Morning in the highest highlands of the Rockies, a morning clear,
cold, and tense, with a bell-like quality in the frosty air to make
the cracking of a snow-laden spruce-bough resound like a pistol-shot.
For Denver and the dwellers on the eastern plain the sun is an hour
high; but the hamlet mining-camp of Argentine, with its dovecote
railway station and two-pronged siding, still lies in the steel-blue
depths of the canyon shadow.
Massive mountains, dark green to the timber line and dazzling white
above it, shut in the narrow valley to right and left. A mimic
torrent, ice-bound in the quieter pools, drums and gurgles on its
descent midway between two railway embankments, the one to which the
station and side-tracks belong, old and well-settled, the other new
and as yet unballasted. Just opposite the pygmy station a lateral
gorge intersects the main canyon, making a deep gash in the opposing
mountain bulwark, around which the new line has to find its way by a
looping detour.
In a scanty widening of the main canyon a few hundred yards below the
station a graders' camp of rude slab shelters is turning out its horde
of wild-looking Italians; and on a crooked spur track fronting the
shanties blue wood-smoke is curling lazily upward from the kitchen car
of a construction train.
All night long the Rosemary, drawn by the sturdiest of mountain-climbing
locomotives, had stormed onward and upward from the valley of the
Grand, through black defiles and around the shrugged shoulders of the
mighty peaks to find a resting-place in the white-robed dawn on the
siding at Argentine. The lightest of sleepers, Virginia had awakened
when the special was passing through Carbonate; and, drawing the berth
curtain, she had lain for an hour watching the solemn procession of
cliffs and peaks wheeling in stately and orderly array against the
inky background of sky. Now, in the steel-blue dawn, she was--or
thought she was--the first member of the party to dress and steal out
upon the railed platform to look abroad upon the wondrous scene in the
canyon.
But her reverie, trance-like in its wordless enthusiasm, was presently
broken by a voice behind her--the voice, namely, of Mr. Arthur
Jastrow.
“What a howling wilderness, to be sure, isn't it?” said the secretary,
twirling his eyeglasses by the cord and looking, as he felt,
interminably bored.
“No, indeed; anything but that,” she retorted warmly. “It is grander
than anything I ever imagined. I wish there were a piano in the car.
It makes me fairly ache to set it in some form of expression, and
music is the only form I know.”
“I'm glad if it doesn't bore you,” he rejoined, willing to agree with
her for the sake of prolonging the interview. “But to me it is nothing
more than a dreary wilderness, as I say; a barren, rock-ribbed gulch
affording an indifferent right of way for two railroads.”
“For one,” she corrected, in a quick upflash of loyalty for her kin.
The secretary shifted his gaze from the mountains to the maiden and
smiled. She was exceedingly good to look upon--high-bred, queenly, and
just now the fine fire of enthusiasm quickened her pulses and sent the
rare flush to neck and cheek.
Jastrow the cold-eyed, the business automaton, set to go off with a
click at Mr. Somerville Darrah's touch, had ambitions not automatic.
Some day he meant to put the world of business under foot as a
conqueror, standing triumphant on the apex of that pyramid of success
which the Mr. Somerville Darrahs were so painstakingly uprearing. When
that day should come, there would need to be an establishment, a
menage, a queen for the kingdom of success. Summing her up for the
hundredth time since the beginning of the westward flight, he thought
Miss Carteret would fill the requirements passing well.
But this was a divagation, and he pulled himself back to the askings
of the moment, agreeing with her again without reference to his
private convictions.
“For one, I should have said,” he amended. “We mean to have it that
way, though an unprejudiced onlooker might be foolish enough to say
that there is a pretty good present prospect of two.”
But Miss Carteret was in a contradictory mood. Moreover, she was a
woman, and the way to a woman's confidence does not lie through the
neutral country of easy compliance.
“If you won't take the other side, I will,” she said. “There will be
two.”
Jastrow acquiesced a second time.
“I shouldn't wonder. Our competitor's road seems to be only a question
of time--a very short time, judging from the number of men turning out
in the track gang down yonder.”
Virginia leaned over the railing to look past the car and the dovecote
station shading her eyes to shut out the snow-blink from the sun-fired
peaks.
“Why, they are soldiers!” she exclaimed. “At least, some of them have
guns on their shoulders. And see--they are forming in line!”
The secretary adjusted his eye-glasses.
“By Jove! you are right; they have armed the track force. The new
chief of construction doesn't mean to take any chances of being shaken
loose by main strength. Here they come.”
The end of track of the new line was diagonally across the creek from
the Rosemary's berth and a short pistol-shot farther down stream. But
to advance it to a point opposite the private car, and to gain the
altitude of the high embankment directly across from the station, the
new line turned short out of the main canyon at the mouth of the
intersecting gorge, describing a long, U-shaped curve around the head
of the lateral ravine and doubling back upon itself to reenter the
canyon proper at the higher elevation.
The curve which was the beginning of this U-shaped loop was the
morning's scene of action, and the Utah track-layers, two hundred
strong, moved to the front in orderly array, with armed guards as
flankers for the handcar load of rails which the men were pushing up
the grade.
Jastrow darted into the car, and a moment later his place on the
observation platform was taken by a wrathful industry colonel fresh
from his dressing-room--so fresh, indeed, that he was coatless,
hatless, and collarless, and with the dripping bath-sponge clutched
like a missile to hurl at the impudent invaders on the opposite side
of the canyon.
“Hah! wouldn't wait until a man could get into his clothes!” he
rasped, apostrophizing the Utah's new chief of construction. “Jastrow!
Faveh me instantly, seh! Hustle up to the camp there and turn out the
constable, town-marshal, or whatever he is. Tell him I have a writ for
him to serve. Run, seh!”
The secretary appeared and disappeared like a marionette when the
string has been jerked by a vigorous hand, and Virginia smiled--this
without prejudice to a very acute appreciation of the grave
possibilities which were preparing themselves. But having her share of
the militant quality which made her uncle what he was, she stood her
ground.
“Aren't you afraid you will take cold, Uncle Somerville?” she asked
archly; and the Rajah came suddenly to a sense of his incompleteness
and went in to finish his ablutions against the opening of the battle
actual.
At first Virginia thought she would follow him. When Mercury Jastrow
should return with the officer of the law there would be trouble of
some sort, and the woman in her shrank from the witnessing of it. But
at the same instant the blood of the fighting Carterets asserted
itself and she resolved to stay.
“I wonder what uncle hopes to be able to do?” she mused. “Will a
little town constable with a bit of signed paper from some lawyer or
judge be mighty enough to stop all that furious activity over there?
It's more than incredible.”
From that she fell to watching the activity and the orderly purpose of
it. A length of steel, with men clustering like bees upon it, would
slide from its place on the hand-car to fall with a frosty clang on
the cross-ties. Instantly the hammermen would pounce upon it. One
would fall upon hands and knees to “sight” it into place; two others
would slide the squeaking track-gage along its inner edge; a quartet,
working like the component parts of a faultless mechanism, would tap
the fixing spikes into the wood; and then at a signal a dozen of the
heavy pointed hammers swung aloft and a rhythmic volley of resounding
blows clamped the rail into permanence on its wooden bed.
Ahead of the steel-layers were the Italians placing the cross-ties in
position to receive the track, and here the foreman's badge of office
and scepter was a pick-handle. Above all the clamor and the shoutings
Virginia could hear the bull-bellow of this foreman roaring out his
commands--in terms happily not understandable to her; and once she
drew back with a little cry of womanly shrinking when the pick-handle
thwacked upon the shoulders of one who lagged.
It was this bit of brutality which enabled her to single out Winton in
the throng of workers. He heard the blow, and the oath that went with
it, and she saw him run forward to wrench the bludgeon from the
bully's hands and fling it afar. What words emphasized the act she
could not hear, but the little deed of swift justice thrilled her
curiously, and her heart warmed to him as it had when he had thrown
off his coat to fall to work on the derailed engine of the Limited.
“That was fine!” she said to herself. “Most men in his place wouldn't
care, so long as the work was done, and done quickly. I wonder
if--oh, you startled me!”
It was Mr. Somerville Darrah again, clothed upon and in his right
mind; otherwise the mind of a master of men who will brook neither
defeat at the hands of an antagonist nor disobedience on the part of
his following. He was scowling fiercely across at the Utah activities
when she spoke, but at her exclamation the frown softened into a smile
for his favorite niece.
“Startled you, eh? Pahdon me, my deah Virginia. But as I am about to
startle some one else, perhaps you would better go in to your aunt.”
She put a hand on his arm. “Please let me stay out here, Uncle
Somerville,” she said. “I'll be good and not get in the way.”
He shook his head, in deprecation rather than in refusal.
“An officer will be here right soon now to make an arrest. There may
be a fight, or at least trouble of a sort you wouldn't care to see, my
deah.”
“Is it--is it Mr. Winton?” she asked.
He nodded.
“What has he been doing--besides being 'The Enemy'?”
The Rajah's smile was ferocious.
“Just now he is trespassing, and directing others to trespass, upon
private property. Do you see that dump up there on the mountain?--the
hole that looks like a mouth with a long gray beard hanging below it?
That is a mine, and its claim runs down across the track where Misteh
Winton is just now spiking his rails.”
“But, I don't understand,” she began; then she stopped short and clung
to the strong arm. A man in a wide-flapped hat and cowboy
_chaparejos_, with a revolver on either hip, was crossing the stream
on the ice-bridge to scramble up the embankment of the new line.
“The officer?” she asked in an awed whisper.
The Rajah made a sign of assent. Then, identifying Winton in the
throng of workers, he forgot Virginia's presence. “Confound him!” he
fumed. “I'd give a thousand dollars if he'd faveh me by showing fight
so we could lock him up on a criminal count!”
“Why, Uncle Somerville!” she cried.
But there was no time for reproaches. The leather-breeched person
parading as the Argentine town-marshal had climbed the embankment,
and, singling out his man, was reading his warrant.
Contrary to Mr. Darrah's expressed hope, Winton submitted quietly.
With a word to his men--a word that stopped the strenuous labor-battle
as suddenly as it had begun--he turned to pick his way down the rough
hillside at the heels of the marshal.
For some reason that she could never have set out in words Virginia
was distinctly disappointed. It was no part of her desire to see the
conflict blaze up in violence, but it nettled her to see Winton give
up so easily. Some such thought as this had possession of her while
the marshal and his prisoner were picking their way across the ice,
and she was hoping that Winton would give her a chance to requite him,
if only with a look.
But it was Town-Marshal Peter Biggin, affectionately known to his
constituents as “Bigginjin Pete,” who gave her the coveted
opportunity. Instead of disappearing decently with his captive, the
marshal made the mistake of his life by marching Winton up the track
to the private car, thrusting him forward, and saying: “Here's yer
meat, Guv'nor. What-all 'ud ye like fer me to do with hit now I've
got it?”
Now it is safe to assume that the Rajah had no intention of appearing
thus openly as the instigator of Winton's arrest. Hence, if a fierce
scowl and a wordless oath could maim, it is to be feared that the
overzealous Mr. Biggin would have been physically disqualified on the
spot. As it was, Mr. Darrah's ebullient wrath could find no adequate
speech forms, and in the eloquent little pause Winton had time to
smile up at Miss Carteret and to wish her the pleasantest of
good-mornings.
But the Rajah's handicap was not permanent.
“Confound you, seh!” he exploded. “I'm not a justice of the peace! If
you've made an arrest, you must have had a warrant for it, and you
ought to know what to do with your prisoneh.”
“I'm dashed if I do,” objected the simple-hearted Mr. Biggin. “I
allowed you wanted him.”
Winton laughed openly.
“Simplify it for him, Mr. Darrah. We all know that it was your move to
stop the work, and you have stopped it--for the moment. What is the
charge, and where is it answerable?”
The Rajah dropped the mask and spoke to the point.
“The cha'ge, seh, is trespass, and it is answerable in Judge
Whitcomb's cou't in Carbonate. The plaintiff in this particular case
is John Doe, the supposable owneh of that mining claim up yondeh. In
the next it will probably be Richa'd Roe. You are fighting a losing
battle, seh.”
Winton's smile showed his teeth.
“That remains to be seen,” he countered coolly.
The Rajah waved a shapely hand toward the opposite embankment, where
the tracklayers were idling in silent groups waiting for some one in
authority to tell them what to do.
“We can do that every day, Misteh Winton. And each separate individual
arrest will cost your company twelve hours, or such a matteh--the time
required for you to go to Carbonate to give bond for your appearance.”
During this colloquy Virginia had held her ground stubbornly, this
though she felt intuitively that it would be the greatest possible
relief to all three of these men if she would go away.
But now a curious struggle as of a divided allegiance was holding her.
Of course, she wanted Mr. Somerville Darrah to win. Since he was its
advocate, his cause must be righteous and just. But against this
dutiful convincement there was a rebellious hope that Winton would not
allow himself to be beaten; or, rather, it was a feeling that she
would never forgive him if he should.
So it was that she stood with face averted lest he should see her eyes
and read the rebellious hope in them. And in spite of the precaution
he both saw and read, and made answer to the Rajah's ultimatum
accordingly.
“Do your worst, Mr. Darrah. We have some twenty miles of steel to lay
to take us into the Carbonate yards. That steel shall go down in spite
of anything you can do to prevent it.”
Virginia waited breathless for her uncle's reply to this cool
defiance. Quite contrary to all precedent, it was mildly
expostulatory.
“It grieves me, seh, to find you so determined to cou't failure,” he
began; and when the whistle of the upcoming Carbonate train gave him
leave to go on: “Constable, you will find transpo'tation for yourself
and one in the hands of the station agent. Misteh Winton, that is your
train. I wish you good-morning and a pleasant journey. Come, Virginia,
we shall be late to ouh breakfast.”
Winton walked back to the station at the heels of his captor,
cudgeling his brain to devise some means of getting word to Adams.
Happily the Technologian, who had been unloading steel at the
construction camp, had been told of the arrest, and when Winton
reached the station he found his assistant waiting for him.
But now the train was at hand and time had grown suddenly precious.
Winton turned short upon the marshal.
“This is not a criminal matter, Mr. Biggin: will you give me a moment
with my friend?”
The ex-cowboy grinned. “Bet your life I will. I ain't lovin' that old
b'iler-buster in the private car none too hard.” And he went in to get
the passes.
“What's up?” queried Adams, forgetting his drawl for once in a way.
“An arrest--trumped-up charge of trespass on that mining claim up
yonder. But I've got to go to Carbonate to answer the charge and give
bonds, just the same.”
“Any instructions?”
“Yes. When the train is out of sight and hearing, you get back over
there and drive that track-laying for every foot there is in it.”
Adams nodded. “I'll do it, and get myself locked up, I suppose.”
“No, you won't; that's the beauty of it. The majesty of the law--all
there is of it in Argentine--goes with me to Carbonate in the person
of the town-marshal.”
“Oh, good--succulently good! Well, so long. I'll look for you back on
the evening train?”
“Sure,” was the confident reply, “if the Rajah doesn't order it to be
abandoned on my poor account.”
Ten minutes later, when the train had gone storming on its way to
Carbonate and the Rosemary party was at breakfast, the clank of steel
and the chanteys of the hammermen on the other side of the canyon
began again with renewed vigor. The Rajah threw up his head like a
war-horse scenting the battle from afar and laid his commands upon the
long-suffering secretary.
“Faveh me, Jastrow. Get out there and see what they are doing, seh.”
The secretary was back in the shortest possible interval, and his
report was concise and business-like.
“Work under full headway again, in charge of a fellow who wears a
billy-cock hat and smokes cigarettes.”
“Mr. Morton P. Adams,” said Virginia, recognizing the description.
“Will you have him arrested too, Uncle Somerville?”
But the Rajah rose hastily without replying and went to his office
state-room, followed, shadow-like, by the obsequious Jastrow.
It was some little time after breakfast, and Virginia and the Reverend
Billy were doing a constitutional on the plank platform at the
station, when the secretary came down from the car on his way to the
telegraph office.
It was Virginia who stopped him. “What do we do next, Mr. Jastrow?”
she said; “call in the United States Army?”
For reply he handed her a telegram, damp from the copying press. It
was addressed to the superintendent of the C. G. R. at Carbonate, and
she read it without scruple.
“Have the Sheriff of Ute County swear in a dozen deputies and come
with them by special train to Argentine. Revive all possible titles
to abandoned mining claims on line of the Utah Extension, and have
Sheriff Deckert bring blank warrants to cover any emergency.
“DARRAH V.-P.”
“That's one of them,” said the secretary. “I daren't show you the
other.”
“Oh, please!” she said, holding out her hand, while the Reverend Billy
considerately turned his back.
Jastrow weighed the chances of detection. It was little enough he
could do to lay her under obligations to him, and he was willing to do
that little as he could. “I guess I can trust you,” he said, and gave
her the second square of press-damp paper.
Like the first, it was addressed to the superintendent at Carbonate.
But this time the brown eyes flashed and her breath came quickly as
she read the vice-president's cold-blooded after-thought:
“Town-Marshal Biggin will arrive in Carbonate on Number 201 this
A.M. with a prisoner. Have our attorneys see to it that the man is
promptly jailed in default of bond. If he is set at liberty, as he
is likely to be, I shall trust you to arrange for his rearrest and
detention at all hazards.
“D.”