It was a December morning,--the Missouri December of mild temperatures
and saturated skies,--and the Chicago and Alton's fast train, dripping
from the rush through the wet night, had steamed briskly to its
terminal track in the Union Station at Kansas City.
Two men, one smoking a short pipe and the other snapping the ash from
a scented cigarette, stood aloof from the hurrying throngs on the
platform, looking on with the measured interest of those who are in
a melee but not of it.
“More delay,” said the cigarettist, glancing at his watch. “We are
over an hour late now. Do we get any of it back on the run to Denver?”
The pipe-smoker shook his head.
“Hardly, I should say. The Limited is a pretty heavy train to pick
up lost time. But it won't make any particular difference. The western
connections all wait for the Limited, and we shall reach the seat
of war to-morrow night, according to the Boston itinerary.”
Mr. Morton P. Adams flung away the unburned half of his cigarette
and masked a yawn behind his hand.
“It's no end of a bore, Winton, and that is the plain, unlacquered
fact,” he protested. “I think the governor owes me something. I
worried through the Tech because he insisted that I should have a
profession; and now I am going in for field work with you in a howling
winter wilderness because he insists on a practical demonstration.
I shall ossify out there in those mountains. It's written in the
book.”
“Humph! it's too bad about you,” said the other ironically. He was
a fit figure of a man, clean-cut and vigorous, from the steadfast
outlook of the gray eyes and the firm, smooth-shaven jaw to the square
fingertips of the strong hands, and his smile was of good-natured
contempt. “As you say, it is an outrage on filial complaisance. All
the same, with the right-of-way fight in prospect, Quartz Creek Canyon
may not prove to be such a valley of dry bones as--Look out, there!”
The shifting-engine had cut a car from the rear of the lately-arrived
Alton, and was sending it down the outbound track to a coupling with
the Transcontinental Limited. Adams stepped back and let it miss him
by a hand's-breadth, and as the car was passing, Winton read the name
on the paneling.
“The Rosemary: somebody's twenty-ton private outfit. That cooks our
last chance of making up any lost time between this and tomorrow--”
He broke off abruptly. On the square rear observation platform of
the private car were three ladies. One of them was small and
blue-eyed, with wavy little puffs of snowy hair peeping out under
her dainty widow's cap. Another was small and blue-eyed, with wavy
masses of flaxen hair caught up from a face which might have served
as a model for the most exquisite bisque figure that ever came out
of France. But Winton saw only the third.
She was taller than either of her companions--tall and straight and
lithe; a charming embodiment of health and strength and beauty:
clear-skinned, brown-eyed--a very goddess fresh from the bath, in
Winton's instant summing up of her, and her crown of red-gold hair
helped out the simile.
Now, thus far in his thirty-year pilgrimage John Winton, man and
boy, had lived the intense life of a working hermit, so far as the
social gods and goddesses were concerned. Yet he had a pang--of
disappointment or pointless jealousy, or something akin to both--when
Adams lifted his hat to this particular goddess, was rewarded by a
little cry of recognition, and stepped up to the platform to be
presented to the elder and younger Bisques.
So, as we say, Winton turned and walked away as one left out, feeling
one moment as though he had been defrauded of a natural right, and
deriding himself the next, as a sensible man should. After a bit he
was able to laugh at the “sudden attack,” as he phrased it, but later,
when he and Adams were settled for the day-long run in the Denver
sleeper, and the Limited was clanking out over the switches, he
brought the talk around with a carefully assumed air of lack-interest
to the party in the private car.
“She is a friend of yours, then?” he said, when Adams had taken the
baited hook open-eyed.
The Technologian modified the assumption.
“Not quite in your sense of the word, I fancy. I met her a number
of times at the houses of mutual friends in Boston. She was studying
at the Conservatory.”
“But she isn't a Bostonian,” said Winton confidently.
“Miss Virginia?--hardly. She is a Carteret of the Carterets;
Virginia-born-bred-and-named. Stunning girl, isn't she?”
“No,” said Winton shortly, resenting the slang for no reason that
he could have set forth in words.
Adams lighted another of the scented villainies, and his clean-shaven
face wrinkled itself in a slow smile.
“Which means that she has winged you at sight, I suppose, as she does
most men.” Then he added calmly, “It's no go.”
“What is 'no go'?”
Adams laughed unfeelingly, and puffed away at his cigarette.
“You remind me of the fable about the head-hiding ostrich. Didn't
I see you staring at her as if you were about to have a fit? But it
is just as I tell you: it's no go. She isn't the marrying kind. If
you knew her, she'd be nice to you till she got a good chance to flay
you alive--”
“Break it off!” growled Winton.
“Presently. As I was saying, she would miss the chance of marrying
the best man in the world for the sake of taking a rise out of him.
Moreover, she comes of old Cavalier stock with an English earldom
at the back of it, and she is inordinately proud of the fact; while
you--er--you've given me to understand that you are a man of the
people, haven't you?”
Winton nodded absently. It was one of his minor fads to ignore his
lineage, which ran decently back to a Colonial governor on his
father's side, and to assert that he did not know his grandfather's
middle name--which was accounted for by the very simple fact that
the elder Winton had no middle name.
“Well, that settles it definitely,” was the Bostonian's comment.
“Miss Carteret is of the _sang azur_. The man who marries her will
have to know his grandfather's middle name--and a good bit more
besides.”
Winton's laugh was mockingly good-natured.
“You have missed your calling by something more than a hair's-breadth,
Morty. You should have been a novelist. Give you a spike and a
cross-tie and you'd infer a whole railroad. But you pique my
curiosity. Where are these American royalties of yours going in the
Rosemary?”
“To California. The car belongs to Mr. Somerville Darrah, who is
vice-president and manager in fact of the Colorado and Grand River
road: the 'Rajah,' they call him. He is a relative of the Carterets,
and the party is on its way to spend the winter on the Pacific coast.”
“And the little lady in the widow's cap: is she Miss Carteret's
mother?”
“Miss Bessie Carteret's mother and Miss Virginia's aunt. She is the
chaperon of the party.”
Winton was silent while the Limited was roaring through a village
on the Kansas side of the river. When he spoke again it was not of
the Carterets; it was of the Carterets' kinsman and host.
“I have heard somewhat of the Rajah,” he said half-musingly. “In
fact, I know him, by sight. He is what the magazinists are fond of
calling an 'industry colonel,' a born leader who has fought his way
to the front. If the Quartz Creek row is anything more than a stiff
bluff on the part of the C. G. R. it will be quite as well for us
if Mr. Somerville Darrah is safely at the other side of the
continent--and well out of ordinary reach of the wires.”
Adams came to attention with a half-hearted attempt to galvanize an
interest in the business affair.
“Tell me more about this mysterious jangle we are heading for,” he
rejoined. “Have I enlisted for a soldier when I thought I was only
going into peaceful exile as assistant engineer of construction on
the Utah Short Line?”
“That remains to be seen.” Winton took a leaf from his pocket
memorandum and drew a rough outline map. “Here is Denver, and here
is Carbonate,” he explained. “At present the Utah is running into
Carbonate this way over the rails of the C. G. R. on a joint track
agreement which either line may terminate by giving six months'
notice of its intention to the other. Got that?”
“To have and to hold,” said Adams. “Go on.”
“Well, on the first day of September the C. G. R. people gave the
Utah management notice to quit.”
“They are bloated monopolists,” said Adams sententiously. “Still I
don't see why there should be any scrapping over the line in Quartz
Creek Canyon.”
“No? You are not up in monopolistic methods. In six months from
September first the Utah people will be shut out of Carbonate
business, which is all that keeps that part of their line alive.
If they want a share of that traffic after March first, they will
have to have a road of their own to carry it over.”
“Precisely,” said Adams, stifling a yawn. “They are building one,
aren't they?”
“Trying to,” Winton amended. “But, unfortunately, the only practicable
route through the mountains is up Quartz Creek Canyon, and the canyon
is already occupied by a branch line of the Colorado and Grand River.”
“Still I don't see why there should be any scrap.”
“Don't you? If the Rajah's road can keep the new line out of Carbonate
till the six months have expired, it will have a monopoly of all the
carrying trade of the camp. By consequence it can force every shipper
in the district to make iron-clad contracts, so that when the Utah
line is finally completed it won't be able to secure any freight for
a year, at least.”
“Oho! that's the game, is it? I begin to savvy the burro: that's the
proper phrase, isn't it? And what are our chances?”
“We have about one in a hundred, as near as I could make out from
Mr. Callowell's statement of the case. The C. G. R. people are moving
heaven and earth to obstruct us in the canyon. If they can delay the
work a little longer, the weather will do the rest. With the first
heavy snow in the mountains, which usually comes long before this,
the Utah will have to put up its tools and wait till next summer.”
Adams lighted another cigarette.
“Pardon me if I seem inquisitive,” he said, “but for the life of me
I can't understand what these obstructionists can do. Of course, they
can't use force.”
Winton's smile was grim. “Can't they? Wait till you get on the ground.
But the first move was peaceable enough. They got an injunction from
the courts restraining the new line from encroaching on their right
of way.”
“Which was a thing that nobody wanted to do,” said Adams, between
inhalations.
“Which was a thing the Utah _had_ to do,” corrected Winton. “The
canyon is a narrow gorge--a mere slit in parts of it. That is where
they have us.”
“Oh, well,” returned Adams, “I suppose we took an appeal and asked
to have the injunction set aside?”
“We did, promptly; and that is the present status of the fight. The
appeal decision has not yet been handed down; and in the meantime
we go on building railroad, incurring all the penalties for contempt
of court with every shovelful of earth moved. Do you still think you
will be in danger of ossifying?”
Adams let the question rest while he asked one of his own.
“How do you come to be mixed up in it, Jack? A week ago some one
told me you were going to South America to build a railroad in the
Andes. What switched you?”
Winton shook his head. “Fate, I guess; that and a wire from President
Callowell of the Utah offering me this. Chief of Construction Evarts,
in charge of the work in Quartz Creek Canyon, said what you said a
few minutes ago--that he had not hired out for a soldier. He resigned,
and I'm taking his berth.”
Adams rose and buttoned his coat.
“By all of which it seems that we two are in for a good bit more
than the ossifying exile,” he remarked. And then: “I am going back
into the Rosemary to pay my respects to Miss Virginia Carteret. Won't
you come along?”
“No,” said Winton, more shortly than the invitation warranted; and
the other went his way alone.