+"Good," said Ford. "That puts it up to Mr. Colbrith, at all events. And
+now, while we have a clear day before us, I want to go over these
+C. P. & D. terminal contracts with you. Right here in Chicago is where
+the Transcontinental will try hardest to balk us. The C. P. & D. has
+trackage rights to the elevators; but I want to be sure that the
+contracts will hold water under a transfer of ownership."
+
+Subjected to legal scrutiny, the contracts promised to be defensible,
+and Ford came through the day with his apprehensive burdens considerably
+lightened. After dinner he took his papers to Kenneth's room, and
+together they went carefully over all the legal points involved in the
+welding of the three local lines into the Pacific Southwestern system,
+Ford furnishing the data gathered by him during the four days.
+
+Kenneth was shrewdly inquisitive, as his responsibilities constrained
+him to be, and it was deep in the small hours when Ford made his escape
+and went to bed. By consequence, he was scarcely more than half awake
+the next morning, when he dressed hurriedly and hastened over to the Van
+Buren Street station to see if the president's car had arrived.
+
+The Nadia was in and side-tracked, with a sleepy porter on guard. Ford
+climbed to the platform and asked for the president.
+
+"Yas, suh; dis is Mr. Colbrith's cyar; but he don't see no newspapuh
+men--no, suh. Besides, dey's just gettin' up," was the rebuff; but Ford
+ignored it.
+
+"'They?' Then Mr. Colbrith isn't alone?"
+
+"No, suh; got a pahty 'long with him--a young gentleman and two ladies;
+yes, suh. Mr. Colbrith nebber goes nowhah's 'dout he teks a pahty in de
+cyar."
+
+"Heavens!" groaned Ford, under his breath; "as if the thing wasn't
+complicated enough without making a picnic of it!" Then aloud. "I wish
+to go in. My name is Ford, and Mr. Colbrith is expecting me."
+
+"Sho' you isn't a newspapuh man?"
+
+"Of course not," said Ford shortly.
+
+"All right, suh," said the negro; and he made way and opened the door.
+
+The Nadia was a commodious hotel on wheels, with a kitchen and buffet
+forward, four state-rooms opening upon a narrow side vestibule, and a
+large dining and lounging room looking out through full-length windows
+upon a deep, "umbrella-roofed" platform at the rear.
+
+There was no one in the large compartment when Ford reached it; but a
+moment later a door opened and closed in the vestibule, and Adair made
+his appearance. Ford drew a breath of relief and shook hands with his
+backer.
+
+"I'm glad it's you, Mr. Adair. I've been scenting all sorts of
+hindrances since the porter told me there was a party aboard."
+
+The young man without an avocation dropped into the easiest of the
+wicker chairs and felt in his pockets for his cigarette case.
+
+"Your prophetic soul didn't deceive you any," he laughed. "The
+hindrances are here in full force. It is one of Uncle Sidney's notions
+never to travel without a tail like a Highland chieftain's. I had a
+foreboding that he'd ask somebody, so I took it upon myself to fill up
+his passenger list with Aunt Hetty, my sister, and my uncle's nephew."
+
+"I understand," said Ford, and would have plunged forthwith into the
+business pool; but Adair stopped him with a gesture of dismay.
+
+"Not before breakfast, if you love me, my dear fellow!" he protested,
+with a little grimace that instantly set the reminiscent part of Ford's
+brain at work. "After I've had something to eat--"
+
+The interruption was the noiseless entrance of a motherly little lady in
+gray, with kindly eyes and a touch of silver in the fair hair drawn
+smoothly back from her forehead.
+
+"This is Mr. Stuart Ford, I am sure," she said, giving her hand to the
+young engineer before Adair could introduce him. "You look enough like
+your father to make me recognize you at once."
+
+Ford was a little embarrassed by the gratefully informal greeting.
+
+"Ought I to remember you, Mrs. Adair?" he asked ingenuously.
+
+"Oh, no, indeed. I knew your father as a young man before he married and
+went to the farther West. The Fords and the Colbriths and the Stanbrooks
+are all from the same little town in central Illinois, you know."
+
+"I didn't know it," said Ford, "though now I recall it, I used often to
+hear my father speak of Miss Hester Stanbrook." Then he was going on to
+say that trite thing about the smallness of the world when Adair broke
+in.
+
+"I'd like to know what is keeping Uncle Sidney and Alicia. _I_ haven't
+had breakfast yet."
+
+As if his protest had evoked her, a young woman drew the portiere of the
+vestibule--a young woman with bright brown hair, eyes like dewy wood
+violets, and an adorable chin. Ford stared helplessly, and Adair
+laughed.
+
+"Shocked, aren't you?" he jested. "But you needn't be alarmed. I have
+persuaded my sister not to prosecute in the case of the snatched purse.
+Alicia, this is Mr. Stuart Ford, and he desires me to say that he is not
+often reduced to the necessity of robbing unprotected young women for
+the sake of scraping an acquaintance."
+
+Ford lost sight of the Pacific Southwestern exigencies for the moment,
+and surely the lapse was pardonable. If the truth must be told, this
+young woman, who had been discovered and lost in the same unforgetable
+evening, had stirred the neglected pool of sentiment in him to its
+profoundest depths, and thoughts of her had been dividing time pretty
+evenly with some parts of the strenuous business affair. Indeed, the
+hopelessness of any effort toward rediscovering her had been one of his
+reasons for hurrying away from New York. He knew himself--a little--and
+that quality of unreasoning persistence which other people called his
+strong point. The search he had been half-minded to make once begun--
+
+"I hope you haven't forgotten me so soon, Mr. Ford," she was saying; and
+he recovered himself with a start.
+
+"Forgotten you? No, indeed!"--this with almost lover-like emphasis.
+"I--I think I am just a trifle aghast at my good luck in finding you
+again. It seemed so utterly hopeless, you know. Don't you think--"
+
+But now the president had stalked in, and his high querulous voice was
+marshaling the party breakfastward. Ford manoeuvered skilfully in the
+pairing off, and so succeeded in securing Miss Adair for a companion on
+the short walk across to the Grand Pacific.
+
+"You were about to ask me something when Uncle Sidney interrupted you,"
+she prompted, when they were clear of the throng in the station
+vestibule.
+
+"Yes; I was going to ask if you don't think it was unnecessarily cruel
+to send me that note of thanks unsigned."
+
+"Cruel?" she echoed, and her laugh was so exactly a replica of her
+brother's that Ford wondered why the reminiscent arrow had not gone at
+once to its mark. "How absurd! What possible difference could it make?"
+
+"It made a lot of difference to me," said Ford, refusing to be brushed
+aside. "How did you expect I was ever going to be able to find you
+again, without even your name as a clue?"
+
+She glanced up at him with unfeigned interest. The men of her world were
+not altogether unappreciative; neither were they so primitively
+straightforward as this young industry captain out of the West.
+
+"It is not impossible that I never thought of your finding me again,"
+she said, and only the tone saved it from being a small slap in the
+face.
+
+Ford took the rebuff as a part of the day's work.
+
+"Perhaps you didn't," he admitted. "But I mean to go on hoping that you
+did."
+
+"The idea!" she scoffed; but this time she blunted the keen edge of the
+rebuke by adding: "I thought, perhaps, we might meet again, sometime.
+You see, we are all stock-holders in the Pacific Southwestern; my
+brother, Aunt Hetty and I; and Uncle Sidney had shown us a letter--it
+was from Mr. North, I think--saying that you were likely to come to New
+York with some kind of a plan of reorganization. So when you gave me
+your card, I knew at once who you were."
+
+Ford made an immediate mental note of the bit of information implicating
+Mr. North, but did not allow himself to be diverted by the business
+affair.
+
+"Yes, I know; but that didn't help me a little bit," he protested,
+wishing that the distance to the hotel were twice as far.
+
+"That was just because it happened so; you ran away before my brother
+had a chance to offer you any hospitality," she explained. Then, before
+he could say any more straightforward things: "Tell me, Mr. Ford; are
+you really going to find something to interest brother?--something that
+will keep him actually and enthusiastically busy for more than a few
+days at a time?"
+
+Ford laughed. "I fancy he hasn't been bored for the lack of work since I
+left New York, has he?"
+
+"No; and it has made such a difference! Won't you please try and keep
+him going?"
+
+"You may rest assured that I shall do what I can. But you see he has
+quit already."
+
+"By coming to Chicago with us? Oh, no, indeed; you are quite mistaken.
+He is here to help you to--to 'minimize' Uncle Sidney; I think that is
+the word he used. He was afraid you had been finding Uncle Sidney rather
+difficult. Have you?"
+
+"I have, for a fact," said Ford, out of the depths of sincerity. And,
+again out of a full heart: "Your brother is a brick, Miss Adair."
+
+"Isn't he?" and she laughed in sheer good comradeship. "If you can only
+manage to make him rise to his capabilities--"
+
+"He'll never be able to live the simple life for a single waking hour,"
+said the engineer, finishing the sentence for her.
+
+"Oh, but that is a mistake!" she objected. "The very first requirement
+is work; plenty of work of the kind one can do best."
+
+The short walk to the hotel, where Kenneth was waiting to go to
+breakfast with the president's party, came to an end, and the social
+amenities died of inanition. For one thing, President Colbrith insisted
+upon learning the minutest ins and outs of the business matter, making
+the table-talk his vehicle; and for another, Miss Adair's place was on
+the opposite side of the table, and two removes from Ford's. Time and
+again the young engineer tried to side-track business in the interests
+of something a little less banal to the two women; but the president was
+implacable and refused to be pulled out of the narrow rut of details;
+was still running monotonously and raspingly in it when Kenneth glanced
+at his watch and suggested that the time for action was come.
+
+After breakfast the party separated. Mrs. Adair and Miss Alicia were to
+spend the day with friends in South Chicago, and Mr. Colbrith carried
+the attorney off to his room to dig still deeper into the possible legal
+complications which might arise out of the proposed transfer of the
+three short roads. Ford and Adair sat in the lobby and smoked while they
+were waiting for the president and the general counsel to conclude their
+conference, and the young millionaire gave his companion the story of
+the fight in the directory.
+
+"We have Brewster to thank for the lift which finally pulled our wheel
+out of the mud," said the young man, modestly effacing himself in the
+summing up. "Or rather I should say that we have the enemy to thank for
+stirring Brewster into action. Brewster's got some copper mines out in
+Utah that he nurses like a sick child. Just at the critical moment some
+of the people who control the Transcontinental began to worry his copper
+stock. In the hot part of it he came to me and said, 'Adair, will that
+western extension of yours be able to fry any fat out of
+Transcontinental?' I told him it would, most assuredly; that next to
+making money for ourselves, and, incidentally, saving the Pacific
+Southwestern from going smash, our chief object was to give the
+Transcontinental a wholesome drubbing."
+
+"You are progressing rapidly," said Ford, with a grin of appreciation.
+"Did that fetch him?"
+
+"It did, for a fact. He looked like one of those old bushy-bearded
+vikings when he said, 'By thunder, I'm with you, young man! And I'll
+answer for Scott and Magnus and Harding. Get your board together, and
+we'll settle it to-day."
+
+Ford looked up quickly. "If Mr. Colbrith wasn't the chief of your family
+clan, Adair, I could wish that we had this Mr. Brewster at the head of
+things."
+
+The rejoinder was heartily prompt. "You don't wish it any more fervently
+than I do, Ford. That is why I am here to-day. The board, in spite of
+all that our handful of revolutionaries could do, has armed Uncle Sidney
+with almost dictatorial powers in this stock-purchasing deal; and if he
+doesn't contrive to strangle things by the slow process, it will be
+simply and solely because you and Kenneth and I are here to see that he
+does not. Do you know what the men call him out on the main line? When
+they see the Nadia trundling in, they say, 'Here comes old Automatic
+Air-Brakes.' And it fits him."
+
+"But I don't quite understand why he should want to put the brakes on
+here and now," Ford interposed. "I know he is against the scheme,
+personally; but he is here as the representative of a majority which has
+committed itself to the expansion measure, isn't he?"
+
+"Oh, yes; and he has no thought of playing the traitor--you mustn't
+think that of him. But it isn't in his nature to facilitate things. In
+the present crisis he will feel that he is personally responsible for
+the expenditure of five million dollars. He will examine and
+investigate, and probe and pry, and will want to worry through every
+pen-scratch which has been made up to date."
+
+"Well, there is one comfort; he can't take much time for his worrying,"
+said Ford. "Some of the options expire to-morrow noon."
+
+Adair sat up as one who suddenly takes notice.
+
+"What?--to-morrow? Land of glory! but you two fellows took short
+chances! Why, any little hitch--"
+
+"I know," said the engineer evenly. "But we took what we could get--and
+were thankful. Somebody was bidding against us, and prices began to
+jump. Incidentally, I may say that Kenneth deserves to be made a
+vice-president of the new company, at the very least. He has done ten
+men's work in the last three or four days."
+
+"I don't doubt it. Neither do I suspect you of loafing. For that matter,
+I've been hustling a few lines, myself, since I sent you that first
+telegram."
+
+"Do you find it exciting enough to keep you interested, as far as you've
+gone?" inquired Ford, mindful of Miss Alicia's longings.
+
+"It's the best yet," declared the idler. "Only, you mustn't lean too
+heavily on me, you know. I'm the most uncertain quantity you ever
+experienced. But here comes Uncle Sidney, with a cowed and brow-beaten
+Kenneth in tow--say your prayers, and get ready for the battle royal."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE RACE TO THE SLOW
+
+
+Adair's prophecy that President Colbrith would prove himself an
+obstructor of the stubbornest was amply fulfilled during the short
+interval which remained for decisive action. Truly, in the battle for
+business celerity the odds were three to one against Mr. Colbrith; yet
+the three were as those who buffet the wind. The president must see and
+feel, know and fully understand; and at the very last moment, when the
+shortest of the options had no more than an hour to live, he was
+proposing to summon General Manager North from Denver to make a fifth in
+the council of discord.
+
+It was Adair who took the bull by the horns when the president's caution
+was about to turn victory into defeat. What was said or done after the
+young man drew Mr. Colbrith into the private committee-room at the bank
+and shut the door, Ford and Kenneth, who were excluded, could only
+surmise. But whatever was done was well done. When the two, uncle and
+nephew, came out of the room of privacy, the old man was shaking his
+head and the young one was smiling serenely. So it came about that
+between eleven and twelve o'clock, when Ford, grimly battling to the
+last, fought as one without hope, a few strokes of the pen opened the
+doors upon the new creation; five million dollars, more or less, changed
+hands, and the Pacific Southwestern took the long leap eastward from the
+Missouri River to its new base in Chicago.
+
+"It's you for the hustle now, Ford," said Adair, linking arms with the
+engineer when the quartet left the bank. "How soon do you think you can
+get that first train-load of grain in transit?"
+
+"I wish I could tell you," said Ford.
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Because it will depend very largely upon the authority Mr. Colbrith or
+the board sees fit to give me. At present, you will remember, I am still
+only a division superintendent--Mr. North's subordinate, in fact, and--"
+
+"Say it out loud," encouraged Adair.
+
+"I don't like to, but I suppose it can't be helped. Up to now I have
+been acting under special orders, as you may say, in a purely financial
+transaction. But my commission expired five minutes ago when the stock
+deal went through. When it comes to issuing orders in the operating and
+transportation department, I have no authority whatever. Mr. North is
+general manager, and I suppose his jurisdiction will now be extended to
+cover the new line, won't it?"
+
+"Not much!" retorted the amateur promoter. "You are going to be given a
+free hand in this from the word go. From what I can learn, North has
+been an obstructor, all along, hasn't he?"
+
+"I can't say that," said Ford, just, even to an enemy. "To be right
+honest about it, I shall have to confess that I slurred him
+entirely--went over his head."
+
+"For good reasons, no doubt, only you are too charitable to give them.
+Never mind: as I say, you are going to have a free hand. This is your
+pie and nobody else is going to cut it for you." And when the party
+reached the hotel there was another conference of two behind closed
+doors, in which Ford and the general counsel did not participate.
+
+An hour later, when Adair came down from the president's room, he thrust
+a sheaf of penciled printers' copy into Ford's hands.
+
+"There you are," he said. "I've done the best I could for you on such
+short notice--with Uncle Sidney trying his level best to get a cross
+reference to the board before taking action. Get these circulars through
+a print shop and into the mails. You'll see that one of them announces
+your appointment, effective to-day, as Assistant to the President. That
+was as far as Uncle Sidney could be dragged. It doesn't give you a
+straight flush; but your hand will beat North's if it comes to a
+show-down between you. Just the same, I shouldn't quarrel with North, if
+I were you. Uncle Sidney thinks the sun rises and sets in him."
+
+Ford nodded, and while he was reading hastily through the sheaf of
+pencilings a boy brought him a telegram. When he opened the envelope,
+Kenneth had turned away. But Adair was looking on, and he did not fail
+to remark the startling effect of the few typewritten words upon the
+engineer.
+
+"Whereabouts does it hit us this time?" he inquired, lighting a fresh
+cigarette.
+
+"In the neck," said Ford curtly. "The possibility occurred to me
+yesterday--Pacific Southwestern stock being so badly scattered among
+small holders. I wired a broker, a good friend of mine, to pick up a few
+shares on my account. Here is what he says: 'Market bone dry. No
+offerings of P. S-W. at any price.'"
+
+Adair whistled softly. "That's getting next to us with a vengeance!" he
+commented. "And it can be done, too. Half a dozen of the small
+stock-holders have been to me since the fire was lighted, trying to get
+me to take their stock at market."
+
+"How much do we control--that we are sure of?" Ford asked.
+
+"I don't know--in figures. Not more than two-fifths, I should say. At
+the last board meeting I proposed that we make a safe majority pool
+among ourselves, but Uncle Sidney sat on me. Said his own personal
+constituency among the little people was big enough amply to secure us."
+
+Ford swore pathetically.
+
+"The one single instance when his caution might have steered him
+straight--and it went to sleep!" he raged.
+
+"Exactly," laughed Adair. "And now the Transcontinental moguls are
+buying up a majority of their own, meaning to capture the main-line dog
+and leaving us to wag the extension tail which we have just acquired.
+Say, Ford; doesn't that appeal to your sense of humor?"
+
+"No, it doesn't," said Ford savagely. To see one's air-castles crumbling
+at the very moment when they were to be transmuted into solid realities
+is apt to provoke a reversion to type; and Ford's type was Gothic.
+
+"That's a pity," said Adair, absently rolling his cigarette between his
+thumb and finger. "Also, it's another pity that I am such a hopeless
+quitter. I believe I could pull this thing out yet, if I could only get
+up sufficient steam."
+
+"For heaven's sake, tell me what you burn, and I'll furnish the fuel,"
+said Ford desperately.
+
+"Will you? I guess I need something pretty inflammatory."
+
+"Lord of love! haven't you good and plenty, without calling upon me?
+Are you going to let these stock-jobbing land-pirates on 'Change gibbet
+you as a solemn warning to aspiring young promoters?"
+
+Adair paused with the cigarette half way to his lips. "Ah," he said,
+after a thoughtful moment. "Perhaps that was what I needed. No; they
+will not gibbet any of us to-day; and possibly not to-morrow." Then,
+with a sudden dropping of the mask of easy-going indifference: "Give me
+the key to your room, and find me a swift stenographer. Then go over to
+the Lake Shore headquarters and ask to have the Nadia coupled to the
+evening train for New York."
+
+"But the president?" Ford began. "Didn't he say something about going
+over these new lines on an inspection trip?"
+
+"Never mind Uncle Sidney: on this one occasion he will change his plans
+and go back to New York with us," said Adair curtly.
+
+"Good," said Ford approvingly. "And how about opening the new through
+line for business? Do we go on? Or do we hang it up until we find out
+where we are 'at'?"
+
+"Don't hold it up a single minute. Drive it for all the power you can
+get behind it. If we have to collide with things, let's do it with the
+throttle wide open. Now find me that shorthand person quickly, will
+you?"
+
+By what means the president was persuaded or coerced into doing the
+thing he had not planned to do, Ford was not to know. But for that
+matter, after carrying out Adair's instructions the engineer plunged at
+once into his own Herculean task of reorganization, emerging only when
+he made a tardy sixth at the president's dinner table in the hotel cafe
+in the evening.
+
+The dinner, which the young engineer had been fondly counting upon as a
+momentary relaxation from the heart-breaking business strain, was a
+dismal failure on its social side. President Colbrith, as yet, it
+appeared, in blissful ignorance of the latest news from New York, had
+reserved the seat of honor for his new assistant, and the half-hour was
+filled to overflowing with minute and cautionary definitions of the
+assistant's powers and duties.
+
+Ford listened with a blank ear on that side. There was work to do, and
+one man to do it. He did not care particularly to hear instructions
+which he would probably have to disregard at the first experimental dash
+into the new field. He meant to hold himself rigidly to account for
+results; more than this he thought not even Mr. Colbrith had a right to
+require.
+
+After dinner he indemnified himself for the kindergarten lecture by
+boldly taking possession of Miss Adair for the short walk over to the
+private car. The entire world of work was still ahead, and a corps of
+expert stenographers was at the moment awaiting his return to the C. P.
+& D. offices, where he had established temporary headquarters; but he
+shut the door upon the exigencies and listened to Miss Alicia.
+
+"I am so sorry we are not going to be here to see your triumph," she was
+saying; adding: "It is a triumph, isn't it?"'
+
+"Only a beginning," he amended. "And it won't be spectacular, if we can
+help it. Besides, this east-end affair is only a preliminary. A little
+later on, if our tackle doesn't break, we shall land the really big fish
+for which this is only the bait."
+
+"Shall you never be satisfied?" she asked jestingly. And then, more
+seriously: "What is your ambition? To be able to buy what your neighbor
+can not afford?"
+
+"Big money, you mean? No, I think not. But I like to win, as well as
+other men."
+
+"To win what?"
+
+"Whatever seems worth winning--this fight, in the present instance, and
+the consequent larger field. Later, enough money to enable me to think
+of money only as a stepping-stone to better things. Later still,
+perhaps--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, as though willing to leave the third desideratum in
+the air, but she would not let him.
+
+"Go on," she said. "Last of all?"
+
+"Last of all, the love of a true woman."
+
+"Oh!" she scoffed, with a little uptilt of the admirable chin. "Then
+love must come trailing along at the very end, after we have skimmed
+the cream from all the other milk pans in orderly succession."
+
+"No," he rejoined gravely. "I put it clumsily--as I snatch purses. As a
+matter of sober fact, love sets the mile-stones along any human road
+that is worth traversing."
+
+She glanced up at him and the blue eyes were dancing. Miss Alicia Adair
+knew no joy to compare with that of teasing, and it was not often that
+the fates gave her such a pliable subject.
+
+"Tell me, Mr. Ford; is--is she pretty?"
+
+"She is beautiful; the most beautiful woman in the world, Miss Adair."
+
+"How fine! And, of course, she is a paragon of all the virtues?--an
+angel without the extremely inconvenient wings?"
+
+"You have said it: and I have never doubted it from the moment I first
+laid eyes on her."
+
+"Better and better," she murmured. Then: "She has money?"
+
+"I suppose she has; yes, she certainly has money. But that doesn't make
+any difference--to her or to me."
+
+"It is simply idyllic!" was the ecstatic comment. "After all this there
+remains but one other possible contingency. Has she a willing mind, Mr.
+Ford?"
+
+They had reached the steps of the Nadia, and the others had gone within.
+Ford looked soberly into the depths of the laughing eyes and said: "I
+would give all my chances of success in this Pacific Southwestern affair
+to be able to say 'yes' to that."
+
+The station gong was clanging the departure signal for the New York
+train, and he swung her lightly up to the step of the car.
+
+"Good-by," she said, turning to smile down upon him. And then, "I don't
+believe you, you know; not the least bit in the world."
+
+"Why don't you?" he demanded.
+
+"Because the woman doesn't live who would be worth such a sacrifice as
+that would be--to Mr. Stuart Ford."
+
+And this was her leave-taking.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE SINEWS OF WAR
+
+
+The general offices of the C. P. & D. Railway were crowded into a
+half-dozen utilitarian rooms on the second floor of the company's
+freight station building in the Chicago yards. In two of these rooms,
+with a window outlook upon a tangle of switching tracks with their
+shifting panorama of cars and locomotives, Ford set up his standard as
+chief executive of the three "annexed" roads, becoming, in the eyes of
+three separate republics of minor officials and employees, the arbiter
+of destiny.
+
+Naturally, the announcement that their railroads had been swallowed
+whole by the Pacific Southwestern had fallen as a thunderclap upon the
+rank and file of the three local companies; and since, in railway
+practice, a change of owners usually carries with it a sweeping change
+in department heads, the service was instantly demoralized.
+
+During the first few hours of Ford's administration, therefore, the
+wires were buzzing with hasty resignations; and those whose courage was
+not whetted to the quitting point took a loose hold upon their duties
+and waited to see what would happen. Under such chaotic conditions Ford
+took his seat in the mean little office over the freight station, and
+flung himself ardently into the task of bringing order out of the sudden
+confusion. Effectively to support Adair and the reconstructionists on
+the board it was critically necessary that there be immediate and
+cheering news from the front.
+
+It was in the preliminary wrestle with disintegration that the young
+engineer's gift of insight and his faculty of handling men as men stood
+him in good stead. He was fresh from his trip over the new extension, on
+which he had met and shrewdly appraised the men who were now his
+subordinates. With the human field thus mentally mapped and
+cross-sectioned he was enabled to make swift and sure selections,
+cutting out the dead timber remorselessly, encouraging the doubtful,
+reassuring the timid, assorting and combining and ordering until, at the
+close of the second day of fierce toil, he was ready to make his first
+report to Adair.
+
+     Track connections at junction points completed to-day. General and
+     division operating and traffic departments in the saddle and
+     effectively organized. With proper cooeperation on part of General
+     Manager North, grain should begin to move eastward to-morrow. Can
+     get no satisfactory replies from North. Have him disciplined from
+     your end. Answer.                            FORD.
+
+To this telegram there was a prompt and voluminous reply from the seat
+of war in the East. In a free fight on the Stock Exchange, a battle
+royal generaled by Brewster and Magnus in which every inch of ground had
+been sharply contested by brokers buying up P. S-W. in the interest of
+principals unnamed, a majority of the Southwestern stock--safe but
+exceedingly narrow--had been secured by the reconstructionists.
+
+In accordance with Ford's suggestion, North had been "called down" by
+wire, and Ford was instructed to report instantly any failure of effort
+on the part of the Denver headquarters to set the grain trains in
+motion.
+
+Otherwise, and from the New York point of view, the situation remained
+most hopeful. The fight in the Street had unified the factions in the
+board of directors, and even the timid ones were beginning to clamor for
+an advance into the territory of the enemy.
+
+Ford read Adair's letter-length and most unbusiness-like telegram with
+the zest of the fine wine of triumph tingling in his blood. With the
+Chicago outlet fairly open and in working order, and a huge tributary
+grain crop to be moved, it should be only a matter of days until the
+depressed Pacific Southwestern stock would begin to climb toward the
+bonding figure.
+
+This was the first triumphant conclusion, but afterward came reaction
+and a depressive doubt. Would the stock go up? Or would the enemy devise
+some assault that would keep it down in spite of the money-earning,
+dividend-promising facts? Upon the expected rise hung the fate of Ford's
+cherished ambition--the building of the western extension. Without a
+dividend-paying Chicago-Denver main line, there could be no bond issue,
+no thirty millions for the forging of the third and most important link
+in the great traffic chain.
+
+Ford walked the floor of his office, called by courtesy, "private," for
+an anxious hour, balancing the probabilities, and finally determined to
+take the desperate chance. There was a vast mountain of preliminary work
+to be leveled, huge purchasing expenses to be incurred, before the first
+step could be taken in the actual building of the western extension; and
+the summer was advancing day by day. He did not hope to get the
+extension completed in a single season. But to get it over into the
+promising mining field on the lower Pannikin before snow-flying meant
+work of the keenest, without the loss of a single day. Could he afford
+to play the safe game and wait until the building capital should be
+cannily in Mr. Magnus' bank vaults?
+
+He decided that he could not; and when he reached a decision, Ford was
+not the man to hesitate before taking the plunge. On the morning of the
+third day he called Truitt, sometime superintendent of the C. P. & D.,
+and now acting manager of the Chicago Extension, and gave him his
+instructions.
+
+"You say there are three grain trains moving on the line now, Mr.
+Truitt: there will be three more before night. Keep them coming, and
+give them the right of way over everything but the United States mails.
+Can you handle this without help from me?"
+
+"We'll give it a pretty stiff try," was the prompt rejoinder. "But you
+are not going to leave us, are you, Mr. Ford?"
+
+"No; but for the next forty-eight hours I am going to lock my door, and
+I don't want to be disturbed for anything less than a disaster or a wire
+from New York. Please give orders accordingly, will you?"
+
+The orders were given; and, left with his force of stenographers, Ford
+began to walk the floor, dictating right and left. Letters and telegrams
+to steel mills, to contractors, to bridge builders, to the owners of
+grading outfits, and to labor agencies, clicked out of the typewriters
+in a steady and unbroken stream, and the din was like that of a
+main-line telegraph office on a hot piece of track.
+
+All day long, and far into the night, the office force wrought
+unceasingly, digging away at the mountain of preliminary correspondence;
+and by the next morning the wire replies were beginning to come in.
+
+Then came the crux. To insure prompt delivery of material, definite
+orders must be placed immediately. A delay of a single day might entail
+a delay of weeks in the shipments. Yet the risk of plunging the company
+into debts it might never be able to pay was appalling. What if the
+stock should not go up as prefigured?--if the bonds could not be
+floated?
+
+It was with the feeling that he might well be signing his own
+death-warrant that Ford put his name to the first order for two hundred
+thousand dollars' worth of steel rails for immediate delivery to the
+company's line in Chicago. But after the first cold submergence it came
+more easily, and when he left the office an hour before midnight, a cool
+million would not have covered the obligations he had assumed during the
+strenuous day.
+
+Kenneth was sitting up for him when he reached his hotel, and the
+usually impassive face of the general counsel reflected trouble.
+
+"Out with it," said Ford wearily; and suddenly the new million of
+indebtedness became a mountain weight to grind him to powder.
+
+"We're blocked," was the brief announcement. "Two of the grain trains
+are in, and the Transcontinental lawyers have won the toss. We're
+enjoined by the court from using the service tracks to the elevators.
+Didn't your local people tell you?"
+
+"No," said Ford. "I had given orders that I was not to be disturbed. But
+what of it? You expected something of the sort, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes; and I provided for it. The injunction will be dissolved when we
+have our final hearing; but long before that time the mischief will be
+irreparable, I'm afraid."
+
+"How?"
+
+"It will be blazoned far and wide that we can't deliver the goods--that
+the opposition has done us up. I've tried to keep it out of the
+newspapers, or, rather, to persuade them not to make too much of it. But
+it wouldn't go. The Transcontinental has all the pull in this town, it
+appears."
+
+"And you think it will affect the price of the stock?"
+
+"It is bound to, temporarily, at least. And coming upon the heels of
+to-day's sudden tumble--"
+
+"What's that?" demanded Ford, dry-lipped, adding: "I haven't seen a
+paper since morning."
+
+Kenneth wagged his head gloomily. "It's pretty bad. P. S-W. closed at
+thirty-three--five points off yesterday's market."
+
+"Good Lord!" Ford's groan was that of a man smitten down in the heat of
+the fight. "Say, Kenneth, within a single sweep of the clock-hands I
+have contracted for more than a million dollars' worth of material for
+the western extension--more than a million dollars' worth!"
+
+"Well, I'm afraid you have sinned in haste to repent at leisure," said
+the lawyer, with a weary man's disregard for the amenities. Then he
+added: "I'm going to bed. I've had about all I can stand for one day."
+
+Ford went to the room clerk for his key; reeled would be the better
+word, since his brain was whirling. There was a telegram in his box, and
+he tore it open with fresh and sharper misgivings. It was from Adair.
+
+     The sick man's getting sicker. What is the matter with your
+     prescription? Stock gone off five points, and the bears are
+     squeezing us to beat the band. Stories flying on the Street that we
+     are a kite without an effective tail; that the courts will keep us
+     out of the elevators. What do you say?
+
+Ford consulted his watch. There was barely time to catch the midnight
+train for New York, and his determination was taken on the spur of the
+moment. It was all or nothing, now.
+
+Hastily writing a wire to the cashier of the Denver bank where he kept
+his personal account, and another to Adair, and leaving brief notes for
+Kenneth and Truitt, he took a cab and had himself driven at a gallop to
+the Union Station. He was the last man through the platform gates, but
+he made his train, and was settling himself in the sleeper when another
+telegram was thrust into his hand. This was from Frisbie, at Saint's
+Rest; and that it brought more bad news might be argued from the way in
+which he crushed it slowly in his hand and jammed it into his pocket. On
+this day, if never before, he was proving the truth of the old adage
+that misfortunes do not come singly.
+
+Upon arriving in New York late the following evening, he had himself
+driven to the Waldorf, where he found Adair waiting for him. A few words
+sufficed to outline the situation, which the lapse of another day had
+made still more desperate. So far from recovering, the falling stock had
+dropped to twenty-nine and a half, and there was every indication that
+the bottom was not yet reached.
+
+"How do you account for it?" asked Ford, when the dismal tale had been
+told.
+
+"Oh, it's easy enough, when you know how," was the light-hearted
+rejoinder. "As I wired you, there was something of a scramble on the
+floor of the Exchange last week when we were fighting to find out
+whether we should control our own majority or let the Transcontinental
+have it. Our pool got its fifty-one per cent. all right, but in the
+nature of things the enemy stood as the next largest stock-holder in
+P. S-W., since they'd been buying right and left against us. Now, since
+we don't need any more, and nobody else wants it, all the
+Transcontinental people have to do is to unload on the market, and down
+she goes."
+
+Ford looked incredulous, and then wrathful.
+
+"Adair, tell me: did I have to stop my work when my time is worth fifty
+dollars a minute, and come all the way to New York to tell you folks
+what to do?" he demanded.
+
+Adair's laugh was utterly and absolutely care-free.
+
+"It looks that way, doesn't it? Have you got the compelling club up your
+sleeve, as usual?"
+
+"A boy might carry it--and swing it, too," was the disgusted answer.
+"When does the board meet again? Or has it concluded to lie down in the
+harness?"
+
+"Oh, it gets together every morning--got the meeting habit, you know.
+Everybody's in a blue funk, but we still have the daily round-up to swap
+funeral statistics."
+
+"All right. Meet me here in the morning, and we'll go and join the
+procession. Can you make it nine o'clock?"
+
+"Sure. It's too late to go home, and I'll stay here. Then you'll be
+measurably certain that I can't escape. May I see the tip end of the
+club?"
+
+"No," said Ford grumpily. "You don't deserve it. Go to bed and store up
+a head of steam that will carry you through the hardest day's work you
+ever hoped to do. Good night."
+
+They met again at the breakfast-table the following morning, and Ford
+talked pointedly of everything save the P. S-W. predicament. One of
+Adair's past fads had been the collecting of odd weapons; Ford
+discovered this and drew the young man skilfully into a discussion of
+the medieval secrets of sword-tempering.
+
+"I've a bit of the old Damascus, myself," said the engineer. "Tybee--he
+was on the Joppa-Jerusalem road in the building--picked it up for me.
+Curious piece of old steel; figured and flowered and etched and inlaid
+with silver. There were jewels in the pommel once, I take it; the
+settings are still there to show where some practical-turned vandal dug
+them out."
+
+Adair was quite at a loss to guess how old swords and their histories
+could bear upon the financial situation, but he was coming to know Ford
+better. Some one has said that it is only the small men who are careful
+and troubled on the eve of a great battle. So the talk was of ancient
+weapons until the time for action arrived; and a smooth-faced gentleman
+sitting at a near-by table and marked down by Ford--though not by Ford's
+companion--listened for some word of enlightenment on the railroad
+situation, and was cruelly disappointed.
+
+"Why wouldn't you talk?" asked Adair, when they were driving down-town
+in the young millionaire's auto. "Or rather, why did you persist in
+keeping me to the old swords?"
+
+Ford laughed.
+
+"For one reason, I enjoy the old swords--as a relaxation. For another,
+Mr. Jeffers Hawley, who was once one of the Transcontinental lawyers in
+Denver, was sitting just behind you, with eager ears. You didn't know
+that. Hold on a minute; tell your man to stop at the Chemical Bank. I
+want you to introduce me to the cashier."
+
+"Now, what the deuce are you starting a New York bank account for?"
+queried Adair, as they came out of the bank together and climbed into
+the tonneau of the waiting touring car. "Couldn't you draw on the
+treasurer? What's the use of your being the assistant to the president,
+I'd like to know?"
+
+"Wait," was the answer; and the questioner waited, perforce.
+
+The board was already in session when the two young men were admitted to
+the private room in the rear of the Broad Street offices, and Ford was
+welcomed as a man who has recklessly steered the ship upon the rocks.
+There were even some open recriminations, notably on the part of the
+president; but Ford sat quietly under them, making no defense, and
+folding and refolding a slip of paper in his fingers as he listened.
+
+When they gave him leave to speak, he still made no attempt to explain.
+Instead, he rose, walked to the other end of the table, and tossed the
+bit of folded paper across to Mackie, the broker.
+
+"I inherited a little money, and I have made and saved enough more to
+make it an even twenty thousand dollars," he said. "I don't know of any
+more promising investment just now than Pacific Southwestern at
+twenty-nine and a half. Will you be good enough to buy for my account,
+Mr. Mackie?"
+
+The effect was electrical. President Colbrith sat up very straight in
+his chair; two or three of the anxious ones opened on Ford with a rapid
+fire of questions; and Brewster, the copper magnate, sat back and
+chuckled softly in his beard.
+
+"No, gentlemen; there is no change in the situation, so far as I know.
+Of course, you are not so foolish as to let the newspaper talk of the
+tie-up at the Chicago elevators influence you," Ford was saying to the
+anxious inquirers. "And, apart from that, everything is going our way.
+As I have remarked, our stock at the present figure is good enough for
+me, and I only wish I had two hundred thousand, instead of twenty
+thousand, to put into it."
+
+Brewster stopped chuckling long enough to hold up a finger to the
+broker. "You may buy for my account, too, Mackie, while you are at
+it--and keep on buying till I tell you to quit."
+
+This broke the deadlock instantly, and for a few minutes the board room
+was as noisy as the wheat pit with a corner threatening. Brewster, still
+laughing in his beard, pulled Ford out of the press at the broker's end
+of the table.
+
+"I'm going to ask only one thing of you, young man," he began, his
+shrewd little eyes twinkling. "Just let me know when you are going to
+get out, so I can pull through without having to take the bankruptcy."
+
+[Illustration: "Will you be good enough to buy for my account, Mr.
+Mackie"]
+
+"I'll do it, Mr. Brewster," laughed Ford. "Only I'm not going to get
+out--unless you folks freeze me out."
+
+"Then it isn't a long bluff on your part?"
+
+"It is, and it isn't. We still stand to win if we have the nerve to hold
+on--in which event P. S-W. at twenty-nine and a fraction is a gold mine.
+That's one view of it, and the other is this: we've simply _got_ to
+corner our own stock if we expect to sell thirty millions additional
+bonds."
+
+"Well, I guess you've gone the right way about it. But are you sure
+about these Chicago terminals? A legal friend of mine here says you'll
+never get in."
+
+"He was possibly paid to say it," said Ford hotly. "There has never been
+a shadow of doubt touching our trackage rights on the C. P. & D.
+contracts, or upon our ability to maintain them. All the
+Transcontinental people hoped to do was to make a newspaper stir to help
+keep our stock down. They know what we are going to do to them over in
+their western territory, and they won't stop at anything to block us."
+
+"Of course; I think we were all inclined to be a little short-sighted
+and pessimistic here, Mr. Ford. When do you go back to your fighting
+ground?"
+
+"To-night."
+
+"You won't wait to see what happens here?"
+
+"I don't need to, I am sure. And the minutes--my minutes--are worth
+dollars to the company just now."
+
+"Well, go in and win--only don't forget to give me that tip. You
+wouldn't want to see a man of my age going to the poorhouse."
+
+"One other word, Mr. Brewster," Ford begged, as the copper magnate was
+pointing for the door of escape. "Please don't let any of these timid
+gentlemen sell till we get our bonds floated. You mark my word: the
+temptation to make a big killing is going to be very great, within a
+week."
+
+The copper king laughed; openly, this time.
+
+"You overrate my influence, Mr. Ford; but I'll do what I can--by word of
+mouth and by example. You can count on me--as long as you let me stay on
+your side of the market."
+
+Ford had three several invitations to luncheon after the meeting
+adjourned, but he accepted none of them. To Adair he made the
+declination courteous while they were trundling back to the Waldorf in
+the big touring car.
+
+"I have lost an entire day because I could not take the time to secure a
+stenographer before leaving Chicago night before last. I must find one
+now and go to work."
+
+"All right; if you must. But I was hoping I could take you out to
+Overlook to dinner this evening. Can't you come anyhow, and take a later
+train west?"
+
+"Don't tempt me," said Ford. And then: "The ladies are quite well, I
+hope?"
+
+"Oh, yes; they are in town to-day, and we are all going to luncheon
+together--though I shan't know just where until I go to the club.
+Failing the dinner, won't you make a knife and fork with us at one
+o'clock?"
+
+"I should like to--more than anything else in the world," Ford
+protested, meaning it. "But you'll make my excuses to Mrs. Adair, won't
+you? We've simply got to get a three-cornered hustle on now, if we want
+to save the day in the West."
+
+"Why? Is there anything new in that quarter?"
+
+"There is: something that I didn't dare to mention back yonder in the
+board meeting. You may remember that I told you I had left a man in my
+place on the Plug Mountain--Frisbie? I had a wire from him, night before
+last, just as I was leaving Chicago. As you know, the Pacific
+Southwestern inherits, from the old narrow-gauge purchase, the
+right-of-way over Plug Pass and down the valley of the Pannikin. Frisbie
+wires that the Transcontinental people have begun massing building
+material at the terminus of their Saguache branch, only twenty miles
+from the Pass."
+
+"And that means?--I'm lame on geography."
+
+"It means that they'll cut in ahead of us, if they can. Plug Pass is the
+only available unoccupied outlet through the mountains for thirty or
+forty miles north or south; and if we don't get our building force on
+the ground mighty suddenly, we'll find it fortified and held by the
+enemy."
+
+The touring car had turned into Broadway, and the traffic roar precluded
+further talk. But when Ford was dismounting from the tonneau at the
+entrance to his hotel, Adair said: "There appears to be no rest for the
+wicked. You ought to have some of that thirty million dollars to spend
+right now."
+
+Ford's smile was little more than a sardonic grin.
+
+"Adair," he said, "I'm going to tell you something else that I didn't
+dare tell those money-tremulous people in McVeigh and Mackie's private
+office. I have been signing contracts and buying material by the
+train-load ever since the first grain shipment was started eastward on
+our main line. Also, I've got my engineering corps mobilized, and it
+will take the field under Frisbie as its chief not later than to-morrow.
+Putting one thing with another, I should say that we are something over
+a fresh million of dollars on the wrong side of solvency for these
+little antics of mine, and I'm adding to the deficit by the hundred
+thousand every time I can get a chance to dictate a letter."
+
+Adair lighted a cigarette and made a fair show of taking it easily. But
+a moment later he was lifting his hat to wipe the perspiration from his
+forehead.
+
+"Lord! but you have the confidence of your convictions!" he said,
+breathing hard. "If we shouldn't happen to be able to float the bonds--"
+
+"We are in too deep to admit the 'if.' The bonds must be floated, and at
+the earliest possible moment that Magnus will move in it. You wanted
+something big enough to keep you interested. I have been trying my best
+to accommodate you."
+
+Adair leaned forward and spoke to his chauffeur. The man watched his
+chances for room to turn in the crowded street.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Ford.
+
+"Back to McVeigh and Mackie's--where I can watch a ticker and go broke
+buying more Pacific Southwestern," was the reply, and just then the
+chauffeur found his opening and the big car whirled and plunged into the
+down-town stream.
+
+In the financial news the next morning there was a half-column or more
+devoted to the sudden and unaccountable flurry in Pacific Southwestern.
+Ford got it in the Pittsburg papers and read it while the picked-up
+stenographer was wrestling with his notes. After the drop in the stock,
+caused, in the estimation of the writer, by the company's sudden plunge
+into railroad buying at wholesale, P. S-W. had recovered with a bound,
+advancing rapidly in the closing hours of the day from the lower
+thirties to forty-two, with a strong demand. The utmost secrecy was
+maintained, but it was shrewdly suspected that one of the great
+companies, of which the Pacific Southwestern was now a competitor on an
+equal footing for the grain-carrying trade, had gone in to absorb the
+new factor in trans-Missouri traffic. Other and more sensational
+developments might be expected if the battle should be fought to a
+finish. Then followed a brief history of the Pacific Southwestern, with
+a somewhat garbled account of the late dash for a Chicago terminal, but
+lacking--as Ford remarked gratefully--any hint of the company's designs
+in the farther West.
+
+"If Adair and Brewster and the others only have the nerve to keep it
+up!" said Ford to himself. Then he tossed the paper aside and dived once
+more into the deep sea of extension building, working the picked-up
+stenographer until the young man was ready with his resignation the
+moment the final letter was filed for mailing in the Chicago station.
+
+Five days the young engineer waited for news from New York--waited and
+worked like a high-pressure motor while he waited. Each day's financial
+news showed the continued and growing success of the home-made "corner,"
+and now the reporters were predicting that the stock would go to par
+before the price should break.
+
+Ford trembled for the good faith of his backers on the board. When one
+has bought at twenty-nine and a half and can sell within the week for
+eighty-seven, the temptation is something tremendous. But at the closing
+hour of the fifth day the demand was still good; and when Ford reached
+the hotel that night there was a telegram from Adair awaiting him.
+
+He tore it open and read it, with the blood pounding through his veins
+and a roar which was not of the street traffic drumming in his ears.
+
+     P. S-W. closed at ninety-two to-day, and a Dutch syndicate will take
+     the bonds. Success to you in the Western wilderness. Brewster wants
+     to know how soon you'll reach his Utah copper mines.         ADAIR.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+HURRY ORDERS
+
+
+"I'm no cold-water thrower, Ford, as you know. But if I were a
+contractor, and you were trying to get me to commit myself to any such
+steeplechase, I should say no, and confirm it with a cuss-word."
+
+It was a week after the successful placing of the Western Extension
+building-fund bonds with the Dutch syndicate, and Ford, having ordered
+things to his liking on the newly opened Chicago line, had taken the
+long step westward to Denver to begin the forging of the third link in
+the great railway chain.
+
+Frisbie, now first assistant engineer in charge of construction, had
+come down from Saint's Rest for a conference with his chief, and the
+place of conferrings was a quiet corner in one of the balconies
+overlooking the vast rotunda of the Brown Palace Hotel; this because the
+carpenters were still busy in the suite of rooms set apart for the
+offices of the assistant to the president in the Pacific Southwestern
+headquarters down-town.
+
+"You mean that the time is too short?" said Ford, speaking to Frisbie's
+emphatic objection.
+
+"Too short at both ends," contended the little man with the devilish
+mustaches and chin beard. "The Copah mining district is one hundred and
+twenty miles, as the crow flies, from the summit of Plug Pass--say one
+hundred and forty by the line of our survey down the Pannikin, through
+the canyon and up to the town. Giving you full credit for more
+getting-ready than I supposed any man could compass in the three weeks
+you've been at it, I still think it is impossible for us to reach Copah
+this season."
+
+"You must change your belief, Dick," was the curt rejoinder. "This is to
+be a campaign, not only of possibilities, but of things done. We go into
+Copah with the steel gangs before snow flies."
+
+"I know; that's what you've been saying all along. But you're looking at
+the thing by and large, and I'm figuring on the flinty details. For
+example: you'll admit that we can't work to any advantage west of the
+mountains until we have made a standard gauge out of the Plug Mountain
+branch. How much time have you been allowing for that?"
+
+"No time at all for the delay: about three weeks, maybe, for the actual
+changing of the gauge," said Ford coolly.
+
+"All right," laughed Frisbie. "Only you'll show us how. It doesn't lie
+in the back of my head--or in Crapsey's, unless he's a better man than I
+hired him for."
+
+"Who is Crapsey?"
+
+"He is a Purdue man that I picked up and started out on the branch to
+make figures on the change of gauge. The other three parties, under
+Major Benson, Jack Benson and Roy Brissac, are setting the grade stakes
+down the Pannikin, and Leckhard is wrestling with the construction
+material you've been dumping in upon us at Saint's Rest. That left me
+short, and I hired Crapsey."
+
+"Good. If he is capable, he may do the broadening. Call him in and set
+him at it."
+
+"But, man! Don't you want the figures first?"
+
+"My dear Dick! I've had those figures for two years, and there's nothing
+very complicated about that part of our problem. Call your man in and
+let him attack the thing itself."
+
+"Everything goes: you may consider him recalled. But broadening the Plug
+Mountain to standard gauge doesn't put us into Copah this summer, does
+it?"
+
+"No; our necessities will do that for us. See here; let me show you."
+Ford took out his note-book and on a blank page of it outlined a rough
+map, talking as he sketched. "Three weeks ago you wired me that the
+Transcontinental people were massing building material at the terminus
+of their Saguache branch."
+
+"So I did," said Frisbie.
+
+"And the day before yesterday you wired again to say that it was
+apparently a false alarm. What made you change your mind?"
+
+"They are hauling the stuff away--over to their Green Butte line, I'm
+told."
+
+"Why are they hauling it away?"
+
+"The bluff--their bluff--was called. We had got busy on Plug Pass, and
+they saw there was no hope of cutting in ahead of us at that point."
+
+"Exactly. Now look at this map for a minute. Here is Saint's Rest; here
+is the Copah district; and here is Green Butte, the junction of their
+narrow gauge with the standard-gauge Salt Lake and Eastern. If you were
+on the Transcontinental executive committee and saw an active competing
+line about to build a standard-gauge railroad through the Copah district
+and on to a connection with your narrow gauge's outlet at Green Butte,
+what would you advise?"
+
+Frisbie nodded. "It's easy, when you know how, isn't it They'll
+standardize their narrow gauge to Green Butte, make an iron-clad traffic
+contract with the S. L & E. to exclude us, and build a branch from
+Jack's Canyon, say, up into the Copah country." And then in loyal
+admiration: "That's what I call the sure word of prophecy--your
+specialty, Stuart. How many nights' sleep did you lose figuring that
+out?"
+
+"Not any, as it happens," laughed Ford. "It was a straight tip out of
+the East. The plan, just about as you've outlined it, was adopted by the
+Transcontinental powers that be, sitting in New York last week. By some
+means unknown to me, Mr. Adair got wind of it, and made a flying trip to
+Chicago to put me on--wouldn't even trust the wire with it. Now you
+understand why we've got to wake the Copah echoes with a locomotive
+whistle this season."
+
+"Copah--yes," said Frisbie doubtfully. "But that is only a way station.
+What we need is Green Butte and the Pacific coast outlet over the S. L &
+E.; and they stand to euchre us out of that, hands down. What's to
+prevent their making that traffic contract with the Mormon people right
+now?"
+
+"Nothing; if the S. L & E. management were willing. But just here the
+political situation in Mormondom fights for us. Last year the
+Transcontinental folk turned heaven and earth over to defeat the Mormon
+candidate for the United States Senate. The quarrel wasn't quite mortal
+enough to stand in the way of a profitable business deal; but all things
+being equal, the Salt Lake line will favor us as against its political
+enemy."
+
+"You're sure of that?" queried Frisbie.
+
+"As sure as one can be of anything that isn't cash down on the
+nail--with the money locked up in a safety deposit vault. By the
+sheerest good luck, the Mormon president of the S. L & E. happened to
+be in New York at the time when Adair had his ear to the
+Transcontinental keyhole. Adair hunted him up and made a hypothetical
+case of a sure thing: if our Western Extension and the Transcontinental,
+standard-gauged, should be knocking at the Green Butte door at the same
+time, what would the S. L & E. do? The Mormon answer was a bid for
+speed; first come, first served. But Adair was given to understand,
+indirectly, that on an equal footing, our line would be given the
+preference as a friendly ally."
+
+"Bully for the Mormon! But you say Copah--this summer. When we reach
+Copah we are still one hundred and forty miles short of Green Butte. And
+if you can broaden the Plug Mountain in three weeks--which you'll still
+allow me to doubt--the Transcontinental ought to be able to broaden its
+Green Butte narrow gauge in three months."
+
+"If you had cross-sectioned both lines as I have, you wouldn't stumble
+over that," said Ford, falling back, as he commonly did, upon the things
+he knew. "We shall broaden the Plug Mountain without straightening a
+curve or throwing a shovelful of earth on the embankment, from beginning
+to end. On the other hand, the Green Butte narrow gauge runs for seventy
+miles through the crookedest canyon a Rocky Mountain river ever got lost
+in. There is more heavy rock work to be done in that canyon than on our
+entire Pannikin division from start to finish."
+
+"That's bully for us," quoth the first assistant. "But, all the same, we
+shouldn't stop at Copah, this fall."
+
+"We shall not stop at Copah," was the decisive rejoinder. "The winters
+on the western side of the range are much milder than they are here, and
+not to be spoken of in the same day with your Minnesota and Dakota
+stamping-ground. If we can get well out of the mountains before the
+heavy snows come--"
+
+Frisbie wagged his head.
+
+"I guess I've got it all, now--after so long a time. We merely break the
+record for fast railroad building--all the records--for the next six
+months or so. Is that about it?"
+
+"You've surrounded it," said Ford tersely.
+
+"Good enough: we're ready to make the break when you give the word. What
+are we waiting for?"
+
+"Just at this present moment, for the contractors."
+
+"Why, I understood you had closed with the MacMorrogh Brothers," said
+Frisbie.
+
+"No. At the last moment--to relieve me of a responsibility which might
+give rise to charges of favoritism, as he put it--Mr. Colbrith took the
+bids out of my hands and carried the decision up to the executive
+committee. Hence, we wait; and keep a growing army of laborers here
+under pay while we wait," said Ford, with disgust thinly masked. Then
+he added: "With all due respect to Mr. Colbrith, he is simply a senile
+frost!"
+
+Frisbie chuckled.
+
+"Been cooling your fingers, has he? But I understood from the
+headquarters people down-town, that the MacMorroghs had a sure thing on
+the grading and rock work. Their bid was the lowest, wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes; but not the cheapest for the company, Dick. I've been keeping tab
+on the MacMorroghs for a good while: they are grafters; the kind of men
+who take it out of the company and out of their labor in a thousand
+petty little steals--three profits on the commissary, piece-work for
+subs where they know a man's got to lose out, steals on the working
+hours, fines and drawbacks and discounts on the pay-rolls, and all that.
+You know how it's done."
+
+"Sure," agreed Frisbie, with his most diabolical grin. "Also, I know how
+it keeps the engineering department on the hottest borders of Hades,
+trying to hold them down. The good Lord deliver us!"
+
+"I wanted to throw their bid out without consideration," Ford went on.
+"But again Mr. Colbrith said 'No,' adding that the MacMorroghs were old
+contractors on the line, and that Mr. North had always spoken very
+highly of them."
+
+"Ah; the fine Italian hand of Mr. North again," said Frisbie. "And that
+reminds me: are we going to be at war with the main line operating
+department?"
+
+Ford shook his head. "Not openly, at least. North was down to meet my
+train when I came in last night, and you would never have suspected that
+I left Denver six weeks ago without his blessing. And now I'm reminded.
+I have a luncheon appointment with him at twelve, and a lot of letters
+to dictate before I can keep it. Go down and do your wiring for Crapsey,
+and if we lose each other this afternoon, I'll meet you here at dinner
+this evening."
+
+It was while Ford was working on his mail, with one of the hotel
+stenographers for a helper, that a thick-set, bull-necked man with
+Irish-blue eyes and a face two-thirds hidden in a curly tangle of
+iron-gray beard, stubbed through the corridor on the Pacific
+Southwestern floor of the Guaranty Building, and let himself cautiously
+into the general manager's outer office. The private secretary, a
+faultlessly groomed young fellow with a suggestion of the Latin races in
+his features, looked up and nodded.
+
+"How are you, Mr. MacMorrogh?" he said; and without waiting for a reply:
+"Go on in. Mr. North is expecting you."
+
+The burly one returned the nod and passed on to the inner room. The
+general manager, a sallow, heavy-visaged man who might have passed in a
+platform gathering for a retired manufacturer or a senator from the
+Middle West, swung in his pivot-chair to welcome the incomer.
+
+"Glad to see you, MacMorrogh. Sit down. What's the news from New York?"
+
+The contractor found a chair; drew it close to the general manager's
+desk, and filled it.
+
+"I'm thinking you'll know more about that than I will, Misther North,"
+he replied, in a voice that accorded perfectly with the burly figure and
+piratical beard. "Ford's fighting us with his fishtes."
+
+"Why?" asked the general manager, holding his chin in his hand--a
+gesture known the entire length of the Pacific Southwestern as a signal
+of trouble brewing, for somebody.
+
+"God knows, then; I don't," said the MacMorrogh. "I wint to Chicago to
+see him when the bid was in, and d'ye think he would lave me talk it
+over with him? Not him! Wan day he'd be too busy; and the next, I'd have
+to call again. 'Twas good for him I was not me brother Dan. Dan would've
+kicked the dure in and t'rown him out av the windy."
+
+The wan ghost of a smile flitted across the impassive face of the big
+man at the desk.
+
+"Let me tell you something, MacMorrogh. If you, or your brother Dan,
+ever find it necessary to go after Ford, don't give him notice by
+battering down doors. You won't, I know. But about the contract: you
+haven't heard from the executive committee?"
+
+"Not the half of wan wor-rd."
+
+"Have you any idea of what is causing the delay?"
+
+"'Tis dommed well I know, Misther North. Ford is keeping the wires hot
+against us. If I could have Misther Colbrith here with you for wan five
+minutes--"
+
+The general manager broke in, following his own line of thought.
+
+"Ford is in Denver; he came in from Chicago last night. Why don't you go
+up to the Brown and have it out with him?"
+
+"Fight it out, d'ye mean?"
+
+"Certainly not. Make friends with him."
+
+The contractor sat back in his chair and plunged his stubby hands deep
+into his pockets.
+
+"Give me the sthraight tip, Misther North."
+
+"It ought to suggest itself to you. This is a big job, with a great deal
+of money passing. Your profits, over and above what you will make out of
+the company, will be quite large. Ford is an ambitious young man, and he
+is not building railroads for his health."
+
+The MacMorrogh was nodding slowly. Nevertheless, he made difficulties.
+
+"Me hand's not light enough for that, Misther North."
+
+Again the general manager smiled.
+
+"You require a deal of prompting, sometimes, Brian. What's the matter
+with a trusty go-between?"
+
+"H'm, that's it, now. But where to lay me finger on the right man. 'Tis
+a risk to run--with a yooung fire-brand like Ford holding the other end
+iv the string."
+
+"Still I think the man can be found. But first we must make sure of your
+contract, with or without Ford. Your suggestion about taking the matter
+up with Mr. Colbrith in person strikes me favorably. Can you spare the
+time to go to New York?"
+
+"Sure I can."
+
+"At once?"
+
+"The wan minute for sthriking is whin the iron's hot, Misther North."
+
+The general manager put aside the thick file of papers he had been
+examining when MacMorrogh entered, and began to set his desk in order.
+
+"I have been thinking I might make it convenient to go with you. I
+presume you have no objection to going as my guest in the Naught-Seven?"
+
+"'Tis an honor you're doing me, Misther North, and I'll not be
+forgetting it."
+
+"Not at all. There are some matters connected with this contract that
+I'd like to talk over with you privately, and if we can agree upon them,
+I may be able to help you with Mr. Colbrith and the executive
+committee."
+
+The general manager pressed one of the electric buttons on the side of
+the desk, and to the clerk who answered gave a brief order: "Have the
+Naught-Seven provisioned and made up to go east as a special at
+twelve-ten to-day. Tell Despatcher Darby to make the schedule
+fast--nineteen hours or less to the River."
+
+The clerk nodded and disappeared, and North turned again to MacMorrogh.
+
+"Now about that other matter: I'll find you a go-between to approach
+Ford; but to be quite frank with you, you'll have to be liberal with the
+young man for his services. When you go into the diplomatic field, you
+have to spend money." He was pressing another of the electric buttons as
+he spoke, and to the office boy who put his face in at the door, he
+said: "Ask Mr. Eckstein to step in here a minute."
+
+It was the private secretary, the well-groomed young man with the alien
+eyes and nose who answered the summons. North gave him his instructions
+in a curt sentence.
+
+"Mr. MacMorrogh would like to have a little talk with you, Eckstein:
+take him into the other room where you can be undisturbed."
+
+It was half an hour later when the door of the library opened to readmit
+the private secretary and the contractor, and in the interval the
+division superintendent's clerk had returned to say that the special
+train schedule was made up, and that the Naught-Seven would be waiting
+at the Union Station at twelve-ten.
+
+"Well?" said the general manager, lifting a slow eyebrow at MacMorrogh
+and compressing into the single word his wish to know what had been done
+in the conference of two.
+
+"'Tis all right, Misther North," said the contractor, rubbing his hands.
+"'Tis a crown jewel ye have in this yooung--"
+
+North cut the eulogy short in a word to his secretary.
+
+"I go east, special, at twelve-ten, Eckstein, as Mr. MacMorrogh has
+probably told you. I have a luncheon appointment at twelve with Mr.
+Ford. Meet him when he comes, and make my excuses--without telling him
+anything he ought not to know. If you can take my place as his host, do
+so; but in any event, keep him from finding out where we have gone until
+we are well on the way. That's all."
+
+This was why Ford, walking the few blocks from his hotel at noon to keep
+his engagement with North, found the general manager's private office
+closed, and a suave, soft-spoken young man with a foreign east of
+countenance waiting to make his superior's excuses.
+
+"Mr. North was called out of town quite unexpectedly on a wire," was the
+private secretary's explanation. "He tried to telephone you at the
+Brown, but the operator couldn't find you. He left me to explain, and
+I've been wondering if you'd let me take his place as your host, Mr.
+Ford."
+
+Now Ford's attitude toward his opponents was, by reason of his gifts,
+openly belligerent; wherefore he fought against it and tried to be as
+other men are.
+
+"I am sure Mr. North is quite excusable, and it is good-natured in you
+to stand in the breach, Mr. Eckstein," he said. "Of course, I'll be glad
+to go with you."
+
+They went to Tortoni's, and to a private room; and the luncheon was an
+epicurean triumph. Eckstein talked well, and was evidently a young man
+of parts. Not until the cigars were lighted did he suffer the table-talk
+to come down to the railroad practicalities; and even then he merely
+followed Ford's lead.
+
+"Oh, yes; we have made arrangements to give you a clear deck in the
+Denver yards for your material and supplies," he said, in answer to a
+question of Ford's about side-track room and yard facilities at the
+point which would have to serve as his base. "Following your orders, we
+have been forwarding all that your Plug Mountain rolling stock could
+handle, but there is considerable more of it side-tracked here. After
+the MacMorrogh grading outfit has gone to the front, we shall have more
+room, however."
+
+"The MacMorrogh outfit?" queried Ford. "Do they store it in our yards?"
+
+"Oh, no. They have a pretty complete railroad yard of their own at
+their headquarters in Pueblo. But they have three train-loads of tools
+and machinery here now, waiting for your orders to send them to the
+front."
+
+Ford weighed the possibilities thoughtfully and concluded that nothing
+could be lost by a frank declaration of principles.
+
+"They have given you folks a wrong impression, Mr. Eckstein," he said
+mildly. "The contract for the grading on the Western Extension is not
+yet awarded; and if I can compass it, the MacMorrogh Brothers' bid will
+be thrown out."
+
+The private secretary tried to look mystified, with just the proper
+touch of a subordinate's embarrassment.
+
+"I'm only a clerk, Mr. Ford," he said, "and, of course, I'm not supposed
+to know more than I see and hear in the regular way of business. But I
+understood that the MacMorroghs were in the saddle; that they were only
+waiting for you to provide track-room at Saint's Rest for their tool
+cars and outfit."
+
+"No," said Ford. "It hasn't got that far along yet."
+
+Eckstein looked at his watch.
+
+"Don't let me keep you, if there is anything else you want to do, Mr.
+Ford; but I'll confess you've aroused my curiosity. What is the matter
+with the MacMorroghs?"
+
+Ford answered the question by asking another.
+
+"Do you know them, Mr. Eckstein?"
+
+"Why--yes; as Mr. North's chief clerk would be likely to know the firm
+of contractors which has been given a good share of the Pacific
+Southwestern work for a number of years."
+
+"Do you know any good of them?"
+
+"Bless me! yes: I don't know anything else of them. Three hearty, bluff,
+rough-tongued Irishmen; lacking diplomacy and all the finer touches, if
+you like, but good fellows and hustlers of the keenest."
+
+Ford fastened his companion in a steady eye-grip. "One question, Mr.
+Eckstein; do they play fair with all concerned?"
+
+"They are more than fair; they are generous--with the company, and with
+the company's representatives with whom they have to do business. On two
+contracts with us they have lost money; but I happen to know that in
+both instances they kept their promises to the engineering department to
+the letter."
+
+Ford had cast off the eye-grip and he appeared to be studying the fresco
+design of the ceiling over the private secretary's head.
+
+"And those promises were--?"
+
+Eckstein laughed boyishly. "You needn't make a mystery of it with me,
+Mr. Ford. I'm one of the family, if I haven't any initials after my
+name. I know--we all know--that there are certain profits--not made out
+of the company, of course--that a contractor is always willing to share
+with his good friends, the engineers."
+
+Ford's attitude instantly became that of a freshman wishing to learn the
+ropes.
+
+"Consider me, Mr. Eckstein," he said. "I'm new to the construction
+business--or at least, I've never been at the head of it before. What
+are these--er--perquisites?"
+
+The private secretary thought he had entered the thin edge of the wedge
+and he drove it heartily.
+
+"They are perfectly legitimate, of course. The contractors run a
+commissary to supply the workmen--nobody suspects them of doing it at
+cost. Then there are the fines imposed to secure faithful work, the _per
+capita_ commission paid on the labor sent in by the engineers, the
+discounts on time-checks, the weekly hospital and insurance dues
+collected from the men. All those things amount to a good round profit
+on a contract like ours."
+
+"To about how much, in figures, should you say?" queried Ford, with an
+air of the deepest interest.
+
+"To enough to make your share, as head of the construction department,
+touch ten thousand a year, on a job as big as ours--with a liberal
+provision for Mr. Frisbie, besides."
+
+Ford blew reflective smoke rings toward the ceiling for a full minute or
+more before he said quietly: "Do I understand that you are authorized to
+guarantee me ten thousand a year in commissions from the MacMorrogh
+Brothers, Mr. Eckstein?"
+
+Eckstein laughed.
+
+"You forget that I'm only a clerk, and an onlooker, as you may say. But
+if you accept MacMorrogh's bid, and he doesn't do the square thing by
+you and Mr. Frisbie, you may call me in as a witness, Mr. Ford. Does
+that clear up the doubt?"
+
+"Perfectly," was the quiet rejoinder. "Under these conditions, I suppose
+it is up to me to wire the executive committee, withdrawing my
+objections to the MacMorroghs, isn't it?"
+
+"That is the one thing Mr. MacMorrogh asks." The secretary whipped out a
+note-book and pencil. "Shall I take your message? I can send it when I
+go back to the office."
+
+"Thank you," said Ford; then he began to dictate, slowly and
+methodically: "To S.J. Colbrith, care McVeigh and Mackie, New York. This
+is to recall my objections to MacMorrogh Brothers, as stated in letter
+of the twenty-fifth from Chicago. Further investigation develops the
+fact that they are quite honest and capable, and that they will pay me
+ten thousand dollars a year for withdrawing my opposition."
+
+Eckstein's pencil had stopped and he was gasping for breath.
+
+"Great Scott!" he ejaculated. "That won't do, Mr. Ford! You can't put
+a thing like that into a telegram to the president!"
+
+[Illustration: Eckstein's pencil had stopped and he was gasping for
+breath]
+
+"Why not?" was the cool inquiry. "You said it was perfectly legitimate,
+didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, but--" the entrance of a waiter to clear the table provided a
+merciful stop-gap, and Eckstein, hurriedly consulting his watch,
+switched abruptly. "By Jove! I'm due at the office this minute to meet a
+lot of cattlemen," he stammered, and escaped like a man hastening for
+first aid to the mistaken.
+
+Ford laughed long and silently when he found himself alone in the
+private dining-room; and he was still chuckling by fits and starts when,
+after an afternoon spent with Auditor Evans, he recounted his adventure
+to Frisbie over the Brown cafe dinner table that evening. But Frisbie
+took all the humor out of the luncheon episode when he said soberly:
+
+"He laughs best who laughs last, Stuart. Eckstein took a fall out of you
+one way, even if he did fail in the other; he kept you safely shut up at
+Tortoni's while Mr. North and the chief of the MacMorroghs got away on a
+special train for New York. Beard, the Union Station operator, told me.
+Which means that they'll have a full day with Mr. Colbrith and the
+executive committee before you can possibly get there to butt in."
+
+"No, it doesn't; necessarily," Ford contradicted, rising suddenly and
+signaling a waiter.
+
+"What are you going to do?" queried Frisbie, dropping his knife and
+fork and preparing to second his chief.
+
+"Come and see. I'm going to get out another special train and give Mr.
+North a run for his money," was the incisive answer. "Hike down to the
+despatcher's office with me and help cut out the minutes."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE ENTERING WEDGE
+
+
+Has civilized humanity, in the plenitude of twentieth century
+sophistication, fully determined that there is no such thing as
+luck?--that all things are ordered, if not by Providence, at least by an
+unchangeable sequence of cause and effect?
+
+Stuart Ford was a firm believer in the luck of the energetic; which is
+to say that he regarded obstacles only as things to be beaten down and
+abolished. But in the dash to overtake and pass the general manager's
+one-car special, the belief was shaken almost to its reversal.
+
+He knew the Pacific Southwestern locomotives--and something of the men
+who ran them. The 1016 was one of the fast eight-wheelers; and Olson,
+the engineer, who had once pulled passenger on the Plug Mountain, was
+loyal and efficient. Happily, both the man and the machine were
+available; and while Frisbie was calling up the division superintendent
+at his house to ask the loan of his private car for the assistant to
+the president, Ford was figuring the schedule with the despatcher, and
+insisting upon speed--more speed.
+
+"What's come over you big bosses, all at once?" said Darby, to whom
+Ford's promotion was no bar to fellowship or free speech. "First Mr.
+North wants me to schedule a special that will break the record; and now
+you want to string one that will beat his record."
+
+"Never mind my troubles, Julius," was the evasive reply. "Just you
+figure to keep things out of my way and give me a clear track. Let's
+see--where were we? Cheyenne Crossing at 2 a.m., water at Riddle Creek,
+coal at Brockton--"
+
+The schedule was completed when Frisbie came back to say that the 1016,
+with the superintendent's car attached, was waiting on track Six. Ford
+went down, looked the gift horse in the mouth, and had the running gear
+of the car overhauled under his own supervision before he would give
+Olson the word to go, pressing the night car inspectors into service and
+making them repack the truck journals while he waited.
+
+"I'm taking no chances," he said to Frisbie; and truly it seemed that
+all the hindrances had been carefully forestalled when he finally
+boarded the "01" and ordered his flagman to give Olson the signal. Yet
+before the one-car train was well out of the Denver yards there was a
+jolting stop, and the flagman came in to report that the engine had
+dropped from the end of an open switch, blocking the main line.
+
+Ford got out and directed the reenrailment of the 1016, carefully
+refraining from bullying the big Swede, whose carelessness must have
+been accountable. It was the simplest of accidents, with nothing broken
+or disabled. Under ordinary conditions, fifteen minutes should have
+covered the loss of time. But the very haste with which the men wrought
+was fatal. Enrailing frogs have a way of turning over at the critical
+instant when the wheels are climbing, and jack-screws bottomed on the
+tie-ends do not always hold.
+
+Eight several times were the jack-screws adjusted and the frogs clamped
+into position; but not until the ninth trial could the perverse wheels
+be induced to roll workmanlike up the inclined planes and into place on
+the rails. Ford looked at his watch when his special was free of the
+switches and Olson was speeding up on the first long tangent. With the
+chase still in its opening mile, Mr. North's lead had been increased
+from seven hours to eight.
+
+Leaving Denver on the spur of the moment, Ford had necessarily left many
+things at a standstill; and his first care, after he had assured himself
+that the race was fairly begun, was to write out a handful of telegrams
+designed to keep the battle alive during his enforced absence from the
+firing line. The superintendent's desk was hospitably unlocked, and for
+a busy half-hour Ford filled blank after blank, steadying himself
+against the pounding swing of the heavily ballasted car with a
+left-handed grip on the desk end. When there remained no one else to
+remind, he wrote out a message to Adair, forecasting the threatened
+disaster, and urging the necessity of rallying the reconstructionists on
+the board of directors.
+
+"That ought to stir him up," he said to himself, bunching Adair's
+telegram with the others to be sent from the first stop where the
+Western Union wires could be tapped. Then he whirled around in the swing
+chair and scowled up at the little dial in the end of the car; scowled
+at the speed-recorder, and went to the door to summon the flagman.
+
+"What's the matter with Olson?" he demanded. "Has he forgotten how to
+run since he left the Plug Mountain? Climb up over the coal and tell him
+that forty miles an hour won't do for me to-night."
+
+The flagman picked up his lantern and went forward; and in a minute or
+two later the index finger of the speed-recorder began to mount slowly
+toward the fifties. At fifty-two miles to the hour, Ford, sitting in the
+observation end of the car where he could see the ghostly lines of the
+rails reeling backward into the night, smelled smoke--the unmistakable
+odor of burning oil. In three strides he had reached the rear platform,
+and a fourth to the right-hand railing showed him one of the car-boxes
+blazing to heaven.
+
+He pulled the cord of the air-whistle, and after the stop stood by in
+sour silence while the crew repacked the hot box. Since he had made the
+car inspectors carefully overhaul the truck gear in the Denver station,
+there was no one to swear at. Olson bossed the job, did it neatly and in
+silence, and no one said anything when the fireman, in his haste to be
+useful, upset the dope-kettle and got its contents well sanded before he
+had overtaken it in its rolling flight down the embankment.
+
+Ford turned away and climbed into his car at the dope-kettle incident.
+There are times when retreat is the only recipe for self-restraint; and
+in imagination he could see the general manager's special ticking off
+the miles to the eastward while his own men were sweating over the
+thrice-accursed journal-bearing under the "01."
+
+Now, as every one knows, hot boxes, besides being perversely incurable,
+are the sworn enemies of high speed. At forty miles to the hour the
+journal was smoking again. At forty-five it burst into flames. Once more
+it was patiently cooled by bucketings of water drawn from the engine
+tank; after which necessary preliminary Olson spoke his mind.
+
+"Ay tank ve never get someveres vit dat hal-fer-damn brass, Meester
+Ford. Ay yust see if Ay can't find 'noder wone." And he rummaged in the
+car lockers till he did find another.
+
+Unfortunately, however, the spare brass proved to be of the wrong
+pattern; a Pullman, instead of a P. S-W. standard. Olson was a trained
+mechanic and a man of resources, and he chipped and filed and scraped at
+the misfit brass until he made it serve. But when he climbed again to
+the cab of his engine, and Ford swung up to the steps of the car, the
+white headlight eye of an east-bound freight, left at a siding a full
+hour's run to the rear, came in sight from the observation platform of
+the laboring special.
+
+These were the inauspicious beginnings of the pursuit; and the middle
+part and the ending varied only in degree. All the way up to midnight,
+at which hour a station of a bigness to supply a standard brass was
+reached, the tinkered journal-bearing gave trouble and killed speed. Set
+once more in running order upon its full quota of sixteen practicable
+wheels, the special had fallen so far behind its Denver-planned schedule
+as not only to be in the way of everything else on the division, but to
+find everything else in its way. Ford held on stubbornly until the lead
+of the train he was trying to outrun had increased to twelve hours. Then
+he gave it up, directing his crew to turn the train on the nearest "Y,"
+and to ask for retracing orders to Denver. After which he went to bed in
+the state-room of the borrowed car, and for the first time in his
+experience was a man handsomely beaten by the perversity of insensate
+things.
+
+The request for the retracing orders was sent from Coquina; and when it
+came clicking into the despatcher's office at Denver, a sleep-sodden
+young man with an extinct cigar between his teeth rose up out of his
+chair, stretched, yawned, and pointed for the door.
+
+"Going to leave us, Mr. Eckstein?" said the trick despatcher who was
+sitting at the train table.
+
+"Yes. If Mr. Ford has changed his mind, I may as well go home and go to
+bed."
+
+"Reckon he forgot something, and has to come back after it?" laughed the
+operator.
+
+"Maybe," said the private secretary, and he went out, shutting the door
+behind him with the bat-like softness and precision that was his
+distinguishing characteristic.
+
+The sounders were clicking monotonously when the trick man turned to the
+relief operator who was checking Darby's transfer sheet.
+
+"What do you suppose Eckstein was up to, sitting here all night, Jim?"
+
+"Give it up," said the relief man. "Ask me something easy."
+
+"I'll bet a hen worth fifty dollars I can guess. He didn't want Mr. Ford
+to make time."
+
+The relief man looked up from his checking.
+
+"Why? He didn't do anything. He was asleep more'n half the time."
+
+"Don't you fool yourself," said the other. "He heard every word that
+came in about that hot box. And if the hot box hadn't got in the way,
+I'll bet a cockerel worth seventy-five dollars, to go with that
+fifty-dollar hen, that he would have tangled me up somehow till I had
+shuffled a freight train or something in Mr. Ford's way. He's Mr.
+North's man, body and soul; and Mr. North doesn't love Mr. Ford."
+
+"Oh, rats, Billy!" scoffed the relief man, getting up to fill his
+corn-cob pipe from the common tobacco bag. "You're always finding a
+nigger in the wood-pile, when there isn't any. Say; that's 201 asking
+for orders from Calotte. Why don't you come to life and answer 'em?"
+
+Frisbie, breakfasting early at the Brown Palace on the morning following
+the night of hinderings, was more than astonished when Ford came in and
+took the unoccupied seat at the table-for-two.
+
+"Let me eat first," said the beaten one, when Frisbie would have whelmed
+him with curious questions; and with the passing of the cutlets and the
+coffee he told the tale of the hindrances.
+
+"I guess it was foreordained not to be," he admitted, in conclusion. "We
+tried mighty hard to bully it through, but the fates were too many and
+too busy for us."
+
+"Tricks?" suggested Frisbie, suspecting North of covering his flight
+with special instructions to delay a possible pursuit.
+
+"Oh, no; nothing of that sort: just the cursed depravity of inanimate
+things. Every man concerned worked hard and in good faith. It was luck.
+No one of us happened to have a rabbit's foot in his pocket."
+
+"You don't believe in luck," laughed the assistant.
+
+"Don't I? I know I used to say that I didn't. But after last night I
+can't be so sure of it."
+
+"Well, what's the cost to us?" inquired Frisbie, coming down out of the
+high atmosphere of the superstitious to stand upon the solid earth of
+railway-building fact.
+
+"I don't know: possibly failure. There is no guessing what sort of a
+scheme North will cook up when he and MacMorrogh get Mr. Colbrith
+_cornered_."
+
+"Oh, it can't be as bad as that. Take it at the worst--admitting that we
+may have to struggle along with the MacMorroghs for our general
+contractors; they can't addle the egg entirely, can they?"
+
+Ford tabulated it by length and breadth.
+
+"With the MacMorroghs in the forefront of things to steal and cheat and
+make trouble with the labor, and Mr. North in the rear to back them up
+and to retard matters generally, we are in for a siege to which
+purgatory, if we ever go there, will seem restful, Richard my son. Our
+one weapon is my present ranking authority over the general manager. If
+he ever succeeds in breaking that, you fellows in the field would better
+hunt you another railroad to build."
+
+"It's a comfort to know that you _are_ the big boss, Stuart. North can't
+knock you out of that when it comes to a show-down."
+
+"I don't know," said Ford, whose night ride had made him pessimistic. "I
+am Mr. Colbrith's appointee, you know--not an elected officer. And what
+Mr. Colbrith has done, he may be induced to undo. Adair has been my
+backer in everything; but while he is the best fellow in the world, he
+is continually warning me that he may lose interest in the game at any
+minute and drop it. He doesn't care a rap for the money-making part of
+it--doesn't have to."
+
+"Wouldn't Adair be a good safety-switch to throw in front of Mr. North
+and MacMorrogh in New York?"
+
+Ford nodded. "I thought of that last night, and sent a wire. We'll hear
+from it to-day."
+
+Frisbie ate through the remainder of the breakfast in silence.
+Afterward, at the pipe-lighting, he asked if Ford's wire instructions of
+the night before still held good.
+
+"They do," was the emphatic reply. "We go on just as if nothing had
+happened, or was due to happen. You say your man Crapsey will be in this
+morning: gather up your laborers and turn the Plug Mountain into a
+standard-gauge railroad while we wait. That's all, Dick; all but one
+word--hustle."
+
+"Hustle it is. But say: you were going to give me a pointer on that
+broad-gauging. I've been stewing over it for a day and a night, and I
+don't think of any scheme that won't stop the traffic."
+
+"Don't you? That is because you haven't mulled over it as long as I
+have. In the first place, you have no curves to straighten and no
+cross-ties to relay--our predecessors having set the good example of
+using standard length ties for their three-foot road. String your men
+out in gangs as far as they'll go, and swing the three-foot track, as a
+whole, ten inches out of center to the left. You can do that without
+stopping trains, can't you?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"All right. When you swing, spike the right-hand rail lightly. Then
+string your gangs again and set a line of spikes for the outside of the
+standard-gauge right-hand rail straight through to Saint's Rest. Got
+that?"
+
+"Yes; I guess I've got it all. But go on."
+
+"Now you are ready for the grand-stand play. Call in all your
+narrow-gauge rolling stock, mass your men at this end of the branch,
+shove the right-hand rail over to the line of gauge spikes in sections
+as long as your force will cover, and follow up with a standard-gauge
+construction train to pick up the men and carry them forward as fast as
+a section is completed. If you work it systematically, a freight train
+could leave Denver two hours behind your track-gangs and find a
+practical standard gauge all the way to Saint's Rest."
+
+"Of course!" said Frisbie, in workmanlike disgust for his own
+obtuseness. "I'm going back to the Tech when your railroad is finished
+and learn a few things. I couldn't think of anything but the old Erie
+Railroad scheme, when it was narrowed down from the six-foot gauge. They
+did it in one night; but they had a man to every second cross-tie over
+the whole four hundred miles from New York to Buffalo."
+
+Ford nodded, adding:
+
+"And we're not that rich in labor. By the way, how are the men coming?"
+
+"A car-load or two, every little while. Say, Stuart, you must have had a
+rabbit's foot with you when you touched up the eastern labor agencies.
+Every other railroad in this neck of woods is skinned, and M'Grath is
+having the time of his life trying to hold our levies together. There is
+a small army of them under canvas at Saint's Rest, waiting for the
+contractors, and another with between two and three hundred hands camped
+at the mouth of the canyon."
+
+Ford knocked the ashes from his pipe so hard that the pipestem fell in
+two.
+
+"Yes! all waiting on Mr. Colbrith's leisurely motions! Well, jump in on
+the Plug Mountain. That will utilize some of the waste for a few days."
+
+Frisbie went down to the Plug Mountain yard office, and to a wire-end,
+to begin the marshaling of his forces; and Ford, with three picked-up
+stenographers to madden him, took up the broken threads of his
+correspondence with a world which seemed to have become suddenly peopled
+to suffocation with eager sellers of railroad material and supplies.
+
+Late in the afternoon, when he was tired enough to feel the full force
+of the blow, a New York telegram came. It was from Miss Alicia Adair,
+and Ford groaned in spirit when he read it.
+
+     Brother left here yesterday in the Vanderdecken yacht for Nova
+     Scotia. Can not reach him by telegraph until next Friday or
+     Saturday. Aunt Hester wants to know if there is anything she can
+     do.
+
+One way to save a man's life at a crisis is to appeal to his sense of
+humor. Miss Alicia's closing sentence did that for Ford, and he was
+smiling grimly when he put the telegram away, not in the business file,
+but in his pocket.
+
+Three days later, however, when Frisbie was half-way to Saint's Rest
+with his preliminary track-swinging, another New York telegram found
+Ford in his newly established quarters in the Guaranty Building. This
+was from some one acting as President Colbrith's secretary, and its
+wording was concisely mandatory.
+
+     Contract has been awarded MacMorrogh Brothers. President directs
+     that you afford contractors every facility, and that you confer
+     with Mr. North in all cases of doubt.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE BARBARIANS
+
+
+It was some little time after the rock had begun to fly from the
+cuttings on the western slopes of the mountains that Kenneth, summoned
+by Ford, made the run from Denver to Saint's Rest over the standardized
+Plug Mountain branch and found the engineer-manager living in a
+twenty-foot caboose car fitted as a hotel and an office-on-wheels.
+
+The occasion of Kenneth's calling was a right-of-way dispute on the
+borders of the distant Copah mining district; some half-dozen mining
+claims having been staked off across the old S. L & W. survey. The
+owners, keen to make a killing out of the railroad company, threatened
+injunctions if the P. S-W. persisted in trespassing upon private
+property; and Ford, suspecting shrewdly that the mine men were set on by
+the Transcontinental people to delay the work on the new line, made
+haste to shift his responsibility to the legal shoulders.
+
+"If I hadn't known you for a pretty good mountaineer, Kenneth,
+you would have missed this," he said, making his guest free of the
+limited hospitality of the caboose-hotel. "Are you good for a
+two-hundred-and-eighty-mile cayuse ride, there and back, on the same
+trail we tramped over a year ago last spring?"
+
+"I'm good for everything on the bill of fare," was the heartening reply.
+"How are things going?"
+
+Ford's rejoinder began with a non-committal shrug. "We're building a
+railroad, after a fashion."
+
+"After a good fashion, I hope?"
+
+Another shrug.
+
+"We're doing as well as we can with the help we have. But about this
+right-of-way tangle--" and he plunged his guest into a discussion of the
+Copah situation which ran on unbroken until bedtime.
+
+They took the westward trail together in the morning, mounted upon wiry
+little mountain-bred ponies furnished by one Pacheco, the half-breed
+Mexican who had once earned an easy double-eagle by spying upon two men
+who were out hunting with an engineer's transit. For seven weeks Frisbie
+had been pushing things, and the grade from Saint's Rest to the summit
+of the pass was already a practicable wagon road, deserted by the
+leveling squads and ready for the ties and the steel.
+
+From the summit of the pass westward, down the mountain and through the
+high-lying upper valley of the Pannikin, the grade work was in full
+swing. The horse trail, sometimes a rough cart-road, but oftener a mere
+bridle-path, followed the railroad in its loopings and doublings; and on
+the mountain sections where the work was heaviest the two riders were
+never out of sight of the heavily manned grading gangs.
+
+"To a man up a tree you appear to be doing a whole lot, and doing it
+quickly, Ford," commented the lawyer, when they had passed camp after
+camp of the workers. Then he added: "You are not having any trouble with
+the MacMorroghs, are you?"
+
+"Not what the legal department would call trouble," answered Ford
+evasively; and for ten other miles the narrowness of the bridle-path
+discouraged conversation.
+
+Farther down in the valley of the Pannikin the activities were less
+thickly sown. On many sections the work was light; no more than the
+throwing up of an embankment in the park-like intervales, with now and
+then a rock-or earth-cutting through some jutting spur of the inclosing
+mountains. Here the men were bunched on the rock work and the fills,
+though the camp sites were commonly in the park-like interspaces where
+wood and water, the two sole commodities for which the contractors could
+make no deductions on the pay-roll, lay conveniently at the doors of the
+rude sleeping shacks.
+
+Since he was not required to talk, Kenneth had time to be curiously
+observant of many things in passing. Each camp was the fellow of its
+neighbor; a chaotic collection of hastily built bunk shanties, a mess
+tent for those who, shunning the pay-devouring Scylla of the
+contractors' "commissary," fell into the Charybdis of the common table,
+and always, Kenneth remarked, the camp groggery, with its slab-built
+bar, its array of ready-filled pocket bottles, and its sad-faced,
+slouch-hatted, pistol-carrying keeper.
+
+"What is that Bible-saying about the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty
+land?" said Kenneth, as they were passing one of the wilderness
+bar-rooms buttressing a huge boulder by the trail side. "I should think
+you'd rule those fellows emphatically and peremptorily out of the game,
+Ford. They must make a lot of trouble for you, first and last."
+
+"They do," was the sober response. "But how would you go about it to
+rule them out?"
+
+The lawyer laughed. "My writs don't run this far. But I thought yours
+did. Why don't you fire 'em bodily; tell 'em their number is
+23--skiddoo! Aren't you the Sublime Porte--the court of last resort--the
+big boss--over here?"
+
+Ford pulled his horse down to a walk.
+
+"Kenneth, let me tell you: behind those barkeepers are the contractors;
+behind the contractors is Mr. North; behind Mr. North, the president. My
+little lever isn't long enough to turn the world over."
+
+"Pshaw!" said Kenneth. "Mr. Colbrith wouldn't stand for anything like
+that! Why, he's a perfect fanatic on the whisky question."
+
+"That's all right," said Ford acidly. "It doesn't go as far as Mr.
+Colbrith in the matter of the debauching particulars. It stops in
+Denver; and Mr. Colbrith approves Denver in the lump--signs the vouchers
+without looking at them, as Evans would say. I tell you what I
+believe--what I am compelled to believe. These individual saloon-keepers
+are supposed to be in here on their own hook, on sufferance. They are
+not; they are merely the employees of a close corporation. Among the
+profit sharers you'll find the MacMorroghs at the top, and Mr. North's
+little ring of Denver officials close seconds."
+
+"Do you honestly believe that, Ford?"
+
+"I do. I can't prove it, of course. If I could, I'd go to New York and
+fight it out. And the whisky isn't all of it, or even the worst: there
+are women in some of these camps, and there would be more if Leckhard
+didn't stand guard at Saint's Rest and turn them back."
+
+"Heavens--what a cesspool!" said the attorney. "Does a laboring man ever
+get out of here with any of his earnings?"
+
+"Not if the MacMorroghs can help it. And you can figure for yourself
+what the moral atmosphere must be. We are less than two months old on
+the work, but already the Western Extension is a streak of crime; crime
+unpunished, and at times tacitly encouraged. You may say that my
+department isn't responsible--that this is the contractors' day and
+game. If that is true now--which it isn't--it will no longer be true
+when we come in with our own employees, the track-layers."
+
+But now Kenneth was shaking his head.
+
+"I can't believe it, Ford. You're blue because Mr. Colbrith has thrown
+Mr. North into your boat as ballast. I don't blame you: but you mustn't
+let it make you color-blind."
+
+Ford said nothing. The day was yet young, and the long journey was still
+younger. It was at the noon halt, made at a subcontractor's camp near a
+great earth-cutting and a huge fill, that Kenneth had his object lesson.
+
+They were standing at the door of the timekeeper's shanty--they had been
+the timekeeper's guests for the noon meal--and the big gang of Italians,
+with its inevitable Irish foreman, was already at work. Out at the head
+of the great fill a dozen men were dumping the carts as they came in an
+endless stream from the cutting. Suddenly there was a casting down of
+shovels, a shrill altercation, a clinch, a flash of steel in the August
+sunlight, and one of the disputants was down, his heels drumming on the
+soft earth in the death agony.
+
+"Good God!" said Kenneth. "It's a murder!" and he would have rushed in
+if Ford and the timekeeper had not held him back.
+
+The object lesson was sufficiently shocking, but its sequel was still
+more revolting. Without one to kneel beside the dying man; indeed,
+without waiting until the drumming heels were still; the men callously
+put their shovels under the body, slid it over the lip of the dump and
+left it to be covered by the tumbling cataract of earth pouring from the
+tip-carts whose orderly procession had scarcely been interrupted by the
+tragedy.
+
+Kenneth was silent for many minutes after they had left the camp of the
+Italians. He was a Western man only by adoption; of Anglo-Saxon blood,
+and so unable to condone the Latin's disregard for the sacredness of
+human life.
+
+"That was simply terrible, Ford," he said finally, and his voice was
+still in sympathy with the shaking hand that held the bridle-reins.
+"Will nothing be done?"
+
+"Nothing; unless the murdered man chances to have relatives or clansmen
+in one of the near-by camps--in which case there'll be another killing."
+
+"But the law," said Kenneth.
+
+"There is no law here higher than the caprice of Brian MacMorrogh.
+Besides, it's too common--a mere episode; one of those which you said
+you couldn't believe, a little while back."
+
+"But can't you make the MacMorroghs do a little police work, for common
+decency's sake?"
+
+Ford shook his head. "They are quite on the other side of the fence, as
+I told you in the beginning. By winking at lawlessness of all kinds,
+their own particular brands of lawlessness, by which they and their
+backers make money, go unquestioned. So far from helping, they'd make it
+exceedingly difficult for any sheriff who should have the temerity to
+come in here in the discharge of his duty."
+
+"You foresaw all this before the contract was awarded?"
+
+"Not all--though I had been told that the MacMorroghs ran 'open camps'
+where the work was far enough from civilization to take the curse off.
+What you've seen, and what I've been telling you, is bad enough, God
+knows; but it will be worse before it is better. After we've had a few
+pay-days, and the men begin to realize that they are here to toil and to
+be robbed ... Kenneth, it will be hell on earth; and the company will
+pay for it--the company always pays in the end."
+
+"I've got a notion," said the attorney, after another plodding mile of
+reflection; but what it was he did not say.
+
+Ford and his companion reached Copah in the afternoon of the third day
+out from Saint's Rest, and, singularly enough, the mine owners who were
+disputing the extension right-of-way were found amenable to reason. What
+Kenneth did to secure the P. S-W. right-of-way across the mining claims,
+Ford did not know, or seek to know; though a word or two let fall by the
+attorney led him to believe that the Transcontinental encouragement was
+not quite specific enough in dollars and cents to warrant the
+obstructors in holding out.
+
+Ford was for starting back the next morning: he had missed Brissac and
+both of the Bensons on the way over. But Kenneth confessed to being
+saddle-sore, and begged for another day's respite. Ford agreed without
+giving the matter a second thought. Upon such unconsidered trifles--an
+indifferent "yes" or "no"--turn the poised scales of life. For one other
+day the two Southwestern representatives put up at the Grand Union,
+Copah's tar-paper-covered simulacrum of a hotel; and during that day
+Ford contrived to sell his birthright for what he, himself, valued at
+the moment as a mess of pottage.
+
+It was in this wise. At this period of its existence Copah, the future
+great, was merely a promise; a camp of magnificent prospects. Isolated
+by one hundred and fifty miles of wagon-road and pack-trail from one
+railroad base, and by forty miles of mountains from the other, its
+future turned upon the hope of cheaper transportation. As a gold camp it
+was an anomaly. With a single exception its ores were low grade, and the
+wagon-road and pack-trail freightage made them practically profitless to
+the miners.
+
+The single exception was the "Little Alicia," and it was the coincidence
+of the name, rather than the eloquence of its impoverished owner, that
+first attracted Ford. From first to last he did not know the exact
+location of the mine. It was somewhere in the hills back of Copah, and
+Grigsby, the prospector who had discovered and opened it, had an office
+in the camp.
+
+It was in Grigsby's town office that Ford saw the ore specimens and the
+certified assays, and listened not too credulously to Grigsby's
+enthusiastic description of the Little Alicia. To be a half-owner in
+this mine of mines was to be rich beyond the dreams of avarice--when the
+railroad should come: if one might take Grigsby's word for it.
+
+It is a curious fever, that which seizes upon the new-comer in an
+unexploited mining field. Ford was far from being money-mad; but there
+were times when he could not help contrasting a railroad salary with
+Miss Adair's millions. True, he had once said to her, in the fulness of
+confident belief, that the money of the woman he loved would make no
+difference--to her or to him. But the point of view, wise or foolish, is
+not always the same. There were moments when the Adair millions loomed
+large, and the salary of an assistant to the president--who was in fact
+little more than a glorified chief of construction--shrank in
+proportion. He was free of obligation and foot-loose. His twenty
+thousand dollars invested in P. S-W. stock at twenty-nine and a half had
+grown with the rising market to sixty-odd. What did it matter to any one
+if he chose to put ten thousand of the sixty-odd on a turn of the
+Little Alicia card?
+
+While it was gambling, pure and simple, he did not bet with his eyes
+shut. Inquiry at the Bank of Copah established Grigsby's reputation for
+truth-telling. The specimens and the assay certificates were beyond
+doubt genuine. More than this, Grigsby had made a number of ore
+shipments by freighters' wagon and jack train over the range, and the
+returns had enabled him to keep a small force of men at work in the
+mine.
+
+Ford made his bet through the bank. The cashier was willing to take a
+P. S-W. official's note of hand, to be canceled when Ford could deposit
+to the bank's credit in Denver, and to give Grigsby an open account for
+his immediate needs. Grigsby accepted joyfully, and the thing was done.
+Ford's mess of pottage was a deed of half-ownership in the Little
+Alicia, executed and recorded in the afternoon of the day of stop-overs,
+and he was far enough from suspecting that he had exchanged for it all
+that a man of honor holds dearest. But, as a matter of fact, the
+birthright had not yet been handed over: that came later.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE DRAW-BAR PULL
+
+
+Attorney Kenneth had many more object-lessons in the study of "open
+camps" on the three-day return ride to Saint's Rest. The day of
+stop-over in Copah chanced to be the MacMorrogh Brothers' monthly
+pay-day, and until the men's money was spent pandemonium reigned along
+the line of the extension.
+
+Some of it they dodged, riding wide to pass the larger camps, and
+hearing from afar the noise of carousal, the fierce drinking songs of
+the Magyars, the fusillades of pistol-shots. So far as they could see,
+all work appeared to be suspended; and Major Benson, whose camp of
+engineers they picked up in one of the detours around a gulch head,
+confirmed that conclusion.
+
+"It was the same way last month," raged the major, twisting his fierce
+white mustaches and looking as if he would like to blot the name of
+MacMorrogh from the roster of humanity. "It'll take a full week to get
+them into the swing again, and MacMorrogh will be up with his estimates
+just the same as if he had been working full time. I'll cut 'em; by the
+gods, I'll cut 'em! And you must stand by me, Mr. Ford."
+
+There was the same story to be listened to at Brissac's tie camp; and
+again at young Benson's headquarters, which were on the mountain
+section. This last was on the third day, however, when the madness was
+dying down. Some of the rock men were back on the job, but many of the
+gangs were still grievously short-handed. Ford said little to Kenneth.
+The pandemonium spoke for itself. But on the third night, when the long
+ride was ended, and Pietro, Ford's cook and man-of-all-work, was serving
+supper in the caboose office-on-wheels, some of the bitterness in Ford's
+heart slipped into speech.
+
+"Can you see now how it takes the very marrow out of a man's bones,
+Kenneth? You may think of an engineer as a man of purely bull-headed
+purposes, merely trying, in a crass, materialistic way, to get a
+material thing done. I want to do a big thing, and I'd like to do it in
+a big way. It _is_ a big thing--the building of this extension. If it
+doesn't add another star to the flag, it will at least make one state
+twice as populous, twice as prosperous. It will add its quota to the
+habitable surfaces; and it's a good quota--a land that some future
+generation will love, and swear by, and fight for, if need be. And to
+think that for one man's narrow-mindedness and another's greed we've got
+to christen it in blood and muck and filth and dishonesty--it makes me
+sore, Kenneth; sore and disheartened."
+
+"I don't blame you," said the lawyer, reveling, though he would never
+have admitted it, in the comfort of the caboose headquarters journey's
+end. "But you'll pull through; you'll build your railroad, and the
+mistakes that are made won't be your mistakes. It's a horrible state of
+affairs, that in the MacMorrogh camps; a blot on our boasted
+civilization. But you can't help it. Or rather you will help it if, and
+when, you can."
+
+Ford was shaking his head dejectedly.
+
+"I don't know, Kenneth. It's getting next to me, even at this early
+stage of the game. Have you ever stood on the front car platform of a
+train nearest to the engine and watched the jiggling draw-bar? It is
+apparently loose; its hold on the engine seems to be no more than that
+of the touch of clasped hands in a gipsy dance. Yet it never lets go,
+and the drag of it is always there. By and by, when the coal is all
+burned, and the fire is out, and the water is drained from the tank,
+those gentle little multiplied jerks will pull the big engine down--kill
+it--make it a mere mass of inert metal blocking the way of progress."
+
+"Well?" said the attorney.
+
+"It's an allegory. I'm beginning to feel the draw-bar pull. Sooner or
+later, North and his clique will drag me down. I can't fight as the
+under dog--I never learned how; and they've fixed it so that I can't
+fight any other way."
+
+Kenneth had lighted his cigar and was lying back against the cushion of
+the car-seat. After a little, he said: "Just after we saw the Italian
+killed last week I told you I had a notion, Ford. I've got it yet, and
+I've been turning it over in my mind and wondering if I'd better explode
+it on you. On the whole, I think I'd better not. It's a case of surgery.
+If the patient lives, you'll know about it. If the patient dies, you'll
+be no worse off than you are now. Shall we let it rest at that?"
+
+Ford acquiesced. He was too utterly disheartened to be curious. But if
+he could have foreseen the results of Kenneth's notion it is conceivable
+that he would have been aroused to some effort of protest, as even in
+deep waters one prays sometimes to be delivered from his friends.
+
+It was a week after this farewell supper in the caboose hotel at Saint's
+Rest when Ford went down to Denver to borrow, on his P. S-W. stock, the
+ten thousand dollars to be deposited to the credit of the Bank of Copah.
+Following him, and only one train behind, came Frisbie, new from a
+confirmatory survey of the extension beyond the Copah district.
+
+On his return from the Green Butte end of the proposed line, the little
+man with the diabolical fashion of beard trimming had spent a week in
+and around Copah, picking up yard rights-of-way, surveying approaches,
+and setting grade stakes for the outlying MacMorrogh gangs. During that
+week he had made a discovery, and since he believed it to be all his
+own, he journeyed eastward to share it quickly with his chief.
+
+Ford was dining alone at the Brown Palace when Frisbie, coming straight
+from the Plug Mountain train, found him. There was an entire western
+desert to be talked over during the courses, and Frisbie held his
+discovery in reserve until they had gone to smoke in a quiet corner of
+the great rotunda. Even then he approached it indirectly.
+
+"In taking up the line down the Pannikin we have followed the old S. L &
+W. survey pretty closely all the way from start to finish. What were
+your reasons, Stuart?" he asked.
+
+"There didn't seem to be any good reason for not following it. Brandreth
+made the S. L & W. preliminary, and there isn't a better locating
+engineer in this country."
+
+"I know," said Frisbie. "But the best of us make mistakes, now and then.
+Brandreth made a pretty sizable one, I think."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"You know where the big rock-cutting is to be made in the lower canyon,
+about ten miles this side of the point where we begin to swing south for
+the run to Copah--a mile and a half of heavy work that will cost away
+up into the pictures?"
+
+"Yes; I've estimated that rock work at not a cent less than two hundred
+thousand dollars."
+
+"You're shy, rather than over, at that. And two hundred thousand would
+build a number of miles of ordinary railroad, wouldn't it? But that
+isn't all. The cliffs along that canyon are shale-topped and
+shale-undermined, the shale alternating with loose rock about fifty feet
+above our line of grade in quarter-mile stretches all along. That means
+incessant track-walking day and night through the mile and a half of
+cutting, and afterward--for all time afterward--a construction train
+kept handy under steam to clear away debris that will never quit sliding
+down on the embankment."
+
+"I'm afraid you are right," said Ford. "It's the worst bit on the entire
+extension; the most costly to build, as it will be the most expensive to
+maintain. But I guess Brandreth knew what he was about when he surveyed
+it."
+
+"Brandreth is a short-line man. He wouldn't lengthen his line ten miles
+to dodge an earthquake. Ford, we can save a hundred thousand dollars on
+that piece of track in first cost--to say nothing of the future."
+
+"How? I'm always open to conviction."
+
+"By leaving the S. L & W. survey at Horse Creek, following up to the low
+divide at Emory's Mine, and crossing to enter Copah from the southeast
+instead of from the northeast. I came out that way from Copah five days
+ago. It's perfectly feasible; straight-away, easy earth work for the
+greater part, and the only objection is that it adds about twelve
+running miles to the length of the extension. It's for you to say
+whether or not the added distance will be warranted by the lessened cost
+and the assurance of safety in operating. If we cut through that lower
+canyon cliff it will be only a question of time until we bury somebody,
+no matter how closely it is watched."
+
+Ford took time to consider the proposal. There were objections, and he
+named one of them.
+
+"The MacMorroghs have based their bid on the present survey: they will
+not want to let that piece of rock work drop out of sight."
+
+"They'll have to, if you say so. And you can afford to be pretty liberal
+with them on the substituted twelve miles."
+
+"I'll have to think about it over night," was Ford's final answer.
+"Arrange to give me an hour to-morrow morning and we'll go over the maps
+and your notes together."
+
+Frisbie slept soundly on the gained inch, hoping to make it the coveted
+ell in the morning. He knew the chief objection, which was that Ford,
+too, was a "short-line" engineer; a man who would lay down his railroad
+as the Czar of Russia did the St. Petersburg-Moscow line--by placing a
+ruler on the map and drawing a straight mark beside it between the two
+cities--if that were an American possibility. But he knew, too, that the
+safety clause would weigh heavily with Ford, and there was no minimizing
+the danger to future traffic if the canyon route should be retained.
+
+It turned out finally as the first assistant had hoped and believed it
+would. Ford spent a thoughtful hour at his office in the Guaranty
+Building before Frisbie came down--the little man being trail-weary
+enough to sleep late in the comfortable room at the Brown Palace. The
+slight change of route was hardly a matter to be carried up to the
+executive committee, and Ford's decision turned upon quite another
+pivot--the addition of twelve miles of distance. As against this, safety
+and economy won the day; and when Frisbie came in the talk was merely of
+ways and means.
+
+"Fix up the change with the MacMorroghs the best way you can," was
+Ford's concluding instruction to his lieutenant. "They will kick, of
+course; merely to be kicking at anything I suggest. But you can bring
+them to terms, I guess."
+
+"By my lonesome?" said Frisbie. "Aren't you going over to see the new
+route with your own eyes?"
+
+"No. I'm perfectly willing to trust your judgment, Dick. Besides, I've
+got other fish to fry. I'm going east to-night to have one more tussle
+with the steel mills. We must have quicker deliveries and more of them.
+When I get back, we'll organize the track-layers and begin to make us a
+railroad."
+
+"Good," said Frisbie, gathering up his maps and sketches of the detour
+country; and so, in the wording of a brief sentence or two it came to
+pass that Ford delivered himself bound and unarmed into the hands of his
+enemies.
+
+A little light was thrown upon this dark passage that night in the
+office of the general manager, after Ford's train had gone eastward, and
+Frisbie was on his way back to the MacMorrogh headquarters on the lower
+Pannikin. North was waiting when Eckstein came in, flushed as from a
+rapid walk.
+
+"It's all settled?" asked the general manager, with a slow lift of the
+eyebrow to betray his anxiety.
+
+"To the queen's taste, I should say," was the secretary's not too
+deferential reply. "Ford's out of the way, to be gone ten days or a
+fortnight, and Frisbie has gone back to dicker with MacMorrogh, and to
+survey the new route up Horse Creek. Ford doesn't know; I doubt if he
+will ever know until we spring the trap on him. The one thing I was most
+afraid of was that he would insist upon going over the new line himself.
+Then, of course, he would have found out--he couldn't help finding out."
+
+The general manager squared his huge shoulders against the back of the
+chair.
+
+"You think he would call it off if he knew?" he queried. "You give him
+credit for too much virtue, Eckstein. But I think we have him now. By
+the time he returns it will be too late for him to hedge. MacMorrogh
+will see to that."
+
+Eckstein nodded. "I made a point of that with Brian," he said. "The
+minute the word is given he is to throw a little army of graders upon
+the new roundabout. But Ford won't find out. He'll be too busy on this
+end of the line with the track-layers. I'm a little nervous about
+Merriam, though."
+
+"He's the man who talked Frisbie into championing the new route?"
+
+"Yes. He did it pretty skilfully: made Frisbie think he was finding it
+out himself, and never let the little man out of his sight while they
+were in Copah. But I am afraid Merriam himself knows too much."
+
+"Get him out of the country--before Ford gets back," was the crisp
+order. "If he isn't here when the gun goes off, he can't tell anybody
+how it was loaded."
+
+"An appointment--" Eckstein began.
+
+"That is what I mean," said the general manager, turning back to his
+desk. "We need a traffic agency up in the Oregon country. See
+Merriam--to-night. Find out if he'd like to have the general agency at,
+say, twenty-five hundred a year; and if he agrees, get out the circular
+appointing him."
+
+"He'll agree, fast enough," laughed the secretary. "But I'll nail
+him--to-night."
+
+Ford spent rather more than two weeks in his round-up of the eastern
+steel mills, and there was a terrific accumulation of correspondence
+awaiting him when he reached Denver. At the top of the pile was an
+official circular appointing one George Z. Merriam, a man whom Ford
+remembered, or seemed vaguely to remember, as one of the MacMorrogh
+bookkeepers, general agent of the P. S-W., with headquarters at Portland,
+Oregon. And at the bottom of the accumulation was a second official
+printing, bearing the approval of the president, this; and Ford's eyes
+gloomed angrily when he read it.
+
+     PACIFIC SOUTHWESTERN RAILWAY CO.
+
+     Office of the President.
+
+     NEW YORK, August 24.
+
+     To All Officials and Employees:
+
+     At a called meeting of the stock-holders of this company, held in
+     New York, August 23, Mr. John C. North was elected First
+     Vice-President and General Manager of all lines of this company,
+     operative and under construction. All officers and employees will
+     govern themselves accordingly.
+
+     By Order of the Executive Committee.
+
+     Approved:
+
+     SIDNEY J. COLBRITH, President.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+AN UNWILLING HOST
+
+
+Standing in the Pacific portal of Plug Pass, on the old snow-crust
+which, even in midsummer, never entirely disappears at altitude ten
+thousand feet, they could look away westward over a billowing sea of
+mountain and mesa and valley breaking in far-distant, crystalline space
+against the mighty rampart of the Wasatch range, two hundred and other
+miles nearer the sunset.
+
+It was an outlook both inspiring and chastening; with the scenic
+grandeurs to give the exalted uplift, and the still, gray-green face of
+the vast mountainous desert to shrink the beholder to microscopic
+littleness in the face of its stupendous heights and depths, its
+immeasurable bulks and interspaces. Miss Alicia said something like this
+to Ford, in broken exclamations, when she had taken her first quailing
+eye-plunge from the lofty view-point.
+
+"Yes; quite so," Ford acquiesced, in the unresponsive tone of one who
+says what he must, rather than what he would like to say. "It is all the
+things you have been saying, and more--when one has the time and the
+mind to be enthusiastic about it."
+
+Miss Adair stood up very straight, and her chin was a protest in
+Praxitelean harmonies. She knew very well how reluctantly her companion
+was doing the honors of the mountain vastnesses; how full of wrath he
+was because President Colbrith had seen fit to precipitate the Nadia and
+a private-car party into the midst of the strenuous building battle on
+the western extension. But she argued that this was no reason why he
+should be crustily impossible with her. Wherefore she said, merely to
+see him boil over:
+
+"I should think you would come up here often for this glorious view, Mr.
+Ford. You do, don't you?"
+
+"Come up here for the view? Oh, yes; I presume I have climbed up here a
+hundred times, first and last, and always for the sake of the view. I
+began it the first winter I spent in Saint's Rest, when the snow-shoeing
+was at its best. Really to appreciate the scenery, you should take three
+hours for the approach from the basin down yonder, dragging a pair of
+Canadian raquettes by the toe-straps."
+
+The young woman laughed inwardly at the broadsword slash of his sarcasm.
+It was so like the man; big and vigorous and energetic, and quite
+without regard for consequences or for the insignificance of the thing
+to be obliterated. But she would not spare him.
+
+"How enthusiastic you are!" she commented. "I don't believe I should be
+equal to 'a hundred times, first and last,' or to the snow-shoes. But I
+can admire such zeal in other people immensely."
+
+"Do you really think so small of a man's work in the world, Miss Adair?"
+he demanded, not very coherently. "I'm not saying that the scenery
+doesn't move me. It does; and the first time I stood here on this
+summit, I presume I felt just as you do now. But my comings and goings
+have been chiefly concerned with this"--kicking the rail of the new
+track which threaded the shallow valley of the pass. "I am trying to
+build a railroad; to build it quickly, and as well as I can. When I get
+it finished, I may have time to admire the scenery."
+
+It was a little appeal for sympathy, apparent enough in spite of its
+indirectness; but Miss Adair was still mindful of Ford's too evident
+willingness to leave her behind at the deserted grading-camp half-way
+down to Saint's Rest where the Nadia was temporarily side-tracked.
+
+"Another ideal gone," she lamented, in mock despair. "All those
+trampings and toilings up this magnificent mountain merely to prepare
+for the laying of some logs of wood in a row, with two strands of iron
+to fasten them together!"
+
+He smiled at her definition of his railroad, and the keen edge of his
+annoyance was a little blunted. He had been telling himself that she
+might be twenty-four, or possibly twenty-five; but evidently she was
+only a child, with a child's appreciation of a very considerable
+industrial triumph. Old engineers, one of them an assistant on his own
+staff, had shaken their heads and declared that the running of a
+standard gauge railroad over Plug Pass was a sheer impossibility. Yet he
+had done it.
+
+"I suspect I owe you an apology," he said, yielding a little to the love
+which was fighting with discouragement and righteous anger for the first
+place in his heart. "I'm afraid I have been taking you too seriously,
+all along."
+
+Her laugh was a delicious little ripple of exultation. She had succeeded
+in avenging herself.
+
+"I can forgive you now," she said, and the blue eyes were dancing. "But
+you must admit that you were the aggressor. I have _never_ been made so
+pointedly unwelcome in all my life. I believe you were going to refuse
+to let me walk up here with you if Uncle Sidney had not commanded you
+to."
+
+This time his smile was a grin, but it was not ill-natured.
+
+"I should, indeed," he confessed quite frankly. "To be brutally candid,
+I had a decided attack of the 'unwelcomes' when I received Mr.
+Colbrith's wire announcing his intention of bringing his picnic party
+out here into the midst of things. We have little time, and none of the
+civilized conveniences, for entertaining company."
+
+"I think we all understand that," she made haste to say. "Aunt Hetty
+tried to dissuade Uncle Sidney, but he was bent on showing us how modern
+railroad building is rushed at the 'front'--is that the right word?--and
+so here we are."
+
+A small frown gathered between Ford's eyes. He was far enough from
+suspecting that this was the outworking of Kenneth's "notion"; that Mr.
+Colbrith's annual inspection tour over the Pacific Southwestern had been
+extended to cover the new line at Kenneth's suggestion--a suggestion
+arising out of purely reformatory motives. Nor would it have helped
+matters much if he had known Kenneth's genuine distress when it
+transpired that the suggestion bade fair to result in precipitating a
+private car-load of pleasurers into the pandemonium of the
+grading-camps.
+
+But the pleasurers were as yet only upon the borders of the pandemonium,
+and Ford was torturing his ingenuity to devise some argument strong
+enough to turn back the threatened invasion. There were reasons enough
+why a party with women among its members should not be projected into
+the grading and track-laying field. It was no place for women, Ford was
+telling himself wrathfully; especially for the women of the president's
+own household.
+
+In the little interval of silence Miss Adair was focusing her
+field-glass and trying to trace the line of the descending grade into
+the headwater valley of the Pannikin. Ford did not mean to be ungracious
+to her--what lover ever means to be curt to the one woman in all the
+world? But it is not easy to be angry in nine parts and loving-kind in
+the tenth--anger being one of the inclusive emotions. Nevertheless, he
+made the effort, for her sake. However inconsiderate Mr. Colbrith was,
+she was blameless.
+
+"Let me show you," he said, taking the field-glass and adjusting it for
+her. "Now hold it steadily and pick up the line in the great loop....
+Have you found it?... Now follow it slowly until you come to the point
+where it turns into the valley, and you can trace it for miles by the
+cuts and fills."
+
+She followed his directions until the line of the extension became a
+vanishing thread in the distance, and then was content to let the glass
+sweep the vastnesses beyond. When she spoke it was of the topographic
+immensities.
+
+"I heard you telling brother at the dinner-table in Chicago that you
+were able to see more in this wilderness than you have ever been able to
+make any one else see. Can I see it with the glass?"
+
+"Hardly," he smiled. "I was trying to tell your brother of the
+magnificent possibilities of the country lying between this and that
+farthest mountain range; the country we are going to open up. It was a
+gospel I had been trying to preach to the directors, but none of them
+believed--not even your uncle."
+
+"I see nothing but vastness and cold gray grandeurs," she said, adding:
+"and the very bigness of it makes me feel like a mere atom, or a
+molecule--whichever is the smaller."
+
+"Yet it is a new empire in the rough," he rejoined, with a touch of the
+old enthusiasm, "waiting only for the coming of this"--putting his foot
+again upon the steel of the new railroad line. "What you are looking at
+has been called a part of the Great American Desert--the most forbidding
+part, in the stories of the early explorers. Notwithstanding, there will
+come a time when you can focus your glass here on this mountain and look
+out over what the promoters will then be advertising as a 'peopled
+paradise,' and these 'logs of wood in a row, with two strands of iron to
+fasten them together' will bring it to pass."
+
+There was a flash of the enthusiast's fire in the cool gray eyes to go
+with the words, and Miss Adair wondered at it. He had stood for her as
+an embodiment of things practical and prosaic; as one too keenly
+watchful and alert on the purely industrial side to be in any sense a
+dreamer of dreams. Some part of her thought slipped into speech.
+
+"No, I am not an enthusiast," he denied, in reply to her charge. "At
+bottom, I'm only an engineer, with an ambition to build railroads. But
+I should have learned no more than half of my trade if I couldn't tell
+where it would be profitable to build them."
+
+"Never mind: you seem to have convinced Uncle Sidney and the directors
+finally," she commented.
+
+"No; your uncle and the directors are not empire builders--meaning to
+be," he objected. "They are after the present visible dollar in a
+western outlet for the Pacific Southwestern. If we reach Green Butte
+before our competitors can broaden their narrow gauge to that point, we
+shall have a practicable line from Chicago to the Pacific coast."
+
+"I understand," she said. "But yours is the higher ideal--the true
+American ideal."
+
+"It's business," he asserted.
+
+"Well, isn't business the very heart and soul of the American ideal?"
+she laughed.
+
+This time he laughed with her, forgetting his troubles for the moment.
+
+"I guess it is, in the last analysis," he said. And then: "I'm sorry to
+keep you waiting so long, if you are anxious to get back to the Nadia.
+But I warned you beforehand. I must keep my appointment with Frisbie. Do
+you see anything of him?" This because she was again sweeping the
+western wilderness with the field-glass.
+
+"What am I to look for?"
+
+"The smoke of an engine."
+
+She focused the glass on the gorge at the foot of the pass. "I see it!"
+she cried. "A little black beetle of a thing just barely crawling. Now
+it is turning into the first curve of the great loop."
+
+"Then we shan't have very much longer to wait. Do you find the
+ten-thousand-foot breeze chilly? Turn up the collar of your coat and
+we'll walk a bit."
+
+It was his first appreciable concern for her comfort, and she gave him
+full credit. Coquetry was no part of Miss Alicia's equipment, but no
+woman likes to be utterly neglected on the care-taking side, or to be
+transformed ruthlessly into a man-companion whose well-being may be
+brusquely ignored. And this young athlete in brown duck shooting-coat
+and service leggings, who was patiently doing a sentry-go beside her up
+and down the newly-laid track at the summit of Plug Pass, was quite a
+different person from the abashed apologist who had paid for her dinner
+in the dining-car on the night of purse-snatchings.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE TRUTHFUL ALTITUDES
+
+
+A low, tremulous shudder was beginning to lift itself, like the distant
+growling of thunder, upon the tinnient air of the high summit. A moment
+later a heavy construction engine shot around the final curve in the
+westward climb, with Michael Gallagher hanging out of the cab window on
+the engineer's side.
+
+The two at the summit faced about to watch the approach. The big engine
+came lumbering and lurching dangerously over the unsurfaced track in a
+fierce spurt for the mountain-top, its stack vomiting fire, its
+cylinder-cocks hissing shrilly, and its exhaust ripping the spheral
+silences like the barking detonations of a machine-gun.
+
+Ford glanced aside at his companion; her expressive face was a study in
+delighted animation and he decided that he had again misjudged the
+president's niece. She was beating time softly with her gloved hands and
+singing the song of the locomotive:
+
+"'With a michnai--ghignai--shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah!
+Ein--zwei--drei--Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah!
+    She climb upon der shteeple,
+    Und she frighten all der people,
+Singin' michnai--ghignai--shtingal! Yah! Yah!'"
+
+she quoted; and Ford's heart went out to her in new and comradely
+outreachings.
+
+"You read _Naught-naught-seven_?" he said: "you are one woman in a
+thousand."
+
+"_Merci!_" she countered. "Small favors thankfully received. Brother
+thinks there is only one person writing, nowadays, and the name of that
+person is Kipling. I get a little of it by mere attrition."
+
+The brakes of the big engine were still gripping the wheels when a small
+man with wicked mustaches and goatee dropped from the gangway. His khaki
+suit was weather-faded to a dirty green, and he was grimy and perspiring
+and altogether unpresentable; but he pulled himself together and tried
+to look pleasant when he saw that his chief had a companion, and that
+the companion was a lady.
+
+"I'm sorry if I have kept you waiting," he began. "Gallagher was
+shifting steel for the track-layers when your wire found me, and the
+engine couldn't be spared,"--this, of course, to Ford. Then, with an
+apologetic side glance for the lady: "Riley's in hot water again--up to
+his chin."
+
+"What's the matter now?" gritted Ford; and Alicia marked the instant
+change to masterful command.
+
+"Same old score. The Italians are kicking again at the MacMorrogh
+Brothers' commissary--because they have to pay two prices and get chuck
+that a self-respecting dog wouldn't eat; and, besides, they say they
+are quarrying rock--which is true--and getting paid by the MacMorroghs
+for moving earth. They struck at noon to-day."
+
+The chief frowned gloomily, and the president's niece felt intuitively
+that her presence was a bar to free speech.
+
+"It's straight enough about the rotten commissary and the graft on the
+pay-rolls," said Ford wrathfully. "Is the trouble likely to spread to
+the camps farther down?"
+
+"I hope not; I don't think it will--without whisky to help it along,"
+said Frisbie, with another apologetic side glance for Miss Adair.
+
+"Yes; but the whisky isn't lacking--there's Pete Garcia and his stock of
+battle, murder and sudden death at Paint Rock, a short half-mile from
+Riley's," Ford broke in.
+
+Frisbie's smile, helped out by the grime and the coal dust, was
+triumphantly demoniacal.
+
+"Not now there isn't," he amended; adding: "Any fire-water at Paint
+Rock, I mean. When Riley told me what was doing, I made a bee line for
+Garcia's wickiup and notified him officially that he'd have to go out of
+business for the present."
+
+"Oh, you did?" said Ford. "Of course he was quite willing to oblige you?
+How much time did he give you to get out of pistol range?"
+
+[Illustration: "Miss Adair, you must let me introduce my friend, Mr.
+Richard Frisbie"]
+
+Frisbie actually blushed--in deference to the lady.
+
+"Why--er--it was the other way round. He double-quicked a little
+side-trip down the gulch while I knocked in the heads of his whisky
+barrels and wrecked his bar with a striking hammer I had brought along."
+
+For the first time in the interview the chief's frown melted and he
+laughed approvingly.
+
+"Miss Adair, you must let me introduce my friend and first assistant,
+Mr. Richard Frisbie. He is vastly more picturesque than anything else we
+have to show you at this end of the Pacific Southwestern. Dick--Miss
+Alicia Adair, President Colbrith's niece."
+
+Frisbie took off his hat, and Miss Alicia gave him her most gracious
+smile.
+
+"Please go on," she said. "I'm immensely interested. What became of Mr.
+Garcia afterward?"
+
+"I don't know that," said Frisbie ingenuously. "Only, I guess I shall
+find out when I go back. He is likely to be a little irritated, I'm
+afraid. But there are compensations, even in Pete: like most Mexicans,
+he can neither tell the truth nor shoot straight." Then again to Ford:
+"What is to be done about the Riley mix-up?"
+
+"Oh, the same old thing. Go down and tell the Italians that the company
+will stand between them and the MacMorroghs, and they shall have
+justice--provided always that every man of them is back on the job again
+to-morrow morning. Who is Riley's interpreter now?"
+
+"Lanciotto."
+
+"Well, look out for him: he is getting a side-cut from the MacMorroghs
+and is likely to translate you crooked, if it suits his purposes. Check
+him by having our man Luigi present when he does the talking act. Any
+word from Major Benson?"
+
+"He was at the tie-camp on Ute Creek, yesterday. Jack Benson and Brissac
+are lining the grade for the steel on M'Grath's section, and the bridge
+men are well up to the last crossing of Horse Creek."
+
+"That's encouraging. How about the grade work on the detour--your new
+line into Copah?"
+
+It was the assistant's turn to frown, but the brow-wrinkling was of
+puzzlement.
+
+"There's something a bit curious about that--you don't mind our talking
+shop like a pair of floor-walkers, do you, Miss Adair? You know we
+expected the MacMorroghs would kick on the change of route and the loss
+of the big rock-cut in the canyon. There wasn't a word of protest. If I
+hadn't known better, I should have said that old Brian MacMorrogh knew
+all about it in advance. All he said was: 'Sure, 'tis your railroad, and
+we'll be buildin' it anywheres you say, Misther Frisbie.' And the very
+next day he had a little army of men on that detour, throwing dirt to
+beat the band. It'll be ready for the steel by the time we can get to it
+with the track-layers."
+
+Ford nodded approvingly. "Speed is what we are paying for, and we're
+thankful to get it whenever, and wherever, we can. Is the bridge timber
+coming down all right now?"
+
+"Yes; and we are getting plenty of ties since the major put on his
+war-paint and went after the MacMorrogh subs in the tie-camps. It is the
+rock work that is holding us back."
+
+Ford nodded again. Then he tried a little shot in the dark.
+
+"The president's car is just below--at the basin switch. He wants to
+have it taken to the front, and I have been trying to dissuade him. Is
+the track safe for it?"
+
+Frisbie guessed what kind of answer was desired, and stretched the truth
+a little.
+
+"I should say not. It's something fierce, even for the construction
+trains."
+
+Miss Alicia's smile was seraphic.
+
+"You two gentlemen needn't tell fibs for the possible effect on me," she
+said, with charming frankness. "Nothing I could say would carry any
+weight with Uncle Sidney."
+
+"Stung!" said Frisbie, half to himself; and the two men laughed
+shamefacedly.
+
+"Will it disarrange things so very much if the Nadia is taken to the
+'front'?" asked Miss Adair.
+
+"Well, rather," said Frisbie bluntly. Then he tried to excuse himself
+and made a mess of it.
+
+"Just why?" she persisted. "Forget the conventions, Mr. Frisbie, and
+talk to me as you have been talking to Mr. Ford. Is there any good
+reason, apart from the inconvenience, why our little pleasure party
+shouldn't see your new railroad? I am appealing to you because Mr. Ford
+won't tell me the truth."
+
+Ford stood aloof and let Frisbie worry with it alone.
+
+"There are a dozen reasons, Miss Adair; the track is fearfully
+rough--really, you know, it isn't safe for a big car like the Nadia.
+There are only a few sidings, and what there are, are filled up with
+construction stuff and camp cars, and--"
+
+She was shaking her head and laughing at his strivings.
+
+"Never mind," she said; "you can't tell the truth, either, with Mr. Ford
+looking on. But I shall find it out."
+
+Frisbie looked horrified.
+
+"You--you certainly will, Miss Adair; if Mr. Colbrith insists upon
+having his car dragged over the range." Then, being quite willing to
+make his escape, he turned to his chief. "Is there anything else? If
+not, I'll be getting back to the Riley mix-up before the trouble has
+time to grow any bigger."
+
+Ford shook his head, and Frisbie lifted his hat to Miss Adair and
+turned to climb to his engine cab. But at the moment of brake-releasings
+Ford halted him.
+
+"One minute," he said; and turning to his charge: "I'll borrow Dick's
+engine and take you down to the Nadia's siding, if you'd rather ride
+than walk."
+
+"Oh, will you? That would be fine! But oughtn't Mr. Frisbie to get back
+to his work?"
+
+"Y-yes," Ford admitted. "Time is rather important, just now."
+
+"Then we'll walk," she said with great decision.
+
+"That's all, Dick," Ford called. "Keep an eye open for Garcia. He might
+make a fluke and shoot straight, for once in a way."
+
+They stood in silence on the wind-swept summit until the curving
+down-rush of the western grade had swallowed the retreating engine. Miss
+Alicia was the first to speak when the iron clamor was distance-drowned.
+
+"I like your Mr. Frisbie," she said reflectively. "Isn't he the kind of
+man who would have taken the message to the other Garcia?"
+
+"He is the kind of man who would stop a bullet for his friend, and think
+nothing of it--if the bullet should happen to leave him anything to
+think with," he returned warmly. And then he added, half absently: "He
+saved my life four years ago last summer."
+
+There was genuine human interest in her voice when she said gently:
+
+"Would you mind telling me about it?"
+
+"It was up in the Minnesota pineries, where we were building a branch
+railroad through the corner of an Indian reservation. A half-breed
+pot-hunter for the game companies had a right-of-way quarrel with the
+railroad people, and he pitched upon me as the proper person to kill. It
+was a knife rush in the moonlight; and Dick might have shot him, only he
+was too tender-hearted. So he got between us."
+
+"Well?" she prompted, when it became evident that Ford thought he had
+finished.
+
+"That was all; except that it was touch and go with poor Dick for the
+next six weeks, with no surgeon worthy of the name nearer than St.
+Paul."
+
+Miss Alicia was more deeply impressed by the little story than she cared
+to have her companion suspect. Her world was a world of the commonplace
+conventions, with New York as its starting point and homing place; and
+she thought she knew something of humankind. But it came to her suddenly
+that the men she knew best were not at all like these two.
+
+"Shall we go back now?" she asked; and they were half-way down to the
+siding and the private car before she spoke again. It took some little
+time to compass sufficient humility to make amends, and even then the
+admission came to no more than four words.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Ford."
+
+"What for?" he asked, knowing only that he was coming to love her more
+blindly with every added minute of their companionship.
+
+"For--for trying to be hateful." It was a humbler thing than any she had
+ever said to a man, but the raw sincerity of time and place and
+association was beginning to get into her blood.
+
+"If it comes to that, there were two of us," he rejoined, matching her
+frankness. "And, as you remarked a while back, I was certainly the
+aggressor. Shall we call it a truce for the present?"
+
+"If you will be generous enough."
+
+"Oh, I am generosity itself, under ordinary conditions; but just now
+I'll admit that I am fearfully and wonderfully inhospitable. I can't
+help wishing most fervently that something had happened to prevent your
+uncle's coming."
+
+"Is it uncle who is in the way?--or the pleasure party?"
+
+"Both."
+
+"We are negligible," she said, meaning the pleasurers.
+
+"No, you are not; and neither is your Uncle Sidney."
+
+"Is he still formidable to you?" she laughed.
+
+"He is, indeed. But, worse than that, he is likely to prove a very
+considerable disturbing element if I can't keep him from plunging in
+upon us."
+
+She let half of the remaining distance to the end of the steep grade go
+underfoot before she said: "I like to help people, sometimes; but I
+don't like to do it in the dark."
+
+He would have explained instantly to a man for the sake of gaining an
+ally. But he could not bring himself to the point of telling her the
+story of graft and misrule in which the MacMorroghs were the principals,
+and North--and her uncle, by implication--the backers.
+
+So he said: "It is rather a long story, and you would scarcely
+understand it. We have been having constant trouble with the
+MacMorroghs, the contractors, and there is a bad state of affairs in the
+grading camps. It has come to a point where I shall have to fight the
+MacMorroghs to some sort of a finish, and--well, to put it very baldly,
+I don't want to have to fight the MacMorroghs and the president in the
+same round."
+
+"Why should Uncle Sidney take the part of these men, if they are bad
+men, Mr. Ford?"
+
+"Because he has always distrusted my judgment, and because he is loyal
+to Mr. North, whom he has made my superior. Mr. North tells him that I
+am to blame."
+
+"But it must be a very dreadful condition of things, if what Mr. Frisbie
+said is all true."
+
+"Frisbie spoke of only one little incident. Trouble like this we're
+having to-day is constantly arising. No money-making graft is too petty
+or too immoral for the MacMorroghs to connive at. They rob and starve
+their laborers, and cheat the company with bad work. I've got to have a
+free hand in dealing with them, or--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, realizing that he was talking to her as he might
+have talked to a specialist in his own profession. Hence he was not
+disappointed when she said:
+
+"You go too fast for me. But I think I understand now why our coming is
+inopportune. And it's comforting to know that the reason is a business
+reason."
+
+He put shame to the wall and blurted out suddenly: "It is only one of
+the reasons, Miss Adair. The--the camps are no fit place for a party
+with women. You--you'll have to be blind and deaf if your uncle persists
+in taking you with him."
+
+It was said, and he was glad of it, though he was wiping the
+perspiration from his face when the thing was done. She was silent until
+they were standing at the steps of the side-tracked private car.
+
+"Thank you," she said simply. "Of course, I'll do what I can to keep
+Uncle Sidney from going--and taking us. What shall you say to him?"
+
+"I am going to tell him that our track isn't safe for the Nadia--which
+is true enough."
+
+"Very well. I'll tell Aunt Hetty and Mrs. Van Bruce--which may be more
+to the point. But don't be encouraged by that. I have reason to believe
+that Uncle Sidney will have his way in spite of any or all of us."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+A NIGHT OF ALARMS
+
+
+Ford put Miss Alicia up the steps of the Nadia and followed her into the
+vestibule, meaning to fight it out with Mr. Colbrith on the spot, and
+hoping he might have a private audience with the president for the doing
+of it.
+
+The hope was not denied. Penfield, who was acting as private secretary
+to Mr. Colbrith, _en route_, appeared in the passageway to say that Ford
+was wanted in the president's state-room.
+
+"Well, Mr. Ford, what are we waiting for?" was the querulous demand
+which served as Mr. Colbrith's greeting when Ford presented himself at
+the door of the private compartment.
+
+Ford's reply lacked the deferential note. He had reached a point at
+which his job was not worth as much as it had been.
+
+"I have just brought Miss Adair back from the top of the pass, where we
+met Mr. Frisbie, my chief of construction. I wished to ask him if he
+thought the track was safe for your car, and he says, most emphatically,
+that it is not. I can not take the responsibility of sending the Nadia
+to the end-of-track."
+
+The president's thin face was working irritably. "I haven't asked you to
+assume any responsibility, Mr. Ford. If the track is safe for your
+material trains, it is safe enough for my car. But I didn't send for you
+to argue the point. I desire to have the Nadia taken to the front. Be
+good enough to give the necessary orders."
+
+Ford tried again. In addition to the precarious track there were few or
+no unoccupied sidings, especially near the front. Moreover, there was no
+telegraph service which might suffice for the safe despatching of the
+special train. There might be entire sections over which the Nadia would
+have to be flagged by a man on foot, and--
+
+The president cut him off with almost childish impatience.
+
+"I don't know what your object is in putting so many stumbling-blocks in
+the way, Mr. Ford," he rasped. "A suspicious person might say that you
+have been doing something which you do not wish to have found out."
+
+Ford was a fair-skinned man, and the blood burned hotly in his face.
+But, as once before under the president's nagging, he found his
+self-control rising with the provocation.
+
+"My work is open to inspection or investigation, now or at any time,
+and I think we need not discuss that point," he said, when he could
+force himself to say it calmly. "We were speaking of the advisability of
+taking the Nadia and a pleasure party over a piece of raw construction
+line, and into an environment which, to put it mildly, could hardly be
+congenial to--to the ladies of the party. You know, or ought to know,
+the MacMorroghs: their camps are not exactly models of propriety, Mr.
+Colbrith."
+
+This was merely waving a red flag at an already exasperated bull. The
+president got upon his feet, and his shrill falsetto cut the air like a
+knife.
+
+"Mr. Ford, when I wish to be told what is or is not proper for me to do,
+I'll ask you for an opinion, sir. But this is quite beside the mark.
+Will you order this car out, or shall I?"
+
+Ford looked at his watch imperturbably. Now that the president was
+thoroughly angry, he could afford to be cool.
+
+"It is now five o'clock; and our end-of-track is fully one hundred and
+ten miles beyond the summit of the pass. Do I understand that you wish
+to take the added risk of a night run, Mr. Colbrith? If so, I'll give
+the order and we'll pull out."
+
+"I desire to go _now_!" was the irascible reply. "Is that sufficiently
+explicit?"
+
+"It is," said Ford; and he left the presence to go forward to the cab
+of the waiting engine.
+
+"You are to take the car over the mountain, Hector," he said briefly, to
+the beetle-browed giant in blue denim, when he had climbed to the
+foot-plate. "I'll pilot for you."
+
+"How far?" inquired the engineer.
+
+"Something like a hundred and ten miles."
+
+"Holy smoke! Over a construction track--in the night?"
+
+"It's the president's order--none of mine. Let's get a move."
+
+The big man got down from his box and made room for Ford. "I'll be
+pilin' 'em in the ditch somewhere, as sure as my name's Bill Hector," he
+said. "But we'll go, all the same, if he says so. I've pulled Mr.
+Colbrith before. Down with you, Jimmy Shovel, and set the switch for
+us."
+
+The fireman swung off and stood by the switch, and Hector backed his
+one-car train from the siding. When he had picked up the fireman and was
+ready to assault the mountain, Ford thrust a query in between.
+
+"Hold on a minute; how is the water?" he asked.
+
+Jimmy Shovel climbed over the coal to see, and reported less than half a
+tankful.
+
+"That settles it," said the chief to Hector. "You'll have to back down
+to Saint's Rest and fill up. You'll get no more this side of Pannikin
+Upper Canyon. We haven't had time to build tanks yet."
+
+Hector put his valve-motion in the reverse gear and began to drop the
+train down the grade on the air. A dozen wheel-turns brought a shrill
+shriek from the air-signal whistle. Mr. Colbrith evidently wished to
+know why his train was going in the wrong direction. Hector applied the
+brakes and stopped in obedience to the signal.
+
+"Do we send back?" he asked.
+
+"No," said Ford sourly. "Let him send forward."
+
+Penfield was the bearer of the president's question. Would it be
+necessary to discharge somebody in order to have his commands obeyed?
+
+Ford answered the petulant demand as one bears with a spoiled child.
+They were returning to Saint's Rest for water. Let the president be
+assured that his orders would be obeyed in due course.
+
+"He's a piker, the old man is," said the big engineer, once more giving
+the 1012 the needful inch of release to send it grinding down the hill.
+"I'd ruther pull freight thirty-six hours on end than run his car for a
+hundred miles."
+
+There was trouble getting at the water-tank in the Saint's Rest yard.
+Leckhard, acting as division engineer, telegraph superintendent,
+material forwarder and yardmaster, found it difficult at limes to bring
+order out of chaos in the forwarding yard. It was a full hour before
+the jumble of material trains could be shunted and switched and juggled
+to permit the 1012 to drop down to the water tank; and four times during
+the hour Penfield climbed dutifully over the coal to tell Ford and the
+engineer what the president thought of them.
+
+"Durn me! but you can take punishment like a man, Mr. Ford!" said
+Hector, on the heels of the fourth sending, sinking rank distinctions in
+his admiration for a cool fighter. "These here polite cussin's-out are
+what I can't stand. Reckon we'll get away from here before the old man
+throws a sure-enough fit?"
+
+"That's entirely with the yard crew," said Ford, calmly making himself
+comfortable on the fireman's box. "We'll go when we can get water; and
+we'll get water when the tank track is cleared. That's all there is to
+it." Whereupon he found his cigar case, passed it to Hector, lighted up,
+and waited patiently for another second-hand wigging from the Nadia.
+
+As it chanced the tank track was cleared a few minutes later; the 1012
+was backed down and supplied, and Ford instructed Leckhard to do what he
+could with the single, poorly manned construction wire toward giving the
+president's special a clear track.
+
+"That won't be much," said the hard-worked base-of-supplies man. "We've
+got our own operator at Ten Mile, and Brissac and Frisbie have each a
+set of instruments which they cut in on the line with wherever they
+happen to be. I don't know where Brissac is, but Frisbie is down about
+Riley's to-night, I think. After you pass him you'll have no help from
+the wires."
+
+"I'll have what I can get," asserted Ford. "Now tell me what we're
+likely to meet."
+
+Leckhard laughed. "Anything on top of earth, from Brissac or Jack Benson
+or Frisbie chasing somewhere on a light engine, to Gallagher or Folsom
+coming out with a string of empties. Oh, you're not likely to find much
+dead track anywhere after you get over the mountain."
+
+Ford swung up beside Hector, who had been listening. "You see what we're
+in for, Hector. Start your headlight dynamo and let's go," he said; and
+five minutes farther on, just as Penfield was about to make his fifth
+scramble over the coal in the tender, the 1012 took the upward road with
+a deafening whistle shriek as its farewell to Saint's Rest.
+
+It was pocket-dark by the time the switch-stand at the basin siding
+swung into the broad beam of the electric headlight. Ford got down from
+the fireman's box and crossed over to the engineer's side to pilot
+Hector.
+
+"How's your track from this on?" inquired the big engineman gruffly.
+
+"It is about as rough as it can be, and not ditch the steel trains.
+You'll have to hold her down or we'll have results."
+
+"What in the name o' thunder is the old man's notion of goin' to the
+front with a picnic party and makin' a night run of it, at that, d'ye
+reckon?"
+
+"The Lord only knows. Easy around this curve you're coming to; it isn't
+set up yet." The 1012 was a fast eight-wheeler from the main line, and
+though the grade was a rising four per cent, the big flyer was making
+light work of her one-car train.
+
+Ford sat gloomily watching the track ahead as the great engine stormed
+around the curves and up the grades. The struggle against odds was
+beginning to tell on him. The building of this new line, the opening of
+the new country, was the real end for which all the planning and
+scheming in the financial field had been only the necessary
+preliminaries. For himself he had craved nothing but the privilege of
+building the extension; of rejoicing in his own handiwork and in the new
+triumph of progress and civilization which it would bring to pass. But
+little by little the fine fire of workmanlike enthusiasm was burning
+itself out against the iron barriers of petty spite and malice thrown up
+at every turn by North and the Denver junta of obstructionists.
+
+He was at no loss to account for North's motive. It was no longer the
+contemptuous disregard of a general manager for one of his subordinates
+who had shown signs of outgrowing his job. It was a fight between
+rivals--equals--and Ford knew that it must go on until one or the other
+should be driven to the wall. Thus far, his antagonist had scored every
+point. The MacMorroghs had been helped into the saddle and held there.
+Mr. Colbrith had been won over; the authority given Ford by his
+appointment as assistant to the president had been annulled by making
+North the first vice-president with still higher authority. With a firm
+ally in the president, and a legion of others in the MacMorroghs' camps,
+North could discredit the best engineering corps that ever took the
+field; and he was doing it--successfully, as Ford had reason to know.
+
+More than once Ford had been on the point of leaving his plow in the
+furrow while he should go to New York for one more battle with the
+directory--a battle which should definitely abolish North and Mr.
+Colbrith--or himself. Again and again he had weighed the chances of
+winning such a battle. With Brewster for a leader it might be done. The
+time for the annual stock-holders' meeting was approaching, and an
+election which should put the burly copper magnate into the presidency
+would be an unmixed blessing, not only for a struggling young chief of
+construction, but for the Pacific Southwestern stock-holders, who were
+sure to pay in the end for the present policy of rule or ruin.
+
+Part of the time it seemed to Ford that it was clearly his duty to make
+this fight against the grafters in the Denver management. North deserved
+no consideration, and while Mr. Colbrith was honest enough, his blind
+prejudice and narrow mentality made him North's unwitting accessory.
+Three months earlier Ford would not have hesitated; but in the interval
+a woman had come between to obscure all the points of view. A fight to
+the death against the Colbrith administration meant the antagonizing of
+the Adairs--of Alicia, at least. True, she had spoken lightly of her
+uncle's peculiarities; but Ford made sure she would stand by him in the
+conflict, if only for kinship's sake.
+
+All this he was turning over in his mind for the hundredth time while
+the big 1012 hammered up the Plug Mountain grade under the guiding hand
+of the giant in blue denim. Ford, glooming out upon the lighted stretch
+ahead, was once more finding the crucial question answerless. Should he
+draw out of the losing battle with North and his fellow grafters, and
+thereby save his chance of winning Alicia Adair? Or should he sacrifice
+his love upon the altar of ambition, abolish Mr. Colbrith and the crew
+of buccaneers his mistaken policy was sheltering, and win the industrial
+success and a quieted conscience?
+
+His decision was reached by the time Hector was easing the throttle
+lever at the summit of Plug Pass. What must be done should be done
+quickly.
+
+"Right here is where you begin to run on your nerves," he said to the
+big engineer, as the heavy engine and car lunged over the summit of the
+pass and began to gather gravity momentum on the downward rush.
+
+Hector nodded, and twitched the handle of the air-brake cock at shorter
+intervals. Ford glanced back at the following car framed in the red glow
+from the opened fire-box door. It was surging and bounding alarmingly
+over the uneven track, not without threatenings of derailment. Ford was
+willing to give the president the full benefit of his unreasonable
+pertinacity; but there were others to be considered--and one above all
+the others.
+
+"Easy, man; easy!" he cautioned. "If you leave the steel on this
+goat-track there won't be anybody left to tell the story. It's a
+thousand feet sheer in some places along here. Suppose you let me take
+her to the bottom of the hill."
+
+The engineer stood aside with a good-tempered grin. He had seen the
+chief of construction walking the one young lady of the party to the top
+of Plug Pass and back, and it was not difficult to account for his
+anxiety.
+
+Throughout the ten long miles of the mountain descent Ford crouched on
+the driver's seat and put his mind into the business of getting down the
+slides and around the sagging curves without having a wreck. The 1012's
+brake equipment was modern, and the Nadia's gear was in perfect order.
+Now and then on a tangent the big engine would straighten herself for a
+race or a runaway, but always the steady hand on the air-cock brought
+her down just before the critical moment beyond which neither brakes nor
+the steadiest nerve could avail. Thrice in the long downward rush Ford
+checked the speed to a foot-pace. This was in the rock cuttings where
+the jagged faces of the cliffs thrust themselves out into the white cone
+of the headlight, scanting the narrow shelf of the right-of-way to a
+mere groove in the rock. He was afraid of the cuttings. One of the many
+tricks of the MacMorroghs was to keep barely within the contract limits
+on clearance widths, and once the Nadia, sagging mountainward on the
+roughly leveled track at the wrong moment, touched one of the
+out-hanging rocks in passing. Hector heard the touch, and so did Ford;
+but it was the engineman who made a grim jest upon it, saying: "If she
+does that more'n once or twice, there'll be a job for the car painters,
+don't you reckon, Mr. Ford? And for the carpenters."
+
+Just below the doubling bend in the great loop they came in sight of the
+first of the MacMorrogh camps. Since the night was frosty a huge bonfire
+was burning beside the track; and when Hector blew his whistle, some one
+flagged the train with a brand snatched from the fire. Ford stopped
+because he dared not do otherwise.
+
+"Well, what's wanted?" he snapped, when the train came to a stand, and
+the brand-swinger, backed by a dozen others, made as if he would climb
+to the cab of the 1012.
+
+"Some of us fellies want to go down to Ten Mile--the liquor's out," said
+the man, trying to get a fair sight of the strange engineman.
+
+"Get off!" said Ford; and Hector made the order effective by shoving the
+intruder from the step. That was easy; but before the train had measured
+twice its length, a pistol barked thrice and the glass in the cab window
+on Ford's side fell in splinters.
+
+"Holy smoke!" said Hector. "Is them the kind of plug-uglies you've got
+over here, Mr. Ford?"
+
+Ford nodded. His eyes were on the track again, and he was hoping
+fervently that the three shots had all been aimed at the engine. A mile
+farther on, Penfield came sliding over the coal to say that the
+president wanted to know what the shooting was about.
+
+Ford turned the 1012 over to Hector. The track hazards of the mountain
+grade were safely passed.
+
+"Did any of the shots hit the car?" he asked of Penfield.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, if you have to say anything before the ladies it might be
+advisable to make a joke of it. Signal torpedoes sound very much like
+pistol-shots, you know."
+
+Penfield nodded. "But to Mr. Colbrith?"
+
+"To Mr. Colbrith you may say that a gang of drunken MacMorrogh
+surfacers flagged us down, and when we wouldn't let them have the train,
+made a little gun play."
+
+"Heavens!" said the clerk, whose curiosity stopped short at the farthest
+confines of any battle-field. "Is that sort of thing likely to happen
+again, Mr. Ford?"
+
+"Your guess is as good as anybody's," said Ford curtly. "Better get back
+to the car as quickly as you can, before Mr. Colbrith whistles us down
+to find out what has become of you."
+
+Below the camp of the surfacers there were a few miles of better track,
+and Hector made fair time until the train circled the mountain shoulder
+at the lower end of the great loop. Beyond this the roughnesses began
+again, and there were more of the skimped rock cuttings. At Ten Mile,
+which was a relay station in the upper canyon for the halting of
+supplies and material for which there was no room at the ever-advancing
+"front," they stopped to try for track-clearings.
+
+As Leckhard had foretold, the operator could give them little help. Two
+hours earlier, a train of empties in two sections had left the
+end-of-track, coming eastward. Whether it was hung up at one of the
+intervening side-tracks, or was still coming, the operator could not
+say; and there were no means of finding out. Also, Mr. Frisbie, who had
+reached Riley's camp late in the afternoon, had left there after supper
+and was somewhere on the line with his light engine--probably on his
+way to the front, the operator thought.
+
+Hector removed his great weight from the telegraph counter and the
+woodwork creaked its relief. What he said was indicative of his frame of
+mind.
+
+"Humph!" he growled. "If we don't get tangled up with Mr. Frisbie's
+light engine, it's us for a head-ender with the string of empties. Isn't
+that about it, Mr. Ford?"
+
+"That's it, precisely."
+
+"Which means that Jimmy Shovel trots ahead of us for a hundred mile 'r
+so, carryin' a lantern like a blame' Dio-geenes huntin' for an honest
+man."
+
+"That is the size of it," said Ford; but just then the sounder on the
+table began to click and the operator held up his hand for silence.
+
+"Hold on a minute," he interrupted, "here's a piece of luck--it's Mr.
+Frisbie, cutting in with his field set from Camp Frierson. He is asking
+Saint's Rest about you."
+
+"Break in and tell him we're here," said Ford; and when it was done:
+"Ask him about that string of empties."
+
+The reply was apparently another piece of luck. Frisbie, going westward,
+had passed the first section of the freight train at Siding Number
+Twelve. It was hung up with a broken draw-head on the engine, and was
+safe to stay there, Frisbie thought, until somebody came along with a
+repair kit, which, it might be assumed, would not be before morning.
+
+At this point Ford went around the counter and took the wire for a
+little personal talk with the first assistant. It ignored the stalled
+freight train, and Ford's rapid clickings spelled out an order. Frisbie
+was to drop everything else, and constitute himself the president's
+_avant-courrier_ to the end-of-track camp, which, at the moment,
+happened to be the MacMorroghs' headquarters at the mouth of Horse
+Creek. All liquor-selling was to be stopped, the saloons closed, and the
+strictest order maintained during the president's stay--this if it
+should take the entire field force of the engineering department to
+bring it to pass.
+
+"Don't," clicked Frisbie, from the other end of the long wire. And then
+at the risk of giving it away to every operator on the line: "You're
+doing yourself up. Let the president see for himself what he has let us
+in for."
+
+Ford's reply was short and to the point. "The order stands. There are
+others besides the president to be considered. Good night."
+
+"Well, we go to this here Siding Number Twelve, do we?" said Hector,
+when they were clambering once more to the foot-plate of the 1012.
+
+"Safely, I think," said the chief, adding: "You can't run fast enough
+over this track to get into trouble anyway."
+
+That was the way it appealed to Hector for the succeeding twenty miles.
+When the track was not too rough to forbid speed, the cuts were too
+numerous, and the big flyer had to be bitted and held down until some of
+Hector's impatience began to get into the machinery. This shall account
+as it may for what happened. A mile or two below Riley's, where the
+lights were all out and the turmoil of the day of strikes had apparently
+subsided, the canyon opened out into a winding valley, and when Ford
+called across to Hector: "There are no rock cuts on this section, and we
+are partly surfaced. You can let her out a little for a few miles," the
+engineer took the permission for all it was worth and sent the
+eight-wheeler flying down the newly-ballasted stretch.
+
+Two long curves were rounded in safety, and the special was approaching
+a third, when to Ford, track-watching even more anxiously than Hector, a
+dull red spot appeared in the exact center of the white field of the
+electric. For a moment it puzzled him, but the explanation came with a
+vigorous shock an instant later. It was the oil-lamp headlight of the
+freight!
+
+Hector was huge enough to be slow, if bigness were a bar to celerity.
+But no drill-master of the foot-plates could have brought the flying
+train to a stand with the loss of fewer seconds. Happily, too, the
+1012's electric headlight served as a danger signal seen from afar by
+the engineer of the freight. So it chanced that the two great engines
+merely put their noses together; and by the time Penfield came
+scrambling over the coal with the inevitable query from the president,
+the jolting stop was a thing of the past, and the train was in motion
+again, following the freight, which was backing, at Ford's order, to the
+nearest siding.
+
+"No more hurry for us to-night, Hector," was the boss's dictum, when the
+obstructing string of empties was safely passed. "We take it slow and
+sure from this on, with your fireman to flag us around the curves and
+through the cuts. This was only the first section of the train that left
+Horse Creek at eight o'clock--the section that was broken down at Siding
+Twelve. We're due to pick up the second section anywhere between here
+and the end-of-track."
+
+"Slow it is," said Hector. "I'm no hog, if I do take a little swill now
+and then: I know when I've got enough."
+
+This was at ten-forty, while the night was still young. And for seven
+other hours the one-car special inched its way cautiously toward the
+goal, with Ford scanning every mile of the hazardous way as it swung
+into the beam of the headlight arc, with Hector's left hand stiffening
+on the brake-cock, and with a weary fireman dropping from his gangway at
+every curve approach to flag for safety.
+
+It was not until three o'clock in the morning that they met and passed
+the second section of empties, and the dawn of a new day was fully come
+when the shacks and storehouses of the MacMorroghs' headquarters at the
+mouth of Horse Creek came in sight. Ford got down from his seat on the
+fireman's side and stretched himself as one relaxing after a mighty
+strain.
+
+"That's the end of it for a little while, Billy," he said, addressing
+the big engineer as a man and a brother. "Crawl in on the first siding
+you come to, and go hunt you a bed. I don't think the president will be
+perniciously active to-day--after such a night as we've had."
+
+But in this, as in other instances when Mr. Colbrith's activities had
+figured as a factor, he reckoned without his host.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE MORNING AFTER
+
+
+Ford was awake for all day, and was colloguing with Frisbie about the
+carrying out of the sumptuary order for the forcible camp-cleaning, when
+Penfield came with the request that the chief report at once to the
+president in the Nadia.
+
+"Tell him I'll be there presently," was the answer; and when Penfield
+went to do it, the interrupted colloquy was resumed.
+
+"You say the camp has already gone dry?" said Ford incredulously.
+
+Frisbie nodded. "Everybody's on the water-wagon; here and at all the
+camps above and below--bars not only closed, but apparently wiped out of
+existence. I went for old Brian last night as soon as I reached here. He
+looked at me reproachfully, and said: 'It's you to be always naggin' me
+about thim whisky dives that I'm forever thryin' to run out, and can't.
+Go and thry it yourself, Misther Frisbie, an' I'll stand at your back
+till you're black in the face.' But when I went through the camp,
+everything was quiet and orderly, and Jack Batters' bar was not only
+closed--it was gone; vanished without leaving so much as a bad smell
+behind it."
+
+"And then?" said Ford.
+
+"Then I got out my horse and rode up the creek and through some of the
+camps on the Copah detour. The star-eyed goddess of reform had evidently
+landed on that coast, too. Donahue's Hungarians were singing war-songs
+around their camp-fire, as usual, and Contadini's Tuscans were out in
+full force, guying the night-shift track-layers. But there was no bad
+blood, and no whisky to breed it. You're done up again, Stuart."
+
+"I don't see that," said Ford, who, besides being short on sleep, was
+rejoicing in the thought that Alicia and the other women of the
+private-car party would not have to be blind and deaf.
+
+"Don't you? You've been protesting to beat the band about the
+lawlessness and dissipation of the MacMorrogh camps. Accordingly, Mr.
+Colbrith comes over here to see for himself: and what will he see?
+Decency on a monument smiling reproachfully at her unprincipled
+traducer. MacMorrogh will rub it into you good and hard. Can't you feel
+the Sunday-school atmosphere right here in the headquarters this
+morning? Look down yonder at the Nadia--wouldn't that soothe you, now?"
+
+Ford looked and the scowl which was coming to be a habit transformed
+itself into a cynical smile. A hundred or more of the MacMorrogh
+laborers, hats off and standing at respectful attention, were clustered
+about the rear platform of the private car, and Mr. Colbrith was
+addressing them; giving them the presidential benediction, as Frisbie
+put it irreverently.
+
+"Don't you see how you are going to be hoisted with your own
+ammunition?" the little man went on spitefully. "What becomes of all
+your complaints of drunkenness and crime, when Mr. Colbrith can see with
+his own eyes what truly good people the MacMorroghs are? And what
+conclusion will he arrive at? There's only one, and it's a long-armed
+one so far as your reputation is concerned: you are so desperately bent
+on having your own way that you haven't scrupled to tell lies about
+these angelic contractors."
+
+"Let up, Dick," said Ford gruffly. "I've got about all I can carry till
+I catch up on sleep a little. But you're right: this is the place where
+the fireworks come in. I think I'll go and light the fuses while I'm
+keyed up to it."
+
+The crowd of laborers had dispersed by the time Ford reached the Nadia,
+and the president, benign from the reactionary effect of his own
+early-morning eloquence, was waiting for him.
+
+"Ah; we did reach the front safely, after all, didn't we, Mr. Ford?" was
+Mr. Colbrith's mildly sarcastic greeting. And then: "Come aboard, sir;
+we are waiting breakfast for you."
+
+Ford would have declined promptly, if the invitation had been anything
+less than a command. He had met none of the members of the private-car
+party save Miss Alicia, and he did not want to meet them, having the
+true captain-of-industry's horror of mixing business with the social
+diversions. But with one example of the president's obstinacy fresh in
+mind, he yielded and climbed obediently to the railed platform. Whatever
+happened, he should see Alicia again, a privilege never to be too
+lightly esteemed, whatever it cost.
+
+The social ordeal was not so formidable. The private-car party was made
+up of the president and his sister-in-law, the president's family
+physician, Doctor Van Bruce, the doctor's wife, his sister, a maiden
+lady of no uncertain age, and Alicia. These, with Penfield and Ford,
+made the eight at table in the open compartment in the Nadia; and Ford,
+in the seating, was lucky enough to find his place between Miss Van
+Bruce, who was hard of hearing, and Miss Alicia, who was not. Luckily
+again, Mr. Colbrith omitted all talk of business, drawing his end of the
+table into a discussion of the effects of the dry altitudes in advanced
+stages of tuberculosis.
+
+"What a dreadful night you must have had, Mr. Ford," said Alicia, when
+the tuberculotic subject was well launched at the other end of the
+table. "Were you on the engine all the time?"
+
+"Most of the time," he confessed. "But that was nothing. It wasn't my
+first night in the cab, as it won't be the last, by many, I hope."
+
+"Why? Do you like it?"
+
+"Not particularly. But I hope to live a while longer; and while I live I
+shall doubtless have to ride with the enginemen now and then."
+
+"Was it very bad--last night?" she asked.
+
+"I am afraid you know it was. Could you sleep at all?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I slept very well--after that terrible shaking up we had just
+before bedtime. What was happening then?"
+
+"Nothing much. We were about to try the old experiment of passing two
+trains on a single track."
+
+"Mercy!" she exclaimed.
+
+It was safely retrospective now, and Ford could smile at her belated
+shock.
+
+"Were the others alarmed?" he asked.
+
+"Mrs. Van Bruce and Aunt Hetty were. But Uncle Sidney fairly coruscated.
+He said that an engineer who would make such a stop as that ought to be
+discharged."
+
+"Hector was willing to quit," laughed Ford. "He grumbled for a full hour
+afterward about the wrenching he had given the 1012. You see he might
+have taken about six feet more for the stop, if he'd only known it."
+
+Miss Alicia said "Mercy!" again. "Were we as near as that to a
+collision?" she asked, in a hushed whisper.
+
+"We were, indeed. The freight was supposed to be on a siding--broken
+down. The crew tinkered things up some way, and the train proceeded.
+Luckily, the freight engineer saw our electric headlight farther than we
+could see his oil lamp, and the track happened to be measurably
+straight."
+
+Miss Adair was silent for a little time, waiting for the lapsed
+tuberculotic discussion to revive. When it was once more in full swing,
+she asked quickly:
+
+"What is the programme for to-day? Must we all stay in the car as you
+intimated yesterday?"
+
+Ford glanced across the table to make sure that Penfield was not
+eavesdropping.
+
+"It will not be necessary. Your coming--or the president's--has reformed
+things wonderfully. Frisbie says--but never mind what he says: the
+miracle has been wrought."
+
+He said it with such an evident air of dejection that she wondered. And
+with Miss Alicia Adair the step from wonderment to investigation was
+always short.
+
+"You say it as if you were sorry," she said. "Are you?"
+
+"Oh, no; I'm glad--for your sake. But I wonder if you could understand
+if I say that it will make it a thousand times harder for me?"
+
+"I can understand when I'm told," she retorted.
+
+The table-for-eight was no place for confidences; and Ford knew
+Penfield's weakness for soaking up information. Yet he took the risk.
+
+"You remember what I hinted at, yesterday," he said in low tones; "about
+the rough-house we have been having in the camps. It hasn't stopped
+short of murder. I objected to the MacMorroghs before the contract was
+given to them; and since, I have fought the lawlessness as I could. Now
+your uncle comes over here and doesn't find any lawlessness. What is the
+inference?"
+
+"That you have been--" she took him up quickly, and there was swift
+indignation in the blue eyes.
+
+"--lying to gain a personal end," he finished for her.
+
+Penfield had been apparently listening avidly to the president's praise
+of the dry altitudes as a sure cure for consumption, but now he had his
+face in his plate. Ford devoted himself for the moment to the deaf Miss
+Van Bruce, and when he turned back to Alicia he was telegraphing with
+his eyes for discretion. She understood, and the low-toned tete-a-tete
+was not resumed. Later, when they had a moment together in the
+dispersion from the breakfast-table, he tried to apologize for what he
+was pleased to call his "playing of the baby act." But she reassured him
+in a low-spoken word.
+
+"Brother told me--I know more than you give me credit for, Mr. Ford.
+Mr. North doesn't like you--he would be glad if you would resign. _You
+must not resign!_"
+
+The others, personally-conducted by Mr. Colbrith, were crowding to the
+rear platform for an after-breakfast view of the headquarters camp. Ford
+and Alicia followed, but without haste.
+
+"You have chanced upon the word, Miss Adair," Ford was saying. "I
+decided last night that I should resign."
+
+"No," she objected.
+
+"Yes; I must. Sometime I may tell you why."
+
+"I say you must not. That was the last word in brother's letter; and he
+wished me to repeat it to you," she insisted.
+
+"Where is your brother?" he asked.
+
+"He was in London when he wrote."
+
+"He has thrown up his hand." Ford was pessimistic again.
+
+Miss Adair looked about her despairingly for some means of prolonging
+the whispered confidence. Penfield, deferentially in the rear of the
+platform group, was never safely out of earshot.
+
+"I want to see the engine that so nearly plunged us into a collision
+last night," she said aloud; and Penfield's visible ear betrayed the
+listening mind.
+
+Ford took his cue promptly. "We can go out the other way," he said; and
+the secretary _pro tempore_ had no excuse for following.
+
+They found the cab of the 1012 deserted, with the steam in the huge
+boiler singing softly at the behest of the banked fire. Miss Adair lost
+her curiosity as soon as Ford had lifted her to the foot-plate.
+
+"Now you are to tell me all about it--quickly," she commanded. "Uncle
+Sidney will be calling for you as soon as he misses you. Why are you so
+foolish as to talk about resigning? Don't you see what they will say
+then?--that you were afraid?"
+
+Ford was leaning against the centered reversing-lever, and his face was
+gloomy again.
+
+"Possibly I am afraid," he suggested.
+
+"You should be more afraid of dishonor than of--of the other things. Do
+you suppose Mr. North will be content with your resignation now?"
+
+Ford looked up quickly. Here was a new revelation--an unsuspected facet
+of the precious gem. He could hardly believe that this steady-voiced,
+far-seeing young woman was the insouciant, school-girlish--though none
+the less lovable--young person with whom he had tramped to the
+wind-swept summit of Plug Pass in the golden heart of the yesterday.
+
+"You mean--?" he began.
+
+"I mean that you will be discredited; disgraced if possible. Are you
+sure you haven't been doing anything over here that you wouldn't want
+Uncle Sidney to find out?"
+
+"Not consciously, you may be sure," he asserted unhesitatingly.
+
+"Think; think hard," she urged. "Is there nothing at all?"
+
+He could not help smiling lovingly at her scarce-concealed
+anxiety--though it was merely the anxiety of a noble soul unwilling to
+stand by and see injustice done.
+
+"My methods never get very far underground," he averred. "Not far enough
+for my own safety, Frisbie says. If I had been keeping a diary, I think
+I should be quite willing to let Mr. Colbrith read it--or print it, if
+he cared to."
+
+"And yet there _is_ something," she asserted, and the straight brows
+went together in a little frown of perplexity. "You don't ask me how I
+know: I'm going to tell you, Mr. Ford--though it's rather shameful.
+Three days ago, while we were in Denver, Mr. North came down to the car
+to see Uncle Sidney."
+
+"Yes?" he encouraged.
+
+"They were closeted in Uncle Sidney's state-room for a long time," she
+went on. "I--I was walking with Miss Van Bruce, up and down on the
+station platform beside the Nadia, Uncle Sidney had told me not to go
+very far away because we were likely to start at any moment. The--the
+car windows were open--"
+
+Her embarrassment was growing painfully apparent, and Ford came to the
+rescue.
+
+"You were not even constructively to blame," he hastened to say. "They
+must surely have seen you passing and repassing, and if they wished for
+privacy they might have closed the windows."
+
+"I didn't hear much: only a word or two, now and then. They were talking
+about you and brother; and--" She stopped short and laid her hand on the
+throttle-lever of the big engine: "What did you say this was for?" she
+asked ingenuously.
+
+Ford's up-glance of surprise was answered by a glimpse of Penfield
+sauntering past on the other side of the track. She could not have seen,
+but she had doubtless heard his footsteps on the gravel.
+
+"It's the throttle," said Ford, answering her question. And then:
+"Please go on: he is out of hearing."
+
+"They were speaking of you and brother; and--and of _me_. I can't repeat
+a single sentence entire, but I know Mr. North was accusing you in some
+way, and apparently implicating me. Perhaps I listened in self-defense.
+Do you think I did, Mr. Ford?"
+
+"You certainly had a good right to," said Ford, who would have sworn in
+her behalf that the morally black was spotlessly white. "But how could
+you be implicated?"
+
+"That was what puzzled me then--and it is puzzling me still. They
+said--or rather Mr. North said--that you--that you had _bought_ me!"
+
+Ford did not say that he would like to buy, beg, borrow or steal any
+kind of right to call her his own, but if his lips did not form the
+words they were lying at the bottom of the steady gray eyes for her to
+take or leave as she chose.
+
+"I am sure you couldn't have heard that part of it quite straight," he
+said, almost regretfully.
+
+"But I did, because it was repeated. Mr. North insisted that you had
+bought me; and I didn't like the way in which he said it, either. He
+called me 'the little Alicia'."
+
+"What!" said Ford; and then a flood of light burst in upon at least one
+of the dark places. "It's only a mine," he said sheepishly. "And I did
+buy it, or half of it."
+
+She was regarding him accusingly now.
+
+"Did you--did you name it?" she asked, and there was the merest breath
+of frost in the air.
+
+He was glad to be able to tell the truth without flinching.
+
+"No; it is one of the earliest of the Copah prospects, and I suppose the
+discoverer named it. I am willing to defend his choice, though. He
+couldn't have found a prettier name."
+
+She went back to the matter in hand with womanly swiftness. "But the
+mine: you had a right to buy it, didn't you?"
+
+"I should suppose so. I paid for it with my own money, anyway."
+
+"Then why should Mr. North use it as an argument against you in speaking
+to Uncle Sidney? He did that--I am sure he did that."
+
+"Now the water has grown too deep for me," said Ford. "Why, North,
+himself, is interested in Copah, openly. He owns half a dozen claims."
+
+"Near yours?" she queried.
+
+Ford stopped to consider. "To tell the truth, I don't know where mine
+is," he confessed. "I bought it as the school-boys trade
+pocket-knives--sight unseen. You wouldn't believe it of a grown man,
+would you?"
+
+"What made you buy it at all?"
+
+Again he told the simple truth--and tried not to flinch.
+
+"You won't mind if I say that the name attracted me? I thought a mine,
+or anything, that bore your name, ought to be good and--and desirable.
+And it is a good mine; or it will be, by and by. Some morning I shall
+wake up and find myself rich. At least that is what my partner, Grigsby,
+assures me; and I believe him when I happen to remember it."
+
+She neither approved nor disapproved. When she spoke, it was of the
+present necessity. "We must go back to the others now," she said. "Or
+at least I must. Do you know what is to be done to-day?"
+
+Ford spread his hands.
+
+"Your uncle will set the pace. I wouldn't venture a guess, after last
+night."
+
+He was handing her down from the engine step and she went back in a word
+to the former contention.
+
+"You haven't promised me yet that you will not resign under fire--you
+are under fire, you know."
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Brother thinks you are."
+
+Once more he took the pessimistic view.
+
+"Your brother isn't losing any sleep over the Pacific Southwestern
+situation. You said he was in England, didn't you?"
+
+"I said he was in London when he wrote."
+
+"London is a long way off: and what I do must be done to-day or
+to-morrow. Mr. North will force the fighting, now that your uncle is on
+the ground, and your brother safely on the opposite side of the earth.
+And I can't afford to fight this time, Miss Alicia."
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+They were walking slowly back toward the Nadia when he said: "Because a
+victory would cost me more than I am willing to pay. There is no longer
+room in this service for Mr. North and me. If we come to blows one of us
+will have to go."
+
+"I can understand that," she said quietly.
+
+"And to obliterate Mr. North, I shall be obliged to efface--your uncle."
+
+She caught her breath.
+
+"Mr. Ford, you have intimated that Mr. North isn't an honest man. Do you
+ask me to believe that Uncle Sidney is his accomplice?"
+
+"He is not, knowingly. But he will stand or fall with the man he has
+made. I should have to ride him down before I could get at North."
+
+Her lip curled and the straight-browed little frown came again. "There
+is no such thing as mercy in business, is there, Mr. Ford? My uncle is
+an old man and his presidency means more to him--"
+
+"I understand that perfectly," said Ford soberly. "That is why I prefer
+to step down and out and let some other man have the glory of finishing
+the extension."
+
+She looked up quickly.
+
+"Would you do that for Uncle Sidney? He hasn't been very lenient with
+you, has he?"
+
+Ford ignored the query.
+
+"He is your uncle, Miss Alicia; and I'd do it for your sake or not at
+all."
+
+They had reached the steps of the private car, and Frisbie was waiting
+with evident impatience for a word with Ford. Miss Adair's eyes signaled
+emotion, and Ford thought it was resentment. But her parting word was
+not resentful; it was merely a repetition.
+
+"Go to Mr. Frisbie," she said from the car step; "he is waiting for
+you." And then: "Remember; whatever happens, _you must not resign_--not
+even if Uncle Sidney asks you to."
+
+Frisbie's information, given after Miss Adair had gone in, was rather
+mystifying. Young Benson, who was just in from the grade work beyond
+Copah, brought word of a party of strange engineers running lines on the
+opposite side of the river from the rejected S. L & W. short-cut through
+the canyon of shale slides. Questioned by Benson, they had told what
+Frisbie believed to be a fairy tale. The chief of the party claimed to
+be the newly-elected county surveyor from Copah, running the lines for
+some mining property recently filed for entry. Benson had not been over
+curious; but he was observant enough to note that the tale was a misfit
+in three important particulars. He saw no locating stakes, such as a
+prospector always sets up conspicuously to mark his claim; and there
+were no signs of the precious metal, and no holes to indicate an attempt
+to find it.
+
+"What's your guess, Dick?" said Ford tersely.
+
+The assistant shook his head.
+
+"I haven't any coming to me. But I don't like mysteries."
+
+"Where was this party?"
+
+"About a mile and a half below here. It was going out toward Copah when
+Jack met it--its work, whatever it was, all done, apparently."
+
+It was one of Frisbie's gifts to be suspicious; but Ford was lacking on
+that side.
+
+"It's barely possible that the man was telling the truth, in spite of
+Benson's failure to find any prospect holes," he remarked. "We'll let it
+go at that until we know something different. It couldn't be a
+Transcontinental party, this far from home, and we haven't anybody else
+to fear."
+
+Frisbie dropped the subject as one of the abstractions and took up the
+concrete.
+
+"What are the orders for to-day?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. I'm waiting for Mr. Colbrith to say."
+
+"There are two buckboard teams here, in the MacMorrogh stables--came
+over from Copah last night. What are they for?"
+
+"I don't know. Another of the president's little surprises, I suppose.
+We'll know when he sends for me."
+
+The expected summons came at that precise moment, transmitted by
+Penfield. Mr. Colbrith would like to see Mr. Ford in his private
+state-room in the Nadia. The secretary had a sheaf of telegrams in his
+hand, and wished to be directed to the wire office. Frisbie took him in
+charge, and Ford went to obey the summons.
+
+The president was sitting very erect in his swing chair when the young
+engineer let himself into the box-like compartment, and his voice was at
+its thinnest when he said: "Be seated, Mr. Ford."
+
+Ford sat down on the divan-couch, and the president plunged at once into
+business.
+
+"Some time ago, you advised me, as chairman of the executive committee,
+that you had decided upon a change of route, Mr. Ford," he began
+raspingly. "What were your reasons for making the change?"
+
+"I stated them in my letter of advice," said Ford; "economy in
+construction and greater safety in operating, as against a slight
+increase in the length of the line."
+
+"Twelve miles, I believe you said: that is a very considerable increase,
+I should say. The great eastern companies are spending millions of
+dollars, Mr. Ford, to shorten their lines by half-mile cut-offs."
+
+Ford had his reply ready.
+
+"The conditions are entirely different. It will be many years before a
+fast through service is either practicable or profitable over the
+extension; and when it comes to that, we shall still have the short line
+from Denver to Green Butte by forty-two miles. But I explained all this
+at the time, Mr. Colbrith, and I understood that I had the executive
+committee's approval of the changed route."
+
+"Qualifiedly, Mr. Ford; only qualifiedly. Yet you have gone ahead in
+your usual impetuous way, abandoning the short line through the canyon
+and building the detour. Your motive for haste must have been a very
+strong one--very strong."
+
+"It was. I am not here to kill time."
+
+"So it appears. But I am here, Mr. Ford, to consider carefully, and to
+investigate. We shall go first over this route you have abandoned. I
+wish to see for myself the difficulties you have so painstakingly
+described."
+
+Ford shrugged.
+
+"I'm quite at your service, of course. But you will find it a hard trip.
+Indeed, if we drive, we shall have to cross the river and take the other
+side. The canyon on this side is impassable in places for a man on
+foot."
+
+"I provided for that," said the president, letting his ferrety eyes rest
+for a moment upon the reluctant one. "You will find two buckboards with
+their drivers at the MacMorrogh headquarters. Be good enough to order
+them around, and we'll start at once. No; no protests, Mr. Ford. My
+responsibilities are not to be shirked. Penfield will drive with me, and
+you may take Mr. Frisbie with you, if you see fit. I understand he is
+implicated with you in this matter."
+
+Ford bridled angrily at the word.
+
+"There is no implication about it, Mr. Colbrith. You continually refer
+to it as if it were a crime."
+
+"Ah! the word is yours, Mr. Ford. We shall see--we shall see. That is
+all, for the present."
+
+Ford was raging when he found Frisbie and gave the order for the
+vehicles.
+
+"He turned me out of his office state-room as if I had been a messenger
+boy or tramp! Get those teams out, Dick, and give me a chance to cool
+down. If my job is to last through this day--"
+
+Frisbie laughed. "Go and dip your head in the Pannikin while you wait.
+Or, better still, chew on this. It's a cipher message that Durgin has
+just been sending for Penfield to Vice-President North. Wouldn't that
+make you weep and howl?"
+
+Ford was still puzzling over the meaningless code words when he took his
+seat in the second of the two buckboards with Frisbie. The first
+assistant waited until the horses had splashed through the shallows of
+the river crossing; waited further until the president's vehicle had
+gained a little start. Then he said: "Is it possible that you had
+Penfield for a spy on you as long as you did without working out his
+cipher code? Good Lord! I got that down before I did anything else--last
+spring when you left me to run the Plug Mountain. Here's what he says to
+North"--taking the code message and translating: "Ford suspects
+something. Don't know how much. He and Miss Adair are putting their
+heads together. She has authority of some kind from her brother.
+President goes with Ford to examine abandoned route, as arranged. Will
+wire result later.'"
+
+"'As arranged,'" was Ford's wrathful comment.
+
+"Apparently, everything is arranged for us. Some day, Dick, I'll lose my
+temper, tie Penfield in a hard knot and throw him into the river! It's
+like a chapter out of Lucretia Borgia!"
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE RELUCTANT WHEELS
+
+
+It was possibly an hour after Penfield's cipher message reached the
+Southwestern Pacific headquarters in the Colorado capital, when a
+fair-haired young man in London-cut clothes, and with a tourist's quota
+of hand-luggage, crossed the Denver Union Station platform from the
+Pullman of a belated Chicago train.
+
+Ascertaining from a gateman that the Plug Mountain day train had long
+since gone on its way up the canyon, the young man left his many
+belongings at the check-stand and had himself driven up-town to the
+Guaranty Building. It was Eckstein who took his card in Mr. North's
+outer office. The private secretary was dictating to a stenographer, and
+was impatient of the interruption. But the name on the card wrought a
+miracle.
+
+"Mr. North? Why, surely, Mr. Adair. He is always at liberty for you.
+Right through this way"--holding the gate in the counter railing at its
+widest--"we're mighty glad to see you in Denver, always."
+
+Adair had acquired the monocle habit on his latest run across the
+Atlantic, and to keep in practice he gave the secretary the coldest of
+stares through the disconcerting glass. "Really! I'm quite delighted.
+Who is the other member of the 'we,' Mr.--er--er--"
+
+"Eckstein," prompted the secretary; but he said no more, being prudently
+anxious to be quit of the transfixing stare before a worse thing should
+befall.
+
+In the inner room the vice-president was less effusive, but no less
+cordial. It was a rare thing to see one of the company's directors in
+the Denver business offices. Mr. North was of the opinion that it would
+be a good investment of time and effort for all concerned if the members
+of the board used their privilege oftener. So on through half a dozen
+polite time-killers to the reluctant query: What could the general
+manager do for Mr. Adair?
+
+Given leave to speak, Adair stated his needs succinctly. He wanted a
+special train to Saint's Rest; he wanted it suddenly, and he asked that
+it be given the right of the road.
+
+"My dear sir!" protested the vice-president, "you mustn't ask
+impossibilities! You shall have the train at once, of course: you shall
+have my private car. But when it comes to the right of way, you'll have
+to appeal to Mr. Ford. Why, he doesn't scruple to lay out the United
+States mails for his material trains!"
+
+"Um," said Adair. "Where can I reach Ford?"
+
+Mr. North did not equivocate; he never lied when the truth would answer
+the purpose equally well.
+
+"He is out on the extension; or more correctly speaking, somewhere
+beyond the present end of the construction telegraph line. I'm afraid
+you couldn't reach him by wire."
+
+"And the president?" queried the visitor.
+
+"Mr. Colbrith's car is at the end-of-track. You wished to join the party
+in the Nadia?"
+
+"That is what I had in mind," said Adair, not too anxiously.
+
+Mr. North shook his head.
+
+"I don't think you'd enjoy the run over the construction track. Mr.
+Colbrith went over it last night because--well, because he believes it
+to be a presidential duty to inspect everything. If you leave to-day,
+you will probably meet the Nadia coming out--possibly at Saint's Rest."
+
+Adair suddenly became wary.
+
+"Perhaps that would be the easy thing to do," he said. "I suppose the
+engineers at Saint's Rest could put me up if I have to stay over night?"
+
+"You needn't ask them. You will have my car--with the best cook this
+side of Louisiana. Keep it, live in it, till Mr. Colbrith picks you up
+on his return."
+
+"All right. But you'll give me the special. And let it make as good
+time as it can, Mr. North; I'm fierce when I have to ride a slow train."
+
+The vice-president's promise was freely given; and to expedite matters,
+the division superintendent's chief clerk went down to the station with
+Adair to see the special train properly equipped and started on the
+mountain-climbing run. Adair left the details to this orderly from the
+general offices; not knowing how to compass them himself, he had to. If
+he could have seen the broad grins on the faces of his train crew when
+Dobson, the clerk, gave them the despatcher's order--but at that moment
+he was lounging in Mr. North's easiest chair in the central compartment
+of the "01," reading for the twentieth time a crease-worn telegram.
+
+The telegram was from Alicia, and it was dated at Denver, three days
+gone. It was not very explicit; on the contrary, it was rather
+incoherent.
+
+     "You would better come on as fast as you can if you want to save
+     your friend's life. He has been tried and found guilty--of just
+     what, I don't know--and will be hanged pretty soon--within a few
+     days, I think."
+
+"Now that's a nice way to stir a fellow up, isn't it?" soliloquized the
+pleasure-lover. "Just as I was getting ready to go up to Mount Ptarmigan
+for the shooting. She knew that, too. I'll bet a picayune it's just a
+girl's scare. Ford's plenty good and able to take care of himself."
+
+That was Mr. Charles Edward Adair's care-free phrasing of it; but three
+hours later, when the cook of the "01" served him the most appetizing of
+luncheons in the big open compartment, and the steeply pitched walls of
+the lower Blue Canyon were still stinting the outlook from the car
+windows, he began to grow impatient.
+
+"Whereabouts are we now, Johnson?" he asked of the cook's second man.
+
+"Between Cutcliff and No-Horse; yes, sah. 'Bout forty mile from Denver."
+
+"Great Scott! Fifteen miles an hour? Say, Johnson, what do you do when
+you want 'em to run faster--pull this string?"
+
+"Yes, sah; dat's it," grinned the negro.
+
+Adair pulled the air-cord, and it brought results--of a kind. Only the
+train came to a sudden stop, instead of going ahead faster; and
+Conductor Barclay, who had been riding on the engine, came back to see
+what had happened.
+
+"Did you stop us, Mr. Adair?" he asked pleasantly.
+
+"Not meaning to, you may be sure," said Adair. "But now you're here,
+I'll ask if there is any objection to my getting off and walking. I
+could stop and rest and let you overtake me now and then, you know."
+
+The conductor tweaked the air-cord and the train moved on again.
+
+"I've been expecting you'd shout at us," he said good-naturedly. "But
+we're doing the best we can. There's a freight wreck on ahead, and we've
+been dallying along, hoping they'd get it picked up by the time we reach
+it. I thought you'd rather keep moving than to be hung up for three or
+four hours at the wreck."
+
+Adair saw his helplessness and made the best of it. He was in Mr.
+North's hands, and if Mr. North was playing for delay, the delay would
+be forthcoming. None the less, he contrived to make Barclay
+uncomfortable.
+
+"I'm only a director in the Pacific Southwestern, and I suppose
+directors don't count," he said nonchalantly. "Yet, I presume, if I
+should ask it as a personal favor, I might get a conductor's or an
+engineer's head to take home with me for a souvenir. How would that be?
+Do you think I could make it win?"
+
+"You could do it, hands down, Mr. Adair. But I hope you won't feel as if
+you'd got to go into the head-hunting business. It's like the boy
+throwing stones into the pond; it's fun for the kid, but sort o' hard on
+the toad-frogs."
+
+Adair laughed. He was not one of those who find it easy to bear malice.
+
+"You don't talk half as bad as you act," he said genially. "Down at
+bottom I dare say you're a pretty good kind of a fellow. Had anything to
+eat?"
+
+Barclay shook his head. "No; we was laying off to get coffee and sinkers
+at Clapp's Mine, if we ever get there."
+
+"'Coffee and sinkers'," said Adair. "That doesn't sound very uplifting.
+Sit down here and help me out with my contract."
+
+Barclay did it, rather unwillingly. He was not accustomed to eating at
+the vice-president's table, but there was no resisting the curly-headed
+young man when he chose to make himself companionable. Barclay sat on
+the edge of his chair, ate with his knife or fork indifferently, and had
+small use for the extra spoons and cutlery. But he made a meal to be
+remembered. Afterward, the young man found a cigar-case, and his own box
+of Turkish cigarettes; and still the special was going at the same slow
+cow-gallop up the canyon.
+
+"How many are there of you up ahead?" asked Adair, when Barclay's cigar
+was going like a factory chimney.
+
+"Only Williams and his fireman."
+
+"Dinner-buckets?"
+
+"No; neither one of 'em, as it happens. Hurry call to go out with you,
+and both of 'em live too far to go home after the grub-cans."
+
+"Johnson," said the dispenser of hospitality, calling the second man.
+"Think you could climb over the coal with some dinner for the enginemen?
+No? Let me make it possible"--flipping a dollar into the ready palm.
+"Tell the cook it's an order, and if he stints it there'll be
+consequences."
+
+Barclay grinned his appreciation. The curly-headed young man was far
+enough removed from any species of railway official hitherto known to
+the conductor. But Adair was only paving the way.
+
+"Do you know," he said, after a little interval of tobacco-charmed
+silence, "one of the things I am most anxious to see is a real railroad
+wreck. Suppose you quicken up a little and let us have our dead time at
+the scene of this disaster you speak of."
+
+Barclay was tilting uneasily in his chair.
+
+"I reckon they've about got it picked up and cleaned out o' the way by
+this time, Mr. Adair. I shouldn't be surprised if we could hardly find
+the place when we get there."
+
+"Nor I," said Adair; and he sat back and chuckled. "It's considerably
+difficult to sit up and pull your imagination on a man who has been
+decently good to you, isn't it, Barclay? Let me ask you: are you Mr.
+North's man?"
+
+"Mr. North is the big boss."
+
+"But this Plug Mountain division is a part of Mr. Ford's line, isn't
+it?"
+
+"It used to be all his. There's a white man for you, Mr. Adair."
+
+Adair saw his opportunity and used it.
+
+"Now see here, Barclay; I'm only a director, and I don't cut much ice
+out this way. But back in New York I'm one of three or four people who
+can tell Mr. North what he can do, and what he can't. You wouldn't want
+to see Mr. Ford getting it in the neck, would you?"
+
+"By Jacks! There ain't a man in the service that wouldn't fight for him.
+I tell you, he's _white_."
+
+"Well, Mr. Ford is in trouble: I don't know but he is likely to lose his
+job, if I don't see the president before the big ax comes down. That is
+between us two."
+
+The conductor sprang out of his chair.
+
+"By gravy! Why didn't you say that at first? Say, Mr. Adair, you stand
+between us and Mr. North--tell him you gave the orders yourself--and
+you'll have the ride of your life from here to Saint's Rest!"
+
+"Go it," said Adair; and two minutes after Barclay had let himself out
+of the forward door of the "01," the train took a sudden start and
+darted ahead at full speed.
+
+This bit of diplomacy on the part of Adair saved two full hours in the
+run to Saint's Rest. Nevertheless, it was after dark when the "01"
+pulled into the crowded material yard in the high mountain basin and
+Leckhard came aboard to find out what had brought this second
+private-car visitation. He was relieved not to meet North--to be
+confronted only by a pleasant-faced young man who seemed to have the car
+all to himself.
+
+"My name is Leckhard," announced the man-of-all-work, "and I represent
+the engineering department. I saw it was Mr. North's car, and--"
+
+"And you came to see what you could do for the vice-president and
+general manager," Adair finished for him. "Mighty sorry to disappoint
+you, Mr. Leckhard, but my name isn't North; it's Adair, and I'm only a
+director. How much authority is a director allowed--at this altitude and
+distance from New York?"
+
+Leckhard laughed.
+
+"I reckon you might call yourself the ranking officer in the field, Mr.
+Adair. What you say, goes."
+
+"Then I say 'go'; which means that I'd like to go--on to the end of the
+extension."
+
+But now the engineer was shaking his head.
+
+"Ask me anything but that, Mr. Adair. None of our enginemen is at this
+end of the line, and your man Williams, who brought you up from Denver,
+doesn't know the way. More than that, if we had a man and an engine, I'd
+be afraid to send you out for a night run. Mr. Ford made it last night
+with Mr. Colbrith's car, and they used up ten hours in covering less
+than a hundred and twenty miles, and came within six feet of killing
+everybody."
+
+Adair had lighted a cigarette, and he did not reply until the match
+flare had gone out. Then he said, in a way that made Leckhard his friend
+for life:
+
+"I'm entirely in your hands, Mr. Leckhard; can't turn a wheel unless you
+say so. And I believe you're telling me the truth, as man to man. Can
+you reach Ford or Mr. Colbrith by wire?"
+
+"I'm sorry to say I can't. We have only the one wire, and it's on
+temporary poles most of the way. It broke down on us this morning, and I
+can't raise the end-of-track."
+
+"Block number two," said Adair cheerfully. "We seem to be out of luck
+this evening." Then, with searching abruptness: "Do you call yourself
+Ford's friend, Mr. Leckhard?"
+
+"Rather," said the Saint's Rest Pooh Bah. "He hired me; and when he
+goes, I go."
+
+"Ah! now we are warming ourselves at the same fire. Let me invite your
+confidence in one word, Mr. Leckhard. I dislike Mr. North."
+
+The burly engineer laughed again.
+
+"You have a geniusful way of putting your finger on the sore spot
+without fumbling. We all dislike Mr. North at this end of things--with
+reason."
+
+"And that reason is?"
+
+"That he'd fire the entire engineering department if he could find half
+an excuse. I'm afraid he's going to do it, too, in the most effectual
+way--by forcing Mr. Ford out. If Ford goes, every man in the department
+will quit with him. I'm afraid it's coming to that."
+
+Johnson, the porter, had lighted the Pintsch globes and was laying the
+covers for dinner.
+
+"Make it two, Johnson," said Adair; and, then to Leckhard: "You dine
+with me--don't say no; I couldn't stand it alone." And when that point
+was settled: "Now, sit down till we thresh, this out a bit finer. How
+far has this forcing business gone? You're talking to the man who has
+backed Ford from the first."
+
+"It has gone pretty far. North has obstructed, quietly but persistently,
+ever since the first blow was struck on the extension. He has delayed
+material, when he could do it unofficially, he scants us for rolling
+stock and motive power, he stands in with the MacMorroghs and backs them
+against Ford every time there is a dispute. Ford is a patient man, Mr.
+Adair, but I think he has about reached the limit."
+
+"H'm. Do you attach any particular importance to the president's trip
+over the extension?"
+
+Leckhard shook his head. "I'm only a passenger--I see what goes by the
+car-windows. Mr. Colbrith was dead set on pushing over to the
+end-of-track--wouldn't even wait for daylight. You probably know him
+better than I do--"
+
+"He is my uncle," Adair cut in.
+
+"Oh; then I can't tell you anything about him. He was hot at Ford last
+night; what for I don't know, unless it was because Ford opposed a night
+run over a raw construction track with the Nadia. He was right about
+that, though. If I had been in his place I would have thrown up my job
+before I would have taken the risk."
+
+Adair appeared to be considering something, and when he had thought it
+out, the porter had announced dinner and they had taken their places at
+the table.
+
+"I have told you I am Ford's friend, Mr. Leckhard; I have ridden a
+couple of thousand miles out of my way to give him a lift. Tell me
+frankly; have you any reason to believe it will come to blows between
+him and the president while they are together at the front?--Try this
+celery; it's as good as you'd get at Sherry's."
+
+Leckhard helped himself to the relish, and waited until the negro,
+Johnson, had gone back to the cook's galley.
+
+"The little I know comes in a roundabout way," he replied slowly.
+"Penfield, who is known all over the Southwestern as Mr. North's private
+detective and spy, is with Mr. Colbrith acting as the president's
+secretary. Yesterday, while the Nadia was side-tracked here, Penfield
+had a lot of telegraphing to do for Mr. Colbrith. He did it
+himself--he's a lightning operator, among other things--and I happened
+into the office just as he was finishing. His final message was a
+cipher, to Mr. North, and he signed it with his own name."
+
+"Well?" said Adair.
+
+Again the engineer waited until the negro was out of hearing.
+
+"A little later, just as the Nadia was about to pull out, there came a
+rush call from Denver for Penfield. I answered and said the car was on
+the point of leaving, but that I'd take the message and try to catch
+Penfield if I could. It came, on the run, and it was signed by Eckstein,
+North's chief clerk. It wasn't ciphered--lack of time, I reckon--and
+Eckstein took the chance that I wouldn't catch on."
+
+"You kept a copy?" suggested Adair.
+
+"I did. I wasn't able to deliver the original until the Nadia came back
+from the foot of the pass in the evening to fill the engine tank. But I
+couldn't make anything out of it. It was an order to Penfield not to let
+anything interfere with the president's buckboard trip--whatever that
+might be--with authority to incur any expense that might be necessary,
+using the telegram as his credential with the MacMorrogh Brothers if
+more money were needed."
+
+"To pay for the buckboards?" asked Adair.
+
+"You may search me," said Leckhard. "Only it could hardly be that--we
+have an open account at the Bank of Copah for legitimate expenses. No;
+there's a nigger in the woodpile, somewhere. Penfield is only a clerk;
+but for some purpose he is given _carte blanche_ to spend money."
+
+Adair was absently stirring his black coffee.
+
+"All of which points to one conclusion, Mr. Leckhard. They are plotting
+against Ford--without the president's connivance. But the president is
+going to be made to swing the club. I know rather more than you do about
+it--which isn't saying very much. My--a relative of mine who is with
+the party in the Nadia wired me three days ago from Denver that Ford had
+been tried and condemned, and was only waiting to be hanged. That's why
+I am here to-night. You've got to get me to the end-of-track before it
+comes to blows between Mr. Colbrith and Stuart Ford. I know both men,
+Mr. Leckhard. If the iron comes to a certain heat, the past master of
+all the peacemakers won't be able to patch things together."
+
+"Ford will resign," said the engineer.
+
+"That is what I'm afraid of; and we can't let him resign. That would
+mean Mr. North for everything in sight, and the ultimate ruin of the
+Pacific Southwestern. On the other hand, I can't have Ford fighting the
+family--or my uncle--which is just what he will do if he gets his blood
+up--and doesn't quit in a huff. It's up to you to trundle this car over
+to the seat of war, Mr. Leckhard."
+
+The division engineer was thinking hard.
+
+"I can't see how it's to be done, right now, Mr. Adair. But I'll tell
+you what I will do. Our empty material trains come back from the front
+in the night, as a rule. When they get in, and I can be sure that the
+track's clear, I'll double one of the construction engines out with you.
+It will be along toward morning, I'm afraid; but, with nothing in the
+way, you ought to make the run in four or five hours--say by late
+breakfast time."
+
+That was the way it was left when Leckhard went back to his telegraph
+den at ten o'clock; and some six hours later, Adair, sleepily conscious
+of disturbances, wakened sufficiently to hear the wheels once more
+trundling monotonously under the "01."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE CONSPIRATORS
+
+
+"How far do we go, and what do we do when we get there?" asked Frisbie
+of his chief, when the two buckboards, heaving and lurching over the
+rock-strewn talus at the foot of the canyon cliff, had passed beyond
+sight and sound of the headquarters camp at the mouth of Horse Creek.
+
+"I'm not guessing any more," said Ford crustily. He was finding that his
+temper deteriorated as the square of his distance from Alicia Adair
+increased. "The president said he wanted to drive over this short-cut,
+and he's doing it."
+
+"Humph!" growled Frisbie. "If he wanted to rub salt into your bruises,
+why didn't he take you in the cart with him? And where do _I_ come in?"
+
+"You are 'implicated' with me; that was his word."
+
+Another mile passed in discomforting plungings. The trail had become all
+but impassable for the staggering horses; yet the leading buckboard held
+on doggedly. There were places where both drivers had to get out and
+lead; bad bits where all save the president descended to walk. But
+through the worst as well as the best, Mr. Colbrith clung to his seat
+like a man determined to ride. It was well past noon when the two
+vehicles reached the western portal of the canyon, and the dottings of
+the Copah mine workings came in sight on the hillsides to the southward.
+Ford's driver had fallen a little behind in the final half-mile, and
+when the gap was closed up, the president was waiting.
+
+"Well, Mr. Ford," he began, somewhat breathless but triumphant, "are you
+fully satisfied?"
+
+"I have learned nothing that I did not know before we began to build the
+extension," was the non-committal rejoinder.
+
+"Oh, you haven't? You reported that canyon impracticable for a railroad,
+and yet I have just driven through it without once dismounting from this
+buckboard. Moreover, we shall find in Copah to-morrow a re-survey of the
+line showing its entire practicability, Mr. Ford--a report not made by
+your engineers."
+
+Ford and Frisbie exchanged swift glances of intelligence. The presence
+of the strange engineering party in the canyon was sufficiently
+explained. At first sight the president's expedient seemed childishly
+puerile to Ford. Then suddenly in a flash of revealment he saw beyond
+the puerilities--beyond the stubborn old man who, with all his narrow
+self-will and obstinacy was merely playing the game for others.
+
+"We can discuss these matters later, if you wish," he said placably. "I
+think you will find our ground well taken. Do you want to drive back as
+we came? Or will you let me find you an easier road to the mouth of
+Horse Creek?"
+
+But Mr. Colbrith was not to be balked or turned aside.
+
+"Mr. Ford, I wish to be fair and impartial. I desired to satisfy myself,
+personally, that this route we have driven over is practicable, and it
+was also my desire that the investigation should be conducted in your
+presence. You will admit now that you made a mistake--a very costly
+mistake for the company--in abandoning this short cut."
+
+"I admit nothing of the kind. The difficulties remain as they were,
+quite unchanged by our pleasure trip from the end-of-track, Mr.
+Colbrith. Assuming that the re-survey will report that the north bank of
+the river is practicable, while the south bank is not, I have only to
+say that the cost of the two bridges would offset the easier grading
+conditions, while the danger to future traffic would remain the same.
+But that is neither here nor there. You must either give us credit for
+knowing our business, or you must discredit us entirely."
+
+Frisbie was grinding his heel into the hard soil of the mesa. The
+argument was growing rather acrid; and Penfield and the two drivers were
+interested listeners. It was high time for a diversion to be made, and
+the assistant made it.
+
+"We have used five hours getting down here, and we'll need as many going
+back," he put in. "Unless there is something more to be done on the
+spot, I think we'd better take the road over the hills. It's with you,
+Mr. Colbrith."
+
+The president signified his assent by climbing into his buckboard, and
+the return journey was begun with the two engineers in the lead for
+pathfinding purposes. Once safely out of earshot, Frisbie voiced his
+disgust.
+
+"A wild goose-chase, pure and simple! Stuart, that old man is in his
+second childhood."
+
+"Not at all," said Ford. "He is merely following out North's
+suggestions. Dick, my name is Dennis."
+
+"Nonsense! Things are no worse than they have been all along."
+
+"My time with the Pacific Southwestern is shorter by just the number of
+hours it has taken us to drive down here. Mr. Colbrith has convinced
+himself that I was wrong in abandoning the canyon. To-morrow he will
+convince himself that I was doubly wrong in approving the detour. I
+shall hand in my resignation to-night."
+
+"So be it," said Frisbie shortly. "That means good-by to the extension.
+I'm predicting that it will never get to Green Butte--never get beyond
+Copah. And your name will go out to the railroad world as that of a man
+who bit off a number of large things that he couldn't chew."
+
+"Confound you!" said Ford; and after that, Frisbie could get no more
+than single-syllabled replies to his monologue of Job's comfortings.
+
+The returning route was a detour, winding, through the greater part of
+it, among and over the swelling heights north of the Pannikin. On each
+hilltop the vast sweep of the inter-mountain wilderness came into view,
+and from the highest point in the trail, reached when the sun was
+dipping toward the western horizon, the eye-sweep took in the broken
+country lying between the Pannikin and the path of the Transcontinental
+narrow gauge forty miles away.
+
+Jack's Canyon, the Transcontinental station nearest Copah, was the
+beginning of a combined pack trail and stage road connecting the Copah
+district with what had been, before the advent of the Southwestern
+Extension, its nearest railroad outlet. Along this trail, visible to the
+buckboarders as a black speck tittuping against the reddening background
+of the west, galloped a solitary horseman, urging his mount in a way to
+make Frisbie, getting his glimpse from the hilltop of extended views,
+call Ford's attention.
+
+"Look at that brute, pushing his horse like that at the end of the day!
+He ought to be--"
+
+But the hastening rider was getting his deserts, whatever they should
+be, as he went along. For three hours, with three relays of fresh horses
+picked up at the stage stations in passing, he had been galloping
+southward, and to whatever other urging he might confess was added the
+new one of fear, the fear that in the approaching day's-end he would
+lose his way.
+
+Seen from the nearer point of view, the tittuping horseman seemed
+curiously out of harmony with his environment. Instead of the cow-boy
+"shaps," or overalls, he wore the trousers of civilization, which the
+rapid night had hitched half-way to his knees. In place of the
+open-breasted shirt with the rolled-up sleeves there were tailor-made
+upper clothes, with the collar and cravat also of civilization, and the
+hat--it was perhaps fortunate for the rider that he had not met any true
+denizens of the unfettered highlands on the lonely trail from Jack's
+Canyon. His hat was a Derby of the newest shape; and the cow-men beyond
+the range are impatient of such head-gear.
+
+Recognition, after one has ridden hard for three hours over a dusty
+road, is not easy; but there are faces one never forgets, and the
+features, dust-grimed and sweat-streaked though they were, had still the
+South-of-Europe outline, the slightly aquiline nose, and the piercing
+black eyes of Mr. Julius Eckstein, whom we saw, on the morning of this
+same road-wearying day, welcoming Adair over the counter railing in the
+Denver office. How does it come that a few short hours later we find him
+galloping tantivy over the dusty hills, no less than two hundred miles,
+as the birds fly, from the counter railing of welcomings?
+
+That is the story of another, and a more successful special train than
+Adair's. No sooner was the care-free young director safely on his way to
+meet the delays so painstakingly prearranged for him than the wires
+began to buzz with a cipher message of warning to Penfield. A precious
+half-hour was lost in ascertaining that the wire connection to the
+end-of-track was temporarily out of commission; but during that
+half-hour Mr. North had held his chin in his hand to some good purpose.
+
+With the fresh complications promised by Adair's projection into the
+field, a stronger man than Penfield should be in command on the firing
+line. The vice-president decided swiftly that Eckstein was the man; but
+how to get him to the MacMorrogh headquarters before Adair should
+arrive?
+
+It proved to be simpler in the outcarrying than in the planning. A
+special light engine over the Transcontinental to Jack's Canyon--an
+exchange of courtesies which even fighting railroads make in war as well
+as in peace--a wire request on the stage company for relays of saddle
+horses, and the thing was done. And Eckstein, pushing his jaded beast
+down the final hill in the dusk of the evening, and welcoming, as only
+the saddle-tormented can welcome, the lights of the headquarters camp,
+confessed in cursings quite barbaric in their phrasings that he, too,
+was done.
+
+The conference held that night behind locked doors in the MacMorroghs'
+commissary office was a council of five, with Eckstein, as the
+mouthpiece of the vice-president, in the chair. Penfield was present,
+with no vote, and the three MacMorroghs voted as one; but as to that,
+there were no divisions. A crisis was imminent, and it must be met.
+
+"As I have said, I am here with power to act," said Eckstein, gripping
+the chair with wincings after the day of torment. "The plan outlined at
+first by Mr. North must go through as it was outlined. Part of it has
+already been carried out, you say: Ford and the president have been over
+the short-cut together. To-morrow the entire private-car party goes to
+Copah over the detour. Are the buckboards here for that?"
+
+"They're here wid the drivers. I saw to that part of it myself." It was
+the youngest of the three MacMorroghs who gave the assurance.
+
+"So far so good," commented the chairman. "The other thing we have to
+provide for, or rather, to prevent, is the possibility of Mr. Adair's
+reaching here in time to join the party. The last definite information
+we had of Mr. Adair he was crawling up Blue Canyon, with a train crew
+which was under orders to give him ample time to study the scenery. He
+has probably reached Saint's Rest before this, however, and once there,
+Leckhard will give him anything in sight. The question is, will he
+attempt to run the extension to-night?"
+
+The middle MacMorrogh thought not, and his younger brother agreed with
+him. But the senior partner voted aye, and stuck to it. Thereupon ensued
+a conflict of opinion. Dan MacMorrogh pointed out that the construction
+motive power was all at the west end, or in transit eastward; it would
+be daylight of another day before an engineer familiar with the hazards
+could be obtained for Adair's special over the construction line. But
+Brian MacMorrogh argued with equal emphasis that this was a mere begging
+of chances. Without a telegraph wire to verify the guess, no man could
+say at what hour one of the trains of empties would pull through to
+Saint's Rest; and whatever the hour, Leckhard would doubtless turn the
+engine and crew to double back with Adair's car.
+
+Eckstein was gripping the arms of his chair and setting his teeth deep
+into his cigar while the probabilities were getting themselves threshed
+out. At the end of the dispute he said quietly: "It's a hell of a pity
+we can't have the use of the wire for this one night. But, gentlemen, we
+can't stop for trifles. There are five of us here in this room who know
+how much is at stake. One of two things is due to happen. If we can keep
+Adair out of it for another twelve hours, Ford will be disgraced and
+asked to resign. If he gets to that point, we're safe. I know Ford's
+temper. If Mr. Colbrith puts it as he is likely to put it, Ford will say
+and do things that will make it impossible for Adair or any one else to
+get him back into the service."
+
+"Thrue for you, Misther Eckstein; ye have 'im down to the crossin' of a
+'t'," agreed the eldest of the brothers MacMorrogh.
+
+"That is one of the due things," Eckstein went on smoothly. "The other
+isn't pretty to look at. If Adair gets here in time, it will be another
+story. He can handle Ford; and he has proved once or twice that he can
+handle Mr. Colbrith. If he hadn't been out of the way when you went to
+New York with Mr. North, you'd never have seen the thin edge of this
+contract, Brian. Well, then what happens? With Adair on the ground to
+back him, Ford wins out. Do you know what that means? Investigations,
+muck-rakings, and worse. There are two or three of us here, and some
+more on the other side of the range, who won't get off with less than
+ten years apiece. I'm willing to take the chance of a few more years
+for another play on the red. How is it with the rest of you?"
+
+The elder MacMorrogh spread his hands.
+
+"It's all in the same boat we are. You've a notion in the back par-rt of
+your head, Misther Eckstein; lave us have it."
+
+"As I've said, we can't stick at trifles. If Adair's train is on the
+extension, it mustn't get here. Somebody goes up the line on a hand-car
+to-night and stops it."
+
+"Is it to ditch it, ye mane?" asked the youngest of the brothers in a
+hoarse whisper.
+
+Eckstein laughed cynically. "What a lot of crude cutthroats you are!" he
+jeered. "Now if it were Ford, instead of Adair--but pshaw! a rail or two
+taken up and flung into the river well beyond walking distance from this
+camp does the business. Only the man who does it wants to make sure he
+has gone far enough back to cover all the possible chances."
+
+"That's me," said Dan MacMorrogh; and he rose and let himself out, with
+the younger brother to lock the door behind him.
+
+The door-keeping attended to, the younger brother drew closer into the
+circle.
+
+"There's wan thing," he said, looking furtively at Eckstein. "I was in
+Copah this day: I got the buckboards for Misther Colbrith. Goin' past
+the bank, who would I see but our old bookkeeper, Merriam, chinnin' wid
+the bank president. I thought he was out o' the way entirely."
+
+Stiff and saddle-sore as he was, Eckstein leaped out of his chair with
+an oath.
+
+"Merriam? What the devil is he back here for? It's a put-up job!"
+
+It was the chief of the MacMorroghs who flung in the calming word.
+
+"'Tis only a happen-so, Misther Eckstein. Merriam owns a mine or two in
+the Copah, and ye know the fever: a man can't keep away from thim."
+
+"That may be; but it's a cursed unlucky combination, just the same. I
+tell you, Brian, he knows too much--this fellow Merriam. He knew what
+was up when he was steering Frisbie. You told him too much. And
+afterward, when we gave him the Oregon job, he knew why he was being
+bribed to go away. You let us in for this: you've got to muzzle him,
+some way."
+
+The MacMorrogh looked at his remaining brother meaningly. "'Tis up to
+you, this time, Mickey, b'y. Find your way over to the minin' camp this
+night, and make a clane job av it.'"
+
+Penfield was moving uneasily in his chair. The plotting waters were
+deepening swiftly, much too swiftly for him. Loyalty to his superior
+officer, the unquestioning loyalty that disregards motives entirely and
+does not look too closely at methods, was his fetish. But these men
+were not merely loyal to Mr. North. They were criminals--he stuck at the
+word, but there was no other--fighting for their own hand.
+
+"I guess--I guess I'd better go back to the Nadia," he stammered, trying
+to keep his voice steady. "Mr. Colbrith may need me."
+
+Eckstein turned on him like a snarling animal.
+
+"No you don't, Arthur, my boy. I know you like a book. You stay here
+till you're in as deep as the rest of us. Like Merriam, you know too
+damned much."
+
+Penfield sat still, with the cold chills running up and down his spine,
+while Eckstein went on talking to the two MacMorroghs.
+
+"This Merriam business complicates things like hell"--he was growing
+coarsely profane in the grinding mill of events. "But it shows us where
+we stand. This thing has got to go through, and if it doesn't work out
+the way we've planned it, it's for us to find another way."
+
+"There's always the wan other way," said the elder MacMorrogh slowly.
+"'Tis but a drunken fight in wan o' the camps, and Ford tryin' to stop
+it, as he always does: a bit of a shindy among the b'ys, and this--"
+crooking his forefinger suggestively.
+
+"Bah!" said Eckstein. "You fellows ought to have lived in the stone age,
+when a man pulled his enemy to pieces with his bare hands. If it comes
+to that, there are easier ways--and safer. A premature blast in a rock
+cut; a weak coupling-pin when he happens to be standing in the way of a
+pulling engine: they tell me he is always indifferent to his personal
+safety. But never mind the fashion of it; the point I'm making is that
+if everything else fails, Ford mustn't live to be the head-foreman of
+the outfit."
+
+Penfield's face was ashen, and he was cravenly thankful that the
+lamplight was dim, and that his chair was in the shadow. This was more
+than he had bargained for; more by the price of a man's life.
+
+Eckstein was lifting himself by painful inches from his chair. A silence
+as of the grave had fallen upon the two MacMorroghs. It was the senior
+partner who broke it.
+
+"'Tis as ye say, Misther Eckstein. A man--a safe man, that'll do what
+he's told to do--will be at Ford's heels till this thing do be settled.
+And now for yourself: 'tis betther that ye kape dark. Four of us know
+that you're in the camp--no wan else need know. I've a room and a bed,
+and ye'll be nadin' the lasht, I'm thinking."
+
+The two MacMorroghs were bestirring themselves, and Penfield was
+slipping through the door into the commissary when Eckstein's fingers
+closed upon his arm.
+
+"Your part is to keep tab on the programme," he whispered "Get word
+instantly to Brian if there is any change. And if you weaken, Arthur,
+I'll promise you just one thing: I'll pull you in with the rest of us if
+I have to swear to a string of lies a mile long. Remember that."
+
+Penfield escaped at length, and stumbled through the littered
+end-of-track yard to where the lighted windows of the Nadia marked the
+berth of the president's car. Out of the shadow of the car a man rose up
+and confronted him. It was Frisbie, and he asked a single question:
+
+"Say, Penfield, who was that fellow who rode around to the MacMorroghs'
+back door just after dark?"
+
+"It was Eckstein." The secretary let slip the name before he could lay
+hold of his discretion.
+
+"Oh: all right That's all," said the engineer; and he vanished.
+
+Climbing to the observation platform, Penfield let himself into the
+cheerful central compartment of the Nadia quietly enough to surprise two
+people who were sitting together on one of the broad divans. The two
+were Ford and Miss Alicia Adair, with Aunt Hester Adair, reading under
+the drop-light at the table, for the only other occupant of the
+compartment. It was Miss Alicia who told the secretary that he was not
+needed.
+
+"Mr. Colbrith was very tired, and he has gone to bed," she said; and
+Penfield, still pallid and curiously unready of speech, said he believed
+he'd go, too.
+
+Ford got up when Penfield had disappeared in the curtained vestibule
+leading to the state-rooms.
+
+"I shall wait one more day, because you want me to," he said, resuming
+the conversation which had been broken off by Penfield's incoming. "But
+I'll tell the truth: I came here to-night to have it over with. We were
+as near quarreling to-day as I want to come, and if Frisbie hadn't got
+between--"
+
+"Good Mr. Frisbie!" she said. "Some day I hope to get a chance to be
+very nice to him."
+
+Ford laughed. The evening had healed many of the woundings of the day.
+
+"If you don't get the chance it won't be Dick's fault--or mine.
+Meantime, I'll be delighted to pose as his substitute."
+
+She had gone with him to the door, and his last word was a reminder.
+"Don't forget," he said. "I'm to drive your buckboard to-morrow,
+whatever happens."
+
+"You are the one who will forget," she retorted. "When Uncle Sidney
+crooks his finger at you, you'll climb up obediently beside him and let
+him scold you all the way over to Copah."
+
+"Wait and see," said Ford; and then he said good night, not as he wanted
+to, but as he must, with Aunt Hester sitting within arm's reach.
+
+Frisbie was sitting up for him when he reached the white tents of the
+engineers' camp pitched a little apart from the MacMorrogh
+conglomeration of shacks and storehouses.
+
+"Just one question," said the first assistant, "and I've been staying
+awake to ask it. Are you still my boss?"
+
+"For one more day," said Ford shortly.
+
+"Well, we can't live more than a day at a time, if we try. That will do
+to sleep on."
+
+"All right; sleep on it, then."
+
+"In a minute; after I've freed my mind of one little news item. Do you
+remember that fellow we saw riding in on the Jack's Canyon trail as we
+were coming back this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you any notion who it was?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It was Mr. Julius Eckstein; and he is at present lying doggo in the
+MacMorrogh quarters. That's all. Now you can turn in and sleep a few
+lines on _that_."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+THE MILLS OF THE GODS
+
+
+It was merely by chance that Adair had Michael Gallagher for his
+engineer when the "01" was made up for the after-midnight run from
+Saint's Rest to the MacMorrogh headquarters. But it was a chance which
+was duly gratifying to Leckhard. The little Irishman was Ford's most
+loyal liegeman, and a word was all that was needed to put him on his
+mettle. The word was spoken while he was oiling around for the
+man-killing extra service.
+
+"Pretty well knocked out, Michael?" asked Leckhard, by way of preface.
+
+"I am thot, Misther Leckhard. 'Tis the good half of lasht night, all day
+yestherday, and thin some."
+
+"It's tough. But if any of the other men were in, I should still ask you
+to go. Mr. Ford is in a pinch, and Mr. Adair, your passenger, is going
+to help him out. He can do it if you get him to Horse Creek in time; and
+I know you'll get him there if the 956 and the '01' will stay on the
+steel."
+
+"To help Misther Foord out? Thot's me," said Gallagher simply.
+
+"Not having a wire, I can't boost you any from this end. You'll meet
+Folsom and Graham with the other two sections of empties where you can:
+you'll run as fast as the Lord'll let you on such a track as you have:
+but above all, you'll stay on the rails. If you ditch yourself, it'll go
+hard with Mr. Ford."
+
+"I'll do all thim things and wan more--and thot wan is the shtiffest av
+thim all: the saints aidin' me, Misther Leckhard, I'll shtay awake."
+
+There was a short siding at the summit of the pass, and by good hap,
+Gallagher met Folsom with the first string of empties at that point: or
+rather, giving the bit of good luck full credit, he heard the roaring of
+Folsom's exhaust as the first of the opposing trains pounded up the
+dangerous western grade, and hastily backed up and took the summit
+siding.
+
+Pitching over the hill with the "01" the moment Folsom's tail-lights had
+passed the outlet switch, Gallagher had a sharp attack of memory. The
+day before, in the Horse Creek yard, he had seen and remarked a jagged
+scratch on the side of the Nadia. Hence, he was watching for the narrow
+rock cuttings, and the three passages perilous on the cliff face were
+made in safety.
+
+Once off the mountain, however, the greater peril began to assert
+itself. For a time the Irishman kept himself fully awake and alert by
+pushing the 956 to the ragged edge of hazard, scurrying over the short
+tangents and lifting her around the curves in breath-taking spurts.
+Later this expedient began to lose its fillip. Since the train was
+running wholly on the air-brakes there was nothing for the fireman to
+do, and Jackson, the loyalest understudy Gallagher had ever known,
+tumbled from his box in a doze, staggered across the gang-way into the
+half-filled tender, and fell like a man anaesthetized full length on the
+coal. Gallagher did not try to arouse him.
+
+"'Tis hell for wan, an' twice hell for two," he muttered; and then he
+shifted his right hand to the brake-cock and grasped the hot throttle
+lever with the ungloved left. And for a time the pain of the burn
+sufficed.
+
+It was another piece of luck, good or bad, that made Ten Mile station
+the special train's meeting point with the second train of empties. This
+time it was Graham, the other engineer, who heard. He had stopped at Ten
+Mile on the bare chance that the wire between that point and Saint's
+Rest had been repaired; public opinion to the contrary notwithstanding,
+an engineer does not run "wild" when he can help it.
+
+The engineer of the third section had come out of the night operator's
+office disappointed, and was climbing to his engine to pull out, when he
+heard, or thought he heard, the dull rumble of a train racing down the
+canyon. It came in sight while he listened, and the yellow flare told
+him that it was either Gallagher or Folsom doubling back on one of the
+construction engines. What startled him was the fact that the coming
+train appeared to be running itself; there was no warning whistle shriek
+and no slackening of speed.
+
+Graham was a Scotchman, slow of speech, slow to anger, methodical to the
+thirty-third degree. But in an emergency his brain leveled itself like a
+ship's compass gimballed to hang plumb in the suddenest typhoon. Three
+shrill whistle calls sent a sleepy flagman racing to set the switch of
+the siding. With a clang the reversing lever came over and the steam
+roared into the cylinders.
+
+The Scotchman had the grade to help him, which was fortunate. When he
+had the string of empties fairly in retreat, the beam of Gallagher's
+headlight was shining full in his face and blinding him. For a
+heart-breaking second he feared that the opposing train would follow him
+in on the siding; there was but an instant for the flicking of the
+switch. But by this time the sleepy flagman was wide awake, and he
+jerked the switch lever for his life the moment Graham's engine had
+cleared the points. It was the closest possible shave. Gallagher's cab
+ticked the forward end of the other engine's running board in passing,
+and if Graham had not been still shoving backward with the throttle
+wide open, the "01," being wider than its piloting engine, would have
+had its side ripped out.
+
+Graham had a glimpse into the cab of the 956 as it passed and saw
+Gallagher, sitting erect on his box with wide-staring eyes. He knew the
+symptoms, and feared that he had only postponed the catastrophe. The
+siding was a short one, and he knew that in backing down he must
+inevitably have shoved the rear end of his train out upon the main line
+at the lower switch. Once again the level brain righted itself to the
+emergency. Four sharp shrieks of the whistle for switches, a jamming of
+the whistle lever to set the canyon echoes yelling in the hope of
+arousing Gallagher, and Graham slammed his engine into the forward
+motion without pausing to close the throttle. There was a grinding of
+fire from the wheels, a running jangle of slack-taking down the long
+line of empties, and the freight train shot ahead, snatching its rear
+end out of harm's way just as Gallagher, dreaming that his boiler had
+burst and that all the fiends of the pit were screeching the news of it,
+came to life and snapped on the air.
+
+When the stop was made, the little Irishman roused his fireman, got off
+and footed it up the line to see what he had done. Graham had stopped
+his engine when he was sure his train was clearing the lower switch, and
+was on his way back to find out what had happened to Gallagher. The two
+men met in the shadow of the halted material empties, and it was the
+Irishman who began it.
+
+"Paste me wan, Scotchie," he said. "'Tis owin' to me."
+
+Without a word the Scotchman gave the blow, catching the little man full
+in the chest and knocking him half a car-length. That was enough.
+Gallagher picked himself up out of the gravel, the lust of battle hot
+upon him.
+
+"Wan more like thot, ye divvle, and I cajo lick ye if ye wor
+Fin-mac-Coul himself," he panted; and Graham gave it judiciously, this
+time on the point of the jaw. For five bloody minutes it went on, give
+and take, down and up; methodically on Graham's part, fiery hot on
+Gallagher's. And in the end the Irishman had the heavier man backed
+against the string of empties and yelling for quarter.
+
+"Are you full awake now, ye red-hot blastoderm?" gasped Graham,
+struggling to free himself when Gallagher gave him leave.
+
+"I am thot, thanks to you, Sandy, lad. 'Twas a foine bit av a scrimmage,
+an' I'm owin' ye wan. Good night to ye."
+
+"Ye've got a clear track from this," called Graham, swabbing his
+battered face with a piece of cotton waste drawn from one of the pockets
+of method. "But ye'd better not take any more cat-naps. Go on with ye,
+ye wild Irishman; ye're obstructin' the traffic."
+
+For twenty miles below Ten Mile Gallagher sat on his box like a man
+refreshed. Then the devil of sleep postponed beset him again. Once more
+the fireman was asleep on the coal, and to the little Irishman's
+bombardment of wrenches and other missiles he returned only sodden
+groans. Gallagher nerved himself to fight it through alone. Mile after
+mile of the time-killing track swung slowly to the rear, and there was
+not even the flick of speed to help in the grim battle.
+
+Dawn came when the end-of-track camp was still forty miles away, but the
+breaking day brought no surcease of strugglings. When it came to the
+bitter end, when his eyelids would close involuntarily and he would wake
+with a start to wonder dumbly how far the 956 had come masterless,
+Gallagher took a chew of tobacco and began to rub the spittle into his
+eyes--the last resort of the sleep-tormented engineman. Like all the
+other expedients it sufficed for the time; but before long he was
+nodding again, and dreaming that a thousand devils were burning his eyes
+out with the points of their red-hot pitchforks.
+
+Out of one of these nightmares he came with a yell of pain to see what
+figured for the moment as another nightmare. Three hundred feet ahead
+the track seemed to vanish for three or four rail-lengths. It was
+second nature to jam on the brakes and to make the sudden stop. Then he
+sat still and rubbed his smarting eyes and stared again. The curious
+hallucination persisted strangely. Fifty feet ahead of the stopped
+engine the glistening lines of the steel ended abruptly, beginning again
+a car-length or two beyond. Without disturbing the sleeping Jackson,
+Gallagher got down and crept cautiously out to the break. It was a
+break. He stooped and felt the rail ends with his hands.
+
+When he straightened up his passenger was standing beside him.
+
+"What is it?" asked Adair. "Have we lost something?"
+
+Gallagher waved a grimy hand at the gap.
+
+"The thrack," he said. "'Twas there whin I pulled me sthring av empties
+out over ut lasht night. 'Tis gone now, else I'm thot near dead for
+sleep I can nayther see nor feel sthraight."
+
+Adair was calmly lighting a cigarette.
+
+"Your senses are still in commission," he said; "there is a good-sized
+piece of track missing. Who sniped it, do you suppose?"
+
+The engineer was shaking his fiery head.
+
+"'Tis beyond me, Misther Adair."
+
+"That's the deuce of it," smiled the young man. "It's beyond the train.
+How is your engine--pretty good on the broad jump?"
+
+Gallagher was not past laughing.
+
+"She'll not lep thot, this day. But who'd be doin' this job betune dark
+an' mornin', d'ye think?"
+
+"You will have to ask me something easy, I'm not up in all the little
+practical jokes of the country. But if I should venture a guess, I
+should say it was some one who didn't want me to answer the first call
+for breakfast at your end-of-track camp this morning. What do we do?"
+
+Gallagher was thinking.
+
+"We passed a camp av surfacers tin mile back, and there'd be rails at
+Arroyo Siding, tin mile back o' thot," he said reflectively.
+
+Adair had passed over to the river side of the line and was looking at a
+fresh plowing of the embankment.
+
+"The rails have been dragged down here and they are probably in the
+river," he announced. "If we had men and tools we might fish them out
+and repair damages."
+
+"Come on, thin," cried the little Irishman, and when he ran back to
+climb to the footboard of the 956, Adair climbed with him.
+
+Jackson, refreshed by his cat-naps on the coal, was sent to the rear end
+of the "01" to flag back, and in due time the special picked up the gang
+of surfacers just turning out to the day's work. An Irish foreman was in
+command, and to him Gallagher appealed, lucidly but not too gently. The
+reply was a volley of abuse and a caustic refusal to lend his men to
+the track-laying department.
+
+Gallagher turned to Adair with his red-apple face wrinkling dismayfully.
+
+"'Tis up to me to push thot felly's face in, Misther Adair; and what wid
+two nights and a day, shtandin', and wan fight wid a bully twice me
+size, I'm not man enough."
+
+Adair tossed away the stump of his cigarette.
+
+"You're quite sure that is what is needed?" he queried.
+
+"To knock a grain av sinse into thot Wicklow man?" queried Gallagher.
+"Sure, it is." And then whispering: "But not for you, Misther Adair;
+he'd ate you in two bites. L'ave me have a thry wid him."
+
+But Adair was off and fronting the surly MacMorrogh foreman.
+
+"We need a dozen of your men and some tools," he said quietly. "Do we
+get them?"
+
+"Not by a fistful!" retorted the surly one. "Maybe you think you're
+enough of a ---- ---- ---- to take 'em."
+
+"I am a better man than you are," was the even-toned rejoinder.
+
+"Prove it, then."
+
+Gallagher, leaning from his cab window, fully awake now, and chuckling
+and rubbing his hands together softly, saw the blow. It was clean-cut,
+swift as the lightning's flash, true to a finger's breadth, and the
+sound of it was as bone upon bone. At its impact the Wicklow man bounded
+into the air, arched his back like a bow, and pitched on his head in the
+ditch. When he rose up, roaring blasphemies and doubling his huge fists
+for the fray, the quiet voice was assailing him again. "Do we get the
+men and tools?"
+
+"Not--"
+
+Again the lightning-like passes of the hands, and the Wicklow man sat
+down forcibly and gasped. The Italian surfacers threw aside their picks
+and shovels and made a ring, dancing excitedly and jeering. The big
+foreman, whose scepter of authority was commonly a pick-handle for the
+belaboring of offenders, was not loved.
+
+"Kick-a da shin--kick-a da shin--he like-a da nigger-mans," suggested
+one of the Italians, but there was no need. Being safely out of range of
+the catapult fists, the foreman stayed there.
+
+"Take your track gang and be damned to you!" he snarled.
+
+Adair made a forward step and stood over him.
+
+"Are you quite convinced that I am the better man?" he asked very
+gently.
+
+"It's a trick!" growled the Wicklow man savagely. "I could get onto it
+in another whirl or two."
+
+"Get up," said the gentle voice. "You'll never have a better chance to
+learn the trick." But the foreman had the saving grace to shun
+anti-climaxes.
+
+"G'wan! Take the men, I say; all of 'em, if you like."
+
+"Thanks," said Adair pleasantly. "We'll do it, and we'll take you, as
+well--to answer for their good behavior. Let me help you up," and he
+stooped and snapped the big one to his feet as a man would collar a
+reluctant boy.
+
+"Great judgment!" gasped the foreman. "Say, Mister
+Cock-o'-the-walk--where do you hide all that muscle?" And without
+waiting for an answer he piled a dozen of his men upon the engine and
+followed them, still muttering.
+
+It was a partly surfaced ten miles over which the special train
+thundered for the third time since dawn-breaking, and Gallagher took the
+last wheel-turn out of the 956. None the less, the sun was reddening the
+western mountains when the Italians took ground at the mysterious gap.
+The rails were found in the stream, as Adair had predicted, and it was a
+work of minutes only to snake them up the embankment and to spike them
+lightly into place. But when Adair, for the healing of wounds, had
+thrust a bank-note into the hand of the Wicklow man, and the special was
+once more on its unhindered way westward, the sun had fairly topped the
+eastern range, and Johnson, the porter of the "01," was shouting across
+the rocketing tender that breakfast was served.
+
+The young man in the London-cut clothes might have climbed back to the
+car over the coal; or Gallagher would have stopped for him. But he
+elected to stay in the cab, and he was still there, hanging from the
+open window on Jackson's side, when the one-car special woke the echoes
+with its whistle, clattered in over the switches at Horse Creek, and
+came to a stand opposite the MacMorroghs' commissary.
+
+It was Brian MacMorrogh who came across the tracks to greet Adair, and,
+since this was their first meeting, he made the mistake of his life in
+calling the young director by name.
+
+"The top of the morning to you, Misther Adair. Is it Misther Colbrith
+you'd be looking for?"
+
+"It is," said Adair shortly, not failing to remark that the
+barrel-bodied, black-bearded man seemed to recognize and to be expecting
+him.
+
+"'Tis two hours gone they all are," was the oily-voiced explanation. "Up
+the grade and over to Copah. But they'll be back to-morrow, Heaven
+savin' thim, and we'll make you comfortable here--as comfortable as we
+can."
+
+"That will be quickly done," said Adair, swinging down from the engine
+step. "Just give me a horse and tell me which way they have gone, and
+I'll overtake them."
+
+But here the barrel-bodied one spread his hands helplessly.
+
+"'Tis just our luck!" he protested, in the keenest self-reproach. "There
+isn't a horse or a mule in camp that you could get a mile an hour out
+of. In fact, I'm thinking there isn't anny horses at all!"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
+
+
+Since the weather was rather threatening, and the promise of October in
+the inter-mountain region is not to be lightly trifled with, Mr.
+Colbrith pressed for an early start on the seventeen-mile buckboard
+jaunt to Copah over the detour survey.
+
+It was by his express command that the private-car party was called at
+daybreak, and that breakfast was served in the Nadia at six o'clock. And
+at seven sharp, which chanced to be the precise time of day when Adair's
+commandeered Italians were spiking the last of the displaced rails into
+position at the gap in the track thirty-three miles away, the buckboards
+were drawn up at the steps of the president's car.
+
+For reasons charitable, as well as practical, Ford had planned to leave
+Frisbie out of this second dance of attendance upon the president. The
+track-layers were well up toward the head of Horse Creek gulch, with
+Brissac to drive; but during the night the Louisianian had reported in
+with a touch of mountain fever, and Ford had asked Frisbie to go up and
+take his place.
+
+This was one of Ford's peg-drivings for the day; and another was timed
+for the moment of outsetting. For conveyances for the party there were
+the two double-seated buckboards used on the canyon trip the previous
+day, and one other with a single seat; but there were only two drivers,
+the third man, who had brought the single-seated rig from Copah, having
+been prevailed upon by Ford to disappear.
+
+Ford directed the distribution of the trippers arbitrarily, and was
+amazed when the president acquiesced without protest. Mr. Colbrith, the
+doctor's wife, and Penfield, were to go in the leading vehicle; Aunt
+Hester Adair, Miss Van Bruce, and the doctor, in the second; and Ford
+drove the single-seated third, with Miss Alicia for his companion.
+
+"I think you must have taken Uncle Sidney unawares," said Alicia, when
+the caravan was toiling at a slow footpace along the rough wagon road
+paralleling the Horse Creek grade.
+
+"You mean that he might have objected to your driver? You are a whole
+lot safer with me than you would be with one of those livery-stable
+helpers up ahead."
+
+"Oh, no; I didn't mean just that. But you know he usually plans all the
+little details himself, and--"
+
+"And the fact that somebody else plans them is sufficient excuse for a
+rearrangement. That is one of the penalties he pays for being the big
+boss," laughed Ford. Since the yesterday was now safely yesterday, and
+to-day was his own, there was no room for anything but pure joy.
+
+"You are a 'big boss,' too, aren't you?" she said, matching his
+light-hearted mood.
+
+"I was, in a way, until your uncle came over and eclipsed me."
+
+"And you will be again when Uncle Sidney moves a little farther along in
+his orbit."
+
+"That remains to be seen. There is yet plenty of time for him to abolish
+me, permanently, before he goes on his way rejoicing."
+
+"But you are not going to resign, you know," she reminded him.
+
+"Am I not?" Then he took his courage by the proper grip and went on with
+sudden gravity: "That rests entirely with you."
+
+"Mr. Ford! Aren't you a little unfair?" She did not pretend to
+misunderstand him.
+
+"I am open to convincement," he affirmed.
+
+"It is making me Uncle Sidney's executioner, on one hand; or yours, on
+the other."
+
+He pressed the point relentlessly.
+
+"There are only two horns to the dilemma: either Mr. Colbrith, or a man
+named Stuart Ford, will have to walk the official plank. Because Mr.
+Colbrith is your relative, I'm willing to be the victim. But you must
+say that it is what you wish. That is my price."
+
+"I say it is unfair," she repeated. "Why should you put the burden of
+the decision upon poor me?"
+
+"Because, if you were not concerned, there would be, to put it in good
+Hibernian, only one horn to the dilemma--and your uncle would be impaled
+upon that one."
+
+"Mercy!" she shuddered, in mock dismay. "That sounds almost vindictive.
+Are you vindictive, Mr. Ford?"
+
+"Terribly," he laughed. "The black-hearted villain of melodrama isn't a
+patch on me when I'm stirred." And then, more seriously: "But it isn't
+altogether a joke. There is another side to the thing--what you might
+call the ethical, I suppose. There are a score or so of men in the
+company's service--Frisbie and his subordinates--whose jobs hang upon
+mine. A worse man than I ever aspired to be might be loyal to his
+friends."
+
+"I wouldn't think of questioning your loyalty to your friends," she
+admitted.
+
+"Also," he went on determinately, "there is the larger question of right
+and wrong involved. Is it right for me to step aside and let an
+organized system of graft and thievery go on unchecked? I know it
+exists; I have evidence enough to go before a grand jury. I'm not posing
+as a saint, or even as a muck-raker; but isn't something due to the
+people who are paying the bills?"
+
+"Now you are involving Uncle Sidney again; and I can't listen to that."
+
+"He is innocent; as innocent as some hundreds of other narrow-minded,
+short-sighted old men whom chance, or the duplicity of the real rascals,
+puts at the head of corporations."
+
+"Yet you would make him suffer with the guilty."
+
+"Not willingly, you may be sure. Not at all, if he would listen to
+reason. But he won't. He'll stand by North till the last gun is fired;
+and while North stays, there'll be graft, big or little, as the
+opportunities warrant."
+
+Alicia held her peace while the caravan was measuring another half-mile
+of the boulder-strewn road. Then she said: "I feel so wretchedly
+inadequate to help you, Mr. Ford. I wish you could wait until you have
+talked it over with brother."
+
+"So do I. But I am afraid postponement doesn't lie with me, now. From
+your uncle's manner and from what he said to me yesterday, I can't help
+feeling that the crisis is right here. For two days Mr. Colbrith has
+been very plainly leading up to some sort of dramatic climax. I can't
+remotely guess what it is going to be; though I can guess that the plot
+isn't his."
+
+Again she took time to consider, and when she spoke they were nearing
+the scene of strenuous activities at the moving track-end.
+
+"You don't think you could postpone it?" she asked, almost wistfully, he
+thought. "I think--I hope--my brother will become interested again. It
+is your fault that he lost interest, Mr. Ford."
+
+"My fault?" reproachfully.
+
+"Certainly. You didn't give him enough to do. He was happy and contented
+while you kept him hard at work. But after the bonds were placed and the
+money raised--"
+
+"I'm a miserable sinner!" Ford confessed. "And I had promised you, too!
+But the battle has been so fierce at this end of the line; and I
+couldn't be in two places at one time. Your brother should have been
+made first vice-president, instead of North. Perhaps we can bring it
+about yet--if you don't call it all off."
+
+"There it is again," she retorted. "You are dragging me in--and trying
+to bribe me, too!"
+
+"God forbid!" he said, so earnestly that she forgave him. And then: "I
+wish your brother were here--now."
+
+"So do I," she admitted. Then she told him of the wire summons sent from
+Denver, and of the shadowy hope she had based upon it.
+
+"Where was your brother then?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know, positively. I hope he was in New York. He was to come
+over in the _Campania_, in time for the shooting at Mount Ptarmigan."
+
+"You've had no word from him?"
+
+"None."
+
+They were up with the track-layers, now, in a country of huge bare hills
+and high-lying, waterless valleys; and the president had halted the
+caravan to give his guests a chance to see a modern railroad in the
+actual throes of evolution.
+
+In a specialist in the trade, Ford's genius might have invoked
+enthusiasm. Speed was the end to which all of the young engineer's
+inventive powers had been directed; and the pace was furious. On the
+leveled grade ahead of the track-laying train an army of sweating
+laborers marched and counter-marched like trained soldiers, placing the
+cross-ties in position. On a train of specially constructed flat-cars
+another army was bolting together a long section of track, clamping the
+double line of rails at intervals to hold them to gauge. At the word,
+"Ready!" a hauling chain, passing through an anchored pulley-block far
+up the grade and back to the freed engine of the construction train, was
+made fast to the forward end of the bolted section; a second word of
+command, and the engine backed swiftly, dragging the prepared section
+off over the rollers of the flat-cars and into place on the ties. With
+the clanging fall of the final pair of rails, a third army,
+spike-drivers these, fell upon the newly placed steel, shouting their
+chantey as they swung the great pointed hammers; and in the midst of
+this fresh turmoil the train, with its brigade of bolters deftly
+preparing another section, was slowly pushed to the new front for
+another advance.
+
+"It is like clockwork," was Miss Alicia's enthusiastic comment. "Did you
+invent it, Mr. Ford?"
+
+Now the combination of flat-car bolting-table, and the shifting and
+laying by sections, was Ford's invention, but he modestly stood from
+under.
+
+"Frisbie gets the medal," he said. "It's all in the drill--every man
+knowing what he has to do, and doing it at the proper moment. I'd give
+something if I had Dick's knack in detail organizing."
+
+She looked up, laughing. "You have the funniest way of ducking to cover
+if you think a bit of honest appreciation is coming your way, Mr. Ford.
+You know you told Mr. Frisbie how to do it."
+
+"Did I? I suppose it wouldn't be polite to contradict you."
+
+"Or any use. Is Mr. Frisbie here now?--Oh, yes; there he is." And then,
+in a half-awed whisper: "Who is that dreadful, Grand-Opera-villain
+looking man he is talking to?"
+
+Ford's eyes sought and found Frisbie. He was standing a little apart
+from the turmoil, talking to a man on horseback; a man with half-closed,
+beady, black eyes, drooping mustaches, and a face reptilian in its
+repulsiveness.
+
+"That is 'Mexican George'; the MacMorrogh Brothers' 'killer'," said Ford
+evenly. "Have you ever heard of a professional man-killer, Miss Adair; a
+man whose calling is that of a hired assassin?"
+
+She shuddered. "You are jesting, I know. But the word fits his face so
+accurately. I saw him lounging about the store at the camp yesterday,
+and it gave me the creeping shivers every time I looked at him. Do you
+ever have such instantaneous and unreasoning hatreds at first sight?"
+
+"Now and then; yes. But I was not jesting about Mexican George. He is
+precisely what the word implies; is hired for it and paid for it.
+Nominally, he guards the commissary and stores, and is the paymaster's
+armed escort. Really, it is his duty to shoot down any desperate laborer
+who, in the MacMorroghs' judgment, needs to be killed out of the way."
+
+"Mercy!" Miss Alicia was shuddering again. "What hideously primitive
+conditions! What is this terrible man doing out here?"
+
+"Oh, he is a free lance; comes and goes as he pleases. No, he's not
+quarreling with Dick"--answering her look of anxiety.
+
+"How do you know he isn't?"
+
+Ford laughed. "Because Dick wouldn't let him get that near. He
+knows--Hello; I wonder what your good uncle wants of us."
+
+Mr. Colbrith was standing up in his place in the leading buckboard and
+making signals to the rear guard of two. Ford shook the reins over his
+broncos and drove around.
+
+The president was fingering his thin beard and waving an arm toward the
+track-layers.
+
+"Mr.--ah--Ford," he began critically, "is it necessary to have such a
+vast army of men as that to lay the track?"
+
+"I don't think we are over-manned," said Ford good-naturedly. It was
+comparatively easy to be patient with Alicia looking on and listening.
+
+But it was against Mr. Colbrith's principles to let a man off with a
+single rebuttal.
+
+"I am not at all convinced of the worth of these new-fangled ideas, Mr.
+Ford; not at all. We built the Pacific Southwestern main line in the
+old, approved way--a rail at a time--with less than one-quarter of the
+men you have over there."
+
+"I don't question it: and you were three years building some six hundred
+miles in a prairie country. We are to-day just six weeks out of Saint's
+Rest with the track gang, and in six more, if the weather holds, we
+shall be laying the switches in the Green Butte yards. That is the
+difference between the old way and the new."
+
+The president was turned aside but not stopped.
+
+"I understand," he objected raucously. "But your expense bills are
+something tremendous; tre-_men_dous, Mr. Ford! You have spent more money
+in three months than we spent in a full year on the main line."
+
+"Quite likely," agreed Ford, losing interest in the pointless
+discussion. "But with us, time is an object; and we have the results to
+show for the expenditure."
+
+At this, Mr. Colbrith took refuge in innuendo, as seemed to be his
+lately acquired habit.
+
+"You are very ready with your answers, Mr. Ford; very ready, indeed. Let
+us see if you can continue as you have begun."
+
+It was Miss Alicia who resented this final speech of the president's
+when the buckboards were once more in motion, following the unrailed
+grade around the swelling shoulders of the huge hills.
+
+"I think that last remark of Uncle Sidney's was rather uncalled for,"
+she said, after Ford had driven in grim silence at the tail of the
+procession for a full mile.
+
+"It is one of a good many uncalled for things he has been saying to me
+since the day before yesterday," was Ford's rejoinder.
+
+"Yet you can still assure me that you are not vindictive."
+
+"I am not--at the mere actors in the play. But I confess to an unholy
+desire to get back at the prompter--the stage manager of the little
+comedy. I am only waiting for your decision."
+
+"Please!" she said; and he saw that the blue eyes were growing wistful
+again.
+
+"I'm done," he said quickly. "I shan't put it up to you any more. I'll
+do what I think I ought to do, on my own responsibility."
+
+But now, woman-like, she crossed quickly to the other side.
+
+"No; you mustn't deprive me of my chance," she protested soberly. "After
+a little while I shall tell you what I think--what I think you ought to
+do. Only you must give me time."
+
+His smile came from the depths of a lover's heart.
+
+"You shall have all the time there is--and then some, if I can compass
+it. Now let's talk about something else. I've been boring you with this
+despicable business affair ever since you gave me leave on that
+foot-race down Plug Mountain Tuesday afternoon."
+
+"What shall it be?" she inquired gaily. And then: "Oh, I know. One day
+last summer--just as we were leaving Chicago in the Nadia--you had begun
+to tell me about a certain young woman who had money, and who was--who
+was--"
+
+"--who was without her peer in all this world," he finished for her.
+"Yes; I remember."
+
+"Do you still remember her, as you do the conversation?" she went on
+teasingly.
+
+"I have never lost a day since I first met her."
+
+"Good Sir Galahad!" she mocked. "And is she still worth all those
+sacrifices you said you would be willing to make for her?"
+
+"All, and several more."
+
+Silence for a little time, while the hoof-beats of a horse fox-trotting
+behind them drew nearer. It was the sinister-faced Mexican who ambled
+into view, and when he overtook the rearmost of the buckboards he was a
+long time in passing.
+
+"That dreadful man!" murmured Alicia; and she did not go back to the
+suspended subject until he had trotted on past the caravan. Then she
+said slowly, taking her companion's complete understanding for granted:
+"It must be delicious to be away out over one's depth, like that!"
+
+"It is," said Ford solemnly. "It's like--well, I've never been sick a
+day in my life since I can remember, but I should think it might be like
+a--a sort of beneficent fever, you know. Haven't you ever had a touch of
+it?"
+
+"Possibly--without recognizing it. Can you describe the symptoms?"
+
+"Accurately. One day I awoke suddenly to the realization that there was
+one woman, in the world: before that, you know, there had always been a
+good many, but never just one. Then I began to discover that this one
+woman was the embodiment of an ideal--my ideal. She said and did and
+looked all the things I'd been missing in the others. I wanted to drop
+everything and run after her."
+
+"How absolutely idyllic!" she murmured. "And then?"
+
+"Then I had to come down to earth with a dull, stunning swat, of course.
+There were a lot of commonplace, material things waiting to be done, and
+it was up to me to do them. Before I saw her, I used to think that
+nothing could divide time with a man's work: that there wouldn't be any
+time to divide. Afterward, I found out my mistake. Sleeping or waking,
+every day and all day, she was there: and the work went on just the
+same, or rather a whole lot better."
+
+The long drive was in its final third, and the wagon track, which had
+transferred itself to the top of the level railroad grade, admitted
+speed. By degrees the caravan became elongated, with the president still
+in the lead, the man on horseback indifferently ahead or behind, and the
+other two vehicles wide apart and well to the rear. Their isolation was
+complete when she said:
+
+"Do you want me to say that I don't recognize any of the symptoms, Mr.
+Ford?"
+
+"Do I--No! Yes!--that is, I--Heavens! that is a terrible way to put it!
+Of course I hope--I hope you are in love--with the right person. If
+you're not, I--"
+
+She was weeping silently; weeping because it would have been a sin to
+laugh.
+
+"You--called it a comedy a little while--ago," she faltered. "In another
+minute it will be a tragedy. Don't you think we are getting too far
+behind the others?"
+
+He whipped up obediently, but the horses were in no hurry. At the
+rounding of the next shouldering hill the railroad grade entered a high,
+broad valley, the swelling hills on either side dotted with the dumps
+and tunnel-openings of the Copah gold-diggers. Ford had not been through
+the upper part of the district since the previous summer of
+pathfindings, and at that time it was like a dozen other outlying and
+hardly accessible fields, scantily manned and languishing under the dry
+rot of isolation. But now--
+
+He was looking curiously across at the opposing hillsides. Black dots,
+dozens of them, were moving from ledge to ledge, pausing here and there
+to ply pick and shovel. Now and then from some one of the dry arroyos
+came the echoes of a surface shot; dynamite cartridges thrust into the
+earth to clear away the drift to bed-rock. Ford called his companion's
+attention to the activities.
+
+"See what it does to a mining country when a railroad comes within
+shouting distance," he said. "The last time I was over here, this valley
+was like a graveyard. Now you'd think the entire population of Copah
+was up here prospecting for gold."
+
+"Is that what they are doing?" she asked. Then suddenly: "Where is your
+mine?--the mine with my name?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I told you the simple truth. I don't know where it is; though I suppose
+it is up this way somewhere. Yes, I remember, Grigsby said it was on Cow
+Mountain."
+
+The hill on their side of the valley threw out a long, low spur and the
+railroad-grade driving track swept in a long curve around the spur and
+crossed over to the foot of a slope dotted with the digging manikins.
+
+"By Jove!" said Ford, still wondering. "There are twice as many
+prospectors out here as there were inhabitants in Copah the last time I
+was over. The camp ought to vote bonds and give the railroad company a
+bonus."
+
+Farther along, the grade hugged the hillside, skirting the acclivity
+where the shaft-houses of some of the older mines of the district were
+perched on little hillocks formed by their own dumps, within easy
+tramming distance of the railroad. Opposite and directly below the
+nearest of these shaft-houses the two leading buckboards had stopped;
+and the president was once more standing up and beckoning vigorously to
+the laggards in the single-seated vehicle.
+
+Ford spoke to his horses and grimaced as one who swallows bitter herbs.
+
+"I wonder what I've been doing now--or leaving undone?" he queried.
+
+He was not kept long in suspense. When they drove up, the president was
+still standing, balancing himself with a hand on the driver's seat in
+front. His thin face was working nervously and the aggressive chin
+whiskers moved up and down like an accusing finger.
+
+"Dear me!" said Alicia, under her breath; "Uncle Sidney is really angry,
+this time! What could have hap--" She glanced up at the mine buildings
+perched above the roadway and smothered a little cry. Ford's eyes
+followed hers. All across the slab-built shaft-house and the lean-to ore
+sheds was stretched a huge canvas sign. And in letters of bright blue,
+freshly painted and two feet high, ran the boastful legend:
+
+     THE LITTLE ALICIA MINE
+
+     THE ONLY PAYING PRODUCES IN THE DISTRICT
+
+     Stuart Ford & John Grigsby, Props.
+
+The white-haired old man standing in the leading buckboard was trembling
+with righteous indignation. Pointing a shaking finger at the
+incriminating sign, he broke out in a storm of accusation.
+
+"So, Mr. Ford! This is why you changed the route of the extension and
+added twelve miles to its length!" he raved. "This explains why you
+suddenly found the shorter route impracticable! Answer me sir: when did
+you become interested in this mine?"
+
+There was a little stir of consternation among the listeners; and it did
+not help matters that the man on horseback ambled up at the moment and
+drew rein behind the doctor's vehicle. Ford's hands were gripping the
+reins until the stiff leathers were crumpled into strings; but it was
+Alicia's touch on his arm that enabled him to reply coldly:
+
+"It was something over two months ago, I believe. I can give you the
+exact date when we reach Copah, though you will permit me to say that it
+is none of your business."
+
+Mr. Colbrith exploded like a hastily fired bomb.
+
+"I propose to make it some of my business! Was it before or after your
+purchase here that you decided upon the change of route? Answer me that,
+Mr. Ford!"
+
+Ford wheeled his bronchos and closed the shouting gap.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Colbrith," he said half-menacingly. "If it is your
+purpose to humiliate me before your guests, I shall drive on and leave
+you."
+
+"You don't answer my question; you can not answer it! You instructed
+your assistant to change the line of this railroad _after_ you had
+bought this mine!"
+
+[Illustration: "Answer me, sir! When did you become interested in this
+mine?"]
+
+"And if I did?"
+
+"You did. And by so doing, Mr. Ford, you diverted the company's money to
+your own personal ends as wrongfully as if you had put your hands into
+the treasurer's strong-box. In other words, you became what you have
+accused others of being--a common grafter!"
+
+Ford's face was very white, and his lips were drawn into thin lines when
+he opened them to reply. But the restraining hand was on his arm again,
+and he obeyed it.
+
+"I don't care to talk with you, about this matter or any other, here and
+now. Later on, perhaps, when you can speak without being abusive, I
+shall take the liberty of telling you what I think of you." And at that,
+he gave his horses the rein and drove on, swiftly, abruptly, leaving the
+president and his guests to follow as they would.
+
+For some minutes neither of the two in the flying buckboard could find
+words wherewith to bridge the miserable chasm so suddenly opened between
+them. Miss Alicia's eyes were tear-brightened and unfathomable; Ford's
+were hard, and there was a steely light in them. It was Alicia who spoke
+first.
+
+"I know it is not true, of course--what Uncle Sidney accused you of,"
+she offered. "But tell me how it happened?"
+
+"I don't know--unless the devil planned it," said Ford bitterly. "I
+bought the mine one day last summer when I was in Copah, without
+premeditation, without seeing it--without knowing where it was situated,
+just as I have told you. Some little time afterward, Frisbie came to me
+with the plan for the change of route. I had considered it before, but
+had made no estimates. Frisbie had made the estimates, and we decided
+upon it at once. I haven't been over here since: it wasn't necessary,
+and I had other things to do."
+
+"Did Mr. Frisbie know about your purchase of the mine?"
+
+"No. I don't think he knows of it yet. To tell the truth, I was a little
+ashamed: it was a touch of the mining fever that everybody gets now and
+then in a mining country. Dick would have guyed me."
+
+"But Mr. Frisbie must have been over the line a great many times: how
+could he miss seeing that enormous sign?" she persisted.
+
+Ford shook his head.
+
+"I venture to say that the paint isn't yet dry on that sign. It was put
+there for a purpose, and your uncle was told to look for it. Grigsby is
+just the sort of fool to jump at the chance to advertise the mine, and
+somebody suggested it and gave him the tip that the president of the
+railroad was coming in this way. Mr. North is a very careful man. He
+doesn't neglect any of the little details."
+
+The high valley was falling away into a broken gulch, and the
+railway-grade driving-path clung closer to the hillsides. At the next
+turn the town of Copah came into view, and the road became a shelf on
+the slope two hundred feet above the main street and paralleling it.
+Alicia was looking down upon the town when she said:
+
+"What shall you do?"
+
+Ford's laugh was not mirthful.
+
+"I have already done it. I shall perhaps be permitted to see you all
+safely back to the Nadia, and over the rough track to Saint's Rest. More
+than that I fancy Mr. Colbrith will not allow--and possibly not that
+much."
+
+Miss Adair was still looking down upon the town; and now Ford looked.
+Instantly he saw that something unusual was going on. Notwithstanding
+the number of men afield on the hills, the main street of the camp was
+restlessly alive. Horsemen were galloping back and forth; in front of
+the outfitting stores freighters were hastily loading their pack
+animals; at every gathering place there were knots of excited men
+talking and gesticulating.
+
+Ford was puzzled. At another time he would quickly have put the obvious
+two and two together to make the equally obvious four. But now he merely
+said: "That's curious; mighty curious. Where do you suppose all those
+people came from?"
+
+Alicia's rejoinder was not an answer to the half-mechanical query.
+
+"Mr. Ford, a little while ago I told you I must have time to consider:
+I--I have considered. You must fight for your life and your good name.
+You must make Uncle Sidney see things as they are--that they are not as
+he thinks they are."
+
+"I can't," he said stubbornly. "Your condition reverses your decision.
+If I am to fight with any hope of winning, after what has transpired
+to-day, Mr. Colbrith will have to be eliminated."
+
+He had pulled the broncos down to a walk. There was a soft thudding of
+hoofs on the yielding earth of the grade behind, but neither of them
+heard.
+
+"You are disappointing me," she protested, and now the hesitation was
+all gone. "A few minutes ago, before this miserable thing happened, you
+were telling me of your ideal ... a woman may have an ideal, too, Mr.
+Ford."
+
+"Yes?" he said eagerly.
+
+"My ideal is the knight without fear and without reproach--and also
+without limitations. He will never say, 'I can not.' He will say, 'I
+will,' and not for my sake, but because his own sense of justice and
+mercy and loving-kindness will go hand in hand with his ambition."
+
+"One word," he broke in passionately; and now the soft thudding of hoofs
+had drawn so near that the presence of the overtaking horseman might
+have been felt. "My little allegory didn't deceive you; you are the one
+woman, Alicia, dear. I didn't mean to tell you yet, though I think you
+have known it all along: I had an idea that I wanted to do something
+worthy--something big enough to be worth while--before I spoke. But you
+have given me leave; don't say you haven't given me leave!"
+
+"You have taken it," she said softly, adding: "And that is what a woman
+likes, I think. But you mustn't spoil my ideal, Stuart--indeed, you
+mustn't. You are young, strong, invincible, as my knight should be. But
+when you strike you must also spare. You say there is no way save the
+one you have indicated; you must find a way."
+
+He smiled ruefully.
+
+"You give the cup of water only to take it away again. I'd rather build
+ten railroads than to attempt to smash North and his confederates
+through your uncle. You see, I'm frightfully handicapped right at the
+start--with this mine business hanging over me. But if you say it has to
+be done, it shall be. I'll win Mr. Colbrith over, in spite of all that
+has happened; and he shall fire North and the MacMorroghs first and
+prosecute them afterward. I've said it."
+
+It was just here that the broncos shied--inward, toward the hill. Ford
+gathered the slack reins, and Miss Adair looked up and gave a little
+shriek. Noiselessly, and so close upon the buckboard that he might have
+touched either of its occupants with his rawhide quirt, rode the
+Mexican. When they discovered him he was leaning forward, his
+half-closed eyes mere slits with pin-points of black fire to mark them,
+and his repulsive face a stolid mask. Ford's hand went instinctively to
+the whip: it was the only available weapon. But the Mexican merely
+touched his flapping sombrero and rode on at the shuffling fox-trot.
+
+"That man, again!" shivered Alicia, when the portent of evil had passed
+out of sight around the next curve in the grade.
+
+But Ford's concern was deeper than her passing thrill of repulsion.
+
+"Did you notice his horse's hoofs as he went by?" he asked soberly.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"I did. He dismounted somewhere behind us and covered them with
+sacking."
+
+"What for?" she asked, shivering again with the nameless dread.
+
+"You recall what I was saying when the broncos shied: his object was to
+creep up behind us and listen. He has done it more than once since we
+left the end-of-track, and this time--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"This time he heard what he wanted to hear."
+
+Beyond the curve which had hidden the Mexican, the wagon-road left the
+grade, descending abruptly upon the town. Ford looked back from the turn
+and saw that the other two vehicles were not yet in sight.
+
+"Shall we wait for your aunt and the others?" he asked.
+
+Her smile was a sufficient reward for the bit of tactful forethought.
+
+"I'm sure we have left the conventions far enough behind not to be
+unduly terrified by them. I am not afraid to go in unchaperoned.
+Besides, I heard Uncle Sidney telling Doctor Van Bruce that our rooms at
+the hotel had been engaged for us."
+
+Ford drove carefully down the steep side street which was the approach
+to the hotel. An excited throng blocked the sidewalk, and the lobby
+seemed to be a miniature stock exchange. Single-eyed, Ford fought a
+passage through the crowd with Alicia on his arm, heeding nothing until
+he had seen her safely above stairs and in the sitting-room of the
+president's reservation, with a cheerful fire in the big sheet-iron
+stove for her comforting. Then he went down and elbowed his way through
+the clamorous lobby to the clerk's desk.
+
+"Suppose you take a minute or two off and tell me what this town has
+gone crazy about, Hildreth," he said, with a backward nod toward the
+lobby pandemonium.
+
+"Why, Great Scott! Mr. Ford--have you got this far into it without
+finding out?" was the astounded rejoinder. "It's a gold strike on Cow
+Mountain--the biggest since Cripple Creek! We've doubled our population
+since seven o'clock this morning; and by this time to-morrow.... Say,
+Mr. Ford; for heaven's sake, get your railroad in here! We'll all go
+hungry within another twenty-four hours--can't get supplies for love or
+money!"
+
+Ford turned away and looked out upon the stock-selling pandemonium with
+unseeing eyes. The chance--the heaven-sent hour that strikes only once
+in a life-time for the builders of empire--had come: and he was only
+waiting for the arrival of the president to find himself rudely thrust
+aside from the helm of events.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE DEADLOCK
+
+
+"No, Mr. Ford; there is no explanation that will explain away the
+incriminating fact. This is a matter which involves the good name of the
+Pacific Southwestern company, through its officials, and I must insist
+upon your resignation."
+
+The battle was on, with the two combatants facing each other in the
+privacy of the president's room in the Copah hotel. Since Alicia had
+made him exchange the sword of extermination for the olive branch, Ford
+was fighting on the defensive, striving good-naturedly and persistently
+to keep his official head on his shoulders.
+
+"I've admitted that it looks pretty bad, Mr. Colbrith; but you will
+concede the one chance in a hundred that no wrong was intended. I merely
+did, on the ground, what thousands of investors in mining chances do the
+world over--bought an interest in a mine without knowing or caring
+greatly into what particular mountain the mine tunnel was driven."
+
+Mr. Colbrith frowned. He was of that elder generation of masters which
+looked with cold disapproval upon any side ventures on the part of the
+subordinate.
+
+"The company has paid you liberally for your time and your undivided
+attention, Mr. Ford. No man can serve two masters. Your appointment as
+assistant to the president did not contemplate your engaging in other
+business."
+
+Ford carefully suppressed the smile which the bit of industrial
+martinetry provoked.
+
+"As to that," he said placably, "I can assure you that the gold-digging
+has been purely an investment on my part."
+
+"But an investment which you should not have made," insisted the
+president judicially. "If it had not tempted you to the breach of trust,
+it was still inexpedient--most undeniably inexpedient. An official high
+in the counsels of a great corporation should be like Caesar's
+wife--above suspicion."
+
+This time Ford's smile could not be wholly repressed. "I grant you it
+was foolhardy, in the economic point of view," he confessed. "I took a
+long chance of going ten thousand dollars to the bad. But mine-buying is
+a disease--as contagious as the measles. Everybody in a mining country
+takes a flyer, at least once. The experienced ones will tell you that
+nobody is immune. Take your own case, now: if you don't keep a pretty
+tight hold on your check-book, Mr. Colbrith, Cow Mountain will--"
+
+The president frowned again; more portentously, this time.
+
+"This levity is most reprehensible, Mr. Ford," he said stiffly. "I trust
+I know my duty as the head of a great railway company too well to be
+carried away on every baseless wave of excitement that fires the
+imagination of the mining-camp I chance to be visiting." Mr. Colbrith
+was not above mixing metaphor when the provocation was sufficiently
+great.
+
+"Baseless?" echoed Ford. "Surely you don't doubt ... Why, Mr. Colbrith,
+this strike is the biggest thing that has happened in the mining world
+since the discovery of the wedge-veins in Cripple Creek!"
+
+The president shrugged his thin shoulders as one whose mission in life
+is to be sturdily conservative after all the remainder of mankind has
+struck hands with frenzied optimism.
+
+"Nonsense!" he rasped contemptuously. "What happens? Two men come to
+town with certain rich specimens which they claim to have taken out of
+their prospect hole on Cow Mountain. That was at seven o'clock last
+night, less than twenty-four hours ago, and some two or three thousand
+lunatics have already rushed here in the belief--founded upon a mere
+boast, it may be--that a great gold reef underlies Cow Mountain. By this
+time to-morrow--"
+
+Ford took him up promptly. "Yes; and by this time to-morrow the Denver
+Mining Exchange will be howling itself hoarse over Copah mining shares,
+like those curb-stone fellows down-stairs; the hunt will be up, and
+every feeder the Pacific Southwestern system has will be sending its
+quota of gold-seekers to the new field. That isn't what you were going
+to say, I know; but it is what is going to happen. Mr. Colbrith, it's
+the chance of a century for the Pacific Southwestern company, and you
+are deliberately trying to fire the one man who can make the most of
+it."
+
+The president's lack of sense of humor made it hard for him at times. He
+was sitting very erect in the straight-backed hotel chair when he said:
+"Mr. Ford, there are occasions when your conceit is insufferable. Do you
+imagine for a moment that you are the only engineer in the United States
+who can build railroads, Sir?"
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Then perhaps you will be good enough to explain your meaning?"
+
+"It was a poor attempt at a jest," said the young man, rather lamely.
+"Yet it had the truth behind it, in a way. I predict that this is the
+beginning of one of the biggest mining rushes the world ever saw. We are
+within one hundred and forty miles of Copah with a practicable railroad;
+we are within twelve miles with a track which must be made practicable
+while the band plays. If you discharge your entire engineering corps at
+this crisis--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," interrupted the president crustily. "I have not
+asked your force to resign."
+
+"Not meaning to, perhaps," countered the young man, maliciously
+rejoicing in the hope that he had found one vulnerable link in the
+president's coat of mail. "But if I go, the entire department will go.
+Every man in it is my friend, as well as my subordinate; and they know
+very well that if they shouldn't go, your new chief would fire them and
+put in his own men."
+
+"Ha!" said the president, straightening up again. "Am I to understand
+that you are threatening me, Mr. Ford."
+
+"No, indeed; I am only stating a fact. But it is a pretty serious fact.
+Let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that my prediction comes
+true; that within thirty-six or forty-eight hours Saint's Rest is packed
+with people trying to get to Copah. Your new chief, if you shall have
+found him, will hardly be in the saddle. When he comes he will have to
+reorganize the department, break in new men, learn by hard knocks what I
+have been learning in detail--"
+
+Mr. Colbrith thrust out a thin lip of obstinate determination.
+
+"And if he does, your hypothetical rush will simply have to wait, Mr.
+Ford. We have the key to the Copah door."
+
+"Don't you fool yourself!" snapped Ford, forgetting his role of the
+humble one for the moment. "The Transcontinental is only forty miles
+away at Jack's Canyon, with a pretty decent stage road. Long before you
+can get the extension in shape to carry passengers, or even freight, the
+other line will be known from Maine to California as the keyholder to
+this district!"
+
+That shot told. The president was not yet convinced that the Copah boom
+was real; but there was the chance that it might be--always the chance.
+And to the over-cautious the taking of chances, however remote, is like
+the handling of a snake: a thing to inspire creeping horrors.
+
+"If you could convince me, Mr. Ford, that your interest in that mine did
+not influence you in changing the route of the extension," he began; but
+Ford took him up sharply. "I can't; and I can say no more than I have
+said."
+
+Mr. Colbrith got up and went to the window to look down upon the excited
+throng in the street. It did look real.
+
+"Perhaps we might leave matters as they are, pending a future
+investigation, Mr. Ford," he said, turning back to his victim, who was
+methodically clipping the end from a cigar.
+
+"No," was the brittle rejoinder.
+
+Again the president took time to look down into the crowded street. His
+next attack was from the rear.
+
+"But I have understood that you do not wish to resign. Let us be
+magnanimous, Mr. Ford, and agree to hang this matter up until this
+supposed crisis is past."
+
+"No," was the curt reply. "I have changed my mind. I don't think I want
+to work for you any longer, Mr. Colbrith."
+
+"Not if I withdrew my--ah--objections?"
+
+"No."
+
+Silence again. The packed lobby of the hotel had overflowed upon the
+plank sidewalk, and the din of the buyers and sellers rose like the
+noise of a frantic street fight. Ford's half jesting remark about the
+possibility of the microbe finding its way into the blood of the
+president was not so pointless as the old man's retort sought to make it
+appear. It was the wheat pit which had given Mr. Colbrith his first
+half-million; and as he listened to the hoarse cries, the thing which he
+hoped was safely caution-killed began to stir within him. Suddenly he
+picked a word of two out of the sidewalk clamor that made him turn
+swiftly upon the silent young man.
+
+"They are selling 'Little Alicia'--your stock--down there!" he gasped.
+"Have you--have you--"
+
+"No; I haven't put mine on the market. It's some of my partner's,
+Grigsby's, stock. I suppose he couldn't stand the push."
+
+Once more the president listened. Only an ex-wrestler in the wheat pit
+could have picked intelligence out of the Babel of puts and calls.
+
+"It's up to a hundred and fifty!" he exploded. "What did you pay for
+your shares, Mr. Ford?"
+
+"Twenty," said Ford coolly.
+
+"Good Heavens! I--I hope you hold a safe majority?"
+
+"No; we broke even, Grigsby and I. I have fifty per cent."
+
+The president groaned.
+
+"I--I'll excuse you, Mr. Ford. Get down there at once and buy that other
+necessary share!"
+
+Ford shook his head with predetermined gloom. "No, Mr. Colbrith, I'm not
+buying any more mining stock. What I did buy seems to have cost me my
+job."
+
+"But, my dear young man! This is a crisis. You are likely to lose
+control of your property! Or, at least, it is soaring to a point at
+which you will never be able to secure the control."
+
+Ford came up smiling. "You forget that this is mere mad excitement, Mr.
+Colbrith," he said, handing back the President's own phrase. "To-morrow,
+I dare say, I shall be able to buy at twenty again."
+
+The president came away from the window and sat down. His face was
+twitching and the thin white hands were tremulous.
+
+"There may be more in this gold discovery than I have been willing to
+admit," he said abstractedly, "and in that case ... Mr. Ford, upon what
+terms will you consent to go on and whip this line of ours into shape?"
+
+Ford came out of the fog of discouragement with a bound.
+
+"A complete change in the management of the Pacific Southwestern, Mr.
+Colbrith. North and his grafters must go."
+
+The President did not fly into wrathful shards, as Ford fully expected.
+On the contrary, he was fingering the white goat's-beard with one
+nervous hand, and apparently listening half-absently to the clamor in
+the street.
+
+"Don't be unreasonable, Mr. Ford," he said quite mildly. "You know we
+can't consider anything like that at the present moment."
+
+"It must be considered," Ford persisted. "Ever since I quit being a
+division superintendent, North has obstructed, lied about me, fought me.
+The time has come when, if I stay, I must have a free hand. I can't have
+it while he is out of jail."
+
+"That is strong language to apply to our first vice-president, Mr. Ford.
+And I can only believe that you are prejudiced--unduly prejudiced. But
+all this may be taken up later. As you suggest, we may be losing very
+precious time."
+
+Ford got to his feet.
+
+"Promise me that you will give the Denver management as thorough an
+investigation as you have given me, Mr. Colbrith; do that, and give me
+absolute authority over the MacMorroghs and their men for one week; and
+before the week's end we'll be hauling passengers and freight into Copah
+over our own rails."
+
+For a moment the president seemed to be on the point of yielding. Then
+his habitual caution thrust out its foot and tripped him.
+
+"I can't be pushed, Mr. Ford," he complained, with a return of the
+irritated tone. "Let the matter rest for the present. And--and you may
+consider yourself relieved from duty until I have gone a little deeper
+into these charges against you. Mr. North accuses you, and you accuse
+Mr. North. I must have time to approach those matters deliberately. I
+don't know which of you to trust."
+
+It was a deadlock. Ford bowed and laid his hand on the door.
+
+"You are still the president of the Pacific Southwestern, Mr. Colbrith,
+and while you remain president--"
+
+The old man's pride of office took fire like tow in a furnace.
+
+"What do you mean by that, Mr. Ford? Make yourself clear, sir!" he
+quavered.
+
+"I mean just this: if your niece, Miss Alicia Adair, hadn't been good
+enough to say that she will be my wife, I'd carry this thing up to the
+board of directors and do my level best to have you put where you could
+do the least harm."
+
+"You? Alicia?" the old man shrilled. And then, in an access of senile
+rage that shook him like a leaf in the wind: "I said you were
+suspended--you are discharged, sir--here and now! If you give another
+order as an official of the Pacific Southwestern company, I'll--I'll put
+you through the courts for it!"
+
+Ford opened the door and went out, leaving the president clutching his
+chair with one hand and balling the other into a shaking fist. The die
+was cast, and he had thrown a blank at the very moment when the game
+seemed to be turning his way. What would Alicia say?
+
+As if the unspoken query had evoked her, the door of her room opened
+silently and she stood before him in the corridor.
+
+"Tell me," she commanded.
+
+"We have fought it out, and I've had my beating," he said soberly. "When
+I thought I had him fairly down,--he was actually begging me to stay on
+with the company,--we got tangled up again over North, and he fired me
+bodily."
+
+"Did you--did you tell him about our--"
+
+"Yes; and that was what set off the final fireworks."
+
+She put her hands on his shoulders and made him face her squarely.
+
+"Stuart, did you lose your temper?"
+
+"I--I'm afraid I did--just at the last, you know. It's simply an
+unspeakable state of affairs, Alicia, dear! At a moment when we should
+be setting the whole world afire in a superhuman effort to flog this
+piece of construction track into shape, your uncle paralyzes
+everything!"
+
+The constraining touch of her hands became almost a caress. "What shall
+you do, Stuart? Is there nothing to be done?"
+
+He took his resolution on the spur of the moment.
+
+"Yes, thank heaven! Your uncle has got to find a printing press, or at
+least a telegraph wire, before he can make my discharge effective.
+Before he can do that, or until he does it, I'm going to pull the
+throttle wide open and race that discharge circular, if I go to jail for
+it, afterward! Who knows but I shall have time to save the day for the
+company after all? Good-by, dearest. In twenty minutes I shall be riding
+for the MacMorroghs' camp, and when I get there--"
+
+"You are going to ride back?--alone? Oh, no, no!" she protested; and the
+clinging arms held him.
+
+"Why, Alicia, girl--see here: what do you imagine could happen to me?
+Why, bless your loving heart, I've been tramping and riding this desert
+more or less for two years! What has come over you?"
+
+"I don't know; but--but--oh, me! you will think I am miserably weak and
+foolish: but just as you said that, I seemed to see you lying in the
+road with your horse standing over you--and you were--dead!"
+
+"Nonsense!" he comforted. "I'll be back here to-morrow, alive and well;
+but I mustn't lose a minute now. It's up to me to reach Horse Creek
+before the news of the gold strike gets there. There'll be a stampede,
+with every laborer on the line hoofing it for Copah. Good-by,
+sweetheart, and--may I?" He took her face between his hands and did it
+anyhow.
+
+Five minutes later he was bargaining for a saddle horse at the one
+livery stable in the camp, offering and paying the selling price of the
+animal for the two days' hire. It was a rather sorry mount at that, and
+when he was dragging it out into the street, Jack Benson, the youngest
+member of his staff, rode up, that moment in from the tie-camp above Cow
+Mountain.
+
+"Don't dismount, Jack," he ordered curtly. "You're just in time to save
+me eight or ten miles, when the inches are worth dollars. Ride for the
+end-of-track and Frisbie on a dead run. Tell Dick to hold his men, if he
+has to do it at the muzzle of a gun, and to come on with the track,
+night and day. He'll have to raise the pay, and keep on raising it--but
+that's all right. It's an order. Rush it!"
+
+Benson nodded, set his horse at the path leading up to the railroad
+grade, and spurred up the hill. Ford gave a final tug at his saddle
+cinches, put up a leg and began to pick his way down the thronged
+street in the opposite direction.
+
+Thirty seconds afterward a man wearing the laced trousers and broad
+bullion-corded sombrero of a Mexican dandy came out of his hiding-place
+behind the door of the livery stable office, thoughtfully twirling the
+cylinder of a drawn revolver.
+
+"I take-a da mustang," he said to the boy who had held Ford's horse
+during the short interview with Benson. And when the bronco was brought
+out, the Mexican, like Ford, looked to the cinches, mounted, and rode
+down the street leading to the lower mesa and the river.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+RUIZ GREGORIO
+
+
+He rode easily, as one born to the saddle, the leathers creaking
+musically under him to keep time to the shuffling fox-trot of the wiry
+little range pony. Once free of the mining-camp and out upon the mesa,
+he found a corn-husk wrapper and his bag of dry tobacco and deftly
+rolled a cigarette, doing it with one hand, cow-boy fashion. When the
+cigarette was lighted, the horseman ahead was a mere khaki-colored dot,
+rising and falling in the mellowing distance.
+
+With the eye of a plainsman he measured the trail's length to the broken
+hill range where the Pannikin emerges from its final wrestle with the
+gorges. Then he glanced up at the dull crimson spot in the murky sky
+that marked the sun's altitude. There was time sufficient--and the trail
+was long enough. He did not push his horse out of the shuffling trot. At
+the portal hills the horseman now disappearing over the rim of the high
+mesa would slacken speed. In the canyon itself a dog could not go faster
+than a walk.
+
+On the lower mesa the Mexican picked up the galloping dot again,
+holding it in view until it halted on the river bank a hundred yards
+below the entrance to the canyon. Since the water was low in the ford,
+the river bank hid the crossing, and the Mexican drew rein and waited
+for the dot to reappear on the opposite shore.
+
+A slow minute was lost; then a second and a third. The man in the corded
+sombrero and laced buckskins touched his horse's flank with a spur and
+crept forward at a walk, keeping his eyes fixed upon the point where the
+quarry ought to come in sight again. When three more minutes passed and
+the farther shore was still a deserted blank, the Mexican dug both
+rowels into his mustang and galloped down to the river, muttering curses
+in the _patois_ of his native Sonora.
+
+Apparently the closing in had been delayed too long. There were fresh
+hoof-prints in the marl of the hither approach to the shallow ford, but
+none to match them on the farther side. The Mexican crossed hastily and
+searched for the outcoming hoof-marks. The rocky bar which formed the
+northern bank of the stream told him nothing.
+
+Now it is only in the imagination of the word-smith that the villain in
+the play is gifted with supernatural powers of discernment. Ruiz
+Gregorio Maria y Alvarez Mattacheco, familiarly and less cumbrously
+known as "Mexican George," was a mere murderer, with a quick eye for
+gun-sights and a ready and itching trigger finger. But he was no Vidoeq,
+to know by instinct which of the two trails, the canyon passage or the
+longer route over the hills, Ford had chosen.
+
+Having two guesses he made the wrong one first, urging his mustang
+toward the canyon trail. A stumbling half-mile up the narrow cleft of
+the river's path revealing nothing, he began to reconsider. Drawing a
+second blank of the same dimensions, he turned back to the ford and
+tried the hill trail. At the end of the first hundred yards on the new
+scent he came again upon the fresh hoof-prints, and took off the
+brow-cramping hat to swear the easier.
+
+Two courses were now open to him; to press hard upon the roundabout hill
+trail in the hope of overtaking the engineer before he could reach the
+Horse Creek camp, or to pass by the shorter route to the upper ford to
+head him off at the river crossing. The Mexican gave another glance at
+the dull red spot in the western sky and played for safety. The
+waylaying alternative commended itself on several counts. The canyon
+trail was the shorter and it could be traversed leisurely and in
+daylight. Pressing his livery hack as he could, Ford would scarcely
+reach the crossing at the mouth of Horse Creek before dusk. Moreover, it
+would be easier to wait and to smoke than to chase the quarry over the
+hills, wearing one's pinto to the bone.
+
+Ruiz Gregorio Maria set his horse once more at the task of picking a
+path among the canyon boulders, riding loosely in the saddle, first in
+one stirrup and then in the other, and smoking an unbroken succession of
+the corn-husk cigarettes.
+
+One small cloud flecked the sky of satisfaction. His instructions had
+been explicit. If Ford should resign, quit, wash his hands of the
+Pacific Southwestern, he might be suffered to escape. If not--there was
+only one condition attached to the alternative: what was done must be
+done neatly, with despatch, and at a sufficient distance from any of the
+MacMorrogh camps to avert even the shadow of suspicion.
+
+Now the upper crossing of waylayings was within a stone's throw of the
+end-of-track yards; nay, within an amateur's pistol-shot of the
+commissary buildings. But Ruiz Gregorio, weighing all the possibilities,
+found them elastic enough to serve the purpose. A well-calculated shot
+from behind a sheltering boulder, the heaving of the body into the swift
+torrent of the Pannikin, and the thing was done. What damning evidence
+might afterward come to the light of day, if, indeed, it should ever
+come to light, would be fished out of the stream far enough from any of
+the MacMorrogh camps.
+
+Thus Ruiz Gregorio Maria y Alvarez, lolling lazily in his saddle while
+the hard-breathing mustang picked a toilsome path among the strewn
+boulders and through the sliding shale beds. He went even further: an
+alibi might not be needful, but it would be easy to provide one. Young
+Jack Benson, if no other, would know that Ford had taken one of the
+shorter trails from Copah to the camp at Horse Creek. _Bueno!_ He, Ruiz
+Gregorio, could slip across the river in the dusk when the thing was
+done, skirt the headquarters camp unseen, and present himself a little
+later at Senor Frisbie's camp of the track-layers, coming, as it were,
+direct from Copah, almost upon the heels of Senor Benson. After that,
+who could connect him with the dead body of a man fished out of a river
+twenty, fifty, a hundred miles away?
+
+There was a weak link in the chain. Ruiz Gregorio's child-like plot
+turned upon one pivot of hazard--hazard most likely to be ignored by so
+good a marksman as the "man-killer." One shot he might permit himself,
+with little danger of drawing a crowd from the mess tent and the
+sleeping shanties in the Horse Creek camp. Two would bring the men to
+their doors. Any greater number would be taken as the signal of a free
+fight needing spectators. Hence the first shot must suffice.
+
+The Mexican bore this in mind when, arriving at his post opposite the
+camp in the early dusk, he chose his ambushing boulder so near the
+descending hill trail that a stout club might have been substituted for
+the pistol. The weather promise was for a starless night, but the
+electric arc-lights were already scintillating at their mastheads in
+the headquarters railroad yard across the Pannikin. Later, when the
+daylight was quite gone and the electrics were hollowing out a bowl of
+stark whiteness in the night, Ruiz Gregorio wished he had chosen
+otherwise. The camp lights shone full upon him and on the mustang
+standing with drooped head at his elbow, and the trail on the other side
+of the boulder was in shadow.
+
+He was about to take the risk of moving farther up the hill-path to a
+less exposed lurking place, was hesitating only because his indolent
+soul rebelled at the thought of having to drag Ford's body so many added
+steps to its burial in the river, when the clink of shod hoofs upon
+stone warned him that the time for scene-shifting had passed. Pushing
+the mustang out of the line of sight from the trail, he flattened
+himself against the great rock and waited.
+
+Ford rode down the last declivity cautiously, for his horse's sake. The
+trail came out of the hills abruptly, dropping into the rock-strewn
+river valley within hailing distance of the camp. Well within the sweep
+of the masthead lights across the stream, the boulder-strewn flat was as
+light as day, save where the sentinel rocks flung their shadows; and
+promptly at the first facing of the bright electrics, Ford's horse
+stumbled aside from the path and began to take short cuts between the
+thick-standing boulders for the river. This was how the Mexican,
+instead of having his victim at a complete disadvantage, found himself
+suddenly uncovered by the flank, exposed, recognized, and hailed in no
+uncertain tones.
+
+"Hello, Mattacheco! what are you doing here?" Ford had a flash-light
+picture of the horse standing with his muzzle to the ground; of the man
+flattened against the rock. Then he saw the dull gleam of the lights
+upon blued metal. "You devil!" he shouted; and unarmed as he was,
+spurred his tired beast at the assassin.
+
+Here, then, was the weak link in Ruiz Gregorio's chain twisted to the
+breaking point at the very outset. Instead of taking a deliberate
+pot-shot at an unsuspecting victim, he was obliged to face about, to
+fire hastily at a charging enemy, and to spring nimbly aside to save
+himself from being ridden down. The saving jump was an awkward one: it
+brought him into breath-taking collision with the upjerking head of the
+mustang. When he had recovered his feet and his presence of mind, the
+charging whirlwind had dashed through the shallows of the Pannikin, and
+a riderless horse was clattering across the tracks in the railroad yard.
+
+The Mexican waited prudently to see what the camp would say to the
+single shot. It said nothing; it might have been deserted for all the
+indications there were of life in it. Ruiz Gregorio snapped the empty
+shell from his weapon, replacing it with a loaded one, and mounted and
+rode slowly through the ford. The riderless horse disappearing across
+the tracks gave him good hope that the hasty shot had accomplished all
+that a deliberate one might have.
+
+There was no dead man tumbled in a heap in the railroad yard, as he had
+hoped to find. Silence, the silence of desertion, brooded over the
+masthead arcs. Painfully the Mexican searched, at the verge of the
+river, in the black shadows cast by the crowding material cars. Finally
+he crossed over to the straggling street of the camp, walking now and
+leading the spent mustang. Silence here, too, broken only by the
+sputtering sizzle of the electrics. The huge mess tent was dark; there
+were no lights, save in the closed commissary and in the president's
+car: no lights, and not a man of the camp's crowding labor army to be
+seen.
+
+At a less strenuous moment the man-killer would have been puzzled by the
+unusual stillness and the air of desertion. As it was, he was alertly
+probing the far-flung shadows. The engineer, if only wounded, would
+doubtless try to hide in the shadows in the railroad yard.
+
+The Mexican left his horse in the camp street and made an instant search
+between and under the material cars, coming out now and again to stare
+suspiciously at the president's private car, standing alone on the
+siding directly opposite the commissary. The Nadia was occupied. It was
+lighted within, and the window shades were drawn down. Ruiz Gregorio
+could never get far from the lighted car without being irresistibly
+drawn back to it, and finally he darted back in time to see a man rise
+up out of the shadow of the nearest box-car, spring to the platform of
+the Nadia and kick lustily at the locked door. The door was opened
+immediately by some one within, and the fugitive plunged to cover--but
+not before the Mexican's revolver had barked five times with the rapid
+staccato of a machine gun.
+
+When Ruiz Gregorio, dropping the smoking weapon into its holster, would
+have mounted to put into instant action the plan of the well-considered
+alibi, a barrel-bodied figure launched itself from the commissary porch,
+and a vigorous hand dragged horse and man into the shadow of the
+stables.
+
+"Off wid you now, you blunderin' dago divvle!" gritted the MacMorrogh
+savagely. "It's all av our necks ye've put into a rope, this time, damn
+you!"
+
+The Mexican had dismounted and was calmly reloading his pistol.
+
+"You t'ink-a he's not-a sufficiently kill? I go over to da car and
+bring-a you da proof, _si_?"
+
+"You'll come wid me," raved the big contractor. "'Tis out av your clumsy
+hands, now, ye black-hearted blunderin' cross betune a Digger Indian and
+a Mexican naygur! Come on, I say!"
+
+The back room of the commissary to which the MacMorrogh led the way
+held three men; Eckstein, and the two younger members of the contracting
+firm. They had heard the fusillade in the camp street and were waiting
+for news. Brian MacMorrogh gave it, garnished with many oaths.
+
+"The pin-brained omadhaun av a Mexican has twishted a rope for all av
+us! He's let Ford come back, alive; let him get to the very dure av the
+prisident's car! Then, begorra! he must mades show himself under the
+electhrics and open fire on the man who was kicking at the dure and
+looking sthraight at him!"
+
+Eckstein asked a single question.
+
+"Did he get him? If he's dead he can't very well tell who shot him."
+
+"That's the hell av it!" raged the big man. "Who's to know?"
+
+Eckstein spat out the extinct cigar stump he was chewing.
+
+"We are to know--beyond a question of doubt, this time. Who is in the
+Nadia, besides Ford?"
+
+"The two naygurs."
+
+"No one else?"
+
+MacMorrogh shook his head. "No wan."
+
+"You are sure Mr. Adair and Brissac are out of the way?"
+
+"They got Gallagher to push them up to Frisbie's track camp in Misther
+North's car an hour before dark."
+
+"None of your men are likely to drift in from the other way up the
+line?"
+
+"Not unless somebody carries the news av the gold sthrike--and there's
+nobody going that way to carry it. The camp's empty but for us."
+
+Eckstein rose and buttoned his coat.
+
+"You have held your own strikers--the men you can depend upon: how many
+do we count, all told?"
+
+"Thirteen, counting the five av us here, and the felly that runs the
+electhric light plant."
+
+"H'm; it's a hell of a risk: thirteen men knowing what only one should
+know--and what that one should hurry to forget. But your butter-fingered
+Mexican has left us no choice. Ford knows enough now to send some of us
+over the road for life. If he got into that car alive, he must never
+come out of it alive."
+
+Brian MacMorrogh had unlocked a cupboard in the corner of the room. It
+was a well-filled gun-rack, and he was passing the Winchesters out to
+his brothers.
+
+"'Tis so," he said briefly. Then: "There's the two naygurs in the car:
+what av thim, Misther Eckstein?"
+
+Eckstein took one of the guns and emptied the magazine to make sure of
+the loading.
+
+"We are thirteen to one; the negroes don't count," he replied coldly.
+"Call in your men and we'll go and do what's got to be done."
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+THE SIEGE OF THE NADIA
+
+
+With a horse that could have been handled Ford would not have run away
+when the charge upon the Mexican failed of its purpose. So far from it,
+he tried to wheel and charge again while the man was reeling from his
+collision with the rearing mustang.
+
+But the bronco from the Copah stable, with the flash and crash of the
+pistol-shot to madden it, took the bit between its teeth and
+bolted--safely through the shallows of the stream crossing and up to the
+level of the railroad yard beyond, but swerving aside at the first of
+the car shadows to fling its rider out of the saddle. Ford gathered
+himself quickly and rolled under a car. His right arm had no feeling in
+it, whether from the shot or the fall he could not determine.
+
+The numbness had become a prickling agony when he heard the Mexican
+splashing through the river to begin his search. Ford's field of vision
+was limited by the car trucks, but he kept the man in sight as he could.
+It filled him with sudden and fiery rage to be hunted thus like a
+defenseless animal, and more than once he was tempted to make a dash for
+the engineers' quarters on the hillside above the commissary--a rifle
+being the thing for which he hungered and thirsted.
+
+But to show himself under the lights was to invite the fate he had so
+narrowly escaped. He knew Mattacheco's skill as a marksman: the Mexican
+would not be rattled twice in the same half-hour. Ford gripped the
+benumbed arm in impotent writhings.
+
+"Now, by recognizing him, I've fixed it so that he is obliged to kill
+me," he muttered. "It's my life, or his neck for a halter, and he knows
+it. The blood-thirsty devil! If I could only get to Brissac's
+bunk-shanty and lay my hands on a gun ..."
+
+There seemed to be no chance of doing that most desirable thing. The
+Mexican was now afoot and coursing the railroad yard like a baffled
+hound. Ford saw that it was only a question of minutes until his
+impromptu hiding-place would be discovered, and he began to look for
+another. The Nadia was but a short distance away, and the lighted deck
+transoms beckoned him.
+
+It was instinct rather than intention that made him duck and plunge
+headlong through the suddenly opened door of the private car at the
+glimpse of his pursuer standing beside his horse in the open camp
+street. This was why the pistol barked harmlessly. Springing to his
+feet, and leaving the frightened negro who had admitted him trying to
+barricade the door with cushions from the smoking-room seats, Ford burst
+into the lighted central compartment.
+
+It was not empty, as he had expected to find it. Two men, startled by
+the shots and the crash of breaking glass, were prepared to grapple him.
+It was Brissac, the invalided assistant, who cried, "Hold on, Mr.
+Adair--it's Ford, and he's hurt!"
+
+Ford met the involuntary rush, gathered the two in his uncrippled arm
+and dragged them to the floor.
+
+"That's in case my assassin takes a notion to turn loose on the
+windows," he panted. Then he gasped out his story while Brissac got the
+aching right arm out of its sleeve and looked for the injury.
+
+Adair listened to the story of the attempted murder awe-struck, as one
+from the civilized East had a right to be.
+
+"By Jove!" he commented; "I thought I had bumped into all the different
+varieties of deviltry since I left Denver yesterday morning, but this
+tops 'em. Actually tried to kill you in cold blood? But what for,
+Stuart?--for heaven's sake, what for?"
+
+"Because he was hired to: because his masters, the MacMorroghs, and
+their master, North, have staked their roll on this last turn of the
+cards. I know too much, Adair. The president was sent over here to get
+rid of me. That failing, word was passed down the line that I was to be
+effaced. A few hours ago this Mexican overheard me telling your sister
+what I proposed to do to North and the MacMorroghs. That's why he--Ouch!
+Roy; that is my arm you're trying to twist out of joint, man!"
+
+"It's all right," laughed the Louisianian; "it is only a crazy-bone bump
+that you got when the bronc' threw you. Say, Ford; I thought you claimed
+to know how to ride a horse!"
+
+Adair was feeling in his pockets for the inevitable cigarette case.
+
+"What he overheard you telling Alicia?" he mused. "I'm evidently two or
+three chapters behind. But no matter; this is the now; the very
+immediate now. Will your assassin keep on feeling for you?"
+
+Ford shook his head. "Not any more just at present, I guess. He has
+waited too long. That fusillade of his will have turned the entire camp
+out by this time, and the Macs don't want any inconvenient witnesses."
+
+"Witnesses?" echoed Adair. "Then you don't know--Say, Stuart; there
+isn't a white man in this camp besides us three--unless you count the
+MacMorroghs and their commissary garrison as white men. News of the
+great gold strike got here about three o'clock, and every laborer within
+hearing of it shouldered pick and shovel and lined out up the new track
+for Copah."
+
+"What!" shouted Ford. "And these dash-_dashed_ MacMorroghs didn't try
+to hold them?"
+
+"I don't know about that. I had Mr. Brissac, here, over in the '01'--I
+came across the mountain in North's car, you know--dosing him with
+things out of Doctor Van Bruce's traveling case, and trying to get him
+in shape to show me the way to Copah. After the stampede, which took all
+the four-legged horses as well as the two-legged asses, I persuaded your
+man Gallagher to hitch his engine to our car to drag us up to Frisbie's
+camp at the front. I thought Frisbie would probably be in communication
+with you. Gallagher's intentions were good, but about three miles up
+Horse Creek he ditched the car so thoroughly that we couldn't inhabit
+it; so we got out and walked back."
+
+"All of which brings on more talk," said Ford gravely. "From what you
+say, I gather that the MacMorroghs are still here. Did any one see you
+come back?"
+
+"I don't know. It was after dark when we straggled in, and we didn't
+ring any bells or blow any whistles."
+
+Ford stood up.
+
+"Does either one of you happen to have anything bigger than a
+pocket-knife in the way of a weapon?" he asked.
+
+"Why? what are you going to do?" Adair demanded.
+
+"I am going to separate you two from my highly dangerous presence," said
+Ford definitely. "The MacMorroghs' outfit of a dozen or fifteen
+cutthroat scoundrels, captained, for the moment, by Eckstein, North's
+right-hand man, are doubtless just across the way in the back room of
+the commissary. You say the camp is otherwise deserted: the MacMorroghs
+don't know that you are here; and they do know that I am, dead or alive.
+Moreover, Mattacheco has doubtless told them by this time that I saw and
+recognized him. Wherefore, it's up to them to see that I never get a
+chance to go before a grand jury."
+
+"You sit down on the floor," said Adair. He had found a cigarette and
+was crimping the end of it. "Have you a fraction of an idea that we are
+going to allow you to make a Jonah of yourself for us? Sit down, I say!
+Who's got a gun?"
+
+Brissac had crept to a window and was reconnoitering the deserted camp
+street and the commissary through a peephole in the drawn shade. As
+Adair spoke, he sprang back, tripped Ford and fell with him, crying:
+
+"Down! both of you!"
+
+At the cry there was a shot from without, and a window on the exposed
+side of the Nadia fell in shivers. There were yells of terror from the
+cook's pantry, and the two negroes came crawling through the side
+vestibule, their eyes like saucers and their teeth chattering. Ford
+jumped up and turned off the Pintsch lights; and he was barely down
+again when another shot broke a second window.
+
+"Wouldn't that jolt you?" said Adair. "They are feeling for you with
+both hands. What a heaven's pity it is that we haven't so much as a
+potato popgun among us to talk back with. What did you see, Mr.
+Brissac?"
+
+"A crowd of them bunched on the commissary porch. One of them was
+sighting a Winchester at the car when I got busy."
+
+Adair was again lamenting the lack of arms when the negro porter
+produced a pocket bulldog pistol of the cheap and uncertain sort.
+"Y-y-y-yah you is, Mistuh Charles," he stuttered.
+
+"Ah, Williams--concealed weapons? That is fifty dollars fine in your
+native Tennessee, isn't it?" Then to Brissac: "Please go to the farther
+window and mark down for me, Mr. Brissac. I don't like to have those
+fellows do all the bluffing."
+
+While the assistant was complying, a third bullet from the commissary
+porch tore high through the car, smashing one of the gas globes. Adair
+crawled to a broken window and the cheap revolver roared like an
+overloaded musket.
+
+"Good shot!" said Brissac, from his marking post. "You got one of them:
+he's down and they're dragging him inside. Now they have all ducked to
+cover."
+
+"That settles any notion of a palaver and the pipe of peace, I guess,"
+said Adair, as indifferently as if he had just brought down a clay
+pigeon. "Prophesy, Stuart: what comes next?"
+
+Ford shook his head.
+
+"They can't quit now till they are sure I am permanently obliterated;
+they have gone too far. They'll credit me with that shot of yours, and
+they will take it as a pretty emphatic proof that I still live. Hence,
+more war."
+
+"Well, what do we do? You are the captain."
+
+"Picket the car and keep a sharp lookout for the next move. Brissac, you
+take the forward end, and I'll take the rear platform. Adair, post your
+Africans in here where they'll do the most good, and see that they don't
+go to sleep on their jobs."
+
+The disposition of forces was quickly made, after which suspense set in.
+Silence and the solitude of the deserted camp reigned unbroken; yet the
+watchers knew that the shadows held determined enemies, alertly
+besieging the private car. To prove it, Adair pulled down a portiere,
+gave it bulk with a stuffing of berth pillows, and dropped the bundle
+from one of the shattered windows. Three jets of fire belched from the
+nearest shadow, and the dummy was riddled. Adair fired at one of the
+flashes, resting the short-barreled pistol across the window ledge, and
+the retaliatory shot brought Ford hurrying in from his post.
+
+"For heaven's sake, don't waste your ammunition!" he whispered. "One of
+them has gone up to the powder-house after dynamite. I heard the
+creaking of the iron door."
+
+Adair whistled softly. "Dynamite! That will bring things to a focus
+beautifully, won't it? When they have blown us up, I wonder how they
+will account to Uncle Sidney for the loss of his car?"
+
+Brissac had come running in at the sound of the firing. He missed the
+grim humor in Adair's query.
+
+"Car, nothing!" he retorted. "Better say the entire camp and everything
+in it! There's a whole box-car load of dynamite and caps out here in the
+yard--sub-contractors' supplies waiting for the freighters' teams from
+the west end. If they smash us, the chances are ten to one that there'll
+be a sympathetic explosion out yonder in the yard somewhere that will
+leave nothing but a hole in the ground!"
+
+"No," said Ford. "I gave orders myself to have that car set down below
+the junction when the Nadia came in."
+
+"So you did; and so it was," Brissac cut in. "But afterward it got mixed
+in the shifting, and it's back in the yard--I don't know just where."
+
+Adair turned to the cowering porter.
+
+"Have you any more cartridges for this cannon of yours, Williams?" he
+asked.
+
+"N-n-no, sah."
+
+"Then we have three more chances in the hat. Much obliged for the
+dynamite hint, Stuart. I'll herd these three cartridges pretty
+carefully. Back to your sentry-boxes, you two, and make a noise if you
+need the artillery."
+
+Another interval of suspense followed, thickly scored with pricklings of
+anxiety for the besieged. Then an attempt was made from the rear. Ford
+saw a dodging shadow working its way from car to car in the yard and
+signaled softly to Adair.
+
+"Hold low on him," he cautioned, when the New Yorker was at his elbow,
+"those cheap guns jump like a scared cow-pony." Then he added: "And pray
+God you don't hit what he's carrying."
+
+Adair held low and bided his time. There was another musket-like roar,
+and an instant though harmless reply from two rifles on the other side
+of the Nadia. But the dodging shadow was no longer advancing.
+
+"I've stopped him for the time being, anyhow," said Adair, exulting like
+a boy. "If we only had a decent weapon we could get them all, one at a
+time."
+
+"This was crude," Ford commented. "Eckstein will think up something
+better for the next attempt."
+
+It was a prophecy which found its fulfilment after another sweating
+interval of watchfulness. This time it was Brissac who made the
+discovery, from the forward end of the Nadia. The nearest of the
+material cars was a box, lying broadside to the private car on the next
+side-track but one. From behind the trucks of the box-car a slender
+pole, headed with what appeared to be an empty oyster tin, and trailing
+a black line of fuse, was projecting itself along the ground by slow
+inchings, creeping across the lighted space between the two cars.
+Brissac promptly gave the alarm.
+
+"This is where we lose out, pointedly and definitely," predicted Adair,
+still cheerful. "Anybody want to try a run for it?"
+
+It was Ford who thought of the two negroes.
+
+"Tell them, Roy," he said to Brissac. "Perhaps they would rather risk
+the rifles."
+
+Brissac crept back to the central compartment, and the two watchers
+marked the progress of the inching pole, with its dynamite head and the
+ominous black thread of communication trailing like a grotesque horn
+behind it. At the crossing of the intervening track it paused, moving
+back and forth along the steel like a living thing seeking a passage.
+Finally the metallic head of it appeared above the rail, hesitated, and
+came on slowly. At that moment there was a shout, and the two negroes,
+hands held high, tumbled from the opposite step of the Nadia and ran
+toward the commissary stables. Three shots bit into the silence, and the
+fat cook ran on, stumbling and shrieking. But the man Williams stopped
+short and fell on his face, rolling over a moment later to lie with arms
+and legs outspread.
+
+"God!" said Ford, between his set teeth; "they saw who they were--they
+couldn't help seeing! And there was no excuse for killing those poor
+devils!"
+
+But there was no time for reprisals, if any could have been made. When
+Brissac rejoined the two in the forward vestibule, the stiff-bodied
+snake with its tin head and trailing horn was crossing the second rail
+of the intervening siding.
+
+"We've got to think pretty swiftly," suggested Adair, still cool and
+unruffled. "I might be able to hit that tin thing at this short
+distance, but I suppose that would only precipitate matters. What do you
+say?"
+
+Ford could not say, and Brissac seemed to have become suddenly petrified
+with horror. He was staring at the lettering on the box-car
+opposite--the one under whose trucks the dynamiters were hiding.
+
+"Look!" he gasped; "it's the car of explosives, and they don't know it!"
+Then he darted back into the Nadia's kitchen, returning quickly with a
+huge carving-knife rummaged from the pantry shelves. "Stand back and
+give me room," he begged; and they saw him lean out to send the
+carving-knife whistling through the air: saw it sever the head from the
+stiff-bodied snake--the head and the trailing horn as well.
+
+"Good man!" applauded Adair, dragging the assistant engineer back to
+safety before any of the sharpshooters had marked him down. "Where did
+you learn that trick?"
+
+"It is my one little accomplishment," confessed the Louisianian. "An old
+Chickasaw chief taught me when I was a boy in the bayou country."
+
+The peril was over for the moment. The severed pole was withdrawn, and
+for what seemed like an endless interval the attack paused. The three
+besieged men kept watch as they might, creeping from window to window.
+Out under the blue glare of the commissary arc-light the body of the
+negro porter lay as it had fallen. Once, Ford thought he heard groans
+from the black shadow where the fat cook had disappeared, but he could
+not be sure. On the other side of the private car, and half-way between
+it and the forty-thousand-pound load of high explosives, the petard
+oyster-tin lay undisturbed, with the carving-knife sticking in the sand
+beside it.
+
+"What will they try next?" queried Adair, when the suspense was again
+growing intolerable.
+
+"It is simple enough, if they happen to think of it," was Ford's
+rejoinder. "A few sticks of dynamite in a plugged gas-pipe: cut your
+fuse long enough, light it, and throw the thing under the car. That
+would settle it."
+
+Adair yawned sleepily.
+
+"Well, they've got all night for the inventive part of it. There's no
+rescue for us unless somebody--a good husky army of somebodies--just
+happens along."
+
+"The army is less than eight miles away--over at Frisbie's camp," said
+Ford. "With Dick to lead them, the track-layers would sack this place in
+about five minutes. If I could only get to the wire!"
+
+Brissac heard the "if."
+
+"Let me try to run their picket line, Ford," he said eagerly. "If I can
+get around to our quarters and into the telegraph tent--"
+
+"You couldn't do it, Roy. There is the proof of it," pointing to the
+body of the slain negro. "But I have been thinking of another scheme.
+The track-camp wire is bracketed across the yard on the light-poles. I
+have my pocket relay. I wonder if we could manage to cut in on that
+wire?"
+
+"Wait a minute," Brissac interrupted. He was gone but a moment, and when
+he returned he brought hope with him.
+
+"The wire is down and lying across the front vestibule," he announced
+excitedly. "They must have cut it up yonder by the telegraph tent and
+the slack has sagged down this way."
+
+"Which gives us a dead wire without any batteries," said Ford gloomily;
+and then: "Hold on--aren't there electric call-bells in this car,
+Adair?"
+
+"Yes, several of them; one in each state-room."
+
+"Good! that means batteries of some sort," said Ford. "Rummage for
+them, Brissac, while I get that wire in here."
+
+The wire was successfully pulled in through the front vestibule without
+giving the alarm. Ford twisted it in two when he had enough of it to
+reach the central compartment. Adair did sentry duty while the two
+technicians wrought swiftly. The bell battery was found, the ground
+connection made with a bit of copper wire stripped from one of the
+state-rooms, and Ford quickly adjusted the delicate spring of the tiny
+field relay.
+
+What he feared most was that the few dry-cells of the bell battery would
+not supply the current for the eight miles of line up Horse Creek. For a
+time, which lengthened to dragging minutes, the anxious experimenters
+hung over the tiny field instrument. The sensitive magnet seemed wholly
+dead. Then, suddenly, it began to tick hesitantly in response to Ford's
+tapping of the key.
+
+"Thank God, the battery is strong enough," he exclaimed. "Now, if there
+is somebody within hearing at Frisbie's end of the line ..."
+
+He was clicking persistently and patiently, "E-T," "E-T," "E-T,"
+alternating now and then with the Horse Creek call and his own private
+code letter, when Adair came up from his post at one of the rear
+windows. The golden youth was the bearer of tidings, but Ford held up
+his hand for silence: some one was breaking in to reply from
+Frisbie's--Frisbie, himself, as the minimized tickings speedily
+announced.
+
+Ford snipped out his call for help in the fewest possible words:
+
+     Arm M'Grath's gang and bring it by train to Horse Creek, quick.
+     MacMorroghs are trying to dynamite us in the Nadia.       FORD.
+
+Almost without a break in the insect-like tickings the reply came:
+
+     Stand them off; help coming.
+
+The thing done, the master workman in Ford snatched at the helm.
+
+     Did you catch and hold the pick-and-shovel men from this camp?
+
+he clicked anxiously.
+
+     Got them all herded here and ready to go back to work--for more
+     pay,
+
+answered Frisbie; and Ford ticked one more word, "Hurry," and closed the
+key with a sigh of relief. Then, and not until then, Adair said: "Is
+that all, for the present? If it is, I'm sorry to have to report that
+the beggars outside have hit upon your gas-pipe scheme. They are rolling
+a round, black thing with a string attached down upon us from the
+commissary. The slant of the hill is just enough to keep it coming where
+the ground is smooth."
+
+From sheer force of habit, Ford disconnected his field telegraph, cased
+and pocketed it. Then there was an instant adjournment to the rear
+windows on the camp side. Happily, the rolling bomb was as yet only on
+the way. Pebbles and roughnesses intervened here and there to stop or to
+turn it aside, and since it was out of reach of their longest pole, the
+dynamiters would start it on again by throwing stones at it.
+
+Hereupon ensued a struggle which, under other conditions, would have
+figured as horse-play. One after another the three men in the car heaved
+cushions, pillows, obstructions of any sort, in the path of the rolling
+menace. And behind the commissary barricade the dynamiters patiently
+twitched the bomb by the firmly fastened fuse this way and that to avoid
+the obstacles, or sent it forward under the impact of well-directed
+missiles.
+
+Ford was the first of the three to recognize the futility of the cushion
+barricades.
+
+"They'll beat us--they'll drop it in the ditch right here under us in
+spite of fate!" he juried. "Brissac: go and break the glass in the
+accident tool-case and bring me the ax, quickly!" And when he had it;
+"Now get me a piece of that telegraph wire and bend a hook on the end
+of it--jump for it; you'll have to twist it off with your fingers!"
+
+With an energy that made no account of the lamed arm, Ford tore up the
+carpet and fell to work fiercely, cutting a hole through the car floor;
+while Brissac broke a piece from the wire and bent a finger-shaped hook
+on the end of it. Adair, with his eye at a hole in a window shade, gave
+his attention to the attack.
+
+"They are getting it here, slowly but surely," he reported. "It is going
+to roll under us just about where you are.... Now it has gone past my
+line of sight." And a moment later, in the same drawling monotone: "They
+have lighted the fuse, but there is a good long string of it to burn
+through. Take your time--" then, with a sudden failure in the monotone:
+"No, by Jove! you can't take your time! The fire is jumping across the
+road to beat the band!"
+
+The hole was opened through the floor, and Ford was on his stomach with
+his face and an arm in the aperture, fishing desperately for the loop in
+the fuse. It was his success, his sudden drawing of the loop up into the
+car, that had shocked Adair out of his pose. Brissac was ready with the
+ax, and the instant the loop appeared it was severed, the burning end
+cast off, and the other end, with the bomb attached, was safely drawn up
+into the car.
+
+The perspiration was running from Ford's face in streams when he had
+the engine of death securely in his hands.
+
+"Take it, Roy," he gasped. "Drop it into the water-cooler. That will be
+the safest place for it if they fall back on the gun-play."
+
+As if his word had evoked it, a storm of rifle bullets swept through the
+car, smashing windows, breaking the remaining gas globes and splintering
+the wood-work. Again and again the flashes leaped out of the surrounding
+shadows and the air was sibilant with whining missiles.
+
+Brissac had the infernal machine: at first he fell upon it and covered
+it with his body; afterward he crawled with it into the nearest
+state-room and muffled it in a roll of berth mattresses.
+
+When the storm ceased, as suddenly as it had begun, they crept together
+in the vestibule farthest from the commissary lead-hurling volcano to
+count the casualties.
+
+There was none; not even a bullet score or a splinter-wound to show for
+the hot bombardment, though the side of the Nadia facing the commissary
+was riddled.
+
+"I'm believing all I've ever read about its taking a hundred pounds of
+lead to kill one man in a war battle," said the New Yorker, grimly
+humorous to the last. "How do you two C. E.'s account for it?"
+
+"We don't," said Ford shortly. "We're merely thankful that all
+humankind habitually shoots high when it's excited or in a hurry."
+
+[Illustration: Brissac hurled the skillet like a clumsy discus]
+
+Then he sprang afoot, secured his ax, and sent Brissac to the pantry to
+rummage for other weapons. "A rush is the next thing in order," he
+suggested; and they prepared as they could to meet it.
+
+But the rush did not come. Instead of it, one man, carrying what
+appeared to be a bundle of dripping rags, came cautiously into the open
+and approached the shattered car. The night wind sweeping down from the
+upper valley was with him, and the pungent odor of kerosene was wafted
+to and through the broken windows.
+
+"Oho!" said Adair. "Having safely shot you dead or disabled, they are
+now going to give you Christian burial, Ford. Also, they will
+comfortably obliterate all the marks and scars of this pleasant
+evening's diversion. How near shall I let him come before I squander one
+of the two remaining cartridges on him?"
+
+"Wait," said Brissac in a half-whisper. In his second pantry rummaging
+he had found nothing more promising than a cast-iron skillet--promising
+because it had weight and a handle to wield it by. The intending
+incendiary was no more than a few yards from his goal when Brissac rose
+up opposite the nearest shattered window and hurled the skillet like a
+clumsy discus. His aim was true to a hand's-breadth: a bullet from
+Adair's pistol could have done no more. With a cry that was fairly
+shogged out of him by the impact of the iron missile, the man flung away
+his burden, dropped in his tracks and lay groaning.
+
+They looked for another storm of lead to follow this, and hugged the
+floor in readiness for it. When it did not come, Ford crept to the hole
+in the car floor and listened long and intently. Half an hour he had
+given Frisbie to get his track-layers together, and to cover the eight
+miles of rough-laid rails with the construction train. What was delaying
+him?
+
+"You said Gallagher ditched your car: did it block the track?" he asked
+of Adair.
+
+"It did, didn't it, Brissac?" was the answer, and the assistant
+confirmed it.
+
+"Then that is why Frisbie can't get to us. Was Gallagher's engine still
+on the rails?"
+
+"It was."
+
+Ford sat up and nursed his knees. "Dick will make a way if he can't find
+one ready made. But it may take hours. Meanwhile, if these devils have
+scouts out--"
+
+"Yes?" said Adair.
+
+"They'll bring the warning, and there won't be much more time wasted in
+experiments. They can do us up, if they get right down to business."
+
+"What are they doing now?" Adair asked of Brissac, who was on watch on
+the commissary side.
+
+"I'll be hanged if I know. It looks like a young cannon, and it's
+pointed this way. By George! it's coming--coming by its all alone, too!"
+
+By this time they were all watching the new menace. Brissac's
+description fitted it accurately; a cylindrical object mounted upon a
+pair of small wheels taken from the commissary store-room truck. It came
+toward the Nadia by curious surges--a rush forward and a pause--trailing
+what appeared to be a long iron rod behind it.
+
+Ford hit upon the explanation. The cylindrical thing was another
+gas-pipe bomb; the iron tail was a smaller pipe containing and armoring
+the fuse, and serving also as the means of propulsion. They were
+coupling on additional lengths of the fuse-carrying pipe as they were
+needed; hence the jerking advances and pauses.
+
+Adair's low laugh was as care-free as ever.
+
+"A practical illustration of the tail wagging the dog," he remarked.
+"But the dog will wag us good and plenty when they get him where they
+want him. You can't fish that thing up through the hole with your
+wire--or crop the tail."
+
+"No; it's a run for it, this time," said Ford, rising and stripping his
+coat.
+
+But Brissac was pointing to three or four men dodging from shadow to
+shadow under the masthead lights and circling wide to tighten the line
+of circumvallation.
+
+"We shan't run very far," he commented.
+
+It seemed a hair-graying age to the watchers at the Nadia's windows
+before the men behind the commissary barricade got their infernal
+machine placed to their liking. They stared at it, all three of them,
+fascinated, deaf and blind to all else. A minimized shudder as of
+drumming wheels or escaping steam was in the air when they saw the flare
+of the match that betokened the firing of the fuse, but no one of the
+three heard it.
+
+It was when the sputtering line of fire had buried itself in its tube
+that they became suddenly alive to the unbelievable fact that a
+locomotive was thundering down the yard on the Nadia's track. A rifle
+cracked; then another and a third; but the engine came on as if its
+driver bore a charmed life.
+
+Surely Michael Gallagher must have prayed to the saints that night. He
+did not know that the very seconds had become priceless: he knew only
+that Frisbie had sent him on ahead to snake the president's car out of
+the Horse Creek yard as quickly as possible. Yet if he could have seen
+the bomb and the sputtering fuse, he could not have slowed more deftly
+to let the automatic couplers clutch each other, nor, at the touch and
+clamp, could he have reversed and gathered headway with greater skill.
+
+The three occupants of the Nadia staggered to their feet as the private
+car lunged ahead in the grasp of the big engine, increasing speed with
+every wheel-turn. Mechanically, and as one man, they rushed to the rear
+platform. The mock cannon stood where it had been thrust; but in the
+camp street a handful of men were wrestling madly with the pipe
+fuse-carrier, breaking it, wrenching it in pieces, and stamping futilely
+upon the snake-like thing hissing and spitting under their feet.
+
+"Look!" sobbed Adair. "They know--they've discovered that box-car! Oh,
+why in the name of the pitiful Christ don't they drop it and run?"
+
+This from the man who had laughed, and aimed and fired and laughed
+again, in the heat of battle. But Ford's rejoinder was the bitter
+malediction of the defeated industry captain. "Damn their worthless
+lives!" he stormed. "In the next half-minute the Pacific Southwestern
+stands to lose a quarter of a million dollars!"
+
+It was but a vanishing glimpse that they had of the handful of madmen
+stamping and dancing under the masthead light in front of the
+commissary; a glimpse withdrawing swiftly into a dim perspective as the
+Nadia was whisked around the curve and up the Horse Creek grade.
+
+It was after Gallagher had picked up the lights of the waiting train of
+armed track-layers, and was whistling to announce his success, that the
+end came. For the three watchers on the rear platform of the president's
+car the little constellation of arc-stars in the valley below was
+suddenly blotted out in a skyward belching of gray flame; a huge
+volcano-burst of momentarily illuminated dust. Instinctively they
+braced themselves for the concussion that followed,--a bellowing
+thunderclap and a rending of earth and air that shook the surrounding
+hills and drowned the shriek of Gallagher's whistle.
+
+A blast of air, down-drawn from the heights to fill the dreadful vacuum,
+was still rocking the stopped car when Frisbie climbed nimbly to the
+railed rear platform and swung his lantern to light the faces of the
+three men braced in the doorway.
+
+"A close call, gentlemen," was his only comment; and then he appealed
+briefly to Ford for orders.
+
+"Back us down slowly," said Ford shortly, "and follow with your train.
+We may need the men."
+
+Frisbie went forward through the wrecked private car, returning
+presently to flag Gallagher along with the lantern swung over the
+railing. Down in the valley of the Pannikin the heavy, sickening fumes
+of the burned explosives hung in the air, and when the car swung in on
+the straight line the red glare of a wrecked and burning oil tank
+lighted the scene.
+
+The camp site was blankly unrecognizable. Where the ten-tracked yard had
+been there was a vast depression, half-filled with distorted steel and
+debris indescribable, twisted iron and splintered wood, with the water
+from the river pouring into it. The commissary buildings and the
+surrounding bunk-shanties were gone, swept away as with the stroke of a
+mighty broom; and the trees on the hill-sides above were scorched and
+shriveled as if a forest fire had blasted them.
+
+Frisbie was the first to speak after he had flagged Gallagher to a stand
+on the farthermost edge of the devastation.
+
+"Any use to turn out the crew and hunt for them?" he asked.
+
+Ford shook his head.
+
+"No. Leave M'Grath and a few others to stand guard and to flag the
+incoming steel trains, and let's get out of this. I'm sick; and so is
+Mr. Adair."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+THE STAR OF EMPIRE
+
+
+A week, the most strenuous week in Copah's history, had passed, and
+still the president's party delayed its return to what Miss Priscilla
+Van Bruce constantly referred to as "civilization"; though the Farthest
+West has always been slow to admit the derogatory comparison which the
+word implies.
+
+During the strenuous week much had happened, and much more was scheduled
+to happen. For one twenty-four-hour day the ex-speculator in Mr.
+Colbrith held out against the sharp attacks of the reawakened lust of
+conquest. Then, from Jack's Canyon on the Transcontinental, from
+men-clustered construction trains on the extension, over the passes from
+Summit Lakes, and across the brown plains from Green Butte, poured the
+army of gold-seekers, and the president was swept away and into the very
+vortex of the stock-jobbing whirlpool.
+
+It was not until the third day of the week that Adair came ambling into
+Copah, riding a cart mule from Frisbie's camp. To his sister and his
+aunt the young man told everything; to his uncle nothing. Between gasps
+in the speculative frenzy Mr. Colbrith found time to complain bitterly
+to his nephew of Ford's defection.
+
+"It was dastardly!" he shrilled. "We had some words; I don't deny that
+we had some words. But he was most unreasonable. He should have gone
+about his business and let me have time to consider. Here are thousands
+of people pouring into this place, everything at famine prices, no
+supplies for our miners, no railroad to bring them. What's this I hear
+about an accident at Horse Creek? Why isn't Ford on the ground attending
+to his railroad building and straightening things out? Have I got to
+forfeit the money-making chance of a lifetime and go and drag that track
+into Copah with my own hands?"
+
+Adair seemed suddenly to have lost his tongue, which was certainly glib
+enough ordinarily. All he would say was that the engineering department
+was still at work, he believed; that the track was approaching Copah,
+slowly, perhaps, but pretty surely.
+
+"But without a head!" snapped the irate president. "Ford is a traitor to
+the company. Tell him so from me, sir, if you know where he is
+skulking."
+
+Adair did tell Ford, circumstantially, when he rode the cart mule out of
+town the next morning and met the young engineer at the head of a
+tremendously augmented track force, rushing the rails around the
+swelling hills on the approach to the mining-camp-city.
+
+"Oh, he's still up in the air," laughed the director, when he had
+repeated the president's wrathful outburst. "Frantic because the road
+isn't finished; frantic because he can't get in on all the ground-floors
+in all the mining deals; frantic some more because he has to live in a
+shack hotel while he has a private car and a good cook, as he thinks,
+only a few miles away. Which reminds me: the '01' has a pretty good
+cook, and the incomparible Johnson,--don't let them escape. Have you
+sent the Nadia back to Denver for repairs?"
+
+"Yes; Frisbie went over in it this morning."
+
+"Frisbie?"
+
+"Yes, I had to let him go. Word came from Leckhard as soon as we got the
+wire reestablished, which was late last night. North was taken suddenly
+ill the day after the explosion. He resigned at once by wire to the
+executive committee in New York, and two days later he took a steamer
+from Galveston for nobody knows where; health trip--doctor's
+orders--Leckhard said. I sent Frisbie over to be acting manager of the
+system, pending the president's--er--recovery from _his_ sudden illness.
+Leckhard says the New York people are burning the wires trying to get
+word to Mr. Colbrith."
+
+"They may go on burning them," said Adair calmly. "Uncle Sidney isn't
+going to quit until he owns a good half of the Copah district--or gets
+his armature burned out. And if he were ready to quit, we shouldn't let
+him. But how are things working out on the extension?--that is what
+interests me."
+
+"Bully!" was the enthusiastic reply. "We're spending money like water;
+paying anything that's asked; and even then the men come and go like a
+torchlight procession. But we are keeping the surfacing gangs neck-full
+the entire length of the line, and Leckhard has already organized his
+regular train service over the first hundred miles. That puts us on an
+even footing with the Transcontinental at Jack's Canyon, and the tide is
+fairly turned our way. When we lay the rails into Copah,--which will be
+the day after to-morrow, if nothing pulls in two,--the first through
+passenger train, with the '01' in tow, will be right behind us. Does the
+report satisfy you?"
+
+"Your word fits it: it's bully."
+
+"Then I want my reward. When am I to be allowed to chase in and pay my
+respects to your--er--aunt, and--and Miss Alicia?"
+
+Adair laughed.
+
+"My--er--aunt!" he mocked. "Much you care about Aunt Hetty. And I've a
+thing or two to say about Alicia. Who gave you leave to fall in love
+with my little sister, I'd like to know?"
+
+"She did," retorted Ford brazenly. "Don't tell me you are going to try
+to kick it over at this late day. You can't, you know."
+
+Adair tilted his hat to the back of his head and thrust his hands into
+his pockets.
+
+"I'm no such wild ass of the prairies," he declared. "But, my good
+friend, you don't come into town till you bring your railroad with you.
+I know how it will be: you'd linger for just one more last fond
+farewell, and about that time Uncle Sidney would drop in on you
+unexpectedly. Then there'd be a family row, after which my Pacific
+Southwestern stock wouldn't be worth a whoop. No; you wait till I get
+Uncle Sidney safely where I want him--properly in the nine-hole, and
+then I'll flag you in."
+
+The chance for which the golden youth was waiting and working climaxed
+on the day the extension rails came down the hill-side grade above the
+town--a town now spreading into a wilderness of hastily built and
+crowding structures. It was a simple pit he had digged for an old man
+suddenly gone mad with the fever of mine-buying. From picking up stock
+in a score of prospects, Mr. Colbrith had hedged by concentrating his
+heavy investments in six or seven of the most promising of the partly
+developed properties. Then, to make assurance reasonably sure, he had
+sprung the modern method of combination upon his fellow stock-holders in
+the producing mines. The promising group was to be merged in one giant
+holding corporation, strong enough to control the entire Copah
+situation.
+
+But there were obstacles in the way; obstructions carefully placed, if
+the truth must be told, by an unscrupulous young manipulator in the
+president's own household. The Little Alicia was in the group, was the
+keystone in the combination arch, as it chanced, and unhappily Grigsby
+had parted with a grievous block of his share of the stock--a block
+which could neither be recovered nor traced to its present holder. Not
+to make a mystery of the matter, the certificates were safely locked in
+a safety-deposit box in the vault of the Bank of Copah, and the key to
+the box rattled in Adair's pocket. And because the Little Alicia could
+not be included, three other necessary votes were withheld when the
+president tried to get action.
+
+Mr. Colbrith was in despair. A good many of his investments were
+palpably bad; and they could be recouped only by the backing of the
+combination. And the combination obstinately refused to combine unless
+the Little Alicia could be gathered in. At the end of the ends Mr.
+Colbrith appealed to his nephew.
+
+"You know where Ford is," he began accusingly. "You needn't deny it. I
+was in hopes we wouldn't have to ask him to sell us more than one share
+of his stock, which he couldn't decently refuse to do if we let him set
+his own price. But since we can't trace that block that Grigsby let go,
+we must have nearly all of Ford's. Find him: get his stock if you have
+to pay twice par for it. If you don't, I--I shall be the heaviest loser
+in this camp, Charles Edward." It was gall and wormwood to the old man,
+but it had to be swallowed.
+
+"So you are coming around to ask a favor of Ford?" said the young man
+unfeelingly. "He won't help you out. You mustn't forget that you kicked
+him out of the family; or rather you kicked him to prevent his getting
+into it."
+
+"But think of the profit to him!" protested the president. "He paid only
+twenty cents for his half of the Alicia; he told me so himself. At two
+hundred he'd clear ninety thousand; a magnificent amount for so young a
+man!"
+
+"Ford doesn't care anything about money. You can't move him that way."
+
+"Well, then, find him for me and I'll--I'll apologize," said Mr.
+Colbrith, pressed now to the last extremity.
+
+"He doesn't want your apologies, Uncle Sidney. Your little tiff was
+between man and man, and he'd never think of holding you accountable for
+anything you were foolish enough to say."
+
+"Then what in heaven's name does he want?"--irascibly.
+
+"Oh, a lot of things: reinstatement; your order to investigate the
+Denver management; a chance to build his railroad unmolested; and, as a
+side issue, a chance to whitewash your administration of Pacific
+Southwestern by conducting the house-cleaning in your name--this last
+because he thinks something of the family honor. He doesn't have to
+consider us, you know. At the next annual meeting he can elect Brewster
+president over your head: then you will have to stand for all the
+grafting and deviltry that will be unearthed."
+
+The ground for this duel between President Colbrith and the determined
+young pace-setter was the lobby of the tar-paper-covered hotel, cleared
+now of the impromptu mining-stock exchange, which had moved into
+permanent quarters. The old man rose stiffly and stood grasping the
+chair-back.
+
+"The same reckless charges against Mr. North and his subordinates--and
+now _you_ are making them!" he rasped. "They are groundless; groundless,
+I tell you!"
+
+Adair looked at his watch, listened a moment as for some expected sound
+from out-of-doors, and motioned toward the vacated chair.
+
+"Sit down, Uncle Sidney, and let me tell you what happened at Horse
+Creek camp a week ago last night," he said evenly; and then he told the
+story of the attempt upon Ford's life, of the siege of the Nadia, of the
+terrible catastrophe which had involved all three of the MacMorroghs,
+the commissary staff, Eckstein, and the headquarters camp. When he
+finished, the president was shaking as if from a chill. Yet one thread
+of the strong strand of loyalty still held.
+
+"It was horrible--fiendish!" he shuddered. "But it was the MacMorroghs'
+fight. It does not necessarily incriminate North."
+
+"It does," said Adair, in the same even tone. "I told you that we left a
+few men at the wrecked camp to warn the incoming material trains. They
+found a single survivor of the thirteen men who tried to destroy us and
+the Nadia. It was Eckstein, North's secretary, and before he died he
+amply confirmed all of our guesses. They had plotted to have you quarrel
+with Ford. Ford had bought his half of the Little Alicia without any
+prompting, but from that as a starting point the entire scheme was
+worked up. The MacMorroghs' bookkeeper, a man named Merriam--who is at
+present in Copah, and whose deposition I have had taken before a justice
+of the peace--was detailed to win Frisbie over to the change of
+route--no difficult thing, since the change was for the better. But
+Merriam's part was chiefly to keep Frisbie from finding out anything
+about Ford's mine; which he did. Am I making it clear?"
+
+The president bowed his head.
+
+"Then, when you came West on your inspection trip, the trap was sprung.
+You were told that Ford had been doing a dishonorable thing, and you
+were urged to come over here and see for yourself. To make sure that
+there should be no slips, Penfield was sent with you, ostensibly as
+your acting secretary, but really as a spy--"
+
+"Oh, no; I can't think that of young Penfield," protested the president.
+
+"I say yes; and the proof is that Penfield has confessed. He was scared
+into it when I told him what had happened at Horse Creek and gave him
+his choice of telling me what he knew, or going to jail. Then I came on
+the scene at the inopportune moment, and after North had carefully
+issued instructions intended to delay me as much as possible, he sent
+Eckstein in post-haste by way of Jack's Canyon and the stage trail to
+get ahead of me. You see, he was afraid to trust matters to Penfield,
+who would most certainly have stopped short of the desperate measures
+Eckstein and the MacMorroghs finally took. It was decided at a council
+in which Penfield was present, that Ford's elimination must go through.
+If you didn't quarrel with him and drop him, he was to be murdered."
+
+Mr. Colbrith was silent for a long minute after Adair ceased speaking.
+Then he looked up to say: "What was Ford doing at Horse Creek that
+night? He had left me only a few hours before; and, as I have said, we
+had--we had some words."
+
+Adair smiled. "He was about to begin doing what he has been doing ever
+since: flogging the extension into shape night and day to get it ready
+to carry passengers and freight. He conceived it to be his duty--to you
+as well as to the other stock-holders. And he _has_ flogged it into
+shape. Look out of that window, Uncle Sidney!"
+
+A long passenger train, crowded to the platforms, and with the private
+car "01" in tow, was winding down the grade of the opposite hillside,
+and as they stepped to the windows the engineer woke the echoes with the
+engine whistle.
+
+"The first one of many, let us hope," said the young man, standing at
+his uncle's elbow. Then, with quite a different note in his voice: "It's
+Stuart's work, all of it. He has scarcely stopped to eat or sleep since
+that horrible night in the Pannikin valley. And that night, Uncle
+Sidney, I fought shoulder to shoulder with him--as a brother should; he
+is a man, and--there are not many more--like him."
+
+The president's thin lips were drawn into straight lines, and the thin
+goat's-beard stood out at the argumentative angle. Mr. Colbrith was
+chary of his emotions.
+
+"Will he sell us that stock in the Little Alicia, Charles Edward?"
+
+Adair smiled at the determined return to the practical.
+
+"No," he said; "I don't think he will--I shouldn't, if I were in his
+place. But he will do the next best thing: he will marry Alicia and so
+bring it into the family. And on the railroad conditions I have named,
+I am quite sure he will make you his voting proxy if you want to use it
+in forcing the combine."
+
+The president took a turn as far as the clerk's counter and back. The
+lobby was deserted, everybody having gone to welcome the first train
+into Copah.
+
+"You seem to have North against the wall," he said when he came back.
+"Yet, for the sake of--of, well of his wife and children, he must have
+even-handed justice. I must insist upon that."
+
+It was the most lovable thing in the irascible old man--his undying
+loyalty to a man in whom he had once believed. Adair slew the last hope
+with reluctance. Drawing a thick packet of undelivered telegrams from
+his pocket, he handed it to his uncle.
+
+"Justice is the one thing Mr. North is most anxious to dodge," he said
+gravely. "When the news of the catastrophe reached him, he resigned by
+wire--to New York; not to you--got his physician to order him out of the
+country, and left Denver between two days. Ford has sent Frisbie to
+Denver to hold things together, and there has been a number of
+removals--subject, of course, to your approval. You will find the
+history of all these minor happenings in those telegrams, which I have
+been collecting--and holding--until you had leisure to look them over."
+
+"Where is Mr. Ford now?" asked the president crisply.
+
+"He is not very far away; in fact, he is up-stairs in the sitting-room
+of our suite with Aunt Hetty and the two Van Bruce ladies and Alicia.
+Incidentally,--quite incidentally, you understand,--he is waiting to be
+asked to help you out in that mining deal."
+
+"Fetch him," was the curt command; and Mr. Colbrith sat down to wade
+resignedly through the mass of delayed wire correspondence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What remains of the story of the Pacific Southwestern is a chapter, as
+yet unfinished, in the commercial history of the great and growing
+empire of the West.
+
+Of the rush to the Copah gold field; of the almost incredible celerity
+with which a stretch of one hundred and forty-odd miles of construction
+track was opened for the enormous traffic which was instantly poured in
+upon it; of the rapid extension of the line to a far western outlet; of
+the steady advance of P. S-W. shares to a goodly premium: these are
+matters which are recorded in the newspaper files of the period.
+
+For the typically American success of the Southwestern's dramatic upward
+leap to the rank of a great railway system, President Colbrith has the
+name and the fame. Yet here and there in the newspaper record there is
+mention of one Stuart Ford, "our rising young railroad magnate," in the
+unashamed phrase of the _Copah Megaphone_, first as the president's
+assistant; later, as first vice-president and general manager of the
+system, in the Chicago headquarters, with Mr. Richard Frisbie as his
+second in command on the western lines, and Mr. Charles Edward Adair as
+comptroller and chief of finances on the executive committee in New
+York.
+
+Ford's prophecies predicting the development of the new empire first
+traversed by the Western Extension have long since found ample
+fulfilment, as all the world knows. Copah gave the region its first and
+largest advertisement; but other mining districts, with their imperative
+beckonings to a food-producing population, have followed in due course.
+
+It was early in June of the year marking the opening of the completed
+Western Extension for through Pacific Coast traffic that a one-car
+train, drawn by the smartest of passenger engines in charge of a
+diminutive, red-headed Irishman, stormed bravely up the glistening steel
+on the eastern approach to Plug Pass. The car was the rebuilt Nadia; and
+in obedience to a shrill blast of the cab air-whistle, Gallagher brought
+it to a stand on the summit of the mountain.
+
+Alicia looked more than ever the artist's ideal of the American womanly
+felicities when Ford lifted her from the step of the Nadia.
+
+"You are quite sure Mr. Gallagher won't mind?" she was saying, as they
+walked forward together.
+
+"Mind? Wait till you hear what he says. Michael is an Irish diamond in
+the rough, and he knows when he is honored."
+
+They discovered the red-headed little man industriously "oiling around"
+for the swift glide down the western declivities.
+
+"Michael," said the first vice-president, "Mrs. Ford thinks she would
+like to take the Pannikin loop in the cab of the Six-eighty-eight. Can
+you make room for us?"
+
+Gallagher snatched his cap from his fiery head.
+
+"Could we make room? 'Tis by the blessing av the saints that I'm a
+little man, meself, Missis Foord, and don't take up much room in the
+c-yab. And as f'r Johnny Shovel, he'll be riding on the coal f'r the
+pure playsure av ut. My duty to ye, ma'am; and 'tis a pity ut isn't a
+black night, whin the swate face av ye would be lighting the thrack f'r
+us."
+
+Ford lifted Alicia to the gangway and made her comfortable on the
+fireman's box, fixing a footbrace for her, and giving her his arm for a
+shoulder rest when Gallagher sent the steam whistling through the
+cylinder-cocks for the impulse needful to start the downward rush.
+
+"'With a michnai--ghignai--'" she began; but when the engine plunged
+over the summit and the matchless view to the westward came suddenly
+into, being, the quotation lapsed in a long-drawn, ecstatic "O-o-oh!"
+
+"You are not afraid, are you?" said the bridegroom, man-like, letting
+her feel the support of his arm.
+
+"Afraid? No, indeed; I am just happy--happy! There lies the world before
+us, Stuart; _our_ world, because, more than any other man's, yours were
+the brain that conceived it and the hands that brought it to pass. Let
+us go down quickly and possess it. Tell Mr. Gallagher that he may run as
+fast as ever he dares." Then with a sigh of contentment and a
+comfortable nestling into the hollow of the strong arm of protection:
+"Was there ever another wedding journey just like ours, Stuart, dear?"
+
+
+
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