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Title: The Fight on the Standing Stone
Date of first publication: 1925
Author: Francis Lynde (1856-1930)
Date first posted: April 20, 2014
Date last updated: April 20, 2014
Faded Page eBook #20140443

This eBook was produced by: Brenda Lewis, Donna M. Ritchey
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




THE FIGHT ON
THE STANDING STONE




_BY FRANCIS LYNDE_

  THE CRUISE OF THE CUTTLEFISH
  THE GOLDEN SPIDER
  DICE AND LARRY, FRESHMEN
  THE DONOVAN CHANCE

      *    *    *    *    *

  THE FIGHT ON THE STANDING STONE
  PIRATES' HOPE
  THE FIRE BRINGERS
  THE GIRL, A HORSE AND A DOG
  THE WRECKERS
  DAVID VALLORY
  BRANDED
  STRANDED IN ARCADY
  AFTER THE MANNER OF MEN
  THE CITY OF NUMBERED DAYS
  THE HONORABLE SENATOR SAGEBRUSH
  THE PRICE
  A ROMANCE IN TRANSIT

_CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS_




  THE FIGHT ON
  THE STANDING STONE

  BY
  FRANCIS LYNDE



  [Illustration]


  NEW YORK
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
  1925




  Copyright, 1925, by
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  Printed in the United States of America

  [Illustration]




TO MR. CHARLES AGNEW MACLEAN

Friend of many years, and through whose good offices this tale of a
man's conflict and victory received its initial _imprimatur_ this book
is affectionately inscribed




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                  PAGE

        I. The Bear Hunters                     3

       II. The Engineers' Mess                 14

      III. Sparks on the Anvil                 21

       IV. Entering Wedges                     27

        V. Fire in the Rock                    38

       VI. The Time-killers                    46

      VII. Judson Greer                        56

     VIII. The Led-Captain                     65

       IX. Whom the Gods Destroy               77

        X. Mahomet Westervelt                  83

       XI. Quod Erat Demonstrandum             92

      XII. The Root of Evil                   105

     XIII. Balancing                          116

      XIV. The Conspirators                   126

       XV. McClarty's Petard                  136

      XVI. The Snare of the Fowler            148

     XVII. Flint and Steel                    162

    XVIII. The Kicking Deer                   172

      XIX. In Which the Cat Came Back         186

       XX. The Flanking Column                192

     XXI. The Stop-Signal                     204

     XXII. In Which a Cigar-Case Turns Up     209

    XXIII. A Bloodless Battle                 218

     XXIV. The Forlorn Hope                   227

      XXV. The Vise Nip                       235




THE FIGHT ON THE STANDING STONE




I

THE BEAR HUNTERS


The sun, poising for its early autumn afternoon plunge behind the
snow balds on high Buckskin, was doing its best to idealize in a
golden glow of color the commissary, the bunk shanties, the long
strings of material cars, and the other bare utilities of Travois, the
end-of-track construction camp. Beyond the camp with its gridironing
of railroad tracks the Standing Stone, clear, snow-cold and sparkling,
caught the suffusing tint in the spray flung up by the boulders in
its tortuous bed; and even the black smoke belching from the stacks
of the two big "camel-back" locomotives in the yard turned to a pearl
gray with pink undertones as it rose to diffuse itself in the upper
effulgences.

Over a great gash scoring the nearer shoulder of the Buckskin like
a fresh wound a dull yellow mist hung in mid air; and as Stannard
came out of the camp telegraph shack with a tissue copy of a telegram
crumpled viciously in his fist, the rumbling grunt of the dynamite
floated down from the jagged scar on Buckskin to be passed back and
forth in diminishing echoes between the Dogtooth and Rock-Face, twin
bulkings inclosing the Travois valley like the crooking fingers of a
pair of hollowed hands.

Crossing the straggling camp street to come by the shortest path to
the end-of-track yard, the stalwart young chief of construction fell
afoul of Callahan and his car-repairing mate at work jacking up a steel
flat to replace a broken drawbar. Because he was in the mood to snap at
anything that came in his way, he stopped short and wheeled upon the
two men under the flat-car.

"Who smashed that drawbar, Patsy?"

"Sure, I dunno, Sorr," returned the car-repairer. And then, loyal to
his yardmates: "I'm thinking maybe 'twas done on the main line, before
we'd be getting the car on the Cut-off at all."

"No, it wasn't; it was done right here in this yard! Write out a report
of it and give the number of the shift that turned it over to you. I'm
going to make an example of some of these clock-watchers that are too
lazy to ride a kick-off and set the brakes. Have you seen Mr. Roddy
since he came down from the tunnel?"

"I did, Sorr. 'Twas him I saw going across the thracks to the river wid
his fishin'-pole, not twinty minut's ago."

Stannard faced about and strode away in the direction indicated, still
gripping the tissue telegram. Callahan winked slyly at his mate. "'Tis
bad news the boss has been getting," he commented. "I'd not like to be
Misther Jackson Roddy to be caught wid a fishin'-pole in me hand before
quittin' time."

"You're batty!" scoffed the helper, "Them things don't count with the
bosses. And anyway, Mr. Roddy is off his shift when he comes down from
the tunnel."

"'Tis bad news, all the same," Callahan insisted. "Misther Stannard is
a foine upshtandin' young man whin he's at himself, but whin his mad's
up I'd sooner be findin' tin dollars on the dump than to have the b'y
hit out at me wid annything less than a feather bed between the two
av us. 'Tis a twinty-horse-power mule kick he'd put behind thim two
fishties av his, this minut!"

True to the Irishman's characterization, Stannard gave a very fair
imitation of a young giant ferociously angry when he had crossed the
tracks to come upon his assistant wading knee-deep in the icy waters of
the Standing Stone and skilfully playing a fine mountain trout in the
boiling eddies.

"Get out of that mill-tail and come and listen to this, Jackson!"
he called from the bank, bellowing to make himself heard above the
drumming of the torrent.

Roddy, a small man with baby-blue eyes and the jaw of a bulldog, waded
ashore obediently, playing the fish as he came and deftly slipping the
landing-net under it when the fight ended in the shallows.

"What's eating you now?" he grumbled. At altitude five thousand feet
in the short-grass hills the distinctions of rank and file fall easily
into the scrap-heap with the other purely ornamental traditions.

"Get on to this," rasped the chief; and thereupon he smoothed the
crumpled telegram and read it aloud. "'President Merriam's private car
_Egeria_, and extra Pullman, with hunting party from New York will run
special, Brinker, conductor, Gaffney, engineman, Yellow Medicine to
Travois, leaving here four-fifteen. Mr. Westervelt, in charge of party,
wants you to arrange side-track accommodation for _Egeria_ and extra
best place in Travois yard where ladies won't be annoyed. Pennoyer,
Agent.' Do you get that, Jackson? Wouldn't that make you let out a yell
and break for the timber! 'Ladies'--that's what he says--'Ladies'!--in
this God-forsaken, howling wilderness of a man's camp. Wah!"

Roddy grinned. He had unjointed his fly rod and was picking up the
creel which already held trout enough for the mess supper-table.

"That reminds me of the story of the fellow who saw one of your brother
Missourians at a bar and remarked that he'd give a thousand dollars for
a thirst like that. Woman, lovely woman, doesn't appeal to me that way.
I wish she did."

The athletic young chief of staff growled like a dog.

"Come down to earth, Jacksie, and look this thing in the eye for a
minute. What in thunder are we going to do with a junketing picnic
party right in the thick of this latest mix-up--with the hard-rock men
threatening to strike on us, and the Overland Northern building three
miles a day to cut us out of Standing Stone Canyon? Silas Westervelt is
one of our directors, and he ought to have known better than to throw
in a handicap like this."

"You know Mr. Westervelt then, do you?"

"I've met him," said Stannard shortly. "He was on the G. L. & P.
Securities Board last year when I went to New York to fight this
Cut-off scheme to a finish."

The assistant nodded. In common with the other members of the
engineering staff he knew the story of the Cut-off scheme; how
Stannard, serving his apprenticeship as a division engineer on the
Yellow Medicine district of the main line, had evolved the great idea
of the short cut across the Yellow Desert and the tunnel under Buckskin
whereby eighty miles of distance and a thousand feet of grades could be
eliminated; how the young Missourian had fought his idea up through
the various official threshings and winnowings and had finally been
permitted to lay his plan before the board of directors in New York;
and how, after many bucketings of cold water from an over-cautious
minority, the vote for a bond issue had carried, and Stannard, with his
commission as chief engineer of the project in his pocket, had come
back to the Standing Stone country to translate the great idea into
steel-rail and hard-rock facts.

There had been difficulties from the outset. With an eager demand for
labor on other and less isolated projects, the grade contractors had
been able to secure only the sweepings of the market-place. With orders
booked far in advance at the mills the deliveries of steel and other
material had been exasperatingly delayed, and the newly promoted chief
of construction had literally fought for every day's progress over the
forty-five miles of sage-brush desert lying between Yellow Medicine and
the Dogtooth Hills.

In the hills, and with the tunnel workings begun at both ends, a new
obstacle had developed. In order to obtain the grade for the eastern
tunnel approach, Stannard had carried his line in a great hair-pin loop
up one side of the canyon of the Standing Stone and back on the other;
the canyon being a precipitous gulch intersecting the Travois basin at
right angles from the south, and lying between the western cliffs of
the Dogtooth and the eastern shoulders of the Buckskin range.

With the first shatterings of the dynamite on the ten-mile loop in the
canyon the new trouble began. An old survey of the Overland Northern,
the Great Lakes & Pacific's chief competitor, ran through the Standing
Stone canyon, and a formal notice, which was in effect a mandatory
warning to "keep off the grass," had been promptly served upon the G.
L. & P.

Stannard, acting under advice which he had fairly bullied out of his
own company's lawyers, had ignored the notice to quit; was still
ignoring it in spite of the fact that the Overland people were rushing
a branch line across the desert from Lodge Butte with the avowed
intention of occupying the canyon on the old survey, and of passing
through it to a tapping of the rich mining district served by the G. L.
& P. main line in the southern Buckskins. This rapid-fire advance of
the enemy was the common gossip of the Travois camp, and Roddy's tone
was gruffly sympathetic when he pushed his inquiry a little farther.

"Westervelt is also a heavy stockholder in Overland Northern, isn't
he?" he queried.

"He is said to be, though nobody seems to know definitely," Stannard
returned. "But there is one thing sure; he fought this Cut-off scheme
of mine from start to finish in the various meetings of the board,
and gave up only when he was outvoted two to one. I don't like this
hunting-party interference a little bit, Jackson, coming at this
particular minute."

By this time the two men had dodged between the shifting trains in the
yard and were crossing to the double log cabin which served as the
staff headquarters.

"Meaning that we are likely to go up against a situation in which the
innocent bystander might be in the way?" queried Roddy.

"Just that. I don't know how far the Overland Northern people will
carry their bluff for a right-of-way which doesn't belong to them any
more than it does to the Dalai Lama of Lhasa. Greer is their chief
of construction, and they say he's a scrapper. I've been looking for
their locating squad to come through here any day, and when that
happens there'll be blood on the moon. Nice, pleasant prospect for Mr.
Westervelt and his carload of 'ladies'!"

Roddy captured a water boy and sent him around to the cook house
with the creel of fish before he followed his chief into the big
working-room of the headquarters cabin. He was perched on a high stool
in front of one of the mapping trestles when he began again on the sore
subject.

"Four-fifteen out of Yellow Medicine; that will bring them here about
supper time. You'd ought to 've let me catch another mess of trout,
Claiborne."

"Not much! We'll give 'em track room because we've got to, but we don't
feed 'em on delicacies. Tell you what I'd do, Jackson, if it wasn't for
the women; I'd shove that blamed private car out on the Standing Stone
spur at the mouth of the canyon where it would get a liberal dusting of
rocks now and then from the blasting in the big cut. I've a good mind
to do it anyway. I haven't much use for Mr. Silas Westervelt, or for
any kind of a crowd he'd pick out to bring with him."

At this the assistant with the baby-blue eyes and the bad jaw began to
scent animosities other than those which had been advertised by the
gossip of the camp.

"Merely because he opposed your scheme?" he suggested, with the
subtlety of an elephant trying to pick up a pin.

"No; that part of it was straight business, and he didn't see the thing
as I did. I don't know as I've told you, but a number of the board
meetings last summer were held in the library of Mr. Westervelt's
country house out on the Sound shore. Mr. Westervelt went out of his
way to rub it into me that I was only a paid servant of the railroad
company."

"Oh!" said Roddy, with a leer which went better with the bad jaw than
with the child-like eyes. "So there was a girl mixed up in it, eh?"

"How the devil did you know that?" growled the modest giant, tilting in
the only chair the field office could boast.

"Guessed it," said the assistant shortly. "It's a safe bet. When it
isn't business, it's just naturally bound to be a girl."

"You've hit it," admitted the giant morosely. "There was a house party
going on at the Westervelt mansion, and one of the guests was Miss
Anitra Westervelt--Banker Silas's niece. I didn't see that the fact
of my being there on business barred me from saying good-morning or
good-evening to Miss Anitra, but Mr. Westervelt seemed to think it did."

"Suffering Scott!" breathed Roddy, with well simulated astonishment;
"did he have the nerve to say that to a man of your size?"

"Oh, no; not in so many words, of course. But I got the gist of his
meaning one morning after I had been down to the beach with the crowd
to give Miss Anitra a swimming lesson. The members of the Securities
committee happened to come out on an earlier train that morning, and
what Mr. Westervelt said about my not being on hand will keep until I
have a chance to pass it back to him."

Roddy chuckled. "Any little old ordinary prophet could foretell that
you're due to have the time of your life, Clay," he said. "I wouldn't
be in your shoes for a deed-of-gift to the pick of the half-dozen Ozark
apple orchards you are said to own."

"Blame the apple orchards!" growled Stannard, with sour irrelevance.
"That was the way Mr. Westervelt introduced me to Miss Anitra and a
bunch of her friends--as 'the well-known young apple king of the
Ozarks.' Wouldn't that jar your back teeth loose?"

"Well, you are, aren't you?" said Roddy maliciously; "or you were until
you got the engineering bee in your bonnet, and came out here to wear
the brass collar of a soulless corporation."

"The apples were Dad's," said the Missourian, half moodily. "He spent a
few thousand barrels of them, more or less, to give me the kind of an
education I wanted. Good old Daddy. I wish he were alive now to enjoy
the trees that he set out with his own hands when I was a barefooted
young cub. God forgive me, Jackson, but for one little minute when Mr.
Westervelt was rubbing them in I was ashamed of the apple-trees and of
the old, big-knuckled hands that had set them out! Then I felt like
going away somewhere and kicking myself."

This time Jackson Roddy's chuckle was completely sympathetic. "And the
girl--how did she take it?"

Stannard was silent for a full minute, and when he spoke again it was
to say, "Miss Anitra Westervelt is a law unto herself, Jackson. She
says--and does--the first thing that comes into the back part of her
mighty pretty little head. Sometimes that first thing is conventional,
but a heap of other times it's--well, let's call it original; original
enough to make your blood run cold--or warm, as you happen to be
constituted. No, I didn't fall in love with her, if that's what you're
wriggling your ugly jaw about, but I guess the only reason was because
I'm not enough of an acrobat to fall in seventeen different directions
at once."

Roddy was stuffing his short pipe with a rubbed up handful of cut
plug. "We're dodging," he objected, as he felt in his pocket for a
match. "You're mighty whistling right about the awkwardness of this
butt-in of the bear hunters, or whatever they are. It's coming at the
wrong time, good and plenty. Do you know what I did last night after
the hard-rock gophers gave me their ultimatum? I wired a good friend
of mine in Denver to buy up a few cases of Winchesters quietly, and
gave him shipping directions to Yellow Medicine. I have pretty good
assurances that we can depend upon the Irish track-layers if it comes
to a free fight to keep the rock gophers from blowing up our tunnel,
and I didn't want to be caught with my hands in the dough."

"And you did this on your own responsibility?" snapped the chief.

"I did. You couldn't afford to be mixed up in anything as brash as
that, and I wanted you to be able to swear out a clean bill of health
for yourself in case anything serious came of it."

Stannard shot a quick look at the percher from beneath his heavy black
brows.

"As a dust-thrower you are not a very remarkable success, Jackson,"
he said quietly. "Do you suppose I am thick-headed enough to fall for
anything as child-like as that story about the hard-rock men? I know
very well what you want those guns for."

"Name it," said the assistant between gentle little puffs at the short
pipe.

"Gallagher, that new steel foreman you imported from Arizona, named it
for me this morning when I was coming down the canyon. I saw two of his
men climbing up the back of the Stone and I wanted to know what they
were doing. He said they were wiring the flash-light signal as you had
ordered them to. What do you know--more than I do--Jackson?"

"I know this: I worked under Judson Greer, your Overland Northern
fighting man, for the better part of three years, and I savvy him up
one side and down the other," said the blue-eyed assistant slowly. "As
I said a minute ago, we're not going to be caught with our hands in the
dough. As the big boss on this job, Clay, that's all you need to know;
I guess maybe it's more than you ought to know."




II

THE ENGINEERS' MESS


Owing to the deep shadowing of the inclosing mountains the dusk falls
in the Travois while yet the peaks and shoulderings of the main
range lie bathed in an upper ambience shot through and through with
the afterglow of the sunset. The locomotives in the yard had blown
the shift-changing signal, and down the steep incline leading from
the Buckskin gash and the tunnel's mouth a string of mine-cars was
descending, cable lowered, and laden with the men of the off-shift. In
the construction yard the masthead electrics were twinkling on by twos
and threes, as the cut-ins were made on the different circuits from the
small power plant at the dam on the upper Standing Stone; and along the
grade from the loop, Gallagher's day-shift of steel men and shovelers
was straggling into camp.

Stannard, returning from a brittle little conference with Bailey, his
yard-master, in the lower yard, heard the whistle of the bear-hunters'
special as the train shrilled around the curve of approach. He had
been giving Bailey the order for the placing of the private cars, and
directing with malice aforethought that they be shunted in ahead of a
half-dozen empty steel flats on the siding farthest removed from the
camp and his own headquarters.

Determined to regard the "picnic party," as he was still calling it, in
the light of an interference, he did not go down the yard to welcome
Mr. Westervelt and his guests when the two-car train halted at the
"limits" switch to let Bailey climb to the engine cab. Nevertheless,
he had a passing glimpse of the train as it went rocketing up to the
western switches from whence it was to be kicked in on the riverbank
siding. The private car was a heavy hotel-Pullman, with a deeply
recessed observation platform at the rear. By the light of the nearest
masthead, Stannard saw that the platform was well-filled, and that
there were women in the group--four or five of them. Also, through
the lighted windows of the spacious central compartment, he saw two
white-jacketed waiters laying the table for dinner.

The young engineer had a sharp return of the grouch when he faced
about to climb to his headquarters office on the mesa bench above the
camp. Bear-hunting in a Pullman palace car was all very modern and
luxurious--and incongruous; most incongruous with the hunting halt made
in a railroad construction camp. The Broad Street money lord should
have known better than to project a junketing party, with women in it,
into a working camp where it could only be in the way and serve as a
stumbling-block to discipline and the speeding-up of the job. Stannard
had the men of his own staff in mind when he swore that he would put
the screws on and work them so hard that they wouldn't have time to
kill time with any of the picnicking young women; and since Black Sam
had not yet drubbed out the mess supper call on his Chinese gong,
the young chief turned aside into the empty working-room and squared
himself at his desk to plan for the disciplinary activities.

Under such conditions, and with the virus of acute ill-humor working in
his blood, the athletic young Missourian was not very good company for
anybody when he took his place at the head of the engineers' mess table
a little later. Roddy, having had his pointer, held his tongue; but
Markley, the snappy, red-headed young man-driver who had charge of the
tunnel boring on the other side of the mountain, was of those who rush
in blindly.

"They tell me you've invited a bunch of your New York friends out here
to see us do the great act, Stannard," was the way the red-headed one
broke in. "I want to get my picture in the Kodaks, and I'm going to hit
you for a transfer to this side of the Buckskin."

Bartley Pearson, big, black-whiskered, and as good-natured at heart as
he was saturnine in appearance, grunted his appreciation. Driving the
eastern drift of the great bore, Pearson had but one ambition in life,
namely, to make two feet of advance to Markley's one; and anything
which promised to make the red-headed little hustler careless of
hard-rock results was to be welcomed.

Stannard, who had been conspicuously silent, took his face out of his
plate long enough to read the riot act.

"You'll get a transfer to the location work on the Kicking Deer if you
let that private-car party mix and mingle with your job, Markley,"
he said. Then he went on to clear the situation definitely and once
for all. "Mr. Silas Westervelt, who is one of our directors, has
seen fit to bring a party of his friends out here on a bear-hunting
expedition. Why in the name of common sense he wanted to dump his bunch
of play-people down here in the middle of a hot construction fight is
more than I know; but I want to say this: The job goes on just the same
as if that private car wasn't here." "Oho! keep off the grass, eh?"
murmured Markley, helping himself to another plateful of Roddy's trout;
and Patterson, the purple-faced giant who was manhandling the grade and
track men on the approach loop in the Standing Stone canyon, chuckled
hoarsely, while Eddie Brant, boyish, fair-haired and cherubic--the
staff's draftsman and map-maker--looked up to inquire innocently,
"Didn't I hear somebody say that there are ladies with the party?"

"Feed your face, Eddie-boy, and never mind what you heard," laughed
Pearson. "Stannard says they're play-people, so the ladies, if there
are any, are only play-ladies, you know."

A sense of humor is a precious gift, and Stannard smiled good-naturedly
when he saw the grin spreading upon the faces of the five who in any
real need would have gone through fire and water to prove their loyalty
to him and to the job.

"You fellows can have your joke, if you'll only take it out on me," he
told the five. "When Yellow Medicine wired this afternoon that this
private-car crowd was coming here to camp down on us, I was hot. We
don't need any distractions just now, with matters in their present
shape, and you all know what I mean when I say that. Any day in the
week we are liable to have to do something that wouldn't listen very
well if Mr. Westervelt should get up in a directors' meeting in New
York and tell about it--not to mention what he might try to say or do
right here on the ground."

"That being the case?"--cut in Patterson.

"That being the case, I shall do everything I can think of to
discourage the bear-hunters, and I am banking on you fellows to back me
up. If anybody should ask you, you've never seen or heard of any bears
in the Buckskin country. Are you with me?"

"Why not?" mumbled Pearson, with his mouth full. "Capital's business
is to put up the money and then go away and let things alone. If it
wasn't for the women, we could mighty soon run a bunch of New York
dickie-gentlemen out o' camp."

Stannard nodded. "If Mr. Westervelt had any special object in landing
down on us with the intention of staying and getting himself well used
while he does stay, you'd call it a pretty foxy move--bringing the
women along. Just the same, I don't despair of discouraging him. He'll
be sending for me pretty soon, I expect, and when I get a whack at him
I'll tell him a few of the things he ought to know without the telling."

"Like fits you will," Pearson chuckled, the retort showing how little
Stannard's discipline hampered the pure man-to-man relations. And then:
"Can't you ring us in some way? There ain't a man of us who wouldn't
walk a mile in a blizzard to see you set a multi-millionaire back an
inch or two."

"Clay'll give him his orders," snapped Markley; then, imitating and
grossly exaggerating Stannard's tempered Missouri drawl: "'Misto'
Westervelt, yo' take yo' foot in yo' hand and pile out o' here!' I
think I hear you saying it, just like that--not!"

The young chief's grin was only half appreciative when he said: "That's
all right. Go on and have your fun out of it, you bullies; but don't
let me catch the first man of you giving that mob any encouragement to
stay here--just salt that down and keep it to chew on."

"You hear that, Eddie?" said Patterson, turning upon the curly-haired
map-maker. "That means you. You're the only man in the gang that'll be
likely to get a second look-in at the ladies."

Eddie Brant took his medicine patiently. It was the prescription that
the outdoor men had been administering in liberal doses from the first.
"I know," he returned, striking back in the only way that occurred to
him; "it's a terrible handicap for a man to be as pretty as I am. I'm
doing my level best to live it down, Jamie."

"Score one for Eddie-boy," chanted Roddy, breaking into the joking
give-and-take for the first time. Then he switched the talk abruptly.
"Heard anything more from the hard-rock men, Pearson?"

"Same old song," grumbled the east-end tunnel boss.

  "'We'll work like min eight hours a day,
    And all we want is a little more pay.'

There'll be nothing doing till the next pay-day drunk, and by that time
I'll have found the ring-leaders, if I have to sift the lot of 'em
through a wire sand-screen."

"There's something curious about this kick," Stannard put in. "Our
gophers are getting better pay and working under better conditions than
have ever been given on a job like this, and they know it. Sometimes
I've been tempted to wonder if the Overland Northern hasn't sent us a
few trouble makers."

"There's more in that than might appear on the surface of the puddle,"
Markley put in. "I've got my eye on two or three fellows over on my end
of the job, and if I get a pinch on 'em, you'll hear something drop."

"Fire 'em!" said Stannard crisply. "And that applies to you, too,
Pearson. I'm looking to you two fellows to spot the right men. When you
find 'em, cut 'em out, and I'll see to it that they don't hang around
very long in the Travois."

"You won't have any trouble with my contingent," Markley qualified,
with a ferocious grin. "There's a good bit of tall timber over on my
side of the range, and that's what they'll take to after I get through
with 'em."

By this time the mess-table squad was comfortably forgetting the
private-car party marooned on the opposite side of the construction
yard. But now a reminder, in the shape of a natty young negro in
uniform with a gold-lettered "_Egeria_" on his cap, intruded itself.

"Take off that cap!" roared Stannard, before the negro was well within
the open door of the mess shack, and the negro went a shade lighter in
color and obeyed.

"Y-y-yas, suh," he stammered. "I--I's lookin' for de boss-man. Misteh
Weste'velt, he say,--"

"We're all bosses here," said the chief gruffly. "Out with it; what do
you want?"

"Misteh Weste'velt, he say fo' Misteh Stanna'd please come oveh to de
cyah."

Because the message had the savor of a mandatory order from a superior
to an underling, a grin went around the mess table; and in deference
to the grin Stannard scowled at the messenger and said: "Tell Mr.
Westervelt I'm busy now; I'll be over after a while." And to make the
small defiance good, he left the table and crossed to the working-room
to put in a full hour over the blue-prints on his desk before he rose
and struggled into his coat and went to obey the great man's summons.




III

SPARKS ON THE ANVIL


On the way across the electric-lighted railroad yard Stannard was
telling himself in sardonic humor that the delay in answering the
banker-director's summons might be made to figure as something less
than an open hostility, since it had doubtless given Mr. Westervelt
time to finish his dinner. Reaching the river-bank spur-track, he found
that the private car and its extra had been pushed down to a coupling
touch with the string of empty steel flats. The lights were turned low
in the central compartment, and under the darkened balcony formed by
the "umbrella roof" of the rear platform there were lounging figures;
among them somebody with a musical ear and a rich baritone voice who
was humming a song to the twanking time-beat of a banjo accompaniment.

Determined to dodge the social hazard effectively, Stannard went to
the forward vestibule, was admitted by the coffee-colored porter and
had himself shown to the private compartment where a large-bodied
gentleman, shrewd-eyed, with thin hair graying reluctantly at his
temples, and wearing a metallic smile in permanence on a face which
in spite of the smile figured as a dry desert of inscrutability, was
working his way through the market record in a bundle of New York
newspapers picked up from the passing Fast Mail at Yellow Medicine.
At the door-opening the waiting magnate laid his newspapers aside,
looking up in a way which gave the young engineer the impression that
the cold eyes were taking in every detail of his working-clothes
unpresentability, down to the missing button on the shapeless khaki
coat.

"Ah, Mr. Stannard; you're here at last, are you?" was the colorless
greeting. "Sit down, if you please. I didn't know but you had
forgotten."

Stannard found a seat on the narrow single-berth divan, wishing
heartily that he had been really able to carry the ignoring process to
the actual point of forgetting the banker's summons.

"This is a pretty busy camp, Mr. Westervelt," he returned, clipping the
words to make them fit his resentment. And then: "I'm here because you
sent for me, but I hope you're not going to ask anything in the way of
entertainment for your party in the Travois."

"Oh, no," rejoined the banker-director dryly; "we were not expecting to
be entertained. All we thought of asking of you was a little common,
ordinary hospitality."

Here was the opening which Stannard had determined that he would make
for himself if it should not be offered by the chief invader and he
took instant advantage of it.

"Hospitality is a large word, when a man has neither time nor the means
at hand to make it a workable possibility, Mr. Westervelt."

"Ah?" said the banker mildly. "Frankly, then you don't want us here. Is
that what you are trying to tell me?"

"I should have wired you yesterday that we had no room in the Travois
yards for a pleasure party, if it hadn't been for that fact that
you are, in a certain sense, my superior officer--a director in our
company," retorted Stannard, taking his courage in both hands. "It is
strictly a matter of business. As you must know, we are pushing the
work on the Cut-off, practically night and day. If we don't get the
grading and steel-laying up to the tunnel before snow flies, we shall
be unable to move material, and the tunnel-driving will have to be held
up until next spring, heavily increasing the cost."

"True; very true," was the toneless comment. "But what, if I may ask,
has all this to do with the few feet of track space which we may occupy
in your construction yard for a week or so?"

Stannard frowned and bit his lip, finding himself helplessly caught in
the trap which is always set for the unwary one who takes refuge in the
half-truth. It was manifestly impossible to tell the whole-truth, that
the Travois camp might shortly become a scene of a fierce labor battle
with the hard-rock men; or that he was living in daily anticipation of
a clash with the on-coming Overland Northern construction force.

"It isn't the track room, altogether," he began; "it's the--well, it's
the incongruity of dropping a junketing party down here in the midst of
things. You'd have to be a workingman yourself to understand how much
of a disturbing influence a car-load of play-people will exert, in the
circumstances."

The metallic smile was broadening upon the banker's dry-desert face,
but it did not rise to the level of the calculating eyes.

"I think you are always a little impractical on what you doubtless
call your practical side, Mr. Stannard," he said, letting the smile
soften the criticism as it might; "at least I found you so last summer,
under conditions which were much more favorable than the present.
I can understand your impatience of any interruptions in your work,
and I think I can promise that the interruptions shall be judiciously
minimized. A little information to begin with, and later, perhaps,
permission to replenish our kitchen stores from your commissary--"

Stannard threw up his hand in a quick gesture of surrender.

"I've said all I'm going to say, and it was perhaps more than any G.
L. & P. hired man has a right to say to a member of his own board of
directors. Let it go, and tell me what I can do for you."

Again the fine-grained smile reached its high-water mark just beneath
the stony eyes. "You make me the victim of misplaced confidence, Mr.
Stannard; you do, indeed. It was in my mind that a small and, so to
speak, momentary, admixture of the social element in your strenuous
life out here at the end-of-track might serve as a pleasant relaxation
for you and the young men of your staff. But if you insist upon
regarding it as an intrusion--"

"When you talk that way, I'm not insisting upon anything," said
Stannard, anxious now only to make his escape while the escaping was
good.

"As I have said, we are not asking much beyond a little friendly
tolerance and advice. To-morrow, at your leisure, we should like to be
put in touch with some one who can furnish guides and horses for the
bear hunt. And by the way, while I think of it, are there any bears to
be found in the Buckskin region?"

Stannard's suspicions, acutely alert on general principles, caught
quickly at this tacit admission that the bear-hunting phase of the
expedition was secondary to some other object. "I saw a few last
year, when I was out with the locating parties," he replied guardedly,
adding; "naturally there wouldn't be much game to be found in the
neighborhood of a camp as big as ours."

"No, I supposed not," said the banker, quite coolly. And then, in the
vein of subtle irony which fitted the permanent smile: "For your true
city-bred sportsman, Mr. Stannard, it is the hunting that counts,
rather than the size of the game-bag. I suppose we may assume that the
hunting is good, even in the neighborhood of a camp as big as yours?"

Stannard's grin was a tribute to the audacity of the joke which this
cold-blooded money lord was apparently playing upon his guests.

"Oh, yes; there will be good hunting--plenty of rough work and hard
riding, if that's what you're looking for. And as for the guides and
horses, I'll send word in the morning to Crumley, who has a cattle
ranch in the valley on the other side of Rock Face. He'll give you the
pick of his cow ponies, and a cow-puncher or two to make it look real,
I guess."

"Good!" said the banker. "As for the rest, we shall get on well
enough, I dare say. As I have intimated, we sha'n't ask much beyond
the standing-room for the _Egeria_. That, and a little neighborliness,
perhaps, for those of us who may be minded to stay behind after the cow
ponies have been paraded."

There was a stir in the other part of the car advertising the return of
the rear-platform loungers, or some of them, and presently the notes
of a piano began to chord with the twanging of the banjo. Still sourly
determined to dodge the social entanglement, Stannard got upon his feet.

"If there is nothing else, I'll go back to my job," he said shortly.
"Nothing more at present, I think--unless you would like to meet the
other members of the party," was the suave rejoinder.

"Not to-night," Stannard refused, almost curtly; and a moment later he
had left the presence and was groping his way through the narrow side
corridor to the forward vestibule.




IV

ENTERING WEDGES


Not wishing to jump from the frying-pan into the fire, Stannard took
the precaution of reconnoitering before showing himself under the light
of the mast-heads. The coast was clear, and, dropping to the ground, he
crossed the gridironing of tracks quickly and climbed the slope to his
log-built headquarters. Somewhere down among the bunk shacks a gang of
Italian graders was singing around their night fire, carrying the note
of incongruity which the arrival of the private-car party had struck
to a still higher pitch in a measurably faultless rendering of a Verdi
chorus, and the young chief, a music-lover to his finger-tips, stopped
to listen for a moment. Then he turned shortly and entered the open
door of the office-workroom; rather, let us say, he took the entering
step over the threshold, only to fall back as if he had seen a ghost in
the lighted interior.

The ghost was not only quite substantial; it was an exceedingly
charming ghost, and it was sitting at ease in the engineer's desk
chair, quietly nibbling the end of a pen-staff. "Come in and make
yourself at home, Mr. Stannard," it said, with cheerful hospitality;
this while the young chief of construction was hanging to either jamb
of the door and striving as he might to get his feet once more upon the
solid earth.

"_You?_" he managed to say, after a time. "For heaven's sake, how did
you get here?" "In my uncle's car, most of the way, and the rest of it
on my own two little feet. Won't you come in and sit down?"

Stannard got in far enough to be able to put his back against the
wall. In his wildest imaginings it had never occurred to him that Miss
Anitra Westervelt might be a member of the private-car party, and he
was making a desperate effort to readjust the imaginings as he stood
looking down upon her.

There was a year and more lying between this night of astoundment and
the days when he had neglected the committee meetings to play tennis
with her on the country house lawn or to give her swimming lessons
on the Sound shore, but the lapse of time had wrought no change save
to make her more irresistibly attractive and alluring. Even the
absurd little pot hat of the moment which covered her thick coils
of copper-gold hair borrowed grace from her wearing of it; and the
laughing brown eyes, the curve of the wilful lips, and the upthrust of
the pretty chin were the same.

"You don't seem to be so very effervescently glad to see me," she
remarked, after he had been dumb long enough to warrant another
pin-prick. "I thought you would be, you know. That's why I made Eggie
bring me over here. He has gone down to the Italians' camp with the
others to hear the singing. I didn't want to hear it for fear it would
make me homesick."

"Who is 'Eggie'?" Stannard demanded.

"When he's at home they call him the Honorable Egbert Adelbert Edward
Montjoy, because he happens to be one of the several sons of Lord
Earlingham. But over here we call him Eggie--just plain Eggie--and he
rather likes it, I think. Why don't you sit down?"

Since she had the only chair in the room, he was obliged to perch
himself upon Eddie Brant's high three-legged stool, and it put him at
a gross disadvantage.

"I'm beginning to come to, a little," he laughed. "I hadn't the
faintest idea that I was going to have you to reckon with in that
private-car bunch over yonder."

"'To reckon with'?" she echoed. "Are we _Egerians_ the kind of people
who have to be 'reckoned with'?"

"I am afraid you are, in the present instance," he affirmed. "I've
just been over to the car, having an interview with your honored and
respected uncle. We didn't exactly come to blows, but--"

"I knew you wouldn't want us," she interrupted quite coolly. "I tried
to get a bet out of Doc Billy, but he didn't have the courage of his
convictions."

"And who might Doc Billy be?"

"If you are going to say 'who' like an owl every time I mention
anybody--"

"That's because I haven't been introduced," he hastened to say. "How
many of you are there?"

"Take us as we come, and I'll introduce you," was the prompt rejoinder.
"First, there is Mrs. Grantham--Aunt Jeannette, we all call her, and
she really is aunt to two of us. Mr. Vallory, who likes to say spiteful
things, says she is fair, fat and fifty; but she's a dear just the
same."

"We'll check off Mrs. Chaperone Grantham," said Stannard, doubling one
little finger for the tally and wondering in the back part of his mind
where and how and why his fit of bad temper had vanished so suddenly.

"Then there are the two Wetmore girls, Mrs. Grantham's nieces, you
know. Una admits twenty-two but she's twenty-four if she's a day. If
you like tall, willowy, graceful girls with nice hair and perfectly
lovely gray eyes, and can put up with a good bit of refined contempt
for everything west of the Allegheny Mountains, you'll fall in love
with Una at first sight."

"Check," called Stannard, doubling another finger and adding: "I'm much
too busy to fall in love with willowy people just at present. Who's
next?"

"Una's sister Gladys. She says eighteen, but I happen to know to a
certainty that it ought to be twenty-one. Did you ever see a real,
sure-enough French _bisque_, Mr. Stannard? If you have, you'll know
Gladys the moment you set eyes on her; china-blue eyes, hair like spun
flax, peachy complexion and all that, you know--just the kind of girl
that most men, at some time or other in their lives, fancy they'd like
to play at housekeeping with."

"Not for mine," chuckled the stool-percher, reckless now of what the
chaperone or Mr. Silas Westervelt or anybody else might think of this
most unconventional tête-à-tête. "Any more eligible young ladies?"

"Not a single, solitary one, unless you want to count me in. We're a
little shy in that respect, being only a crowd of amateur bear hunters;
but we have plenty of men."

"I'm interested in men," Stannard averred. "Do we get Doc Billy first?"

"Not if we pay any attention to the Noble Order of the Self-important,"
was the mocking reply. "Monty Carroll easily heads that kind of a list.
He is a rising young impressionist who does things in 'atmosphere' and
has had two years in the Beaux Arts. If he could paint as well as he
thinks he can, he'd be a second Corot."

"Say, I'm glad I'm not in your list," Stannard laughed happily, turning
down a forefinger for the artist. "Who is the next man?"

"Make Eggie the thumb. He is charmingly British, big, handsome, and
good-natured, and there isn't anybody in the world who enjoys a joke as
he does--after it has been explained to him so that he can understand
it. I suspect he's over here to marry money--Una's money, for example;
or possibly mine, if he can't find any with a less formidable
encumbrance."

Stannard winced a little at this. His acquaintance with Miss Anitra,
while it had thriven like the weeds in a worn-out garden patch, had
been all too brief. She had a level-eyed way of saying the most
startling things, and he could never be quite sure of the point at
which cool mockery ended and sober earnest began. Moreover, he had a
feeling that, in the summer of committee meetings she had suffered him
to climb to the place of familiarity chiefly for the reason that he
was only an incident in her life, and that when he should move on and
go about his legitimate business of building railroads there would be
no awkward after-meetings or anti-climaxes. He was trying to figure
himself as merely incidental to her again when he said:

"We'll pass up the hands-across-the-sea gentleman and shift to the
other set of fingers. Have we reached Doc Billy yet?"

"Not yet. Mr. Adam Vansutter Padgett, being a member of the Stock
Exchange, has a long lead over the medical profession. Roly-poly,
round-faced, good-natured, hair thinning a little over the place
where he thinks out his coups and corners. Gives you the impression
that he is the sort of person who would tell you, upon the slightest
provocation, the complete story of his life in one instalment. He
wouldn't, though; that's only his pose. Down under the roly-poly
_bonhomie_ there is an exceedingly capable man of business. Past that,
he happens to be the only man in the party who has ever killed big
game." Stannard craned his neck to get a glimpse campward through the
open door. The Italians were still singing, and he hoped they would
keep it up indefinitely.

"Now, I'm sure we must have reached Doc Billy," he suggested. "Let's
see how near I can come to him on a chance shot: he is tall, thin and
sort of hungry-looking; strokes his face and ponders you professionally
when you ask him a simple little thing like 'Why is a woman?' or
something of that sort: wears his hair long, and--"

Her laugh, silvery and almost boyish in its unrestraint, cut him short.

"How perfectly ridiculous!" she gasped; and then: "That's the
traditional doctor you're describing, and Doctor William Pangborn Kitts
smashes all the traditions into little tiny shards. He is as big and
hard-muscled as you are; he played football on his college team, and is
a man's man in every sense of the word--which is only another way of
saying that most women fall in love with him at sight. He doesn't know
what it is to be 'professional,' and when he laughs you'd think the
roof was falling in."

"I've a hunch that I'm going to like Doc Billy," said Stannard.
"Married or single?"

"Very much married, indeed. They're on their honeymoon--Doc Billy and
his wife--and that brings us to the one other young woman, who isn't
eligible merely because Doc Billy saw her first. Dolly Kitts is little
and brown-eyed and quiet, and she thinks the sun rises and sets in
William Pangborn. She has lots of money of her own, and she makes a
haloed hero out of Billy because he won't give up his profession and be
an idler. She isn't a little bit in love with the bear-hunting phase
of things, but she makes believe she is merely because her husband is
such a raving maniac on the outdoor life."

"Check for number seven," said Stannard. "Anybody else?"

"Nobody," was the short reply.

"Aha! my memory is better than yours. Didn't you speak of a Mr. Vallory
who was fond of saying cynical things about nice old ladies? I used
to know a man named Vallory once; he was in the class ahead of me at
Illinois--a fellow who was capable enough to loaf through his college
course and come out at the top, and still have time to mix up in more
outside activities than you could count."

"If I made any mention of our Mr. Vallory, you may forget it, because
I'm tired of cataloguing. Tell me about yourself. What have you been
doing all these months and years?"

"It's only one year, and a part of another," Stannard corrected. "And
as for doings, you rode over a good bit of them on the way here from
Yellow Medicine. To-morrow, with the help of a little daylight, I can
show you some of the others, if you care to see them."

"And the one altogether lovely?--has she been found yet?"

The young Missourian slid from his perch on the stool to stand with his
back against the drawing table.

"Didn't I tell you a few minutes ago that I am too busy to fall in
love?"

"You did, and it went in one ear and out the other. A man is never too
busy to fall in love."

"You're quite sure of that, are you?"

"Perfectly sure. People tell us that sentiment is the whole of a
woman's life, but only an incident in a man's. The part about a woman
isn't necessarily true, but the other part is."

"Well, then: the one altogether lovely has been found and lost again.
It was a sort of 'iridescent dream,' I guess. Anyhow, it wasn't even a
possibility."

"So you woke up and rubbed your eyes and forgot it?"

"That's what I've been trying to make myself believe. It's the sensible
thing, at least."

"There'll be a second choice some day," she asserted, half mockingly.
"Wait until you have met Gladys Wetmore. She is the most adaptable
person you ever saw."

Stannard drew out his watch and glanced at it surreptitiously under
cover of his coat lapel. It was half-past nine, and the singing in the
graders' camp had stopped. Through the open door he saw a straggling
procession making its way across tracks toward the private-car. It was
evident that Miss Anitra's companions had either forgotten her or had
concluded that she had returned to the _Egeria_ without them. There
are times when the conventions, even for an Ozark mountaineer, die
hard; and Stannard had a disquieting fear that Pearson or Patterson or
somebody else might drift in and find them alone together.

"It's time you were going to bed," he announced abruptly. "Your people
have all gone back to the car. I'll walk across the yard with you."

"So good of you, I'm sure," was the demure response, and as she rose to
go with him: "It's years and years since anybody has been brave enough
to tell me to stop talking and go to bed."

The young man who fancied he was responsible grinned broadly.

"I'm the boss in this camp, and what I say goes as it lies. But I'm
not quite as brave as I ought to be. If I were, I should promptly
couple an engine to your uncle's hotel-wagon over yonder and toddle it
out of the Travois and back to Yellow Medicine."

"Why?" she demanded shortly.

"The reason I gave your uncle a little while ago when he sent for me
was good enough: I told him that a working camp is no place for a
picnic party."

She turned upon him with a flash of the brown eyes and a lift of the
wilful chin. "That wasn't the real reason," she shot back smartly.

"Mr. Westervelt's reason for coming here and my reason for wishing him
to go away may or may not be first cousins. Just the same, if I could
think of any way to discourage him, I'd be glad."

"I like that," was the tart rejoinder. "Perhaps you imagine I am going
to help you think of the way."

The young man laughed good-naturedly.

"I don't imagine for a moment that you would do anything you didn't
want to do."

"I never do; at least not without knowing why I am supposed to be doing
it."

They were out of the headquarters shack now and walking together down
the slope toward the railroad tracks. There was no moonlight, but
electric arcs are not such a bad substitute when the sentimental soil
has been judiciously prepared beforehand.

"I don't want you to go away, and I am afraid to have you stay; that's
the long and short of it," was the admission which the substitute
moonlight finally wrung out of the young engineer.

The young woman at his side looked up quickly. "You are doing, or you
are going to do, something that you don't want Uncle Silas to find
out?" she queried. "Oh, no; it's hardly that. But there is trouble
ahead--trouble of the kind that might make it very unpleasant for
a--for a picnic party. We are working a pretty rough lot of laborers,
grade men and hard-rock 'gophers,' and any little jangle about pay, or
hours, or anything of that sort, in a railroad camp is likely to mean
rioting and violence. You see what I mean. The fellow whose job it is
to have to man-handle such things any old day in the week is apt to be
impatient of handicaps."

"I see," she said, with a touch of the Westervelt detachment. "You want
me to tell Uncle Silas that I'm sick of the wilderness, and get the
others to tell him so."

"When I am in my right mind that is exactly what I want."

"Are you in your right mind now?" she inquired innocently.

"No; I'm just foolish enough to feel like taking a chance and letting
things rock along."

"I see," she nodded again. "You are discounting all the mean little
things I've been saying about Gladys--or perhaps it's Una--and
wondering if the time hasn't come for you to be thinking a little more
pointedly about that second choice."

"Oh, am I?" he laughed; and then, the false moonlight getting in its
work again: "There isn't going to be any second choice."

"Don't you believe it! There always is; and if the man would try half
as hard the first time as he does the second--but never mind; do you
really want me to work on Uncle Silas's sympathies?--he hasn't very
many, you know." And then, breaking off suddenly; "Oh, look up there!
What is that?"

They had crossed the gridironing of vacant tracks and were standing at
the steps of the _Egeria_. Stannard wheeled quickly and saw that she
was looking up at the sharply defined summit of the Standing Stone,
the curiously detached and spire-like monolith in which the Dogtooth
ended and which marked the entrance to the canyon and gave its name to
the river. On the summit of the Stone a bright light was alternately
flashing and disappearing.

Whatever explanation Stannard might have made was lost in a rather
violent interruption. While they were still watching the mysterious
signal flashings a big, black whiskered man, swearing under his breath
and fiercely hurried, came tumbling out of the vestibule of the private
car and narrowly missed falling upon them. It was Pearson, and he began
on Stannard with no apparent regard for Stannard's companion.

"Been hunting all over the lot for you," he growled impatiently. "The
tunnel roof's down again in the east heading, and this time we'll have
a dead man for breakfast. The gophers are all out and swearing by all
that's holy that they won't go back into the drift again with Truman as
dynamite boss. Three or four of us had to fight like the devil to keep
'em from hanging Truman the first dash out o' the box!"

"Ring off, you fool!" gritted Stannard, out of the corner of his mouth.
Then he turned and lifted the young woman, who had been listening,
wide-eyed and shaken, to the vestibule step. "Don't let it tremble you
up that way," he whispered. "It's only an accident, and they have to
happen every once in so often on a job as big as this," and bidding her
good-night, he joined Pearson in a swift run across the yard to the
engine which the tunnel-driver had ordered out to rush them to the foot
of the great mountain.




V

FIRE IN THE ROCK


As it came about, Stannard was destined to meet one other member of the
private-car party sooner than he expected. After the potential riot
at the tunnel mouth had been quelled, and the one man injured by the
falling roof had been carried down to the valley level and rushed into
camp on a hand-car, Stannard found a frank-faced, square-shouldered
young stranger waiting in the yard for the arrival of the makeshift
ambulance.

"My name's Kitts, and I'm licensed to saw your leg off," was the way in
which the stalwart one introduced himself, clinching the introduction
by showing an ominous-looking black bag. "Miss Anitra was telling us
you'd had an accident, and I didn't know how well fixed you might be
for surgical help."

"We're not fixed at all," said Stannard. "I've been yelping for six
months to get the company to send me a camp doctor. When a man gets
half killed we have to finish him by sending him down to the main line."

"Then I may take hold?" inquired the volunteer.

"Sure you may. I'm afraid it's a hopeless case, but the whole camp and
everything in it is yours. Shoot out your orders and we'll obey them."

At that, Stannard was given to see a thing which stirs keen joy in the
heart of any skilled workman; namely, the way in which another workman
and a master of his craft brings things to pass. Kitts snapped out
directions to the ambulance crew, and in an incredibly short space
of time the crushed tunnel-driver was transferred to the shack which
served as the camp emergency hospital. The young surgeon whipped out of
his coat and went to work at once with Stannard for his assistant.

The Missourian had seen human repair jobs before, a gruesome number
of them in the industrial field, but never anything to compare with
the rapid mastercraft of the volunteer from the _Egeria_. The instant
stripping of the injured man and the swift examination and diagnosis
were like the dexterous passes in a sleight-of-hand trick.

"Broken bones until you can't rest," was the verdict, "but that seems
to be the worst of it. We'll patch him up, all right. Put your knee
right here and brace yourself--that's the ticket. Now hand me that roll
of adhesive; and, say--couple of you fellows get busy whittling splints
for this leg. J'ever see a careful mother gluing up the baby's broken
doll, Stannard? This'll remind you of it."

Stannard was reminded of many things during the next few minutes, but
chiefly of the strides which modern surgery has made in the hands of
men like the adept who, with the corded muscles of a prize-fighter and
the gentle touch of a woman, was giving a manipulation clinic, with the
crushed and broken hard-rock man for a subject. After the clinic was
over, he took Kitts to his own room in the headquarters cabin to give
him a chance to wash up; and when he tried to show his appreciation
he had the grateful experience of having his thanks cut short by the
breezy young fellow who was scrubbing his hands in the wash-bucket.

"Cut that out--cut it all out, Stannard, old man. It's all in the day's
work. The fellows on the football squad used to say that I broke more
bones than I'd ever have a chance to mend, if I lived to be a hundred
years old, so I'm only trying to be fair about it and catch up with my
record."

"The man would have died before we could have chased him across the
desert to Yellow Medicine."

"Don't you believe it! That kind is pretty hard to kill," laughed the
bone-mender, skilfully catching the towel that Stannard tossed to him.
And then: "I feel like smoking a pipe; if it isn't too late, and you're
not too sleepy--"

Stannard protested that neither objection obtained. Kitts had his own
briar, but he filled it out of the engineer's buckskin pouch of cut
plug; after which they went out to sit on the rough slab bench beside
the workroom door with the black, star-punctured September night sky
for a canopy and the winking arc-lights of the yard to outline the
shanties and tents of the sleeping camp and to bulk in the somber
backgrounds of the surrounding mountains.

Two men, as likely to find each other congenial as the young Missourian
and the upstanding, outspoken young surgeon, easily alight upon the
common ground of friendly confidence. For a time the talk was desultory
and reminiscent, harking readily back to college days which were but
shallowly buried in the past for both. Farther along, it came down to
the September night and to Stannard's problem, which--as he stated--was
to get his railroad up to and through the mountain barrier before the
snows came.

"You're going to make it all right, aren't you?" said Kitts.

"Barring too much bad luck, we ought to make it with a margin to
spare," was the reply which lacked confidence only in the tone.
"Accidents?--like this one to-night, you mean?"

"Yes; accidents just like this one to-night," said Stannard gravely.

"I got the particulars only as Anitra Westervelt gave them," said the
expert in human repairing. "It was a roof-slump in the tunnel, wasn't
it?"

"Yes, we've got a bad proposition on our hands in the tunnel. In the
nature of things, we couldn't make many preliminary test borings
to determine the geological make-up of the mountain. By all the
surface indications we should have found porphyry and solid granite.
Instead, we've got into a mixed mass of loose stuff which requires the
carefullest kind of work and pretty constant timbering. That is why
we are rushing the approach track so frantically up the canyon. We've
got to have it to transport the concreting material; and every day's
delay means just so many more hollow teeth to plug up with the concrete
arching."

"Then your 'overhead' is unsafe?"

"Yes, it has been unsafe all the way along, and to-night Fitzgerald,
the heading boss, was getting ready to blow this particular soft spot
down before it became dangerous to the men working under it. The
dynamite went off prematurely."

"Of course, it was accidental?"

"I wish I could be sure of that, Kitts. But I can't be sure of it.
There have been too many similar 'accidents.'"

"Good Lord! But you don't mean to say that you're letting it go without
investigation."

"There isn't much left to investigate, after forty or fifty tons of
rock have fallen in to bury all the evidences. But I did pry around
as well as I could while Pearson was driving the 'muckers' on the job
of getting the poor devil you've just been patching up out of his
ready-made grave. What happened to-night has happened at least twice
before. The dynamite was placed, and the wire connections were made;
ready for the firing of the shot. After the firing wires are cut in,
the 'dynamite boss,' as he is called, is supposed to stand over his
plunger machine until the heading boss notifies him in person that the
men are out and the drills have been dragged back. I don't know that
I'm making it very clear."

"Yes, you are. I know the mining stunt like a book; I put in part of my
apprenticeship as company surgeon in the anthracite field. Go on with
your story."

"To-night, as on two other occasions, Truman, the dynamite boss, was
called away from his machine after the wires had been coupled in on the
fuses. Somebody that he couldn't see or identify in the darkness yelled
to him that his wires were crossed. He says he threw the safety-switch
and went to investigate. Before he had taken ten steps the charge
exploded."

"My heavens!" ejaculated the listener. "But why--why in the name of
conscience would anybody want to do such a thing as that?"

Stannard pulled at his pipe in sober silence for a full minute before
he replied. Being neither more nor less secretive than other young men
of his temperament and training, he was not given to talking loosely
to comparative strangers. But the frank, open-eyed young surgeon was
an exception, and his sympathy and interest were unmistakably sincere.
Stannard began at the beginning, giving Kitts a brief outline of a
situation which was likely to climax in a right-of-way war for the
possession of Standing Stone Canyon.

"Now you know why we're rushing and why we are suspicious of anything
that makes for delay," he ended. "Greer, the chief of construction on
the Overland Northern, is an unscrupulous fighter, and he wouldn't
hesitate to load us up with trouble-makers from his own camps if he
thought he could hold us back."

Kitts held his peace for a little while before he said: "I'm only an
innocent bystander, and these matters are miles out of my line; but
honestly, Stannard, the thing doesn't seem to hold together. You say
that the Overland Northern people will fight you for a right-of-way up
the Standing Stone. As you explained it, the Overland Northern scheme
is merely to parallel or confiscate your road through some four or five
miles of your approach canyon. What's that got to do with your tunnel?
How can they hope to further their scheme by holding you up on a part
of your job that doesn't concern them?"

"Frankly, Kitts, I don't know. As I've said, Greer is an unscrupulous
fighter. He'd hit out wherever he thought he could hit hardest. The
Overland is our strongest competitor on transcontinental business, and
if this tunnel of mine should turn out to be a failure it would cripple
us badly in the money market, and make us just that much weaker in the
business fight."

"I see; but still the motive seems rather indirect; too indirect to
warrant this dynamite business in your tunnel." Kitts paused to relight
his pipe, and when he went on he had taken the other necessary step
which brought him into the field of frank partizanship. "If I were you,
Stannard, I should dig a bit deeper and ask myself if the fact that the
_Egeria_ is camping out over yonder on that side-track has any bearing
upon the puzzle."

"We can hardly discuss that," said the Missourian. "You are Mr.
Westervelt's guest."

"Not altogether," was the quick reply. "I am Mrs. Grantham's family
physician. It pleases her to believe that she has fatty degeneration
of the heart,--which she hasn't,--and she wouldn't come along unless
Dolly and I could come, too--afraid of the altitude. It was all right;
I have a staving good office partner, and though we've been married a
couple of months, Dolly and I hadn't had any wedding trip. So I turned
the practice over to Bentley and told Mrs. Grantham we were It."

"In that case, I am taking all the pointers I can get. What's your
notion?"

"I don't know that I have any. But we're a queerly assorted bunch for a
pleasure party, and it strikes me that we've come to a mighty curious
place to hunt bears. If you'll take it from me, there'll be more to
follow. Some of us--the women, the Englishman, the painter-man and
yours truly--are merely fill-ins. Cancel us out, and you have remaining
a Wall Street money king, a mighty smooth stock broker who has turned
a dozen little bull-and-bear tricks for Mr. Westervelt, and a clubman
hanger-on who has been known to fetch and carry for Mr. Westervelt in
some of these same little quiet shearings of the woolly lambs. That's
gossip, pure and simple, and now I've got it out of my system, I'll
trot along and go to bed."

For a long half-hour after the square-shouldered figure of Doctor Billy
had disappeared among the yard shadows, Stannard kept his place on the
bench, smoking in solitary silence and brooding thoughtfully over the
possibilities which might be involved in the private-car invasion.

That Kitts should have been able to throw new light on the situation
was not singular. The bystander in any game can always see many moves
that the players fail to see. But, granting the young surgeon's hint
that bigger game than the hypothetical brown bears was afoot, what
was Westervelt's object? If it were merely an interference in behalf
of the Overland Northern, why was he taking such a roundabout way of
interposing it, and why had he encumbered himself with a car-load of
non-combatants whose presence might easily obstruct the obstructionist?

The young Missourian was still puzzling over these answerless questions
when he finally got up to go and turn in, the one clear conclusion
arising out of the yeasty turmoil being a troubled conviction that he
had been seriously underrating the resources of Judson Greer and his
associates in the advancing Overland Northern army of dispossession.

At the door of the work-room he met Roddy. The assistant's clothes were
dusty, and he looked hollow-eyed and weary.

"Hello!" said the young chief. "I thought you had turned in hours ago,
Jacksie. Where have you been?"

"I've been taking a little hike for my health. Got a wireless and had
to go and answer it."

"A wireless? Was that your contrivance that I saw working on top of the
Stone, a couple of hours ago?"

"That's her," was the laconic reply. "I sent Stedman up there with a
good glass this afternoon. What you saw was his wig-wag report to me.
He's been seeing things."

"What did he see?"

"He saw what I've just seen--at a good bit closer range. Greer has
moved up one step nearer. His new grade camp is now within five miles
of the Travois, and he's working a night gang. I wanted to make
sure, so I took a tramp in the dark. To-morrow, or the next day at
farthest, we'll be hearing his dynamite. Now you see why I wanted those
Winchesters. Good-night: I'm dead on my feet and I'm going to bunk
in."




VI

THE TIME-KILLERS


Bully Gallagher, despot of track-layers, whose voice was as the grating
of a rusty hinge, and whose scepter of authority was a pick-handle,
had been driving his gang to the tune of an Irish quick-step for two
full hours of the matchless September morning; and the steel, clanging
musically into place on the cross-ties to be spiked home under the
showering blows of the maul men, was now within a short half-mile
of the big rock-cutting on the lower leg of the loop of the tunnel
approach.

Looking down toward the canyon's mouth, where the uncertain and
wavering lines of the new track bent themselves around the base of the
Standing Stone, Gallagher, contemplative for the moment, saw a sight to
make him lift his voice in imprecations in comparison with which his
brow-beatings of the gang were but as love-whispers.

"Holy Tacks!" he rasped, when the volcanic eruption of objurgation had
exhausted itself. And then to O'Hara, his understudy: "For the love o'
Gawd, Patsy, look what's comin' to us--an' me widout me dress-suit and
me eye-glasses!"

What Gallagher saw was sufficiently distressing to a man driving a
track-gang at speed, the more so since the gang boss was of those who
are firmly convinced that industrial speed bestirs itself only at the
behest of many bull-bellowings and much profanity. Stannard, shortly
after his morning's conference with Bailey and the material handlers
in the Travois yard, had been set upon, just as he was leaving for
the canyon battlefield, by eight-elevenths of the complement of the
_Egeria_, the missing members of the party being only Mr. Westervelt,
the chaperone, and the man who had been named to him as Vallory.

The bear hunters, waiting perforce until the guides and horses could be
procured from Crumley's ranch, were reduced to the necessity of killing
time. Wouldn't Mr. Stannard take them over the grade of the new line
and show them the tunnel?

If any one save Anitra Westervelt had made the beseeching, Stannard's
answer would have been a flat refusal. And how was he to know that
Kitts, anticipating the refusal, had put Anitra forward to do the
talking? With an inward groan and a wordless malediction broad enough
to include at least seven of the would-be sight-seers, the Missourian
dissembled his reluctance and fell into line, hoping that the newly
laid canyon track, rough and hard to walk upon, would shortly
discourage some one--the willowy Miss Wetmore, for example.

They had covered the half-mile intervening between the camp and the
spire-like mass of granite guarding the mouth of the canyon when
Gallagher first caught sight of them. After making her plea, Miss
Westervelt had dexterously attached herself to the big boyish-looking
Englishman, while the younger Miss Wetmore, whose mood of the moment
was artistic, clung prettily to the arm of the landscape painter.
Stannard saw teasing malice in this arrangement, which made him
responsible for the pleasure and entertainment of the rather chilling
young woman with the gray eyes and nice hair, and he made sure that at
least three members of the party, Anitra, Kitts and the round-bodied,
full-faced little broker who came stumbling on behind, were keenly
enjoying his discomfiture.

"As I was saying, Mr. Stannard, everything out here seems so dreadfully
crude and banal that I should think one would never get used to it,"
resumed the gray-eyed Miss Wetmore, after Padgett had broken in to ask
the height of the cathedral-spired Standing Stone.

"Oh, but I say!" interposed the Honorable Eggie, "you wouldn't expect
to find all the comforts of home in such a magnificent wilderness as
this, don't you know. Directly we come to those carriages on ahead we
can sit down and rest a bit."

Since the "carriages" referred to were the flats of the steel-laying
train, Stannard swallowed his emotions with a gulp and tried to
interest his unimpressionable companion in the torrent leaping and
tossing its spray man-head high in its boulder-strewn bed at the foot
of the narrow embankment.

"Oh, yes," was the lack-luster rejoinder; "of course, it's very fine
and impressive, but it is also very noisy and very wet."

The young chief heard a sound behind him which, voicing itself in any
throat less musical than Anitra Westervelt's, he would have compared to
a chicken choking, and it prompted him to say: "Oh, no, Miss Wetmore,
that is a mistaken idea that many Eastern people have. The water at
this altitude is never what you might call really wet. If you will stay
here long enough you will see our men working in it for days at a time
without the slightest inconvenience."

Doctor Billy's comment on this remarkable piece of information was an
explosive chortling, and Miss Una's perfectly penciled eyebrows went up
in austere inquiry. "Was that a joke, Mr. Stannard?"

"Mr. Stannard's jokes are like the Cubists' pictures; you have to be
able to feel them," put in the sprightly younger sister, and again
Kitts exploded.

"Really, though," bubbled the Honorable Eggie, adjusting his eye-glass
for a better appraisal of Stannard's job, "this is a deucedly clever
bit of engineering, what? Fancy tucking a railway line into such a
place as this!" And then: "I say, Mr. Padgett, could you figure this
all out in dollars?"

"Mr. Padgett is busy walking the ties; please don't interrupt him,"
pleaded Anitra. Then to Kitts: "Why don't you and Dolly laugh at that,
too?"

Doctor Billy did, and the brown-eyed young bride hanging on his arm
smiled seraphically in harmony with her haloed hero. Padgett stopped
to light a cigar and then stumbled on to pass the fat and well-filled
Morocco-leather case to the other men of the party.

"I'm game," he puffed. "So far, I've only turned my ankle twice and
knocked the cap off one knee with the other. How much do we get of
this, Stannard?"

"Ten miles,--if we walk the grade to the tunnel mouth."

Miss Una shrieked decorously, and Carroll stopped to take out his
handkerchief and flick the dust from his patent-leathers.

"You don't mean to say that you're going to tramp us ten miles to get
to your blooming hole in the ground, do you, Mr. Stannard?" he demanded.

"Sure," laughed the Missourian, equal now to anything. "After you
have ridden one of Crumley's cow-ponies over two or three counties,
you'll enjoy a little hike like this. Besides, when we come to the
'carriages,' as Mr. Montjoy calls them, we can stop and rest." Once
more the stalwart young doctor snorted; and Carroll said: "You can
count me out on the ten-mile tramp. I wouldn't walk that far over a
railroad grade for a farm in Paradise."

"There weren't any farms in Paradise; nothing but apple-orchards," Miss
Westervelt put in, adding with the accent malicious, "Ask Mr. Stannard.
He knows."

"You make me extremely tired, all of you," sighed the younger Miss
Wetmore. "How any one can make wretched jokes and talk such vapid
nonsense, with this glorious scenery making its silent appeal to all
that is highest and best----"

Stannard excused himself abruptly and tramped on ahead. It had
suddenly occurred to him that Gallagher might not have noticed the
coming invasion; in which case the big foreman might be helplessly
surprised in the midst of one of his prayerful appeals to his men. The
precautionary measure was not without its effect. When the lagging
time-killers came up, Gallagher was sweetly adjuring the track-gang, as
thus:

"Now, thin, gentlemin--aisy wid that bit av steel, lest ye'd be
breakin' ut. Shquint ut into pla-ace, Misther O'Hara, if ye plaze.
Right ye are. Shpikes! but don't be hittin' thim too har-rd lest ye'd
be hurtin' their poor little feelin's. 'Tis a foine day, Misther
Stannard, an' 'twas a grand thing f'r ye to be bringin' yer friends
up to see us puttin' the nate little pieces av steel to bed on the
cross-ties. Misther Bannagher"--to the man who was spacing the
rails--"that thrack-gauge is ornamintal, to be sure, but 'tis also mint
to be used. Tim Grogan, ye shouldn't shpit on yer hands in the presence
av the ladies--'tis an onpleasant habit ye have."

"Isn't it the truth that there is no gentleman quite like the Irish
gentleman, wherever you find him," remarked the younger Miss Wetmore,
in an aside to any who cared to hear.

Carroll had unlimbered his sketching kit and was preparing to make a
study of the strenuous activities, with the Standing Stone and the
forested shoulderings of the Buckskin for a background. Stannard drew
a little aside, hoping that the pause would not outlast Gallagher's
ability to sit on the safety valve. Miss Westervelt joined him when the
others had gathered around the impressionist's easel.

"Are you really going to punish us by making us walk ten dreadful miles
around the grade?" she asked.

"Of course not," he returned. "The rock men are working in the cut just
above here and we couldn't very well pass them without climbing the
Dogtooth. We'll turn back when you're quite sure you have seen enough."

"You must punish Doc Billy," she said airily. "He dared me to ask you,
and you said, last night, that you'd show me what you are doing. I know
you are just too busy to breathe, and you're hating us all like poison
for taking your time. If I say that I am sorry, will that make up for
it?"

"Amply," said Stannard; and further to show his magnanimity he walked
her on up the grade and over a climbing path among the red firs which
brought them out upon the brink of the great rock-cutting where they
could look down into the gash which was growing slowly under the
gnawings of the drills and the dynamite.

When they first looked down, the noise of the battering air-drills was
deafening. But a little later the clamor and fusillade stopped and
there was a hurried placing of iron shields over the machinery and a
scattering of the small army of rock-men. "They are getting ready to
shoot," Stannard explained; and then: "Perhaps we'd better give them a
little more distance."

"You mean that they are going to blast the rock?"

"Yes."

"That is something I've always wanted to see. Won't it be safe if we
stay here?"

Stannard measured the hazard with a calculating eye. There was only one
chance in a hundred that any of the fragments would be blown as far as
their brink of observation. None the less, he was unwilling to take
even the small risk.

"It will be safer farther back among the trees," he demurred.

Miss Westervelt put her back against the bole of a great fir and the
pretty lips took on the curve of wilfulness. "But I want to stay right
here, where I can see it," she insisted.

Since the risk was so small as to be all but negligible, Stannard
yielded, and together they watched the men attaching the wires of the
firing machine. The young engineer almost changed his mind when he
counted the number of shots in the battery. There were eight of them
and the blast promised to be a miniature earthquake. Unhappily there
was no time for reopening the argument with his companion. The foreman
was running back to give the signal to the firing boss, and the great
gash in the river-fronting cliff was already emptied of every one else.

"Put your hands over your ears!" called Stannard sharply, and as he
spoke the cutting below them was filled with a spurting eruption of
dust and hurtling rocks, and the surrounding mountain sides echoed to a
rumbling crash of mimic thunder.

Stannard could never explain to his own satisfaction afterward just
how the untoward thing happened. Out of the spouting dust-cloud they
both saw a fragment of stone no larger than a man's fist rise in a
curving trajectory to the level of their cliff-edge to hurl itself
among the trees. An instant later Stannard heard the stone strike
something, and the next instant he saw it bounding leisurely toward
them with its force so nearly spent as to make it improbable that it
would cover half the distance.

When it became evident that the leisurely boundings were deceptive,
he took the alarm; but then it was too late. The small stone, rolling
almost to its stop, changed its course again to drop accurately at
the butt of Miss Westervelt's tree, and with a cry of pain the girl
collapsed in a stricken little heap.

"For heaven's sake!" gasped Stannard, dropping down beside her. "Where
did it hit you?"

"It's my ankle," she faltered, setting her pretty teeth against a groan.

In a twinkling he had the dainty outing boot off and was feeling for
broken bones. "It's my fault!" he protested in keen self-reproach. "I
should have taken you to a safer distance. Does it hurt much?"

"Yes, it hurts like everything! But if you'll put my shoe on again,
I'll try to walk. We must get back to the others, some way."

Stannard replaced the small tan boot, awkwardly enough, to be sure, but
very gently. She told him she couldn't stand it to have it laced, so he
tied it loosely and lifted her to let her make the essay at walking.
The attempt was a failure, even with the help of his supporting arm,
and one glance at her face decided him. Gathering her up as if she had
been a child and telling her to put her arms around his neck and hang
on, he stumbled back to the path and down the hillside, and it was
thus that they made their reappearance on the track-laying scene.

Naturally, there was sympathy in abundance for the injured one, and
Kitts took over the case and made a swift examination.

"It's only a bruise, but a pretty bad one," was his announcement, and
then there arose the question of transportation to the Travois yard.
Stannard solved that problem at once, to the crass delaying of the
work and the speechless disgust of Bully Gallagher, by taking the
construction engine and one of the steel flats for a special train.
More than that, he took up a collection of coats from the track-layers
and made a couch of them on the flat-car for Miss Westervelt.

A few minutes at the heels of the big locomotive sufficed for the
making of the short journey to the camp yard, and Stannard, directing
the movements of the emergency train from the engine cab, had the
hospital car drawn in beside the _Egeria_. Yielding his place to no
one, he put the Englishman aside at the stop, told Kitts gruffly that
he didn't need any help, and once more taking Anitra in his arms,
carried her into the private car.

Here, while he was putting the victim of the catapulting stone on the
lounge in the open compartment, he had a chance to get acquainted with
a gray-haired, motherly looking lady who was trying not to be too
greatly flustered by the freshly added anxiety, but he scamped the
chance, or so much of it as he could, hurrying out again to send the
work engine back to Gallagher.

With this abrupt breaking up of the sight-seeing expedition, the
harassed and still self-reproachful young chief of construction was
free to go once more about his business of railroad building, and he
did it, spending the greater portion of the day with Markley and
Pearson in the tunnel drifts and coming back to the Travois camp only
when Pearson's day-shift knocked off at late supper time.

Reaching the big yard on the engine of the laborers' train just as the
masthead arc-lights were fizzing and sputtering into being, he meant to
make it his first duty to go over to the _Egeria_ to inquire about the
bruised ankle. But before he had crossed the first of the intervening
tracks, Roddy overtook him.

"You're wanted at the office 'phone, Clay," rasped the small man with
the baby-blue eyes and the bad jaw. "Markley's at the wire. Ten minutes
after you left him to cross the mountain this afternoon, his gang,
hard-rocks and muckers to a man, walked out on him. Worse than that,
they've taken possession of the works and they're swearing that they'll
burn the tunnel timbering before they'll let you send in a bunch of
strike-breakers to take their places."




VII

JUDSON GREER


Taking time only to snatch a hasty bite of supper at the cook-house
door, and telephoning Markley that he and Roddy would cross the
mountain at once to confer with the striking rock-men, Stannard set out
for the tramp in the dark with Roddy at his heels.

An hour later, when the two mountain climbers were breasting the steep
slopes of the trail connecting the eastern and western tunnel workings,
and the younger members of the private-car party had gathered, with
Carroll and his banjo for a nucleus, in an after-dinner grouping on the
observation platform, Silas Westervelt, passing a word to the colored
porter, retreated to the privacy of his office-stateroom.

As on the previous evening, Mr. Westervelt found the financial pages
of his New York newspapers sufficiently interesting as an after-dinner
recreation; but he had scarcely begun on them before the cat-footed
porter tapped at the door and opened it to admit a small dark-faced
man, bearded and uniformed in neatly fitting working clothes of brown
duck, with leggings and shoes to match. Between jobs, when Mr. Judson
Greer haunted the engineering clubs in Chicago or New York, he was
inclined to be slightly foppish in matters of dress, and even in the
field the tendency expressed itself in a certain jaunty fitness which
went well with his snappy manner of speech and his unquestioned ability
as a master railroad builder. "Ah, Greer," said the money lord, laying
his papers aside precisely as he had postponed them for Stannard's
benefit twenty-four hours earlier; "I rather looked for you last night."

"I knew you were here, but we were moving up with the grading outfit,
and I thought it wouldn't do any harm to let you get settled a bit,"
said the Overland Northern man, seating himself on the narrow divan and
crossing his legs.

"Oh, no; there was no special hurry," was the magnate's rejoinder. "We
didn't have the facts up to date."

"But you have them now?"

"Fairly well. Vallory has had the day, and he has improved it. Stannard
is the key to the situation. It was he who bullied Merriam and the
others into financing this Cut-off scheme, and the financial end of
it is working out precisely as was to be expected. The bond issue was
barely large enough to cover the actual cost of construction with no
margin for bad luck. And there has already been considerable bad luck."

Greer's smile showed his mouthful of fine, even teeth under the closely
cropped mustache.

"Stannard's young," he remarked, clipping the words to the highest
point of efficiency. Then: "Has he any idea of what's in the wind?"

"Vallory thinks not. Of course, he's looking for trouble in the
right-of-way matter in Standing Stone Canyon, and he is pushing the
work vigorously to forestall you there."

"But he still thinks that we are intending to build on through the
canyon to the Buckskin mining camps?"

"So far as Vallory has been able to find out by chumming with one
or two of the members of Stannard's staff, that is the situation at
present. Our young man takes it for granted that you are meaning to
make trouble for him in the canyon and so delay his track-building to
the tunnel. Under existing conditions, those ten miles of approach
track are vitally necessary, as you know. Without them Stannard cannot
transport the material for his tunnel arching, save at a prohibitive
cost; and without the arching the tunnel will not stand through the
winter. I understand it has been caving very badly."

Again Greer made the teeth-baring smile. "I've heard that, too," he cut
in. "If it doesn't stand?"

"If for any reason Stannard should be unable to go on and finish his
job before winter sets in, there would have to be another bond issue;
in other words, our young man would have his battle to fight all over
again with the Securities Committee."

"That's about the way I had it stacked up. The question is, could he
make the fight successfully?"

Mr. Westervelt's smile wrinkled like a miniature sand ripple on the
dry-desert face. "Not without knocking the bottom out of the market on
G. L. & P., I'm afraid."

"I don't suppose our people on the Overland would shed many tears if
that were to happen," said Greer.

"No, I suppose not," returned the banker-director dryly.

Greer moved uneasily on the divan, uncrossed his legs and crossed them
the other way.

"I'll have to admit that I don't see just where you're coming in on
this, Mr. Westervelt," he ventured.

The New Yorker fixed his cold eyes upon the engineer. "Perhaps it
isn't altogether necessary that you should see, Mr. Greer. Your
compensation----"

"I know; I'm only a hired hand, as you might say. Still, I like to work
intelligently, when I can." "You shall," was the even-toned reply.
"There are a few of us in the G. L. & P. directory who believe that
this Cut-off scheme is ill-advised. I may go so far as to say that we
should be glad to see it dropped right where it is, even at this late
day."

"Of course," Greer assented; "I understood that. What I don't
understand is how you and your friends can stand for the loss. But
that's none of my business. I'm here under instructions from our
president to co-operate with you. Also, I have been given to understand
that the building of our extension through the Standing Stone Canyon to
the Buckskin camps is a bluff. If you'll excuse the slang, what's the
dope?"

Again the great captain of finance permitted the permanent smile to
rise to its highwater mark beneath his eyes.

"We might put the case hypothetically, Mr. Greer. It is an axiom of
trade that anything with a property value may be acquired by the buyer
if the price is right. You are a man of intelligence and discretion;
suppose I should tell you that we have found a prospective purchaser
for the tunnel site and the uncompleted tunnel through the range--a
property which we are already finding burdensome, even in its period of
construction."

Greer winked twice, which was his only outward manifestation of the
inward shock of instant understanding. He knew well enough that there
is no such thing as sentiment in business. In some manner, as yet
unexplained, Banker Westervelt and whatever interests he represented
stood to make a profit on the killing of the G. L. & P. short-cut
scheme, and a transfer of its rights to some other company--doubtless
the Overland Northern.

Greer did not know how the profit was to be made, but that did not
especially concern him. Neither did it surprise him to learn that
Westervelt and his associates were on the "bear" side of the market in
the field of their own securities. He had been in the railroad service
long enough to know that there are two kinds of railroading; the real
thing, which is the building and operating of a line for the possible
profit there may be in the carrying business; and the Wall Street kind
which resembles more nearly the humble occupation of sheep-shearing.

"I am beginning to see the hole through the millstone, Mr. Westervelt.
President Guthrie has probably told you how much or how little I am to
be trusted. You may go as far as you like."

The banker waved a deprecatory hand.

"Briefly, Mr. Greer, it has been thought advisable by a conservative
minority of our stockholders to abandon this Cut-off scheme entirely.
This costly tunnel can never be profitable to us----"

--"But it may be to somebody else," put in the engineer quickly.

"Exactly," said Mr. Westervelt, matching the tips of his fingers
accurately and rocking gently in his pivot chair. "Unfortunately, we
have been unable thus far to convince Mr. Merriam and his friends that
the proper thing to do is to dispose of our white elephant before we
are confronted with the necessity of another bond issue. As I remarked
a few moments ago, Mr. Stannard is the key to that situation. If we
could persuade him to go to Mr. Merriam with the frank admission that
the tunnel costs are going to be very largely in excess of his original
estimates, the difficulties would vanish."

"I don't know Stannard," Greer demurred shortly. "But if he's like most
men in his profession and mine he would sooner cut off an arm and hand
it to you. Am I to understand that you mean to give him his chance
first--before we force the fighting?"

"It would be better on all accounts if Mr. Stannard could be made to
see the futility of his undertaking. We have not abandoned the hope
that he may yet be made to see it."

Greer's laugh was hidden; so well buried that it did not manifest
itself even in the teeth-baring smile. He knew the hyperbole of
business; knew that Stannard was to be either bought or bullied. But
again he told himself that it was none of his affair; at least, that if
he should be required to figure in it, his part would probably have to
do only with the bullying.

Up to the present he had had no belligerent instructions from his own
superiors authorizing him to carry his point by force if necessary,
though Stannard's suspicion that the Overland Northern chief of
construction had been supplying him with labor trouble makers was well
founded. Greer had gone thus far on a hint from his own management to
the effect that delay in the tunnel boring might be a point gained in
the right-of-way fight. But this was a matter apart from the bigger
deal, the existence of which he had been merely suspecting.

"As I have said, I have instructions to take orders from you," he went
on, after the reflective pause. "We are less than five miles away with
the grading force. Do I understand that we are to mark time until you
give the word?"

"Not exactly that. If other means fail, it may be necessary to give
Mr. Stannard an object lesson; in other words, to show him the entire
impracticability of completing his tunnel approach, if you should
dispute the right-of-way in the canyon with him." "I see," was Greer's
terse comment. "If it comes to the right-of-way scrap, we can put the
brakes on hard enough to make the wheels skid. Our original location
runs across the head of the Travois at an elevation which would put
us at least a hundred feet higher than Stannard's line on the canyon
slope. Unless your people should get out an injunction against us----"

"There will be no appeal to the courts," said the banker definitely.

"In that case the spoil from our cutting a hundred feet higher up
the slope in the canyon would be apt to give Stannard a good bit of
trouble."

"Something of that sort was in my mind," was the magnate's half absent
rejoinder. "Of course, it need be nothing more than what the army
people would call a 'reconnaissance in force'; a sort of last-resort
argument to convince Mr. Merriam and his friends that they were wrong
and we were right. I'm hoping it won't come to that, but it is only the
part of prudence to be prepared. You say you are within five miles of
the Travois now?"

"With the grading force--yes."

"Is there any heavy work yet to be done?"

"Very little of it. We are entering the hill country on an easy grade
and there are no rock-cuttings. Our survey runs along the opposite side
of the river at the foot of Rock Face Mountain, within a pistol shot of
your car here, and it does not interfere with Stannard's construction
yard at all; will not interfere until we begin making the fill to cross
his tracks at the head of the valley."

"Then here is my suggestion: push your work right along until you
reach the base of operations here in the Travois. By that time the
negotiations to which I have referred may have progressed to a
satisfactory point."

Greer nodded. The inference, so far as his own part in the deal was
concerned, was quite plain. The Overland Northern construction force
was to be held as an argument in reserve to be used only when diplomacy
should fail. He had a natural curiosity to know what form the diplomacy
would take; whether the battle was to be fought out in the financial
arena of the Street, or whether the attack was to concentrate itself
upon Stannard. Greer knew the young Missourian only by repute, and it
was that repute which made him say:

"I'm afraid you're going to have to show Stannard, Mr. Westervelt. He's
from Missouri, you know."

The smile on the face of the host of the bear-hunting party was as
expressionless as the stone calm of a Buddha.

"Human nature is much the same the world over, Mr. Greer. Some one has
summed it up rather baldly in the saying that every man has his price.
It would be more accurate to say that every man's success depends upon
his willingness to yield to constraining influences."

"It sounds better, anyhow," was Greer's bitten-off comment, and the
cynicism in the remark was thinly veiled. Then he added: "They say
Stannard doesn't especially need money."

"Everybody needs money." Mr. Westervelt said it with the manner of one
repeating an axiom. "If you have none, the need shouts itself from the
house-top. If you have a little, the need for more may not be quite so
apparent, but it is precisely as real."

The Overland Northern chief of construction got upon his feet and
buttoned his coat.

"What Stannard is needing at the present moment is some argument that
he can use upon a lot of discontented workmen," he ventured. "He has a
strike on his hands. Did you know that?"

"No."

"It's a fact. It was pulled off at the shift-changing hour over at the
west end of the tunnel this evening. Stannard and Roddy have gone over
to see what there is to be done about it."

"Ah; that means more delay, I suppose?"

"That is what it is meant to mean."

The banker stood up to shake hands with his departing visitor. "You are
a man of resources, Mr. Greer, and we are fortunate to have you with
us. I hope there will be no violence."

"There won't be, unless Stannard brings it on by trying to fight the
strikers with strike-breakers. He will hardly be able to do that,
however. The labor markets are pretty well skinned just now." And
at this the engineer went his way, leaving the _Egeria_ and the
construction yard as he had come--with a due regard for secrecy.




VIII

THE LED-CAPTAIN


Stannard's victory over the striking rock-men at the western
tunnel-working was easier than he had any right to expect it would be.
After holding out behind their barricade in the mouth of the tunnel for
twenty-four hours, the strikers capitulated and consented to go back to
work, the easy surrender being due chiefly to the fact that, owing to
Markley's prompt precautions, there was no whiskey to be had.

The labor trouble settled, for the time being, at least, Roddy remained
with Markley at the west end, and Stannard crossed the mountain alone,
reaching his Travois headquarters after the east-end night-shifts
had gone to work. Over in the yard he could see the lights of the
_Egeria_, and his thoughts reverted, as they had many times during the
twenty-four-hour interval, to the young woman with the bruised ankle.

In justice to his job, not less than in deference to the eternal
fitness of things, the level-headed young captain of industry had been
trying for two days to keep the sentimental avalanche from getting the
fatal start which might overwhelm him. In common with many young men of
a generation which takes its romance vicariously out of a novel hastily
skimmed through, or contents itself with the still more ephemeral
substitute of the modern drama, Stannard esteemed himself a bachelor
by force of circumstance. Now and then there had been day-dreams of
a future in which, having safely made his mark in his profession, he
might be able to marry and settle down; but the desire to fill in the
details of the picture had lain harmlessly dormant up to his first
meeting with Anitra Westervelt.

That meeting had been productive of a fresh series of day-dreams which,
when he had been able to push them into some short perspective of time,
became mere matter for ribald self-ridicule. He had learned enough of
Miss Westervelt to know that she was the spoiled darling of a social
set which he had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to enter;
that she was an only child and an orphan, independently wealthy in her
own right, and the heiress presumptive of her banker uncle.

The young Ozark mountaineer had no false ideas about the classes and
the masses, but he did have a keen sense of proportion, and was both
sane enough and sensible enough to admit the social incongruities.
Also, he owned sufficient poverty-pride to make him fiercely intolerant
of the distinctions which build themselves upon the figures of a
bank-account; and, as not infrequently happens, the intolerance took
the form of a deeply-rooted prejudice against the money-marriers of
either sex.

It was the recurring jolt of the incongruities that stopped him when
he would have gone across the railroad yard to inquire about the
stone bruise; that and a sudden weariness accenting itself in a huge
reluctance at the thought that he might be required to stay and be
talked to by the other members of the car party.

But he was not to escape the social infliction entirely. When he
turned back, and had climbed the mesa slope to the headquarters
cabin, he found a clean-shaven, carefully groomed man sitting on the
door-flanking bench and smoking cigarettes. The young man got up and
held out his hand as Stannard approached, saying, "They told me you'd
be back sooner or later, and I thought I'd wait. I suppose you don't
remember me, Claiborne? There isn't any especially good reason why you
should."

Stannard took the proffered hand and gripped it mechanically, finding
it cold and rather clammy in his grasp. Then recognition came with a
little shock.

"Vallory!" he exclaimed. "Austin Vallory!" and then: "I'd heard your
name mentioned--as the name of the only man of Mr. Westervelt's party
that I hadn't met--and I thought it was only a coincidence."

"It was, and it wasn't," said Vallory, sitting down again and lighting
a fresh cigarette. "I'm hardly the same Austin Vallory you used to know
in college."

The light from the nearest masthead arc included the headquarters in
its radius, and there was enough of it to show the Missourian a face
deeply lined and almost haggard--the face of a man prematurely aged by
the hastening process of burning the candle at both ends.

"You have changed a good bit; that's a fact," he commented, sitting
down to fill his pipe. "I'm not sure that I should have known you if
the identity of names hadn't paved the way. How do you happen to be out
here turning the trick with the bear hunters?"

"Ask the man," laughed Vallory, with acrid humor. "Perhaps he'll tell
you that I'm along to represent the ultimate consumer. I believe I have
a little G. L. & P. stock somewhere among the leavings."

Stannard recalled what he had known of Vallory in the college period
and found that it could be compressed into a few statements of facts
and a little hearsay. Vallory had entered the western university as
a second-year man, having been "rusticated" for cause--so the campus
gossip said--from a great eastern university where he had spent his
Freshman year. Beyond this it was known that he was a brilliant student
when he chose to be, and that he was the son of a wealthy New York
broker.

There were other items, but they were rather hazy in Stannard's mind.
Vaguely he remembered hearing that Vallory's father had died shortly
after the son's graduation. Also, now that he was trying to gather up
the recollections, he recalled that some one had told him later that
young Vallory, having come into his money too suddenly for his own
good, was going all the gaits.

Their talk for a time was purely reminiscent because they had no other
common ground. Stannard remembered that, together with a good many
others in the big western university, he had been boyishly dazzled by
Vallory's brilliance. What had figured as brilliance in the youth had
become sardonic egoism in the man. Quite early in the talk it developed
that Vallory had made ducks and drakes of the inherited fortune, or
at least of the major portion of it, and by his own confession he
had become a mere book-maker in the life race, keeping in the social
running for the sake of the tips he could pick up.

"Money talks, in this world, Claiborne, and everything else barely
whispers," was his summing up of the philosophy of life. "And that
brings us back to the original question. You asked me how I managed
to get this far from New York; you can put it in four words--I had a
hunch."

Stannard did not press for explanations. As a matter of fact, he was
tired enough to hope that Vallory would presently go back to the
_Egeria_ and so give him a chance to go to bed. But the clubman made
the explanation without encouragement.

"Westervelt has some sort of a deal on, and it occurred to me that I
might grab hold of his coat-tails and get myself pulled ashore on some
little island of prosperity if I should come along," Vallory went on,
adding: "Of course, I didn't take any stock in the bear hunt. That was
too transparent to fool anybody except the bear hunters themselves."

"And they are?"--

"Practically all the men in the party, save and excepting Uncle Silas
and your humble servant. If you should ask me, I couldn't tell you
why the women are along, unless it is because they are the victims of
circumstances--or rather, of one circumstance."

"Yes?"

Vallory nodded, tossing away an empty cigarette carton and opening
another.

"Anitra was the compelling circumstance. At the last moment she decided
to come along, and to use one of your Western phrases, what Anitra
Westervelt says, goes as it lies. Of course, that made a chaperone
necessary. In her turn, Mrs. Grantham accounts for the two Wetmore
girls and for her family physician, and Kitts and his wife are too
saccharinely one to be separated."

"But the women can't hunt bears," Stannard interposed.

"Oh, no; but they can go on a woodsy picnic into the foot-hills and
make believe hunt bears as successfully as the men. Westervelt needed
an excuse for making the Travois his headquarters, and he has it.
That's all he wants."

"You are talking in riddles and I guess I'm too sleepy to dig them
out," was Stannard's rejoinder.

"Money's the key-word, Claiborne--big money and easy money," said
Vallory; and then: "You're pretty well at the top in your trade, so
they tell me. Have you ever figured out how many years it'll take you
to save up a stake out of your salary?"

A material train was pulling in from the desert, and for a time the
night silence was torn and rent by strident noises and clamorings. When
the train came to rest with a jangling of drawbars, and the locomotive
had gone clattering down the yard to the coal chutes at the temporary
repair shop, Stannard answered the question.

"To tell the truth, Austin, I've been too busy to think much about the
stake. I've always been able to get the three square meals and a place
to sleep."

"A common ordinary yellow dog can do that," was the half cynical
comment. "Don't you want more money than that asks for?"

Under normal conditions, Vallory--the Vallory of college memories, or
this newer and even less likable egoist--was the last man in the world
in whom Stannard would have chosen to confide. But the conditions are
never wholly normal when an unattainable object of desire has been
lately dangling itself before the eyes of longing.

"For just one reason, Vallory, I should like to have more--a good bit
more," he admitted.

"Well then, why don't you get it?" was the cool query.

Stannard laughed. "The means don't readily suggest themselves. I'm
neither a trader nor a grafter."

"Everybody grafts, more or less," declared the clubman oracularly,
adding: "But that's a piker's alternative in most cases. I suppose,
for example, you might hold out ten thousand a year, or such a matter,
in rake-offs on your supply and material bills on a job like this,
and possibly another ten on your sub-contracts. That's what a piker
would do, not having the ability to see anything bigger." Then without
warning: "It occurs to me, Claiborne, that you are about to be handed
the chance of your life. Are you man enough to grab it if it should
come in your way?"

"As I told you a few minutes ago, Austin, I'm no good at the riddles
to-night. You'll have to put it in words of one syllable."

"I can give you only a hint. Silas Westervelt is stringing the wires
for a killing of some sort connected with this jerk-water railroad
of yours. That much I'm sure of. I'm giving it out cold that I'm
going to make him drag me in on the hand-out. Figuring solely on the
probabilities, it's only fair to say that your chance in the game looks
a thousand times better than mine."

"I don't see either the chance or the game," the Missourian thrust in
obtusely.

"Neither do I, for that matter, at the present moment; I'm not far
enough on the inside. But I've been wondering if--well, never mind that
part of it; it'll probably say itself a little later." Vallory got up
and yawned, stretching his arms over his head. "It's getting along into
the shank of the evening, and you must be about all in. I oughtn't to
have kept you up. If Westervelt hadn't said what he did--"

Stannard was thoroughly awake now, and the skilful spreading of the
veil of mystery changed his indifference into quickened interest--as it
was meant to.

"Come back here and sit down and tell me what you've got on your mind,
Austin," he broke in. "You'll sleep better if you get it out of your
system."

Vallory thrust his hands into his pockets and began to pace back and
forth, three steps and a turn, as one hesitating. When he stopped
and stood with one foot on the bench, his thin lips were parting in a
mirthless smile.

"There isn't any reason in the world why I should butt into your game,
Clay. The friendly mile-posts have been passed so far and so long ago
that I've forgotten what they look like. I'm on my own, as Montjoy
would put it, and you can take it from me that I'd cut your throat
in a minute if you stood in my way. I'm saying this so that you'll
understand there's no personal end to be served."

"Go on," said Stannard.

"Let me begin by asking a question: How well do you know Mr. Silas
Westervelt?"

"I know what the newspapers print about him--and possibly a little
more."

"You scrapped with him a year ago when you were trying to fight this
Cut-off scheme through, didn't you?"

"Hardly that. He was on one side, and I was on the other. Sometimes I
thought he went out of his way to land on me, but perhaps he didn't."

"Westervelt is a peculiar man in some respects," Vallory went on,
speaking slowly. "They will tell you in New York that he is a man
without friends, cold-blooded and a sort of first cousin to Shylock
when he gets the other fellow into a corner where he can shave off
the pound of flesh. Yet those who are nearest to him--Anitra, for
example--might tell you that he has another side; that he is really
capable of forming likings and dislikings."

"We're not getting anywhere yet," Stannard suggested mildly. "Where do
I come in?"

"At the front door, unless I am very greatly mistaken," Vallory
asserted impressively. "Westervelt likes you, chiefly, I think,
because you are one man in a thousand who has fought him to a finish.
You did, you know; and you beat him--in a small way. That is the surest
road to his favor."

"I'll have to take your word for the liking, Vallory," said Stannard
shortly. "I should have put it the other way around."

"Because he tried to choke you off on this short-line scheme? You
shouldn't jump at conclusions, Clay. Possibly Westervelt had the longer
look ahead and saw developments that you couldn't see. I know this
much, anyway; he is willing to be your friend--at least to the extent
of helping you to get something more than the piker's start you've got
now."

Stannard shook his head. "You are taking me at a disadvantage, Austin;
throwing a thing like that at me when I am too tired to be able to see
straight. Why should Mr. Westervelt interest himself in me?"

The clubman laughed and took his foot from the bench.

"You are more than usually thick-headed to-night, Clay," he remarked.
"There can be only one reason on top of earth why Silas Westervelt
might wish to give you a boost--apart from the fact that he likes
you a little for the way in which you did him up with the Securities
Committee a year ago."

"You'll have to give it a name," said Stannard stubbornly.

"It has a name, and a very pretty one. See here, Clay; were you asleep
a few minutes ago when I told you that Anitra Westervelt changed her
mind at the last moment about going to Europe with the Van Pelts and
insisted on turning this bear-hunting party into a co-ed picnic?"

The young Missourian struggled to his feet, rather stiffly because the
tired muscles had been given time to harden into knots.

"You've said too much, or too little, Austin. If you're talking through
your hat--"

Vallory laughed again and tossed the last of the series of cigarettes
aside. It fell upon the path leading down to the railroad yard and lay
like a tiny red eye looking up at the two men.

"No; you couldn't squeeze any more out of me if you should run me
through a cheese press, Claiborne. But I can see as far into a
mill-stone as the next fellow. You're in luck, old man--the biggest
kind of luck; at least, that is how it would appeal to me if I were
standing in your shoes. Now go to bed and sleep--if you can; I'm
through with you for to-night."

Five minutes later the clubman, admitted by the porter on guard in the
forward vestibule of the _Egeria_, made his way through the corridor,
tapped on the door of the banker-director's state-room, and was
admitted. Silas Westervelt was lying on the lounge and he did not get
up at the noiseless door-opening and closing.

"Well?" he inquired.

"I've put the hook into him," was the crisp rejoinder. "It strikes me
that you're going to find him pretty easy."

The man on the lounge made no comment, and when he spoke again it was
about another matter.

"What have you heard about the horses and guides?"

"Crumley has been over from his ranch, and Padgett and Kitts have made
a dicker with him. The ranchman has a round-up shack about ten miles
back in the hills, and he will fit it up as a camp. The start is to
be made early to-morrow morning. Crumley furnishes a camp cook, and
there will be a buckboard for the women." "Anitra can't go," said the
banker. "Her ankle isn't well enough." Then he added: "Padgett mustn't
get too far out of reach. I may need him at any moment. How about the
telegraph operator?"

"He's fixed," said Vallory. "He'll take our messages and give them the
right of way over everything. I had to do a little judicious lying
there and tell the young man that, for business reasons, his chief
didn't care to know anything about your use of the wire. Then I gave
him Padgett's first batch of cipher copy with a ten dollar bill rolled
up in it."

"And the deliveries? how about those?"

"I have arranged for them. Messages for you or Padgett will be
delivered here at the car by the operator in person."

The big-bodied man on the couch sat up and ran his hands through the
thinning hair.

"How did you go at Stannard?" he asked.

Vallory laughed. "I gave him what the box-fighters call the heart
punch. For the purposes of this particular killing he has been led to
believe that a certain young woman in this party would not be sorry to
see him come in for a piece of money."

Silas Westervelt looked up quickly.

"Vallory, you are playing with fire. Besides, you had no authority to
involve Anitra, even by implication. Why couldn't you be man enough to
put it on a business basis at once? We need Stannard's services and we
are willing to pay for them."

The thin lips of the led-captain parted in a sardonic smile. "With
all due respect to you, you don't know Stannard as well as I do," he
retorted. "If I had gone at him with a straight money proposition,
it would have been a good bit like sticking a match into a barrel of
gunpowder. More than that, we should have been missing our one best
bet by not taking advantage of his principal weakness. He was batty
about Anitra a year ago last summer. It was the joke of the season,
though it probably wasn't passed on to you. You let me manage this
thing in my own way and I'll have the apple-picker eating out of your
hand--and without committing or involving anybody."

The banker frowned thoughtfully.

"I won't have Anitra involved--understand that; and I still think it
is a blunder on your part to take that line," he said with brittle
emphasis. "With all her good hard common sense, Anitra is more or less
romantic--all girls are. If she should find out what you are doing, I
wouldn't answer for anything she might say or do."

"She won't have time to find out," said the go-between, with his hand
on the door-knob. "I'm counting on this hunting business to keep them
apart until after we have made the turn."

"That is where you are making another blunder," cut in the great man,
with a degree of testiness which was quite out of keeping with his
usual attitude of bland impassivity. "She can't go with the others, as
I have told you. The only thing to do now is to push the matter with
Stannard, and push it quickly. Send George Washington in as you go out,
and tell him I'm ready to go to bed."




IX

WHOM THE GODS DESTROY


With Vallory's parting words to banish all thoughts of sleep and
weariness, Stannard filled his pipe again after the clubman had left
him and tramped off aimlessly into the night, craving solitude and the
chance to wrestle with the incredible thing to which Vallory's hint had
pointed.

He was not quite fatuous enough to take the hint at its face value.
He told himself that Anitra Westervelt had doubtless joined the
bear-hunting party very pointedly because she wished to, and for no
other reason whatever. None the less, it warmed him deliciously to
believe that a thought for him had added its urgings. He remembered
how she had improved the earliest opportunity to seek him out on the
evening of the _Egeria's_ arrival, and an added touch of imagination
made it easily conceivable that she had tried to warn him not to take
the bear-hunting excuse for the private-car invasion too literally.

But quite apart from this, Vallory must have had some basis for the
hint. Stannard gave manly modesty a free hand and tried not to be a
conceited ass. Yet the ecstatic possibility would not suffer itself
to be entirely sat upon and extinguished. The athletic young chief of
construction jammed his fists into the pockets of his working coat and
went plodding on westward through the railroad yard, following the
line of the recently laid track skirting the base of the Standing
Stone. In the back part of his head there was a grim determination to
walk the ecstatic possibility off, if the thing could be done, and he
did not realize where he was going or how far he had gone until he
found himself stumbling over the cross-ties on the curve of the canyon
approach.

By this time the masthead arc-lights in the construction yard were
left well behind and his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness.
Since the track-layers were now able to keep up by working only the
day shift, the canyon at his left was deserted, though he could see
the reflection of the electric flares lighting the great rock cutting
beyond the end-of-track, and could hear the rapid-fire volleying of the
air drills.

Directly in front of him the steep wooded shoulder of the Buckskin
cut off the view to the westward, and at his right the river, issuing
from the canyon on a line parallel with the foot of the Buckskin, cut
straight across the head of the Travois before making its right-angled
turn to the eastward along the mountain barrier of the Rock Face.

Finding himself no nearer a sane conclusion about Vallory's hint than
he had been when he left the construction camp, he was turning to
retrace his steps when a curiously recurring phenomenon brought him
alertly awake to the time, place, and surroundings. On the right bank
of the river, and apparently about half-way across from the canyon
mouth to the elbow bend at the foot of Rock Face, a small bright light
was alternately appearing and disappearing like the winking lamp of an
overgrown firefly.

Owing his nativity to a region in which there are swamps as well as
mountains, Stannard's first thought was of the jack-o'-lanterns of his
boyhood. But apart from the fact that there are no masses of decaying
vegetation in the high altitudes, the light was far too dazzling to
owe its origin to marsh-gas. Sober second thought named it an electric
flash-lamp in some human hand, and wondering what member of his
staff might be picking his way across the great valley at that time
and place, Stannard made his way down the yielding slope of the new
embankment to the margin of the stream and began to stalk the curious
phenomenon.

There was a thick growth of small aspens fringing the bank of the
Standing Stone, and with the trees for cover and the noise of the river
to drown his footsteps he was able to make his approach without being
discovered by the two men who were moving back and forth on a north and
south line parallel with the river. For a little while their movements
puzzled the engineer. One of them would stand statue-like while the
other paced off a short distance to the southward. Then the one in
advance would stop, snapping his flash-light rapidly. Following this,
the rear man would close up and the light would show again, glowing
steadily for a few seconds as if one were holding it to enable the
other to read or write something in a small book.

Familiar as he was with the routine work of his own trade, Stannard
did not realize what the men were doing until the starlight showed him
an engineer's transit instrument dimly outlined on a slight elevation
against the black background of the eastern sky. At that, however, the
puzzle solved itself instantly. He knew that the old location of the
canyon-threading Overland Northern survey ran across the head of the
Travois paralleling the river, and the conclusion was obvious. The two
men were engineers from Judson Greer's force, and they were secretly
verifying the notes of the old preliminary survey.

The originality of the move appealed instantly to the craftsman in
the young Missourian. Never before had he seen an attempt made to take
instrument readings at night with only the help of a pocket flashlight.
Drawing nearer in the shadow of the aspens, he saw how the thing was
done. The rodman went ahead, placed his staff, and showed the light at
the level of the target until the instrument man had found it with his
telescope. That done, the reading was taken by turning the light on the
target itself.

Under other conditions, or rather, in some calmer frame of mind,
Stannard might not have interfered. Legally, Greer was entirely within
his rights in sending his men to verify the old survey. It would be
only at the point of track-crossing on the G. L. & P. right-of-way that
the Overland Northern would become a trespasser. But Stannard had been
too lately stirred up by the talk with Vallory to be able to weigh and
measure the nicer distinctions.

Climbing the river bank to the high-water gravel bar where the two
men were running their line, he broke in upon them with a challenging
demand.

"Say, I'd like to know what you two fellows think you're doing here!"

Now Stannard was unarmed, but the smaller of the two men prudently made
sure of the fact by running his flashlight quickly over the figure of
the intruder. Following the flash, Stannard found himself looking into
the muzzle of an army service revolver in the hands of the bigger of
the two, a loose-bodied giant half a head taller than he had any right
to be.

"What we happen to be doing is none of your blank-dashed business,"
grated the giant, strengthening the uncivil phrase in the retort with a
grouping of adjectives which would have made Bully Gallagher turn green
with envy. "I'm making it some of my business," Stannard snapped back.
"Put up that gun, or I'll take it away from you and pitch it into the
creek!"

The big man stepped from behind his instrument and made as if he would
thrust the revolver into Stannard's face.

"You make your get-away right now, before I start a lead mine in you
bigger than any you ever saw in Missouri, Mr. Claiborne Stannard!" he
barked. And then: "Put up your hands!"

It was the small added fact that Stannard found himself recognized, and
still defied, that dropped the spark into the tinder box of a temper
which was ordinarily rather slow to ignite. Ducking cleverly to dodge
the weapon, he closed with the transit man in a mad-bull rush, twisting
the gun from the hand of threatenings, and throwing the loose-bodied
giant with a skilful back-lock and an open-handed push under the chin.

"Now get up and fight like a man!" he panted, and stepped back to give
the fallen one a chance to rise.

The bit of decent fairness came near costing him his life. A shot from
an automatic pocket-pistol smacked upon the still night air, and the
dodging ray of the flash-lamp showed Stannard the smaller man with his
weapon out and coolly taking pot-shots at him by the help of the little
spot-light.

After that, there was nothing for it but a fight to a finish, and
the Missourian went about it systematically. Baseball had been his
safety-valve in college, and he had been known as the outfielder with
the swiftest and most deadly "wing" of any man on the team. Catching up
a stone, he hurled it at the little man, who straight-way doubled up,
dropped his automatic and the flashlight, and withdrew from the scene,
rolling out of sight among the fringing aspens and making strange
noises as he disappeared.

By this time the big-bodied one was up and gamely trying to hold his
own against Stannard's rushes. Twice the Missourian closed for a
moment of savage in-fighting, and both times the big man went down
among the worn boulders of the old high-water torrent wash. At the
third knock-out, discretion got the better of the transit man's valor.
Leaping up in the recovery, he hurdled away over the boulder heaps,
with Stannard in hot pursuit. The chase was not a long one, and it
ended when the fugitive splashed through the shallows of the Standing
Stone and gained the thick cover on the opposite bank.

Balked of his prey, the Missourian raced back to the battlefield and
made hostile search for the second man. Failing to discover him, for
the good and sufficient reason that he, too, had taken flight, Stannard
found the flash-light and by its help made spoils of war of the two
weapons and the surveying instruments.

It was the unreasoning madness of the slow-to-anger type that made
him deliberately smash the transit and target staff and fling them,
together with the pistols, into the river.

After which he was content to tramp back to the bunk-house at the
headquarters, breathing rageful threatenings for the first half-mile,
and beyond that, when the reaction had set in, gibbeting himself
satirically as a hot-tempered idiot who had gone a very considerable
distance out of his way to get on the wrong side of an argument, and to
make a pair of enemies who would doubtless bide their time to even the
account.




X

MAHOMET WESTERVELT


A telephoned report from Pearson of another slump in the east-end
tunnel-working--this time happily without loss of life or limb--got
Stannard out of bed in the graying dawn of the morning following the
fight with Greer's pioneers and sent him in hot haste up the mountain
to the scene of the fresh disaster.

The black-bearded assistant met his chief in the clay cutting of the
tunnel approach. He had already organized his force for the removal of
the débris and had called in as many of Patterson's graders as could be
used in the limited working space.

"It's a bad one this time," was Pearson's confirmation of the wired
report. "Fifty feet of the timbering gone, and what's left of the roof
is so rotten that I don't believe anything but steel or concrete will
hold."

"Some more premature shot-firing?" Stannard queried.

"No; not this time. It was a shake-down right on the heels of a blast
in the heading. I'd been watching it, and I ordered the men all the way
out before the heading shots were fired. As it happened, it wouldn't
have hurt anybody. The slump is three or four hundred feet this side of
the farthest point of the present run-back. What we need is concrete."

Stannard nodded.

"One more kick to keep us hustling. Everything asks for the rushing of
this loop track. We can't get the concreting material until we have a
track, and we can't have a track until we get the grade. I'd plant men
three feet apart all the way up the ten miles if I could get them; but
I simply can't get them, Bartley. They're not to be had for love or
money. More than that, we're not even holding our own; can't keep the
gangs full from day to day."

"I know," agreed the tunnel engineer; "they quit us and chase
over to Greer's camps. Patterson told me yesterday he was losing
pick-and-shovel men out of his squads in bunches of five and ten at a
crack. We can't stand for that, can we?"

The young chief frowned impatiently.

"There's only one way to square an account of that kind; to give the
other fellow a dose of his own medicine. I don't like to do it; I've
never done it yet on any job where I had the say-so, and I don't want
to begin now."

Pearson's smile was sour. "A man has no business to have a conscience
in these days, Stannard. I used to have one, but I wrapped it up in
cotton wool and put it away before I came out here. In this day and
generation you've got to reach out and take what you want wherever you
can find it. If you don't, the other fellow will."

"I hate to believe that, Bartley. It makes pirates of us all, and what
isn't good for the swarm isn't good for the bee. There oughtn't to be
any reason why a man should be honest in his personal relations and a
buccaneer and a highbinder in business. Let's go inside and see just
how bad a jolt we've got this time."

When the inspection was concluded, the sun was still no more than half
an hour high above the Yellow Desert stretching away in the eastward
vista between the Dogtooth and Rock Face. Pearson walked with his
chief out to the mouth of the clay cutting to the point where the path
to the valley began. From the high viewpoint the Travois lay like a map
in the foreground, with the camp buildings, the yard tracks and the
long strings of material cars delicately minimized by the distance.

Over on the river spur the Westervelt private Pullmans were
measurably isolated. A stir at the platform end of the _Egeria_, a
dotting of saddle horses and the still more unusual spectacle of two
buckboard teams in a railroad yard, advertised the outsetting of the
bear-hunters. Pearson pointed with a rocking motion of his thumb.

"So the city folks are sure-enough going to beard the savage
honey-eater in his den, are they?" he said.

"They are going picnicking in the hills at the Back of Crumley's upper
range," Stannard qualified. "Possibly the Englishman and one or two of
the others still believe in the bears."

"Are they all going?" inquired the tunnel driver.

"I suppose not. Mrs. Grantham, the chaperone, will hardly care to camp
out, and I fancy nothing is farther from Mr. Westervelt's purpose."

Pearson turned short upon his superior. "What's he here for, Stannard?"

Stannard shook his head. "I wish I knew definitely. It would simplify
matters somewhat."

The black-whiskered one grunted.

"I don't want to know any more about it than you want to tell me," he
said gruffly.

"There isn't anything to tell--not as yet. From two or three sources
I have been given to understand that Mr. Westervelt's real object in
coming to the Travois is not pleasure--it's business; some business
connected with the railroad." "That means the Wall Street end of some
business connected with the railroad, I take it," was Pearson's curt
comment.

"Naturally. It's a pretty safe bet that Mr. Westervelt's interest in
any corporation with which he is associated concerns itself altogether
with speculative values."

"That has been the curse of western railroading ever since I've known
anything about it, Clay," growled the tunnel engineer. "I put in ten
years on one transcontinental line, and during that time there were
three changes of control, all in Wall Street, and all for the purpose
of making money out of the stock speculations. The physical thing
itself--the railroad that was carrying the passengers and freight and
earning the money--was a mere pawn in the game; the carcass that was
picked and picked again until there was nothing left but the bare
bones."

"I know," Stannard agreed. "It's one part of the game, and it's lucky
for us that we've got a man like Mr. Merriam on our side in the G. L. &
P."

Pearson was wagging his big head dubiously. "You never can tell," he
rejoined. "It's the money that talks, and the big money is always in
the dickering and buying and selling. The men at the top expect us to
be loyal to them and to the railroad as a railroad. But they reserve
the right to be loyal only to their own bank-accounts. I don't blame
'em. If anybody should show me how to make a pot of money suddenly, I
reckon I'd jump at the chance--and so would you."

"Would I?" said Stannard; and he was asking himself the same question
in many forms as he strode down the mountain and across the valley,
pointing for the mess shack and the breakfast which he had missed.

It was after he had taken his seat in solitary state at the head of a
table long since deserted by the other members of the staff that Eddie
Brant came in with a telegram.

"It's marked 'Rush,' but I didn't think you'd want me to go chasing out
on the hill after you," said the draftsman.

Stannard said no, and after Brant had gone, opened the freshly sealed
envelope. The telegram was from New York, and it was signed by the
president.

  "Rumors in circulation here that tunnel costs are likely to double
  on your estimates and necessitate another bond issue. Wire fully
  present condition of work and authoritative denial of rumor over your
  signature. Mr. Westervelt is somewhere in your neighborhood with a
  hunting party. If you can reach him, it might be well for you to
  confer with him."

Stannard read the message twice and was going thoughtfully over it for
the third time when Vallory strolled in with the inevitable cigarette
held loosely between his thin lips.

"Breakfasting at eight o'clock?--and you call yourself a workingman? I
am astonished!" said the lounger in mock reproach.

Stannard folded the portentous telegram and slipped it into his pocket.

"Overlook it this time, and we won't let it occur again," he laughed;
and then: "Draw up a stool and have a cup of camp coffee with me, won't
you?"

"Not in a thousand years!" protested the clubman. "There are two things
that I'm mighty careful of--my reputation and my digestion. Besides, I
breakfasted ages ago. The bear hunters got away at a most ungodly hour,
and of course I had to get up and see them do it. By the way, is that
a black eye you're sporting? or is it merely a gentle hint that the
plumbing in the camp bath-room is out of order?"

"Call it the bath-room," said Stannard, with his face in his plate; and
then with a sudden return to straight-forwardness: "No, you needn't
do that either. You named it right in the beginning. I had a little
disagreement with a fellow last night, and was awkward enough to let
him hit me."

"Was that after I left you?" Vallory queried.

"Yes; a little while after. Does it show up much?"

"No; I was only joshing you. Forget it and let's talk about something
else. Are those crazy people of ours going to get any bears out in the
foot-hills?"

"They'll probably get plenty of hunting," was the qualified rejoinder.
"Did they all go?"

Vallory laughed. "I'm not quite the sole survivor; Mrs. Grantham and
Uncle Silas are still with me. And that reminds me; I've 'come an
errand,' as Montjoy would say. Westervelt wants to see you."

"Did he send you after me?" Stannard inquired shortly.

"Oh, not exactly that. He said if I happened to run across you I was to
ask you to drop around. It wasn't an order, if that's what you mean."

"That is exactly what I meant," answered the Missourian, absently
double-sweetening his coffee. Then he added, "I've a good bit of
office work to do this morning, and if you'll take my excuses to Mr.
Westervelt, I'll be much obliged."

Vallory was tilting his three-legged stool against the wall of the
shack and regarding the breakfaster through half-closed eyelids.

"In other words," he said half jocularly, "you'd cut off your nose to
spite your face. Is that it?"

"I don't know why you should say that." "I say it because you are so
evidently prejudiced against a man whose only crime, so far as I can
see, is the harboring of rather a kindly feeling for you. If I were in
your place, Clay, and a man of Westervelt's money and influence showed
a disposition to want to take care of me--"

"Once more, Austin, I don't know what you're talking about," said
the breakfaster, firmly determined, in the light of this new day,
resolutely to ignore the conversation of the night before.

Vallory shot a new element into the argument in a single shrewd
question. "Don't you want to hold on to your job?"

"Naturally."

"Then take a fool's advice and go and have a talk with Uncle Silas. Do
more than that--tell him anything he may want to know. I'm advising you
as I'd advise myself."

Stannard pushed his stool back from the trestle-board table and squared
his shoulders against the wall.

"You are beating the bushes again, as you did last night," he said,
breaking his own resolution. "Come out flat-footed and say what you
mean. What does Mr. Westervelt want of me?"

"He doesn't want to throw his niece at your head, if that's what you're
afraid of," said the clubman with a smile that was more than half a
leer. Then more placably: "It's business--straight business, Clay; and
you can climb in or stay out, just as you please; it won't make the
slightest difference in the world to anybody but yourself. Blame me, if
you feel like it. I was the one who suggested that you might be a man
of sense and not a hypersensitive ass."

"Then you are on the inside now, are you? You know you intimated last
night that you weren't--that you were merely intending to be."

"I'm inside far enough to smell easy money, and to know that some of it
will come your way if you don't insist upon turning it down. That's as
far as I can go. If you don't see fit to confer with one of the biggest
individual stockholders in your own company when he requests it, it is
very pointedly your own affair."

Stannard scowled up at the ceiling, which was not a ceiling but only
the under side of the corrugated iron roofing of the mess shack.
Stubbornness was one of his failings, though those who set him hard
tasks were wont to call it his chief virtue, since it was the quality
which drove him through to accomplishment when other men were beaten
back and crowded to the wall.

"I told you the plain truth a minute or so ago, Vallory; I have a bunch
of estimates to check up and get off on the first train of empties that
goes out to Yellow Medicine. Estimates mean pay-roll money, and if that
isn't forthcoming--"

Vallory was laughing again; a slow laugh that trickled from the thin
lips in little ripples of exhaled cigarette smoke.

"Perhaps Westervelt will be willing to break even with you and wait
until your precious estimates are checked," he suggested; and with that
he got up and lounged out, as one who, having had a boresome duty to
perform, has performed it to his complete and entire satisfaction.

Stannard set it down as one of the curious lapses to which the sanest
mind is occasionally subject that he had not remembered once, during
the talk with Vallory, the wording of the president's telegram; this
though he had been reading it thoughtfully for the third time when
the clubman came in. In the light of the president's suggestion that
he should find Silas Westervelt and confer with him, his late refusal
to walk across the tracks to the _Egeria_ became at once absurd and
quite indefensible. None the less, he made one more small concession
to the invincible obstinacy. An hour or so of delay could make
little difference; and so determining, he went to his office in the
headquarters cabin, stripped off his coat and plunged doggedly into the
estimate checking.

An hour later he had occasion to send Eddie Brant out to the
contractors' office with one of the estimate reports to have some
corrections made. The draftsman had been gone less than a minute when
the doorway was darkened by an ample figure in tailor-made tweeds, and
Stannard looked up to find the banker-director taking in the details
of the scantily furnished work-room in an all-inclusive glance of the
calculating eyes. Since the mountain would not go to Mahomet, Mahomet
had to come to the mountain.




XI

QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM


Stannard tried to make himself believe it was only decent respect
for a man older than himself, and no sort of ubiquitous kowtowing to
the man's wealth and position, that made him get up and offer Silas
Westervelt the only chair. The banker thanked him and sat down; and the
engineer braced himself for another bucketing of the cold displeasure
which had greeted him on that first-evening visit to the _Egeria_.

Oddly enough, the coldness did not materialize. On the contrary, the
great man sniffed the odor of the black pipe which Stannard had just
put aside, and said, almost genially: "Mr. Stannard, you can't imagine
how vividly the smell of that pipe brings back the old undergraduate
days at Yale. We didn't smoke briars in my time; we stuck to the good
old long-stemmed clays. You don't happen to have a clay pipe and a bit
of dry tobacco, do you?"

Half doubting the evidence of his own senses, Stannard excused himself
and went across to the mess bunk-room to rummage in Pearson's kit box.
The tunnel-driver smoked a clay pipe sometimes in the evenings, and
since it was his fad not to use one for more than a single sitting, he
usually kept a supply of them in his box. With his search rewarded, the
young chief went back to the work-room and tendered the stolen pipe and
a confiscated buckskin sack of Virginia leaf tobacco. Whereupon the
magnate stuffed and lighted the clay, and sat back to enjoy what was
doubtless the severest infraction of habit he had permitted himself in
many years.

"Fill up and join me, Mr. Stannard," he said, after a whiff or two.

Stannard, speechless as yet, obeyed the order in silence. With his pipe
alight, he perched himself upon Brant's drawing stool. Then the banker
began to talk, quite humanly and between leisurely puffs at the clay
pipe.

"A year ago last summer we were on opposite sides of a discussion in
which personal interest cut so large a figure that we couldn't very
well get together, Mr. Stannard. You were quite naturally and properly
enthusiastic over an engineering project which owed itself largely,
if not wholly, to your own professional genius; while I, and some
other members of the committee, took the longer look ahead and saw the
possible financial difficulties. Do I state it fairly?"

"Quite fairly," said Stannard, still wondering.

"Very good. Those financial difficulties have arisen. Your tunnel costs
are exceeding your estimates week by week. Isn't that true?"

"Unfortunately, it is true. But if you have been reading my detailed
reports to the Executive Committee, you will know that the increased
costs are due to conditions which could not possibly be foreseen."

Mr. Westervelt waved the explanation aside with a gesture of the
pipe-nursing hand. "I am not criticizing, Mr. Stannard--far from it. I
am merely stating the fact. Tell me frankly; do you see any likelihood
of getting the tunnel through without another bond issue?"

"There would be if the Overland Northern would keep hands off,"
Stannard shot back. "You are intimating that there have been
interferences?"

"Many small ones, and there is a threat of a still bigger one. With
the Overland camps only a few miles away, we are unable to keep our
laborers from drifting, and though I can't prove it, I am morally
certain that Greer, the O. N. chief of construction, is over-bidding us
on wages, and has been sending us trouble-makers--men who have signed
on with us for the sole purpose of fomenting strikes and promoting
accidents."

"H'm," said the banker. "That is a pretty serious charge, isn't it?"

"I'm not making it as a charge, because, as I say, I can't prove it;
but the fact remains."

"You spoke of a threat which might have still more serious consequences
than these labor troubles. Do you refer to a possible conflict over the
right-of-way in Standing Stone Canyon?"

"That is what I meant; yes. Unless we can beat him to it, Greer will
make it cost us a mint of money. Without the loop line to use as a
material track, we shall be obliged to abandon the tunnel work for the
winter, after the snows come. The abandonment is not to be thought of.
We've got to keep on boring, putting in the sustaining arch as we go,
or we won't have any tunnel left. I've treated these matters very fully
in my reports, as you have doubtless seen."

Mr. Westervelt was nodding slowly.

"If the conservative few of us were disposed to be critical, Mr.
Stannard, we might say that you, or circumstances, have gotten us
into a pretty bad box. But we don't say anything of the kind. We know
that the present conditions couldn't possibly have been foreseen, as
you say, and we are anxious now only to save the G. L. & P. company
from disaster. You will probably say that this comparatively modest
shortening project of yours is a small thing to precipitate a crisis
in the affairs of a great transcontinental railway. But the stock
market is a law unto itself, and the smallest adverse condition, a mere
flutter, will sometimes serve to break the market for the strongest
corporation."

"I'm following you," said Stannard soberly. "I've lost a good many
nights' sleep over this thing, I can assure you. Since we are talking
as man to man, I may say that I had a telegram from Mr. Merriam this
morning. He says that reports of our bad luck have already reached the
Street, and asks me to deny them."

The banker-director was shaking his head rather sadly when he said,
"Merriam is one of the finest fellows in the world, but he is such a
confirmed optimist that he is very hard to convince, at times. Have you
sent the denial?"

"No; and in the face of the facts, I don't quite see how I can, Mr.
Westervelt. Do you?"

"Most certainly not. You owe it to yourself, and to the company, to
take a very different course. Let me ask you something; Mr. Merriam has
been your friend all along, as we all know: how far would you go in an
effort to save him and his associates on the board and in the Executive
Committee from a very serious loss--in money and prestige?"

Stannard took time to think about it, and a picture of the bluff,
jovial, large-hearted Middle-Western millionaire who had fought his
way to the front in the great market place of the Street, generously
dragging his friends up with him, struck itself out clearly in the
mental vista. In his patient struggle to get recognition for the
short-cut plan, President Merriam was the man who had reached down
to him, lifting him out of the tangle of official disinterest and
cold-shoulderings and giving him his chance to plead his cause before
the Securities Committee.

For the man who had thus befriended him, and who had finally become his
strongest partizan and backer, Stannard felt that he would go to any
length. Westervelt sat back in his chair and smoked quietly, with the
mask of false geniality fitting like a second skin over the dry-desert
features and veiling the calculating eyes. How was Stannard to know
that the war of the market place sometimes breeds enmities bitter and
lasting, or that there was a score reaching backward to a loss of many
millions lying between John P. Merriam and the tweeded gentleman who
was calmly smoking the long-stemmed pipe raided from Pearson's kit-box?

"Mr. Merriam has been my friend, as you say," was the beginning of
Stannard's deferred answer. "I'm little more than a number on the G. L.
& P. payrolls, Mr. Westervelt; but if there is anything I can do to get
between Mr. Merriam and this loss you speak of, I am more than ready."

"It may cost you something, temporarily at least," warned the great
man, adding: "Professionally, I mean. But let us begin at the
beginning. What reply are you going to make to Merriam's telegram? You
have intimated that you can't conscientiously deny this report which is
threatening to break the price of our stock. Doesn't it occur to you
that the situation is rather critical, Mr. Stannard?"

Stannard confessed his helplessness in so many words. "To tell the
truth, I don't know just what to say to Mr. Merriam."

The high-water smile came and sat upon the impassive face of the great
capitalist.

"In other words, you are a railroad builder and not a promoter. I
consistently opposed the financing of this Cut-off project, as you
know: the time was not ripe for it. The event is proving that my
judgment was right. We are confronting a crisis which is far more
serious than Merriam and his friends are willing to concede. Do you
follow me, Mr. Stannard?"

"I'm trying to," said Stannard, passing his hand over his brow to shut
out the gaze of the stone-gray eyes which seemed to be half hypnotizing
him.

"Let me tell you what will happen a little later on. When these reports
of our failure get themselves properly exaggerated, our stock will be
hammered down in the open market, and the Merriam management will be
discredited. There are some of us who are not particularly concerned
about what may become of the present management, but are very pointedly
concerned about the safety of our own investment. As for yourself, you
have no invested money to lose, but you don't want to see Merriam get
the worst of it. Isn't that your position?"

Stannard fought against the hypnotic effect of the cold eyes as the
hard-rock man caught under the falling tunnel roof had fought for
breath. Difficulties there had been from the outset, but if any one
had tried to tell him in any former stage of them that his cherished
project was not only hopeless, but a menace to the financial integrity
of the G. L. & P. company, he would have refused to listen. Now,
however, he was constrained to listen.

"Are you trying to tell me that I ought to be the scapegoat, Mr.
Westervelt?" he asked, after a time.

Again the high-water smile came and went.

"I wouldn't put it quite so strong as that," was the even-toned
reply; "but I do think you owe it to Merriam, and to the company, to
come to the rescue. You are the one man who can do it most easily
and effectively because Merriam will take your word as an engineer
against the sworn testimony of a board of experts. If the G. L. & P.
stockholders could know the situation as you and I know it, a vote to
drop this project right where it is would be all but unanimous. Don't
you agree with me?"

"You make it look that way; though I'll be frank enough to say that it
hasn't looked that way to me up to this morning. If the company will
back me I can put that tunnel through in spite of hell!"

"I admire your courage, Mr. Stannard," said the magnate in a fresh
access of kindliness. "You are a born fighter, and I couldn't help
admiring that quality in you a year ago last summer. But you see it
isn't altogether a matter of courage, or of the company backing you.
A few points decline in G. L. & P. stock would easily swallow the
earnings, or the savings, of this short-line Cut-off of yours for the
next fifty years to come. It is a wise man who knows when to let go,
and our friend Merriam is not gifted with that particular kind of
wisdom."

"But what can I do--more than I have done?" pleaded the beleaguered
young technician. "I haven't been hiding anything from our people. My
reports to New York have been as exactly truthful as I have known how
to make them."

"Ah, yes; but you will admit that your point of view has been
like Merriam's--enthusiastically optimistic. You have encountered
difficulties, but you have never admitted for a moment that they
might in the end prove insurmountable. Pardon me--let me finish, if
you please. I'm not criticizing your optimism; it is a fine thing in
a young man. Without it this old world of ours would too often stand
still and merely mark time. But there are crises, like the present,
when the older and cooler heads are needed. You stand at the parting
of the ways, Mr. Stannard. If you are the narrow technician, seeing
success only in pushing your project to completion at any or all costs,
well and good--we shall have to suffer. But if you are broad enough to
consider the ultimate good of all concerned--"

"One moment," Stannard interposed, striving once more to reassert
himself. "You are putting this up to me as if I were the whole thing."

"You are, in a sense," was the calm rejoinder. "As I have said,
you are the one man who can convince the Merriam management of the
inadvisability of continuing this losing fight against Nature in
Buckskin Mountain."

Stannard gasped, and his heart skipped a beat.

"You mean--you mean that we ought to lie down on the job?--throw up
our hands after we've spent millions on a betterment that will be
absolutely worthless unless we finish it?" he stammered.

Again the banker-director waved the clay pipe in gentle deprecation.

"There is your one-sided point of view again," he asserted. "You can
see the loss which would accrue from an abandonment of your work, but
you fail to see the greater loss in the shrinkage of values which will
certainly follow these panicky reports that are already in the air."

The young Missourian turned to the drawing-table and propped his head
in his hands. Somewhere in this specious argument there was a false
note; he knew it--felt it in every fiber of him. But he could not find
it; he could only grope blindly for it.

"Have patience with me a little longer," he begged, finally. "I can't
see, for the life of me, what difference it will make whether we go
ahead and fail, or stop and fail."

This time the smile on the Sahara face was leniently superior.

"That workingman's point of view of yours is still getting in the way,
Mr. Stannard. I wonder if you would consent to an experiment aimed at
its removal?"

"A surgical operation?" suggested Stannard, catching desperately at the
straw of humor.

Silas Westervelt drew himself up to the desk and took a fat collection
of papers and envelopes, letters, blanks and other matters, from his
pocket. Then, tapping the papers gently with the stem of the pipe, "Let
us try an experiment, calling it a laboratory test, if you please. I
am a heavy stockholder in G. L. & P. A shrinkage of say ten dollars
a share from the present market price would cost me something over a
million dollars. Very good. I am a business man, Mr. Stannard, and the
good business man never hesitates to spend one dollar to save ten. That
is a fair statement?"

"Perfectly."

"Very well; let us say that this ten per cent salvage fund can be
spent most judiciously in buying an enlightened point of view for the
person who controls the situation. We might put it upon the basis
of an expense account; money spent for the purpose of obtaining
an expert and unbiased opinion. Now then, just to illustrate my
point. Assuming the need, the good business man would search for
the readiest expedient"--the banker was running through his pocket
papers, suiting the action to the word--"and having found it"--he had
drawn out and unfolded a stiff sheet of parchment paper, green-backed
and gilt-lettered, and was writing rapidly on the back of it with
Stannard's desk pen--"and having found it, he would promptly make his
salvage investment something like this."

Stannard took the freshly blotted square of cunningly engraved
bank-note parchment merely because it was thrust upon him. It was a
certificate for one thousand shares of preferred stock of the G. L. &
P. Railway Company, made out in the name of Silas Westervelt. On the
back the banker had filled in the blank transfer to Claiborne Stannard.

"I don't see the point," Stannard said bluntly, returning the
certificate.

"Don't you?" was the suave query. "For the purposes of the experiment
in changing viewpoints, Mr. Stannard, we will say that you are now no
longer 'a number on the pay-roll,' as you phrased it a few minutes
ago. You are the owner in fee simple of one thousand shares of G. L.
& P. common which, at the market, is worth something over one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, and your opinion is not now biased by
the workingman's point of view. In other words, you, have become
an investor whose interest as a stockholder is more important than
his interest as a salaried employé of the company. The constructing
engineer wishes to complete his undertaking; but the stockholder knows
that a raid on his securities will mean the loss, overnight, so to
speak, of more money than the engineer could earn in a goodly number of
years."

Again Stannard propped his head in his hands and frowned thoughtfully
down upon Eddie Brant's exquisitely drawn map of the loop line
thumb-tacked upon the drawing-board. Taking Mr. Westervelt's
object-lesson merely as a clever hypothesis, intended only as an
illustration of the point in question, its effect was still subtly
potent. Almost before he knew it, the young construction chief was
drifting. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, added to his modest
patrimony in the Ozarks, would make him a small capitalist, and with
such a start the vista of possibilities widened magically. As if
reading his inmost thoughts the banker went on smoothly.

"Your engineer, who has now become a capitalist, is concerned, not only
about the value of his securities, but also about the future which is
bound up in them. He is young and able. If he is so fortunate as to
have a friendly adviser or two he can nurse his little capital, turning
and multiplying it until he, too, has become a power in the land. There
is practically no limit to what a courageous young man, with a fair
knowledge of the world and of other men, can accomplish with a working
capital of, say, one hundred thousand dollars, which would be the
present borrowing value of this bit of paper. Coming suddenly into the
possession of the means, a young man of intelligence and perspicacity
would see new worlds opening out before him. He would--"

The young Missourian wheeled quickly upon the gray clothed figure in
the desk chair.

"Let's get back to earth again, Mr. Westervelt," he said shortly. "Your
object-lesson may stand for what it is worth as an illustration. I can
see the other side now, as I couldn't a few minutes ago. What do you
want me to do?"

"Only what your own good judgment--your later judgment--tells you what
you ought to do. You will consider the best good, in the broader sense,
of the company in which you have, for the past few minutes, been a part
owner. You will--"

"Specifically, I mean," Stannard broke in. "Admitting for the sake of
the argument, that I am taking the broader point of view, what can I
do? Failure is failure, isn't it? What difference will it make to the
market whether we stop voluntarily or are forced to stop?"

"If we handle it skilfully, it will make all the difference in the
world. Suppose you wire Merriam that it is your honest conviction that
the prosecution of the Cut-off project, and the construction of the
tunnel under these unforeseen adverse conditions which will so greatly
increase its cost, will not be a paying investment for the company?
Suppose you add that you understand the tunnel rights and site can be
disposed of to a good advantage to another company, and that you advise
the sale?"

"_What!_" Stannard tried to keep from shouting the demand, but the
effort was a failure.

The dry-faced gentleman in the desk chair resumed his pipe for a final
whiff.

"I wouldn't have you quote me as your authority, of course. But as
a banker in touch with all these things, I happen to know that such
overtures have been made to our Executive Committee in New York.
There is no need for half confidences between us, Mr. Stannard. The
Overland Northern is not spending money like water merely to build
a local line to the Southern Buckskin mining camps. It is searching
for a pass through the mountains by which it can eventually build on
to the southern Pacific Coast. Why should we not take advantage of
its necessity and recoup some portion of our loss by the sale of the
tunnel?"

The thing was too big to be grasped in its entirety at the mere
hearing of the words. Stannard slipped from his stool and stood with
folded arms, staring unseeingly through the small square window over
the desk at the busy scene in the construction yard. Since his rôle
had hitherto been that of a fighting field captain, the idea of
compromising with the enemy sent the blood to his brain and set a small
war-pulse hammering insistently on the edge of his square jaw. While
the tumultuous wave of militancy was still submerging him, the man of
money went on purringly.

"You are doubtless wondering why we have arrived at this point this
morning,--you and I,--Mr. Stannard. Quite possibly you are asking
yourself why I have come so far out of my way to enlist the services of
a man on the firing line. There are several reasons. For one, I have
felt that something was due you as the originator of this project.
Under present industrial conditions capital too often ignores the
claims of exceptional ability in the working staff. Another reason was
less altruistic and more practical, and I have already stated it. John
P. Merriam will take your decision and advice as final." The great man
rose and laid the borrowed pipe carefully aside. "You'll need a little
time to think about it, of course. I can understand that it comes to
you as a bolt from the blue. Just wire Merriam that you will give him
particulars in a day or two, and let it rest at that for the present."

When Stannard broke his absent-minded eye-hold upon the yard
activities, he was alone in the bare working-room. Dropping into
the chair so recently vacated by the banker-director, he reached
mechanically for the roll of estimates. In the act something crackled
stiffly under his hand and a folded paper fell to the floor. He stooped
to pick it up, and sat staring at it with another tumultuous wave of
mingled emotions overwhelming him. The paper was the transferred stock
certificate.




XII

THE ROOT OF EVIL


Austin Vallory, in answering Stannard's question about the stay-behinds
in the _Egeria_, had craftily omitted any mention of Miss Westervelt.
None the less, her uncle's prediction of the night before had been
verified; she had been unable to go, and the middle of the forenoon
following the departure of the bear hunters found an exceedingly
discontented young woman yawning over a book on the recessed
observation platform of the private car.

Over in the yard the day crews were shifting the material trains
back and forth, smashing the silence of the windless autumn day with
stertorous locomotive snortings and the crashings of drawbars. In the
interval when the trains were out of the way, the discontented one
could look across to the shacks and tents of the great camp, deserted
now by all save the cooks and the commissary clerks. Farther away,
a thickly clustering gang of trackmen was laying the rails of a new
siding, and the ringing blows of the spike-mauls made cheerful music
when the train noises permitted them to be heard.

To her inner self, which was ever her closest confidante, Miss
Westervelt admitted that she was in a vile temper. Caring little or
nothing for the doubtful pleasure of the sham bear hunt, she had a
reason of her own for not wishing to be left behind. Though it was her
mental habit to name things accurately, she was content to let the
reason take the form of a huge distaste for solitude, and with Mrs.
Grantham dozing peacefully in the biggest wicker-chair planted solidly
in the middle of the open compartment, and her uncle and Vallory
invisible, Miss Anitra's solitude was a fact incontrovertible.

Some little time after she had finally abandoned the book as
impossible, she saw Stannard coming across the railroad yard, and
began, after the manner of her kind, to put a rod in pickle for the
young construction chief. He had treated her shamefully. It was two
full days since she had been hurt, and he had not thought it worth
while to walk across the tracks to ask about her. "Bear!" she said to
herself, and then again, "Bear, _Bear!_"

It was thus that Stannard's welcome was formulating itself when he
swung up to the deck of the adjacent flat-car and put a leg over the
brass railing of the _Egeria_. Because of Vallory's craft, he had
supposed, of course, that Anitra had gone with the others, and his
little shock of surprise leaving him defenseless for the moment, the
moment was instantly improved. Miss Westervelt looked up from the book
which she was not reading, with malice in her eye, to say inhospitably,
"If you are looking for Uncle Silas, you won't find him. He has gone
away."

"I'm looking for you, now that I know you're here," said Stannard,
drawing up a camp-stool and straight-way forgetting his errand, which
was to return the illustrative stock certificate left behind by the
banker in the headquarters office. "You don't mean to tell me that the
sore ankle has kept you from going with the others?"

"Much you care about the sore ankle," she retorted with the accent
resentful, and then: "In my part of the United States gentlemen take
off their hats under certain well understood conditions. Now then swear
at me, if you feel like it; I know that's what you're aching to do."

Stannard removed his worn cloth working-hat and stared into it
thoughtfully.

"I guess I needed that little slap," he remarked, with imperturbable
good-nature. "A man gets to be frightfully careless of the little
decencies, living a life like mine. And I owe you a lot of apologies
about that ankle, too. This is the first day I've been in camp for any
length of time since you were hurt. Isn't it getting better?"

It was; it was so nearly well that only Doctor Billy's prohibition kept
her quiet, but she wouldn't admit it.

"No; it's quite possible that I am going to be a cripple for life, and
it's all your fault. And you wouldn't even come over to the car to say
you were sorry!"

"But I have come; and if I could believe you mean what you say, 'sorry'
wouldn't be the word. Is it really serious?"

"I'm here," she asserted, "and all the others have gone off to have a
good time in the hills. Isn't that enough?"

"You wanted to go?" he asked.

"Why shouldn't I want to go? Didn't we come out here to hunt bears?"

"No," said Stannard shortly. "At least, that isn't your uncle's
purpose--unless you choose to call me a bear. He's been hunting me."

"Business?" she queried, a little less spitefully.

"Yes; business." And then, merely because he had reached a point at
which a listening ear had become a vital necessity: "He wants me to
discharge myself."

"Well?"--with carefully frozen disinterest--"why don't you do it? I
should think you would want to do it. What can you find attractive in
a life that makes you work night and day and wear old clothes and live
with your hat on, with only a lot of rough men under you to bully and
browbeat?"

"Surely, you don't mean that," he protested. In the other summer
which was gone and could never be recalled, she had been deliciously
enthusiastic over his choice of a profession; she had said it was so
free, so broadening, so lacking in temptation and all that.

"Why shouldn't I mean it?" she demanded. "What can you ever hope to
be or do in an environment like this? Will you ever see the time,
for example, when you can gather up a party of your friends and take
them in your own, or somebody else's, private car on a bear-hunting
expedition of two or three thousand miles?"

"Oh; if it's money you mean," he began.

"Of course it's money. What else is there worth living for in such a
world as this?" She made herself look very austere and complacently
mercenary lying back in the small wicker easy-chair with the lame foot
on a hassock, and there was a scornful curve to the pretty lips that
sent the honest workman's blood climbing in a dull flush to deepen the
sunburn on Stannard's hard-muscled face.

"Excuse me," he said. "Don't you know, I really thought you looked at
it the other way around--a year ago last summer."

"Maybe I did--then. I can't be held accountable for what I may have
said so long ago as that."

"No, of course not," he agreed. "I tried to tell myself then that it
was only a fad--that is, that you were only----"

"That I was talking merely because I was so charmed and delighted to
listen to the sound of my own voice," she broke in flippantly. "But
I'm savagely in earnest now. How any man with ambitions above those
of the people over yonder who are nailing down those rails can be
content to--but what is the use of talking about it? Some day, when
that wonderful second choice of yours has been discovered, I suppose
you will settle down to love in a cottage--or a grade shanty--and never
know what you are missing."

"Does it really mean that much?--the money?" he questioned.

"Doesn't it mean everything on earth that is worth while?" she flashed
back.

"In times past I have been glad to believe that it didn't."

"But now you have changed your mind?"

He smiled sourly.

"I have been listening to some good advice. First it was Vallory's;
then it was your uncle's; and now it is yours."

"Certainly," she nodded, with an air of complete conviction. "Everybody
will advise you to get money--honestly if you can; the other way, if
you must."

He looked away to the distant slope of the Buckskin, where the graders
were making a thin line of the yellow clay show through the trees on
the side-cutting of the approach.

"I have just been given my chance," he announced gravely. "If I choose
to take it, I have your uncle's word for it that I can be a rich man in
a few years."

"If you choose to take it?" she repeated, with a lift of the wilful
chin. "You don't mean to say that you are hesitating!"

"If I am, it is only because some of those old beliefs I spoke of are
dying rather hard." "But if Uncle Silas pointed the way for you----"

"I know what you would say," he interposed hastily. "It's honest
enough, as honesty goes nowadays--business honesty, at least. More than
that, it has been made to appear that I shall be doing the man who has
been my strongest friend a service--only I'm afraid he may not see it
in exactly that light."

"You are rich enough even now to afford the other conscience--the
business conscience--aren't you?" She smiled across at him so sweetly
at this that he forgot the social barriers--or most of them; forgot,
also, his own clean code of the single standard for all men under
all conditions. Then she went on. "For the young man of to-day there
are two roads to fortune; to make money, or to marry it. Too much
conscience is a handicap in either race, isn't it?"

He looked at her curiously.

"I wonder how old you are," he said reflectively.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you know too much."

"I haven't had anything to do but to learn. There are only two kinds of
men in the world--infants and the others."

"And you think I am one of the infants, and that it is time I was
growing up?"

Her shoulders went up in a small shrug of indifference real or most
artfully simulated.

"You want money, don't you? Not just a little, but a great deal. If you
do, you mustn't look too closely at the means of getting it. That is
the way of the world. Of course, you might marry it; that is the easy
way. But Miss Money-Bags might not be even the second choice, and that
would be sad."

"I wish I knew how much in earnest you are," he broke out half
impatiently. "Do you really believe that a man would be justified in
throwing a lot of half-way decent ideals overboard for the sake of
stuffing his bank account? I can do it, you know. As I have said, the
chance has been given me within the last hour."

"By Uncle Silas, you said, didn't you?"

He made the sign of assent.

"He doesn't ask you to knock anybody down or rob a bank or anything of
that sort, does he?" she asked.

"No; he merely asks me to turn my back upon a bunch of things that I
have been taught to believe were more or less necessary in the make-up
of an honest man."

"That is your class conscience again, isn't it? If you haven't the
courage, the other way is still open; you can always marry the money,
you know. Some men will tell you that it's much safer than to get down
among the animals and fight for it."

The dull flush had crept up under Stannard's suntan until it was
settling under his eyes and making them uncomfortably hot.

"Say, little girl," he burst out, breaking all the conventions at a
single blow, "that's the sore spot, and you've hammered on it until it
hurts! Do you remember what you made me tell you the other night over
yonder in the headquarters shack--about the 'one altogether lovely,' as
you called her?"

"Yes, I can remember that far back."

"Well, it was her money that made the notion only a pipe-dream for me.
She belongs to another world, but the chief difference between her
world and mine is the money and what it stands for."

Anitra's lip-curl this time was of pure amusement.

"And you have a kind of hazy idea that you might bridge this terrible
gap by getting rich yourself?" she queried, laughing at him. "It isn't
in the least hazy," he countered.

"Perhaps the money--your money--wouldn't make so much difference to
her, after all," she suggested.

"I think enough of her to believe it wouldn't. But it would make a lot
of difference to me."

"Doc Billy doesn't feel that way," she remarked. "If he has lost any
self-respect, it would take a chemical analysis to discover it. And
really, I believe he loves Dolly just as much as he would if she had
only pennies instead of millions."

"Of course he does," was the prompt agreement. "Kitts is a man in every
inch of him, and his wife, if her face doesn't belie her, is second
cousin to an angel. But that is a combination that doesn't happen more
than once in a blue moon."

"Money is a great comfort; I'm very sure I should never have the
courage to give mine up," said the young woman in the wicker chair,
half absently and with seeming irrelevance. Then she added: "If I cared
particularly about the things that you and Doc Billy and Dolly care
for, I might have to give it up some day."

"Why might you?" Stannard asked quickly.

"Because I'm so badly spoiled that I can't be trusted. I am a--a ward
in chancery: is that what you call it when one has to have a guardian?"

"I don't understand," said Stannard.

"I didn't suppose you would," she returned coolly. "For further
particulars you may consider yourself referred to Uncle Silas. How is
your work going on?"

"My own part of it is marking time just at this moment," he said,
rising to go, with a half disappointed feeling that she was dismissing
him. "You say your uncle is not in the car?"

"No; he went away with Mr. Vallory just before you came. They walked
down the track that way"--pointing toward the desert entrance to the
Travois.

The young Missourian hung reluctantly upon his leave-taking. "I'm sorry
you were not able to go to the hills with the others," he said, going
back to the safer topic.

"So am I," was the prompt return. "Perhaps I may be able to go
to-morrow or next day. Doc Billy said something about driving back in
one of the buckboards. It's dreadfully lonesome here, and I've been
promising myself all along that I was going to learn to ride a bucking
bronco before I go home."

Stannard had swung himself over the platform railing, but still he did
not go.

"You like excitement?" he inquired.

"It is the breath of my life," she told him calmly.

"Yesterday there seemed to be a fair prospect of your seeing enough of
it right here in the Travois. Do you see that little black smudge away
out yonder on the desert horizon?"

"Yes: I've been watching it all morning; what is it?"

"It is the advance guard of another railroad, building at the rate of
several miles a day to reach this valley. It has been a race, and I
had the good luck to beat the other fellow by the few weeks we needed.
In the natural order of things there was a scrap in prospect. We are
building pretty nearly on the other railroad's right-of-way in Standing
Stone Canyon."

"You're putting it all in the past tense. Won't there be any fight now?"

He was looking away toward the slope on high Buckskin again when he
said: "Not if I conclude to take a chance in the get-rich-quick game.
That was what your uncle came out here for--to stop the fight and to
give me my chance." "And this chance--what does it involve?" She asked
it eagerly.

"I have told you in part. As a preliminary, it means the giving up of
all this"--his arm-sweep included camp and yard, high-mountain gash and
the yellow clay trail among the firs on distant Buckskin.

"But the reward is proportionately great," she cut in.

"The reward is--money. I shall need it, too, for when the commercial
transaction is closed, and I have played my part, I shall most probably
never be given a chance to build another railroad."

"You don't care? You want money more than anything else, don't you?"

"I should be something more or less than human if I didn't care. But
I shall be only yielding to the inevitable. With or without me the
commercial gods will win out; and Vallory says, and your uncle says,
and now you have said, in effect, that I shall be foolish if I don't
make a running jump and get over on the money side."

"Oh, very foolish, indeed!" she protested, with the brown eyes opened
wide. "You should take all you can get and expect more. Only you
mustn't deceive yourself--about the motive, you know. In the back part
of your brain you are trying to make yourself believe that it's for her
sake--the dream-girl's; that the money will fill up the chasm so that
you can safely cross it to her. You mustn't do that."

"Why mustn't I?"

"In the first place, because it isn't true. You are like other men, and
you want the chance Uncle Silas will give you because you want it, and
that's enough."

"And in the second place?" he queried.

"In the second place you may be disappointed. Dream-girls are always
disappointing. The one you've been dreaming about may not want you at
all when you come with money in your hand. That won't matter, though;
there are plenty of others. Gladys, for example. You are really missing
something by not cultivating Gladys. She is so adaptable. Any little
sudden change of front you might wish to make, overnight----"

"Now you are joshing me, and I must go to work," he broke in laughing.
"I hope your ankle will be well enough to let you do what you want to
do by to-morrow or next day. Good-by."

"Good-by, Mr. Get-Rich-Quick Stannard!" she called to him, as he
dropped from the steel-flat. "'Put money in thy purse and all men--and
most women--will speak well of thee.' And don't try too hard to make
yourself believe it's purely for the sake of the dream-person--it
isn't, you know."

Two small results, unmarked of any outsider, came of this small
bickering clash on the observation platform of the _Egeria_ in the dead
calm of the autumn morning. Stannard, plodding across to his office to
finish the checking of the estimate sheets, still had the transferred
stock certificate in his pocket, though he might easily have left the
sealed envelope containing it with Anitra for delivery to her uncle on
his return.

This was one result, and the other was quite as inexplicable. After
Stannard had disappeared among the shifting material trains, the young
woman in the platform wicker-chair stared at the smoky blur on the
distant desert horizon until the brown eyes, overstrained, one would
say, filled with a quick rush of tears. Then she put her face in her
hands, and gave way to a sudden tempest of emotion that shook her like
the grasp of a rough hand reaching out of the calm autumn-morning
immensities.




XIII

BALANCING


The checking of the estimates finished, Stannard put on his coat and
set out to walk up the grade to see what progress the quarrymen were
making in the big rock-cutting in the canyon; this though it was near
enough dinner-time to warrant a postponement of the trip if he had been
able to put his mind upon anything so commonplace as the daily camp
routine.

As he swung along over the unsurfaced track and came upon Gallagher
and his men busily lining it up; saw this and heard the shoutings of
the grade gangs on the opposite mountain dominated now and then by
the hoarse rumble of the dynamite or the rapid-fire clatter of the
air-drills; it seemed incredible that within a few days all these
strenuous activities might stop as a man stops when he is stricken down
in the full flush of life.

The crude waste of it was appalling. Once before, while he had been
serving his engineering apprenticeship in the South, he had seen a
paralleling line built at a cost of millions, only to be abandoned
when it was ready for the steel; and the wasted labor still appealed
to him as the memory of a crime. And now he was called upon to be the
chief factor in a similar tragedy of futility. Surely something was
wrong when industrial or financial ends could be reached only through
such reckless squanderings of human toil and effort. Measured by any
standard, the world must be the poorer for the misdirected effort.

In the depressive undertow of this thought, the young engineer was glad
that Westervelt had taken pains to show him that there was another side
to the problem. How much the stiff bit of stock paper crackling in his
pocket as he walked had to do with the broadened point of view, he did
not suspect, as yet. None the less, in the endeavor to bring himself to
some point of decision and action, he was already beginning to find it
increasingly impossible to ignore the effect of the decision upon his
own future.

He had passed the farthest outposts of Gallagher's track-lining gang,
and was well on his way up the canyon to the rock-cutting, before the
banker's real meaning smashed in upon the train of thought, stopping
him as suddenly as if the realization had been a blow from an invisible
fist. In an illuminating flash he understood that the stock transfer
had not been merely an illustration; it was a bribe, premeditated and
prepared for. That was why Westervelt had left the certificate on the
desk at his departure.

At first the young Missourian was conscious only of a sharp attack
of moral nausea. Stumbling on over the cross-ties in the grip of the
soul-sickness, he could think of nothing but the gross indignity which
had been put upon him. But little by little the huge temptation fought
its way to the front and the flood tide of repulsion began to subside.

By what modern standard would he be condemned if the only wrong lay in
the mere fact that in the process of readjustment some small portion of
the reward fell to him? In a twinkling he saw the situation precisely
as the banker had intended he should see it. The Overland Northern
would make the fight for the right-of-way, and winning or losing, the
result in the real battle-field--that of the Stock Exchange--would be
the same. War would be declared upon the G. L. & P. securities, and
President Merriam's telegram was a sufficient indication that the war
would be disastrous.

At the same time, Stannard knew well the temper of the man who had
made the Great Lakes & Pacific a financial possibility after it had
been for years a plaything of the Street. He would fight to the
last gasp, if only for the reason that his sheerest strength lay in
fighting. That the battle would be a losing one for the younger and
weaker line Stannard could not doubt. The strength and resources of its
great competitor on the north were too well known to admit the factor
of uncertainty. Twenty-four hours earlier, Stannard would not have
admitted this; but now he saw, or thought he saw, more clearly.

Mixed with the purely selfish promptings of the moment there was
also another motive; his plain duty to Merriam which the banker had
not failed to emphasize. Disaster to the G. L. & P. meant still more
crushing disaster for the Merriam management. The young engineer had a
very clear-sighted view of what would befall him professionally if he
should take the part of the soldier in the ranks who turns traitor for
the sake of saving his commanding officer. Put in possession of all the
facts, Mr. Merriam might decline to be "saved" in any such arbitrary
way, but did that make it any less necessary that the salvage should be
effected?

Stannard had not come to any real weighing of the purely ethical
question by the time he reached the great rock-cutting; or rather, he
had come to it and had dismissed it with the half-impatient and wholly
cynical conclusion that the standard of a past generation could not
be applied to the problems of the present. He was well assured that,
potentially, if not actually, Anitra Westervelt understood his dilemma,
and had she not urged him to put money in his purse?

Just beyond the rock-cutting, where the clatter of the air-drills was
a little less than deafening, he met Roddy walking the line from the
eastern tunnel approach. The assistant's report of the situation at
the west end was encouraging. There had been no more trouble with the
hard-rock men, and Markley had caught his stride again and was pushing
the drift at top speed.

"All of which goes to show that we got the trouble-makers in that
last sift-out," said Roddy, with a snap of the baby-blue eyes and the
hardening of the bad jaw. "That twenty-four-hour strike was about the
best thing that could have happened to us."

Stannard stood dumb before the honest little man whose heart and soul
were in the pushing of the great job. How was he to tell Roddy that all
this fine enthusiasm was presently to be blown out like a candle in a
gust of wind?

"Markley's all right," he commented. "He can put more enthusiasm into
a gang of gophers than any man I've ever known. Did you see Pearson as
you came by?"

The assistant nodded. "Yes; and he gave me a word for you. Greer's men
are in the valley. Pearson saw them a little while ago through his
field-glass. They are running a line on the north side of the river at
the foot of Rock Face. That's what made me walk down the grade. I took
the chance of picking you up on the way."

"Well?" said the chief; "that is what we've been expecting, isn't it?"
"Yes; I suppose so. But I thought you'd like to know."

"I found out last night," was the sober rejoinder. "Two of Greer's
advance men were feeling their way across the head of the Travois to a
connection with the old survey in the canyon."

"In the dark?" queried Roddy.

"Yes; they were using a couple of flash-lights. That's how I came to
discover them."

"I like the nerve of it!" rasped the small fighting man. And then:
"There'll be a crossing fight first, I suppose. Where do they hit us?"

"At the base of the Standing Stone. I don't know their levels as they
have decided upon them now, but the old preliminary survey carries
their line about eight feet above ours at the crossing point."

"That won't do," said Roddy quickly. "They'll have to raise or lower."

"Yes; or make us raise or lower."

"Not by a damned sight! We got there first!" was the militant retort.
"I have a hundred and fifty perfectly good Winchester rifles hidden
away in the commissary, and every last one of them says that we don't
move our grade an inch!"

Stannard was shaking his head.

"We can't fight, Jacksie, if it comes to a show-down," he objected
soberly. "We might make a bluff at it, but it wouldn't do any good."

"Why wouldn't it?"

"Some time--a little later on--I'll tell you why it wouldn't."

"Tell me now, Clay. I've just had a snack out of Pearson's dinner
basket, and I can stand it now as well as I ever can. Have you been
'seeing things'?"

Stannard sat down on a stone beside the grade and pulled out his pipe.
"You've got to know it sooner or later, Jackson, and I guess there
isn't any reason why you shouldn't know it now," he said slowly. Then
he told the story of the banker's visit, suppressing nothing save the
incident of the stock transfer.

Roddy was walking back and forth, three steps and a turn, before the
story was concluded; and at the end of it he stopped short to say: "I
hope you told him to go straight to the devil, Clay."

"I don't deny that I wanted to at first. It was a facer. You can see
my position. If Mr. Westervelt was telling the truth--and there isn't
much reason to doubt that part of it--we are in a pretty deep hole. I
know, and you know, that Greer can make a spiteful fight here in the
canyon--can probably keep us from reaching the tunnel this fall. If he
succeeds in doing that, we won't have any tunnel by spring."

"Yes; but my God, Clay, look at the alternative for a minute! If you
tell Mr. Merriam that the project is a failure he'll believe you, and
look where it leaves you! You'll be a broken man!"

"Sure enough; but isn't it my duty to tell him anyway?--in common
justice to him and his management?"

"Unquestionably," snapped the assistant, "if you've lost your fighting
nerve. No man in this world ever went into a scrap with the idea that
he was going to be licked and failed to get what was coming to him.
Westervelt's hypnotized you, that's all there is to it--just plain
hypnotized you!"

"No; he has simply made me see that my point of view, which is yours
and every workingman's, doesn't reach far enough. A railroad is
primarily a money-making undertaking. I'm just as good a fighting man
as I was yesterday, Jackson--plus a little more common sense."

Roddy stooped down and picked up a boulder to hurl it spitefully into
the roaring flood of the Standing Stone. Then he whirled short upon his
chief.

"You haven't any more use for me, Clay. My resignation takes effect
to-night."

"Oh, hold on, Jacksie; don't fly off at a tangent that way. I haven't
made up my mind yet just what I shall do. I've wired Mr. Merriam in
reply to his telegram of this morning telling him that I'll give him
full particulars a little later."

"No; you haven't made up your mind; but you've shown me pretty clearly
how you're going to make it up," was the gloomy retort. Then, mad anger
blinding him, he said the thing that leaped full-grown into his brain
at the instant: "How much is Westervelt going to give you for doing
this, Clay?"

Stannard would have given worlds for the privilege of cramming a hot
denial down the little man's throat. But he had sold his birthright
and the mess of pottage was even then crumpling in the pocket of his
working coat.

"There was no bribe, Jacksie," he declared, telling the first lie in
what bade fair to become an endless series of lies and equivocations.
"But I have a right to demand that I and the men of my staff shall
be taken care of. We'll all lose out together, and Mr. Westervelt
understands that it wouldn't be fair to let us bear the brunt of it."

"I thought so!" gritted the little man; which was also a lie because
the charge had been wholly unpremeditated. "You can count me out on
that, too. I don't take any man's blood money." Then he added the last
straw of insult: "I take it you are to marry the girl after it's all
over and done with."

Stannard got up off the rock slowly, but his eyes were blazing.

"Jacksie, you're forty pounds lighter than I am, and I can't beat you
up as I ought to. But you've got to take that back!"

Roddy stood up to the gigantic young chief like a fighting bantam. "I
will take it back if you'll say that you haven't seen the girl and
talked to her."

Stannard turned and walked away. The river was perilously handy and
the temptation to fling Roddy into it was growing too strong to be
resisted. When he came back it was to say in effect what Westervelt had
said to him.

"I'm going to forget everything you've said, Jacksie; and ask you to
take a little time to think it over." Then, in an overwhelming rush of
pure manliness: "I can't afford to lose your friendship, Jackson. We've
stood shoulder to shoulder on this job, and I know you to the marrow.
Between two men, that means a whole lot more than either one of them
can put into words. Don't you know it?"

Roddy stooped and heaved another stone into the river, its hollow
splash simulating a groan.

"I'm so mad I can't see straight, Clay," he confessed; "but when I get
cooled off I know I shan't be able to see this thing your way. Just the
same, I'm sorry I said what I did about the girl." Then suddenly: "How
soon have you got to make up your mind?"

"There was no time set, but in the nature of things I can't hold off
very long. Go on down to camp and get out your fishing tackle. That'll
give you a clearer point of view if anything will. I'm going to walk
the grade up to the tunnel." And so they parted. It was black dark
that evening before the young chief, who was far behind the returning
day-shift, reached the camp and took his place at table in the deserted
mess shack. The cook brought in a platter of fine mountain trout by
which token Stannard knew that Roddy had taken his advice. While he was
eating, the blue-eyed assistant came in, smoking his pipe.

"Feeling any better?" asked the Missourian.

"I'm feeling as if I had either been to a funeral or was just going to
one," said Roddy; and then: "Those fish came out of the river a little
below the bend. Greer has had a pioneer gang at work on the other bank
all afternoon. Murtrie, one of his instrument men, waded across and
chinned with me. I used to know him a little up in Montana."

"Well?" Stannard encouraged.

"Greer's graders will reach the Travois by to-morrow night. He's laying
rails with a machine. What you do, you've got to do mighty suddenly,
Clay. You can put off everything but the fight with Greer. I can tell
you right here and now that that won't wait. And if you lose the first
shot, you lose the game." The little man got up and lounged to the
door, turning on the threshold to add: "If you fight, I'm with you to
the finish; but if you don't, what I said up in the canyon goes as it
lies--I'll take my time-check."

"You'll wait till you get it, won't you?" Stannard growled
good-naturedly, striving to re-establish the _status quo ante bellum_.
"Got anything else on your mind?"

"Yes; one little thing. You didn't tell me the whole truth about the
flash-light surveying party last night. Murtrie says you beat up a
couple of their men scandalously. Also, he tells me there is a warrant
out for you for assault and battery." Stannard laughed. "Does Greer
tote a justice of the peace along in his outfit, too?"

"Murtrie says he does better than that," was the quiet reply. "He has
the sheriff of Lodge Butte County and half a dozen deputies on his
pay-roll."

"The sheriff of Lodge Butte County may go chase himself," said the
Missourian shortly, and he was so little disturbed by the added item of
news that he picked the bones of three more of the trout after Roddy
had left him.




XIV

THE CONSPIRATORS


In the night following the flawless autumn day which Miss Westervelt
had found so tiresome, the weather changed, with the wind swinging to
the west to blow cloud-streamers over the crest of the Buckskin, and
with a frosty tang in the early morning air to give back the clamor and
clang of the railroad building industries in echoes clean cut and bell
clear.

An hour beyond the breakfast for four in the _Egeria_, which was two
hours and better past the turn-out of the day-shifts in Camp Travois, a
buckboard drawn by a pair of grasshopper-headed broncos was making its
way down the northern gulch at the head of Rock Face toward a ford in
the shallows of the Standing Stone.

Doctor William Pangborn Kitts, who could turn his highly educated
surgeon hand to anything from tinkering a dollar watch to setting
a compound comminuted fracture of a crushed tibia, was driving the
broncos, and his seatmate in the buckboard was the round-bodied broker.

"Careful, Doc, careful," warned Padgett, when one wheel of the frontier
vehicle climbed a boulder as big as a water barrel. "I know you'd like
to have a chance to put me in splints, but I'm pretty well satisfied
with my bones just as they are."

"You couldn't break a bone if you should try," laughed the breezy young
doctor. "You're too well cushioned. What I'm waiting for is a chance to
sew you up after the first of the grizzlies has clawed a few slits in
you."

Padgett snapped his cuff-button and bared a forearm as round and smooth
as an infant's save for a striping of ghastly white scars running from
elbow to wrist.

"You've been joshing me long enough. If I tell you that a grizzly did
that up in the Selkirks----"

Kitts took a chance of driving with one hand while he examined the
scarred arm.

"Worst job of suturing I ever saw," was his verdict; "looks as
if somebody might have sewn 'em up with a sailor's needle and
pack-thread." Then: "I've, never doubted your bear-hunting stories,
Padgett--I've merely envied you. Which brings on more talk: are we
going to find any bears in the Teton foot-hills?"

The broker grinned broadly.

"You're having a good time, aren't you? A good-looking young fellow
like you wouldn't want to get all mussed up in the middle of his
honeymoon. And even Carroll admits that the Teton ranch-house is an
improvement on a railroad construction yard."

"Carroll's a joke," Kitts said, "and so is the Englishman. What keeps
me guessing is why Mr. Westervelt brought them along--why he brought
anybody but you and Vallory."

Padgett ignored the tentative bid for better information concerning Mr.
Westervelt's object.

"Are you going to take Anitra back with you?" he asked.

"Can't, unless I leave you behind."

"You'll get yourself disliked if you don't take her," laughed the
broker; adding: "You can't blame her very much. It's pretty slow
business for her, with only Mrs. Grantham and her uncle to help her
wear out the time." "And Vallory," the doctor put in.

"Mr. Vallory doesn't count; no man counts much with a young woman after
he has proposed two or three times and been turned down."

"So?" said Kitts. "I hadn't thought of Vallory as a marrying man.
Just the same, I admire Anitra's good taste. Vallory's all right, but
he's got too much sour dough in his cosmos. Line him up beside a man
like--well, like young Stannard, for example, and he doesn't stack very
high."

"Yet they have one thing in common--Stannard and Vallory; they both
need money," Padgett qualified sagely.

The broncos were picking their way through the shallows of the ford,
and a little later the buckboard went bouncing over the yard tracks to
be drawn up beside the _Egeria_. One of Crumley's ranchmen was waiting
to take the team, and Kitts gave the return order for the middle of the
afternoon, the delay hingeing upon Padgett's request for time in which
to wire his New York office and get a reply.

In strict keeping with his _métier_, which was athletic, Kitts swung
himself in a high vault to the observation platform where Mrs. Grantham
was sniffing the keen morning air and trying to make herself believe
that she liked it. Left to his own devices, Padgett went to the other
end of the car and had himself admitted by the porter. Silas Westervelt
was alone in his state-room when the broker entered.

"It's rather early in the game for me to show up, but Kitts was coming
anyway, so I took a chance," was the way in which the broker accounted
for his presence. Then he sat down and went rapidly over the file of
wire correspondence which the magnate gave him without comment. With
the reading of the latest of the messages, Padgett nodded briskly.

"It's coming along all right," he approved. "We've got 'em on the run,
and all we need to do now is to keep 'em going. Has Stannard driven his
little nail in the wall yet?"

"Apparently not--from those telegrams," said the banker.

"You've put it up to him?" Padgett questioned, and Westervelt made the
sign of assent.

"Yesterday morning, shortly after you left," he replied, timing the
event for the broker. "I didn't hurry him because his nail-driving will
serve a better purpose if it is delayed a little."

"He'll fall for it?"

"I think so. The only danger lies in the fact that he may talk too much
over the wires to Merriam before he gets around to the saying of the
thing he is paid to say."

"That point ought to be covered carefully," Padgett advised.

"It is fairly well covered. Vallory has taken care of the operator, and
there is only one telegraph office. Stannard has sent but one message,
thus far, and I have a copy of it. It is worded strictly in accordance
with my suggestion made to him in the talk yesterday morning--a
stand-off."

"Cost much?" queried the round-bodied one with a lift of the reddish
brown eyebrows.

The banker-director's hard-bitted smile came and went like a flash of
heat lightning on a summer night.

"I have never believed in the policy of sending a boy to mill, Padgett."

"You made it in stock?"

The magnate inclined his head. "A little later it may be necessary for
you to try to buy it back. He knows the market quotation, and if you
should go to him with a premium bid, and a story that you are sweeping
the corners to help out a customer who has gone short on G. L. & P., it
might tip the balance."

"Then you're not altogether sure of him?"

"My dear Padgett, you haven't been buying and selling in the Street all
these years without learning that you are never sure of anything until
you have it right here"--holding up a thumb and fore-finger tightly
pinched together. "Stannard is human and he wants money. That is a
majority vote in most cases; but there are exceptions enough to warrant
a reasonable doubt."

"You say he wants money: do you mean just the general human hunger, or
a particular case of individual famine?"

This time Mr. Westervelt's smile was wintry.

"I suspect Stannard's realization of his lack dates back to a year ago
last summer, at which time he had the good or the ill-luck, as you
choose to look at it, to meet a certain young woman whose money--among
other things--put her rather hopelessly out of his reach."

Padgett jerked his round head in a one-sided nod, which was his way of
expressing complete comprehension.

"And the young woman?" he said; "she was disposed to be a little
romantic, too?"

"Up to a week ago I thought not. Now, however, I am not quite so
certain, Padgett."

The broker set elbow to knee and nursed his double chin in the palm of
one hand, as a man working out the result of a difficult equation.

"If you think there is any doubt about swinging Stannard into line on
the business basis, it occurs to me that you are missing your one best
bet," he offered at length.

Silas Westervelt did not pretend to misunderstand.

"Apart from the fact that it is never safe to mix women and business,
Adam, I'm not quite temerarious enough to take the risk in the present
instance. You know enough of our family affairs to gather my meaning?"

"I know that your brother David left a will making you his daughter's
guardian and the trustee for the administration of his estate," the
broker admitted.

"He did; and there was a proviso in the will which is not so generally
known. Anitra has always been a spoiled child, wilful and headstrong
to a degree rare even in this age of emancipated young persons. David
lived in constant fear that she would make an unfitting marriage. He
left his property in trust, with the provision that if Anitra married
without my consent before her twenty-fifth birthday the bulk of the
money should go to certain specified charities."

Padgett made a wry face.

"I don't envy you," he commented shortly.

"It has led to much bickering and ill-feeling, I regret to say,"
was the guardian's admission. "Anitra has had a number of excellent
opportunities, any one of which I could have approved most heartily;
but precisely because I could approve, I imagine, she has thrown
them away. A year ago last summer this young engineer turned up,
and--chiefly because I tried to keep him in his place, I fancy--the
girl encouraged him openly. As I have said, I thought it was gone
and forgotten. But when this hunting trip was broached a fortnight
ago, Anitra suddenly gave up her plan of going to Europe with the Van
Pelts and insisted upon coming along with us. She even went so far
as to bully Kitts into saying that she needed a change to the higher
altitude. It made me a bit suspicious, Padgett; to tell the truth, I
am still suspicious. At this very moment I don't know whether her lame
ankle is keeping her here or whether she has again bullied Kitts."

Once more Padgett nursed his chin and became reflective.

"When in doubt, play trumps," he counseled at the end of the reflective
pause, adding: "You needn't commit yourself, you know. Let them get
together a little if they want to. A small sprinkling of romance just
at the present crisis may be worth money to us. I asked Kitts on the
way in if he were going to take Miss Anitra back to the ranch-house
with him. His answer made me suspect that it would depend somewhat upon
circumstances--the circumstances being your niece's wish to go or stay."

There was no enthusiasm in the banker's reply.

"It will be leaning upon a broken reed, Padgett. Vallory suggested
something of the sort and I shut him off. Up to a certain point the
'sprinkling of romance,' as you call it, might work in our favor; but
beyond that point it might easily prove disastrous. You can see what I
mean."

"Oh, yes; but it wouldn't have time to get that far along. I may
conclude not to go back with Kitts to-day; suppose you invite your man
over to the car for dinner this evening. You are willing to cultivate
him socially to that extent, aren't you?"

"I doubt if he would come."

"He would if Mrs. Grantham would send him a note."

"He doesn't know Mrs. Grantham."

Padgett laughed. "In my younger days, when a young girl's chaperone
sent me an invitation to dinner, I think I was always able to give
credit where it belonged."

"I see," said the banker; "but what's the object?"

"For one thing, it might swing the romantic pendulum our way, and for
another, it would give you an excellent opportunity to commit Stannard
before the rest of us."

"H'm," said the banker reflectively; and then: "Padgett, you've a long
head when it comes to the details. I'll think about it."

"There is another thing to think about, too," the broker went on
meditatively. "There is always a chance that Stannard may fail us at
the last moment. We can't afford to fall down now; we've gone too far.
Is Greer ready to put the screws on if they are needed?"

"His graders will be in the Travois to-night, and his advance men are
setting the stakes for the forward push up the canyon. Stannard caught
two of Greer's engineers running a line across the head of the valley
night before last and beat them up. He has a bad temper. The Overland
Northern men were entirely within their rights and were not interfering
in any way with Stannard's work. There is a warrant out for our young
hot-head, but it won't be served unless matters come to a pass at which
it will be necessary to efface Stannard for the time being."

Again Padgett jerked his head sidewise.

"I'm on," he agreed. "If it should come to blows, we can nip the thing
in the bud pretty easily by having Stannard arrested for assault and
battery. As far as I can see, the ground appears to be pretty well
covered at this end of the line, and it's up to our people in New York
to press their advantage. I'll send a wire or two and get a straight
tip on the situation. The only thing I'm afraid of now is a possible
leak. Stannard has two of his surveying parties out in the Kicking Deer
district, and you never can tell what may happen."

The big-bodied magnate settled himself more firmly in his chair.

"Every precaution has been taken. Rundschau and Magoffin, the two
Kicking Deer prospectors, have nothing to gain by talking; and besides,
they are practically under guard day and night in New York, though
they may not know it. More than that, their prospect holes have been
carefully filled up and made to look like abandoned claims. They are
a mile off the line of Stannard's short-cut survey, and his advance
parties are not looking for gold mines."

The broker felt absently in his pocket for a cigar, but when he had
found one he put it back without lighting it.

"Just the same, I'd like to take the top of Stannard's head off and see
what's going on inside," he said. "Of course, you had to give him some
reason why the Overland Northern wants to acquire the tunnel site and
rights?"

"There was a very plausible reason ready to hand. It has long been
understood that the Overland would some day build a southeastern
extension. Stannard believes that the line now under construction
from Lodge Butte is the beginning of that extension. He knows what
every western railroad builder knows, that the only practical route
for a hundred miles north or south is by means of a tunnel under the
Buckskin."

"Capital!" said Padgett, rubbing his fat hands together. Then he
ventured a prediction. "If you'll take my advice, about the dinner
and the dose of romance, Greer won't have to be called in. It will be
vastly better. Merriam can be a nasty fighter if you once get him
started, as you learned a few years ago to your cost. Easy as she lies,
is the word. I'm going over to the camp telegraph office: anything you
want to send?"

"Nothing, I believe," said the magnate, and he let Padgett go without
any further assurances touching the suggested dinner invitation to one
Claiborne Stannard.




XV

M'CLARTY'S PETARD


"It's some whale of a job, Stannard, and the man who could plan it
all, and set it going, and keep it going, needn't take a back seat for
anybody."

Kitts, having paid his duty call upon Mrs. Grantham and Anitra at the
car, had found Stannard as the engineer was setting out for the tunnel,
had climbed the steep Buckskin trail with him, had been put in personal
and sympathetic touch with the strenuous labor battle going on in the
heart of the treacherous mountain, and was now on his way down the
canyon loop-grade with the young Missourian for his pace-setter.

"There are plenty of men who can do all three," was Stannard's modest
disclaimer on the credit score; "so many that the fellow who does them
needn't let his head swell. Just the same, the bigness of the thing
does lay hold of you. You want to see the job go through. If it doesn't
go through, it's a good bit like burying your best friend."

"But you're going to make this one go through," put in the athletic
young physician.

"Two days ago, Kitts, I should have said there was no doubt of it.
We've had our troubles all along, and we've been running a rather
frantic race against time--against the coming of winter, as I told you
the other day; but we still stood an even chance of winning out--up to
yesterday." "And what happened yesterday? Has the other road given you
notice to quit?"

"It's worse than that," Stannard averred soberly. "We've been expecting
a scrap when the Overland Northern got on the ground; that was all
in the day's work. But now Wall Street butts in with a money scare.
For the reasons you have just had pointed out to you on the spot, the
tunnel is costing a good bit more than we figured; the estimates were
based upon solid rock and a roof that would hold itself up."

"I see. And your management has lost its nerve?"

"Not that, exactly. But a minority of the stock is running around in
circles for fear the Northern is going to hit us on the floor of the
Exchange."

"Uncle Silas brings you this pleasant bit of information?" suggested
the doctor.

"Yes; and he puts it up to me good and strong that I ought to be the
goat--that it's my duty to be the goat. If I wire our people that
we're fighting a losing battle here, that will settle it. Mr. Merriam
will take my word for it, the short-cut project will be abandoned,
temporarily, at least, and the country--as the high financiers define
it--will be saved."

"But, say!" Kitts broke in; "that would be pretty tough on you,
wouldn't it? You'd lose your job."

"I stand to lose considerably more than my job. If I consent to be the
goat, I shall be in the same fix that you'd be in if you should do
something making it impossible for you to practice medicine any more."

"Why, Stannard!" the listener exclaimed, "that would be little less
than a catastrophe! Give up your profession?"

"The profession will give me up. It has no more use for failures than
yours has."

"Great Jehu! And you're talking about it as calmly as if it were a
mere incident. Doesn't your calling mean any more than that to you?"

"It means as much to me as yours does to you, Kitts. I could go on
being an engineer--and a poor man--all my life, and be pretty well
satisfied. But that alternative is cut out in the present case. I'm in
the fix of the small manufacturer who gets in the way of the trust; he
can go out of business with the price of his plant in his pocket, or he
can sit tight and be squeezed out."

Kitts had the good-natured, tell-tale face of an open-hearted boy, the
face being maskable only when he dealt with his patients.

"For heaven's sake!" he exclaimed in honest indignation, "they're
trying to bribe you?"

"Oh, I reckon you'd hardly call it that; you don't say that the little
manufacturer is bribed when he sells out because he has to. Westervelt
is disposed to be fair. He knows what it will mean to me in a
professional way to drop this job just as it stands, and he is willing
to make it up to me. He puts it on a business basis, pure and simple;
says it's cheaper for him and those whom he represents to give me a
chance to make good in some other way than it would be for them to take
their losses on the slump in G. L. & P."

They were turning the gulch-head where the upper leg of the loop swung
in a great half-circle to cross the mountain stream and to become the
lower leg, and for a time Kitts held his peace. In the fulness of
time he said: "I can't help feeling as if I had just discovered that
a mighty good friend of mine had developed a case of organic disease
of the heart, Stannard. Has the thing gone so far that it can't be
stopped?"

"It is practically out of my hands. I and my kind are merely pawns in
the big game at the best, and we have to take our medicine when the
high-finance gentlemen hand it out to us."

"I know," Kitts nodded. "It's a crooked old world in some parts of
it. I've known you only three days, Stannard, but that's long enough
to make me figure you as a fellow who wouldn't lie down until he's
dead--plumb dead. Also, I've been sizing you up as a fellow to whom
money doesn't mean any more than it ought to mean."

"That's where you're away off," Stannard rejoined half cynically.
"Money means a lot to me."

"I know better," snapped the young doctor. "You may think it does, just
now, but at the bottom it doesn't. I'm sure it doesn't. Anitra's been
telling me about you. You could go back to your Ozark apple-orchards
and live there in comfort without a job, couldn't you?"

"Yes, I reckon I could."

"Then you owe it to yourself a thousand times over to do it rather than
to sell yourself to Silas Westervelt and his bunch. Listen to me a
minute, Stannard. Back in New York, where people know him up one side
and down the other, Westervelt has a reputation for making cold-blooded
twists and turns that are simply fierce, even in this dollar-thirsty
age. He'll skin you alive, quite without malice, and equally without
mercy, if he needs your hide to hang on some financial fence that he
happens to be building. You can't afford to put yourself into the hands
of a man like that!"

"You can't magnify the risk any more than I have, Kitts. But Westervelt
and his crowd have the whiphand. They can smash me, and what is much
more serious, they can smash John P. Merriam and his management.
Westervelt, while he is a director in our company, is also in deep
enough with Overland Northern to have some sort of a pull. Nothing has
been said to me to even hint at such a thing, but I know that the
Overland's claim on the right-of-way is going to be used as a club if
it's needed. Greer is practically here on the ground with a force which
outnumbers ours. If I don't call the thing off voluntarily, Greer's
presence means that it will be called off forcibly. Mr. Merriam doesn't
want any stock complications such as would be piled in upon him if war
is declared; and that is what will happen if Greer's men and ours come
to blows over this right-of-way."

"I don't see it," objected the ex-football captain stubbornly.

"I didn't, at first--chiefly, I guess, because I didn't want to see
it. But it is the cold fact. Apart from the flurry the fight would
doubtless kick up in the money market, we might lose out to the tune of
a good many millions by getting licked. Look up on that hillside to the
right; do you see that cleared streak through the timber paralleling
our grade?"

"Yes."

"That's the Overland's location. Imagine a small army of laborers up
there, blasting and shoveling and dumping, firing their spoil down on
us faster than we could shovel it off, and you've got the situation.
Greer couldn't stop us entirely, maybe; but he might easily delay us.
You've seen the tunnel, and you can guess what a prolonged delay will
mean for us in that rotten hole."

"I see," Kitts said. "It may mean that the whole business will tumble
in and destroy all your work. Great Cats! but it's hard, Stannard; to
think that your only alternative is to sell out to Uncle Silas. Are you
going to do it?"

"I'm tempted, Kitts; tempted as I never supposed a man with decent
upbringings could be," the Missourian confessed baldly. "On one
hand there's safety for Mr. Merriam, safety for the company--as Mr.
Westervelt puts it--and for me a chance to get in right with the
money-making crowd. I could make good in the money-wrestle; I'm just
egotistical enough to believe that I could, if I should make it the
be-all and end-all. While I don't care much for money, as money, I'm
caring a whole lot, right now, for something that money won't buy, but
for which I can't get even a look-in without money."

"That's one side of it," said Doctor Billy. "What's the other?"

"I reckon there isn't any other," said Stannard, after a dejected
little pause. "Or if there is, it can be summed up in sheer
professional pride; a stubborn disgust for the quitter in any game."

Kitts took a few more strides in silence and then he said: "What does
the girl say about it?"

Stannard laughed good-naturedly. It was impossible to take offense at
anything Kitts could say.

"How do you know there is a girl?" he demanded.

"I took it for granted; there always is."

The young Missourian laughed again and, feeling perfectly safe because
his secret had not been shared, even with Anitra, he said:

"The last time I saw and talked with her she told me to get money;
honestly if I could, and the other way if I had to."

The straightforward young doctor was plainly shocked.

"That's rather dreadful, Stannard! I can't imagine your falling in love
with a woman who could say a thing like that--meaning it."

"Perhaps she didn't mean it, though I wouldn't put it beyond her," was
the half-absent qualification. "Money spells luxury for most women,
and the one I'm speaking of has never known anything but luxury."

A curve in the grade had brought them to the big rock cut, and the
clamor of the air-drills shrilled suddenly louder, making anything less
than a shout inaudible. Standing to look on at the head of the cutting,
Stannard saw M'Clarty, the big Irish foreman, coming across the river
on the foot-log bridge which gave access to the powder magazine hidden
away, for safety's sake, under the opposite canyon cliff.

The Irishman had a small yellow cylinder in his hands to which he
appeared to be attaching a bit of blackened string, and it was evident
that he had not yet observed the approach of his chief. When he reached
the right-hand river bank, both of the onlookers saw him strike a match
on his overalls. A moment later he climbed to the top of a hillock
of broken stone and sent the small yellow cylinder, trailing a thin
line of blue smoke behind it, high among the firs on the slope above
the cutting. Instantly there was a crashing explosion on the forested
hillside and a shower of dry earth and pebbles came pouring over the
cliff-like lip of the excavation.

What followed came like the sudden rebound of a steel spring. While
the dust and pebbles were still rattling down the face of the cliff,
a man in cow-boy overalls, blue shirt, and flapping hat, and with a
cartridge-belted weapon sagging at his right hip, appeared on the high
cliff brink. Deliberately, and yet so swiftly that the movement seemed
a part of the lounging walk, he whipped the weapon from its holster and
snapped it at M'Clarty.

With a yell that made itself heard above the clamor of the drills, the
foreman crumpled like a spineless marionette and rolled down the side
of the small stone heap from which he had hurled his missile. At the
cry the drills were stopped, and the rock-men came running from both
ends of the cutting.

"Come on!" Kitts shouted to his pace-setter; "the man's shot!" and
together they sprinted down the grade to be among the first to reach
M'Clarty.

Knowing better than any one the value of prompt first-aid, the young
surgeon pushed the workmen aside and took hold with his hands. The
foreman's wound was in the leg, a clean downward-ranging puncture which
had missed the thigh-bone but had cut an artery.

"A handkerchief--one of you fellows--quick--a big bandanna!" snapped
Kitts; and he was instantly given his choice of a half-dozen. Knotting
swiftly the first that came to hand, he contrived a makeshift
tourniquet, twisting it with a bit of a stick until the wounded man
yelled again. Setting one of the drillers to hold the stick, the
emergency surgeon sprang up and dragged Stannard aside.

"It's a severed artery, and I've got to get that fellow on the table in
a little less than no time!" he announced hastily. "Luckily, I left a
few of my tools in the private car. How will you get him to camp?"

Stannard's answer expressed itself in competent action. Under his
orders M'Clarty was carried quickly to the end-of-track and put on a
push-car. Room was made for the doctor and the boss, and a bee-swarm of
the men rushed the car down the grade and around the great curve into
the Travois. Five minutes after the arrival at the camp, the foreman
was strapped upon the rude table in the hospital shack, a light-footed
quarryman had raced across to the _Egeria_ and was on hand with the
instruments, and Kitts stripped his coat and went to work.

Stannard did not stay to help. Anxious to forestall further violence,
he hurried into the yard, captured one of the construction locomotives,
and had the crew take him back up the line, at the best speed the newly
laid track would stand, to the scene of the shooting. The rock cutting
was deserted, as he was afraid it would be. The score and more of
drillers and muckers who had been left behind had armed themselves with
drill-ends, pick-handles, anything they could find, and were beating
the forest above the cutting in a hot search for M'Clarty's assailant.

The beaters came straggling in by twos and threes shortly after the
young chief got upon the ground. They had found nothing on the slope
above save a few freshly driven stakes; but these served to identify
the intruders. As to that, however, one of the returning quarrymen
supplied better information.

"There was a gang of 'um," the man told Stannard; "min wid transits
and some wid axes. Sure, it'll be a dom sorry day for thim, do they
be showin' up here again," and he went on to tell the chief how the
quarrel had begun.

Stannard listened, investigated and, after seeing the work resumed
in the cutting, returned to his headquarters. A little later Kitts
came up to beg the loan of the engineer's wash-bucket and towels. He
looked like a butcher and said he felt like one. After he had washed he
came back to the work-room and swung himself up to a seat on Brant's
drawing-board.

"Oh, yes; he'll live, all right," he said, in answer to Stannard's
questioning brow-lift. "But it was a close call. The chances are about
a hundred to one that he would have bled to death if we hadn't happened
along just as we did. If you've got your breath, pitch out and tell me
what it all means."

"It means another move in the game--the game we were talking about
as we came down the grade. A gang of Greer's pioneers was re-locating
the old Overland survey on the slope above the cutting. Carelessly or
purposely, somebody in the gang started a rolling rock; it fell into
the cutting and barely missed smashing one of our drilling squads. Some
few compliments were passed back and forth, then M'Clarty went over to
the magazine and made an impromptu bomb out of a stick of dynamite.
That was what we saw him throw up among the trees."

"Well, they handed it back to him pretty suddenly, anyhow," Kitts
commented; then he added, with the slow closing of an eye: "Rather
savage state of affairs, isn't it? Back east we'd call it war. What are
you going to do about it?"

"It's an added argument on the other side, don't you think?" Stannard
queried. "What we've just seen is an earnest of what will follow on a
vastly bigger scale if I stick to my job and refuse to take the advice
of the one-man peace tribunal over in the _Egeria_. I am game for it,
myself, Kitts, but the bigger question has been thrusting itself upon
me in the last hour or so. My men, or a good many of them, will fight
at the drop of the hat if I give the word. How much right have I to
shove them into the breach? It's a pretty heavy responsibility, first
and last."

The young surgeon laughed and slipped down from the drawing-board seat.

"I'm no good at that end of it, Stannard. You'll have to figure the
responsibility out for yourself. But I'll venture a small guess; if
I've sized you up anywhere near right, these scrappers are taking
precisely the surest way to put the trouble-pot on the fire. Did you
catch the fellow who did the shooting?"

The Missourian shook his head. "No; the quarry-men turned out, after
we left with M'Clarty, and ransacked the woods, but they didn't find
anybody. Which is lucky, I guess, since we mean to keep the peace."

Kitts grinned knowingly.

"You don't mean to keep the peace, Stannard; I can see it in your
eye. You resemble some other people I know. You like to dally with
temptation, and go through all the motions of chasing it up one hill
and down another, knowing all the time precisely what you're going to
do and how you are going to do it."

Stannard got out of his chair and walked the length of the room twice
with his head down and his hands in his pockets before he turned to
say: "You're dead right, Kitts; I do know what I'm going to do! I'm
going to show Judson Greer and the money people that we can put that
tunnel through in spite of the devil. That business at the rock-cutting
this afternoon turned the scale. If they had been content to toll me
along easy----But they were not, and now, by heavens, they can take it
as it comes!"

Kitts stuck out his hand. "I like you better that way, old man. Now
I'll trot along and see if Anitra has changed her mind once more about
going to the bear camp with me this evening. If you were a ladies' man,
I'd like to bet you a brand-new ten-dollar bill that she has." And at
that he went away.

Half an hour after Doctor Billy had gone back to the _Egeria_, Eddie
Brant came in from the lower yard where he had been checking off a
fresh consignment of steel. Stannard had some instructions to give
the map-maker about his latest plotting of the canyon curve, and he
was bending over the drawing board with Brant when the yellow porter
who had figured indifferently as platform guard, second waiter, and
valet-in-ordinary to Mr. Silas Westervelt, came in with a note for
the young chief. The envelope exhaled a faint perfume of violets, and
the inclosure, written in the stiff upright scrawl of the up-to-date
penwoman, ran thus:

  "Dear Mr. Stannard:

  "Mrs. Grantham wishes me to say that she will be greatly pleased to
  have you join us at dinner in the _Egeria_ this evening--informally,
  of course. I have told her that I am sure you won't do anything so
  purely human as to come.

  "A. Westervelt."




XVI

THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER


Between the reading of Anitra's note and the hour when he might
be expected to put in an appearance at the private car, Stannard
changed his mind a dozen times. Setting mere social kindliness aside
as the unlikeliest of the reasons for the dinner invitation, it was
not difficult to trace Anitra's note back through Mrs. Grantham
to Mr. Westervelt. To go and hobnob with the millionaire over the
dinner-table, after he had definitely decided to refuse to fall in with
the millionaire's plans, cut crosswise through the straightforward
grain of the young Missourian. None the less, when the time came he
changed from khaki soiled to khaki clean, and without saying anything
to the mess-room squad, made his way across the yard to the _Egeria_.

Though he was not especially early, he found only Anitra in the open
compartment of the car. He was glad to see that she walked without
limping when she got up to welcome him.

"Oh, dear, I've lost out," she lamented, giving him a wry little smile.
"Doc Billy was just leaving when I wrote the note for Aunt Jeannette,
and I bet him a bright red tie against a box of civilized chocolates
that you wouldn't come. What made you come?"

"You did. I couldn't miss the happy chance of sitting at table with you
at least once more. Did Mr. Padgett go back with Kitts?" "He did not.
He stayed to tell us bear stories over the canned soup. Won't you sit
down?"

"After you," he grinned. "I have had one lesson in manners lately and
I'm not needing another."

She laughed and sat down on the wide leather-covered lounge, making
room for him beside her. He ignored the wordless invitation and drew up
a chair so that he might sit facing her.

"How is the sore ankle by this time?" he asked.

"It's well," she returned calmly, and he grinned again.

"Kitts wanted to bet me that you had changed your mind one other time
about joining the bear hunters. I turned him down and saved my money,"
he told her.

"Are all Missourians so cautiously thrifty?" she inquired mockingly.

"It stands them in hand to be. We haven't any Wall Street in our
metropolis. One can't well take a flyer in little red apples, you know."

The two waiters were laying the shortened table for six and Vallory and
Padgett had come in from the other end of the car. Shortly afterward
Mrs. Grantham made her appearance, and Stannard was presented in due
form.

"So good of you to come to us, Mr. Stannard," gurgled the motherly
lady, sinking into the biggest of the wicker-chairs and fanning herself
purely from force of habit. "You are so busy--you must be so dreadfully
busy----"

"Mr. Stannard is never too busy to be polite," put in the younger
woman. "He has the Missouri manner,--not manners, but manner, you
know--and he has only to be shown."

"Really, Mr. Stannard, you mustn't mind anything that Anitra says,"
murmured the chaperone, apologizing vicariously for the covert
impertinence. "She is a spoiled child, sadly spoiled, I'm afraid."

"I like children," Stannard laughed; "I was raised with a houseful of
them."

"You never told me that you had brothers and sisters," Miss Westervelt
protested, with the air of one who has been denied a confidence.

"I hadn't; they were cousins--my uncle Jasper's children. They came to
live with us after their mother died," he explained; and while he was
doing it, Silas Westervelt, massively complacent and leisurely, came
down the compartment.

"Glad to see you, Stannard--glad you're giving us a chance to be
hospitable," he said, with his nearest approach to cordiality; and
before he could say any more the dinner was announced.

In the seating at table Stannard found himself at Mr. Westervelt's
left, with Vallory opposite and Anitra beside him, facing the broker.
From the beginning the talk was general, turning easily at first
upon the bear-hunting expedition, and a little later coming around,
or being cleverly brought around by the banker-director, to the
railroad-building project.

The tunnel-driving topic fairly afoot, the host, heartily companionable
to a degree which Stannard had thought impossible, openly declared his
continued opposition, though he made it easy for the guest by praising
the geniusful intention of the plan.

"You were all right in pushing it, Stannard; I'm not blaming you at
all," he said, with large lenience. "You were merely a few years ahead
of your times, as all the great innovators have been. That is the point
I tried to make when the matter came up for discussion a year ago. The
eastern roads have set us the example of shortening and straightening,
and it's a good one; but we are prone to forget that the great eastern
companies are old and well established, with an assured earning power
and abundant resources."

"That's the idea," Padgett cut in; "it's the American mania--not to be
able to wait for results. We capitalize the future right along."

"Pernicious activity," said Vallory, making an epigram to fit the
mania. "Something doing all the time. Isn't that about it, Stannard?
We've made a fetish of the 'get busy' idea."

Stannard had been keeping his face in his plate, chiefly because,
having made up his mind to complete his undertaking at all costs, the
Westervelt dinner-table seemed scarcely the proper place at which to
fling down the gauntlet of defiance. So he was careful not to commit
himself.

"As a general proposition, I presume we are all a little too eager
to see the wheels go round," he returned evasively, adding: "and I
suppose that is especially true of the men on the firing line. It's an
American trait to want to push a fight just a little harder when there
is determined opposition or added difficulties and obstacles."

He was looking at Anitra as he said this, and he saw her lips move in a
soundless whisper. The whisper said: "So among other things, you are a
coward!" at least, that was Stannard's translation of it, and the dull
flush which her taunt of the day before had evoked came again to make
him warm and uncomfortable.

"Sober second thought is always a pretty good thing," the broker put in
smoothly. Then he added that which made Stannard suspect that he, too,
had seen and translated the wordless whisper: "It sometimes requires
a finer brand of courage to stop and turn back than it does to go on.
I don't own any G. L. & P. stock, but if I did, I should be scared
to death. I climbed that terrible mountain of yours this afternoon,
and had a look-in at your tunnel, Stannard. Your man Pearson did the
honors, and you won't take it amiss if I say that to a man up a tree,
it looks like a financial frost."

"Stannard knows the frostiness of the situation better than any of us,"
the banker commented suavely. "As an engineer he would like to go on
and finish the project at all hazards; that is only natural. But as a
stockholder in the company, I think I may venture to say that he is
willing to be judiciously conservative. Isn't that so, Stannard?"

The blow was so sudden and so cleverly driven home that it left the
Missourian gasping. The simple retort would have been a prompt denial
of the stock-owning implication, but in the circumstances this was
obviously impossible. The bribe had been tendered, and, from Mr.
Westervelt's point of view, had apparently been accepted. At least it
had not been specifically refused. Technically he was a stockholder;
and the _Egerian_ dinner-table was no better place for explanations
than it was for defiances.

Nevertheless, his hand went mechanically to the inner pocket of his
coat. He had a half-vague, half rageful idea that he was going to hand
the stock certificate back to Silas Westervelt before the tableful of
witnesses, thus driving the nail of honesty and clinching it beyond any
possibility of withdrawal. But in the act he remembered that he had
changed his clothes, and that the bribe had been left in the pocket of
the cast-off coat. Betrayed thus by his own carelessness, he sought to
turn the accusation aside as a joke.

"I am not a stockholder of record," he asserted, and he tried to say it
lightly. "You'll have to produce the books, Mr. Westervelt, before you
can drag me into it that way."

For the first time in Stannard's knowing of him, Mr. Westervelt let the
permanent smile vocalize itself in a bantering laugh.

"There are a good many stockholders in every company who do not find it
advisable to become 'of record' on the transfer books until just before
dividend day," he said meaningly. Then: "You are among friends here, my
dear fellow. Nobody is going to run to President Merriam with the story
that his chief of construction has been taking a quiet little flyer in
the company's stock."

Padgett looked up quickly and struck in before Stannard could reply.

"Have you really got a block of G. L. & P.?" he inquired. "If you have,
I don't know but I shall be chasing you. I've been sweeping the corners
for a customer of ours who has been careless enough to sell more of it
than he can deliver."

"Mr. Westervelt says I have, and since he is in some sense my superior
officer, I can't very well contradict him," laughed Stannard, still
trying to turn the desperate situation into a jest.

Vallory's thin lips curled in a half cynical smile.

"Did you mortgage the apple orchards to get the money to buy G. L. &
P., Clay?" he asked, with carefully calculated malice.

"Of course," said the Missourian; "what else could I do?" He was
looking Vallory straight in the eyes, but this was because he did not
dare to look at Anitra. The sixth sense, however, told him that she had
pushed her small coffee cup aside and was regarding him curiously, as
she might have looked at a new and rather unpleasant cage-beast in the
Central Park exhibit. Mr. Westervelt had timed his attack judiciously.
Before anything more could be said, Mrs. Grantham had risen and the
table party was broken up. Stannard saw his opportunity for any
straightforward unwinding of the tangle vanish when Mr. Westervelt
asked Padgett and Vallory to go with him to his state-room.

"Stannard will excuse us, I'm sure," he said; and then to the engineer:
"It's a little matter of business, stirred up by some New York
telegrams which came just before dinner. We'll leave you to the tender
mercies of the ladies, and join you later. You'll find cigars in that
humidor, and I hope Mrs. Grantham and Anitra will be charitable enough
to let you smoke."

Stannard did not trouble to investigate the contents of the cigar
cabinet. A fierce and thirsty desire to set himself right with Anitra
was consuming him, and he was mortally afraid that the motherly
chaperone was going to come between. But the fear was unfounded.
Mrs. Grantham let him place the easiest of the easy chairs for her
under a shaded reading-light and settled herself comfortably with a
magazine. When he joined Anitra the young woman was standing before
the plate-glass rear door, looking out upon the electric-lighted
construction yard.

"Well?" she said shortly, as if he had begun to say something and had
failed to finish saying it. And then: "Did you enjoy your dinner?"

"No," he returned bluntly, "you know I didn't."

"So much for our small attempt at hospitality!" she laughed, with a
touch of scorn, real or most cleverly simulated. "I'm afraid you are
hard to please, Mr. Claiborne Stannard."

"I shall be easily pleased if you'll let me take you out on the
platform where I can say a few things that are needing to be said."
"It is cold out there," she objected.

"The weather is changing again, and if you'll tell me where to find it,
I'll get you a wrap."

She left him abruptly and went to her state-room, returning almost
immediately with a coat. "I'm going out on the platform with Mr.
Stannard," she told the motherly lady in passing; and then she let
Stannard hold the coat while she put it on.

"You got an entirely wrong impression of things at the dinner-table,"
he began abruptly, when he had dragged out one of the wicker chairs for
her and had found a camp-stool for himself.

"Oh, I'm sure I didn't!" she retorted. "I gave you some good advice
the other day, and you have taken it. I suppose I ought to feel highly
complimented."

"Just a moment," he pleaded; "you don't begin to understand."

"Oh, yes, I do," she broke in. "Uncle Silas is going to make your
fortune, and you're going to let him. Why shouldn't you?"

The Missourian's jaw came up with a click that was plainly audible.

"Money," he frowned; "always money! I've been hoping you didn't mean
what you said yesterday morning."

"Why shouldn't I mean it? Isn't money the greatest thing in the
world?--the thing that makes all other things possible? Don't preach at
me, please! Is there anything it won't buy? Men sell themselves for it,
and so do women."

The words cut like the flick of a whip. They seemed so strangely out
of harmony with the soft voice and the ripe lips and the eyes which
were like brown velvet stars in the half-light of the hood-globe. Also,
they were entirely out of keeping with the care-free, generous-hearted
girl-woman of the house-party summer interlude who had seen that her
uncle was making it socially hard for a young man out of the West, and
had striven--so Stannard believed--to make it up to him.

"Tell me plainly," he said; "did you gather from the talk at the table
that I had actually gone so far as to sell myself to your uncle?"
Another man might have put it less baldly, but he was too deeply
stirred to consider the conventional amenities.

"I didn't 'gather'; I _know_," she flashed back. "But again I ask, why
shouldn't you? Do you think it is something to be ashamed of, that
you try to cover it up and hide it? What have you done, more than any
other man in your place would do? Isn't it a mere business decision,
whichever way you make it? If you say 'yes' to whatever Uncle Silas
wants you to do, one set of men will make--or lose--some money; if
you say 'no,' another set of men may make or lose. You have been wise
enough to choose what seems to you to be the winning side, that's
all--the side that will win for itself and let you win."

The young engineer's voice shook a little when he said: "I'm obliged
to believe that you mean what you say--even if you don't know what it
means to me. I thought--I hoped you would let me explain."

"What is there to explain?"

"Nothing, I suppose."

"Of course there isn't," she mocked; and then, with the hard ring in
her voice which had been coming and going as she talked: "I hope you
got enough to make it worth while."

"Your uncle's offer was enough to turn any man's head--any poor man's
head."

"That isn't the point," she insisted. "It must be enough to promise
you the chance to get more. You'll need more before you can ask the
'one altogether' to marry you won't you?"

"Yes, a great deal more."

"I thought so. And if she is foolish enough to say that she doesn't
want you, with your money, you will have just that much wider field in
which to look for the second choice."

"My money won't make her say she doesn't want me," he asserted grimly.

"How do you know it won't?"

"I have her own word for it."

"Oh," she said, with a toss of the pretty head. "I didn't know it had
gone that far."

"It has gone far enough to make me understand exactly what I've got to
do," he returned.

Now it so happened that in drawing up the camp-stool to face Anitra's
wicker chair, Stannard had turned his back upon the near-by torrent
of the Standing Stone and the forested buttressings of the Rock Face
looming darkly beyond the brawling stream. From the beginning of the
platform _tête-à-tête_ he had been dimly conscious of a subdued medley
of sounds coming from nowhere in particular, the grumble and chuck of
wagon-wheels, minimized shouts, a stir as of a straggling army on the
march. In the little pause for which the young woman was responsible, a
man came along the yard-facing side of the private car and stopped at
the platform railing. It was Patterson, and seeing his chief, he looked
relieved.

"The boys are all out hunting for you," he broke in, apparently
ignoring Stannard's companion. "Can you come, right away?"

"If I'm needed," was the rather brittle reply.

"I reckon you're needed, all right," said the grade engineer, and then
he considerately turned his back and moved away.

Stannard got up reluctantly. "You'll excuse me, won't you?" he said to
the one who had been ignored. "I'm at everybody's beck and call, as you
see. I'll go in and thank Mrs. Grantham."

Miss Westervelt twisted her head and looked through the full-length
window behind her chair.

"Don't bother to do that," she said quickly. "I'll absolve you and make
your excuses. Besides, Aunt Jeannette is asleep."

Stannard said "Good-night" much more abruptly than he had meant to,
swung himself over the railing and hastened to join Patterson.

"What is it?" he asked, when he had caught step with his summoner.

"You must have been deaf," Patterson growled. "Greer has been moving up
for the last three hours--in the dark. Don't you hear 'em over on the
other side of the river?"

"I do now, yes. But that was what we were expecting."

"It's something that we wasn't expecting that made us all turn out to
hunt you," was the gruff rejoinder. "The first thing Greer did, while
we were all at supper, was to shove a big gang across the Standing
Stone at the upper ford. It was after the night shift had gone up to
the tunnel, and if little Jack Bannagher hadn't been torch-fishing at
the mouth of the canyon we might not have known what was happening till
morning."

"What was happening?" queried Stannard with a shade of impatience in
his tone.

"Greer had sent his big gang to hit the hillside just beyond the point
where the old Overland survey crosses our line. There's eight feet
of difference between the grade levels, as you know, and when little
Jack brought the news, and I rushed Gallagher and a bunch of his
track-layers up there, we found those cusses building an eight-foot
dump smack across our track, cutting into the hill and using the spoil
to make their fill. They had us pretty well buried by the time we got
there."

"What did you do?"

Patterson grunted. "There was a free fight and Greer's crowd got
the worst of it. We ran 'em off and heaved their tools after 'em.
Gallagher's up there now with his bunch, clearing the track. Roddy's
found some guns, somewhere, and he's served out a few to Bully's
Irishmen and set 'em to patrolling our right-of-way. Then he shucked us
all out to chase for you."

The yard-crossing had been made, and Stannard turned short upon the
big, red-faced assistant.

"I'll drill along with you in a little bit," he said, "but I'm going to
the telegraph office first. Wait for me up at the headquarters shack."

Notwithstanding this announcement, Stannard did not go directly to the
wire-office, a cramped little shelter, half cabin and half tent, which
for the convenience of the yard crews had been placed midway between
the commissary and the temporary repair-shop. Instead, he turned aside
after he had passed the bunk-house and sat down on a pile of cross-ties
and filled and lighted his pipe.

Though he was loath to admit it, he knew that the time had come for
a final decision, and he strove desperately for the clear-sighted
view which would enable him to decide wisely. It was inevitable that
the constraining influences should refuse to be set aside. Grapple
with them as he might, the princely bribe, with all it might stand
for in the future, blocked the path to any fair-minded weighing of
the real issues. Deep in his inner consciousness he was beginning to
feel that Westervelt's urging, or at least that part of it which made
the averting of a smash and the rescue of the Merriam management a
sufficient excuse for the seeming disloyalty, was insincere. But even
so, the stubborn fact remained: the project could be defeated in any
event, with or without his help; he had only to choose between being
driven out empty-handed, and going out of his own free will with the
road to fortune lying fair before him.

In this crucial struggle he refused to consider the clamoring of
desire--or thought he did. There had been little in the after-dinner
talk with Anitra Westervelt to fan the flame of passion. Yet he knew
in his heart that this wilful young woman with the winsome face and
laughing eyes and bitter tongue stood for him as the pattern of all
that was most alluring in womanhood; that for her sake he could batter
down barriers good or evil if he might hope to win her in the end.
And she--he could shut his eyes and see again the curl of the pretty
upper lip and hear her say, "Why shouldn't I mean it? Isn't money the
greatest thing in the world?"

All at once he remembered a thing that he had heard while he was a
business sojourner under the Westervelt roof during the summer of
committee meetings. One of the house-party guests, a married woman
with a loose tongue in her head, had told him that Anitra's fortune
was held in trust; that she would lose it if she should marry against
her uncle's wishes. He had tossed the story out of his mind as a bit
of idle gossip at the time; but now it came back to send the blood
galloping through his veins. Was this the kernel at the heart of the
girl's half-bitter urgings? Did she mean that the money to make love
possible must be his because she would have none of her own?

The ecstatic suggestion was dinning in his ears when he sprang up from
his seat on the cross-ties and walked quickly to the wire office.
Hempstead, the operator, was lying in his bunk, reading a paper-backed
novel when his chief came in and sat down at the packing-box which
served as a table, took out his code-book, and began to write a
telegram. What Stannard presently handed to the operator, with a brief
command to "rush it," was a cipher and was thus unintelligible to
Hempstead, who cast the worn novel aside and sat down to his key. But
the original, which the chief was thrusting into his pocket as he went
in search of Patterson, was a sufficient indication of the direction in
which the tree of decision had fallen.

  To John P. Merriam, President,
  The Waldorf-Astoria,
  New York.

  Situation very serious. O. N. grading force reached Travois to-day,
  and interference has already begun. See no possibility of completing
  tunnel approach before O. N. will be in position to obstruct and delay
  work in canyon. Tunnel still giving trouble. Prospect exceedingly
  discouraging.

  C. Stannard,
  Chief of Construction.




XVII

FLINT AND STEEL


Banker Westervelt's plea of business as an excuse for leaving Stannard
at the dinner-table was merely an excuse. As a matter of fact, the
retreat of the three men split itself as soon as it had passed the door
of the forward corridor, doing so on Westervelt's suggestion to Vallory.

"You'd better smoke your cigar on the outside, Austin, and be ready
to intercept Greer. He is pretty sure to come over, and it won't do
to take the risk of these two scrappers getting together." Thus the
suggestion; and Vallory went out through the forward vestibule, leaving
Westervelt and Padgett to kill time as they might in the privacy of the
banker's state-room.

"You played it pretty fine," was the broker's comment punctuating
the cigar-lighting behind the closed door of the office-state-room.
"Stannard was going to back down and quit us cold. I saw it in his eye.
Greer's to blame."

"How is that?" queried the magnate.

"Judson is pushing things too spitefully. It's a word and a blow with
him, and the blow usually comes first. There was a fight up in the
canyon this afternoon, and one of Stannard's men got shot in the leg."

The banker asked for the details, and Padgett gave them as they had
been given to him by one of the commissary clerks.

"That is bad--worse than that, it's a blunder!" was the arch plotter's
frowning comment. "Greer may be a good railroad builder, but he is
sadly lacking when it comes to handling a delicate situation involving
a knowledge of men. A little injudicious fighting just now----"

"Of course," said Padgett. "Stannard is precisely the kind of young
hot-head to be thrown over by any attempt to drive him. Greer ought to
know that."

"Greer ought to obey orders, at least. I have told him definitely and
positively what to do and what not to do," fumed the great man, with a
touch of impatience. "You say one of Stannard's men was shot; will he
die?"

"No; Kitts and Stannard were walking down the grade and they happened
along in the nick of time. The man was rushed down to the camp, and
Kitts tied up the cut artery."

From this the talk went on to a further discussion of ways and means.
Being a capitalist, and hence a man of peace, the banker leaned more
and more heavily toward the expedient which seemed to promise a
blood-less victory. Tacitly, though for a time neither of them spoke of
it, both of the plotters understood that Stannard's decision hung in a
delicate balance which might be tipped either way by the featherweight
of sentiment. By the careful removal of the obstacles, sentiment had
been given its chance, but that chance might be irretrievably spoiled
by the caprice of a certain wilful young woman. Padgett bottled his
impatience on this score until it finally blew the cork.

"We're not above making blunders ourselves, Westervelt," he broke out,
at the lighting of his third cigar. "A preliminary word from you to
your niece might have taken a good deal of the uncertainty out of this
dinner-party business." The banker's smile was grimly sardonic.

"If you knew David's daughter as well as I do, you wouldn't say that,
Padgett," he objected.

"I've known her ever since she wore pinafores. She is all the things
you can say of her, and then some; but down underneath them all she's a
woman. Sometimes you seem to forget that."

"I don't see the application," said the magnate, and his manner was
that of one who would rather not see.

"You're thinking that an attempt to enlist Anitra on our side would be
the surest way to make her do the other thing," laughed the broker.
"That's so; if you should go at it in any heavy-handed fashion, she'd
probably fly the track in a minute. But a little diplomacy might make
the turn."

"Give your idea a name," was the brief command.

"It's merely a suggestion based on the supposition that she has taken
at least a passing fancy to Stannard. You intimated that there was a
possibility, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And you have given her to understand by your attitude toward Stannard
that you considered him definitely and positively the chief of the
ineligibles, haven't you?"

"I have."

"Well, suppose you take the other side for a few moments. Snatch an
early opportunity to tell her what a fine young man Stannard is,--which
is the truth,--and what a pity it is that he isn't in her class, and so
on. You get the idea?"

Westervelt nodded slowly. "Again I'll pay you the compliment of saying
that you have an exceedingly long head, Padgett," he said. And then,
abruptly: "Vallory wants to marry her. Did you know that?"

Being a florid man by nature, Padgett could flush without showing it.
As the banker's right hand and lieutenant in many a fiercely fought
business battle, the broker thought he knew his principal by length
and by breadth. But the simple statement and its tagged query revealed
an unscrupulous depth which Padgett had not hitherto suspected, and
the revealment touched a hidden spring of generous revulsion in the
round-bodied little man of business. He knew now why Vallory had been
brought along on the sham bear-hunting expedition. It was because his
college comradeship gave him a hold upon Stannard--and his reward
was to be the uncle's encouragement of his suit--for whatever such
encouragement might be worth.

"Vallory's a pretty poor stick; you wouldn't back him up in trying
to break into the family, would you, Westervelt?" said the broker,
forgetting that he himself had just been suggesting an unholy mixture
of the sacred wine of sentiment with the beer of business.

"Oh, I don't know. Vallory comes of good stock."

"Yes; but it's good stock gone to seed, and, as the fellow says in
somebody's story, 'It's damned poor seed!'" The broker was going on
to enlarge upon the quality of the seed, but at that moment the door
opened and Vallory came in, bearing tidings.

"That fellow Greer has fumbled the ball again," was the clubman's
announcement. "There's been a big row up along somewhere, and Stannard
was sent for. He's just gone."

Padgett chewed the stump of the third cigar thoughtfully, and the
banker said a hard word.

"Greer will have to be called down," he rasped. "Guthrie ought to have
known better than to handicap us with such a firebrand!"

Vallory's smile showed his fine even teeth.

"We may need the firebrand a little later," he offered, and then
pointedly to the magnate: "I'm afraid you overdid the matter a little
at the dinner-table to-night. I know Stannard pretty well, and you've
got to play him with a mighty light hand. He was fighting mad when he
went away just now."

"You ought to have gone with him," snapped the great man, rising from
his chair. "Since you didn't, you'd better go and find Greer and tell
him I want to see him at once--to-night." Then, still more impatiently:
"What's the matter with that telegraph boy? We ought to have had the
closing quotations hours ago. Padgett, suppose you go over and wake him
up."

Left to himself, Mr. Westervelt went in search of the opportunity which
Padgett had advised him to snatch. With the blundering complications
piling in one on top of another, it had become highly necessary to act
promptly. The door of Anitra's state-room was open and the room empty.
The banker passed on into the open compartment and found Mrs. Grantham
asleep under the reading light. The observation platform remained, and
a moment later Anitra looked up to see her uncle standing beside her.

"Enjoying the fine night, are you, Nitra?" he said, placing the
camp-stool, recently vacated by Stannard, in the corner of the
platform rail so that he might rest his back against the brass. Then:
"Stannard's gone, has he?"

"Yes; some one came after him a few minutes ago."

"He's a fine fellow," remarked the uncle, with the air of one who has
made a discovery. "I'm beginning to suspect that I didn't more than
half appreciate him when he and I were quarreling over this shortening
project of his a year ago last summer."

"_I_ appreciated him," said the girl shortly.

"I've often wondered if you did, or if you were only trying to make
me believe you did," was the genial counter retort. "Of course, he was
only an incident to you--something different. I supposed you would have
forgotten him by this time."

"Mr. Stannard is not the kind of man to be forgotten so easily; at
least, I thought he wasn't a year ago."

"But now you have changed your mind?"

"Decidedly."

"Just what does that mean?" queried the guardian uncle.

"It means that he isn't 'something different,' as you put it. He is
like all the others."

"That is rather a large generalization, isn't it?"

"Perhaps."

"You couldn't particularize?"

"Easily. Money is the key-word. Doc Billy married it, Monty Carroll
means to marry it, and Eggie Montjoy had no other reason for coming to
America."

"And you think Stannard wants to marry it, too?"

"He wants to marry me," was the calm reply.

The guardian uncle's sudden start made the flimsy camp-stool creak.

"Hah!" he said; and then: "He certainly doesn't believe in the policy
of delay. How many times have you seen him since we came out here?"

The young woman counted upon her fingers. "Four times, including this
evening."

"H'm; rather swift work, I should say," the uncle commented.

"Oh, he hasn't asked me--yet. But I know. There was only one thing to
stop him--the lack of money, and you are doing your best to remove
that."

"You are certainly taking a great deal for granted, Nitra--as you
usually do."

"Maybe; but I don't often have to go back and rub out the mistakes.
While we are speaking of it, perhaps you won't mind my saying that I
don't thank you for spoiling him for me, Uncle Silas."

"Now you are absurd--which is also as usual. I suppose it wouldn't be
worth while to ask you to explain just what you mean?"

"Oh, yes, it would; and if you like, I'll consider myself asked. A year
ago, or a little more, Mr. Stannard was quite capable of marrying a
woman merely because he was in love with her. Now he wouldn't think of
doing such a thing."

"What would he think of?"

"Money; his own money first, and after that the young woman's. He
wasn't that way before, and you've made him that way now."

"Again you are talking absurdities. What have I had to do with the
making or unmaking of Stannard?"

The young woman in the wicker easy-chair sat up quickly. "Do you really
want me to tell you, Uncle Silas?" she asked, with a dangerous softness
in her voice.

"Not unless you can put it in some logical and believable form. And you
know you can't do that."

"But I can," she flashed out. "You have made him believe that money is
the only thing in the world worth having, and when that was done you
bribed him with money--No, don't deny it, please. You are my father's
brother, and I want to keep on remembering that, if I can."

"Stannard told you all this, did he?" was the harsh assumption.

"No; he didn't think he was telling me anything. But I know. Why is
it that the men of your generation persist in clinging to the idea
that the women of mine are children? I've been here in Mr. Stannard's
railroad camp as long as you have, and I have eyes and ears. You told
us all at the table this evening in just so many words that you had
given Mr. Stannard a block of the railroad company's stock. And you and
Mr. Padgett together made the reason for the gift very plain."

Mr. Silas Westervelt was a patient man, mainly because he had usually
found that patience and immobility are the winning cards in any game.
But there were limits.

"One thing which your generation hasn't learned is a decent respect for
your elders, Nitra! I came out here a few minutes ago with the best of
intentions, and you met me with a slap in the face. Do you wonder that
I still regard you as a child--a badly spoiled child, at that?"

Here was a rebuke to bring the most hardened young outlaw to her knees.
But the young woman showed no sign of yielding.

"I can judge of a person's intentions only by his acts. You took
particular pains to humiliate Mr. Stannard a year ago last summer when
he was, constructively at least, a guest in your own house. When I
tried to make it a little easier for him, you took occasion to tell me
that if I chose to 'encourage' him, as you put it, I would do it at my
peril--the peril of losing the money that my father left me."

"Exactly," said the guardian, regaining some portion of his own
peculiar brand of composure. "It was a plain duty to you and to your
father's memory. I knew nothing about Stannard at the time; nothing
more than that he was not in your class, and was most probably quite
willing to become a fortune-hunter if some inconsiderate young woman
with money should give him the chance." "And you thought I was giving
him the chance?" she asked, again with the dangerous softness in her
tone.

"You seemed to be," was the cold rejoinder. "I was not the only one who
thought so. But that is neither here nor there. I don't think you'll
want to marry Stannard after you know him better; but this, too, is a
matter of indifference. What I wish to say is this: if you find any
pleasure in cultivating him, you are entirely free to do it, so far as
I am concerned."

Miss Anitra's thrusting arm was not yet weary. "You think if you
withdraw your objections it will be the surest way of turning me
against him, don't you?" she charged; adding: "Perhaps it will--that is
the attitude you have always forced me to take." She stood up and laid
a hand on the door-knob. "Is that all? If it is, I think I shall have
to ask your permission to go to bed. I'm tired and sleepy."

The guardian uncle had risen with her, and he was beaming down upon her
with the frozen smile once more in permanence.

"You are so absolutely and unspeakably childish that it is impossible
to be angry with you for more than a passing moment, Nitra. If you
had been my own daughter, I could hardly have been more watchful of
your interests or more careful for your future, and I am sure you will
realize this when you allow yourself to think calmly about it. As I
started to say a moment ago, all these harsh things you have been
saying are entirely unmerited. I merely wanted to--"

"You want me to do something for you. What is it?" she demanded shortly.

Silas Westervelt could be as direct as the bullet from a gun when he
chose to be.

"While the present situation continues, I shall be glad if you will
make Stannard feel at home with us when he comes to the _Egeria_. It is
a small thing to ask, and possibly I don't need to ask it; but--"

"I'm sorry; but I can't help you to make Mr. Stannard any more of a
money-maniac than he has already shown himself to be. I'm going out to
the Teton camp to-morrow--if Doc Billy comes in for me."

And at that she turned and left him.

Silas Westervelt gave his niece plenty of time to disappear before he
went back through the open compartment to his own office-stateroom.
Letting himself in, he found Padgett busy with pencil and paper at the
desk. At the door opening the broker flung down the pencil and made a
triumphant clucking with his tongue in his cheek.

"We've got him!" he announced, flourishing the sheet of paper upon
which he had been writing. "When I went over to the wire office,
Stannard was just going in, and I killed time on the outside for a few
minutes. After the coast was clear, I got a grip on young Hempstead and
made him give me a copy of the message he had just sent for Stannard to
John P. It's a cipher, and I've just figured it out. Read it and then
tell me that money doesn't talk!"




XVIII

THE KICKING DEER


Stannard had little to say to Patterson, the gruff-voiced second
assistant, on the half-mile walk to the scene of the recent crossing
fight. His silence was partly due to the fact that he had now fairly
committed himself in the telegram to the president, but mainly it was
chargeable to a small incident which occurred at the outsetting from
the headquarters.

The incident was a word with Bailey, the yard-master, who had come up,
boiling with wrath, to report that the Overland Northern track force
was laying a siding apparently designed to connect with the G. L. & P.
yard tracks at the lower end of the Travois.

The young chief had listened to the report and had told Bailey to sit
tight and say nothing. None the less, the high-handed and arbitrary way
in which Greer was forcing the fighting was provocative of silence and
the stirring of promptings which Stannard had assured himself had been
put safely to sleep.

Reaching the crossing, he found the situation much as Patterson had
described it. A rough gash had been dug in the clay-slide talus of
the Dogtooth above the newly laid track of the canyon approach, and
the point of obstruction had been cleverly chosen. Gallagher's men
had cleared the buried track by the simple process of shoveling the
heap of clay and broken rock on across the track to the other side of
the embankment. The clearing was completed before the chief and the
grade engineer came up, and the track-layers, armed with the repeating
rifles, were scattered up and down the line, guarding it.

Moodily viewing the battle-field by the light of the gasoline
flare-torches left behind by the retreating obstructionists, Stannard
put Patterson in command and called Roddy to return to the camp with
him. They had covered a good half of the half-mile before the assistant
broke the stubborn silence to say, "You're taking me back to give me my
time-check?"

"No," Stannard denied briefly.

Another interval of the track-walking silence intervened, and again it
was Roddy who broke it irritably.

"You're not going to fire me, but you think you ought to," he snapped.
"Is that it?"

"You did exactly what you were hired to do, Jacksie," was the sober
reply.

"But you don't approve it?"

"Yes, I do," was the brittle agreement. "It may be necessary for us to
lie down, Roddy; as I see it now, it is necessary. But the man doesn't
live who is going to make us lie down with a club! You did exactly
right--precisely what I should have done if I had been on deck at the
time."

Roddy, wise in his generation, let the matter rest at this, and a few
hundred yards farther along they came within the radius of the masthead
arcs. At the yard limits Stannard said: "How many more guns have you,
Jackson?"

"Plenty," was the laconic answer.

The young chief stopped and shaded his eyes from the glare of the
electrics.

"I suppose we ought to picket the yards," he growled thoughtfully.
"Greer seems to be the sort of thug that doesn't stop for anything
short of a knock-out." Then with a quick eye-sweep of the empty yard:
"There are two fellows dodging about over there by the _Egeria_ now. Go
and see who they are and what they want."

Roddy went part way across the tracks. Before he could reach the two
intruders they disappeared in the vestibule of the private car. But an
intervening arc-light had shown the assistant what he needed to see.

"Speak of the devil, and you hear the clatter of his hoofs," he said,
rejoining Stannard. "One of the men was your friend Vallory, and the
other was Mr. Judson Greer, himself."

For a moment Stannard saw red. Then he crushed back the rising tide of
unreasoning rage and tried to think it out calmly. The effort helped
a little. Westervelt had made no secret of the fact that the Overland
Northern wished to buy the uncompleted tunnel. But the fact that the
banker had so far taken his own acquiescence for granted as to open
negotiations with the Overland chief of construction rankled like a
barbed thorn in an angry wound.

In the headquarters work-room the lights were turned on, and when the
Missourian went in, Roddy followed him and took his accustomed seat on
Brant's drawing stool.

"We've come to the jumping-off place, Clay, and you've got to tell
me where you stand," he began abruptly. "Greer's confabbing with Mr.
Westervelt over yonder in the private car; Vallory was sent out to find
him and bring him in. What better evidence do you want that there is
crooked work going on?"

Stannard dropped heavily into the desk-chair, and then got up again to
strip off his coat and fling it aside.

"As I tried to tell you day before yesterday, Jacksie, I don't know
the ins and outs of this deal much better than you do. Mr. Westervelt
has made it appear that if we fight, things will go to smash for the G.
L. & P. company on the Stock Exchange, and Mr. Merriam and his crowd
will lose out. On the other hand, he assures me that if we come down
easy, the smash will be averted and the Merriam management will be able
to pull through. I have already told you that he has put it up to me;
not because he wants to, I think, but because he can't very well help
it. Mr. Merriam will take my word as chief of construction. He will
say, very justly, that I am here on the ground, and ought to know what
I am talking about. If I advise him to quit and sell out while he has
the chance--"

"He'll take the advice?--not John P. Merriam!" Roddy broke in. "He's
got more sand than you have, Clay."

"That doesn't cut any figure; I mustn't let it cut any figure. My
duty to Mr. Merriam and the management is pretty clear. If I wire Mr.
Merriam the exact facts as they stand to-night--"

Roddy pointed an accusing finger at his chief. "Clay, you have already
done it, and by the Lord Harry, you were hired to do it!"

Stannard, leaning back in his chair, went livid under his tan and for a
pounding heart-beat or two knew; the impotent rage of the fighting man
who has deliberately tied his own hands.

"Don't go too far with me, Jacksie," he cautioned, and his tongue was
thick in his mouth. "I've had enough to-night to make a murderer of an
ordinary man, and if this thing goes much farther, I shall certainly
hurt somebody!"

"You can begin on me, if you like," Roddy offered, and the baby-blue
eyes were snapping. "If you want another punch, I'll remind you that
you haven't denied anything."

Stannard sprang out of his chair and bolted through the door and across
the passage to his sleeping-room without a word. When he came back,
he was drawing a big envelope from the pocket of his working-coat.
Dashing the coat aside he tore the envelope open and thrust the stock
certificate at Roddy.

"Look at it--read it, and then turn it over and see what's written on
the back," he rapped out; and when Roddy had obeyed, glancing at the
bribe and handing it back with an exclamation that was less an oath
than prayer for justice upon the banker-director, Stannard slammed it
upon his desk, snatched up a pen and, crossed out the incriminating
transfer, scoring it again and again until his own name was hidden
under a blur of ink.

"Now then," he gritted; "that's out of the way once for all, and
maybe I can talk to you without choking! It _was_ a bribe. Westervelt
pretended to use it as an illustration. He said he was going to make
me a stockholder for a minute or two, to see if it wouldn't change my
point of view. When he went away he left this thing on the desk, and
I thought he had merely forgotten it. I took it over to the car and
he wasn't there. Then the devil got hold of me, Jacksie, and I began
to see it the way Westervelt had meant to make me see it: I had been
given a chance to butt in--I was to be paid for butting in--on a game
in which the cards could be just as easily stacked without my help. And
I wanted the money, Roddy; God only knows how badly I wanted it just at
that minute!"

"I know you did--and I know why," cut in the blue-eyed little man in
instant sympathy.

"It was rotten, and I knew it; but my rottenness has nothing to do
with the facts in the case. The tunnel's a failure if we don't get it
arched this fall; and if I don't advise our people to drop it, Greer
can get in the way and make us drop it. Whether Westervelt's been
honest with me, or not, those are the stubborn facts."

The assistant nodded. Then he said: "I want to ask you one question,
Clay, and if it hits you cross-ways you can haul off and land me one.
Have you any reason to believe that Westervelt would like to make it
possible for you to marry his niece?"

"Good Lord, no! I have every reason to believe that he doesn't want to
make it possible!"

"Yet he gives you a hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock which
was last week selling around one-fifty, and intimates that he will
put you in the way of making more. There's a nigger in the wood-pile,
somewhere, Clay, as sure as the devil's a hog! Silas Westervelt isn't
handing out money that way unless there is some mighty good reason for
it."

"You mean?--"

"I mean that what you're asked to do--what I'm afraid you've already
done--was a move in some big stock-jobbing game; a move that couldn't
be made, any other way; that Greer's bluff is only a bluff, and your
voluntary lie-down is the real thing--the one absolutely indispensable
and needful thing."

Stannard sat staring at the blank log wall over his desk with a
thoughtful frown furrowing itself between his level-set eyes.

"I can't see it that way, yet," he objected finally. "The Merriam
management is in trouble--that much is plain from Mr. Merriam's
telegram--and the president is asking for the plain truth. I couldn't
do any less than give it to him." Roddy brought his fist down upon the
drawing-board with a crash that made Brant's ink-bottle fall and roll
across the floor, leaving a black trail across the rough slabs as it
went.

"But what you've given him isn't the truth!" he exploded--"not the
truth as you believed it to be before Westervelt came over here and
hypnotized you. You say the bribe's out of it now, and I believe you,
Clay: take the one other necessary step and tell Westervelt to go to
the devil--tell him you won't quit until Mr. Merriam orders you to
quit!"

Again Stannard stared at the blank wall, but before he could reply
there were footsteps in the passage and Vallory came in, followed by
a small, dark-faced man with a Vandyked beard and mustaches and sharp
roving eyes that instantly took in every detail of the bare work-room.

Roddy got down from his stool, and the bad jaw which was so curiously
out of keeping with the child-like blue eyes was thrust out
aggressively when he nodded a brusque recognition. Vallory was lighting
a cigarette, and he took time to pinch the match out carefully before
he said, "This is Mr. Greer, Stannard. I've come over with him to see
that you don't cripple him before he has a chance to square himself.
Roddy, shake hands with Mr. Greer--and don't go; there's nothing
private about this late-bedtime drop-in."

Stannard stood up and put his back against the wall. He knew Greer by
sight only; the Overland construction chief had been pointed out to him
one time in the University Club in Chicago.

Greer followed up the introduction rather snappishly, for a man who had
come to square himself.

"There was a mistake made this evening, Mr. Stannard," he began. "One
of my sub-contractors took matters into his own hands and opened up a
crossing interference on your right-of-way. It was unauthorized, and I
was sending Murtrie over to call him down when your men ran him off.
That crossing business can be arranged amicably, I'm sure. We needn't
come to blows over it."

"It seems that we have already come to blows," said the Missourian, not
too placably. "I wasn't on the ground, as it happened; but if I had
been--"

"I know," Greer put in quickly. "If you had been, you would have chased
Duffey out. I'm not kicking. I'll be frank with you. I've just come
from Mr. Westervelt, who is a director in your company and a bondholder
in ours. He says there's a compromise deal on and asks us to keep the
peace. More than that, he gives me a hint that you're a coming man in
G. L. & P., and tells me that I don't want to get in bad with you right
on the jump."

Roddy, standing behind his stool and leaning upon it with propped
elbows, said: "What difference would it make if you should, Greer?
Since when have the G. L. & P. and the Overland Northern been bunking
in the same bed?"

"Oh, I don't pretend to know anything about the Wall Street end of
it," said Greer carelessly. "The two roads may be figuring on a
consolidation, for all I know to the contrary. But that's neither here
nor there. Mr. Westervelt, who, as an investor heavily interested in
both companies, ranks us both, wants us to keep the peace, and I'm
ready to do my part."

"Mr. Greer came over to make an explanation," Vallory cut in smoothly,
"and he has made it. Of course, there is always a chance for more or
less ill-feeling when two construction outfits get to mixing and
messing over a disputed right-of-way. But there is no occasion for the
ill-feeling in the present case."

Roddy was determined that the angel of peace should not rustle its
wings too prematurely.

"We are working under orders from our own management, and we haven't
been given authority to make terms with anybody," he snapped.

Greer turned upon the assistant with an angry glint in his eyes. "I was
under the impression that Mr. Stannard was the chief of construction on
this job," he struck back with a sneer.

Roddy had shot his small arrow, and could go no farther without
backing. But Stannard did not withhold the backing.

"Mr. Roddy has stated the fact very clearly," he said. "Mr. Westervelt
has made a proposal which I shall submit to our people in New York.
Pending an answer from Mr. Merriam, I shall be glad enough to keep
the peace. But it may as well be distinctly understood that our work
goes on during the interval. If there is any interference, it will be
resisted."

It was just here that Mr. Judson Greer, past master in the gentle art
of breaking records in rushing a railroad line through to completion,
made the capital mistake of entering the field of diplomacy.

"It will be altogether better if we agree right here, Stannard,--you
and I,--to suspend operations until we have definite instructions
from headquarters. I don't know how much Mr. Westervelt has told you,
but really, you know, it's all over but the shouting. The courts have
decided that our original right-of-way in Standing Stone Canyon holds
good, and I don't need to tell as good a man as you are that you can't
complete your tunnel approach if we insist upon our rights." "That
remains to be seen," said Stannard dryly.

"Oh, of course, I grant you that," was the ready response. "I suppose
we two could scrap it out and waste a lot of money for our respective
companies; but in the end you'd have to get down and out. The Overland
is going to be the first railroad into the Kicking Deer district;
that's written in the books."

The effect of this remarkable statement upon the three listeners was a
striking commentary upon that Scripture which characterizes the human
tongue as an unruly member. Vallory turned aside, and his half audible
oath was poorly hidden in a choking cigarette-smoke cough, forced
for the occasion. Roddy straightened up with a flash of blue fire in
the child-like eyes. A cool wind was sliding down from the high snow
balds of the Buckskin and blowing in through the open window of the
office-workroom. Stannard reached for the nearest of the two cast-off
coats and put it on.

"I've said all that I need to say, Mr. Greer," he remarked quietly. "If
you want to mark time pending the clearing up of the situation from New
York, that is your own affair, of course. But I shall neither discharge
my force nor lay it off. Was there anything else?"

There might have been many things else if Vallory's presence of mind
had not come to the rescue.

"You're working all-night shifts over here, Clay," he laughed, dragging
out his watch; "but even at that, I suppose you have to sleep a little
once in a while. Come on, Greer; let's give these fellows a chance to
turn in. They'll be doing the somnambulist act with us, and talking
in their sleep if we stay any longer." And he locked arms with Greer
and took him away. Stannard walked the floor of the work-room with
his hands behind him for five full minutes after the departure of the
clubman and the engineer. As at an earlier period in the evening, Roddy
was the one to break the silence.

"Well?" he said, tentatively.

Stannard stopped and began to arrange the papers on his desk. "I am
clothed and in my right mind again, Jacksie," he asserted soberly.
"What I do now will be done without tangling itself up with anything
that may happen to me personally. This bribe goes back to Mr.
Westervelt in the morning, and that lets me out. Just the same, I've
got to take care of Mr. Merriam's interests and not let all this
double-dealing and chicanery make a hot-headed fool of me."

"You are still believing that Mr. Westervelt is telling the truth about
the Wall Street situation and the calamities that are going to befall
if we don't sell out to the Overland?" queried Roddy.

"I am going to give Mr. Merriam a chance to duck, if he wants the
chance."

"But you've already advised him to duck, haven't you?"

"What I wired him an hour or so ago may fairly be taken as an offset to
some of the optimistic things that I have signed my name to since we
began hitting the bad luck. I didn't advise him; I merely told him that
the outlook was plenty discouraging; and it is, Roddy--you'll have to
admit it is."

"Also you gave him to understand that you wanted to lie down, didn't
you?"

Stannard sat on the edge of the desk and tried to be perfectly fair and
straightforward with his ruthless questioner.

"It might be taken that way," he admitted. "I thought so. It's getting
along towards midnight; but it's up to you to chase this wire of yours
with another before you go to bed, Clay. Make it plain to Mr. Merriam
that you are willing to fight to the last gasp, if that's what he wants
you to do. I'll back you--every man on the force will back you. Great
Heavens! Didn't you hear what Greer said?"

"I heard him make his brag about swallowing us whole, if that's what
you mean."

"You heard him say that the Overland was going to be the first railroad
to enter the Kicking Deer district, and you saw your friend Vallory
turn away and come mighty near choking to death to keep from cursing
Greer for letting the cat out of the bag."

"What's that?" exploded the Missourian.

"Oh; you are catching on at last, are you? I don't know any more than
you do what's going to happen in the Kicking Deer district; but if
there's any reason why the Overland wants to get there first, you'll
admit that it's a still bigger reason for us."

Stannard made no further comment. "Come on down to the telegraph office
with me, Jacksie," he said; and they went out together. As they were
passing the commissary, the potential recanter suddenly changed his
mind. "On second thought, perhaps you'd better get busy another way,
Roddy," he advised. "Go back to the office and call up Patterson on
the working phone. Tell him to pick out half a dozen good men from his
picketing squad and send them down here to patrol the yard. I wish to
the Lord we could get that private car out of the way; or, failing in
that, get the two women that are left in it over to that camp in the
Teton foot-hills!"

The blue-eyed assistant laughed shrewdly as he turned away. "Mr.
Westervelt meant to make you keep the peace, whether you wanted to or
not," he said. "That is the reason why he brought the women along. Go
and send your wire--and make it stout and man-sized. I'll see to the
guard-mounting."

Roddy went back to the headquarters and picked up Patterson on one of
the field 'phones in the canyon. Transmitting the chief's order, and
getting Patterson's assurance that a guard squad would be sent down
at once, the assistant changed the switch plugs and rang up the west
end of the tunnel. Markley's night man answered, and Roddy asked for
Markley himself. When he had the red-headed tunnel driver at the other
end of the wire:

"That you, Charlie?--all right; this is Roddy. Want to take a little
hike for your health?"

"Hike be damned! I'm driving tunnel!" was the indignant retort that
came back over the wire.

"Never mind about that. Put that big Cornish head-driller of yours in
charge for the night, and one of us will be over in the morning to
start the day shift. Get that?"

"Sure. What's broke loose?"

"That's just what we want you to find out, and you're the man to do it,
if anybody can. Make you a blanket roll and pitch out down the mountain
to Castleman's horse ranch. Take a pine torch if you can't find your
way in the dark. At Castleman's get the best mountain-climbing bronc'
he'll let you have, and make a straight shoot for the Kicking Deer."

"All right; say I'm watering the bronc' in the Kicking Deer--what next?"

"That's what I can't tell you, Markley--it's what you've got to find
out for yourself. Prospectors have been finding float gold in the hills
a mile or two north of the Deer any time during the past twenty years
but nothing that would pay to work. Turn prospector yourself and see
if there has been anything doing in that neck of woods lately. If you
turn up anything new and startling, climb your bronc' and burn the wind
to get the news on the wire. That's all. Go to it, and bring back the
money!"

"I'm It!" snapped the red-headed one, and the click in the receiver
told Roddy that his one-man scouting expedition had as good as taken
the field.




XIX

IN WHICH THE CAT CAME BACK


The morning following the clash of the two rival construction forces
near the mouth of Standing Stone Canyon saw a return of the delightful
autumn weather, clear and cool enough to be bracing, but with a
windless air, and sunshine that was like the golden glow of the Italian
October.

To the casual observer the passing of the night had changed nothing
in the aspect of the end-of-track construction camp. The yard crews,
with the two big "camel-backs" for switching engines, were sorting
the trains of material which had come in during the night; gangs of
laborers were unloading cross-ties and rails; a few trackmen were
laying a "cut-in" from a new siding to the main line; and in the lower
yard, Bailey, with a road crew and its engine, was making up trains of
empty cars to be taken back to Yellow Medicine.

If the yard gangs were larger, and the activities a little more
strenuous than usual, the increase in numbers and the quickened pace
were not significant enough to evoke more than a passing comment on
the part of the two men who stood on the railed-in rear platform of
the _Egeria_. Though it was still early, the banker-director and
his business lieutenant had already breakfasted. What was even more
remarkable, they had been out on the platform before breakfast at
the hour of shift changing; had seen the night men from the tunnel
come down to make a hungry assault upon the big mess tent back
of the commissary, and had looked on while Patterson loaded his
pick-and-shovel army on the work train preparatory to a resumption of
the daily grading drive among the firs on the high shoulder of the
Buckskin.

Not having the deductive gifts of a Vidocq or a Holmes, the
round-bodied broker and his principal missed some of the details of the
stirring scene which was staging itself in shuttling trains, in the
hurrying crews, in the clangor and slide of the steel as the loading
gangs, heaving and shouting in unison, shot it skilfully from car to
storage stack.

For one of the missed details, each of the "camel-backs" carried a
third man in the cab--a man whose sawed-off gun lay on the cushion at
his feet, and whose most onerous duty seemed to consist in hanging from
the cab window to chaff with the various working squads as the engine
passed them. For another, there were idlers in each of the working
gangs; men who, upon closer inspection, would have been identified as
members of Gallagher's track-laying army, each with a short repeating
rifle carried at ease in the crook of his arm.

Over on the bare mesa knoll behind the log-built headquarters there was
a third of the missed details figuring as one of the commissary clerks
with a field-glass which he focused from time to time upon the distant
Rock Face with the new camp rising at its foot, or upon a point a mile
or more up the valley where Greer's bridge gang was busily at work
throwing a trestle across the Standing Stone.

Neither the banker nor his companion on the _Egeria's_ platform noted
any of these small significances; but Mr. Westervelt had marked the
activities of the Overland Northern bridge gang, and he commented
impatiently upon them.

"Greer is proving exceedingly hard to hold down," was the form the
comment took. "After that blunder of last night and its consequences,
he ought to know better than to go on baiting Stannard at the most
critical moment in the entire undertaking!"

"Greer has some reason on his side," Padgett interposed. "You remember
he told you last night that though he would make the proposal to
Stannard because you insisted upon it, he couldn't afford to stand
still; that a halt would disorganize his force and make him lose just
that much distance in a hard-fought race. He believes--as I've been
inclined to believe all along--that Stannard will have to be knocked
into line with a club."

"You change your mind every few minutes, Padgett!" said the magnate,
irritably critical. "Last night, after you had translated that message
of Stannard's to Merriam, you said we had him."

"It did look that way. But, on second thought, it's just as Vallory
says: the message doesn't say anything that can't be taken back.
Merriam's reply will be the turning point; and Stannard has fixed
things now so that we may have a good bit of trouble in finding out
what Merriam says."

"How is that?"

"Didn't Vallory tell you? Some time during the night, or early
this morning, Stannard had his telegraph office moved up to his
headquarters, where he can have young Hempstead right under his eye."

Mr. Westervelt shook his head. "That looks bad, Padgett," he commented.
"It looks as if Hempstead might be under suspicion. Have you seen the
boy this morning?" "No; I was over there before breakfast with a
message and that blue-eyed, steel-trap little chap--Roddy--took it in.
He shut me off pretty short; said the wire was very busy, but he'd get
my telegram off as soon as he could."

The banker drew up a camp-stool and sat down astride of it, squaring
his arms on the polished brass railing.

"This is settling day," he said. "That wire you brought me last night
was from Sawtelle. He's got Merriam right where he wants him, and if
Merriam doesn't come to terms by noon, a break will be made in G. L. &
P. on the floor of the Exchange. Stannard's wire will help out, but it
wasn't strong enough. He must send another this morning."

Padgett waved a fat hand in acceptance of the necessity.

"You say he must; but will he?--with Greer slapping him in the face
with that trestle-building up yonder? I'm afraid we missed a bet by
letting Greer get in here before Stannard was definitely committed."

"But Stannard _is_ committed," persisted the magnate. "He has accepted
his retainer."

"You mean he has not as yet refused to accept it. There's a good bit of
difference in that distinction, don't you think?"

It was at this precise moment, as if the broker's query had evoked
him, that handsome Eddie Brant dropped from a string of moving cars
on a near-by siding and came across to the _Egeria_. "Letter from Mr.
Stannard," he said, handing an official envelope up through the railing
to the sitting millionaire; and he was gone before Mr. Westervelt could
run his finger under the freshly gummed flap.

There were two enclosures, and the banker held one of them, face down,
upon his knee while he read the other. As more than once before, since
he had projected himself into this unwonted region of things unfettered
and elemental, Mr. Silas Westervelt swore picturesquely.

"Listen to this, Padgett!" he grated. "It's from Stannard. He says, 'I
am returning herewith stock certificate Number 1663, for 1,000 shares
of G. L. & P. common, which--doubtless through an oversight--you left
lying on the desk when you were in my office the other day. In order to
guard against possible accidents, I have crossed out the endorsement on
the back of the certificate, as you will see.'"

The banker-director paused and swore again; and Padgett asked, "Is that
all? Doesn't he say what he is going to do?"

"Of course he doesn't--he doesn't need to say!" the great man rapped
out angrily. Then: "Where's Vallory? I want him to go and find Greer!
I told you all that hustling over yonder meant something! Hurry up
and send one of the colored boys after Vallory; or, better still, go
after him yourself. He's over there somewhere, trying to keep tab on
Stannard."

It was possibly five minutes before this episode of the letter-reading
that Miss Anitra Westervelt, rising much later than her uncle and his
two subalterns, had entered the open compartment, meaning to get her
morning breath of fresh air on the rear platform while the waiter was
laying the breakfast plates for herself and Mrs. Grantham.

The shades were drawn in the two full-length rear windows, and she did
not know that the platform was occupied until she stood with the knob
of the half-opened door in her hand. When her uncle laid his mandatory
commands upon Padgett, she was thankful for the qualifying change which
sent the broker over the railing instead of back through the car in
search of a messenger. It gave her the short reprieve that was needed;
and a moment later, when Mr. Westervelt passed through the car on his
way to shut himself into his office-stateroom, the plate-laying waiter
was the only occupant of the open compartment.




XX

THE FLANKING COLUMN


The cheap little alarm clock on Stannard's desk had measured off an
hour or more beyond the despatching of Eddie Brant on the errand
which had proved so disturbing to Mr. Silas Westervelt. Like a good
general alertly aware of the approaching conflict, the young chief of
construction, sitting at his desk and directing the activities, was
thoughtfully making his dispositions for the battle which now seemed
inevitable.

That Mr. Westervelt would pass the fighting word to Greer was hardly
to be doubted. In the little time which yet remained to him Stannard
was striving anxiously to cover the weak points and to out-maneuver
the enemy. The prime necessity was to keep the interferers out of the
canyon of the Standing Stone until the rails of the approach track
could be laid around the gulch-head curve and up to safety on the high
shoulder of the Buckskin. To accomplish this, the excavating force in
the great rock-cutting had been doubled, and a cordon of Gallagher's
men, armed with the smuggled Winchesters and commanded by Gallagher
himself, had been thrown across the mouth of the canyon, with orders
to hold the intruders back, peaceably if possible, but by force if no
other alternative offered.

With the canyon mouth guarded, and with Patterson driving the work in
the cutting and on the grade at heart-breaking speed, Stannard had
organized a swift but orderly campaign of preparation at his base of
supplies. All morning, at his new desk in the farther corner of the
long work-room, Hempstead, the novel-reading telegraph operator, had
been kept busy rattling his key on hurry messages to the despatchers
and division superintendents on the main line--wire appeals in which
Stannard rang all the changes from coaxings to curses to expedite the
forwarding of his material still in transit.

In the yard the preparation hustle was going forward on lines of
efficiency laid down by the young chief and his first assistant in the
small hours of the morning. Cross-ties and rails were being shifted
into rankings of easy accessibility, so that they might be loaded and
rushed to the front without delay; and a steam wrecking-crane, borrowed
from the Yellow Medicine headquarters a week earlier to pick up a
derailed locomotive in the Travois yard, was pressed into service to
help in the quick transferring of the heavier material.

At all points, in the yard as well as on the grade, Stannard was
maintaining the guard of the loyal track-layers, not so much to
forestall a possible attack as to keep his laborers from deserting.
This was Roddy's idea, and Roddy knew Greer. "About the first thing
Judson will do will be to send walking delegates over here to stampede
our crowd," Roddy suggested; and thereupon the guard had been
established as a sort of emergency constabulary, with orders to arrest
stragglers or strangers promptly.

Past these workmanlike preparations, Stannard had taken another leaf
out of the good general's book by turning his commissary clerks and
staff helpers into a scouting corps. It was one of these who was posted
on the little hill behind the headquarters building to keep watch
with his field-glass and to report from time to time on the progress
of Greer's work in the upper valley. Others were stationed at various
points in the danger zone under Roddy's direction; and the importance
of this precaution was demonstrated when a young chainman came across
from his hiding-place near the _Egeria_ with the word that Padgett had
hurriedly sought and found Vallory, and that Vallory had immediately
set out for the valley head, "Pikin' out like he was goin' for a
doctor," in the scouting chain-man's phrase.

Taking all these preliminary steps with the vigor of an undaunted
fighting man, Stannard was still sweating under an uncertainty that was
little short of paralyzing. As yet there had been no reply from the
president to either of his messages of the previous night. Again and
again he made Hempstead break the sending of the "hurry orders" to ask
Yellow Medicine if there were anything from New York; and the reply was
always the same, "O fm Nw. Yk."

He had just fallen upon the operator again, with the same disappointing
result, when Roddy, completing a scouting round which had included
a trip to the east-end tunnel workings and a hand-car flight to the
end-of-track in the canyon, came in.

"I was just beginning to wonder if Greer had sand-bagged you," was the
young chief's greeting. "What do you know?"

"We are hanging on by our eyebrows, but we're still alive," said Roddy.
"Weatherby has just reported in from his verifying trip down the South
Fork of the Deer. He got me on Pearson's phone from the west end of the
tunnel, and I told him to stay where he is and take Markley's place."

"Markley's? What's the matter with Markley?" "Didn't I tell you?
He wanted to lay off for a day or so, and I let him go," said the
assistant coolly. "I had him on the wire last night while you were down
at Hempstead's shack."

"Wanted a lay-off?" Stannard exclaimed. "That's a little queer, isn't
it? I didn't think Markley was the sort of man who would ask leave to
go fishing in the hot middle of a fight."

"Oh, that's all right," said the granter of lay-offs, nonchalantly.
"He'll be back in a day or two, and Weatherby can drive tunnel as well
as anybody we've got." Then he switched abruptly. "Pearson's holding
his breath. Another section of his roof is threatening to tumble down.
I did my best to 'hope him up.' One day more in the big rock cut will
give us room to get by with the ties and rails; and Patterson says he's
in shape to surface for us now as fast as we want to push him with the
steel."

"Which means that we may possibly be able to shoot Pearson's concreting
material up to him in time to save his roof--if Mr. Merriam doesn't
call us down," was the young chief's half discouraged rejoinder.

"No telegram yet?" queried Roddy.

"Not a word. I've been worrying the life out of those poor devils at
Yellow Medicine all morning. I don't understand it, Jacksie. It isn't
like Mr. Merriam to crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after him."

"No, it isn't," agreed the little man, and then he switched again.
"What have you done about the private car?"

"Nothing. Mr. Westervelt may stay if he wants to. But I have sent
Crowley out to the camp in the Tetons with a note asking Kitts to come
in after Mrs. Grantham and Miss Anitra. He'll do it." Roddy slid down
from Brant's stool and walked to the window behind Stannard's chair.

"He has already done it," he remarked casually. "He is coming across
the yard now--with Miss Westervelt. That's my cue to drop out, I
reckon."

"It's nothing of the sort!" growled the Missourian. "Kitts may be
coming to see me, but Miss Westervelt isn't. Stay where you are."

Roddy obeyed the order so literally that he was still looking out of
the window when the athletic young surgeon came in and turned to hold
an imaginary portière aside for his companion. For a little time the
talk was strictly frivolous; with Kitts asserting that he had brought
Miss Westervelt over to say good-by, since he was going to take her and
the chaperone back with him, and Miss Westervelt protesting vigorously
that she didn't mean to be dragged off to any place more primitive and
barbarous than the Travois construction camp.

Stannard never knew whether it was Kitts or Roddy who was responsible
for the shift which presently left him alone at his end of the long
room with Anitra, but the thing was done when one or the other of them
suggested that M'Clarty's wound ought to be seen to, and they left the
work-room together.

"I'm glad they've gone," said Stannard, seating his remaining visitor
in the one chair and planting himself on the desk end. "I want to talk
seriously to you, and Kitts makes a joke of everything. You didn't mean
it when you said you were not going back with him?"

"I haven't made up my mind yet," was the flippant rejoinder.

"Then I'll make it up for you: you go; you've got to go, and take Mrs.
Grantham with you." "Why have I got to go?" she demanded, with an
uptilt of the pretty chin.

"Because I say you must."

Her laugh was a delicious little ripple of defiance.

"This is positively refreshing!" she mocked. And then, "I'm _not_ going;
n-o-t, not. Now what are you going to do about it, Mr. Sublime Porte
Stannard?"

Stannard's heavy brows went together in a frown.

"What I shall be obliged to do will add a little more pepper to a stew
which is already hot enough. I shall have to send the _Egeria_ back to
Yellow Medicine--without waiting for the other members of your party to
rejoin it."

"Mercy!" she gasped, and if her astoundment were an affectation it was
a triumph in its way. Then: "Something dreadful must have happened
since last night. Wouldn't Uncle Silas give you enough money?"

It was just at this conjuncture that Hempstead got up from his table in
the far corner of the room and went out. With a clear field, Stannard
braced himself and smashed his way through the conventional barriers.

"You've given me the chance that I've been aching for all morning," he
broke out. "You've had every reason to believe that I was about to turn
grafter, haven't you?"

"I don't think we have mentioned any such dreadful word as that," she
returned. "You were simply going to be like other men and get all the
money you could, weren't you?"

"No!" he denied roughly. "I was tempted--I'll admit that. But I think
there was never a moment when I really meant to take your uncle's
bribe. That's what it was, you know; just a plain, shameless bribe!"
He was looking her fairly in the eyes when he said it, and the
wide-open brown depths were glowing like velvet stars as they had on
that other occasion when he had been brutally self-assertive with her.
Then she took his breath away.

"I know the bribe was given you, and I also know that you have proved
yourself the impossible hundredth man by returning it," she said quite
calmly; adding: "That is why I made Doc Billy bring me over here, don't
you see?"

"No; I don't see," he objected blindly.

"Then I'll make it quite plain," she went on as blandly as if she were
discussing the weather. "When we first met, a year ago last summer, I
liked you because I thought you were different. I've been thinking of
you that way ever since, and it simply made me furious when I found
out, or thought I found out, that you were going to be just like all
the others."

Stannard gripped the edge of the desk until he could feel his
heartbeats in his finger-ends.

"Then you didn't mean what you were saying when you told me--"

"Not one single word of it. But I was just spiteful enough not to
say one word that would stop you. Being a man, I suppose you can't
understand that--but any woman would know."

Stannard was well out of his depth now and floundering helplessly.

"You wanted me to refuse, and yet you talked money to me until I
couldn't think of anything else?" he exploded.

She nodded brightly, adding: "You needn't shout at me that way. Be a
good lion, like the one in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and roar me
gently." The little quip broke the strain, and he laughed with her.

"There never was another woman like you in all the world," he exulted.
"Now I can tell you why you must go with Kitts, and take Mrs. Grantham.
There is going to be the biggest kind of a row right here in this
valley--if my president doesn't call me down--and I'm going to ask you
to be disloyal enough to your uncle to go away."

"Disloyal?" she queried.

"Yes. He brought you and the other women along so that I couldn't
fight, even if I should want to. That is one of the meanings of this
picnic party."

She made a charming little face at him.

"You couldn't drive me away with a stick now," she told him, sweetly
obstinate. "The idea! just when something really worth while is going
to happen!"

"All right, then; I shall have to order the _Egeria_ out of the danger
zone."

"You do it, and I'll go over to the other side!" she struck back.

"Do you mean to say that you are on my side, as it is?"

"Of course I am. Why else would I have made Doc Billy bring me over
here? I wanted to tell you that Uncle Silas is fairly hopping. He has
sent for this Greer person, and--oh, dear! I had forgotten! Now you
won't have any money and you can never tell the 'one altogether' that
_her_ money doesn't make any difference!"

"My money wouldn't make any difference to her," he put in hastily. "It
was a pipe-dream--as I told you a few evenings ago. She liked me a
little once, just as you did--because she thought I was different--but
that's all. She can marry an Italian Count, if she wants to--and pay
all his debts. So you can see I'm not in it; not even in the outer
edges of it. You say your uncle has sent for Greer?"

"I did; but I sha'n't say it again unless you'll promise not to send
the _Egeria_ away."

Stannard took time to consider. Her sudden change of front was sweeping
him off his feet. In the lilting exaltation of the moment he felt as
other men have felt since the world began--that with the chosen woman
looking on he could smash his way to success through anything and
everything. Then he remembered that story he had heard and tossed out
of his mind; how she would be disinherited if she should marry against
her uncle's wishes. He would have nothing but the apple-trees to offer
her to make up for the lost fortune; and, as matters stood, Mr. Silas
Westervelt's opposition was a thing already earned.

"I wish you didn't have a dollar to your name," he said, which was as
near as he came to making the required promise about the moving of the
private car.

Her laugh was a tonic for overstrained nerves and a troubled mind.

"That means that you are going to let the car stay here," she approved.
"Now I'll be good and help you. Uncle Silas read your note, and he--he
simply _coruscated_! I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't very well
help it. Then he hurried Mr. Padgett off to find Austin Vallory, and
Austin Vallory was to hurry, hurry, hurry and find the Greer person.
What will the Greer person do to you?"

"He will try to make me do what your uncle tried to hire me to do;
quit, go away, lie down on the job."

"Can he do it?"

"Not in a month of Sundays--unless Mr. Merriam tells me I've got to."
"Then you haven't heard from Mr. Merriam?"

"No. I'm looking for a telegram any minute."

She got out of her chair and went to stand for a moment at the little
square window commanding the camp and the yard.

"Doc Billy and Mr. Roddy are coming back," she said quickly. And then,
still more hurriedly: "There is something behind all this: I don't know
what it is, but I heard just a whisper of it in New York before we
started. There is a great deal of money involved, some way, and--and
Uncle Silas hates Mr. Merriam. I haven't tried to find out; but now I
_am_ going to try. That's the reason you mustn't drive me away. You
won't, will you?"

He was trying to assure her in some burbling fashion that he and the
entire Travois camp were hers to play skittles with, if she so desired,
when Kitts and Roddy came in and the conventional side-scenes shifted
quickly into place again. Stannard watched for his opportunity, and
farther along when Roddy made it for him by taking Miss Westervelt
to the door to show her the "snow veil" blowing over the sharp,
high-pitched summit of Bald Mountain, he backed Kitts into a corner.

"Miss Anitra has changed her mind about going with you," said the
Missourian, without preface. "She wants to stay and see the scrimmage,
and what she says goes as it lies. I'll see to it that the _Egeria_ is
kept out of the way of any bombardment--and----"

"So you're going to make the fight?" Kitts broke in. "I knew you would!
By Jove, I'm going to be here to see it!"

"You can do me a good turn by herding the others away from it," said
Stannard quickly. "That's what I wanted to ask you to do." Kitts
laughed.

"Are you of the same mind that you were a few days ago? putting it
up that Uncle Silas brought us along to force you to keep the peace?
Because if you are, you can bet high that his first move will be to
call us all in. He couldn't embarrass you any more effectually than by
turning the lot of us loose on you right in the middle of things, and
if war has been declared, that is just about what he'll do."

"If he does, I'll trundle the whole bunch of you out on the desert and
leave you there," said the young chief, with a grim laugh; but after
Kitts had taken his charge back across the tracks to the _Egeria_,
Stannard remembered his compact with his new ally, and never doubting
for an instant the ally's sincerity, he could not help wondering if her
coming had not been part of a deeply buried move of Silas Westervelt's
with a further tying of a fighting man's hands as its object.

Coming back to business after the visitors were gone, Roddy was quick
to remark that Hempstead's chair at the telegraph table was still
vacant. While he was asking what had become of the operator, Eddie
Brant loafed in, hot, dusty, and with fine fire of excitement blazing
in his boyish eyes.

"I'm the sweet little Sherlock Holmes of this outfit!" he bragged,
climbing to a seat on his high stool and fanning himself with his hat.
"When I get through telling you where I've been, you're going to get me
the Carnegie medal!"

"I'm going to dock you for staying away so long," growled the chief.
"What have you been doing?"

"Butting in," said the map-maker briefly. "I gave your letter to His
Nibs in the _Egeria_ and on the way back I stopped at the commissary.
Boligee, the engineer who came in with the last train of material
before daylight, was there, buying a plug of tobacco. I got to talking
with him, and he asked me what in Sam Hill we'd been building a wagon
road for across our track about four miles back in the desert."

"What's that?" Stannard demanded.

"A wagon road. I fell on him like a thousand of brick. His engine was
standing on the coal track, and I got him to take me down the line and
show me. The wagon road was there, all right; crossing planks all in
and everything shipshape. More than that, it looked as if all the teams
in the round world had been using it--right recently."

"Cut out the frills!" snapped Roddy. "You didn't stop at that?"

"You bet I didn't! I sent Boligee back to camp and piked out to follow
the road to the south. When I got into the hills it looked like a sure
thing--and it was, and is. When I came out on top of the south spur of
the Dogtooth, which was where the tote-road took me, I could hear the
Standing Stone pounding among the boulders a good three-quarters of a
mile straight down in the canyon."

Again Roddy broke in with a fierce: "Cut it short and get to the nib of
the thing, can't you!"

"I'm there, right now. On a ledge in the woods above our rock-cutting
I saw the end of my tote-road, and what the road had been made for.
There's a big grade camp on that ledge in the woods, with a couple
of hundred men sitting around doing nothing--waiting for orders, I
suppose. While we've been watching the mouth of the canyon, Greer's
gone all around Robin Hood's barn and outflanked us. When that big
bunch on the Dogtooth ledge drills its first set of holes and touches
'em off, we'll have to take a magnifying-glass along when we go to hunt
for our rock-cut! Now don't I get that medal?"




XXI

THE STOP-SIGNAL


Eddie Brant's startling announcement was followed by a dramatic pause
into which the tappings of the telegraph sounder at the farther end of
the room broke with magnified clamorings. Then the blue-eyed assistant
swore painstakingly and fervently, and Stannard sprang from his chair
to go to the telephone, his first thought being for the workmen in the
big rock-cutting whose lives would be imperiled if Greer's grading
force should begin blasting and excavating on the mountain above them.

Before he could reach the 'phone he was confronted by a big man in
work-stained khaki who had walked in unannounced. Stannard instantly
recognized the intruder as his rough-and-tumble antagonist in the night
fight on the Standing Stone gravel-bar.

"Flag o' truce," said the gigantic transit-man, grinning. "Mr. Greer
sent me over with a message. I'll deliver it peaceably, if you'll let
me."

"Turn it loose," said Stannard shortly.

"We've got a big rock-cut to make on our right-of-way in the canyon,
and we don't want to kill any of you folks unless we have to," the
emissary began. "Mr. Greer says if you want to play safe, you'll take
your men out of that cutting you're making just below us."

"You go back and tell Mr. Greer that we are entirely within our rights
in the canyon, and he will endanger the lives of our men at his
peril!" snapped the Missourian.

"Just as you say," the big man acquiesced, grinning again: and with
that he turned and went away with as little ceremony as he had come.

Another interval of silence followed and Roddy was the first to break
it.

"We're up against it, good and hard, Clay!" he gritted. "Greer's put us
where we've got to take the initiative--which is exactly what he meant
to make us do. Unless we mean to hang up and go out of business, we've
got to drive that bunch of his out of the Dogtooth timber, and he's
daring us to do it. When we do it, we shall put ourselves on the wrong
side of the law."

"Yes, and I'll bet he has brought the law machinery right along with
him," put in Brant. "When we make the break, there'll be warrants out
for every last one of us. I saw it done that way last year up in the
Cœur d'Alenes."

Stannard took a turn up and down the room with his hands in his
pockets. His fighting blood was up, now, but the president's silence
was hampering him cruelly. Try as he might to overcome it, there was
always a lingering fear that Silas Westervelt's story might be true,
after all; that a plunge into violence might be precisely the thing
which would precipitate the stock-market disaster which Westervelt had
predicted.

Still, something must be done; and it was too late to turn back.
If Greer's flanking force could not be driven out of the Dogtooth
stronghold, the battle was as good as lost. Brant had not exaggerated
in saying that the dynamiting of the high ledge would send an avalanche
of earth and broken rock down completely to extinguish the quarried
foothold which was the weakest point in the tunnel approach.

It was Brant who finally came to the rescue. While Stannard was
tramping back and forth, the map-maker had been sitting with his elbows
on the drawing-board and his fingers buried in his curly hair. Suddenly
he looked up to say:

"If you'll give me a free hand, Stannard, I'll get those fellows out of
the woods--and I'll do it without killing anybody. What do you say?"

"It's your say," said the young chief, wheeling short upon the
draftsman. "What do you mean by 'a free hand'?"

"Leave of absence for a few hours, and an order to Bailey giving me the
use of one of those road engines on the coal track."

"Where do you want to go?"

"To Yellow Medicine. I'll be back by supper-time, if I have any kind of
luck."

"Go ahead--and tell Bailey you have my authority," said Stannard,
who was still wrestling with the greater problem; and when Brant
disappeared, Roddy broke in.

"If that kid can do what he says he can, I'll resign and give him my
job." And then, seeing that Stannard was in sore need of a diversion
of some sort: "Come down to the loading platform with me and look over
those concrete mixers that Canby's unloading. Pearson will want to know
how to install them; if we're lucky enough to be able to get them up to
him before his roof falls in."

A few minutes after the work-room had been deserted by the two
engineers, a young fellow with sleepy eyes and a loosely hanging lower
lip dodged in through the open door, made a quick reconnaissance of
the mesa path in passing the square window, and went to the telegraph
table. Sitting down to the worn-out typewriter upon which he took his
messages, he thrust a receiving blank between the rolls and began
to write, referring from time to time to a few scrawled signs and
pot-hooks on the back of a visiting card which he had drawn from his
pocket.

When he took the sheet from the machine he folded it methodically,
enclosed it in an envelope, and returned the scribbled card to his
pocket. Five minutes later he was handing the sealed envelope to
Stannard on the loading platform below the bunk shacks; delivering it
and turning away to tramp back to the headquarters.

"This is where we find out whether we live or die, Jacksie," Stannard
jested grimly, tearing the envelope across. Then, as he read the
enclosure, the bright autumn sunshine went out in a glare of red for
him, and his explosive outburst made the two freight-handlers who were
unloading the mixing machine drop their pinch-bars and duck for safety.

Roddy took the freshly delivered telegram his chief was thrusting at
him and glanced at the typewritten, lines. The message bore a New York
date line and it had evidently been delayed in transmission, since the
date line gave the sending time as eight-thirty.

  To C. Stannard,
  Chief of Construction,
  Travois Camp.

  Mr. Merriam sick and confined to his room. Directs me to tell you that
  Appellate Court has decided against us in claim of Overland Northern
  as prior locator of right-of-way and tunnel site, and injunction will
  be issued. Stop all work at once and confer with Mr. Westervelt.

  C. Cardigan,
  Secretary.

Exactly coincident with Roddy's reading of this peremptory stop-order,
the coffee-colored serving man was laying the plates for the midday
meal in the _Egeria_, and Vallory was swinging himself up to the
recessed observation platform where Mr. Westervelt was sitting quietly
in the shade of the umbrella roof and apparently waiting for him. In
the body of the car, Kitts, delaying his return to the foot-hills until
afternoon, was laughing and joking with Anitra and the chaperone. The
door was ajar, and Vallory silently closed it and stood with his back
to it.

"It's pulled off," he reported. "Stannard will be over before long,
ready to eat from your hand. When he comes, you want to strike quick
and hard; shove him out and shove Greer in, in a hurry. Padgett's got
New York over Greer's construction wire, and he wanted me to tell
you that there is merry hell to pay in the Street--it began with the
opening of the market this morning. Get a strangle hold on Stannard
when he shows up, and remember that time is the one thing we can
neither borrow nor buy."

The magnate nodded slowly.

"I don't know what you've done, Austin, and I don't want to know," he
declared, taking refuge in the time-honored assumption that the master
may not be called to account for the overzealous forth-pushings of his
followers. Then he added. "I hope it isn't anything that will land you
in the penitentiary when Merriam sets the dogs on you."

Vallory's smile showed his fine, even rows of teeth.

"I can take care of myself," he asserted; adding: "but so far as that
is concerned, there is no trail for the dogs to follow. Stannard has
just been handed a wire which will do the business for us. I can't
quote it _verbatim_, but it's a stop-order, all right." And then the
door opened behind him and the waiter announced luncheon.




XXII

IN WHICH A CIGAR-CASE TURNS UP


Contrary to Vallory's confident prediction, Stannard did not break his
neck in the effort to hand in his submission to the banker-director at
the earliest possible moment. So far from it, after the first burst
of angry disappointment he turned the camp activities over to Roddy,
filled his pockets with crackers at the commissary and set out to walk
the line toward the canyon, munching the makeshift luncheon as he went.

More than at any other crisis in the heart-breaking struggle for
accomplishment, he craved solitude and a chance to think. With
Westervelt's urgings, and Greer menacing and out-maneuvering him at
every turn; with the rotten tunnel roof threatening, and with his New
York backing practically withdrawn, submission seemed to be the only
alternative. Yet the very depth of the ditch into which his undertaking
had fallen was breeding a fine frenzy of forlorn-hope determination as
he tramped moodily along over the cross-ties of the unsurfaced track.

"For just one word from anybody who cares a tinker's damn what becomes
of this job, I'd fight Judson Greer to a stand-still and put the thing
through yet!" he told himself grittingly in the desperate gropings for
some outlet which would be a little less than annihilative. Then he
caught at the one small ray of hope in the maddening order from New
York. "That wire says Mr. Merriam is sick: if he were up and able to
fight for his own hand, I don't believe for a single minute that he'd
let this buccaneering outfit shove him to the wall!"

It was some measure of the struggle which this uncertain ray of hope
was making for a hearing, that in the tramping progress up the line he
dropped no word of discouragement among the gang bosses and foremen as
he went along. Quite to the contrary, the passed word was rather that
of the fighting field captain, and the loyal responses evoked went some
little way toward strengthening the forlorn-hope determination which
was growing and taking shape in the stubborn part of his brain. There
were many nationalities represented in the big construction force, but
the fighting leaven was Irish and American and Scandinavian--loyal to
the core, as Stannard was finding out, and entirely unafraid.

"'Tis a leather medal we'd ought to have, Misther Stannard, f'r lettin'
thim hoboes fr'm Greer's camp get to the back av us," said Gallagher,
when the tramping chief came to the guard line thrown across the mouth
of the canyon.

"Brant told you about it, did he?"

"He did that same. I was f'r takin' our b'ys up the hill an' dhrivin'
thim out, but the orders was to stay here an'----"

"That was right. Brant says there are a couple of hundred of them,
and you haven't men enough to divide. You've had no trouble here this
morning?"

"Divil a wan bit av throuble, at all. To be sure, a bunch av thim
Overland stake-dhrivers did be coming over here a while back, an' we
took 'em in. But there's been divil a bit av throuble."

"Took them in?" queried Stannard. "What did you do with them?" "Dipped
'em in the Stone wance 'r twice--they was that dhirty and dishreputable
that you'd be thinking they's never seen soap 'r wather--and sint thim
back wid our compliments t' Misther Greer."

"They'll be arresting you next, Bully. I understand they have a squad
of deputy sheriffs along."

Gallagher tapped the cased field-glass with which Roddy had provided
him.

"'Tis a great little thrick--this shpy-glass Misther Roddy was after
givin' me. The man wid a gun on him that gets near enough t' read anny
law-papers t' me----"

Stannard was turning away to go up the canyon, and he had quite
forgotten the New York stop-signal telegram when he said, "That's
right, Bully, don't let them snipe you or rush you. We'll try to
relieve you before night, and if we can't, we'll put a search-light up
here."

At the great rock-cutting, where the doubled force was rushing the work
within a stone's-throw of the concealed enemy on the timbered bench
above, Stannard drew Olesen, the big Swede who had taken M'Clarty's
place as foreman, aside out of the drill-clamor.

"You know what's up yonder in the timber, don't you, Jan?" he asked,
with a jerk of his thumb to indicate the hidden menace.

"Mester Brant, he bane telling me 'bout dat. Ve ent bane carin' much
'bout dem fallers."

"I think you are safe to work the day-shift through," said Stannard.
"To-night we may try to drive them out."

"Ve fix for dem fallers," said the foreman, with a child-like smile
spreading itself over his impassive face. "Ven Mester Brant he bane
tailing us, ve plant som' dannamite en dot teember. Hae tank som't'ing
vill go off bang! _fon_ dem fallers tank dey will make us som'
troubles, _ja_?"

Stannard did not deprecate this violent precautionary measure. Instead,
he repeated the word of encouragement given to Gallagher.

"Hold your own, if you can, Jan; and remember that this cut of yours
is the only thing that is stopping us now. We'll put a hundred
steel-layers in here to rush the track through the minute you can give
us ten feet of space between the cliff and the river,"

Half-way up the upper leg of the hair-pin loop, upon which Patterson's
graders and surfacers were thickly scattered, the young Missourian came
upon the red-faced grade engineer energetically driving his mixed army
of shovelers.

"How is she looking to you, by this time?" growled Patterson, priding
himself, as he had reason, on the fine, carefully aligned and leveled
succession of cuts, and fills and curves winding through the forest of
the Buckskin slope.

Stannard ignored the question.

"Jamie, you were the man who told us the most about this old
right-of-way surveyed by the Overland Northern five years ago. Where
did you get your information?"

The expatriated Dumfriesshire man made a clucking noise in his throat.

"I got it right here, on the spot. I was working for the O. N. that
summer and helped run the line."

"It was assumed, in the court proceedings, that the extension was
aiming to reach the Rhyolite district in the southern Buckskins. Was
that so?"

"Nobody in the locating party except Barbuck, the chief, seemed to
know. The line came across the head of the Travois, about where Greer
is planning to cross, then up the canyon just above our location, and
then over the divide to the south. Besides that, Barbuck had us run a
lot of preliminary lines around here; one of them doubled back along
this side of the canyon and stopped about where our tunnel enters. Some
of us thought he was feeling for a way to climb the range, but that was
only a guess. Barbuck never talked."

Stannard threw up his hand in a gesture of impatience.

"That accounts for it, then," he said. "They are not only claiming the
canyon right-of-way, now; they are claiming the tunnel site, as well."

"Huh!" Patterson grunted. "Why don't they ask our people to give them
the whole Cut-off, while they're about it!"

Stannard turned to resume his tramping inspection trip, and again his
parting word ignored the New York stop-order.

"Keep 'em moving, Jamie, and sort your force over to pick out a man
here and there who could be trusted with a gun and cartridge-belt
at a pinch," he directed; and then, briefly and without comment, he
told Patterson of the flanking party which had gained a foothold on
the opposite mountain side; told the story and left it to sink into
Patterson's mind as it might.

It was five o'clock, or thereabouts, when the young chief reached the
V-shaped clay cutting which formed the eastern entrance to the tunnel,
and in the mouth of the cut he came suddenly upon Pearson, mud-stained
and begrimed, walking out with two visitors who had evidently been
exploring the threatening depths with the tunnel-driver for a guide.
Stannard had to look twice before he could believe his eyes; for the
two sight-seers were Miss Anitra and the athletic young surgeon.
Putting his astonishment into words, he found that they had started out
to walk only to the foot of the Buckskin--to test the recovery of the
bruised ankle, so Kitts said. Reaching the river and the foot-log, they
had crossed; and by the simple process of putting one foot before the
other, had climbed to the tunnel mouth.

It was shortly after Stannard's upcoming that Kitts felt hurriedly in
his pockets and claimed to have lost his cigar-case.

"That's funny," he said; "I had it a few minutes ago, just before we
came out, and was going to offer you a smoke, Mr. Pearson. Would you
mind going back with me? I--that is, my wife gave me the case, and I
wouldn't take a pretty for it."

Pearson went willingly, and the departure of the two left Miss
Westervelt smiling sweetly up at the young Missourian and saying,
"Isn't it remarkable how people walk off and leave us alone together?
It's coming to be a habit."

"I am still wondering what Kitts could be thinking of to walk you all
the way up here from the camp," Stannard protested warmly.

"Doc Billy wasn't thinking of it; he was thinking--and talking--very
pointedly of making me go back from each and every one of our resting
places."

"You wanted to come?"

"I wanted to see you, and Mr. Roddy said you were probably up here.
I've been eavesdropping again, and I suppose I ought to be ashamed of
it--but I'm not. I was lying down in my state-room after luncheon and
they talked so that I couldn't help hearing them. The ventilator was
open between my room and Uncle Silas's." She stopped to take breath and
then went on hurriedly: "_I_ didn't open the ventilator. If you think
I did, I sha'n't say another word!"

Stannard's manhood came quickly to the front in a chivalric prompting
to save the woman he loved from the consequences of any rash impulse.

"You mustn't tell me anything that you ought not to tell me," he
interposed gently.

"You think I ought to be loyal to my uncle rather than to--rather than
to anybody else? That's little and narrow. If I should see Uncle Silas
picking your pocket, would it be right for me to turn my back and say
nothing?"

"Go ahead," he said shortly. "I was just a little bit afraid you might
not realize exactly what you are doing."

"Then I may tell you?"--with a swift glance over her shoulder to make
sure that Kitts and Pearson were not yet in sight.

"If you think I ought to know."

"It was this way: there were three of them--Uncle Silas and Austin
Vallory and a strange man, whose voice I didn't recognize. They were
talking about you and your railroad. The strange man said something
that I didn't understand--something about having just come from kicking
a deer, or being kicked by a deer--and that things wouldn't wait; that
what was going to be done must be done at once, because the news was
already started and it was going to spread like wild-fire."

Stannard caught eagerly at the mysterious reference, translating it
instantly into some mention of the Kicking Deer district on the western
slopes of the Buckskin.

"Was that all?" he asked.

"No. Uncle Silas said it was all right; that you had had orders from
New York and were going to stop work at once. Then he explained that
this Greer person would go on and finish the tunnel, working day and
night until it was done. I knew that wasn't so--about your giving up.
You're not going to give up, are you? Don't you owe it to yourself not
to give up?"

"I'm beginning to wonder if I don't owe it to you not to give up," he
flashed back. And then: "But your uncle was right; an order came this
morning to stop the work."

"How did it come?"

"By wire."

She was grinding a small heel into the marl of the clay cutting.

"You haven't stopped yet," she asserted.

"No, not yet. I was ordered to confer with your uncle, and it made me
so hot under the collar that I had to take a little time to cool off."

"Have you cooled off now?" she inquired, half mockingly.

"No."

"But you are going to see Uncle Silas, aren't you?"

"Mr. Merriam's private secretary tells me I've got to."

"Then your orders were not from Mr. Merriam himself?" she asked quickly.

"No; he is sick, so that wire says."

Pearson and Kitts were coming back, and the young surgeon had the lost
and found cigar-case in his hand. The girl was standing with her back
to them, but she heard them.

"Listen," she said in a half whisper. "I saw Austin Vallory and that
young man who works in your telegraph office together in the little
grove of trees just beyond the _Egeria_ this morning--not very long
after Doc Billy and I came back from your headquarters. Did you get
your message from New York before that time, or after it?"

"After; it came just before noon. And the wire was delayed--the
date-line showed it!" Stannard exclaimed, beginning to see a little
daylight through the thick fog of mystery.

She took a step nearer and laid a hand on his arm. "Then take the word
from me and _don't give up_!" she urged. "That's what I came up here to
say to you. If you have to be beaten, don't, for pity's sake, let them
smother you to death with feathers; make them fight for what they get
and fight hard! Last night, at the dinner-table, Uncle Silas shamed you
before us all--show him that he has a man to reckon with; a man whom he
can't buy or bully or hoodwink!"

The interruption was upon them, and the young Missourian had time only
for an impulsive rush of blood to the head--or heart--and a momentary
imprisonment of the small hand on his arm; for these and for the
low-spoken word, "That's all I've been needing, little girl! You just
climb up into the grand-stand and watch us while we----"

It was just here that Kitts broke in with a wink and a laugh which
Stannard understood, if Pearson didn't.

"Some men are born lucky and others have the luck jammed down their
throats," he said. "The cigar-case wasn't lost, after all; I had merely
put it in another pocket!"




XXIII

A BLOODLESS BATTLE


Stannard walked down the steep path with the two tunnel explorers, and
Doctor William Pangborn Kitts found himself entirely unnecessary as an
escort when it came to helping Miss Anitra over the rough places. At
the foot of the mountain Stannard made the two sit down while he went
to the nearest field 'phone and ordered one of the "camel-backs" up
from the yard. "You're not going to walk any more on that ankle," he
told Anitra; and when the engine came, the remainder of the return was
made at the company's expense.

The masthead lights were on in the yard when the engine stop was made
in front of the headquarters. Stannard lifted his charge down from the
high gangway of the "camel-back," turned her over to Kitts, and with an
abrupt "Good-night" left them to make their way across to the private
car. There was reason for the crisp leave-taking. On the short turn
down the new track Stannard had seen the headlight of an approaching
locomotive on the desert horizon; a token, as he hoped, pointing to
Eddie Brant's return.

The hope was presently fulfilled. Shortly after the "camel-back" had
clattered down the yard, a road engine, running light, pulled in from
the desert and was shunted upon the coal tracks. Five minutes later
Brant came up.

"I've got the dope, and it was simply the biggest piece of luck that
ever happened," he said shortly. "Do I still have the free hand?"

"It's up to you," Stannard avouched. "If you can chase that gang out of
the woods up on Dogtooth without landing us all at the end of a rope,
you'll be the prize-winner."

"I'm the bright-eyed little chaser; but there's no special hurry--we
don't want to be too early, or too late. Let's go and eat supper."

The meal in the iron-roofed mess shack was a silent one for the better
part, with only the chief, Roddy, and the map-maker to gather at one
end of the trestle-board table. Though the night-shift had already gone
up to the tunnel, Pearson had not come down; and Patterson had called
up from the high grade to say that he was going to work his surfacing
army by flare-light until nine o'clock.

Eating like a hungry scout, Brant got through first and disappeared.
After he was gone Roddy opened up on the subject of the stop-order.

"I take it you haven't been over to see Mr. Westervelt yet, Clay,"
he said quietly, loading the sugar into a third cup of Black Sam's
unapproachable coffee.

"No; and I'm not going," was the curt rejoinder.

"Isn't it an order?"

"Maybe; but for the next twenty-four hours or so I'm going to disregard
it."

"That reminds me of what Lincoln said to the man who complained that
General Grant was a drunkard--about wishing he knew Grant's brand of
whiskey so that it might be more widely used. Where did you get your
liquor, Clay?"

"Perhaps I can tell you a little later, Jacksie. At present, I'll say
only this: there is something behind all this monkey-motioning and
scheming--some whale of a big thing that hasn't stuck its head up high
enough yet to let us see what it looks like. I'm going to take a long
chance and go on just as if that telegram had never come. It may cost
me my job and send me to jail for contempt of court, but I'll have the
satisfaction of bluffing Greer--and Mr. Judas Westervelt--just one more
time before I'm knocked out." Then he shifted abruptly to Brant and his
mysterious project. "Have you any notion of what Eddie has in mind?"

"Not any very clear notion; no. But whatever it is, he'll pull it off.
If you're through, we'll go and dig him up."

They found Brant in the headquarters work-room. He had just come up
from the lower yard with something in a gunny-sack. Roddy stooped
and untied the string. With a little straw for packing there were a
dozen or more pint bottles in the sack--flat pocket flasks, tightly
corked, and each bearing the label of a famous Yellow Medicine saloon
certifying the contents as pure Deep Spring whiskey.

"Suffering Scott!" was Roddy's comment as he held one of the bottles up
to the light. "Are you going to get 'em all drunk, Eddie?"

Brant laughed.

"Right you are; it's my treat to-night, and I'm going to get them all
drunk."

"You'll have to take a cork-screw along," said Stannard, taking the
bottle that Roddy handed him and noting that the cork was pressed
in level with the neck and sealed with paraffin. Then: "If this is
whiskey, it's 'moonshine'; it's as clear as water."

Roddy had straightened up and was sniffing suspiciously.

"Say, Clay, we need an office cat. There's a dead rat around here
somewhere; I've been noticing it for two or three days."

Brant laughed again. "If you had named the cat to me, I might have
brought one up from Yellow Medicine."

Stannard felt in the sack and counted the bottles. "Eighteen pints,
Eddie? You don't hope to get two hundred men drunk on eighteen pints of
whisky, do you?"

"That is an extra fine brand of bug-juice, warranted to knock you out
at a hundred yards--no cure, no pay," said the map-maker. Then he went
to the 'phone, set the plugs and rang the alarm until he got Gallagher
at the canyon mouth. The wire conversation was brief and to the point.

"That you, Bully? This is Brant. Say, Bully; after a while, if you
hear a crowd of drunks tumbling over each other to get out of the
canyon, just open your line and let 'em go through: no shooting, you
understand--they won't need it. Get that? All right."

Hanging up the receiver, Brant turned upon Stannard: "I'm going to
clear the canyon for you, but it'll be up to you to think out some
scheme for holding it after it is cleared. What'll you do?"

Stannard's answer expressed itself in prompt action. Going to the
'phone, he tried several of the field stations on the Buckskin grade,
plugging first one and then another until he got Patterson. To the
grade engineer he gave a brief order.

"Roddy tells me that you can free at least half of your men by nine
o'clock. Pick out fifty or sixty of the best of them, of the kind I
was talking about this afternoon, and send them down the mountain to
Gallagher's guard line at the Standing Stone. Gallagher will have guns
and ammunition for them, and they are to report----" Stannard turned
quickly to Brant--"Where are they to report, Eddie?"

The map-maker thought a moment. "I guess Roddy had better meet the
Patterson crowd at the canyon with the guns and ammunition, and hold
them until I've finished my little stunt," he said. And then to Roddy:
"After the rush passes you, march your men up the west side of the
river and turn the gulch head above our bridge. It'll be a whole lot
pleasanter going that way."

Stannard finished giving the order to Patterson in accordance with
Brant's directions, after which Roddy went out to arrange for his part
of the undertaking, while Stannard and Brant left the headquarters
together, Brant leading the way with the sack of bottles over his
shoulder.

Leaving the camp, the map-maker struck off up the slope of the
Dogtooth, plunging into the timber and picking his way by the help
of a pocket flash-light. Zigzagging and climbing, the pair came out
an hour later on the bare summit of the low range at a point a few
hundred yards from the sheer gash which separated the main mountain
from the needle-like peak of the Standing Stone. From the treeless
ridge summit they could look down upon the starring electrics in the
Travois yard a thousand feet below, and across to the gasoline flares
lighting the new camp under Rock Face. Farther west there were more of
the flares, with intermittent spark spoutings from the stack of a big
steam-shovel--evidence sufficient to prove that Greer also was working
night shifts.

Bearing sharply to the south, Brant led the way along the crest of the
ridge, and a half-hour more of the silent progress brought the two men
out upon a rocky cliff overlooking the upper canyon of the mountain
torrent. Above the hoarse roar and rumble of the Standing Stone in its
boulder bed, they could hear the distance-diminished jar and clatter
of the air-drills in the deep cutting; and in the caverned darkness
just below their cliff of espial--a darkness made impenetrable by a
backgrounding of thick forest--there was a dotting of camp-fires, the
night fires of Greer's flanking column.

"Here's where we press the button," said Brant, easing his burden to
the ground. Then: "You've got more beef and a better throwing arm
than I have. Let's see how near you can come to hitting one of those
camp-fires with a bottle of this bug-juice. Don't drop it, for heaven's
sake!" he pleaded, when the ex-fielder began to grope for his missile.

It was a pretty long throw. Though the camp seemed to lie fairly below
their cliff, downward distances are deceptive. Stannard took off his
coat, and fitting one of the pint flasks into his hand with a pitcher's
finger-lock, he sent it spinning out into the darkness. After what
seemed like a long minute there was a faint tinkling crash from below.

"Give 'em another!" said Brant quickly. "Send 'em in just as fast as
you can! You've got eighteen chances to get your man at the plate--keep
'em going!"

One after another in quick succession the pint bottles went sailing
across the black void; but before the third one had crashed among the
rocks at the forest edge the camp was alive and buzzing like a swarm of
angry bees. Shouts, curses and mad gaspings floated up on the gentle
breeze slipping across from the Buckskin, and when the fourth missile
broke near one of the fires there was a sudden blue flare to light
up a scene that was little short of pandemonium. Dark figures were
bursting frantically out of the tents and shack-shelters, stumbling
to fall headlong and springing up again to rush blindly in frenzied
efforts to dodge the rain of whiskey flasks. Brant sat down on the
cliff edge and rocked back and forth in agonies of hilarious mirth.

"Give it to 'em, Clay; you'll put the whole team out if you don't get a
Charley horse!" he gasped.

Stannard groped for another bottle and sniffed at the light breeze
which was lifting the mad-house clamor to the cliff-edge. Then he got
a whiff from below, and burst out chokingly: "For the love of Mike,
Eddie, what is this stuff we're handing out to 'em? Shades of all the
dead cats! Whoof!"

As Brant had foreseen, the frantic rush to escape was made down
the canyon, no man of the crowd being brave enough to take the
mountain-climbing road in the face of the deadly bombardment. The
map-maker caught up the half-emptied gunny-sack and led the way along
the ridge.

"Keep up with 'em!" he yelled to Stannard. "Keep even with them and
keep 'em going!"

Thereupon ensued a retreat growing speedily into a panic-stricken rout
when the fugitives discovered that the unseen enemy was still keeping
within striking distance. Some of the missiles went wide of the mark in
the darkness, but others sped true and a fresh series of the choking
yells and polyglot curses marked the hits.

At the canyon mouth a locomotive was standing on the curve, and its
electric head-lamp flung a broad glare of white light across the head
of the Travois. Far out of throwing range now, the pair on the Dogtooth
summit saw a frantic mob burst into the lighted area to continue its
flight across the valley; and high up among the Buckskin firs flare
torches were waving and fierce yells of triumph and derision from
Patterson's graders greeted the fleeing mob as it revealed itself in
dashing through the field of the engine headlight.

It was a full hour later when Stannard and Brant reached the
construction camp. Stannard's first care was to search the field
'phones for Roddy. After a time an answer came from the canyon head.
Roddy had posted his guards to prevent another invasion from the rear,
but his language was picturesquely emphatic when Stannard suggested
that the canyon itself should be picketed.

"Like hell you say!" snapped the field commander, over the wire. "You
couldn't drive a dog out of a tan-yard into that canyon until after the
wind has blown through it! I don't know what you fellows turned loose
up here, but the Chinese stink-pots couldn't hold a candle to it. We'll
hold the ground around the outer edges. That's all any human being with
a nose on him can do, just now."

Stannard hung up the 'phone and dropped into his chair. Eddie Brant had
flung himself full length on the floor plentifully wearied.

"Can you give it a name, Eddie? or are you too tired?" queried the
chief.

"It names easy; it was carbon disulphide. They use it in the apple
orchards down in Granite Valley to kill the woolly aphis in the ground.
I happened to remember that Conley, the Granite Valley apple man, came
up to Yellow Medicine last spring to order some of it, and I also
remembered that he got a good bit more than he needed."

"And you went all the way out to Granite Valley?" said Stannard.
"Sure; Smithy drove me in his chug-wagon. The stuff was in sealed
cans and we had to have something that would break so I went up to
the Magnolia and got the whiskey bottles. When do I get that Carnegie
medal?"




XXIV

THE FORLORN HOPE


On the morning following the rout of the Overland Northern flanking
column the Great Lakes & Pacific building activities took a fresh and
vigorous leap forward. At the earliest graying of the dawn, material
trains were rushing to the front, and shortly afterward the chattering
of the air-drills in the great rock-cutting gave place to the clang of
the steel and the ringing rhythm of the spike-mauls.

True to his promise, Olesen had widened the cutting sufficiently during
the night to admit of the passage of the track; and Patterson, dividing
his force a second time, brought half of his small army of laborers
down to help in the track-laying. With the coming of daylight Roddy
had weeded out his guarding force, cutting it down to a quick-moving
efficiency basis and sending every man he could spare to increase
Patterson's working army.

Stannard and Eddie Brant were snatching a hasty breakfast in the mess
shack when the porter from the _Egeria_ came over with a word from Mr.
Westervelt. Once more the chief engineer of the Cut-off was summoned
to meet the banker-director. Stannard's return message was curt to the
point of incivility.

"Go back and tell Mr. Westervelt that this is my busy day. If he wants
to see me, he'll have to come over here, and be reasonably quick about
it," he told the messenger, and the man went away to do it. This
peremptory refusal did not bring Mr. Westervelt as Stannard had feared
it might; but it did bring a substitute in the person of the New York
clubman. Stannard was in the work-room, making ready to join Patterson
at the front, when Vallory lounged in, lighting a cigarette.

"Going somewhere, Clay?" he asked, dropping lazily into the desk-chair.

"Yes; I'm going to the front. Say what you've come to say, and say it
suddenly, Austin. Your time may not be worth anything, but mine is."

"Mr. Westervelt wants to see you. Didn't the nigger bring the word
straight?"

"He did."

"And you're not going over to the car?"

"Not this morning."

Vallory took a deep inhalation of cigarette smoke and let it ooze
gently from his nostrils and his mouth as he spoke. "What's the matter
with you, Clay? Don't you want money?"

"Not a dollar of Mr. Westervelt's money. Go and tell him so, if you
like."

"So that part of it is off?"

"Definitely off."

"All right; then we'll come down to the brass-tacks plane. You're
simply making a fool of yourself, Clay, and you know it. For the sake
of carrying your engineering job through, you are upsetting all sorts
of things, smashing your company, standing to make Mr. Westervelt and
his friends lose a pot of money, and beyond all that, going directly
contrary to the orders of your own superiors. I used to think you were
a pretty sane sort of fellow, but now you seem to have gone utterly
daffy."

"So you bought Hempstead and got him to show you that message from
Cardigan yesterday morning, did you?" Stannard rapped out.

"The boy had sense enough to know which side his bread was buttered
on--which is more than I can say for you. Let me tell you a thing or
two, Clay. We have a wire of our own now on the other side of the
river. It's eight o'clock--which means that it is ten o'clock in New
York. Within the next two hours the smash will come on the Exchange.
You can stand it off if you will authorize us to say that you have
stopped work on the Cut-off."

"You'll have to show me," insisted the stubborn one, lighting his short
pipe in the hope that it would kill the smell of the cigarette.

"I could do that easily enough if you ever got a newspaper in this
God-forsaken wilderness of yours. The Street has been wild for two days
over the sudden slump in G. L. & P."

"You're wasting your time and mine," was the only reply this elicited.

"I have one more shot in the locker, Clay. Don't you want to marry
Anitra Westervelt?"

"That, my dear boy, is none of your damned business," said the
Missourian pleasantly.

"Possibly not," was the cool rejoinder. "Nevertheless, I'm more or less
interested. I suppose you know that the biggest salary you are ever
likely to earn wouldn't keep her in pin-money."

"And you think I ought to graft a little so as to be able to give her
more?" said Stannard. "Luckily for me, she doesn't look at it that way."

Vallory dropped his cigarette and set his heel on it, and there was
a sort of smoky flare in his dark eyes when he said: "Clay, I should
have married that girl a year ago myself, if it hadn't been for you."
Then he added a lie: "We are as good as engaged now, and if she has
been giving you reason to think otherwise during the last few days, you
must remember that she is Silas Westervelt's niece, and that blood is
thicker than water."

"I'm not very good at subtleties," said the badgered one, with a
dangerous gentleness in his tone. "Are you trying to tell me that Miss
Westervelt has been kind to me for the purpose of furthering this
scheme of her uncle's?"

Vallory's thin lip curled. "You were always a good bit of an ass
about women in the old days," he remarked; "and you don't seem to
have improved much with age. I don't deny that you made some sort of
a mark on Anitra a year ago. It didn't amount to anything. You hadn't
any money then, and you haven't any now, and the man who marries her
without her uncle's consent will need money because in that case she
won't have any of her own."

Stannard slung the strap of his note-book case over his shoulder.

"As I intimated a moment ago, Austin, you are wasting your ammunition.
For the sake of the old days, I'm not going to tell you what I think
of you for dragging Miss Westervelt's name into this dirty business of
stock-jobbing or whatever it is. I happen to know on the best possible
evidence that what you are trying to make me believe is a lie cut out
of the whole cloth. Miss Westervelt has never allowed herself to be
used for a single minute as a cat's-paw for her uncle. I don't know
what Silas Westervelt is paying you for your part in the deal, but
whatever it is, it isn't enough to square you for the use you've made
of an old college friendship." It was at this summarizing climax
that Eddie Brant came in, red-faced and gasping. He was evidently
bursting with news, but at sight of Vallory he checked himself and
went on to the telegraph table, dropping into Hempstead's chair, which
had been empty all morning. Vallory got upon his feet at the passing
of the map-maker and calmly lighted another of the gold-stamped and
monogrammed cigarettes.

"You've made your bed, Clay, but I'm afraid you're not going to be able
to lie on it very long," he said quite dispassionately. "I'm not much
of a prophet, but I'll venture to predict that you are going to fall
down both ways: you won't finish your railroad, and you won't get the
girl." And with that he went away.

He was hardly out of the door before Brant, who was clumsily rattling
the telegraph key, beckoned frantically to his chief.

"Come here, quick!" he called. "Yellow Medicine's got a New York wire
for us, and I don't know Morse well enough to take it!"

Stannard ran down the long room, slid into the chair which Brant
vacated for him and cut in on the wire. "Write it down as I call it off
to you," he ordered; and Brant grabbed for a pencil and a pad. Snappily
the sounder clicked out the words which Brant wrote out as Stannard
called them.

  To C. S.
  Travois Camp.

  Why no reply to my two telegrams yesterday? Disregard any overtures
  made by Overland Northern and push work on Cut-off at all speed.
  Injunction notice served on us _in re_ Stettinger whose mining claim
  we cross in canyon. We now hold Stettinger's written release, and you
  will be protected in ignoring any interference by officers of local
  courts. Rush work and spare neither men nor money. Answer quick.

  Merriam.

Eddie Brant, flushed and breathless at the beginning of his job of
transcribing, was pale and shaky when he scrawled the signature.

"It's too late," he stuttered. "I've run five miles through the woods
to bring the news. Greer has outflanked us again. Sometime in the
night he sent a big gang up over the Buckskin slope and this morning
Roddy was taken by surprise while he was watching the tote-road over
the hills. There was a sheriff's posse along, and they've arrested
everybody in authority, Pearson, Patterson, Roddy, Bully Gallagher, and
even the foremen and gang bosses. I dodged into the underbrush because
Roddy made me. They're herding our folks down the canyon, and they're
going to take 'em over Greer's construction line to the county seat at
Lodge Butte!"

Stannard sat back in his chair with his jaw outthrust.

"Is that all, Eddie?" he asked quietly.

"No; by Jove! There's a bunch of deputies on the way down here, right
now, to pick up the yard bosses and to snipe you! That's why I hurried.
If you don't light out they'll get you, and then there won't be anybody
left!"

Stannard smiled grimly.

"It was your dead-cat business last night that did it, Eddie. Some of
those fellows carried the smell back to the camp with them, and Greer
couldn't stand for that."

Brant ran across to the window to snatch an anxious look up the yard.
The threatened raid was not yet in sight, but in the nature of things
it could not be long delayed.

"You'd better go," he urged. "They'll get you, sure, and if this big
force of ours is left without anybody to boss it--" The break came
upon an impatient skirling of the telephone alarm.

"Answer it," said Stannard shortly to the map-maker, and Brant hurried
to lift the receiver from its hook.

What he heard seemed to affect him like a series of twitching electric
shocks, but Stannard was not looking. He had picked up the dropped
pencil and was slowly writing out a telegram to the president. He had
got no farther than the date line and address before Brant, leaving the
receiver dangling by its cord, came plunging down the room.

"It's Markley," he choked thickly. "Roddy sent him down to the Kicking
Deer and he's back now--at the west end of the tunnel. There's--there's
a big gold strike on the Deer--another Tonopah, he says, and people
are pouring in across the range on foot from Caliente on the Overland
Northern! That's one thing he says, and the other is that his hard-rock
men have just fired the final battery that carries them through into
Pearson's drift. Now we know why Greer is stealing our right-of-way and
the tunnel!"

Stannard turned calmly back to the telegraph table and finished writing
his message to the president. It was brief and to the point.

  To John P. Merriam,
  G. L. & P. General Offices,
  New York.

  See newspaper bulletins from Kicking Deer. East and west tunnel drifts
  connected this morning. I may have to kill a man or two, but Cut-off
  will be completed and G. L. & P. will be first railroad into new gold
  district.

  Stannard.

At the signing of his name the young Missourian snapped an order at
the single remaining member of his staff. "Go to the window and keep
a lookout for me while I send this, Eddie," he said; and when Brant
obeyed he squared himself at the table and clicked the militant answer
over the wires without a break.

"We're still alive, are we, Eddie?" he questioned, rising from the
table when Yellow Medicine acknowledged the "rush," and thrusting a
pencil copy of the telegram into his pocket.

"Nothing doing yet. Perhaps they're trying to get Bailey to send an
engine up for them."

Stannard went to his desk and pulling open a bottom drawer, took from
it a holstered revolver of gigantic proportions, buckled it on and
looked to the loading of the weapon.

"I'm going to leave you to keep house for a little while, Eddie," he
said, still speaking quietly. "If the sheriff's people come, you can
either duck or throw up your hands, whichever seems safest. If you
duck, and if I don't come back, it'll be up to you to get a message to
Mr. Merriam telling him that I'm a liar and a failure."




XXV

THE VISE NIP


Leaving his office to take the field which seemed to have been already
swept victoriously by the enemy, Stannard was telling himself that
Silas Westervelt was the key to the situation, and was striving
manfully to think up some way of bringing the banker-director to
terms--some less crude expedient than that of clapping a gun to his
head and compelling him to intervene.

Since the alarm had not yet reached the camp, the yard activities
were still in full blast, and Stannard had to dodge his way among the
moving material trains to reach the isolated siding on the bank of
the Standing Stone. The dodging progress brought him out some little
distance below the private car. The deep rear platform was empty,
evidence sufficient that the bear-hunters had not yet returned, and
a car-length short of the _Egeria_ he saw Miss Westervelt. She was
standing on the siding embankment, trying to focus a tiny opera-glass
upon the Overland Northern advance at the head of the valley.

Stannard realized that his time for the as yet uninvented expedient
was cruelly short. None the less, he stopped and went across to
the embankment edge. Miss Anitra's flippant greeting was for the
conspicuous cartridge belt and holstered weapon.

"Mercy me, how warlike we are this morning!" she exclaimed. "Are you
going to play train-robber and make me hold up my hands?"

Stannard tried to meet the flippancy on equal terms and made a failure
of it. "I can't play anything with you this morning; I'm up against it
good and hard, little girl."

Her mood changed instantly. "Tell me," she commanded; and he did
it with shot-like directness, beginning with the carbon disulphide
incident and winding up with the reply to Mr. Merriam and his final
word to Brant.

"So you buckled on your pistol and started out--to do what?" she asked.

"I wish I knew!" he gritted. "Your uncle is the man--if I only knew
some way to get at him."

"He _is_ the man," she agreed quietly; "and to a greater extent than
you imagine. If I could only forget for a moment that he is my father's
brother--"

"I don't want you to forget anything that you ought to remember," he
said quickly.

"I am not sure that I ought to remember. You will understand when I
tell you that Uncle Silas has spent the better part of the last two
years trying to devise some way of getting rid of me without having to
account for the money that my father left in trust for me." Then her
eyes filled quickly. "Dear old daddy! He didn't know what he was doing
when he turned me over to the tender mercies of Uncle Silas, and I hope
he doesn't know now."

Stannard was looking momentarily for the appearance of the sheriff's
posse, but if he had been an escaped criminal with the gallows waiting
for him he would have forgotten it.

"Some gossip told me a year ago that you couldn't marry without your
uncle's consent," he said. "It's true," she nodded. "And Uncle Silas
has been searching high and low for a man who would take me without
making a fuss about the fortune which would not be forthcoming as my
dowry. He has found the man now, and that is at the bottom of a good
many other things."

"I know," Stannard broke in; "the man's name is Austin Vallory."

She nodded again, and went on rather bitterly: "Yes; Austin Vallory
would take a few millions of the twenty-five or thirty that my father
left me and call it square. But this isn't helping you. You are on your
way to see Uncle Silas. What can you say to him to make him stop this
wretched money-getting fight?"

"That is just what I can't quite dig out. So far as anybody knows, your
uncle is here representing the G. L. & P. He is one of our directors
and is supposed to be working in our interests. I'm not sure that he
could call Greer off, if he wanted to."

"I can help you there," she said coolly. "Just before we left New York
an old friend--the man who was for many years my father's broker and
confidential adviser--told me two things. One was that Uncle Silas had
been quietly unloading his G. L. & P. stock for months, and the other
was that he had just been secretly elected first vice-president of the
Overland Northern."

"Great Land!" Stannard almost shouted; and then: "I wonder if you know
what you've done--and if you meant to do it?"

"Does it help?" she queried.

"It does, indeed!"

"Very well; then I can give you something else to go with it. I am
almost sure that Uncle Silas had himself made vice-president and came
out here merely to spite Mr. Merriam."

"But in two of the three messages I've had from Mr. Merriam lately,
he has told me to confer with your uncle--and the _Egeria_ is Mr.
Merriam's private car!"

"Uncle Silas could borrow the car easily enough," she suggested. "And
about the telegrams--you mustn't forget that your young man over
there--I can't remember his name, but he's the telegraph operator--has
probably been bribed. It is altogether likely that Mr. Merriam was
trying to tell you _not_ to consult Uncle Silas."

The crack of a single rifle-shot from the upper end of the valley
echoing and re-echoing from the cliffs of Rock Face brought Stannard to
a realization of the priceless value of time.

"I've got enough to go on, now," he said hastily. "They're coming to
blows up yonder, and somebody's due to get killed!"

She caught at him as he was turning away.

"You will find Uncle Silas alone in his office," she said rather
breathlessly. "Please don't forget that, after all is said, he is still
my father's brother!"

"I sha'n't," he promised; and a moment later he was swinging up to the
vestibule step of the private car. The door of the banker's room was
ajar, and he entered without knocking. The magnate was sitting at his
desk, running thoughtfully through a file of telegrams, upon some of
which the ink was scarcely dry, but he put the file aside at the door
opening and closing.

"So you changed your mind about coming over, did you?" was his greeting
to Stannard. "I thought you would--after you had heard the news." Then
coldly: "You've lost your chance to hedge, but I'm still willing to
intercede for you and your law-breaking accomplices with the Overland
Northern people if you'll lay down your arms, discharge your force at
once, and--"

"Hold up," Stannard broke in soberly. "Let's keep the shoe on the foot
it was made for. I'm not here to listen to terms, I'm here to dictate
them. You sent word to me by Vallory a little while ago that you had
a New York wire of your own: I'll hand that back to you. I've got one
too, now, and the operator you bribed is no longer on the job. I've
just had a telegram from headquarters--one which you and Padgett and
Vallory haven't had a chance to rewrite."

"Well?" said the great man crisply.

"I have supposed all along that I was dealing with a director of our
own company."

"You are," was the brusque retort.

"Not appreciably," snapped Stannard. "You have recently been elected
first vice-president of the Overland Northern, and if you haven't been
dropped from the G. L. & P. board, you will be as soon as the other
members learn that you have unloaded practically all of your stock!"

"Without specifically admitting either charge, I am still willing to
give you a chance to say what you have come to say," said the banker
calmly.

"Oh, I'll say it fast enough. From the day you hit this valley you've
been moving heaven and earth to find some way in which the canyon
right-of-way and tunnel could be stolen and turned over bodily to the
Overland. You've bribed my operator and falsified my telegrams and
tried to bribe me. And on top of it all you've been backing Greer and
shoving him into a fight which, for all you know or care, may cost
scores of lives!"

The dry-desert face made little response to this heated accusation, but
there was a narrowing of the cold eyes to go with the banker's, "Well,
go on."

"As a mere investor in either or both companies, I couldn't get at you.
But now I can. You are a responsible officer of the Overland and I've
got the evidence against you. Perhaps we couldn't make it stick in a
criminal indictment, but we can make it cost you a dollar or two for
damages in a Federal court."

"And the alternative?" suggested the big man in the pivot chair.

"Is for you to go with me, right now, to the head of the valley and
stop this bare-faced move to steal our railroad! A word from you will
do it. I suppose I don't need to tell you that Greer's private army of
deputy sheriffs has arrested a lot of my men on a trumped-up charge. I
want those men released."

Silas Westervelt took sixty even-paced seconds in which to consider.
Then he said: "When you're older and more experienced, Stannard, you
won't show your whole hand in the beginning of a game as big as this.
You remarked a moment ago that a criminal indictment probably wouldn't
stick, and that is entirely true; but a little thought would have
convinced you that any damages we may have to pay at the end of years
of litigation in a civil suit would be more than overbalanced by the
maintaining of our claim to your right-of-way and tunnel. You see, I am
taking for granted that you know why the Overland Northern wishes to be
the first railroad in the Kicking Deer district."

"I know all about that," was the curt rejoinder. Then Stannard went on
with a stubborn fighter's disregard for the cripplings and woundings:
"You say I have shown my hand; I have one more card up my sleeve, Mr.
Westervelt, and you force me to play it. Within the next few hours, if
I'm still alive, I'm going to ask your niece to marry me. If she says
'yes,' may I count upon your approval?"

For the first time in the interview the big-bodied man in the swing
chair sat bolt upright, and a deeper sallow tinge spread itself over
the hard-lined face.

"_No!_" he said; and his saying of it came short of profanity only in
the form of the word.

"I took that much for granted," said Stannard coolly. "None the less,
if she is good enough to say the word, we shall be married--hold on,
let me finish; I don't want her money; I wouldn't touch a penny of it
if I were starving. Just the same, you'll have to account to me, as her
husband, for the disposition, you have made of it. You can't do that,
you know; your one best bet was to marry her to a man who would sell
his right to question you for some small portion of the millions that
you've embezzled."

It was a pretty wild shot in the dark, but it went home. Slowly, and
by almost imperceptible degrees, the big man in the chair shrunk and
collapsed; his lips turned blue and his eyes lost their calculating
stare and became fixed and glassy. Stannard sprang up quickly, drew a
glass of ice-water from the bulkhead cooler and handed it to the man
who was gasping for breath. The banker took it, and his teeth rattled
against the glass as he drank. With returning composure, or some little
measure of it, he tried to say that it was a lie; that the trust fund
would be accounted for to the final penny; but Stannard had no mind to
lose the hard-won advantage.

"You know it can't be accounted for; and you also know that it must
be accounted for if you are required to turn it over to the various
charities in accordance with your brother's will. As I have said,
you've been thinking that your best bet was to force Anitra to marry
some man whose silence could be bought; it isn't--it will be better to
give her to a man of her own choosing; some half-way decent fellow who
would love her well enough to let her deal with you in the money matter
as her own generous heart might dictate."

The big man turned his chair slowly to the open window and drank in
deep breaths of the cool, life-giving breeze slipping down from the
snow balds of the Buckskin. For the moment the clashing and jangling of
cars in the yard had stopped. Breaking into the silence came a single
rifle shot followed by an irregular dropping fusillade. Again Stannard
sprang to his feet.

"They're trying to kill each other up there," he said quickly. "It's
up to you to stop it, Mr. Westervelt. If all they say of you is true,
you've got a good bit to answer for as it stands. Can you afford to add
even one human life to the score?"

The great man got up stiffly, and it was a measure of his perturbation
that he overlooked the hat lying on the roll-top desk and fitted a silk
skull cap tightly over the reluctantly graying hair. "Get me up there
as quickly as you can," he said, in a hoarse whisper; and because he
seemed suddenly to have grown old and feeble, Stannard gave him an arm
through the corridor and down the steps of the car.

By the time the short journey to the open air had been made, the
dropping shots had become spiteful volleys. Stannard went quickly into
action. One of the "camel-backs" was clattering through the yard,
empty, and he flagged it down. The engineer jammed on the air; and the
fireman, seeing what was wanted, swung off to lend Stannard a hand in
boosting the big-bodied magnate up to the foot-plate. Stannard's order
was given while the big engine was still cramping under the sudden clip
of the brakes.

"Get the main line, Duggan!" he barked; and at the word the great
engine shot away up the yard, its whistle shrieking the switch call for
the open track.

It was on the curve rounding the base of the sentinel Standing Stone
that they came in sight of the battle-field. The sheriff's posse, with
Roddy, Pearson, and Patterson and a score or more of the picked up
foremen, had apparently emerged from the canyon only to find a thin
line of Gallagher's Irish track-layers, leaderless but spoiling for a
fight, intrenched in shallow rifle-pits in the open and disputing the
crossing to Greer's camp with the sheriff's party. Being Western to a
man, the deputies had promptly sought cover, making a rampart of the
railroad embankment and firing across it at the intrenched track-layers.

As the up-coming engine slowed to a stand barely out of range, the
fire of the attacking party stopped suddenly. Stannard was out of the
cab and off and helping Westervelt to the ground before he saw and
heard the yelling mob that was sweeping across from the newly built
Overland Northern trestle, to take the track-layers in the rear. Using
high-powered rifles, the sheriff's men had stopped firing to keep from
over-shooting the enemy and killing their own reinforcements.

For a moment Stannard thought his hard-won ally was going to fail him.
It was as much as any man's life was worth to break in as a peacemaker
on the firing line. Silas Westervelt slipped and fell heavily as
Stannard hurried him down the slope of the embankment, but the fall was
an accident rather than any attempt to hang back.

"Hurry, man!--for God's sake hurry and stop them--" he panted hoarsely,
when Stannard dragged him to his feet; and together they lurched and
stumbled over the intervening ground, cutting in diagonally behind the
line of rifle-pits to get in front of the charging mob from the trestle
crossing.

They made it, with a hundred yards to spare, and the firing from
the fighting Irishmen stopped in obedience to Stannard's fluttered
handkerchief. Greer, blind-mad and furious, was leading the rescue
charge, and he stopped only when Stannard got in the way and stopped
him.

"Just a moment, Greer," said the square-shouldered young Missourian
brusquely. "Your boss wants to speak to you."

"I'm my own boss on this job!" was the yelped-out defiance. "I've
backed and filled and whip-sawed and monkeyed around at somebody's beck
and call all I'm going to! The Overland Northern Railroad Company pays
my salary, and by--"

The gray-faced man in the skull cap straightened himself with a visible
effort and turned to Stannard.

"You won't reconsider?" he questioned thickly. "It is not too late,
even now."

Stannard cut him off with a fierce gesture. "Do what you've got to do!"
he burst out savagely; and at that the banker took Greer aside.

The colloquy, low-toned and decisive on the banker's part, and angrily
rebellious on Greer's, was short. Stannard stood back out of ear-shot,
alertly ready to intervene if the hostilities should break out again.
The charging mob, a hastily gathered multitude of the foreign laborers
armed with pick-handles, drill-ends, and other hurriedly caught-up
weapons, had fallen back a little at the halting of its leader. In the
shallow rifle-pits the Irish track-layers were laughing and joking one
another; and on the embankment the sheriff's men were climbing into
view and Bully Gallagher was shouting across to his men--shouting and
chanting uproariously:

  "The Irish and the Dutch, oh, they don't amount to much;
   But hooray for the Scandihoovia-a-n!"

At the end of the short colloquy, Greer wheeled and threw up his hands
to his men as one heading a stampede. The banker, staggering as if the
weakness of the battling moment had suddenly gripped him again, came
back to the young Missourian. "It's done," he said, with a curious
rattling in his throat. And then: "Stannard, give me your arm back to
that engine; and if you can find a man and a horse, send for Kitts. I'm
not well."

    *    *    *    *    *

It was well past the evening dinner hour in the _Egeria_ on the
day of climaxings. At the upper end of the yard one of the big
shifting-engines was clearing the way for the light eight-wheeler
which would presently back down to couple on to the private car and
its accompanying Pullman for the night run across the desert to Yellow
Medicine and the main line.

The returned bear-hunters, flocking in an after-dinner group on the
deep observation platform, were idling industriously. Carroll was
picking the strings of his banjo, and the Englishman and the younger
Wetmore sister were humming the refrain of the bit of ragtime.

On the sandy river-bank beside the car a broad-shouldered young
athlete in work-stained khaki was pacing slowly back and forth with a
straight-figured, low-voiced young woman for his companion.

"You will be able to succeed now, won't you?--before the snow comes?"
the young woman was saying.

"Oh, yes; easily. Greer is discharging three of his camps, and we are
hiring the men as fast as they come over. Patterson already has his
rails half-way up the upper leg of the approach, and by to-morrow night
or the next morning we'll be delivering concrete material to Pearson
at the tunnel. The snow isn't going to overtake us, but something else
will."

"What is that?"

"You remember what you told me you overheard about somebody having
kicked a deer or being kicked by a deer? Kicking Deer is the name of
a river on the other side of the range. A second Goldfield discovery
has been made over there, and the news of it is already on the wires.
Inside of a week we shall be absolutely swamped in the rush which will
come pouring in here over our line from Yellow Medicine, and over
Greer's from Lodge Butte. I haven't the slightest notion of how we
shall handle the rush or what we shall do with it, but we'll manage it
some way--and earn some money out of it, too."

"Money," she said half impatiently. "It's always money! Did Uncle Silas
know of the gold strike before we came out here?"

"He did. That was the chief reason why, as vice-president of the
Overland Northern, he was so anxious to get his own line over there
first."

"You haven't told me yet how you made him stop the fight."

Stannard ignored the tentative question and asked one of his own.
"What do you think of a man who doesn't keep his word?" he wanted to
know.

"If the word were a promise--" she began; and he broke in abruptly.

"It was a promise of a sort; and I guess I've got to keep it, no matter
what it costs."

"Is it going to cost money?" she queried.

"No; one way around it may cost me something I value more than all the
money in the world. But the other way around it may cost somebody else
a deal of money. You see, I couldn't scare your uncle with any threat
of what we'd do to him for trying to steal our railroad, so I had to do
the other thing."

"And that was?--"

"I told him that within the next few hours I was going to ask you to
be my wife; and if you were good enough to say 'yes,' and he would be
generous enough to turn my railroad loose, he wouldn't have anybody but
you to deal with in the embezzlement matter."

For two of the slow-paced sentry-beats, with their appropriate turns,
she let him stifle. Then she said: "Are you just keeping your promise
to Uncle Silas, or--"

The break had come at the unpeopled end of the sentry-beat, and there
was no one to look on when the two figures melted quickly into one.

    *    *    *    *    *

Five minutes later, Engine Number 1063, with Engineer Boligee hanging
from the cab window to measure his distance, backed slowly down the
river-bank siding to make a touch coupling with the private-car train.
Boligee, having night-eyes like a cat, saw a curiously shaped figure at
the car step suddenly resolve itself into two, but the hissing of the
steam in the cylinder cocks kept him from hearing the low-spoken words
of parting.

"You'll come to New York?" whispered the half of the curious figure
which the other half was lifting to the car step.

"The minute my job's done; and if you think I need any bigger
hurry-order than the one you've just given me--"

Engineer Boligee turned morosely to his fireman. "Shut your fire-door,
Billy, and pull the bell. We're gone."


THE END.


[The end of _The Fight on the Standing Stone_ by Francis Lynde]