to this job of soil-testing--this particular job, I mean--for the
Department. It has been a sort of special providence to me; but things
don’t often happen that way, unhelped.”
“This thing didn’t happen that way--unhelped,” was the big expert’s
quiet rejoinder. “I asked for the job.”
“I’ve wondered if you didn’t. It was mighty good of you to maroon
yourself out here in the tall hills for the sake of helping me fight
the money pirates, Calvin.”
Sprague was silent for a full minute before he said: “I wish I could
claim a motive as disinterested as that, Dick; but if I should, it
wouldn’t be honest. I had quite another reason for wishing to return to
the Timanyoni after my flying trip through it last July on my way back
from California. I can’t tell you what it was; it’s too idiotic for a
grown man to own up to.”
The superintendent’s curling mustaches took a grinning uptilt, and he
laughed joyously.
“When you talk that way you don’t need to tell me,” he chuckled. “It
was a girl.”
“It was,” admitted the self-confessed simpleton, matching his
accuser’s grin. “Since you’ve guessed that much, I’ll tell you a little
more. I saw her first on your eastbound train, the train that took
on the sham dead man at Little Butte and afterward picked up your
office-car. You’ll remember you asked me to stay over a day or two with
you in Brewster, and I did. As a matter of fact, your persuasion wasn’t
needed. I would have stopped off anyway, because the girl stopped off.”
“Heavens and earth!” ejaculated Maxwell, in ecstatic appreciation; “how
are the mighty fallen! Lord of love! I never expected to see the day
when Cal Sprague, the idol of the foot-ball rooters, would fall for a
pretty face just seen, as you might say, in passing! Oh, gosh!”
“Have your laugh, you old married hyena!” grunted the late-comer in the
sentimental field. “I can’t get back at you because I didn’t happen to
be around when you were making seventeen different kinds of a donkey
of yourself over old Hiram Fairbain’s daughter--as I have no doubt you
did. But that’s neither here nor there; the young woman I’m speaking of
tagged me, and I’m It; I’ve been It ever since that first day on the
eastbound train.”
“And you say she stopped off in Brewster?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t meet her?”
“No. You’ve been calling me an amateur detective, Dick; I’m a fake!
That girl and the people she was with just vanished into thin air the
minute they hit the platform at the Brewster station. I lost them as
completely as if they had stepped off into space.”
“So you came back, later, to hunt her up?”
“I did; or to try to get some trace of her--just that.”
“Of course, it says itself that you have found her.”
Sprague’s mellow laugh rumbled deep in his chest.
“Richard, I have been here seven weeks, and I found her--just three
days ago! In all my knocking around with you and Starbuck and Stillings
and the rest of you, not one man in the bunch has thought it worth his
while to tell me that there is a cottage settlement of Eastern summer
people up in the mountains on Lake Topaz. I had to blunder around and
find out for myself, as I did last Wednesday, when Starbuck took me up
to your mine on Mount Geechy.”
“Great guns!” exclaimed the superintendent; “how in the name of
common-sense was anybody going to suspect that you needed to know? That
summer colony is as old as Brewster. But go ahead and tell me more.
I’m interested, if I don’t look it.”
“There isn’t much to tell. I found her; met her. She is stopping with
an aunt of hers, and by chance--good luck you’d say--I have something
a little better than a speaking acquaintance with the aunt--through
some common friends in New York. There’s nothing to it, Richard. The
girl can have her pick--she has already turned down a couple of English
titles--and she isn’t going to pick any such overgrown slob of a man as
your humble. Let’s talk about something else.”
“If I branch off, it will be into my own grief,” said Maxwell
half-reluctantly. “I had another wire from Ford this afternoon. The
big-money people are getting ready to swat us again, and Ford admits
that he can’t find out where it is to come from, or what it is to be.
If it wasn’t for the name of the thing, and what I owe Ford, I’d be
about ready to throw up my job, Calvin. I have money enough to live on,
and this business of dragging along from day to day with the feeling
that any minute you may get the knife between your ribs isn’t very
exhilarating.”
“You say Ford can’t give you any hint of what is coming next?”
“Not the slightest. But there is something in the wind. You know
Kinzie, the president of the Brewster National Bank? He cornered me
last night at the club and asked a lot of queer questions that didn’t
seem to have any particular bearing on anything.”
“What kind of questions?” inquired the expert.
“Oh, about our right-of-way through the town of Copah, and about our
outstanding floating debts, and finally about a ridiculous damage suit
that has been dragging its way through the courts.”
Sprague sat up and relighted his fat, black cigar.
“What about the damage suit?” he asked.
“It’s a piker’s graft,” was the half-impatient rejoinder. “We have a
little branch line over to the bauxite mines in the western edge of
the county. The telegraph company doesn’t maintain an office, and our
agent is authorized to handle what few commercial telegrams there are.
It seems that one came for a man named Hixon, a prospector whose exact
whereabouts could not be ascertained at the moment. The message was
three days old when it was delivered, and Hixon sued for ten thousand
dollars damages; said he’d lost the sale of a mine by the delay.”
“You are fighting the suit?”
“Of course--it’s point-blank robbery! Stillings has had the case
postponed two or three times in the hope of wearing Hixon out. It comes
up again next week, I believe.”
“And you say Kinzie was curious about this lawsuit?”
“Yes. It seems that Hixon is, or has been, a customer of the bank; and
Kinzie suggested that we ought to compromise.”
“Um,” said the big-bodied man thoughtfully. “In whose court does the
case come up?”
“In Judge Watson’s.”
“Has Hixon a good lawyer?”
“He has the Kentucky colonel, suh,” laughed Maxwell; “our one original,
dyed-in-the-wool, fire-eating spellbinder from the Blue-grass. When
Colonel Bletchford gets upon his feet and turns loose, you can hear the
bird of freedom scream all the way across Timanyoni Park.”
The big chemistry expert with the athletic slant was moving uneasily
in his chair. After a little interval of silence he said: “I can’t be
with you in any more of these little two-steps with the money trust,
Richard. I’m going back to Washington to-morrow.”
Maxwell’s start carried him half-way out of his chair, and he dropped
his short pipe and broke the stem of it.
“Great Scott, Calvin--don’t say that!” he implored. “You can’t throw us
down that way! Why, good Lord, man, if it hadn’t been for you and your
brains.... But, pshaw! there’s no use in talking about it; you simply
_can’t_ go and leave us hanging over the ragged edge!”
“I can; and I guess I must,” insisted Sprague gently. “And the worst of
it is, Dick, I can’t tell you or anybody else the why. It’s just up to
me, and I’ve got it to do.”
Maxwell’s perturbation had cleared his brain like a bucketing of cold
water. “Tell me, Calvin,” he broke out; “is the girl mixed up in it?”
“She is,” was the brief admission.
“Is she gone, or going--back East, I mean?”
“N-no; not immediately, I believe.”
Maxwell sat back in his chair and began to twist nervously at the charm
on his watch-fob.
“I suppose I haven’t any kick coming,” he said at length. “What you
have done for me this summer couldn’t be measured in money, and I have
no right to ask you to go on giving your time and your brains on the
score of friendship.”
“There isn’t any bigger score in this little old round world of ours,
Dick,” said the other gravely. “I’m a cold-blooded fish, and I know it.
I ought to stand by you; every decent thing in me but one urges me to
stand by you. But that one exception queers me. I hope you’ll win out;
I hope to God you’ll win out, Dick; but I can’t be the man to put the
club into your hands this time.”
The snappy little superintendent took his defeat hard. For some further
time he used every argument he could devise to persuade Sprague to
change his mind. But at the end the big man was shaking his head
regretfully.
“It’s no use, Richard,” he said finally. “If you were in my place,
you’d do just as I’m doing--and for the same reason. Let’s go back to
town. It’s too cheerful here to fit either one of us just now.”
Maxwell had driven out to the club-house on the shore of Lake Corona
in his small car, and when he returned to town Sprague occupied the
mechanician’s seat beside him. It was a run of only a few miles, over
the best driving road in the county, and there was neither time nor the
occasion for much talk.
When the car had trundled across the Timanyoni bridge and the viaduct
over the railroad tracks, Maxwell would have set Sprague down at his
hotel across the plaza from the station; but Sprague himself objected.
“You are going over to your office? I’ll go with you, if you don’t
mind. It’s my last evening, and I’m not in the humor to sit it out
alone. I won’t interfere, if you want to work,” was the way he put it.
It was thus it happened that they climbed the stair to the second
story of the railroad building together, and together walked down the
corridor to the door of the despatcher’s room. Connolly, the fat night
despatcher, was at his glass-topped table behind the counter railing,
and when he saw the superintendent he held up a pudgy hand.
“Benson’s been trying to get you on the wire from Copah for an hour or
more, Mr. Maxwell,” he said. “I didn’t know where to raise you.”
“Is he on the wire now?” asked Maxwell, letting himself and his
companion through the wicket in the counter rail.
“No; but I’ll call him for you.” Followed a sharp rattling of the key
and a few broken snippings from the sounder, and then the despatcher
got up out of his chair. “Here he is,” he said. “He wants to talk to
you, personally.”
Maxwell took the vacated chair and key, and Connolly stood aside with
the big expert. “Seems right good to have you dropping in every now and
then, Mr. Sprague,” said the fat one. “You’d ought to belong to us out
here. We’d sure make it warm for you in the Short Line family.”
Sprague looked the dumpling-like despatcher over in mild and altogether
friendly criticism.
“Speaking of families: you got married yourself a little while ago,
didn’t you, Dan?” he asked.
“You bet I did!” was the enthusiastic reply. “Sadie ain’t got done
talking yet about that set of knives and forks you sent her from
Philadelphia.”
Again the big-muscled man was looking the despatcher over critically,
this time with a quizzical twinkle in his gray eyes.
“Tell me how you did it, Dan,” he urged soberly. “You’re fatter than I
ever dared to be. How did you manage to make a girl believe that there
might be a man inside of a big body as well as in a medium-sized one?”
The night despatcher laughed until his moon-like face was purple; until
the car-record clerk in the distant corner of the room looked up from
his type-writer to see if he, too, might not share the joke.
“Gi-give me a little time,” wheezed Connolly; and he was presumably
going to tell how it had been done when Maxwell got up from the
glass-topped table and broke in.
“Twenty-six is asking for orders, Dan,” he said; and when Connolly had
resumed his chair and his key: “That’s all, Calvin. We’ll go across to
my office, if you like.”
It was behind the closed door of the superintendent’s room, after
Sprague had chosen the easiest of the three chairs and settled himself
for a smoke, that Maxwell said:
“I’m going to miss you like the devil, Calvin; I’m missing you right
now.”
Sprague blew a series of smoke rings toward the disused gas-fixture
hanging from the centre of the ceiling.
“Something that Chief Engineer Benson has been telling you over the
wire from Copah?” he suggested.
“Yes.”
Another series of the smoke rings, and then: “Well, I didn’t tell you
you couldn’t talk, did I?”
Maxwell did not haggle over the inverted terms of the permission to
talk. The necessity was too pressing.
“Benson has struck something that he can’t account for. For a week or
more the Transcontinental people have been gathering a working camp at
the Copah end of the bridge on which their Jack’s Canyon branch crosses
the Pannikin. Nobody seems to know what they are going to do, or where
they are going to do it. At Leckhard’s suggestion, I sent Benson over
to pry around a little.”
“And he hasn’t found out what the T-C. folks have in mind?”
“No, he hasn’t. But it is plainly some sort of a track-building job. He
says they have a hundred or more scraper-teams in camp, a train-load of
new steel, and forty car-loads of cross-ties. And this afternoon they
brought down a mechanical rail-layer--a machine much used nowadays for
rushing a job of track-laying.”
The big guest smoked reflectively for a full minute or more before he
said: “No jangle with the Copah city authorities about any trackage
rights in the town, or street crossings, or anything of that sort?”
“Not that I have ever heard of. The T-C. has its own Copah yard, and
has a switching connection with the Pacific Southwestern yard tracks;
though, naturally, there is little exchange of business between the two
competitive systems.”
“Do they connect with you?” asked Sprague.
“Not directly. Our yard was originally an independent lay-out, lying a
mile to the west of town. When the Short Line became a grand division
of the Pacific Southwestern, the two yards, ours and the P. S-W., were
operated as one, though they are still separate lay-outs.”
“I see. What else does Benson say?”
“He has been asking questions and chewing the rag with anybody who
would talk, he says; but we all know Jack. He is too downright and
bluff to be much of a detective.”
Maxwell turned to his desk and began on the ever-present pile of
waiting work; and the big expert settled himself more deeply into his
chair and smoked on with his gaze fixed upon the ceiling gas-pendant.
After the lapse of many minutes he said: “Have you a blue-print of the
Copah yards, Dick?”
Maxwell rose and went to a filing-case in the corner of the office.
After a little search he found the required blue-print and gave it to
Sprague, explaining the locations and the relative positions of the
three railroad yards. The expert studied the map thoughtfully, even
going so far as to scrutinize the fine lettering on it with the help of
a small pocket magnifying-glass.
“And right over here by the river is where you say the new camp has
been pitched?” he asked, indicating the spot with the handle of the
magnifier.
“Yes; Benson says it’s at the south end of the bridge, and just west of
the T-C. bridge siding.”
Sprague looked up quickly. “Did Benson say they had an electric-light
outfit for night work?”
“Why, no; I don’t remember that he did.”
“Go and ask him,” said Sprague shortly; and the superintendent, who had
learned to take the expert’s suggestions without question, left the
office to do it.
He was back in a few minutes, with the light of a newly kindled
excitement in his eyes.
“By Jove, Calvin, you’re a wizard!” he exclaimed. “Your guess is
better than another man’s eyesight. They’ve not only got the light
outfit--they’ve strung it up and gone to work! Benson says they are
laying a track out across the valley of the Pannikin like this,” and
he traced a curving line on the blue-print, which Sprague was still
holding spread out on his knees.
Sprague nodded slowly. “That is move Number One,” he said. “Dick,
you’re in for a fight to a finish, this time. They’ve got you foul in
some way, and they are so sure of it that they are already beginning to
take possession. Don’t you see what this new track means?”
“No, I don’t,” Maxwell confessed, with a frown of perplexity.
“You will see before to-morrow night. Pull yourself together, old man,
and do a little clear-headed reasoning. Why are these people starting
out to build a railroad at ten o’clock Saturday night? Surely you’ve
had experience enough in crossing fights to know what that means!”
Maxwell straightened up and swore out of a full heart.
“You mean that they are going to cut a crossing through the
Southwestern main line, and do it on Sunday, when our people can’t stop
them with a court injunction?”
“You’ve surrounded at least half of it,” said the expert. “The other
half will come later. If I wasn’t going away to-morrow----”
Maxwell walked to the window and stared across at the flaming arc light
hanging in front of the Hotel Topaz on the opposite side of the plaza.
When he turned again, Sprague had rolled the blue-print into a tube and
was laying it on the desk.
“Calvin, you’ve had time to think it over,” said the man at the window.
“You haven’t made it very plain for me, but I can understand that it’s
friendship against--against the girl. I’m human enough to know what
that means, but----”
Sprague was holding up one of his big square-fingered hands in protest.
“I have been thinking it over, Dick,” he admitted gently. “I’ll
stay--for the line-up, anyway. But it’s only fair to warn you that
I may drop out at any minute; perhaps when the game is going dead
against you. Now we’ll get action. You go back to the wire and keep
in touch with Benson. We want to know at the earliest possible moment
exactly what it is that the T-C. people are trying to do. While you’re
wiring, I’ll go out and try to find Stillings.”
This was the situation at ten o’clock on Saturday night. At the
nine-o’clock Sunday morning breakfast in the Topaz café, when Maxwell,
hollow-eyed and haggard from his night’s vigil at the wires, next
had speech with Sprague, the news from the seat of war at Copah was
sufficiently exciting.
As Maxwell had predicted, the Transcontinental track-layers had built
up to the Southwestern main line, and had finally succeeded in cutting
a crossing through it, though not without a fight. The Southwestern
force, with Leckhard, the division superintendent, at its head, had
resisted as it could. Since it was past midnight, with no hope of
obtaining legal help until Monday morning, Leckhard had “spotted” a
locomotive on the crossing, and when the men in charge of it were
overborne by numbers, the engine had been derailed and “killed” before
it was abandoned.
The stubborn resistance had purchased nothing more than a short delay.
The marauders had a wrecking-crane as part of their equipment; and half
an hour after its abandonment the derailed Southwestern engine had
been toppled over into the ditch, and the track-layers were at work
installing the crossing frogs.
“And after that?” queried Sprague, when Maxwell had told of the losing
fight at the main line crossing.
“After that they went on building across the valley and heading for the
western end of our yard. At the last report, which came about eight
o’clock, they had less than a mile of steel to lay before they would
be on our right-of-way. Benson is crazy. He is yelling at me now to
petition the governor for the militia.”
“You haven’t done anything?”
“There isn’t anything to do. They are on neutral ground, now, and will
be until they reach our right-of-way--if that is what they are heading
for. We have no manner of right to interfere with them until they
become actual trespassers; and as for that, no physical force we could
muster would stop them. Benson says there are between four and five
hundred men in that track gang, and many of them are armed.”
Sprague nodded. “It is a fight to a finish, as I told you last night.
And they have the advantage because we don’t know yet where or how they
are going to hit us. Have you communicated with Ford?”
“I have tried to; but I don’t get any reply.”
“Tally!” said the big man on the opposite side of the table. “I’ve been
having the same kind of bad luck. I can’t locate Stillings.”
“Did you try his house?”
“I did that first. His family is out of town, and he has been stopping
at the club. But nobody there seems to know anything about him. A
little after midnight I found your division detective, young Tarbell,
and put him on the job. We’re needing Stillings, and needing him badly.”
“Tarbell hasn’t reported back yet?”
“Not yet; it is beginning to look as if he had dropped out, too. But
the day is still young. You’d better go upstairs and get a little
sleep. I’ll stay on deck and call you if you are needed.”
Maxwell had finished his simple breakfast and he took the good advice.
It was nine hours later, and the electrics were twinkling yellow in the
sunset pinks and grays flooding the quiet Sunday evening streets and
the railroad plaza, when he came down and found Sprague just ready to
go in to dinner.
“News!” demanded the superintendent eagerly. “I had no idea of wasting
the day this way.”
Sprague made him wait until they were seated at a table for two in the
corner of the café.
“The Copah fight is over, and the T-C. people have broken into your
yards with their new track,” the expert announced briefly. “Benson had
to give up and go to bed about noon, but Leckhard has kept us posted.
The track is in, and frogged to a connection with your main line;
and the entire attacking force has camped down at the two points of
trespass; presumably to keep you and Leckhard from interfering and
tearing up their job. Move Number One, whatever it may mean, is a move
accomplished.”
“I can’t understand; I can’t begin to understand!” said Maxwell, in
despair. And then: “No word yet from Ford?”
“No; and what is more to the point, there is none from Stillings--nor
from Tarbell. I’m beginning to think that this is a bigger game
than any we’ve played yet, Dick. I dug up Editor Kendall, of _The
Tribune_, this afternoon, and had a little heart-to-heart talk with
him. There is big trouble of some sort in the air; he has smelled it,
but he can’t tell what it is. He has his young men out everywhere, ‘on
suspicion,’ and he has promised to keep in touch with us up to the time
his paper goes to press.”
“That ought to help us to get at the facts,” said the superintendent.
“Kendall is our friend, and he has some mighty keen young fellows on
his staff. By the way, there’s one of them now--just coming in at the
door. He’s looking for somebody, too.”
The young incomer was not long in finding his man. With a nod to the
head-waiter, he came across to Sprague’s table. “A note for you, Mr.
Sprague--from Mr. Kendall,” he said. “There’s no answer, I believe,”
and he went on to another table and began to chat with two other young
men, strangers to Maxwell, who had come in on the evening train.
Sprague glanced at his note and passed it across the table. Maxwell
read it and found that it merely added to the mysteries without
offering anything in the way of enlightenment.
“Dear Sprague:
“Have followed your suggestion, and our young men have spotted at
least a score of the strangers at the different hotels. Nobody
seems to know any of them, and they won’t talk. You will find a
list of names, copied from the hotel registers, on enclosed slip.
It has occurred to me that Maxwell might know some of them, if your
suspicions are well founded.
“Kendall.”
Maxwell frowned over the list for a moment before handing it back.
“A few of them are familiar,” he said. “Tom Carmody is a division
superintendent on the west end of the T-C., and this man Hunniwell
used to be in their legal department. Vance Jackson is, or used to be,
Carmody’s chief despatcher; and--why, say! this is a T-C. crowd; here’s
Andy Cochran, their Canyon Division trainmaster.”
“Any more?” asked Sprague quietly.
“No; the other names are all strange to me.”
Sprague took the list and pointed with a square-ended forefinger to one
of the names.
“This man Dimmock; you don’t know him?” he queried.
“No.”
“Well, I don’t know him, either; but I happen to know something about
him. Two years ago I was doing a little soil work down in Oklahoma. It
was during the time they were having the scrap with the oil companies.
Mr. Dimmock was there, ostensibly as an independent capitalist from the
East looking for bargains in oil-wells, but really as a representative
of the trust.”
“Is this the same man?”
The expert held his fork pointing diagonally across his plate. “Follow
the line of this fork,” he directed in low tones, “and you’ll see
him--at the farther table by the door.”