When the track was not too rough to forbid speed, the cuts were too
numerous, and the big flyer had to be bitted and held down until some of
Hector's impatience began to get into the machinery. This shall account
as it may for what happened. A mile or two below Riley's, where the
lights were all out and the turmoil of the day of strikes had apparently
subsided, the canyon opened out into a winding valley, and when Ford
called across to Hector: "There are no rock cuts on this section, and we
are partly surfaced. You can let her out a little for a few miles," the
engineer took the permission for all it was worth and sent the
eight-wheeler flying down the newly-ballasted stretch.
Two long curves were rounded in safety, and the special was approaching
a third, when to Ford, track-watching even more anxiously than Hector, a
dull red spot appeared in the exact center of the white field of the
electric. For a moment it puzzled him, but the explanation came with a
vigorous shock an instant later. It was the oil-lamp headlight of the
freight!
Hector was huge enough to be slow, if bigness were a bar to celerity.
But no drill-master of the foot-plates could have brought the flying
train to a stand with the loss of fewer seconds. Happily, too, the
1012's electric headlight served as a danger signal seen from afar by
the engineer of the freight. So it chanced that the two great engines
merely put their noses together; and by the time Penfield came
scrambling over the coal with the inevitable query from the president,
the jolting stop was a thing of the past, and the train was in motion
again, following the freight, which was backing, at Ford's order, to the
nearest siding.
"No more hurry for us to-night, Hector," was the boss's dictum, when the
obstructing string of empties was safely passed. "We take it slow and
sure from this on, with your fireman to flag us around the curves and
through the cuts. This was only the first section of the train that left
Horse Creek at eight o'clock--the section that was broken down at Siding
Twelve. We're due to pick up the second section anywhere between here
and the end-of-track."
"Slow it is," said Hector. "I'm no hog, if I do take a little swill now
and then: I know when I've got enough."
This was at ten-forty, while the night was still young. And for seven
other hours the one-car special inched its way cautiously toward the
goal, with Ford scanning every mile of the hazardous way as it swung
into the beam of the headlight arc, with Hector's left hand stiffening
on the brake-cock, and with a weary fireman dropping from his gangway at
every curve approach to flag for safety.
It was not until three o'clock in the morning that they met and passed
the second section of empties, and the dawn of a new day was fully come
when the shacks and storehouses of the MacMorroghs' headquarters at the
mouth of Horse Creek came in sight. Ford got down from his seat on the
fireman's side and stretched himself as one relaxing after a mighty
strain.
"That's the end of it for a little while, Billy," he said, addressing
the big engineer as a man and a brother. "Crawl in on the first siding
you come to, and go hunt you a bed. I don't think the president will be
perniciously active to-day--after such a night as we've had."
But in this, as in other instances when Mr. Colbrith's activities had
figured as a factor, he reckoned without his host.
XVIII
THE MORNING AFTER
Ford was awake for all day, and was colloguing with Frisbie about the
carrying out of the sumptuary order for the forcible camp-cleaning, when
Penfield came with the request that the chief report at once to the
president in the Nadia.
"Tell him I'll be there presently," was the answer; and when Penfield
went to do it, the interrupted colloquy was resumed.
"You say the camp has already gone dry?" said Ford incredulously.
Frisbie nodded. "Everybody's on the water-wagon; here and at all the
camps above and below--bars not only closed, but apparently wiped out of
existence. I went for old Brian last night as soon as I reached here. He
looked at me reproachfully, and said: 'It's you to be always naggin' me
about thim whisky dives that I'm forever thryin' to run out, and can't.
Go and thry it yourself, Misther Frisbie, an' I'll stand at your back
till you're black in the face.' But when I went through the camp,
everything was quiet and orderly, and Jack Batters' bar was not only
closed--it was gone; vanished without leaving so much as a bad smell
behind it."
"And then?" said Ford.
"Then I got out my horse and rode up the creek and through some of the
camps on the Copah detour. The star-eyed goddess of reform had evidently
landed on that coast, too. Donahue's Hungarians were singing war-songs
around their camp-fire, as usual, and Contadini's Tuscans were out in
full force, guying the night-shift track-layers. But there was no bad
blood, and no whisky to breed it. You're done up again, Stuart."
"I don't see that," said Ford, who, besides being short on sleep, was
rejoicing in the thought that Alicia and the other women of the
private-car party would not have to be blind and deaf.
"Don't you? You've been protesting to beat the band about the
lawlessness and dissipation of the MacMorrogh camps. Accordingly, Mr.
Colbrith comes over here to see for himself: and what will he see?
Decency on a monument smiling reproachfully at her unprincipled
traducer. MacMorrogh will rub it into you good and hard. Can't you feel
the Sunday-school atmosphere right here in the headquarters this
morning? Look down yonder at the Nadia--wouldn't that soothe you, now?"
Ford looked and the scowl which was coming to be a habit transformed
itself into a cynical smile. A hundred or more of the MacMorrogh
laborers, hats off and standing at respectful attention, were clustered
about the rear platform of the private car, and Mr. Colbrith was
addressing them; giving them the presidential benediction, as Frisbie
put it irreverently.
"Don't you see how you are going to be hoisted with your own
ammunition?" the little man went on spitefully. "What becomes of all
your complaints of drunkenness and crime, when Mr. Colbrith can see with
his own eyes what truly good people the MacMorroghs are? And what
conclusion will he arrive at? There's only one, and it's a long-armed
one so far as your reputation is concerned: you are so desperately bent
on having your own way that you haven't scrupled to tell lies about
these angelic contractors."
"Let up, Dick," said Ford gruffly. "I've got about all I can carry till
I catch up on sleep a little. But you're right: this is the place where
the fireworks come in. I think I'll go and light the fuses while I'm
keyed up to it."
The crowd of laborers had dispersed by the time Ford reached the Nadia,
and the president, benign from the reactionary effect of his own
early-morning eloquence, was waiting for him.
"Ah; we did reach the front safely, after all, didn't we, Mr. Ford?" was
Mr. Colbrith's mildly sarcastic greeting. And then: "Come aboard, sir;
we are waiting breakfast for you."
Ford would have declined promptly, if the invitation had been anything
less than a command. He had met none of the members of the private-car
party save Miss Alicia, and he did not want to meet them, having the
true captain-of-industry's horror of mixing business with the social
diversions. But with one example of the president's obstinacy fresh in
mind, he yielded and climbed obediently to the railed platform. Whatever
happened, he should see Alicia again, a privilege never to be too
lightly esteemed, whatever it cost.
The social ordeal was not so formidable. The private-car party was made
up of the president and his sister-in-law, the president's family
physician, Doctor Van Bruce, the doctor's wife, his sister, a maiden
lady of no uncertain age, and Alicia. These, with Penfield and Ford,
made the eight at table in the open compartment in the Nadia; and Ford,
in the seating, was lucky enough to find his place between Miss Van
Bruce, who was hard of hearing, and Miss Alicia, who was not. Luckily
again, Mr. Colbrith omitted all talk of business, drawing his end of the
table into a discussion of the effects of the dry altitudes in advanced
stages of tuberculosis.
"What a dreadful night you must have had, Mr. Ford," said Alicia, when
the tuberculotic subject was well launched at the other end of the
table. "Were you on the engine all the time?"
"Most of the time," he confessed. "But that was nothing. It wasn't my
first night in the cab, as it won't be the last, by many, I hope."
"Why? Do you like it?"
"Not particularly. But I hope to live a while longer; and while I live I
shall doubtless have to ride with the enginemen now and then."
"Was it very bad--last night?" she asked.
"I am afraid you know it was. Could you sleep at all?"
"Oh, yes; I slept very well--after that terrible shaking up we had just
before bedtime. What was happening then?"
"Nothing much. We were about to try the old experiment of passing two
trains on a single track."
"Mercy!" she exclaimed.
It was safely retrospective now, and Ford could smile at her belated
shock.
"Were the others alarmed?" he asked.
"Mrs. Van Bruce and Aunt Hetty were. But Uncle Sidney fairly coruscated.
He said that an engineer who would make such a stop as that ought to be
discharged."
"Hector was willing to quit," laughed Ford. "He grumbled for a full hour
afterward about the wrenching he had given the 1012. You see he might
have taken about six feet more for the stop, if he'd only known it."
Miss Alicia said "Mercy!" again. "Were we as near as that to a
collision?" she asked, in a hushed whisper.
"We were, indeed. The freight was supposed to be on a siding--broken
down. The crew tinkered things up some way, and the train proceeded.
Luckily, the freight engineer saw our electric headlight farther than we
could see his oil lamp, and the track happened to be measurably
straight."
Miss Adair was silent for a little time, waiting for the lapsed
tuberculotic discussion to revive. When it was once more in full swing,
she asked quickly:
"What is the programme for to-day? Must we all stay in the car as you
intimated yesterday?"
Ford glanced across the table to make sure that Penfield was not
eavesdropping.
"It will not be necessary. Your coming--or the president's--has reformed
things wonderfully. Frisbie says--but never mind what he says: the
miracle has been wrought."
He said it with such an evident air of dejection that she wondered. And
with Miss Alicia Adair the step from wonderment to investigation was
always short.
"You say it as if you were sorry," she said. "Are you?"
"Oh, no; I'm glad--for your sake. But I wonder if you could understand
if I say that it will make it a thousand times harder for me?"
"I can understand when I'm told," she retorted.
The table-for-eight was no place for confidences; and Ford knew
Penfield's weakness for soaking up information. Yet he took the risk.
"You remember what I hinted at, yesterday," he said in low tones; "about
the rough-house we have been having in the camps. It hasn't stopped
short of murder. I objected to the MacMorroghs before the contract was
given to them; and since, I have fought the lawlessness as I could. Now
your uncle comes over here and doesn't find any lawlessness. What is the
inference?"
"That you have been--" she took him up quickly, and there was swift
indignation in the blue eyes.
"--lying to gain a personal end," he finished for her.
Penfield had been apparently listening avidly to the president's praise
of the dry altitudes as a sure cure for consumption, but now he had his
face in his plate. Ford devoted himself for the moment to the deaf Miss
Van Bruce, and when he turned back to Alicia he was telegraphing with
his eyes for discretion. She understood, and the low-toned tête-à-tête
was not resumed. Later, when they had a moment together in the
dispersion from the breakfast-table, he tried to apologize for what he
was pleased to call his "playing of the baby act." But she reassured him
in a low-spoken word.
"Brother told me--I know more than you give me credit for, Mr. Ford.
Mr. North doesn't like you--he would be glad if you would resign. _You
must not resign!_"
The others, personally-conducted by Mr. Colbrith, were crowding to the
rear platform for an after-breakfast view of the headquarters camp. Ford
and Alicia followed, but without haste.
"You have chanced upon the word, Miss Adair," Ford was saying. "I
decided last night that I should resign."
"No," she objected.
"Yes; I must. Sometime I may tell you why."
"I say you must not. That was the last word in brother's letter; and he
wished me to repeat it to you," she insisted.
"Where is your brother?" he asked.
"He was in London when he wrote."
"He has thrown up his hand." Ford was pessimistic again.
Miss Adair looked about her despairingly for some means of prolonging
the whispered confidence. Penfield, deferentially in the rear of the
platform group, was never safely out of earshot.
"I want to see the engine that so nearly plunged us into a collision
last night," she said aloud; and Penfield's visible ear betrayed the
listening mind.
Ford took his cue promptly. "We can go out the other way," he said; and
the secretary _pro tempore_ had no excuse for following.
They found the cab of the 1012 deserted, with the steam in the huge
boiler singing softly at the behest of the banked fire. Miss Adair lost
her curiosity as soon as Ford had lifted her to the foot-plate.
"Now you are to tell me all about it--quickly," she commanded. "Uncle
Sidney will be calling for you as soon as he misses you. Why are you so
foolish as to talk about resigning? Don't you see what they will say
then?--that you were afraid?"
Ford was leaning against the centered reversing-lever, and his face was
gloomy again.
"Possibly I am afraid," he suggested.
"You should be more afraid of dishonor than of--of the other things. Do
you suppose Mr. North will be content with your resignation now?"
Ford looked up quickly. Here was a new revelation--an unsuspected facet
of the precious gem. He could hardly believe that this steady-voiced,
far-seeing young woman was the insouciant, school-girlish--though none
the less lovable--young person with whom he had tramped to the
wind-swept summit of Plug Pass in the golden heart of the yesterday.
"You mean--?" he began.
"I mean that you will be discredited; disgraced if possible. Are you
sure you haven't been doing anything over here that you wouldn't want
Uncle Sidney to find out?"
"Not consciously, you may be sure," he asserted unhesitatingly.
"Think; think hard," she urged. "Is there nothing at all?"
He could not help smiling lovingly at her scarce-concealed
anxiety--though it was merely the anxiety of a noble soul unwilling to
stand by and see injustice done.
"My methods never get very far underground," he averred. "Not far enough
for my own safety, Frisbie says. If I had been keeping a diary, I think
I should be quite willing to let Mr. Colbrith read it--or print it, if
he cared to."
"And yet there _is_ something," she asserted, and the straight brows
went together in a little frown of perplexity. "You don't ask me how I
know: I'm going to tell you, Mr. Ford--though it's rather shameful.
Three days ago, while we were in Denver, Mr. North came down to the car
to see Uncle Sidney."
"Yes?" he encouraged.
"They were closeted in Uncle Sidney's state-room for a long time," she
went on. "I--I was walking with Miss Van Bruce, up and down on the
station platform beside the Nadia, Uncle Sidney had told me not to go
very far away because we were likely to start at any moment. The--the
car windows were open--"
Her embarrassment was growing painfully apparent, and Ford came to the
rescue.
"You were not even constructively to blame," he hastened to say. "They
must surely have seen you passing and repassing, and if they wished for
privacy they might have closed the windows."
"I didn't hear much: only a word or two, now and then. They were talking
about you and brother; and--" She stopped short and laid her hand on the
throttle-lever of the big engine: "What did you say this was for?" she
asked ingenuously.
Ford's up-glance of surprise was answered by a glimpse of Penfield
sauntering past on the other side of the track. She could not have seen,
but she had doubtless heard his footsteps on the gravel.
"It's the throttle," said Ford, answering her question. And then:
"Please go on: he is out of hearing."
"They were speaking of you and brother; and--and of _me_. I can't repeat
a single sentence entire, but I know Mr. North was accusing you in some
way, and apparently implicating me. Perhaps I listened in self-defense.
Do you think I did, Mr. Ford?"
"You certainly had a good right to," said Ford, who would have sworn in
her behalf that the morally black was spotlessly white. "But how could
you be implicated?"
"That was what puzzled me then--and it is puzzling me still. They
said--or rather Mr. North said--that you--that you had _bought_ me!"
Ford did not say that he would like to buy, beg, borrow or steal any
kind of right to call her his own, but if his lips did not form the
words they were lying at the bottom of the steady gray eyes for her to
take or leave as she chose.
"I am sure you couldn't have heard that part of it quite straight," he
said, almost regretfully.
"But I did, because it was repeated. Mr. North insisted that you had
bought me; and I didn't like the way in which he said it, either. He
called me 'the little Alicia'."
"What!" said Ford; and then a flood of light burst in upon at least one
of the dark places. "It's only a mine," he said sheepishly. "And I did
buy it, or half of it."
She was regarding him accusingly now.
"Did you--did you name it?" she asked, and there was the merest breath
of frost in the air.
He was glad to be able to tell the truth without flinching.
"No; it is one of the earliest of the Copah prospects, and I suppose the
discoverer named it. I am willing to defend his choice, though. He
couldn't have found a prettier name."
She went back to the matter in hand with womanly swiftness. "But the
mine: you had a right to buy it, didn't you?"
"I should suppose so. I paid for it with my own money, anyway."
"Then why should Mr. North use it as an argument against you in speaking
to Uncle Sidney? He did that--I am sure he did that."
"Now the water has grown too deep for me," said Ford. "Why, North,
himself, is interested in Copah, openly. He owns half a dozen claims."
"Near yours?" she queried.
Ford stopped to consider. "To tell the truth, I don't know where mine
is," he confessed. "I bought it as the school-boys trade
pocket-knives--sight unseen. You wouldn't believe it of a grown man,
would you?"
"What made you buy it at all?"
Again he told the simple truth--and tried not to flinch.
"You won't mind if I say that the name attracted me? I thought a mine,
or anything, that bore your name, ought to be good and--and desirable.
And it is a good mine; or it will be, by and by. Some morning I shall
wake up and find myself rich. At least that is what my partner, Grigsby,
assures me; and I believe him when I happen to remember it."
She neither approved nor disapproved. When she spoke, it was of the
present necessity. "We must go back to the others now," she said. "Or
at least I must. Do you know what is to be done to-day?"
Ford spread his hands.
"Your uncle will set the pace. I wouldn't venture a guess, after last
night."
He was handing her down from the engine step and she went back in a word
to the former contention.
"You haven't promised me yet that you will not resign under fire--you
are under fire, you know."
"Am I?"
"Brother thinks you are."
Once more he took the pessimistic view.
"Your brother isn't losing any sleep over the Pacific Southwestern
situation. You said he was in England, didn't you?"
"I said he was in London when he wrote."
"London is a long way off: and what I do must be done to-day or
to-morrow. Mr. North will force the fighting, now that your uncle is on
the ground, and your brother safely on the opposite side of the earth.
And I can't afford to fight this time, Miss Alicia."
"Why can't you?"
They were walking slowly back toward the Nadia when he said: "Because a
victory would cost me more than I am willing to pay. There is no longer
room in this service for Mr. North and me. If we come to blows one of us
will have to go."
"I can understand that," she said quietly.
"And to obliterate Mr. North, I shall be obliged to efface--your uncle."
She caught her breath.
"Mr. Ford, you have intimated that Mr. North isn't an honest man. Do you
ask me to believe that Uncle Sidney is his accomplice?"
"He is not, knowingly. But he will stand or fall with the man he has
made. I should have to ride him down before I could get at North."
Her lip curled and the straight-browed little frown came again. "There
is no such thing as mercy in business, is there, Mr. Ford? My uncle is
an old man and his presidency means more to him--"
"I understand that perfectly," said Ford soberly. "That is why I prefer
to step down and out and let some other man have the glory of finishing
the extension."
She looked up quickly.
"Would you do that for Uncle Sidney? He hasn't been very lenient with
you, has he?"
Ford ignored the query.
"He is your uncle, Miss Alicia; and I'd do it for your sake or not at
all."
They had reached the steps of the private car, and Frisbie was waiting
with evident impatience for a word with Ford. Miss Adair's eyes signaled
emotion, and Ford thought it was resentment. But her parting word was
not resentful; it was merely a repetition.
"Go to Mr. Frisbie," she said from the car step; "he is waiting for
you." And then: "Remember; whatever happens, _you must not resign_--not
even if Uncle Sidney asks you to."
Frisbie's information, given after Miss Adair had gone in, was rather
mystifying. Young Benson, who was just in from the grade work beyond
Copah, brought word of a party of strange engineers running lines on the
opposite side of the river from the rejected S. L & W. short-cut through
the canyon of shale slides. Questioned by Benson, they had told what
Frisbie believed to be a fairy tale. The chief of the party claimed to
be the newly-elected county surveyor from Copah, running the lines for
some mining property recently filed for entry. Benson had not been over
curious; but he was observant enough to note that the tale was a misfit
in three important particulars. He saw no locating stakes, such as a
prospector always sets up conspicuously to mark his claim; and there
were no signs of the precious metal, and no holes to indicate an attempt
to find it.
"What's your guess, Dick?" said Ford tersely.
The assistant shook his head.
"I haven't any coming to me. But I don't like mysteries."
"Where was this party?"
"About a mile and a half below here. It was going out toward Copah when
Jack met it--its work, whatever it was, all done, apparently."
It was one of Frisbie's gifts to be suspicious; but Ford was lacking on
that side.
"It's barely possible that the man was telling the truth, in spite of
Benson's failure to find any prospect holes," he remarked. "We'll let it
go at that until we know something different. It couldn't be a
Transcontinental party, this far from home, and we haven't anybody else
to fear."
Frisbie dropped the subject as one of the abstractions and took up the
concrete.
"What are the orders for to-day?" he asked.
"I don't know. I'm waiting for Mr. Colbrith to say."
"There are two buckboard teams here, in the MacMorrogh stables--came
over from Copah last night. What are they for?"
"I don't know. Another of the president's little surprises, I suppose.
We'll know when he sends for me."
The expected summons came at that precise moment, transmitted by
Penfield. Mr. Colbrith would like to see Mr. Ford in his private
state-room in the Nadia. The secretary had a sheaf of telegrams in his
hand, and wished to be directed to the wire office. Frisbie took him in
charge, and Ford went to obey the summons.
The president was sitting very erect in his swing chair when the young
engineer let himself into the box-like compartment, and his voice was at
its thinnest when he said: "Be seated, Mr. Ford."
Ford sat down on the divan-couch, and the president plunged at once into
business.
"Some time ago, you advised me, as chairman of the executive committee,
that you had decided upon a change of route, Mr. Ford," he began
raspingly. "What were your reasons for making the change?"
"I stated them in my letter of advice," said Ford; "economy in
construction and greater safety in operating, as against a slight
increase in the length of the line."
"Twelve miles, I believe you said: that is a very considerable increase,
I should say. The great eastern companies are spending millions of
dollars, Mr. Ford, to shorten their lines by half-mile cut-offs."
Ford had his reply ready.