While Adams was dispensing commissary tea in iron-stone china cups to
his two guests in the “dinkey” field office, his chief, taking the
Rosemary's night run in reverse in the company of Town-Marshal Biggin,
was turning the Rajah's coup into a small Utah profit.
Having come upon the ground late the night before, and from the
opposite direction, he had seen nothing of the extension grade west of
Argentine. Hence the enforced journey to Carbonate only anticipated an
inspection trip which he had intended to make as soon as he had seated
Adams firmly in the track-laying saddle.
Not to miss his opportunity, at the first curve beyond Argentine he
passed his cigar-case to Biggin and asked permission to ride on the
rear platform of the day-coach for inspection purposes.
“Say, pardner, what do you take me fer, anyhow?” was the reproachful
rejoinder.
“For a gentleman in disguise,” said Winton promptly.
“Sim'larly, I do you; savvy? You tell me you ain't goin' to stampede,
and you ride anywhere you blame please. See? This here C. G. R. outfit
ain't got no surcingle on me.”
Winton smiled.
“I haven't any notion of stampeding. As it happens, I'm only a day
ahead of time. I should have made this run to-morrow of my own accord
to have a look at the extension grade. You will find me on the rear
platform when you want me.”
“Good enough,” was the reply; and Winton went to his post of
observation.
Greatly to his satisfaction, he found that the trip over the C. G. R.
answered every purpose of a preliminary inspection of the Utah grade
beyond Argentine. For seventeen of the twenty miles the two lines were
scarcely more than a stone's throw apart, and when Biggin joined him
at the junction above Carbonate he had his note-book well filled with
the necessary data.
“Make it, all right?” inquired the friendly bailiff.
“Yes, thanks. Have another cigar?”
“Don't care if I do. Say, that old fire-eater back yonder in the
private car has got a mighty pretty gal, ain't he?”
“The young lady is his niece,” said Winton, wishing that Mr. Biggin
would find other food for comment.
“I don't care; she's pretty as a Jersey two-year-old.”
“It's a fine day,” observed Winton; and then, to background Miss
Carteret effectually as a topic: “How do the people of Argentine feel
about the opposition to our line?”
“They're red-hot; you can put your money on that. The C. G. R.'s a
sure-enough tail-twister where there ain't no competition. Your
road'll get every pound of ore in the camp if it ever gets through.”
Winton made a mental note of this up-cast of public opinion, and set
it over against the friendly attitude of the official Mr. Biggin. It
was very evident that the town-marshal was serving the Rajah's purpose
only because he had to.
“I suppose you stand with your townsmen on that, don't you?” he
ventured.
“Now you're shouting: that's me.”
“Then if that is the case, we won't take this little holiday of ours
any harder than we can help. When the court business is settled--it
won't take very long--you are to consider yourself my guest. We stop
at the Buckingham.”
“Oh, we do, do we? Say, pardner, that's white--mighty white. If I'd
'a' been an inch or so more'n half awake this morning when that old
b'iler-buster's hired man routed me out, I'd 'a' told him to go to
blazes with his warrant. Nex' time I will.”
Winton shook his head. “There isn't going to be any 'next time,'
Peter, my son,” he prophesied. “When Mr. Darrah gets fairly down to
business he'll throw bigger chunks than the Argentine town-marshal at
us.”
By this time the train was slowing into Carbonate, and a few minutes
after the stop at the crowded platform they were making their way up
the single bustling street of the town to the court-house.
“Ever see so many tin-horns and bunco people bunched in all your
round-ups?” said Biggin, as they elbowed through the uneasy shifting
groups in front of the hotel.
“Not often,” Winton admitted. “But it's the luck of the big camps:
they are the dumping-grounds of the world while the high pressure is
on.”
The ex-range-rider turned on the courthouse steps to look the sidewalk
loungers over with narrowing eyes.
“There's Sheeny Mike and Big Otto and half a dozen others right there
in front o' the Buckingham that couldn't stay to breathe twice in
Argentine. And this town's got a po-lice!”--the comment with
lip-curling scorn.
“It also has a county court which is probably waiting for us,” said
Winton; whereupon they went in to appease the offended majesty of the
law.
As Winton had predicted, his answer to the court summons was a mere
formality. On parting with his chief at the Argentine station
platform, Adams' first care had been to wire news of the arrest to the
Utah headquarters. Hence Winton found the company's attorney waiting
for him in Judge Whitcomb's courtroom, and his release on an
appearance bond was only a matter of moments.
The legal affair dismissed, there ensued a weary interval of
time-killing. There was no train back to Argentine until nearly five
o'clock in the afternoon, and the hours dragged heavily for the two,
who had nothing to do but wait. Biggin endured his part of it manfully
till the midday dinner had been discussed; then he drifted off with
one of Winton's cigars between his teeth, saying that he should “take
poison” and shoot up the town if he could not find some more peaceful
means of keeping his blood in circulation.
It was a little after three o'clock, and Winton was sitting at the
writing-table in the lobby of the hotel elaborating his hasty notebook
data of the morning's inspection, when a boy came in with a telegram.
The young engineer was not so deeply engrossed in his work as to be
deaf to the colloquy.
“Mr. John Winton? Yes, he is here somewhere,” said the clerk in answer
to the boy's question; and after an identifying glance: “There he
is--over at the writing-table.”
Winton turned in his chair and saw the boy coming toward him; also he
saw the ruffian pointed out by Biggin from the court-house steps and
labeled “Sheeny Mike” lounging up to the clerk's desk for a whispered
exchange of words with the bediamonded gentleman behind it.
What followed was cataclysmic in its way. The lounger took three
staggering lurches toward Winton, brushed the messenger boy aside, and
burst out in a storm of maudlin invective.
“Sign yerself 'Winton' now, do yet ye lowdown, turkey-trodden--”
“One minute,” said Winton curtly, taking the telegram from the boy and
signing for it.
“I'll give ye more'n ye can carry away in less'n half that time--see?”
was the minatory retort; and the threat was made good by an awkward
buffet which would have knocked the engineer out of his chair if he
had remained in it.
Now Winton's eyes were gray and steadfast, but his hair was of that
shade of brown which takes the tint of dull copper in certain lights,
and he had a temper which went with the red in his hair rather than
with the gray in his eyes. Wherefore his attempt to placate his
assailant was something less than diplomatic.
“You drunken scoundrel!” he snapped. “If you don't go about your
business and let me alone, I'll turn you over to the police with a
broken bone or two!”
The bully's answer was a blow delivered straight from the shoulder--too
straight to harmonize with the fiction of drunkenness. Winton saw the
sober purpose in it and went battle-mad, as a hasty man will. Being a
skilful boxer,--which his antagonist was not,--he did what he had to
do neatly and with commendable despatch. Down, up; down, up; down a
third time, and then the bystanders interfered.
“Hold on!”
“That'll do!”
“Don't you see he's drunk?”
“Enough's as good as a feast--let him go.”
Winton's blood was up, but he desisted, breathing threatenings.
Whereat Biggin shouldered his way into the circle.
“Pay your bill and let's hike out o' this, _pronto_!” he said in a low
tone. “You ain't got no time to fool with a Carbonate justice shop.”
But Winton was not to be brought to his senses so easily.
“Run away from that swine? Not if I know it. Let him take it into
court if he wants to. I'll be there, too.”
The beaten one was up now and apparently looking for an officer.
“I'm takin' ye all to witness,” he rasped. “I was on'y askin' him to
cash up what he lost to me las' night, and he jumps me. But I'll stick
him if there's any law in this camp.”
Now all this time Winton had been holding the unopened telegram
crumpled in his fist, but when Biggin pushed him out of the circle and
thrust him up to the clerk's desk, he bethought him to read the
message. It was Virginia's warning, signed by Adams, and a single
glance at the closing sentence was enough to cool him suddenly.
“Pay the bill, Biggin, and join me in the billiard-room, quick!” he
whispered, pressing money into the town-marshal's hand and losing
himself in the crowd. And when Biggin had obeyed his instructions:
“Now for a back way out of this, if there is one. We'll have to take
to the hills till train time.”
They found a way through the bar and out into a side street leading
abruptly up to the spruce-clad hills behind the town. Biggin held his
peace until they were safe from immediate danger of pursuit. Then his
curiosity got the better of him.
“Didn't take you more'n a week to change your mind about pullin' it
off with that tinhorn scrapper in the courts, did it?”
“No,” said Winton.
“'Tain't none o' my business, but I'd like to know what stampeded
you.”
“A telegram,”--shortly. “It was a put-up job to have me locked up on a
criminal charge, and so hold me out another day.”
Biggin grinned. “The old b'iler-buster again. Say, he's a holy terror,
ain't he?”
“He doesn't mean to let me build my railroad if he can help it.”
The ex-cowboy found his sack of chip tobacco and dexterously rolled a
cigarette in a bit of brown wrapping-paper.
“If that's the game, Mr. Sheeny Mike, or his backers, will be most
likely to play it to a finish, don't you guess?”
“How?”
“By havin' a po-liceman layin' for you at the train.”
“I hadn't thought of that.”
“Well, I can think you out of it, I reckon. The branch train is a
'commodation, and it'll stop most anywhere if you throw up your hand
at it. We can take out through the woods and across the hills, and mog
up the track a piece. How'll that do?”
“It will do for me, but there is no need of your tramping when you can
just as well ride.”
But now that side of Mr. Peter Biggin which endears him and his kind
to every man who has ever shared his lonely round-ups, or broken bread
with him in his comfortless shack, came uppermost.
“What do you take me fer?” was the way it vocalized itself; but there
was more than a formal oath of loyal allegiance in the curt question.
“For a man and a brother,” said Winton heartily; and they set out
together to waylay the outgoing train at some point beyond the danger
limit.
It was accomplished without further mishap, and the short winter day
was darkening to twilight when the train came in sight and the
engineer slowed to their signal. They climbed aboard, and when they
had found a seat in the smoker the chief of construction spoke to the
ex-cowboy as to a friend.
“I hope Adams has knocked out a good day's work for us,” he said.
“Your pardner with the store hat and the stinkin' cigaroots?--he's all
right,” said Biggin; and it so chanced that at the precise moment of
the saying the subject of it was standing with the foreman of
track-layers at a gap in the new line just beyond and above the
Rosemary's siding at Argentine, his day's work ended, and his men
loaded on the flats for the run down to camp over the lately-laid
rails of the lateral loop.
“Not such a bad day, considering the newness of us and the bridge at
the head of the gulch,” he said, half to himself. And then more
pointedly to the foreman: “Bridge-builders to the front at the first
crack of dawn, Mike. Why wasn't this break filled in the grading?”
“Sure, sorr, 'tis a dhrain it is,” said the Irishman; “from the placer
up beyant,” he added, pointing to a washed-out excoriation on the
steep upper slope of the mountain. “Major Evarts did be tellin' us
we'd have the lawyers afther us hot-fut again if we didn't be lavin'
ut open the full width.”
“Mmph!” said Adams, looking the ground over with a critical eye. “It's
a bad bit. It wouldn't take much to bring that whole slide down on us
if it wasn't frozen solid. Who owns the placer?”
“Two fellies over in Carbonate. The company did be thryin' to buy the
claim, but the sharps wouldn't sell--bein' put up to hold ut by thim
C. G. R. divils. It's more throuble we'll be havin' here, I'm
thinking.”
While they lingered a shrill whistle, echoing like an eldrich laugh
among the cliffs of the upper gorge, announced the coming of a train
from the direction of Carbonate. Adams looked at his watch.
“I'd like to know what that is,” he mused. “It's an hour too soon for
the accommodation. By Jove!”
The exclamation directed itself at a one-car train which came
thundering down the canyon to pull in on the siding beyond the
Rosemary. The car was a passenger coach, well-lighted, and from his
post on the embankment Adams could see armed men filling the windows.
Michael Branagan saw them, too, and the fighting Celt in him rose to
the occasion.
“'Tis Donnybrook Fair we've come to this time, Misther Adams. Shall I
call up the b'ys wid their guns?”
“Not yet. Let's wait and see what happens.”
What happened was a peaceful sortie. Two men, each with a kit of some
kind borne in a sack, dropped from the car, crossed the creek, and
struggled up the hill through the unbridged gap. Adams waited until
they were fairly on the right of way, then he called down to them.
“Halt, there! you two. This is corporation property.”
“Not much it ain't!” retorted one of the trespassers gruffly. “It's
the drain-way from our placer up yonder.”
“What are you going to do up there at this time of night?”
“None o' your blame business!” was the explosive counter-shot.
“Perhaps it isn't,” said Adams mildly. “Just the same, I'm thirsting
to know. Call it vulgar curiosity if you like.”
“All right, you can know, and be cussed to you. We're goin' to work
our claim. Got anything to say against it?”
“Oh! no,” rejoined Adams; and when the twain had disappeared in the
upper darkness he went down the grade with Branagan and took his place
on the man-loaded flats for the run to the construction camp, thinking
more of the lately-arrived car with its complement of armed men than
of the two miners who had calmly announced their intention of working
a placer claim on a high mountain, without water, and in the dead of
winter! By which it will be seen that Mr. Morton P. Adams,
C. E. M. I. T. Boston, had something yet to learn in the matter of
practical field work.
By the time Ah Foo had served him his solitary supper in the dinkey he
had quite forgotten the incident of the mysterious placer miners.
Worse than this, it had never occurred to him to connect their
movements with the Rajah's plan of campaign. On the other hand, he was
thinking altogether of the carload of armed men, and trying to devise
some means of finding out how they were to be employed in furthering
the Rajah's designs.
The means suggested themselves after supper, and he went alone over to
Argentine to spend a half-hour in the bar of the dance-hall listening
to the gossip of the place. When he had learned what he wanted to
know, he forthfared to meet Winton at the incoming train.
“We are in for it now,” he said, when they had crossed the creek to
the dinkey and the Chinaman was bringing Winton's belated supper. “The
Rajah has imported a carload of armed mercenaries, and he is going to
clean us all out to-morrow: arrest everybody from the gang foremen
up.”
Winton's eyebrows lifted. “So? that is a pretty large contract. Has he
men enough to do it?”
“Not so many men. But they are sworn-in deputies, with the sheriff of
Ute County in command--a posse, in fact. So he has the law on his
side.”
“Which is more than he had when he set a thug on me this afternoon at
Carbonate,” said Winton sourly; and he told Adams about the
misunderstanding in the lobby of the Buckingham. His friend whistled
under his breath. “By Jove! that's pretty rough. Do you suppose the
Rajah dictated any such Lucretia Borgia thing as that?”
Winton took time to think about it and admitted a doubt, as he had not
before. Believing Mr. Somerville Darrah fit for treasons, stratagems,
and spoils in his official capacity of vice-president of a fighting
corporation, he was none the less disposed to find excuses for Miss
Virginia Carteret's uncle.
“I did think so at first, but I guess it was only the misguided zeal
of some understrapper. Of course, word has gone out all along the
C. G. R. line that we are to be delayed by every possible expedient.”
But Adams shook his head.
“Mr. Darrah dictated that move in his own proper person.”
“How do you know that?”
“You had a message from me this afternoon?”
“I did.”
“What did you think of it?”
“I thought you might have left out the first part of it; also that you
might have made the latter half a good bit more explicit.”
A slow smile spread itself over Adams' impassive face.
“Every man has his limitations,” he said. “I did the best I could. But
the Rajah knew very well what he was about--otherwise there would have
been no telegram.”
Winton sent the Chinaman out for another cup of tea before he said,
“Did Miss Carteret come here alone?”
“Oh, no; Calvert came with her.”
“What brought them here?”
Adams spread his hands.
“What makes any woman do precisely the most unexpected thing?”
Winton was silent for a moment. Finally he said: “I hope you did what
you could to make it pleasant for her.”
“I did. And I didn't hear her complain.”
“That was low-down in you, Morty.”
Adams chuckled reminiscently. “Had to do it to make my day-before-yesterday
lie hold water. And she was immensely taken with the scrawls, especially
with one of them.”
Winton flushed under the bronze.
“I suppose I don't need to ask which one.”
Adams' grin was a measure of his complacence.
“Well, hardly.”
“She took it away with her?”
“Took it, or tore it up, I forget which.”
“Tell me, Morty, was she very angry?”
The other took the last hint of laughter out of his eyes before he
said solemnly: “You'll never know how thankful I was that you were
twenty miles away.”
Winton's cup was full, and he turned the talk abruptly to the
industrial doings and accomplishments of the day. Adams made a verbal
report which led him by successive steps up to the twilight hour when
he had stood with Branagan on the brink of the placer drain, but,
strangely enough, there was no stirring of memory to recall the
incident of the upward-climbing miners.
When Winton rose he said something about mounting a night guard on the
engine, which was kept under steam at all hours; and shortly afterward
he left the dinkey ostensibly to do it, declining Adams' offer of
company. But once out-of-doors he climbed straight to the operator's
tent on the snow-covered slope. Carter had turned in, but he sat up in
his bunk at the noise of the intrusion.
“That you, Mr. Winton? Want to send something?” he asked.
“No, go to sleep. I'll write a wire and leave it for you to send in
the morning.”
He sat down at the packing-case instrument table and wrote out a brief
report of the day's progress in track-laying for the general manager's
record. But when Carter's regular breathing told him he was alone he
pushed the pad aside, took down the sending-hook, and searched until
he had found the original copy of the message which had reached him at
the moment of cataclysms in the lobby of the Buckingham.
“Um,” he said, and his heart grew warm within him. “It's just about as
I expected: Morty didn't have anything whatever to do with it--except
to sign and send it as she commanded him to.” And the penciled sheet
was folded carefully and filed in permanence in the inner breast
pocket of his brown duck shooting-coat.
The moon was rising behind the eastern mountain when he extinguished
the candle and went out. Below lay the chaotic construction camp
buried in silence and in darkness save for the lighted windows of the
dinkey. He was not quite ready to go back to Adams, and after making a
round of the camp and bidding the engine watchman keep a sharp lookout
against a possible night surprise, he set out to walk over the
newly-laid track of the day.
Another half-hour had elapsed, and a waning moon was clearing the
topmost crags of Pacific Peak when he came out on the high embankment
opposite the Rosemary, having traversed the entire length of the
lateral loop and inspected the trestle at the gulch head by the light
of a blazing spruce-branch.
The station with its two one-car trains, and the shacks of the little
mining-camp beyond, lay shimmering ghost-like in the new-born light of
the moon. The engine of the sheriff's car was humming softly with a
note like the distant swarming of bees, and from the dancehall in
Argentine the snort of a trombone and the tinkling clang of a cracked
piano floated out upon the frosty night air.
Winton turned to go back. The windows of the Rosemary were all dark,
and there was nothing to stay for. So he thought, at all events; but
if he had not been musing abstractedly upon things widely separated
from his present surroundings, he might have remarked two tiny stars
of lantern-light high on the placer ground above the embankment; or,
failing the sight, he might have heard the dull, measured _slumph_
of a churn-drill burrowing deep in the frozen earth of the slope.
As it was, a pair of brown eyes blinded him, and the tones of a voice
sweeter than the songs of Oberon's sea-maid filled his ears. Wherefore
he neither saw nor heard; and taking the short cut across the mouth of
the lateral gulch back to camp, he boarded the dinkey and went to bed
without disturbing Adams.
The morning of the day to come broke clear and still, with the stars
paling one by one at the pointing finger of the dawn, and the
frost-rime lying thick and white like a snowfall of erect and
glittering needles on iron and steel and wood.
Obedient to orders, the bridge-builders were getting out their
hand-car at the construction camp, the wheels shrilling merrily on the
frosted rails, and the men stamping and swinging their arms to start
the sluggish night-blood. Suddenly, like the opening gun of a battle,
the dull rumble of a mighty explosion trembled upon the still air,
followed instantly by a sound as of a passing avalanche.
Winton was out and running up the track before the camp was fairly
aroused. What he saw when he gained the hither side of the lateral
gulch was a sight to make a strong man weep. A huge landslide,
starting from the frozen placer ground high up on the western
promontory, had swept every vestige of track and embankment into the
deep bed of the creek at a point precisely opposite Mr. Somerville
Darrah's private car.