Virginia was up and dressed when the sullen shock of the explosion
set the windows jarring in the Rosemary.
She hurried out upon the observation platform and so came to look
upon the ruin wrought by the landslide while the dust-like smoke of
the dynamite still hung in the air.
“Rather unlucky for our friends the enemy,” said a colorless voice
behind her; and she had an uncomfortable feeling that Jastrow had
been lying in wait for her.
She turned upon him quickly.
“Was it an accident, Mr. Jastrow?”
“How could it be anything else?” he inquired mildly.
“I don't know. But there was an explosion: I heard it.”
“It is horribly unfair,” she went on. “I understand the sheriff is
here. Couldn't he have prevented this?”
The secretary's rejoinder was a platitude: “Everything is fair in
love or war.”
“But this is neither,” she retorted.
“Think not?” he said coolly. “Wait, and you'll see. And a word in
your ear, Miss Carteret: you are one of us, you know, and you mustn't
be disloyal. I know what you did yesterday after you read those
telegrams.”
Virginia's face became suddenly wooden. Until that moment it had not
occurred to her that Jastrow's motive in showing her the two telegrams
might have been carefully calculated.
“I have never given you the right to speak to me that way, Mr.
Jastrow,” she said, with the faintest possible emphasis on the
courtesy prefix; and with that she turned from him to focus her
field-glass on the construction camp below.
At the Utah stronghold all was activity of the fiercest. Winton had
raced back with his news of the catastrophe, and the camp was alive
with men clustering like bees and swarming upon the flat-cars of the
material-train to be taken to the front.
While she looked, studiously ignoring the man behind her, Virginia
saw the big octopod engine clamoring up the grade. In a twinkling
the men were off and at work.
Virginia's color rose and the brown eyes filled swiftly. One part
of her ideal was courage of the sort that rises the higher for
reverses. But at the instant she remembered the secretary, and, lest
he should spy upon her emotion, she turned and took refuge in the
car.
In the Rosemary the waiter was laying the plates for breakfast, and
Bessie and the Reverend William were at the window, watching the
stirring industry battle now in full swing on the opposite slope.
Virginia joined them.
“Isn't it a shame!” she said. “Of course, I want our side to win;
but it seems such a pity that we can't fight fairly.”
Calvert said, “Isn't what a shame?” thereby eliciting a crisp
explanation from Virginia in which she set well-founded suspicion
in the light of fact.
The Reverend Billy shook his head.
“Such things may be within the law--of business; but they will surely
breed bad blood--”
The interruption was the Rajah in his proper person, bustling out
fiercely to a conference with his Myrmidons. By tacit consent the
three at the window fell silent.
There was a hasty mustering of armed men under the windows of the
Rosemary, and they heard Sheriff Deckert's low-voiced instructions
to his posse.
“Take it slow and easy, boys, and don't get rattled. Now, then; guns
to the front! Steady!”
The Reverend Billy rose.
“What are you going to do?” said Virginia.
“I'm going to give Winton a tip if it's the last thing I ever do.”
She shook her head and pointed eastward to the mouth of the lateral
gulch. Under cover of a clump of evergreen-scrub a man in a
wideflapped hat and leather breeches was climbing swiftly to the level
of the new line, cautiously waving a handkerchief as a peace token.
“That is the man who arrested Mr. Winton yesterday. This time he is
going to fight on the other side. He'll carry the warning.”
“Think so?” said Calvert.
“I am sure of it. Open the window, please. I want to see better.”
As yet there was no sign of preparation on the embankment. For the
moment the rifles of the track force were laid aside, and every man
was plying pick or shovel.
Winton was in the thick of the pick-and-shovel melee, urging it on,
when Biggin ran up.
“Hi!” he shouted. “Fixin' to take another play-day in Carbonate?
Lookee down yonder!”
Winton looked and became alive to the possibilities in the turning
of a leaf.
“Guns!” he yelled; and at the word of command the tools were flung
aside, and the track force, over two hundred strong, became an army.
“Mulcahey, take half the men and go up the grade till you can rake
those fellows without hitting the car. Branagan, you take the other
half and go down till you can cross-fire with Mulcahey. Aim low, both
of you; and the man who fires before he gets the word from me will
break his neck at a rope's end. Fall in!”
“By Jove!” said Adams. “Are you going to resist? That spells felony,
doesn't it?”
Winton pointed to the waiting octopod.
“I'm going to order the Two-fifteen down out of the way: you may go
with her if you like.”
“I guess not!” quoth the assistant, calmly lighting a fresh cigarette.
And then to the water-boy, who was acting quartermaster: “Give me
a rifle and a cartridge-belt, Chunky, and I'll stay here with the
boss.”
“And where do I come in?” said Biggin to Winton reproachfully.
“You'll stay out, if your head's level. You've done enough already
to send you to Canyon City.”
“I ain't a-forgettin' nothing,” said Peter cheerfully, casting himself
flat behind a heap of earth on the dump-edge.
While the sheriff's posse was picking its way gingerly over the loose
rock and earth dam formed by the landslide, the window went up in
the Rosemary and Winton saw Virginia. Without meaning to, she gave
him his battle-word.
“We are a dozen Winchesters to your one, Mr. Deckert, and we shall
resist force with force. Order your men back or there will be
trouble.”
Winton stood out on the edge of the cutting, a solitary figure where
a few minutes before the earth had been flying from a hundred shovels.
The sheriff's reply was an order, but not for retreat.
“He's one of the men we want; cover him!” he commanded.
Unless the public occasion appeals strongly to the sympathies or the
passions, a picked-up sheriff's posse is not likely to have very good
metal in it. Peter Biggin laughed.
“Don't be no ways nervous,” he said in an aside to Winton. “Them
professional veniry chumps couldn't hit the side o' Pacific Peak.”
Winton held his ground, while the sheriff tried to drive his men up
a bare slope commanded by two hundred rifles to right and left. The
attempt was a humiliating failure. Being something less than soldiers
trained to do or die, the deputies hung back to a man.
Virginia could not forbear a smile. The sheriff burst into caustic
profanity. Whereupon Mr. Peter Biggin rose up and sent a bullet to
plow a little furrow in the ice within an inch of Deckert's heels.
“Ex-cuse _me_, Bart,” he drawled, “but no cuss words don't go.”
The sheriff ignored Peter Biggin as a person who could be argued with
at leisure and turned to Winton.
“Come down!” he bellowed.
Winton laughed.
“Let me return the invitation. Come up, and you may read your warrants
to us all day.”
Deckert withdrew his men, and at Winton's signal the track-layers
came in and the earth began to fly again.
Virginia sighed her relief, and Bessie plucked up courage to go to
the window, which she had deserted in the moment of impending battle.
“Breakfast is served,” announced the waiter as calmly as if the
morning meal were the only matter of consequence in a world of
happenings.
They gathered about the table, a silent trio made presently a quartet
by the advent of Mrs. Carteret, who had neither seen nor heard
anything of the warlike episode with which the day had begun.
Mr. Darrah was late, so late that when he came in, Virginia was the
only one of the four who remained at table. She stayed to pour his
coffee and to bespeak peace.
“Uncle Somerville, can't we win without calling in these horrid men
with their guns?”
A mere shadow of a grim smile came and went in the Rajah's eyes.
“An unprejudiced outsideh might say that the 'horrid men with their
guns' were on top of that embankment, my deah--ten to ouh one,” he
remarked.
“But I should think we might win in some other way,” Virginia
persisted undauntedly.
Mr. Darrah pushed his plate aside and cleared his throat.
“For business reasons which you--ah--wouldn't undehstand, we can't
let the Utah finish this railroad of theirs into Carbonate this
winteh.”
“So much I have inferred. But Mr. Winton seems to be very determined.”
“Mmph! I wish Mr. Callowell had favehed us with some one else--any
one else. That young fellow is a bawn fighteh, my deah.”
Virginia had a bright idea, and she advanced it without examining
too closely into its ethical part.
“Mr. Winton is working for wages, isn't he?” she asked.
“Of cou'se; big money, at that. His sawt come high.”
“Well, why can't you hire him away from the other people? Mr.
Callowell might not be so fortunate next time.”
The Rajah sat back in his chair and regarded her thoughtfully.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing my deah--nothing at all. I was just wondering how a
woman's--ah--sense of propo'tion was put togetheh. But your plan has
merit. Do I understand that you will faveh me with your help?”
“Why, ye-es, certainly, if I can,” she assented, not without dubiety.
“That is, I'll be nice to Mr. Winton.”
“That is precisely what I mean, my deah. We'll begin by having him
heah to dinneh this evening, him and the otheh young man--what's his
name?--Adams.”
And the upshot of the matter was a dainty note which found its way
by the hands of the private-car porter to Winton, laboring manfully
at his task of repairing the landslide damages.
“Mr. Somerville Darrah's compliments to Mr. John Winton and Mr. Morton
P. Adams, and he will be pleased if they will dine with the party
in the car Rosemary at seven o'clock.
“Informal.
“Wednesday, December the Ninth.”