and yet I have just driven through it without once dismounting from this
buckboard. Moreover, we shall find in Copah to-morrow a re-survey of the
line showing its entire practicability, Mr. Ford--a report not made by
your engineers."
Ford and Frisbie exchanged swift glances of intelligence. The presence
of the strange engineering party in the canyon was sufficiently
explained. At first sight the president's expedient seemed childishly
puerile to Ford. Then suddenly in a flash of revealment he saw beyond
the puerilities--beyond the stubborn old man who, with all his narrow
self-will and obstinacy was merely playing the game for others.
"We can discuss these matters later, if you wish," he said placably. "I
think you will find our ground well taken. Do you want to drive back as
we came? Or will you let me find you an easier road to the mouth of
Horse Creek?"
But Mr. Colbrith was not to be balked or turned aside.
"Mr. Ford, I wish to be fair and impartial. I desired to satisfy myself,
personally, that this route we have driven over is practicable, and it
was also my desire that the investigation should be conducted in your
presence. You will admit now that you made a mistake--a very costly
mistake for the company--in abandoning this short cut."
"I admit nothing of the kind. The difficulties remain as they were,
quite unchanged by our pleasure trip from the end-of-track, Mr.
Colbrith. Assuming that the re-survey will report that the north bank of
the river is practicable, while the south bank is not, I have only to
say that the cost of the two bridges would offset the easier grading
conditions, while the danger to future traffic would remain the same.
But that is neither here nor there. You must either give us credit for
knowing our business, or you must discredit us entirely."
Frisbie was grinding his heel into the hard soil of the mesa. The
argument was growing rather acrid; and Penfield and the two drivers were
interested listeners. It was high time for a diversion to be made, and
the assistant made it.
"We have used five hours getting down here, and we'll need as many going
back," he put in. "Unless there is something more to be done on the
spot, I think we'd better take the road over the hills. It's with you,
Mr. Colbrith."
The president signified his assent by climbing into his buckboard, and
the return journey was begun with the two engineers in the lead for
pathfinding purposes. Once safely out of earshot, Frisbie voiced his
disgust.
"A wild goose-chase, pure and simple! Stuart, that old man is in his
second childhood."
"Not at all," said Ford. "He is merely following out North's
suggestions. Dick, my name is Dennis."
"Nonsense! Things are no worse than they have been all along."
"My time with the Pacific Southwestern is shorter by just the number of
hours it has taken us to drive down here. Mr. Colbrith has convinced
himself that I was wrong in abandoning the canyon. To-morrow he will
convince himself that I was doubly wrong in approving the detour. I
shall hand in my resignation to-night."
"So be it," said Frisbie shortly. "That means good-by to the extension.
I'm predicting that it will never get to Green Butte--never get beyond
Copah. And your name will go out to the railroad world as that of a man
who bit off a number of large things that he couldn't chew."
"Confound you!" said Ford; and after that, Frisbie could get no more
than single-syllabled replies to his monologue of Job's comfortings.
The returning route was a detour, winding, through the greater part of
it, among and over the swelling heights north of the Pannikin. On each
hilltop the vast sweep of the inter-mountain wilderness came into view,
and from the highest point in the trail, reached when the sun was
dipping toward the western horizon, the eye-sweep took in the broken
country lying between the Pannikin and the path of the Transcontinental
narrow gauge forty miles away.
Jack's Canyon, the Transcontinental station nearest Copah, was the
beginning of a combined pack trail and stage road connecting the Copah
district with what had been, before the advent of the Southwestern
Extension, its nearest railroad outlet. Along this trail, visible to the
buckboarders as a black speck tittuping against the reddening background
of the west, galloped a solitary horseman, urging his mount in a way to
make Frisbie, getting his glimpse from the hilltop of extended views,
call Ford's attention.
"Look at that brute, pushing his horse like that at the end of the day!
He ought to be--"
But the hastening rider was getting his deserts, whatever they should
be, as he went along. For three hours, with three relays of fresh horses
picked up at the stage stations in passing, he had been galloping
southward, and to whatever other urging he might confess was added the
new one of fear, the fear that in the approaching day's-end he would
lose his way.
Seen from the nearer point of view, the tittuping horseman seemed
curiously out of harmony with his environment. Instead of the cow-boy
"shaps," or overalls, he wore the trousers of civilization, which the
rapid night had hitched half-way to his knees. In place of the
open-breasted shirt with the rolled-up sleeves there were tailor-made
upper clothes, with the collar and cravat also of civilization, and the
hat--it was perhaps fortunate for the rider that he had not met any true
denizens of the unfettered highlands on the lonely trail from Jack's
Canyon. His hat was a Derby of the newest shape; and the cow-men beyond
the range are impatient of such head-gear.
Recognition, after one has ridden hard for three hours over a dusty
road, is not easy; but there are faces one never forgets, and the
features, dust-grimed and sweat-streaked though they were, had still the
South-of-Europe outline, the slightly aquiline nose, and the piercing
black eyes of Mr. Julius Eckstein, whom we saw, on the morning of this
same road-wearying day, welcoming Adair over the counter railing in the
Denver office. How does it come that a few short hours later we find him
galloping tantivy over the dusty hills, no less than two hundred miles,
as the birds fly, from the counter railing of welcomings?
That is the story of another, and a more successful special train than
Adair's. No sooner was the care-free young director safely on his way to
meet the delays so painstakingly prearranged for him than the wires
began to buzz with a cipher message of warning to Penfield. A precious
half-hour was lost in ascertaining that the wire connection to the
end-of-track was temporarily out of commission; but during that
half-hour Mr. North had held his chin in his hand to some good purpose.
With the fresh complications promised by Adair's projection into the
field, a stronger man than Penfield should be in command on the firing
line. The vice-president decided swiftly that Eckstein was the man; but
how to get him to the MacMorrogh headquarters before Adair should
arrive?
It proved to be simpler in the outcarrying than in the planning. A
special light engine over the Transcontinental to Jack's Canyon--an
exchange of courtesies which even fighting railroads make in war as well
as in peace--a wire request on the stage company for relays of saddle
horses, and the thing was done. And Eckstein, pushing his jaded beast
down the final hill in the dusk of the evening, and welcoming, as only
the saddle-tormented can welcome, the lights of the headquarters camp,
confessed in cursings quite barbaric in their phrasings that he, too,
was done.
The conference held that night behind locked doors in the MacMorroghs'
commissary office was a council of five, with Eckstein, as the
mouthpiece of the vice-president, in the chair. Penfield was present,
with no vote, and the three MacMorroghs voted as one; but as to that,
there were no divisions. A crisis was imminent, and it must be met.
"As I have said, I am here with power to act," said Eckstein, gripping
the chair with wincings after the day of torment. "The plan outlined at
first by Mr. North must go through as it was outlined. Part of it has
already been carried out, you say: Ford and the president have been over
the short-cut together. To-morrow the entire private-car party goes to
Copah over the detour. Are the buckboards here for that?"
"They're here wid the drivers. I saw to that part of it myself." It was
the youngest of the three MacMorroghs who gave the assurance.
"So far so good," commented the chairman. "The other thing we have to
provide for, or rather, to prevent, is the possibility of Mr. Adair's
reaching here in time to join the party. The last definite information
we had of Mr. Adair he was crawling up Blue Canyon, with a train crew
which was under orders to give him ample time to study the scenery. He
has probably reached Saint's Rest before this, however, and once there,
Leckhard will give him anything in sight. The question is, will he
attempt to run the extension to-night?"
The middle MacMorrogh thought not, and his younger brother agreed with
him. But the senior partner voted aye, and stuck to it. Thereupon ensued
a conflict of opinion. Dan MacMorrogh pointed out that the construction
motive power was all at the west end, or in transit eastward; it would
be daylight of another day before an engineer familiar with the hazards
could be obtained for Adair's special over the construction line. But
Brian MacMorrogh argued with equal emphasis that this was a mere begging
of chances. Without a telegraph wire to verify the guess, no man could
say at what hour one of the trains of empties would pull through to
Saint's Rest; and whatever the hour, Leckhard would doubtless turn the
engine and crew to double back with Adair's car.
Eckstein was gripping the arms of his chair and setting his teeth deep
into his cigar while the probabilities were getting themselves threshed
out. At the end of the dispute he said quietly: "It's a hell of a pity
we can't have the use of the wire for this one night. But, gentlemen, we
can't stop for trifles. There are five of us here in this room who know
how much is at stake. One of two things is due to happen. If we can keep
Adair out of it for another twelve hours, Ford will be disgraced and
asked to resign. If he gets to that point, we're safe. I know Ford's
temper. If Mr. Colbrith puts it as he is likely to put it, Ford will say
and do things that will make it impossible for Adair or any one else to
get him back into the service."
"Thrue for you, Misther Eckstein; ye have 'im down to the crossin' of a
't'," agreed the eldest of the brothers MacMorrogh.
"That is one of the due things," Eckstein went on smoothly. "The other
isn't pretty to look at. If Adair gets here in time, it will be another
story. He can handle Ford; and he has proved once or twice that he can
handle Mr. Colbrith. If he hadn't been out of the way when you went to
New York with Mr. North, you'd never have seen the thin edge of this
contract, Brian. Well, then what happens? With Adair on the ground to
back him, Ford wins out. Do you know what that means? Investigations,
muck-rakings, and worse. There are two or three of us here, and some
more on the other side of the range, who won't get off with less than
ten years apiece. I'm willing to take the chance of a few more years
for another play on the red. How is it with the rest of you?"
The elder MacMorrogh spread his hands.
"It's all in the same boat we are. You've a notion in the back par-rt of
your head, Misther Eckstein; lave us have it."
"As I've said, we can't stick at trifles. If Adair's train is on the
extension, it mustn't get here. Somebody goes up the line on a hand-car
to-night and stops it."
"Is it to ditch it, ye mane?" asked the youngest of the brothers in a
hoarse whisper.
Eckstein laughed cynically. "What a lot of crude cutthroats you are!" he
jeered. "Now if it were Ford, instead of Adair--but pshaw! a rail or two
taken up and flung into the river well beyond walking distance from this
camp does the business. Only the man who does it wants to make sure he
has gone far enough back to cover all the possible chances."
"That's me," said Dan MacMorrogh; and he rose and let himself out, with
the younger brother to lock the door behind him.
The door-keeping attended to, the younger brother drew closer into the
circle.
"There's wan thing," he said, looking furtively at Eckstein. "I was in
Copah this day: I got the buckboards for Misther Colbrith. Goin' past
the bank, who would I see but our old bookkeeper, Merriam, chinnin' wid
the bank president. I thought he was out o' the way entirely."
Stiff and saddle-sore as he was, Eckstein leaped out of his chair with
an oath.
"Merriam? What the devil is he back here for? It's a put-up job!"
It was the chief of the MacMorroghs who flung in the calming word.
"'Tis only a happen-so, Misther Eckstein. Merriam owns a mine or two in
the Copah, and ye know the fever: a man can't keep away from thim."
"That may be; but it's a cursed unlucky combination, just the same. I
tell you, Brian, he knows too much--this fellow Merriam. He knew what
was up when he was steering Frisbie. You told him too much. And
afterward, when we gave him the Oregon job, he knew why he was being
bribed to go away. You let us in for this: you've got to muzzle him,
some way."
The MacMorrogh looked at his remaining brother meaningly. "'Tis up to
you, this time, Mickey, b'y. Find your way over to the minin' camp this
night, and make a clane job av it.'"
Penfield was moving uneasily in his chair. The plotting waters were
deepening swiftly, much too swiftly for him. Loyalty to his superior
officer, the unquestioning loyalty that disregards motives entirely and
does not look too closely at methods, was his fetish. But these men
were not merely loyal to Mr. North. They were criminals--he stuck at the
word, but there was no other--fighting for their own hand.
"I guess--I guess I'd better go back to the Nadia," he stammered, trying
to keep his voice steady. "Mr. Colbrith may need me."
Eckstein turned on him like a snarling animal.
"No you don't, Arthur, my boy. I know you like a book. You stay here
till you're in as deep as the rest of us. Like Merriam, you know too
damned much."
Penfield sat still, with the cold chills running up and down his spine,
while Eckstein went on talking to the two MacMorroghs.
"This Merriam business complicates things like hell"--he was growing
coarsely profane in the grinding mill of events. "But it shows us where
we stand. This thing has got to go through, and if it doesn't work out
the way we've planned it, it's for us to find another way."
"There's always the wan other way," said the elder MacMorrogh slowly.
"'Tis but a drunken fight in wan o' the camps, and Ford tryin' to stop
it, as he always does: a bit of a shindy among the b'ys, and this--"
crooking his forefinger suggestively.
"Bah!" said Eckstein. "You fellows ought to have lived in the stone age,
when a man pulled his enemy to pieces with his bare hands. If it comes
to that, there are easier ways--and safer. A premature blast in a rock
cut; a weak coupling-pin when he happens to be standing in the way of a
pulling engine: they tell me he is always indifferent to his personal
safety. But never mind the fashion of it; the point I'm making is that
if everything else fails, Ford mustn't live to be the head-foreman of
the outfit."
Penfield's face was ashen, and he was cravenly thankful that the
lamplight was dim, and that his chair was in the shadow. This was more
than he had bargained for; more by the price of a man's life.
Eckstein was lifting himself by painful inches from his chair. A silence
as of the grave had fallen upon the two MacMorroghs. It was the senior
partner who broke it.
"'Tis as ye say, Misther Eckstein. A man--a safe man, that'll do what
he's told to do--will be at Ford's heels till this thing do be settled.
And now for yourself: 'tis betther that ye kape dark. Four of us know
that you're in the camp--no wan else need know. I've a room and a bed,
and ye'll be nadin' the lasht, I'm thinking."
The two MacMorroghs were bestirring themselves, and Penfield was
slipping through the door into the commissary when Eckstein's fingers
closed upon his arm.
"Your part is to keep tab on the programme," he whispered "Get word
instantly to Brian if there is any change. And if you weaken, Arthur,
I'll promise you just one thing: I'll pull you in with the rest of us if
I have to swear to a string of lies a mile long. Remember that."
Penfield escaped at length, and stumbled through the littered
end-of-track yard to where the lighted windows of the Nadia marked the
berth of the president's car. Out of the shadow of the car a man rose up
and confronted him. It was Frisbie, and he asked a single question:
"Say, Penfield, who was that fellow who rode around to the MacMorroghs'
back door just after dark?"
"It was Eckstein." The secretary let slip the name before he could lay
hold of his discretion.
"Oh: all right That's all," said the engineer; and he vanished.
Climbing to the observation platform, Penfield let himself into the
cheerful central compartment of the Nadia quietly enough to surprise two
people who were sitting together on one of the broad divans. The two
were Ford and Miss Alicia Adair, with Aunt Hester Adair, reading under
the drop-light at the table, for the only other occupant of the
compartment. It was Miss Alicia who told the secretary that he was not
needed.
"Mr. Colbrith was very tired, and he has gone to bed," she said; and
Penfield, still pallid and curiously unready of speech, said he believed
he'd go, too.
Ford got up when Penfield had disappeared in the curtained vestibule
leading to the state-rooms.
"I shall wait one more day, because you want me to," he said, resuming
the conversation which had been broken off by Penfield's incoming. "But
I'll tell the truth: I came here to-night to have it over with. We were
as near quarreling to-day as I want to come, and if Frisbie hadn't got
between--"
"Good Mr. Frisbie!" she said. "Some day I hope to get a chance to be
very nice to him."
Ford laughed. The evening had healed many of the woundings of the day.
"If you don't get the chance it won't be Dick's fault--or mine.
Meantime, I'll be delighted to pose as his substitute."
She had gone with him to the door, and his last word was a reminder.
"Don't forget," he said. "I'm to drive your buckboard to-morrow,
whatever happens."
"You are the one who will forget," she retorted. "When Uncle Sidney
crooks his finger at you, you'll climb up obediently beside him and let
him scold you all the way over to Copah."
"Wait and see," said Ford; and then he said good night, not as he wanted
to, but as he must, with Aunt Hester sitting within arm's reach.
Frisbie was sitting up for him when he reached the white tents of the
engineers' camp pitched a little apart from the MacMorrogh
conglomeration of shacks and storehouses.
"Just one question," said the first assistant, "and I've been staying
awake to ask it. Are you still my boss?"
"For one more day," said Ford shortly.
"Well, we can't live more than a day at a time, if we try. That will do
to sleep on."
"All right; sleep on it, then."
"In a minute; after I've freed my mind of one little news item. Do you
remember that fellow we saw riding in on the Jack's Canyon trail as we
were coming back this afternoon?"
"Yes."
"Have you any notion who it was?"
"No."
"It was Mr. Julius Eckstein; and he is at present lying doggo in the
MacMorrogh quarters. That's all. Now you can turn in and sleep a few
lines on _that_."
XXI
THE MILLS OF THE GODS
It was merely by chance that Adair had Michael Gallagher for his
engineer when the "01" was made up for the after-midnight run from
Saint's Rest to the MacMorrogh headquarters. But it was a chance which
was duly gratifying to Leckhard. The little Irishman was Ford's most
loyal liegeman, and a word was all that was needed to put him on his
mettle. The word was spoken while he was oiling around for the
man-killing extra service.
"Pretty well knocked out, Michael?" asked Leckhard, by way of preface.
"I am thot, Misther Leckhard. 'Tis the good half of lasht night, all day
yestherday, and thin some."
"It's tough. But if any of the other men were in, I should still ask you
to go. Mr. Ford is in a pinch, and Mr. Adair, your passenger, is going
to help him out. He can do it if you get him to Horse Creek in time; and
I know you'll get him there if the 956 and the '01' will stay on the
steel."
"To help Misther Foord out? Thot's me," said Gallagher simply.
"Not having a wire, I can't boost you any from this end. You'll meet
Folsom and Graham with the other two sections of empties where you can:
you'll run as fast as the Lord'll let you on such a track as you have:
but above all, you'll stay on the rails. If you ditch yourself, it'll go
hard with Mr. Ford."
"I'll do all thim things and wan more--and thot wan is the shtiffest av
thim all: the saints aidin' me, Misther Leckhard, I'll shtay awake."
There was a short siding at the summit of the pass, and by good hap,
Gallagher met Folsom with the first string of empties at that point: or
rather, giving the bit of good luck full credit, he heard the roaring of
Folsom's exhaust as the first of the opposing trains pounded up the
dangerous western grade, and hastily backed up and took the summit
siding.
Pitching over the hill with the "01" the moment Folsom's tail-lights had
passed the outlet switch, Gallagher had a sharp attack of memory. The
day before, in the Horse Creek yard, he had seen and remarked a jagged
scratch on the side of the Nadia. Hence, he was watching for the narrow
rock cuttings, and the three passages perilous on the cliff face were
made in safety.
Once off the mountain, however, the greater peril began to assert
itself. For a time the Irishman kept himself fully awake and alert by
pushing the 956 to the ragged edge of hazard, scurrying over the short
tangents and lifting her around the curves in breath-taking spurts.
Later this expedient began to lose its fillip. Since the train was
running wholly on the air-brakes there was nothing for the fireman to
do, and Jackson, the loyalest understudy Gallagher had ever known,
tumbled from his box in a doze, staggered across the gang-way into the
half-filled tender, and fell like a man anæsthetized full length on the
coal. Gallagher did not try to arouse him.
"'Tis hell for wan, an' twice hell for two," he muttered; and then he
shifted his right hand to the brake-cock and grasped the hot throttle
lever with the ungloved left. And for a time the pain of the burn
sufficed.
It was another piece of luck, good or bad, that made Ten Mile station
the special train's meeting point with the second train of empties. This
time it was Graham, the other engineer, who heard. He had stopped at Ten
Mile on the bare chance that the wire between that point and Saint's
Rest had been repaired; public opinion to the contrary notwithstanding,
an engineer does not run "wild" when he can help it.
The engineer of the third section had come out of the night operator's
office disappointed, and was climbing to his engine to pull out, when he
heard, or thought he heard, the dull rumble of a train racing down the
canyon. It came in sight while he listened, and the yellow flare told
him that it was either Gallagher or Folsom doubling back on one of the
construction engines. What startled him was the fact that the coming
train appeared to be running itself; there was no warning whistle shriek
and no slackening of speed.
Graham was a Scotchman, slow of speech, slow to anger, methodical to the
thirty-third degree. But in an emergency his brain leveled itself like a
ship's compass gimballed to hang plumb in the suddenest typhoon. Three
shrill whistle calls sent a sleepy flagman racing to set the switch of
the siding. With a clang the reversing lever came over and the steam
roared into the cylinders.