a moment later he was lifting his hat to wipe the perspiration from his
forehead.
"Lord! but you have the confidence of your convictions!" he said,
breathing hard. "If we shouldn't happen to be able to float the bonds--"
"We are in too deep to admit the 'if.' The bonds must be floated, and at
the earliest possible moment that Magnus will move in it. You wanted
something big enough to keep you interested. I have been trying my best
to accommodate you."
Adair leaned forward and spoke to his chauffeur. The man watched his
chances for room to turn in the crowded street.
"Where are you going?" asked Ford.
"Back to McVeigh and Mackie's--where I can watch a ticker and go broke
buying more Pacific Southwestern," was the reply, and just then the
chauffeur found his opening and the big car whirled and plunged into the
down-town stream.
In the financial news the next morning there was a half-column or more
devoted to the sudden and unaccountable flurry in Pacific Southwestern.
Ford got it in the Pittsburg papers and read it while the picked-up
stenographer was wrestling with his notes. After the drop in the stock,
caused, in the estimation of the writer, by the company's sudden plunge
into railroad buying at wholesale, P. S-W. had recovered with a bound,
advancing rapidly in the closing hours of the day from the lower
thirties to forty-two, with a strong demand. The utmost secrecy was
maintained, but it was shrewdly suspected that one of the great
companies, of which the Pacific Southwestern was now a competitor on an
equal footing for the grain-carrying trade, had gone in to absorb the
new factor in trans-Missouri traffic. Other and more sensational
developments might be expected if the battle should be fought to a
finish. Then followed a brief history of the Pacific Southwestern, with
a somewhat garbled account of the late dash for a Chicago terminal, but
lacking--as Ford remarked gratefully--any hint of the company's designs
in the farther West.
"If Adair and Brewster and the others only have the nerve to keep it
up!" said Ford to himself. Then he tossed the paper aside and dived once
more into the deep sea of extension building, working the picked-up
stenographer until the young man was ready with his resignation the
moment the final letter was filed for mailing in the Chicago station.
Five days the young engineer waited for news from New York--waited and
worked like a high-pressure motor while he waited. Each day's financial
news showed the continued and growing success of the home-made "corner,"
and now the reporters were predicting that the stock would go to par
before the price should break.
Ford trembled for the good faith of his backers on the board. When one
has bought at twenty-nine and a half and can sell within the week for
eighty-seven, the temptation is something tremendous. But at the closing
hour of the fifth day the demand was still good; and when Ford reached
the hotel that night there was a telegram from Adair awaiting him.
He tore it open and read it, with the blood pounding through his veins
and a roar which was not of the street traffic drumming in his ears.
P. S-W. closed at ninety-two to-day, and a Dutch syndicate will take
the bonds. Success to you in the Western wilderness. Brewster wants
to know how soon you'll reach his Utah copper mines. ADAIR.
XI
HURRY ORDERS
"I'm no cold-water thrower, Ford, as you know. But if I were a
contractor, and you were trying to get me to commit myself to any such
steeplechase, I should say no, and confirm it with a cuss-word."
It was a week after the successful placing of the Western Extension
building-fund bonds with the Dutch syndicate, and Ford, having ordered
things to his liking on the newly opened Chicago line, had taken the
long step westward to Denver to begin the forging of the third link in
the great railway chain.
Frisbie, now first assistant engineer in charge of construction, had
come down from Saint's Rest for a conference with his chief, and the
place of conferrings was a quiet corner in one of the balconies
overlooking the vast rotunda of the Brown Palace Hotel; this because the
carpenters were still busy in the suite of rooms set apart for the
offices of the assistant to the president in the Pacific Southwestern
headquarters down-town.
"You mean that the time is too short?" said Ford, speaking to Frisbie's
emphatic objection.
"Too short at both ends," contended the little man with the devilish
mustaches and chin beard. "The Copah mining district is one hundred and
twenty miles, as the crow flies, from the summit of Plug Pass--say one
hundred and forty by the line of our survey down the Pannikin, through
the canyon and up to the town. Giving you full credit for more
getting-ready than I supposed any man could compass in the three weeks
you've been at it, I still think it is impossible for us to reach Copah
this season."
"You must change your belief, Dick," was the curt rejoinder. "This is to
be a campaign, not only of possibilities, but of things done. We go into
Copah with the steel gangs before snow flies."
"I know; that's what you've been saying all along. But you're looking at
the thing by and large, and I'm figuring on the flinty details. For
example: you'll admit that we can't work to any advantage west of the
mountains until we have made a standard gauge out of the Plug Mountain
branch. How much time have you been allowing for that?"
"No time at all for the delay: about three weeks, maybe, for the actual
changing of the gauge," said Ford coolly.
"All right," laughed Frisbie. "Only you'll show us how. It doesn't lie
in the back of my head--or in Crapsey's, unless he's a better man than I
hired him for."
"Who is Crapsey?"
"He is a Purdue man that I picked up and started out on the branch to
make figures on the change of gauge. The other three parties, under
Major Benson, Jack Benson and Roy Brissac, are setting the grade stakes
down the Pannikin, and Leckhard is wrestling with the construction
material you've been dumping in upon us at Saint's Rest. That left me
short, and I hired Crapsey."
"Good. If he is capable, he may do the broadening. Call him in and set
him at it."
"But, man! Don't you want the figures first?"
"My dear Dick! I've had those figures for two years, and there's nothing
very complicated about that part of our problem. Call your man in and
let him attack the thing itself."
"Everything goes: you may consider him recalled. But broadening the Plug
Mountain to standard gauge doesn't put us into Copah this summer, does
it?"
"No; our necessities will do that for us. See here; let me show you."
Ford took out his note-book and on a blank page of it outlined a rough
map, talking as he sketched. "Three weeks ago you wired me that the
Transcontinental people were massing building material at the terminus
of their Saguache branch."
"So I did," said Frisbie.
"And the day before yesterday you wired again to say that it was
apparently a false alarm. What made you change your mind?"
"They are hauling the stuff away--over to their Green Butte line, I'm
told."
"Why are they hauling it away?"
"The bluff--their bluff--was called. We had got busy on Plug Pass, and
they saw there was no hope of cutting in ahead of us at that point."
"Exactly. Now look at this map for a minute. Here is Saint's Rest; here
is the Copah district; and here is Green Butte, the junction of their
narrow gauge with the standard-gauge Salt Lake and Eastern. If you were
on the Transcontinental executive committee and saw an active competing
line about to build a standard-gauge railroad through the Copah district
and on to a connection with your narrow gauge's outlet at Green Butte,
what would you advise?"
Frisbie nodded. "It's easy, when you know how, isn't it They'll
standardize their narrow gauge to Green Butte, make an iron-clad traffic
contract with the S. L & E. to exclude us, and build a branch from
Jack's Canyon, say, up into the Copah country." And then in loyal
admiration: "That's what I call the sure word of prophecy--your
specialty, Stuart. How many nights' sleep did you lose figuring that
out?"
"Not any, as it happens," laughed Ford. "It was a straight tip out of
the East. The plan, just about as you've outlined it, was adopted by the
Transcontinental powers that be, sitting in New York last week. By some
means unknown to me, Mr. Adair got wind of it, and made a flying trip to
Chicago to put me on--wouldn't even trust the wire with it. Now you
understand why we've got to wake the Copah echoes with a locomotive
whistle this season."
"Copah--yes," said Frisbie doubtfully. "But that is only a way station.
What we need is Green Butte and the Pacific coast outlet over the S. L &
E.; and they stand to euchre us out of that, hands down. What's to
prevent their making that traffic contract with the Mormon people right
now?"
"Nothing; if the S. L & E. management were willing. But just here the
political situation in Mormondom fights for us. Last year the
Transcontinental folk turned heaven and earth over to defeat the Mormon
candidate for the United States Senate. The quarrel wasn't quite mortal
enough to stand in the way of a profitable business deal; but all things
being equal, the Salt Lake line will favor us as against its political
enemy."
"You're sure of that?" queried Frisbie.
"As sure as one can be of anything that isn't cash down on the
nail--with the money locked up in a safety deposit vault. By the
sheerest good luck, the Mormon president of the S. L & E. happened to
be in New York at the time when Adair had his ear to the
Transcontinental keyhole. Adair hunted him up and made a hypothetical
case of a sure thing: if our Western Extension and the Transcontinental,
standard-gauged, should be knocking at the Green Butte door at the same
time, what would the S. L & E. do? The Mormon answer was a bid for
speed; first come, first served. But Adair was given to understand,
indirectly, that on an equal footing, our line would be given the
preference as a friendly ally."
"Bully for the Mormon! But you say Copah--this summer. When we reach
Copah we are still one hundred and forty miles short of Green Butte. And
if you can broaden the Plug Mountain in three weeks--which you'll still
allow me to doubt--the Transcontinental ought to be able to broaden its
Green Butte narrow gauge in three months."
"If you had cross-sectioned both lines as I have, you wouldn't stumble
over that," said Ford, falling back, as he commonly did, upon the things
he knew. "We shall broaden the Plug Mountain without straightening a
curve or throwing a shovelful of earth on the embankment, from beginning
to end. On the other hand, the Green Butte narrow gauge runs for seventy
miles through the crookedest canyon a Rocky Mountain river ever got lost
in. There is more heavy rock work to be done in that canyon than on our
entire Pannikin division from start to finish."
"That's bully for us," quoth the first assistant. "But, all the same, we
shouldn't stop at Copah, this fall."
"We shall not stop at Copah," was the decisive rejoinder. "The winters
on the western side of the range are much milder than they are here, and
not to be spoken of in the same day with your Minnesota and Dakota
stamping-ground. If we can get well out of the mountains before the
heavy snows come--"
Frisbie wagged his head.
"I guess I've got it all, now--after so long a time. We merely break the
record for fast railroad building--all the records--for the next six
months or so. Is that about it?"
"You've surrounded it," said Ford tersely.
"Good enough: we're ready to make the break when you give the word. What
are we waiting for?"
"Just at this present moment, for the contractors."
"Why, I understood you had closed with the MacMorrogh Brothers," said
Frisbie.
"No. At the last moment--to relieve me of a responsibility which might
give rise to charges of favoritism, as he put it--Mr. Colbrith took the
bids out of my hands and carried the decision up to the executive
committee. Hence, we wait; and keep a growing army of laborers here
under pay while we wait," said Ford, with disgust thinly masked. Then
he added: "With all due respect to Mr. Colbrith, he is simply a senile
frost!"
Frisbie chuckled.
"Been cooling your fingers, has he? But I understood from the
headquarters people down-town, that the MacMorroghs had a sure thing on
the grading and rock work. Their bid was the lowest, wasn't it?"
"Yes; but not the cheapest for the company, Dick. I've been keeping tab
on the MacMorroghs for a good while: they are grafters; the kind of men
who take it out of the company and out of their labor in a thousand
petty little steals--three profits on the commissary, piece-work for
subs where they know a man's got to lose out, steals on the working
hours, fines and drawbacks and discounts on the pay-rolls, and all that.
You know how it's done."
"Sure," agreed Frisbie, with his most diabolical grin. "Also, I know how
it keeps the engineering department on the hottest borders of Hades,
trying to hold them down. The good Lord deliver us!"
"I wanted to throw their bid out without consideration," Ford went on.
"But again Mr. Colbrith said 'No,' adding that the MacMorroghs were old
contractors on the line, and that Mr. North had always spoken very
highly of them."
"Ah; the fine Italian hand of Mr. North again," said Frisbie. "And that
reminds me: are we going to be at war with the main line operating
department?"
Ford shook his head. "Not openly, at least. North was down to meet my
train when I came in last night, and you would never have suspected that
I left Denver six weeks ago without his blessing. And now I'm reminded.
I have a luncheon appointment with him at twelve, and a lot of letters
to dictate before I can keep it. Go down and do your wiring for Crapsey,
and if we lose each other this afternoon, I'll meet you here at dinner
this evening."
It was while Ford was working on his mail, with one of the hotel
stenographers for a helper, that a thick-set, bull-necked man with
Irish-blue eyes and a face two-thirds hidden in a curly tangle of
iron-gray beard, stubbed through the corridor on the Pacific
Southwestern floor of the Guaranty Building, and let himself cautiously
into the general manager's outer office. The private secretary, a
faultlessly groomed young fellow with a suggestion of the Latin races in
his features, looked up and nodded.
"How are you, Mr. MacMorrogh?" he said; and without waiting for a reply:
"Go on in. Mr. North is expecting you."
The burly one returned the nod and passed on to the inner room. The
general manager, a sallow, heavy-visaged man who might have passed in a
platform gathering for a retired manufacturer or a senator from the
Middle West, swung in his pivot-chair to welcome the incomer.
"Glad to see you, MacMorrogh. Sit down. What's the news from New York?"
The contractor found a chair; drew it close to the general manager's
desk, and filled it.
"I'm thinking you'll know more about that than I will, Misther North,"
he replied, in a voice that accorded perfectly with the burly figure and
piratical beard. "Ford's fighting us with his fishtes."
"Why?" asked the general manager, holding his chin in his hand--a
gesture known the entire length of the Pacific Southwestern as a signal
of trouble brewing, for somebody.
"God knows, then; I don't," said the MacMorrogh. "I wint to Chicago to
see him when the bid was in, and d'ye think he would lave me talk it
over with him? Not him! Wan day he'd be too busy; and the next, I'd have
to call again. 'Twas good for him I was not me brother Dan. Dan would've
kicked the dure in and t'rown him out av the windy."
The wan ghost of a smile flitted across the impassive face of the big
man at the desk.
"Let me tell you something, MacMorrogh. If you, or your brother Dan,
ever find it necessary to go after Ford, don't give him notice by
battering down doors. You won't, I know. But about the contract: you
haven't heard from the executive committee?"
"Not the half of wan wor-rd."
"Have you any idea of what is causing the delay?"
"'Tis dommed well I know, Misther North. Ford is keeping the wires hot
against us. If I could have Misther Colbrith here with you for wan five
minutes--"
The general manager broke in, following his own line of thought.
"Ford is in Denver; he came in from Chicago last night. Why don't you go
up to the Brown and have it out with him?"
"Fight it out, d'ye mean?"
"Certainly not. Make friends with him."
The contractor sat back in his chair and plunged his stubby hands deep
into his pockets.
"Give me the sthraight tip, Misther North."
"It ought to suggest itself to you. This is a big job, with a great deal
of money passing. Your profits, over and above what you will make out of
the company, will be quite large. Ford is an ambitious young man, and he
is not building railroads for his health."
The MacMorrogh was nodding slowly. Nevertheless, he made difficulties.
"Me hand's not light enough for that, Misther North."
Again the general manager smiled.
"You require a deal of prompting, sometimes, Brian. What's the matter
with a trusty go-between?"
"H'm, that's it, now. But where to lay me finger on the right man. 'Tis
a risk to run--with a yooung fire-brand like Ford holding the other end
iv the string."
"Still I think the man can be found. But first we must make sure of your
contract, with or without Ford. Your suggestion about taking the matter
up with Mr. Colbrith in person strikes me favorably. Can you spare the
time to go to New York?"
"Sure I can."
"At once?"
"The wan minute for sthriking is whin the iron's hot, Misther North."
The general manager put aside the thick file of papers he had been
examining when MacMorrogh entered, and began to set his desk in order.
"I have been thinking I might make it convenient to go with you. I
presume you have no objection to going as my guest in the Naught-Seven?"
"'Tis an honor you're doing me, Misther North, and I'll not be
forgetting it."
"Not at all. There are some matters connected with this contract that
I'd like to talk over with you privately, and if we can agree upon them,
I may be able to help you with Mr. Colbrith and the executive
committee."
The general manager pressed one of the electric buttons on the side of
the desk, and to the clerk who answered gave a brief order: "Have the
Naught-Seven provisioned and made up to go east as a special at
twelve-ten to-day. Tell Despatcher Darby to make the schedule
fast--nineteen hours or less to the River."
The clerk nodded and disappeared, and North turned again to MacMorrogh.
"Now about that other matter: I'll find you a go-between to approach
Ford; but to be quite frank with you, you'll have to be liberal with the
young man for his services. When you go into the diplomatic field, you
have to spend money." He was pressing another of the electric buttons as
he spoke, and to the office boy who put his face in at the door, he
said: "Ask Mr. Eckstein to step in here a minute."
It was the private secretary, the well-groomed young man with the alien
eyes and nose who answered the summons. North gave him his instructions
in a curt sentence.
"Mr. MacMorrogh would like to have a little talk with you, Eckstein:
take him into the other room where you can be undisturbed."
It was half an hour later when the door of the library opened to readmit
the private secretary and the contractor, and in the interval the
division superintendent's clerk had returned to say that the special
train schedule was made up, and that the Naught-Seven would be waiting
at the Union Station at twelve-ten.
"Well?" said the general manager, lifting a slow eyebrow at MacMorrogh
and compressing into the single word his wish to know what had been done
in the conference of two.
"'Tis all right, Misther North," said the contractor, rubbing his hands.
"'Tis a crown jewel ye have in this yooung--"
North cut the eulogy short in a word to his secretary.
"I go east, special, at twelve-ten, Eckstein, as Mr. MacMorrogh has
probably told you. I have a luncheon appointment at twelve with Mr.
Ford. Meet him when he comes, and make my excuses--without telling him
anything he ought not to know. If you can take my place as his host, do
so; but in any event, keep him from finding out where we have gone until
we are well on the way. That's all."
This was why Ford, walking the few blocks from his hotel at noon to keep
his engagement with North, found the general manager's private office
closed, and a suave, soft-spoken young man with a foreign east of
countenance waiting to make his superior's excuses.
"Mr. North was called out of town quite unexpectedly on a wire," was the
private secretary's explanation. "He tried to telephone you at the
Brown, but the operator couldn't find you. He left me to explain, and
I've been wondering if you'd let me take his place as your host, Mr.
Ford."
Now Ford's attitude toward his opponents was, by reason of his gifts,
openly belligerent; wherefore he fought against it and tried to be as
other men are.
"I am sure Mr. North is quite excusable, and it is good-natured in you
to stand in the breach, Mr. Eckstein," he said. "Of course, I'll be glad
to go with you."
They went to Tortoni's, and to a private room; and the luncheon was an
epicurean triumph. Eckstein talked well, and was evidently a young man
of parts. Not until the cigars were lighted did he suffer the table-talk
to come down to the railroad practicalities; and even then he merely
followed Ford's lead.
"Oh, yes; we have made arrangements to give you a clear deck in the
Denver yards for your material and supplies," he said, in answer to a
question of Ford's about side-track room and yard facilities at the
point which would have to serve as his base. "Following your orders, we
have been forwarding all that your Plug Mountain rolling stock could
handle, but there is considerable more of it side-tracked here. After
the MacMorrogh grading outfit has gone to the front, we shall have more
room, however."
"The MacMorrogh outfit?" queried Ford. "Do they store it in our yards?"
"Oh, no. They have a pretty complete railroad yard of their own at
their headquarters in Pueblo. But they have three train-loads of tools
and machinery here now, waiting for your orders to send them to the
front."
Ford weighed the possibilities thoughtfully and concluded that nothing
could be lost by a frank declaration of principles.
"They have given you folks a wrong impression, Mr. Eckstein," he said
mildly. "The contract for the grading on the Western Extension is not
yet awarded; and if I can compass it, the MacMorrogh Brothers' bid will
be thrown out."
The private secretary tried to look mystified, with just the proper
touch of a subordinate's embarrassment.
"I'm only a clerk, Mr. Ford," he said, "and, of course, I'm not supposed
to know more than I see and hear in the regular way of business. But I
understood that the MacMorroghs were in the saddle; that they were only
waiting for you to provide track-room at Saint's Rest for their tool
cars and outfit."
"No," said Ford. "It hasn't got that far along yet."
Eckstein looked at his watch.
"Don't let me keep you, if there is anything else you want to do, Mr.
Ford; but I'll confess you've aroused my curiosity. What is the matter
with the MacMorroghs?"
Ford answered the question by asking another.
"Do you know them, Mr. Eckstein?"
"Why--yes; as Mr. North's chief clerk would be likely to know the firm
of contractors which has been given a good share of the Pacific
Southwestern work for a number of years."
"Do you know any good of them?"
"Bless me! yes: I don't know anything else of them. Three hearty, bluff,
rough-tongued Irishmen; lacking diplomacy and all the finer touches, if
you like, but good fellows and hustlers of the keenest."
Ford fastened his companion in a steady eye-grip. "One question, Mr.
Eckstein; do they play fair with all concerned?"
"They are more than fair; they are generous--with the company, and with
the company's representatives with whom they have to do business. On two
contracts with us they have lost money; but I happen to know that in
both instances they kept their promises to the engineering department to
the letter."
Ford had cast off the eye-grip and he appeared to be studying the fresco
design of the ceiling over the private secretary's head.
"And those promises were--?"