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THE DAUGHTER OF A MAGNATE
by
FRANK H. SPEARMAN
Author of
Whispering Smith,
Doctor Bryson, Etc.
[Frontispiece: Gertrude used her glass constantly.]
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers : : New York
Copyright, 1903, by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Published, October, 1903
To
WESLEY HAMILTON PECK, M.D.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. A JUNE WATER
II. AN ERROR AT HEADQUARTERS
III. INTO THE MOUNTAINS
IV. AS THE DESPATCHER SAW
V. AN EMERGENCY CALL
VI. THE CAT AND THE RAT
VII. TIME BEING MONEY
VIII. SPLITTING THE PAW
IX. A TRUCE
X. AND A SHOCK
XI. IN THE LALLA ROOKH
XII. A SLIP ON A SPECIAL
XIII. BACK TO THE MOUNTAINS
XIV. GLEN TARN
XV. NOVEMBER
XVI. NIGHT
XVII. STORM
XVIII. DAYBREAK
XIX. SUSPENSE
XX. DEEPENING WATERS
XXI. PILOT
XXII. THE SOUTH ARÊTE
XXIII. BUSINESS
The Daughter of a Magnate
CHAPTER I
A JUNE WATER
The train, a special, made up of a private car and a diner, was running
on a slow order and crawled between the bluffs at a snail's pace.
Ahead, the sun was sinking into the foothills and wherever the eye
could reach to the horizon barren wastes lay riotously green under the
golden blaze. The river, swollen everywhere out of its banks, spread
in a broad and placid flood of yellow over the bottoms, and a hundred
shallow lakes studded with willowed islands marked its wandering course
to the south and east. The clear, far air of the mountains, the glory
of the gold on the June hills and the illimitable stretch of waters
below, spellbound the group on the observation platform.
"It's a pity, too," declared Conductor O'Brien, who was acting as
mountain Baedeker, "that we're held back this way when we're covering
the prettiest stretch on the road for running. It is right along here
where you are riding that the speed records of the world have been
made. Fourteen and six-tenths miles were done in nine and a half
minutes just west of that curve about six months ago--of course it was
down hill."
Several of the party were listening. "Do you use speed recorders out
here?" asked Allen Harrison.
"How's that?"
"Do you use speed recorders?"
"Only on our slow trains," replied O'Brien. "To put speed recorders on
Paddy McGraw or Jimmie the Wind would be like timing a teal duck with
an eight-day clock. Sir?" he asked, turning to another questioner
while the laugh lingered on his side. "No; those are not really
mountains at all. Those are the foothills of the Sleepy Cat
range--west of the Spider Water. We get into that range about two
hundred miles from here--well, I say they are west of the Spider, but
for ten days it's been hard to say exactly where the Spider is. The
Spider is making us all the trouble with high water just now--and we're
coming out into the valley in about a minute," he added as the car gave
an embarrassing lurch. "The track is certainly soft, but if you'll
stay right where you are, on this side, ladies, you'll get the view of
your lives when we leave the bluffs. The valley is about nine miles
broad and it's pretty much all under water."
Beyond the curve they were taking lay a long tangent stretching like a
steel wand across a sea of yellow, and as their engine felt its way
very gingerly out upon it there rose from the slow-moving trucks of
their car the softened resonance that tells of a sounding-board of
waters.
Soon they were drawn among wooded knolls between which hurried little
rivers tossed out of the Spider flood into dry waterways and brawling
with surprised stones and foaming noisily at stubborn root and
impassive culvert. Through the trees the travellers caught passing
glimpses of shaded eddies and a wilderness of placid pools. "And
this," murmured Gertrude Brock to her sister Marie, "this is the
Spider!" O'Brien, talking to the men at her elbow, overheard.
"Hardly, Miss Brock; not yet. You haven't seen the river yet. This is
only the backwater."
They were rising the grade to the bridge approach, and when they
emerged a few moments later from the woods the conductor said, "There!"
The panorama of the valley lay before them. High above their level and
a mile away, the long thread-like spans of Hailey's great bridge
stretched from pier to pier. To the right of the higher ground a fan
of sidetracks spread, with lines of flat cars and gondolas loaded with
stone, brush, piling and timbers, and in the foreground two hulking
pile-drivers, their leads, like rabbits' ears laid sleekly back,
squatted mysteriously. Switch engines puffed impatiently up and down
the ladder track shifting stuff to the distant spurs. At the river
front an army of men moved like loaded ants over the dikes. Beyond
them the eye could mark the boiling yellow of the Spider, its winding
channel marked through the waste of waters by whirling driftwood,
bobbing wreckage and plunging trees--sweepings of a thousand angry
miles. "There's the Spider," repeated the West End conductor,
pointing, "out there in the middle where you see things moving right
along. That's the Spider, on a twenty-year rampage." The train,
moving slowly, stopped. "I guess we've got as close to it as we're
going to, for a while. I'll take a look forward."
It was the time of the June water in the mountains. A year earlier the
rise had taken the Peace River bridge and with the second heavy year of
snow railroad men looked for new trouble. June is not a month for
despair, because the mountain men have never yet scheduled despair as a
West End liability. But it is a month that puts wrinkles in the right
of way clear across the desert and sows gray hairs in the roadmasters'
records from McCloud to Bear Dance. That June the mountain streams
roared, the foothills floated, the plains puffed into sponge, and in
the thick of it all the Spider Water took a man-slaughtering streak and
started over the Bad Lands across lots. The big river forced Bucks'
hand once more, and to protect the main line Glover, third of the
mountain roadbuilders, was ordered off the high-line construction and
back to the hills where Brodie and Hailey slept, to watch the Spider.
The special halted on a tongue of high ground flanking the bridge and
extending upstream to where the river was gnawing at the long dike that
held it off the approach. The delay was tedious. Doctor Lanning and
Allen Harrison went forward to smoke. Gertrude Brock took refuge in a
book and Mrs. Whitney, her aunt, annoyed her with stories. Marie Brock
and Louise Donner placed their chairs where they could watch the
sorting and unloading of never-ending strings of flat cars, the
spasmodic activity in the lines of laborers, the hurrying of the
foremen and the movement of the rapidly shifting fringe of men on the
danger line at the dike.
The clouds which had opened for the dying splendor of the day closed
and a shower swept over the valley; the conductor came back in his
raincoat--his party were at dinner. "_Are_ we to be detained much
longer?" asked Mrs. Whitney.
"For a little while, I'm afraid," replied the trainman diplomatically.
"I've been away over there on the dike to see if I could get permission
to cross, but I didn't succeed."
"Oh, conductor!" remonstrated Louise Donner.
"And we don't get to Medicine Bend to-night," said Doctor Lanning.
"What we need is a man of influence," suggested Harrison. "We ought
never to have let your 'pa' go," he added, turning to Gertrude Brock,
beside whom he sat.
"Can't we really get ahead?" Gertrude lifted her brows reproachfully
as she addressed the conductor. "It's becoming very tiresome."
O'Brien shook his head.
"Why not see someone in authority?" she persisted.
"I have seen the man in authority, and nearly fell into the river doing
it; then he turned me down."
"Did you tell him who we were?" demanded Mrs. Whitney.
"I made all sorts of pleas."
"Does he know that Mr. Bucks _promised_ we should be In Medicine Bend
to-night?" asked pretty little Marie Brock.
"He wouldn't in the least mind that."
Mrs. Whitney bridled. "Pray who is he?"
"The construction engineer of the mountain division is the man in
charge of the bridge just at present."
"It would be a very simple matter to get orders over his head,"
suggested Harrison.
"Not very."
"Mr. Bucks?"
"Hardly. No orders would take us over that bridge to-night without
Glover's permission."
"What an autocrat!" sighed Mrs. Whitney. "No matter; I don't care to
go over it, anyway."
"But I do," protested Gertrude. "I don't feel like staying in this
water all night, if you please."
"I'm afraid that's what we'll have to do for a few hours. I told Mr.
Glover he would be in trouble if I didn't get my people to Medicine
Bend to-night."
"Tell him again," laughed Doctor Lanning.
Conductor O'Brien looked embarrassed. "You'd like to ask particular
leave of Mr. Glover for us, I know," suggested Miss Donner.
"Well, hardly--the second time--not of Mr. Glover." A sheet of rain
drenched the plate-glass windows. "But I'm going to watch things and
we'll get out just as soon as possible. I know Mr. Glover pretty well.
He is all right, but he's been down here now a week without getting out
of his clothes and the river rising on him every hour. They've got
every grain bag between Salt Lake and Chicago and they're filling them
with sand and dumping them in where the river is cutting."
"Any danger of the bridge going?" asked the doctor.
"None in the world, but there's a lot of danger that the river will go.
That would leave the bridge hanging over dry land. The fight is to
hold the main channel where it belongs. They're getting rock over the
bridge from across the river and strengthening the approach for fear
the dike should give way. The track is busy every minute, so I
couldn't make much impression on Mr. Glover."
There was light talk of a deputation to the dike, followed by the
resignation of travellers, cards afterward, and ping-pong. With the
deepening of the night the rain fell harder, and the wind rising in
gusts drove it against the glass. When the women retired to their
compartments the train had been set over above the bridge where the
wind, now hard from the southeast, sung steadily around the car.
Gertrude Brock could not sleep. After being long awake she turned on
the light and looked at her watch; it was one o'clock. The wind made
her restless and the air in the stateroom had become oppressive. She
dressed and opened her door. The lights were very low and the car was
silent; all were asleep.
At the rear end she raised a window-shade. The night was lighted by
strange waves of lightning, and thunder rumbled in the distance
unceasingly. Where she sat she could see the sidings filled with cars,
and when a sharper flash lighted the backwater of the lakes, vague
outlines of far-off bluffs beetled into the sky.
She drew the shade, for the continuous lightning added to her disquiet.
As she did so the rain drove harshly against the car and she retreated
to the other side. Feeling presently the coolness of the air she
walked to her stateroom for her Newmarket coat, and wrapping it about
her, sunk into a chair and closed her eyes. She had hardly fallen
asleep when a crash of thunder split the night and woke her. As it
rolled angrily away she quickly raised the window-curtain.
The heavens were frenzied. She looked toward the river. Electrical
flashes charging from end to end of the angry sky lighted the bridge,
reflected the black face of the river and paled flickering lights and
flaming torches where, on vanishing stretches of dike, an army of dim
figures, moving unceasingly, lent awe to the spectacle.
She could see smoke from the hurrying switch engines whirled viciously
up into the sweeping night and above her head the wind screamed. A
gale from the southwest was hurling the Spider against the revetment
that held the eastern shore and the day and the night gangs together
were reinforcing it. Where the dike gave under the terrific pounding,
or where swiftly boiling pools sucked under the heavy piling, Glover's
men were sinking fresh relays of mattresses and loading them with stone.
At moments laden flat cars were pushed to the brink of the flood, and
men with picks and bars rose spirit-like out of black shadows to
scramble up their sides and dump rubble on the sunken brush. Other men
toiling in unending procession wheeled and slung sandbags upon the
revetment; others stirred crackling watchfires that leaped high into
the rain, and over all played the incessant lightning and the angry
thunder and the flying night.
She shut from her eyes the strangely moving sight, returned to her
compartment, closed her door and lay down. It was quieter within the
little room and the fury of the storm was less appalling.
Half dreaming as she lay, mountains shrouded in a deathly lightning
loomed wavering before her, and one, most terrible of all, she strove
unwillingly to climb. Up she struggled, clinging and slipping, a
cramping fear over all her senses, her ankles clutched in icy fetters,
until from above, an apparition, strange and threatening, pushed her,
screaming, and she swooned into an awful gulf.
"Gertrude! Gertrude! Wake up!" cried a frightened voice.
The car was rocking in the wind, and as Gertrude opened her door Louise
Donner stumbled terrified into her arms. "Did you hear that awful,
awful crash? I'm sure the car has been struck."
"No, no, Louise."
"It surely has been. Oh, let us waken the men at once, Gertrude; we
shall be killed!"
The two clung to one another. "I'm afraid to stay alone, Gertrude,"
sobbed her companion.
"Stay with me, Louise. Come." While they spoke the wind died and for
a moment the lightning ceased, but the calm, like the storm, was
terrifying. As they stood breathless a report like the ripping of a
battery burst over their heads, a blast shook the heavy car and howled
shrilly away.
Sleep was out of the question. Gertrude looked at her watch. It was
four o'clock. The two dressed and sat together till daylight. When
morning broke, dark and gray, the storm had passed and out of the
leaden sky a drizzle of rain was falling. Beside the car men were
moving. The forward door was open and the conductor in his stormcoat
walked in.
"Everything is all right this morning, ladies," he smiled.
"All right? I should think everything all wrong," exclaimed Louise.
"We have been frightened to death."
"They've got the cutting stopped," continued O'Brien, smiling. "Mr.
Glover has left the dike. He just told me the river had fallen six
inches since two o'clock. We'll be out of here now as quick as we can
get an engine: they've been switching with ours. There was
considerable wind in the night----"
"Considerable _wind_!"
"You didn't notice it, did you? Glover loaded the bridge with freight
trains about twelve o'clock and I'm thinking it's lucky, for when the
wind went into the northeast about four o'clock I thought it would take
my head off. It snapped like dynamite clear across the valley."
"Oh, we heard!"
"When the wind jumped, a crew was dumping stone into the river. The
men were ordered off the flat cars but there were so many they didn't
all get the word at once, and while the foreman was chasing them down
he was blown clean into the river."
"Drowned?"
"No, he was not. He crawled out away down by the bridge, though a man
couldn't have done it once in a thousand times. It was old Bill
Dancing--he's got more lives than a cat. Do you remember where we
first pulled up the train in the afternoon? A string of ten box cars
stood there last night and when the wind shifted it blew the whole
bunch off the track."
"Oh, do let us get away from here," urged Gertrude. "I feel as if
something worse would happen if we stayed. I'm sorry we ever left
McCloud yesterday."
The men came from their compartments and there was more talk of the
storm. Clem and his helpers were starting breakfast in the dining-car
and the doctor and Harrison wanted to walk down to see where the river
had cut into the dike. Mrs. Whitney had not appeared and they asked
the young ladies to go with them. Gertrude objected. A foggy haze
hung over the valley.
"Come along," urged Harrison; "the air will give you an appetite."
After some remonstrating she put on her heavy coat, and carrying
umbrellas the four started under the conductor's guidance across to the
dike. They picked their steps along curving tracks, between material
piles and through the débris of the night. On the dike they spent some
time looking at the gaps and listening to explanations of how the river
worked to undermine and how it had been checked. Watchers hooded in
yellow stickers patrolled the narrow jetties or, motionless, studied
the eddies boiling at their feet.
Returning, the party walked around the edge of the camp where cooks
were busy about steaming kettles. Under long, open tents wearied men
lying on scattered hay slept after the hardship of the night. In the
drizzling haze half a dozen men, assistants to the engineer--rough
looking but strong-featured and quick-eyed--sat with buckets of
steaming coffee about a huge campfire. Four men bearing a litter came
down the path. Doctor Lanning halted them. A laborer had been pinched
during the night between loads of piling projecting over the ends of
flat cars and they told the doctor his chest was hurt. A soiled
neckcloth covered his face but his stertorous breathing could be heard,
and Gertrude Brock begged the doctor to go to the camp with the injured
man and see whether something could not be done to relieve him until
the company surgeon arrived. The doctor, with O'Brien, turned back.
Gertrude, depressed by the incident, followed Louise and Allen Harrison
along the path which wound round a clump of willows flanking the
campfire.
On the sloping bank below the trees and a little out of the wind a man
on a mattress of willows lay stretched asleep. He was clad in leather,
mud-stained and wrinkled, and the big brown boots that cased his feet
were strapped tightly above his knees. An arm, outstretched, supported
his head, hidden under a soft gray hat. Like the thick gloves that
covered his clasped hands, his hat and the handkerchief knotted about
his neck were soaked by the rain, falling quietly and trickling down
the furrows of his leather coat. But his attitude was one of
exhaustion, and trifles of discomfort were lost in his deep respiration.
"Oh!" exclaimed Gertrude Brock under her breath, "look at that poor
fellow asleep in the rain. Allen?"
Allen Harrison, ahead, was struggling to hold his umbrella upright
while he rolled a cigarette. He turned as he passed the paper across
his lips.
"Throw your coat over him, Allen."
Harrison pasted the paper roll, and putting it to his mouth felt for
his matchcase. "Throw _my_ coat over him!"
"Yes."
Allen took out a match. "Well, I like that. That's like you,
Gertrude. Suppose you throw your coat over him."
Gertrude looked silently at her companion. There is a moment when
women should be humored; not all men are fortunate enough to recognize
it. Louise, still walking ahead, called, "Come on," but Gertrude did
not move.
"Allen, throw your coat over the poor fellow," she urged. "You
wouldn't let your dog lie like that in the rain."
"But, Gertrude--do me the kindness"--he passed his umbrella to her that
he might better manage the lighting--"he's not my dog."
If she made answer it was only in the expression of her eyes. She
handed the umbrella back, flung open her long coat and slipped it from
her shoulders. With the heavy garment in her hands she stepped from
her path toward the sleeper and noticed for the first time an utterly
disreputable-looking dog lying beside him in the weeds. The dog's long
hair was bedraggled to the color of the mud he curled in, and as he
opened his eyes without raising his head, Gertrude hesitated; but his
tail spoke a kindly greeting. He knew no harm was meant and he watched
unconcernedly while, determined not to recede from her impulse,
Gertrude stepped hastily to the sleeper's side and dropped her coat
over his shoulders.
Louise was too far ahead to notice the incident. After breakfast she
asked Gertrude what the matter was.
"Nothing. Allen and I had our first quarrel this morning."
As she spoke, the train, high in the air, was creeping over the Spider
bridge.