Sprague. “It’s your play, this time, to keep out of it, if you can.
You’d say that the High Line people, J. Montague Smith and his crowd,
inspired that blast in _The Tribune_ this morning, wouldn’t you?”
“It looks that way, yes.”
“Well, let them stir up the mud and make the fight. You sit tight in
the boat and say nothing. What kind of an agent or operator have you at
Angels?”
“Disbrow?--he’s a good man; so good that I’m going to promote him to a
better station next week.”
“Let that promotion wait a while. Give this good man instructions to
watch every move that Jennings makes, and to report at once anything
out of the ordinary that may happen. Do you get that?”
“I’ll do it. Anything else?”
“No, not at present. Later on, say after the evening edition of _The
Times-Record_ comes out, I may want to get you on a quick wire. But
the chief thing just now is to post the Angels man, and to have him
keep in touch with you.”
After Maxwell had gone the chemistry expert finished his breakfast with
epicurean leisure, smoked a reflective cigar in comfortable solitude
in the hotel lobby, and, when the court hour arrived, went around to
the office of the justice of the peace to answer to the charge of
assault. As was to be expected, Jennings was not present; was not even
represented by an attorney. Sprague pleaded guilty and paid his nominal
fine, which MacFarland took with a quiet smile.
“I don’t know what you did to that black-faced bully, Mr. Sprague, but
I hope you got your money’s worth,” he said. “Every time he turns up
here in Brewster he proves himself an undesirable citizen, right from
the word go.”
“Tough, is he?” queried Sprague.
“As tough as they make them. I wonder he didn’t try to get square with
you with a gun. That would be more like him.”
“Perhaps he will, later on,” suggested the fined one, with a
good-natured smile; after which he went across to his laboratory and
was invisible for the remainder of the morning.
Just before noon Stillings dropped into the laboratory office. He found
the chemist working among his retorts and test-tubes.
“I fell in to give you a pointer,” was the attorney’s excuse for the
intrusion. “Jennings is in town. He came over on the ten-o’clock local
and went straight to _The Times-Record_ office.”
Sprague grinned. “You were looking out for him, were you? Somebody got
waked up at last?”
“Yes; the High Line people are on, all right,” was the reply. “Smith
called an emergency meeting of his directors early this morning. Two of
them are Red Desert cattle barons, and they know the Mesquite situation
like a book. What none of them can understand is the ‘why’; why the
Mesquite outfit should take ninety-nine chances in a hundred of sending
a flood down the Timanyoni when there is no money to be made by it.”
“What action did the directors’ meeting take?”
“Instructed me to feel Judge Watson on the question of holding things
up with an injunction. I did it, and it turned out as you intimated
it would; nothing doing. Smith asked me to borrow Maxwell’s special
officer, Arch Tarbell, suggesting that we ought to keep in touch with
Jennings. Archer was going over to Angels on the afternoon train, but
Jennings has saved him the trouble by coming to town.”
“Well, what next?” Sprague inquired.
“That is just what I’d like to ask you,” was the lawyer’s frank
admission. “We’re all looking to you to set the pace. You’re the one
man with the holy gift of initiative, Mr. Sprague. You haven’t admitted
it in so many words, but I know as well as I know anything that you are
the man who started this newspaper talk.”
“Pshaw!” said the expert, in genial raillery; “I’m only a Government
chemist, Mr. Stillings.”
“That’s all right, too; but that isn’t why the railroad men call you
‘Scientific Sprague.’ Four times this summer you’ve dug Maxwell and his
railroad out of a hole when the rest of us didn’t know there was any
hole. What I’m most afraid of now is that Jennings will put up some
sort of a scheme to get you out of the way. He knows well enough by
this time that you are the key to his situation.”
“I’m a tenderfoot,” said the big man, with naïve irony. “What would you
suggest?”
“That you go to Sheriff Harding and get him to swear you in as a
special deputy. Then you can be prepared to defend yourself.”
Sprague’s mellow laugh rumbled deep in his big body.
“I guess I can take care of myself, if it comes to that, without
‘packing hardware,’ as Starbuck would put it,” he averred. “There won’t
be more than three or four of them to tackle me at once, will there?
But about your campaign--I have been hoping that the High Line people,
backed by public sentiment, would be able to head this thing off. I am
still hoping it. It will be altogether better if the railroad doesn’t
have to take a hand on its own account. The New Yorkers would be
sure to make capital out of it, holding the Ford-Maxwell management
up to public execration as a corporation which deliberately strangles
development propositions in its own territory.”
“That’s a fact,” the attorney agreed.
“Working along that line, we can afford to wait, for a little
while at least, to see how the cat is going to jump. Jennings is
over here to get into the newspaper fight himself. In Maxwell’s
demoralization tussle of two weeks ago, it was demonstrated that _The
Times-Record_ had been subsidized by the enemy. Now we shall see
Higginson and his editor jump in and take up the clubs in defence of
the Mesquite Company.”
“I guess that is pretty good advice--to wait,” said Stillings. “But we
have an active crowd in the High Line, and its blood is up. Our people
will want to be doing something while they wait.”
“Let them talk,” said Sprague quickly. “Tell them to resolve themselves
into committees of one to throw the big scare into the Brewster public
which depends upon the safety of the High Line dam for its own safety.
Then pick out a few good, dependable men like Smith, his old fighting
father-in-law the colonel, and Williams the engineer, who will hold
themselves in readiness to start at a moment’s notice, night or day,
for the firing line--any firing line that may happen to show up.”
“That is more like it,” rejoined the attorney. “I’m sworn to uphold the
majesty of the law, but----”
“But, as you remarked last night, there are extra-judicial crises now
and then which have to be met in any old way that offers. Let it rest
at that, and see me at the hotel this evening, if you can make it
convenient.”
With the appearance on the streets of the evening edition of _The
Times-Record_, the Brewster public learned that there were two
sides to the Mesquite question. In terms of unmeasured scorn Editor
Healy attacked the narrow prejudice which would seek to place
stumbling-blocks in the way of a great enterprise designed to benefit,
not only the region locally concerned, but the entire West.
In the course of a long and vituperative editorial, the High Line
company, the Brewster public-service corporations, and the railroad,
each came in for its share of accusation, and their joint lack of
public spirit was roundly condemned. It was pointed out that the High
Line plant, by the admission of its own officials, would be in no
danger even in the unsupposable case of the breaking of the Mesquite
dam. Also, it was urged that the penny-wise policy of the railroad in
adopting the low grade in Timanyoni Canyon was a matter of its own
risk. Was the development of the nation to be halted, it was asked,
because a niggardly railroad company was unwilling to spend a little
money in raising its grade beyond a possible danger line?
But the sting of the editorial for Maxwell was in its tail. Healy
concluded by darkly hinting that certain of the railroad officials were
interested financially in sundry Timanyoni Park lands owned by the High
Line Company, and that they were willing to kill the prospects of the
new district for the sake of their own pockets.
Maxwell was furiously hot about this blast in the evening paper, as
his demeanor at the dinner-table, where he spoke his mind freely to
Sprague, sufficiently proved.
“Why, the miserable liars!” he raged. “There isn’t an official on the
Short Line from President Ford down who owns a single share of stock in
the High Line! We all did help out at first, but Ford made every man
of us turn loose the minute the dam was completed and the project was
securely on its feet. He insisted that we couldn’t afford to work for
two dividend accounts!”
“He was quite right,” said Sprague calmly. “But that is neither here
nor there. It was Jennings’s turn at bat and he took it. Let it go,
and tell me what you hear from that good and reliable man, Disbrow, at
Angels.”
“I had him on the wire myself, just a few minutes ago,” was the
superintendent’s answer. “He says something has stirred things up over
on the Mesquite. They’re working night shifts--began last night.”
“Rain?” queried the expert.
“How the devil do you manage to jump at things that way?” demanded
Maxwell, half-irritably. “Yes; there have been cloud-bursts in the
eastern foot-hills. The river rose two feet to-day.”
“Ah? That may bring on more talk--before the stenographers are ready to
take it down. Any more items from Angels?”
“Nothing special. The Mesquite people got half a car-load of dynamite
this morning. That shows you how careful Disbrow is; he is spotting
everything--even the common routine things.”
“Um; dynamite, eh? What use has Jennings for so much high explosive as
that?”
“I don’t know; uses it in excavating, I suppose. The more he uses, the
bigger his rake-off from the powder company. Where there’s a big graft,
there are always a lot of little ones.”
Sprague ate in silence for five full minutes before he said, quite
without preliminary: “How long would it take a light special train to
run from Brewster to Angels, with a clear track and regardless orders,
Dick?”
“I made it once in my own car in two hours and fifty-five minutes, with
two stops for water. Why?”
“Oh, I was just curious to know. Two fifty-five, eh? And how long would
it take to get the special train ready?”
“Fifteen or twenty minutes, perhaps, on a rush order.”
Sprague sat back and began to fold his napkin carefully in the original
creases.
“As I have said before, I don’t want to pose as an alarmist, Maxwell;
but if I were you, I’d have that special train hooked up and ready to
pull out--and I’d keep it that way, on tap, so to speak.”
The railroad man rose to the occasion promptly.
“Beginning to-night?” he asked.
“Yes, beginning to-night.”
“Has Jennings gone back?”
“He has. He went over on the evening train. Your man Tarbell kept cases
on him while he was here. He spent most of the day with Higginson and
Healy in _The Times-Record_ office.”
Maxwell refused his dessert and ordered a second cup of black coffee.
“This suspense is something fierce, Calvin,” he said, when the waiter
left them. “Have we got to sit still and do nothing?”
“That is your part in it,” was the quiet reply. “If a party of
prominent citizens should call upon you for a special train at some odd
hour of the day or night, you want to be ready to supply it suddenly.
Aside from that, you are to keep hands off.”
For forty-eight hours beyond this evening dinner in the Topaz café--two
days during which the railroad agent at Angels reported increased
activities at the Mesquite dam--the newspaper wrangle over the merits
and demerits of the irrigation project in the edge of the Red Desert
went on with growing acrimony on both sides. But by the end of the
second day it was apparent that _The Tribune_ had public sentiment
with it almost unanimously.
It was also on this second day that further bitterness was engendered
by a street report that Judge Watson had enjoined the High Line
Company from interfering in any way with the operations on the
Mesquite. This was the last straw, and public indignation found
expression that night in a monster mass meeting of protest, in
which the speakers, with J. Montague Smith to set them the example,
criticised the court sharply in free Western phrase.
After the meeting, adopting all sorts of resolutions condemnatory
of everything in sight, adjourned--which was between nine and ten
o’clock--there was a street rumor to the effect that Judge Watson would
declare some of the speakers in contempt, and cinch them accordingly.
Maxwell and Starbuck brought this report to Sprague, who was smoking
one of his big, black cigars on the porch of the hotel.
“Going to institute contempt proceedings, is he?” said the expert, with
interest apparently only half-aroused.
“Wouldn’t that jar you?” commented Starbuck. “I was telling Dick just
now that Judge Watson has about outlived his usefulness in this little
old shack town. This injunction of his is about the rawest thing that
ever came over the range.”
“Smith is red-hot,” Maxwell put in; “hot enough to get out and scrap
somebody. And his directors are all with him.”
Still the big-bodied expert seemed only mildly interested.
“If anybody should happen to get mixed up legally with the Mesquite
folks on this job of theirs, it would be pretty hard to get a jury in
Brewster which would lean the way the judge does, wouldn’t it?” he
asked.
Maxwell’s verdict was unqualified. “It would be practically
impossible.” He had found his pipe and was filling it when Sprague
pointed to the spur track at the end of the railroad building opposite.
“Is that your special train over there, Dick?”
“Yes. You see I’ve obeyed orders. That train has been standing there
for two days, with three shifts of men dividing up the watch in the
engine cab.”
“And the committee of prominent citizens hasn’t yet materialized, eh?
Never mind; you’ve done your part. What is the latest from Angels?”
“More cloud-bursts in the hills, and more activity up on the Mesquite.
Disbrow says that Jennings has been offering all sorts of big pay
to the scattered ranchmen to get them to come on the job with
scraper-teams.”
“That’s bad,” said the chemistry man briefly; adding, “I don’t like
that.”
Starbuck got up to stand with his back to a porch pillar. From the new
position he could look through the windows into the thronged hotel
lobby.
“This town’s stirred up some hotter than I’ve ever seen it before,” he
drawled. “Look at that mob inside--and every blame’ man of it chewing
the rag over this water proposition.”
“I don’t like that,” Sprague repeated, thus proving that he had
entirely missed Starbuck’s comment on the excitement. Then he sat up
suddenly. “There’s a boy just coming down from your offices, Maxwell;
it’s the night watchman’s boy, isn’t it? Run across and head him,
Starbuck; I believe that’s a telegram he has in his hand.”
Starbuck swung himself over the railing and caught the lad before he
could disappear in the street throngs.
“You were plumb right,” he said, when he came back to take his place on
the porch. “He did have a message; it’s for Dick. Here you are.”
Maxwell tore the envelope across and held the telegram up to the
ceiling light.
“Here’s news,” he announced. “It’s from our man at Angels. He says:
‘Jennings’s force disbanded, and most of it gone east on Limited. Been
shipping teams and outfit all afternoon. Too busy to wire sooner.’” The
superintendent crumpled the telegram and smote fist into palm. “Bully
for you, Sprague!” he exulted. “You pushed the right button just right!
Jennings couldn’t stand the pressure; he’s given up the job and quit!”
There was no answering enthusiasm on the part of the big man who rose
suddenly out of his chair and reached for the telegram. Quite the
contrary, the hand which took the crumpled bit of paper was trembling a
little.
“Dick,” he began, in his deepest chest tone, “you hike over to the
despatcher’s office on the dead run and have Connolly clear for that
special train. Don’t lose a minute! Starbuck, it’s up to you to find
Smith, Tarbell, Williams, Colonel Baldwin, and two or three more good
men whom you can trust--trust absolutely, mind you. Herd your crowd at
the station in the quickest possible time; and you, Maxwell, make it
your first business to tell the agent at Angels that there is a special
train coming over the road. Don’t tell him its destination; just say
it will leave Brewster, going east, in a few minutes. Don’t slip up on
that--it may mean a dozen human lives! Get busy, both of you!”
After he was left alone, Sprague shouldered a path through the crowd
in the lobby and had himself lifted to his rooms. When he came down a
few minutes later he had changed his business clothes for the field
rig which he wore on his soil-collecting expeditions. He had scarcely
worked his way through the throng to the comparative freedom of the
porch when Maxwell came hurrying across from the railroad building.
“Bad luck,” said the superintendent, with brittle emphasis. “There’s a
freight-train off the steel half-way between Corona and Timanyoni, this
side of the canyon, and the track is blocked.”
“And we can’t get by? There is nothing on the other side of the wreck
that you could order down to meet us at the block?”
“Nothing nearer than Angels. There is an eastbound freight held
there, loading the last of Jennings’s outfit. To order the engine
back from that would add at least an hour and a half to the
two-hour-and-fifty-minute running schedule I gave you the other day.”
Sprague swore out of a full heart, which, since he was the least
profane of men, was an accurate measure of his growing disquietude.
“That’s on me!” he grated. “I had it all figured out to the tenth
decimal place, _and I didn’t put in the factor of chance_! Dick,
I want the biggest automobile in this town, and the one man among all
your thousands who is least afraid to drive it.”
Maxwell was able to answer without hesitation. “The car will be Colonel
Baldwin’s big ‘six,’ with Starbuck for your reckless chauffeur. But I
doubt if you can get over the range in anything that goes on wheels.”
Then he added: “What is it, Calvin? What have you figured out?”
Sprague ignored the anxious query and spoke only to the fact.
“Can’t get over the range? I tell you, we’ve got to get over the range!
Good Lord! why in Heaven’s name doesn’t Starbuck hurry?”
Starbuck had hurried. He had looked to find most, if not all, of the
men he had been told to summon, closeted in conference with Stillings,
and his guess had gone true to the mark. Only Tarbell was missing, and
him they picked up in front of _The Tribune_ office as they were
hurrying to the rendezvous in the colonel’s big touring-car.
Maxwell saw the car as it came under the corner electrics. “There’s a
little luck, anyway!” he exclaimed. “That is the Colonel’s car, now,
and Billy is driving it.”
“Tools and arms; half a dozen picks and shovels, and anything you can
find that will shoot,” commanded Sprague, vaulting the porch railing
to the sidewalk as easily as Starbuck had vaulted it a little while
before. “See to that part of the outfit yourself, Dick, while I’m
looking after the human end of it.”
One minute afterward the big man was standing beside the touring-car
which had been drawn up at the town-side platform of the railroad
building. Sprague shot the emergency at the five men in the car in
bullet-like sentences.
“Gentlemen, we’ve got to get over to the Mesquite as quick as the
Lord’ll let us. The railroad is blocked, and it’s an auto or nothing.
Maxwell says we can’t do it. I say we’ve got to do it. What do you say?”
“I reckon we can do it,” drawled Starbuck, speaking for all. Then he
turned to Smith, who was in the tonneau. “How about the tanks, Monty?”
“I filled them to-night, before we left the ranch,” said the High Line
treasurer. “Also, there is an extra gallon of oil aboard--we always
carry it.”
“How about it, colonel?” Sprague demanded of the erect, white-mustached
old man in the back seat.
“Sure!” was the quick reply. “You haven’t told us yet whether it’s a
fight or a frolic, but we’re all with you, either way, Mr. Sprague.
Hop in, and we’ll be jogging along.”
It was at this moment that Maxwell, followed by a couple of yard men,
came up. The men were carrying the picks and shovels, which were
hastily stowed in the car, and the superintendent handed over a small
arsenal of weapons, three of them being sawed-off Winchesters.
“I had to raid the express office,” he explained, “and I took what
I could find.” Then to Sprague, who had mounted to the seat beside
Starbuck. “Don’t you want me along?”
“No; you can do a great deal more good right here. Listen, now, and
follow my directions to the letter. Go upstairs to the wire and get in
touch with your man at Angels. It will be your job to keep him in doubt
as to what is on the road _between his station and the lower end
of the canyon_. Lie to him if you have to; tell him a part of the
wrecked freight is on its way up the canyon, or something of that sort,
and keep him believing it as long as you possibly can. Don’t fall down
on it! Everything depends now upon the length of time you can keep some
such story as that going over the wires.”
Starbuck had adjusted a pair of goggles to his eyes, and had his foot
on the clutch-pedal. “All set?” he asked.
“Go!” said Sprague; and at the word the big car shot away from the
platform, rounded the end of the plaza, and bore away through a cross
street to the eastward, gathering headway until, when the city limits
were passed, its cutout exhausts were blending in a deafening roar.
Sprague was the only member of the party who had not at some time in
the past had experience with Starbuck’s driving. But before the first
ten-mile lap on the mesa road had been covered he, too, had had his
initiation. There was a little lamp on the dash which poured its tiny
ray on the dial of the speedometer. Sprague saw the index pointer go
up to thirty-five, jump to forty, crawl steadily onward until it had
passed the forty-five and was mounting to the fifty. After that he
saw no more, for the simple reason that he was obliged to close his
unprotected eyes against the hurricane speed blast. The big man from
Washington had asked for the fastest car in Brewster and for a man who
was not afraid to drive it. He had got both.
At the same time, alarming as the pace might seem, Starbuck was not
taking any needless chances. He knew his road, and knew also that
there were many miles of it among the mountains that would have to be
taken at slower speed. None the less, when the long mesa stretch was
covered, and the big car was making zigzags up the precipitous slopes
of Mount Cornell to reach the gap called Navajo Notch, the pace was
still terrific, and the sober-faced driver was leaning over his wheel
and pushing the motor like a true speed-maniac.
There was an hour of this risky zigzagging, and then the pass, lying
cold and grim in the half moon-light at altitude ten thousand feet,
was reached and threaded. Following the summit-gaining came the
down-mountain rush on the eastern slope, and again Sprague closed
his eyes, confessing inwardly that the steadiest nerve may have its
limitations. With precipices shooting skyward on the right, and
plunging sheer to unknown depths on the left, and with a man at the
wheel who had apparently hypnotized himself until he had become a mere
machine driving a machine----
When Sprague opened his eyes the great car was once more on an even
keel and its wheels were spurning the hard red sand of the desert. In
the far distance ahead a light was twinkling, the lamp in the station
office at Angels. Sprague spoke to the iron-nerved driver at his side.
“Hold on, Billy; can you make the remainder of the run without the
lamps?”
Starbuck brought the big machine to a stand, and leaned over and
extinguished the lights. A little later, under Sprague’s directions, he
was making a silent circuit of the town, with the muffler in and the
engine speeded at its quietest.
Since it was far past midnight, the better part of Angels was abed and
asleep, with lights showing only at the railroad station and in Pete
Grim’s dance-hall, where, arguing from the row of hitched horses, a
round-up of Red Desert cowboys made merry. Sprague stopped the car by a
sign to Starbuck and turned to Tarbell.
“Get out, Archer, and make a quick run over to the station. I want to
know what’s going on in Disbrow’s office.”
Tarbell made the reconnaissance and was back in a few minutes.