I'll admit that I am fearfully and wonderfully inhospitable. I can't
help wishing most fervently that something had happened to prevent your
uncle's coming."
"Is it uncle who is in the way?--or the pleasure party?"
"Both."
"We are negligible," she said, meaning the pleasurers.
"No, you are not; and neither is your Uncle Sidney."
"Is he still formidable to you?" she laughed.
"He is, indeed. But, worse than that, he is likely to prove a very
considerable disturbing element if I can't keep him from plunging in
upon us."
She let half of the remaining distance to the end of the steep grade go
underfoot before she said: "I like to help people, sometimes; but I
don't like to do it in the dark."
He would have explained instantly to a man for the sake of gaining an
ally. But he could not bring himself to the point of telling her the
story of graft and misrule in which the MacMorroghs were the principals,
and North--and her uncle, by implication--the backers.
So he said: "It is rather a long story, and you would scarcely
understand it. We have been having constant trouble with the
MacMorroghs, the contractors, and there is a bad state of affairs in the
grading camps. It has come to a point where I shall have to fight the
MacMorroghs to some sort of a finish, and--well, to put it very baldly,
I don't want to have to fight the MacMorroghs and the president in the
same round."
"Why should Uncle Sidney take the part of these men, if they are bad
men, Mr. Ford?"
"Because he has always distrusted my judgment, and because he is loyal
to Mr. North, whom he has made my superior. Mr. North tells him that I
am to blame."
"But it must be a very dreadful condition of things, if what Mr. Frisbie
said is all true."
"Frisbie spoke of only one little incident. Trouble like this we're
having to-day is constantly arising. No money-making graft is too petty
or too immoral for the MacMorroghs to connive at. They rob and starve
their laborers, and cheat the company with bad work. I've got to have a
free hand in dealing with them, or--"
He stopped abruptly, realizing that he was talking to her as he might
have talked to a specialist in his own profession. Hence he was not
disappointed when she said:
"You go too fast for me. But I think I understand now why our coming is
inopportune. And it's comforting to know that the reason is a business
reason."
He put shame to the wall and blurted out suddenly: "It is only one of
the reasons, Miss Adair. The--the camps are no fit place for a party
with women. You--you'll have to be blind and deaf if your uncle persists
in taking you with him."
It was said, and he was glad of it, though he was wiping the
perspiration from his face when the thing was done. She was silent until
they were standing at the steps of the side-tracked private car.
"Thank you," she said simply. "Of course, I'll do what I can to keep
Uncle Sidney from going--and taking us. What shall you say to him?"
"I am going to tell him that our track isn't safe for the Nadia--which
is true enough."
"Very well. I'll tell Aunt Hetty and Mrs. Van Bruce--which may be more
to the point. But don't be encouraged by that. I have reason to believe
that Uncle Sidney will have his way in spite of any or all of us."
XVII
A NIGHT OF ALARMS
Ford put Miss Alicia up the steps of the Nadia and followed her into the
vestibule, meaning to fight it out with Mr. Colbrith on the spot, and
hoping he might have a private audience with the president for the doing
of it.
The hope was not denied. Penfield, who was acting as private secretary
to Mr. Colbrith, _en route_, appeared in the passageway to say that Ford
was wanted in the president's state-room.
"Well, Mr. Ford, what are we waiting for?" was the querulous demand
which served as Mr. Colbrith's greeting when Ford presented himself at
the door of the private compartment.
Ford's reply lacked the deferential note. He had reached a point at
which his job was not worth as much as it had been.
"I have just brought Miss Adair back from the top of the pass, where we
met Mr. Frisbie, my chief of construction. I wished to ask him if he
thought the track was safe for your car, and he says, most emphatically,
that it is not. I can not take the responsibility of sending the Nadia
to the end-of-track."
The president's thin face was working irritably. "I haven't asked you to
assume any responsibility, Mr. Ford. If the track is safe for your
material trains, it is safe enough for my car. But I didn't send for you
to argue the point. I desire to have the Nadia taken to the front. Be
good enough to give the necessary orders."
Ford tried again. In addition to the precarious track there were few or
no unoccupied sidings, especially near the front. Moreover, there was no
telegraph service which might suffice for the safe despatching of the
special train. There might be entire sections over which the Nadia would
have to be flagged by a man on foot, and--
The president cut him off with almost childish impatience.
"I don't know what your object is in putting so many stumbling-blocks in
the way, Mr. Ford," he rasped. "A suspicious person might say that you
have been doing something which you do not wish to have found out."
Ford was a fair-skinned man, and the blood burned hotly in his face.
But, as once before under the president's nagging, he found his
self-control rising with the provocation.
"My work is open to inspection or investigation, now or at any time,
and I think we need not discuss that point," he said, when he could
force himself to say it calmly. "We were speaking of the advisability of
taking the Nadia and a pleasure party over a piece of raw construction
line, and into an environment which, to put it mildly, could hardly be
congenial to--to the ladies of the party. You know, or ought to know,
the MacMorroghs: their camps are not exactly models of propriety, Mr.
Colbrith."
This was merely waving a red flag at an already exasperated bull. The
president got upon his feet, and his shrill falsetto cut the air like a
knife.
"Mr. Ford, when I wish to be told what is or is not proper for me to do,
I'll ask you for an opinion, sir. But this is quite beside the mark.
Will you order this car out, or shall I?"
Ford looked at his watch imperturbably. Now that the president was
thoroughly angry, he could afford to be cool.
"It is now five o'clock; and our end-of-track is fully one hundred and
ten miles beyond the summit of the pass. Do I understand that you wish
to take the added risk of a night run, Mr. Colbrith? If so, I'll give
the order and we'll pull out."
"I desire to go _now_!" was the irascible reply. "Is that sufficiently
explicit?"
"It is," said Ford; and he left the presence to go forward to the cab
of the waiting engine.
"You are to take the car over the mountain, Hector," he said briefly, to
the beetle-browed giant in blue denim, when he had climbed to the
foot-plate. "I'll pilot for you."
"How far?" inquired the engineer.
"Something like a hundred and ten miles."
"Holy smoke! Over a construction track--in the night?"
"It's the president's order--none of mine. Let's get a move."
The big man got down from his box and made room for Ford. "I'll be
pilin' 'em in the ditch somewhere, as sure as my name's Bill Hector," he
said. "But we'll go, all the same, if he says so. I've pulled Mr.
Colbrith before. Down with you, Jimmy Shovel, and set the switch for
us."
The fireman swung off and stood by the switch, and Hector backed his
one-car train from the siding. When he had picked up the fireman and was
ready to assault the mountain, Ford thrust a query in between.
"Hold on a minute; how is the water?" he asked.
Jimmy Shovel climbed over the coal to see, and reported less than half a
tankful.
"That settles it," said the chief to Hector. "You'll have to back down
to Saint's Rest and fill up. You'll get no more this side of Pannikin
Upper Canyon. We haven't had time to build tanks yet."
Hector put his valve-motion in the reverse gear and began to drop the
train down the grade on the air. A dozen wheel-turns brought a shrill
shriek from the air-signal whistle. Mr. Colbrith evidently wished to
know why his train was going in the wrong direction. Hector applied the
brakes and stopped in obedience to the signal.
"Do we send back?" he asked.
"No," said Ford sourly. "Let him send forward."
Penfield was the bearer of the president's question. Would it be
necessary to discharge somebody in order to have his commands obeyed?
Ford answered the petulant demand as one bears with a spoiled child.
They were returning to Saint's Rest for water. Let the president be
assured that his orders would be obeyed in due course.
"He's a piker, the old man is," said the big engineer, once more giving
the 1012 the needful inch of release to send it grinding down the hill.
"I'd ruther pull freight thirty-six hours on end than run his car for a
hundred miles."
There was trouble getting at the water-tank in the Saint's Rest yard.
Leckhard, acting as division engineer, telegraph superintendent,
material forwarder and yardmaster, found it difficult at limes to bring
order out of chaos in the forwarding yard. It was a full hour before
the jumble of material trains could be shunted and switched and juggled
to permit the 1012 to drop down to the water tank; and four times during
the hour Penfield climbed dutifully over the coal to tell Ford and the
engineer what the president thought of them.
"Durn me! but you can take punishment like a man, Mr. Ford!" said
Hector, on the heels of the fourth sending, sinking rank distinctions in
his admiration for a cool fighter. "These here polite cussin's-out are
what I can't stand. Reckon we'll get away from here before the old man
throws a sure-enough fit?"
"That's entirely with the yard crew," said Ford, calmly making himself
comfortable on the fireman's box. "We'll go when we can get water; and
we'll get water when the tank track is cleared. That's all there is to
it." Whereupon he found his cigar case, passed it to Hector, lighted up,
and waited patiently for another second-hand wigging from the Nadia.
As it chanced the tank track was cleared a few minutes later; the 1012
was backed down and supplied, and Ford instructed Leckhard to do what he
could with the single, poorly manned construction wire toward giving the
president's special a clear track.
"That won't be much," said the hard-worked base-of-supplies man. "We've
got our own operator at Ten Mile, and Brissac and Frisbie have each a
set of instruments which they cut in on the line with wherever they
happen to be. I don't know where Brissac is, but Frisbie is down about
Riley's to-night, I think. After you pass him you'll have no help from
the wires."
"I'll have what I can get," asserted Ford. "Now tell me what we're
likely to meet."
Leckhard laughed. "Anything on top of earth, from Brissac or Jack Benson
or Frisbie chasing somewhere on a light engine, to Gallagher or Folsom
coming out with a string of empties. Oh, you're not likely to find much
dead track anywhere after you get over the mountain."
Ford swung up beside Hector, who had been listening. "You see what we're
in for, Hector. Start your headlight dynamo and let's go," he said; and
five minutes farther on, just as Penfield was about to make his fifth
scramble over the coal in the tender, the 1012 took the upward road with
a deafening whistle shriek as its farewell to Saint's Rest.
It was pocket-dark by the time the switch-stand at the basin siding
swung into the broad beam of the electric headlight. Ford got down from
the fireman's box and crossed over to the engineer's side to pilot
Hector.
"How's your track from this on?" inquired the big engineman gruffly.
"It is about as rough as it can be, and not ditch the steel trains.
You'll have to hold her down or we'll have results."
"What in the name o' thunder is the old man's notion of goin' to the
front with a picnic party and makin' a night run of it, at that, d'ye
reckon?"
"The Lord only knows. Easy around this curve you're coming to; it isn't
set up yet." The 1012 was a fast eight-wheeler from the main line, and
though the grade was a rising four per cent, the big flyer was making
light work of her one-car train.
Ford sat gloomily watching the track ahead as the great engine stormed
around the curves and up the grades. The struggle against odds was
beginning to tell on him. The building of this new line, the opening of
the new country, was the real end for which all the planning and
scheming in the financial field had been only the necessary
preliminaries. For himself he had craved nothing but the privilege of
building the extension; of rejoicing in his own handiwork and in the new
triumph of progress and civilization which it would bring to pass. But
little by little the fine fire of workmanlike enthusiasm was burning
itself out against the iron barriers of petty spite and malice thrown up
at every turn by North and the Denver junta of obstructionists.
He was at no loss to account for North's motive. It was no longer the
contemptuous disregard of a general manager for one of his subordinates
who had shown signs of outgrowing his job. It was a fight between
rivals--equals--and Ford knew that it must go on until one or the other
should be driven to the wall. Thus far, his antagonist had scored every
point. The MacMorroghs had been helped into the saddle and held there.
Mr. Colbrith had been won over; the authority given Ford by his
appointment as assistant to the president had been annulled by making
North the first vice-president with still higher authority. With a firm
ally in the president, and a legion of others in the MacMorroghs' camps,
North could discredit the best engineering corps that ever took the
field; and he was doing it--successfully, as Ford had reason to know.
More than once Ford had been on the point of leaving his plow in the
furrow while he should go to New York for one more battle with the
directory--a battle which should definitely abolish North and Mr.
Colbrith--or himself. Again and again he had weighed the chances of
winning such a battle. With Brewster for a leader it might be done. The
time for the annual stock-holders' meeting was approaching, and an
election which should put the burly copper magnate into the presidency
would be an unmixed blessing, not only for a struggling young chief of
construction, but for the Pacific Southwestern stock-holders, who were
sure to pay in the end for the present policy of rule or ruin.
Part of the time it seemed to Ford that it was clearly his duty to make
this fight against the grafters in the Denver management. North deserved
no consideration, and while Mr. Colbrith was honest enough, his blind
prejudice and narrow mentality made him North's unwitting accessory.
Three months earlier Ford would not have hesitated; but in the interval
a woman had come between to obscure all the points of view. A fight to
the death against the Colbrith administration meant the antagonizing of
the Adairs--of Alicia, at least. True, she had spoken lightly of her
uncle's peculiarities; but Ford made sure she would stand by him in the
conflict, if only for kinship's sake.
All this he was turning over in his mind for the hundredth time while
the big 1012 hammered up the Plug Mountain grade under the guiding hand
of the giant in blue denim. Ford, glooming out upon the lighted stretch
ahead, was once more finding the crucial question answerless. Should he
draw out of the losing battle with North and his fellow grafters, and
thereby save his chance of winning Alicia Adair? Or should he sacrifice
his love upon the altar of ambition, abolish Mr. Colbrith and the crew
of buccaneers his mistaken policy was sheltering, and win the industrial
success and a quieted conscience?
His decision was reached by the time Hector was easing the throttle
lever at the summit of Plug Pass. What must be done should be done
quickly.
"Right here is where you begin to run on your nerves," he said to the
big engineer, as the heavy engine and car lunged over the summit of the
pass and began to gather gravity momentum on the downward rush.
Hector nodded, and twitched the handle of the air-brake cock at shorter
intervals. Ford glanced back at the following car framed in the red glow
from the opened fire-box door. It was surging and bounding alarmingly
over the uneven track, not without threatenings of derailment. Ford was
willing to give the president the full benefit of his unreasonable
pertinacity; but there were others to be considered--and one above all
the others.
"Easy, man; easy!" he cautioned. "If you leave the steel on this
goat-track there won't be anybody left to tell the story. It's a
thousand feet sheer in some places along here. Suppose you let me take
her to the bottom of the hill."
The engineer stood aside with a good-tempered grin. He had seen the
chief of construction walking the one young lady of the party to the top
of Plug Pass and back, and it was not difficult to account for his
anxiety.
Throughout the ten long miles of the mountain descent Ford crouched on
the driver's seat and put his mind into the business of getting down the
slides and around the sagging curves without having a wreck. The 1012's
brake equipment was modern, and the Nadia's gear was in perfect order.
Now and then on a tangent the big engine would straighten herself for a
race or a runaway, but always the steady hand on the air-cock brought
her down just before the critical moment beyond which neither brakes nor
the steadiest nerve could avail. Thrice in the long downward rush Ford
checked the speed to a foot-pace. This was in the rock cuttings where
the jagged faces of the cliffs thrust themselves out into the white cone
of the headlight, scanting the narrow shelf of the right-of-way to a
mere groove in the rock. He was afraid of the cuttings. One of the many
tricks of the MacMorroghs was to keep barely within the contract limits
on clearance widths, and once the Nadia, sagging mountainward on the
roughly leveled track at the wrong moment, touched one of the
out-hanging rocks in passing. Hector heard the touch, and so did Ford;
but it was the engineman who made a grim jest upon it, saying: "If she
does that more'n once or twice, there'll be a job for the car painters,
don't you reckon, Mr. Ford? And for the carpenters."
Just below the doubling bend in the great loop they came in sight of the
first of the MacMorrogh camps. Since the night was frosty a huge bonfire
was burning beside the track; and when Hector blew his whistle, some one
flagged the train with a brand snatched from the fire. Ford stopped
because he dared not do otherwise.
"Well, what's wanted?" he snapped, when the train came to a stand, and
the brand-swinger, backed by a dozen others, made as if he would climb
to the cab of the 1012.
"Some of us fellies want to go down to Ten Mile--the liquor's out," said
the man, trying to get a fair sight of the strange engineman.
"Get off!" said Ford; and Hector made the order effective by shoving the
intruder from the step. That was easy; but before the train had measured
twice its length, a pistol barked thrice and the glass in the cab window
on Ford's side fell in splinters.
"Holy smoke!" said Hector. "Is them the kind of plug-uglies you've got
over here, Mr. Ford?"
Ford nodded. His eyes were on the track again, and he was hoping
fervently that the three shots had all been aimed at the engine. A mile
farther on, Penfield came sliding over the coal to say that the
president wanted to know what the shooting was about.
Ford turned the 1012 over to Hector. The track hazards of the mountain
grade were safely passed.
"Did any of the shots hit the car?" he asked of Penfield.
"No."
"Well, if you have to say anything before the ladies it might be
advisable to make a joke of it. Signal torpedoes sound very much like
pistol-shots, you know."
Penfield nodded. "But to Mr. Colbrith?"
"To Mr. Colbrith you may say that a gang of drunken MacMorrogh
surfacers flagged us down, and when we wouldn't let them have the train,
made a little gun play."
"Heavens!" said the clerk, whose curiosity stopped short at the farthest
confines of any battle-field. "Is that sort of thing likely to happen
again, Mr. Ford?"
"Your guess is as good as anybody's," said Ford curtly. "Better get back
to the car as quickly as you can, before Mr. Colbrith whistles us down
to find out what has become of you."
Below the camp of the surfacers there were a few miles of better track,
and Hector made fair time until the train circled the mountain shoulder
at the lower end of the great loop. Beyond this the roughnesses began
again, and there were more of the skimped rock cuttings. At Ten Mile,
which was a relay station in the upper canyon for the halting of
supplies and material for which there was no room at the ever-advancing
"front," they stopped to try for track-clearings.
As Leckhard had foretold, the operator could give them little help. Two
hours earlier, a train of empties in two sections had left the
end-of-track, coming eastward. Whether it was hung up at one of the
intervening side-tracks, or was still coming, the operator could not
say; and there were no means of finding out. Also, Mr. Frisbie, who had
reached Riley's camp late in the afternoon, had left there after supper
and was somewhere on the line with his light engine--probably on his
way to the front, the operator thought.
Hector removed his great weight from the telegraph counter and the
woodwork creaked its relief. What he said was indicative of his frame of
mind.
"Humph!" he growled. "If we don't get tangled up with Mr. Frisbie's
light engine, it's us for a head-ender with the string of empties. Isn't
that about it, Mr. Ford?"
"That's it, precisely."
"Which means that Jimmy Shovel trots ahead of us for a hundred mile 'r
so, carryin' a lantern like a blame' Dio-geenes huntin' for an honest
man."
"That is the size of it," said Ford; but just then the sounder on the
table began to click and the operator held up his hand for silence.
"Hold on a minute," he interrupted, "here's a piece of luck--it's Mr.
Frisbie, cutting in with his field set from Camp Frierson. He is asking
Saint's Rest about you."
"Break in and tell him we're here," said Ford; and when it was done:
"Ask him about that string of empties."
The reply was apparently another piece of luck. Frisbie, going westward,
had passed the first section of the freight train at Siding Number
Twelve. It was hung up with a broken draw-head on the engine, and was
safe to stay there, Frisbie thought, until somebody came along with a
repair kit, which, it might be assumed, would not be before morning.
At this point Ford went around the counter and took the wire for a
little personal talk with the first assistant. It ignored the stalled
freight train, and Ford's rapid clickings spelled out an order. Frisbie
was to drop everything else, and constitute himself the president's
_avant-courrier_ to the end-of-track camp, which, at the moment,
happened to be the MacMorroghs' headquarters at the mouth of Horse
Creek. All liquor-selling was to be stopped, the saloons closed, and the
strictest order maintained during the president's stay--this if it
should take the entire field force of the engineering department to
bring it to pass.
"Don't," clicked Frisbie, from the other end of the long wire. And then
at the risk of giving it away to every operator on the line: "You're
doing yourself up. Let the president see for himself what he has let us
in for."
Ford's reply was short and to the point. "The order stands. There are
others besides the president to be considered. Good night."
"Well, we go to this here Siding Number Twelve, do we?" said Hector,
when they were clambering once more to the foot-plate of the 1012.
"Safely, I think," said the chief, adding: "You can't run fast enough
over this track to get into trouble anyway."