*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41825 ***

    THE ROAD-BUILDERS

    [Illustration: The M M Co]

    [Illustration: “‘there,’ he cried, ... ‘there, boys! that means
    red hills or bust.’” _Frontispiece_]




    The Road-Builders

    BY

    SAMUEL MERWIN


    AUTHOR OF “THE MERRY ANNE,” JOINT AUTHOR OF
    “CALUMET ‘K,’” “THE SHORT LINE WAR,” ETC.

    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
    F. B. MASTERS

    TORONTO
    THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
    1910


    COPYRIGHT, 1905,
    BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

    Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1905. Reprinted
    April, 1906.

    Norwood Press
    J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
    Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.


    _TO MY LITTLE SON_


NOTE


A part of this story was printed serially in _The Saturday
Evening Post_ under the title, “A Link in the Girdle.”




CONTENTS


CHAPTER            PAGE

       I. YOUNG VAN ENGAGES A COOK                1
      II. WHERE THE MONEY CAME FROM              22
     III. AT MR. CARHART’S CAMP                  37
      IV. JACK FLAGG SEES STARS                  66
       V. WHAT THEY FOUND AT THE WATER-HOLE      97
      VI. THE ROAD TO TOTAL WRECK               138
     VII. THE SPIRIT OF THE JOB                 185
    VIII. SHOTS--AND A SCOUTING PARTY           219
      IX. A SHOW-DOWN                           246
       X. WHAT TOOK PLACE AT RED HILLS          293




    ILLUSTRATIONS


    “‘There,’ he cried, ... ‘there, boys! That means Red Hills
        or bust’”                                         _Frontispiece_

                                                             FACING PAGE

    “‘It’s all I have a right to give anybody’”                       74

    “‘Eighty cents,’ he muttered, ‘and for how much work?’”           80

    “‘Well,’ began the boss, looking him over, ‘what kind of a
        cook are you?’”                                               98

    “Wonderfully they held the pace”                                 114

    “They went on in this way for nearly an hour”                    120

    “‘Look here, Tiffany,’ Carhart began, ‘something’s going to
        happen to this man Peet’”                                    142

    “‘You go back to your quarters’”                                 208

    “... this trestle structure which was slowly crawling, like
        some monster centipede, across the sands of the La Paz”      240

    “The cigarette dropped from Antonio’s unnerved fingers”          244

    “Charlie had not raised his revolver,--the muzzle still
        rested easily on the sill,--but it was pointing straight
        at Jack Flagg’s heart”                                       310




THE ROAD-BUILDERS




CHAPTER I

YOUNG VAN ENGAGES A COOK


The S. & W. was hoping some day to build a large station with a steel
and glass trainshed at Sherman. Indeed, a side elevation of the
structure, drawn to scale and framed in black walnut, had hung for a
number of years in the private office, away down east, of President
Daniel De Reamer. But that was to come in the day when Sherman should
be a metropolis; at present the steel of which it was to be
constructed still lay deep in the earth, unblasted, unsmelted, and
unconverted; and the long, very dirty train which, at the time this
narrative opens, was waiting to begin its westward journey, lay
exposed to the rays of what promised to be, by noon, the hottest sun
the spring had so far known. The cars were of an old, ill-ventilated
sort, and the laborers, who were packed within them like cattle in a
box-car, had shed coats and even shirts, and now sat back, and gasped
and grumbled and fanned themselves with their caps, and steadily lost
interest in life.

Apparently there was some uncertainty back in the office of the
superintendent. A red-faced man, with a handkerchief around his neck,
ran out with an order; whereupon an engine backed in, coupled up to
the first car, and whistled impatiently. But they did not go. Half an
hour passed, and the red-faced man ran out again, and the engine
uncoupled, snorted, rang its bell, and disappeared whence it had come.

At length two men--Peet, the superintendent, and Tiffany, chief
engineer of the railroad--walked down the platform together, and
addressed a stocky man with a close-cut gray mustache and a fixed
frown, who stood beside the rear car.

“Peet says he can’t wait any longer, Mr. Vandervelt,” said Tiffany.

“Can’t help that,” replied Vandervelt.

“But you’ve got to help it!” cried Peet. “What are you waiting for,
anyway?”

“If you think we’re starting without Paul Carhart, you’re mistaken.”

“Carhart! Who is Carhart?”

“That’s all right,” Tiffany put in. “He’s in charge of the
construction.”

“I don’t care what he is! This train--”

He was interrupted by a sudden uproar in the car just ahead. A number
of Italians had chosen to enliven the occasion by attacking the
Mexicans, some of whom had unavoidably been assigned to this car.

Vandervelt left the railroad men without a word, bounded up the car
steps, and plunged through the door. The confusion continued for a
moment, then died down. Another moment, and Vandervelt reappeared on
the platform.

Meanwhile Tiffany was talking to the superintendent.

“You’ve simply got to wait, Peet,” said he. “The old man says that
Carhart must have a free hand. If he’s late, there’s a reason for
it.”

“The old man didn’t say that to me,” growled Peet; but he waited.

       *       *       *       *       *

It would perhaps be difficult to find, in the history of American
enterprise, an undertaking which demanded greater promptness in
execution than the present one; yet, absurdly enough, the cause of the
delay was a person so insignificant that, even for the purposes of
this narrative, his name hardly matters. The name happened to be,
however, Purple Finn, and he had been engaged for chief cook to the
first division.

There was but one real hotel in the “city,” which is to be known here
as Sherman, the half-dozen other places that bore the title of hotel
being rather in the nature of a side line to the saloon and gambling
industry. At this one, which was indicated by a projecting sign and
the words “Eagle, House,” Carhart and his engineers were stopping.
“The Comma House,” as the instrument men and stake men had promptly
dubbed it, was not very large and not very clean, and the “razor back”
hogs and their progeny had a way of sleeping in rows on and about the
low piazza. But it was, nevertheless, the best hotel in that
particular part of the Southwest.

Finn, on the other hand, made his headquarters at one of the half
dozen, that one which was known to the submerged seven-eighths as
“Murphy’s.” That Finn should be an enthusiastic patron of the poor
man’s club was not surprising, considering that he was an Irish
plainsman of a culinary turn, and considering, too, that he was now
winding up one of those periods between jobs, which begin in spacious
hilarity and conclude with a taste of ashes in the mouth.

It was late afternoon. The chief was sitting in his room, before a
table which was piled high with maps, blue-prints, invoices, and
letters. All day long he had been sitting at this table, going over
the details of the work in hand. Old Vandervelt had reported that the
rails and bolts and ties and other necessaries were on the cars;
Flint and Scribner had reported for their divisions; the statements of
the various railroad officials had been examined, to make sure that no
details were overlooked, for these would, sooner or later, bob up in
the form of misunderstandings; the thousand and one things which must
be considered before the expedition should take the plunge into the
desert had apparently been disposed of. And finally, when the large
clock down in the office was announcing, with a preliminary rattle and
click, that it intended very shortly to strike the half-hour between
five and six, the chief pushed back his chair and looked up at his
engineers, who were seated about him--Old Van before him on a trunk;
Scribner and Young Van beside him on the bed; John Flint, a thin,
sallow man, astride the other chair, and Haddon on the floor with his
back against the wall.

“All accounted for, Paul, I guess,” said Flint.

Carhart replied with a question, “How about those iron rods, John?”

“All checked off and packed on the train.”

“Did you accept Doble and Dean’s estimate for your oats?”

“Not much. Cut it down a third. It was altogether too much to carry.
You see, I shall be only thirty-odd miles from Red Hills, once I get
out there, and I don’t look for any trouble keeping in touch.”

“It’s just as well,” said Carhart. “The less you carry, the more room
for us.”

“Did those pots and kettles come, Gus?” Carhart asked, turning to the
younger Vandervelt, who was to act as his secretary and general
assistant.

“Yes; just before noon. They had been carried on to Paradise by
mistake. I got them right aboard.”

“And you were going to keep an eye on that cook. Where is he?”

Young Van hesitated, and an expression of chagrin came into his face.

“I’ll look him up. He promised me last night that he wouldn’t touch
another drop.”

“Well--get your hands on him, and don’t let go again.”

Young Van left the room, and as he drew the door to after him he could
hear the chief saying: “Haddon, I wish you would find Tiffany and
remind him that I’m counting on his getting around early to-night. I’m
not altogether satisfied with their scheme for supplying us.” And
hearing this, he was more than ever conscious of his own small part in
this undertaking, and more than ever chagrined that he should prove
unequal to the very small matter of keeping an eye on the cook. At
least, it seemed a small matter, in view of the hundreds of problems
concerning men and things which Paul Carhart was solving on this day.

The barkeeper at Murphy’s, who served also in the capacity of night
clerk, proved secretive on the subject of Purple Finn--hadn’t seen him
all day--didn’t know when he would be in. The young engineer thought
he had better sit down to digest the situation. This suggested supper,
and he ordered the best of Murphy’s fare, and ate slowly and
pondered. Seven o’clock came, but brought no hint of the cook’s
whereabouts. Young Van gathered from the barroom talk that a big
outfit had come into town from Paradise within the past hour or so,
and incidentally that one of the outfit, Jack Flagg, was on the
warpath--whoever Jack Flagg might be. As he sat in a rear corner,
watching, with an assumption of carelessness, the loafers and
plainsmen and gamblers who were passing in and out, or were, like
himself, sitting at the round tables, it occurred to him to go up to
Finn’s room. He knew, from former calls, where it was. But he learned
nothing more than that the cook’s door was ajar, and that a
half-packed valise lay open on the bed.

At half-past ten, after a tour of the most likely haunts, Young Van
returned to Murphy’s and resumed his seat in the rear corner. He had
no notion of returning to the Eagle House without the cook. It was now
close on the hour when Sherman was used to rouse itself for the
revelry of the night, and that Finn would take some part in this
revelry, and that he would, sooner or later, reappear at his favorite
hostelry, seemed probable.

The lamps in this room were suspended from the ceiling at such a
height that their light entered the eye at the hypnotic angle; and so
it was not long before Young Van, weary from the strain of the week,
began to nod. The bar with its line of booted figures, and the
quartets of card-players, and the one waiter moving about in his
spotted white apron, were beginning to blur and run together. The
clink of glasses and the laughter came to his ears as if from a great
distance. Once he nearly recovered his faculties. A group of new
arrivals were looking toward his corner. “Waiting for Purple Finn,
eh?” said one. “Well, I guess he’s got a nice long wait in front of
him, poor fool!” Then they all laughed. And Young Van himself, with
half-open eyes, had to smile over the poor fool in the corner who was
waiting for Purple Finn.

“I hear Jack Flagg’s in town,” said the barkeeper. “I wonder if he
is!” replied the first speaker. “I wonder if Jack Flagg is in town!”
Again they laughed. And again Young Van smiled. How odd that Jack
Flagg should be in town!

He was awakened by a sound of hammering. There was little change in
the room: the card games were going steadily on; the bar still had its
line of thirsty plainsmen; two men were wrangling in a corner. Then he
made out a group of newcomers who were tacking a placard to the wall,
and chuckling as they did so.

And now, for the first time, Young Van became conscious that he was no
longer alone at his table. Opposite him, smiling genially, and
returning his gaze with benevolent watery eyes, sat a big Texan. This
individual wore his cowboy hat on the back of his head, and made no
effort to conceal the two revolvers and the knife at his belt.

“D’ye know,” said the Texan, “I like you. What’s your name?”

“Vandervelt. What is yours?”

“Charlie--that’s my name.” Then his smile faded, and he shook his
head. “But you won’t find Purple Finn here.”

“Why not?”

“Ain’t that funny! You don’t know ’bout Purple Finn. It’s b’cause Jack
Flagg’s in town. They ain’t friendly--I know Jack Flagg. I’ve been
workin’ with ’im--down Paradise way.”

Young Van was nearly awake. “You don’t happen to be a cook, do you?”
said he.

“Yes,” Charlie replied dreamily. “I’m a cook. But I’m nothin’ to Jack
Flagg. He’s won’erful--won’erful!”

The engineer got up to stretch his legs, and incidentally took
occasion to read the placard. It ran as follows:--

    PURPLE FINN: I heard you was looking for me. Well, I’ll be
    around to Murphy’s to-morrow because I want to tell you you’re
    talking too much.

    JACK FLAGG.

He returned to his table, and amused himself listening to Charlie’s
talk. Then he looked at his watch and found that it was nearly two
hours after midnight. Within six or seven hours the train would be
starting. He wondered what his friends would say if they could see
him. He was afraid that if he should drop off again, he might sleep
too late, and so he determined to keep awake. He communicated this
plan to Charlie, who nodded approval. But he was not equal to it.
Within a very short time his chin was reposing on his breast, and
Charlie was looking at him and chuckling. “Awful good joke,” murmured
Charlie.

Young Van fell to dreaming. He thought that the doors suddenly swung
in, and that Purple Finn himself entered the room. The noise seemed,
at the instant, to die down; the barkeeper paused and gazed; the
card-players turned and sat motionless in their chairs. Finn, thought
Young Van, nodded in a general way, and laughed, and his laugh had no
humor in it. He walked toward the bar, but halfway his roving eye
rested on the placard, and he stood motionless. The blue tobacco haze
curled around him and dimmed the outlines of his figure. In the dream
he seemed to grow a little smaller while he stood there. Then he
walked across and read the placard, taking a long time about it, as if
he found it difficult to grasp the meaning. When he finally turned and
faced the crowd, his expression was weak and uncertain. He seemed
about to say something but whatever it was he wished to say, the words
did not come. Instead, he walked to the bar, ordered a drink, put it
down with a shaking hand, and left the room as he had entered it,
silently. The door swung shut, and somebody laughed; then all returned
to their cards.

When Young Van awoke, the room was flooded with sunlight from the side
windows. He straightened up in his chair and looked around. Charlie
was still at the table. Here and there along the side bench men were
sleeping. The card-players, with seamed faces and cold eyes, were
still at their business. A new set of players had come in, one of them
a giant of a man, dressed like a cowboy, with a hard eye, a heavy
mustache, and a tuft of hair below his under lip.

The engineer was almost afraid to look at his watch. It was half-past
eight. He turned to the still smiling Charlie. “See here,” he said,
“did Finn come in here last night?”

Charlie nodded. “You didn’t wake up.”

Young Van almost groaned aloud. “Where is he? Where did he go?”

“Listen to ’im!” Charlie was indicating a lank stranger who was
leaning on the bar, and talking to a dozen men who had gathered about
him.

“... And when I got off the train,” the lank man was saying, “there
was Purple Finn a-standin’ on the platform. I thought he looked sort
o’ caved in. ‘Hello, Purple,’ says I, ‘what you doin’ up so early in
the mornin’?’ But he never answers a word; just climbs on the train
and sits down in the smoker and looks out the window as if he thought
somebody was after ’im.”

A laugh went up at this, and all the group turned and looked at the
big man with the mustache. But this individual went on fingering his
cards without the twitch of an eyelid.

“So Finn has left town,” said Young Van, addressing his vis-a-vis.

“Yes,” Charlie replied humorously. “He had to see a man down to
Paradise.”

“Who is that big man over there?”

“Him?” Charlie’s voice dropped. “Why, that’s him--Jack Flagg.”

“Did you tell me last night that he was a cook?”

Charlie nodded. “He’s won’erful--won’erful! I know ’im. I’ve been
workin’--”

Young Van pushed back his chair and got up. For a moment he stood
looking at the forbidding face and mighty frame of the man who was now
the central figure in the room; then he crossed over and touched him
on the shoulder. “How are you?” said he, painfully conscious, as every
waking eye in the room was turned on him, that he did not know how to
talk to these men.

Flagg looked up.

“They tell me you can cook,” said the engineer.

“What’s that to you?” said Flagg.

“Do you want a job?”

“This is Mr. Van’ervelt,” put in Charlie, who had followed; “Mr.
Van’ervelt, of the railroad.”

“What’ll you pay?” asked Flagg.

Young Van named the amount.

“When do you want to start?”

“Now.”

“Charlie,”--Flagg was sweeping in a heap of chips,--“go down to Jim’s
and get my things and fetch ’em here.” And with this he turned back to
the game.

Young Van looked uncertainly at Charlie, whose condition was hardly
such that he could be trusted to make the trip without a series of
stops in the numerous havens of refuge along the way. The thing to do
was perhaps to go with him; at any rate, that is what Young Van did.

“Won’erful man!” murmured Charlie, when they reached the sidewalk.
Then, “Say, Mr. Van’ervelt, come over here a minute--jus’ over to Bill
White’s. Wanna see a man,--jus’ minute.”

But Young Van was not in a tolerant mood. “Stiffen up, Charlie,” he
said sharply. “No more of this sort of thing--not if you’re going with
us.”

Charlie was meekly obedient, and even tried to hurry; but at the best
it took considerable time to get together the clothing of the cook and
his assistant, pay their bill, and return to Murphy’s. This much
accomplished, it became necessary to use some tact with Flagg, who was
bent on winning a little more before stopping. And as Flagg could
easily have tossed the engineer out of the window, and had, besides,
the strategical advantage, Young Van was unable to see much choice for
himself in the matter. And standing there, waiting on the pleasure of
his cook, he passed the time in wondering where he had made his
mistake. Paul Carhart, or John Flint, he thought, would never have
found it necessary to take the undignified measures to which he had
been reduced. But what was the difference? What would they have done?
In trying to answer these questions he hit on every reason but the
right one. He forgot that he was a young man.

       *       *       *       *       *

Carhart and Flint, after waiting a long time at the “Eagle, House,”
went down to the station, arriving there some time after the outburst
of Peet, which was noted at the beginning of the chapter. Tiffany saw
them coming, and communicated the news to the superintendent. The
engine reappeared, and again coupled up to the forward car.

“Everything all right?” called Tiffany.

“No,” replied Carhart; “don’t start yet.”

The three walked on and joined Old Van by the steps of the rear car.

“Well,” growled the veteran, “how much longer are we going to wait,
Paul?”

“Until Gus comes.”

“Gus? I thought he was aboard here.”

“No,” said John Flint, with a wink; “he went out last night to see the
wheels go round. Here he comes now. But what in--”

They all gazed without a word. Three men were walking abreast down the
platform, Gus Vandervelt, with a white face and ringed eyes, in the
middle. The youngest engineer of the outfit was not a small man, but
between the two cooks he looked like a child.

“Would you look at that!” said Flint, at length. “Neither of those two
Jesse Jameses will ever see six-foot-three again. Makes Gus look like
a nick in a wall.”

Young Van met Carhart’s questioning gaze almost defiantly. “The cook,”
he said, indicating Flagg.

“All right. Get aboard.”

“Rear car,” cried Old Van, who had charge of the arrangements on the
train.

This time the bell did not ring in vain. The train moved slowly out
toward the unpeopled West, and the engineers threw off coats and
collars, and made themselves as nearly comfortable as they could under
the circumstances.

A few minutes after the start Paul Carhart, who was writing a letter
in pencil, looked up and saw Young Van beside him, and tried not to
smile at his sorry appearance.

“I think I owe you an explanation, Mr. Carhart,” began the young man,
in embarrassment which took the form of stiffness.

But the chief shook his head. “I’m not asking any questions, Gus,” he
replied. Then the smile escaped him, and he turned it off by adding,
“I’m writing to Mrs. Carhart.” He held up the letter and glanced over
the first few lines with a twinkle in his eyes. “I was just telling
her,” he went on, “that the cook problem in Chicago is in its
infancy.”




CHAPTER II

WHERE THE MONEY CAME FROM


Doubtless there were official persons to be found at the time of this
narrative--which is a matter of some thirty years back--who would have
insisted that the letters “S. & W.” meant “Sherman and Western.” But
every one who lived within two days’ ride of the track knew that the
real name of the road was the “Shaky and Windy.”

Shaky the “S. & W.” certainly was--physically, and, if newspaper
gossip and apparent facts were to be trusted, financially. The rails
weighed thirty-five pounds to the yard, and had been laid in scallops,
with high centres and low joints,--“sight along the rails and it looks
like a washboard,” said John Flint, describing it. For ballast the
clay and sand of the region were used. And, as for the financial part,
everybody knew that old De Reamer had been forced to abandon the
construction work on the Red Hills extension, after building fully
five-sixths of the distance. The hard times had, of course, something
to do with that,--roads were going under all through the West;
receiverships were quite the common thing,--but De Reamer and the S. &
W. did not seem to revive so quickly as certain other lines. This was
the more singular in that the S. & W., extending as it did from the
Sabine country to the Staked Plains, really justified the popular
remark that “the Shaky and Windy began in a swamp and ended in a
desert.” On the face of things, without the Red Hills connection with
the bigger C. & S. C., and without an eastern connection with one of
the New Orleans or St. Louis lines, the road was an absurdity.

Then, only a few months before the time of our narrative, the railroad
world began to wake up. Commodore Durfee, one of “the big fellows,”
surprised the Southwest by buying in the H. D. & W. (which meant, and
will always mean, the High, Dry, and Wobbly). The surprise was
greater when the Commodore began building southwestward, in the
general direction of Red Hills. As usual when the big men are playing
for position, the public and the wise-acres, even Wall Street, were
mystified. For the S. & W. was so obviously the best and shortest
eastern connection for the C. & S. C.,--the H. D. & W. would so
plainly be a differential line,--that it was hard to see what the
Commodore was about. He had nothing to say to the reporters. Old
General Carrington, of the C. & S. C., the biggest and shrewdest of
them all, was also silent. And Daniel De Reamer couldn’t be seen at
all.

And finally, by way of a wind-up to the first skirmish of the
picturesque war in which our engineers were soon to find themselves
taking part, there was a western breeze and a flurry of dust in Wall
Street. Somebody was fighting. S. & W. shares ran up in a day from
twenty-two to forty-six, and, which was more astonishing, sold at that
figure for another day before dropping. Other mysterious things were
going on. Suddenly De Reamer reappeared in the Southwest, and that
most welcome sign of vitality, money,--red gold corpuscles,--began to
flow through the arteries of the S. & W. “system.” The construction
work started up, on rush orders. Paul Carhart was specially engaged to
take out a force and complete the track--any sort of a track--to Red
Hills. And as he preferred not to take this rush work through very
difficult country on any other terms, De Reamer gave him something
near a free hand,--ordered Chief Engineer Tiffany to let him alone,
beyond giving every assistance in getting material to the front, and
accepting the track for the company as fast as it was laid.

And as Tiffany was not at all a bad fellow, and had admired Carhart’s
part in the Rio Grande fight (though he would have managed some things
differently, not to say better, himself), the two engineers seemed
likely to get on very well.

Carhart’s three trains would hardly get over the five hundred miles
which lay between Sherman and the end of the track in less than
twenty-seven or twenty-eight hours. “The private car,” as the boys
called it, was of an old type even for those days, and was very
uncomfortable. Everybody, from the chief down, had shed coat and
waistcoat before the ragged skyline of Sherman slipped out of view
behind the yellow pine trees. The car swayed and lurched so violently
that it was impossible to stand in the aisle without support. As the
hours dragged by, several of the party curled up on the hard seats and
tried to sleep. The instrument and rod and stake men and the pile
inspectors, mostly young fellows recently out of college or technical
institute, got together at one end of the car and sang college songs.

Carhart was sitting back, his feet up on the opposite seat, watching
for the pines to thin out, and thinking of the endless gray chaparral
and sage-brush which they would find about them in the morning,--if
the train didn’t break down,--when he saw Tiffany’s big person
balancing down the aisle toward him. Tiffany had been quiet a long
time; now he had a story in his eye.

“Well,” he said, as he slid down beside Carhart, “I knew the old
gentleman would pull it off in time, but I never supposed he could
make the Commodore pay the bills.”

Carhart glanced up inquiringly.

“Didn’t you hear about it? Well, say! I happen to know that a month
ago Mr. De Reamer actually didn’t have the money to carry this work
through. Even when Commodore Durfee started building for Red Hills, he
didn’t know which way to turn. The Commodore, you know, hadn’t any
notion of stopping with the H.D.& W.”

“No,” said Carhart, “I didn’t suppose he had.”

“He was after us, too--wanted to do the same as he did with the High
and Dry, corner the stock.” Tiffany chuckled. “But he knew he’d have
to corner Daniel De Reamer first. If he didn’t, the old gentleman
would manufacture shares by the hundred thousand and pump ’em right
into him. There’s the Paradise Southern,--that’s been a regular
fountain of stock. You knew about that.”

Carhart shook his head.

“We passed through Paradise this noon.”

“Yes, I know the line. It runs down from Paradise to Total Wreck. But
I didn’t know it had anything to do with S. & W. capital stock.”

“Didn’t, eh?” chuckled Tiffany. “Mr. De Reamer and Mr. Chambers own
it, you know, and they’re directors in both lines. The old game was
for them, as P. S. directors, to lease the short line to themselves as
S. & W. directors. Then the S.& W. directors pay the P. S.
directors--only they’re it both ways--in S. & W. stock. Don’t you see?
And it’s only one of a dozen schemes. The old gentleman’s always ready
for S. & W. buyers.”

Carhart smiled. The car lurched and shivered. Such air as came in
through the open door and windows was tainted with the gases of the
locomotive, and with the mingled odors of the densely packed laborers
in the cars ahead.

“That’s really the only reason they’ve kept up the Paradise
Southern--for there isn’t any business on the line. Well, as I was
saying, the Commodore knew that the first thing he had to do was
corner Mr. De Reamer, and keep him from creating stock. So he came
down on him all at once, with a heap of injunctions and court orders.
He did it thorough: restrained the S. & W. board from issuing any more
stock, or from completing any of the transactions on hand, and
temporarily suspended the old gentleman and Mr. Chambers, pending an
investigation of their accounts, and ordered ’em to return to the
treasury of the company the seventy thousand shares they created last
year. There was a lot more, but that’s the gist of it. He did it
through Waring and his other minority directors on the board. And
right at the start, you see, when he began to buy, he made S. & W.
stock so scarce that the price shot up.”

“Seems as if he had sewed up the S. & W. pretty tight,” observed
Carhart.

“Didn’t it, though? But the Commodore didn’t know the old gentleman as
well as he thought. Mr. De Reamer and Mr. Chambers got another judge
to issue orders for them to do everything the Commodore’s judge
forbid--tangled it all up so that everything they did or didn’t do,
they’d be disobeying somebody, and leaving it for the judges to settle
among themselves. Then they issued ten million dollars in convertible
bonds to a dummy, representing themselves, turned ’em right into
stock,--and tangled that transaction up so nobody in earth or heaven
will ever know just exactly _what_ was done,--and sold ‘most seventy
thousand shares of it to Commodore Durfee before he had a glimmer of
where it was coming from. And then it was too late for him to stop
buying, so he had to take in the whole hundred thousand shares. I
heard Mr. Chambers say that when the Commodore found ’em out, he was
so mad he couldn’t talk,--stormed stormed around his office trying to
curse Daniel De Reamer, but he couldn’t even swear intelligent.”

“So Mr. De Reamer beat him,” said Carhart.

“Beat him?--I wonder--”

“But that’s not all, surely. Commodore Durfee isn’t the man to swallow
that.”

“He _had_ to swallow it.--Oh, he did kick up some fuss, but it didn’t
do him any good. His judge tried to jerk up our people for contempt,
but they were warned and got out of Mr. De Reamer’s Broad Street
office, and over into New Jersey with all the documents and money.”
Tiffany’s good-humored eyes lighted up as his mind dwelt on the fight.
Never was there a more loyal railroad man than this one. Daniel De
Reamer was his king, and his king could do no wrong. “Not that they
didn’t have some excitement getting away,” he continued. “They
say,--mind, I don’t know this, but _they_ say that Mr. De Reamer’s
secretary, young Crittenden, crossed the ferry in a cab with four
million five hundred thousand dollars _in bills_--just tied up rough
in bundles so they could be thrown around. And there you
are,--Commodore Durfee is paying for this extension that’s going to
cut him out of the C. & S. C. through business. The money and papers
are out of his reach. The judges are fighting among themselves, and
will be doing well if they ever come to a settlement. And now if that
ain’t pretty slick business, I’d like to know what the word ‘slick’
means.”

Carhart almost laughed aloud. He turned and looked out the window for
a few moments. Finally he said, “If you have that straight, Tiffany,
it’s undoubtedly the worst defeat Commodore Durfee ever had. But don’t
make the mistake of thinking that the S. & W. is through with him.”

“Maybe not,” Tiffany replied, “but I’ll bet proper on the old
gentleman.”

Carhart’s position as the engineer in charge of a thousand and more
men would be not unlike that of a military commander who finds
himself dependent for subsistence on five hundred miles of what
Scribner called “very sketchy” single track. It would be more serious;
for not only must food, and in the desert, water, be brought out over
the line, but also the vast quantity of material needed in the work.
It would be the business of Peet, as the working head of the operating
department, to deliver the material from day to day, and week to week,
at the end of the last completed section, where the working train
would be made up each night for the construction work of the following
day.

If the existing track was sketchy, the new track would be worse.
Everything was to be sacrificed to speed. The few bridges were to be
thrown up hastily in the form of primitive wooden trestles. There
would be no masonry, excepting the abutments of the La Paz
bridge,--which masonry, or rather the stone for it, was about the only
material they would find at hand. All the timber, even to the cross
ties, would have to be shipped forward from the long-leaf-pine
forests of eastern Texas and western Louisiana.

Ordinarily, Carhart would not have relished undertaking such a hasty
job; but in this case there were compensations. When he had first
looked over the location maps, in Daniel De Reamer’s New York office,
his quiet eyes had danced behind their spectacles; for it promised to
be pretty work, in which a man could use his imagination. There was
the bridge over the La Paz River, for instance. He should have to send
a man out there with a long wagon train of materials, and with orders
to have the bridge ready when the track should reach the river. He
knew just the man--John B. Flint, who built the Desplaines bridge for
the three I’s. He had not heard from John since the doctors had
condemned his lungs, and ordered him to a sanatorium in the
Adirondacks, and John had compromised by going West, and hanging that
very difficult bridge between the walls of Brilliant Gorge in the
Sierras. Carhart was not sure that he was still among the living; but
a few searching telegrams brought out a characteristic message from
John himself, to the effect that he was very much alive, and was ready
to bridge the Grand Cañon of the Colorado at a word from Paul Carhart.

Then there was always to be considered the broad outline of the
situation as it was generally understood in the railway world. Details
apart, it was known that Commodore Durfee and Daniel De Reamer were
fighting for that through connection, and that old General
Carrington,--czar of the C. & S. C., holder of one and owner of
several other seats in the Senate of these United States, chairman of
the National Committee of his party,--that General Carrington was
sitting on the piazza of his country house in California, smoking good
cigars and talking horse and waiting to see whether he should gobble
Durfee or De Reamer, or both of them. For the general, too, was
represented on the directorate of the Sherman and Western; and it was
an open question whether his minority directors would continue to
support the De Reamer interests or would be ordered to ally themselves
with the Durfee men. Either way, there would be no sentiment wasted.
But it seemed to Carhart that so long as De Reamer should be able to
hold up his head in the fight General Carrington would probably stand
behind him. Commodore Durfee was too big in the East to be encouraged
in the West. And yet--there was no telling.

It was very pretty indeed. Carhart was a quiet man, given more to
study than to speech; but he liked pretty things.




CHAPTER III

AT MR. CARHART’S CAMP


“It takes an Irishman, a nigger, and a mule to build a railroad,” said
Tiffany.

With Young Van, he was standing in front of the headquarters tent,
which, together with the office tent for the first division, where Old
Van would hold forth, and the living and mess tents for the engineers,
was pitched on a knoll at a little distance from the track.

“The mule,” he continued, “will do the work, the nigger will drive the
mule, and the Irishman’ll boss ’em both.”

Young Van, keyed up by this sudden plunge into frontier work, was only
half listening to the flow of good-natured comment and reminiscence
from the chief engineer at his elbow. He was looking at the
steam-shrouded locomotive, and at the long line of cars stringing off
in perspective behind it. Wagons were backed in against this and the
few other trains which had come in during the day; other wagons were
crawling about the track almost as far as he could see through the
steam and the dust. Men on horseback--picturesque figures in
wide-brimmed hats and blue shirts and snug-fitting boots laced to the
knee--were riding in and out among the teams. The old track ended in
the immediate foreground, and here old Van was at work with his young
surveyors, looking up the old stakes and driving new ones to a line
set by a solemn youngster with skinny hands and a long nose.
Everywhere was noise--a babel of it--and toil and a hearty sort of
chaos. One line of wagons--laden with scrapers, “slips” and
“wheelers,” tents and camp equipage, the timbers and machinery of a
pile-driver, and a thousand and one other things--was little by little
extricating itself from the tangle, winding slowly past head-quarters,
and on toward the low-lying, blood-red sun. This was the outfit of the
second division, and Harry Scribner, riding a wiry black pony, was
leading it into corral on “mile two,” preparatory to a start in the
early morning.

From the headquarters cook tent, behind the “office,” came savory
odors. Farther down the knoll, near the big “boarding house” tents,
the giant Flagg and the equally sturdy Charlie could be seen moving
about a row of iron kettles which were swinging over an open fire. The
chaos about the trains was straightening out, and the men were
corralling the wagons, and unharnessing the mules and horses. The sun
slipped down behind the low western hills, leaving a luminous memory
in the far sky. In groups, and singly, the laborers--Mexicans,
Italians, Louisiana French, broken plainsmen from everywhere, and
negroes--came straggling by, their faces streaked with dust and sweat,
the negroes laughing and singing as they lounged and shuffled along.

Carhart, who had been dividing his attention between the unloading of
the trains and the preparations of his division engineers, came
riding up the knoll on “Texas,” his compact little roan, a horse he
had ridden and boasted about in a quiet way for nearly four years.
John Flint, thin and stooping of body, with a scrawny red mustache and
high-pitched voice, soon rode in over the grade from the farther side
of the right of way, where he was packing up his outfit for the long
haul to the La Paz River. The instrument men and their assistants
followed, one by one, and fell in line at the tin wash-basin, all
exuberant with banter and laughter and high-spirited play. And at last
the headquarters cook, a stout negro, came out in front of the mess
tent and beat his gong with mighty strokes; and Harry Scribner, who
was jogging back to camp from his corral, heard it, dug in his spurs,
and came up the long knoll on the gallop.

There was no escaping the joviality of this first evening meal in
camp. In the morning the party would break up. Scribner would ride
ahead a dozen miles to make a division camp of his own; John Flint
would be pushing out there into the sunset for the better part of a
week, across the desert, through the gray hills, and down to the
yellow La Paz. The youngsters were shy at first; but after Tiffany had
winked and said, “It’ll never do to start this dry, boys,” and had
produced a bottle from some mysterious corner, they felt easier. Even
Carhart, for the time, laid aside the burden which, like Christian, he
must carry for many days. A good many stories were told, most of them
by Tiffany, who had run the gamut of railroading, north, south, east,
and west.

“That was a great time we had up at Pittsburgh,” said he, “when I
stole the gondola cars,”--he placed the accent on the _do_,--“best
thing I ever did. That was when I was on the Almighty and Great Windy
that used to run from Pittsburg up to the New York State line. I was
acting as a sort of traffic superintendent, among other things,--we
had to do all sorts of work then; no picking and choosing and no
watching the clock for us.” He turned on the long-nosed instrument
man. “That was when you were just about a promising candidate for long
pants, my friend.”

“We had a new general manager--named MacBayne. He didn’t know anything
about railroading,--had been a telegraph operator and Durfee’s
nephew,--yes, the same old Commodore, it was,--and, getting boosted up
quick, that way, he got into that frame of mind where he wouldn’t ever
have contradicted you if you’d said he _was_ the Almighty and Great
Windy. First thing he did was to put in a system of bells to call us
to his office,--but I didn’t care such a heap. He enjoyed it so. He’d
lean back and pull a little handle, and then be too busy to talk when
one of us came running in--loved to make us stand around a spell.
Hadn’t but one eye, MacBayne hadn’t, and you never could tell for
downright certain who he was swearing at.

“The company had bought a little railroad, the P. G.--Pittsburg and
Gulf,--for four hundred and fifty thousand. Just about such a line as
our Paradise spur, only instead of the directors buying it personal,
they’d bought it for the company.

“One day my little bell tinkled, and I got up and went into the old
man’s office. He was smoking a cigar and trying to look through a
two-foot wall into Herb Williams’s pickle factory. Pretty soon he
swung his one good eye around on me and looked at me sharp. ‘Hen,’ he
said, ‘we’re in a fix. We haven’t paid but two hundred thousand on the
P.G.--and what’s more, that’s all we can pay.’

“‘Well, sir,’ said I, ‘what’s the trouble?’ It’s funny--he’s always
called me Hen, and I’ve always called him sir and Mister MacBayne. He
ain’t anybody to-day, but if I went back to Pittsburg to-morrow and
met him in Morrison’s place, he’d say, ‘Well, Hen, how’re you making
it?’ and I’d say, ‘Pretty well, Mister MacBayne.’--Ain’t it funny?
Can’t break away from it.

“I’ve just had a wire from Black,’ said he,--Black was our attorney
up at Buffalo,--‘saying that the sheriff of Erie County,’ over the
line in New York State, ‘has attached all our gon_do_la cars up there,
and won’t release ’em until we pay up. What’ll we do?’

“‘Hum!’ said I. ‘We’ve got just a hundred and twenty gon_do_las in
Buffalo to-day.’ A hundred and twenty cars was a lot to us, you
understand--just like it would be to the S. & W. Imagine what would
happen to you fellows out here if Peet had that many cars taken away
from him. So I thought a minute, and then I said, ‘Has the sheriff
chained ’em to the track, Mister MacBayne?’

“‘I don’t know about that,’ said he.

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘don’t you think it would be a good plan to find that
out first thing?’

“He looked at me sharp, then he sort o’ grinned. ‘What’re you thinking
about, Hen?’ he asked.

“I didn’t answer direct. ‘You find that out,’ I told him, ‘and let me
know what he says.’

“About an hour later the bell tinkle-winkled again. ‘No,’ he said,
when I went in his office, ‘they ain’t chained down--not yet, anyway.
Now, what’ll we do?’

“‘Why don’t you go up there?’ said I. ‘Hook your car on to No. 5’--that
was our night express for Buffalo, a long string of oil and
coal cars with a baggage car, coach, and sleeper on the end of it. It
ran over our line and into Buffalo over the Southeastern.

“‘All right, Hen,’ said he. ‘Will you go along?’

“‘Sure,’ I told him.

“On our way out we picked up Charlie Greenman too. He was
superintendent of the State Line Division--tall, thin man, very
nervous, Charlie was.

“Next morning, when we were sitting over our breakfast in the Swift
House, the old man turned his good eye on me and said, ‘Well, Hen,
what next?’ I’d brought him up there, you see, and now he was looking
for results.

“‘Well,’ said I, speaking slow and sort of thinking it over, ‘look
here, Mister MacBayne, why don’t you get a horse and buggy and look
around the city? They say it’s a pretty place. Or you could pick up a
boat, you and Charlie, and go sailing on Lake Erie. Or you might run
over and see the falls--Ever been there?’

“The old man was looking on both sides of me with those two eyes of
his. ‘What are you up to, Hen?’ he said.

“‘Nothing,’ I answered, ‘not a thing. But say, Mister MacBayne, I
forgot to bring any money. Let me have a little, will you,--about a
hundred and fifty?’

“When I said that, the old man gulped, and looked almost scared. I saw
then, just what I’d suspected, that he wouldn’t be the least use to
me. I’d ‘a’ done better to have left him behind. ‘Why, yes, Hen,’ said
he, ‘I can let you have that!’ He went out, and pretty soon he came
back with the money in a big roll of small bills.

“‘Well, good morning, gentlemen,’ said I. ‘I’ll see you at five
o’clock this afternoon.’

“I went right out to the Erie yards, where they were unloading
twenty-two of our coal cars. Jim Harvey was standing near by, and he
gave me a queer look, and asked me what I was doing in Buffalo.

“‘Doing?’ said I, ‘I’m looking after my cars. What did you suppose?
And see here, Jim, while you were about it, don’t you think you might
have put ’em together. Here you’ve got twenty-two of ’em, and there’s
forty over at the Lake Shore, and a lot more in Chaplin’s yards? There
ain’t but one of me--however do you suppose I’m going to watch ’em
all, even see that the boys keep oil in the boxes?’ ‘I don’t know
anything about that,’ said he.

“‘Well now, look here, Jim,’ said I, ‘how many more of these cars have
you got to unload?’ ‘Twelve,’ said he. ‘How soon can you get it
done--that’s my question?’ ‘Oh, I’ll finish it up to-morrow morning.’
‘Well, now, Jim,’ said I, ‘I want you to put on a couple of extra
wagons and get these cars emptied by five o’clock this afternoon. Then
I want you to get all our cars together over there in Chaplin’s yards,
where I can keep an eye on ’em!’ ‘Oh, see here,’ said he, ‘I can’t do
that, Hen. The sheriff--’

“‘Damn the sheriff,’ said I. ‘I ain’t going to hurt the sheriff. What
I want is to get my cars together where I can know what’s being done
to ’em.’

“Well, he didn’t want to do it, but some of the long green passed and
then he thought maybe he could fix me up. There was a lot of other
things I had to do that day--and a lot of other men to see. The
despatcher for the Buffalo and Southwestern was one of ’em. Then at
five o’clock, or a little before, I floated into the Swift House
office and there were MacBayne and Charlie Greenman sitting around
waiting for me. The old man had his watch in his hand. Charlie was
walking up and down, very nervous. I came up sort of offhand and
said:--

“‘Charlie, I want two of your biggest and strongest engines, and I
want ’em up in Chaplin’s yard as soon as you can get ’em there.’

“‘What,’ said he, ‘on a foreign road?’ ‘Yes,’ said I, offhand like.
Then I turned to the old man. ‘Now, Mister MacBayne,’ said I, ‘I want
you to tell Charlie here that when those engines pass out of his
division, they come absolutely under my control.’

“‘Oh, that’s all right, Hen,’ said Charlie, speaking up breathless.

“‘Yes, I know it is,’ said I, ‘but I want you to hear Mister MacBayne
say it. Remember, when those engines leave your division, they belong
to me until I see fit to bring ’em back.’

“The old man was looking queerer than ever. ‘See here, Hen,’ said he,
‘what devilment are you up to, anyway?’

“‘Nothing at all,’ said I. ‘I just want two engines. You can’t run a
railroad without engines, Mister MacBayne.’

“‘Well,’ said he, then, ‘how about me--what do you want of me?’

“‘Why, I’ll tell you,’ said I. ‘Why don’t you hook your car on to No.
6 and go back to Pittsburg to-night?’ You should have seen his good
eye light up at that. Getting out of the state suited him about as
well as anything just then, and he didn’t lose any time about it. When
he had gone, Charlie said:--

“‘Now, Hen, for heaven’s sake, tell me what you’re up to?’

“‘Not a bit of it,’ said I. ‘I don’t see what business it is of yours.
You belong back on your division.’

“‘Well, I ain’t going,’ said he. ‘I’m going wherever you go to-night.’

“‘All right,’ said I; ‘I’m going to Shelby’s vaudeville.’

“That surprised him. But he didn’t say anything more. You remember old
Shelby’s show there. I always used to go when I was in Buffalo of an
evening.

“But about 11:30, when the show was over, Charlie began to get
nervous again. ‘Well, Hen,’ he said, ‘where next?’

“‘I don’t know about you,’ said I, ‘but I’m going to stroll out to
Chaplin’s yard before I turn in, and take a look at our cars. You’d
better go to bed.’

“‘Not a bit of it,’ he broke out. ‘I’m going with you.’

“‘All right,’ said I, ‘come along. It’s a fine night.’

“Well, gentlemen, when we got out to the yards, there were our cars in
two long lines on parallel tracks, seventy on one track and fifty on
another--one thing bothered me, they were broken in four places at
street crossings--and on the two next tracks beside them were
Charlie’s two engines, steam up and headlights lighted. And, say, you
never saw anything quite like it! The boys they’d sent with the
engines weren’t anybody’s fools, and they had on about three hundred
pounds of steam apiece--blowing off there with a noise you could hear
for a mile, but the boys themselves weren’t saying a word; they were
sitting around smoking their pipes, quiet as seven Sabbaths.

“When Charlie saw this laid out right before his eyes, he took
frightened all of a sudden--his knees were going like that. He grabbed
my arm and pulled me back into the shadow.

“‘Hen, for heaven’s sake, let’s get out of here quick. This means the
penitentiary.’

“‘You can go,’ said I. ‘I didn’t invite you to the party.’

“Right beside the tracks there was a watch-box, shut up as if there
wasn’t anybody in it, but I could see the light coming out at the top.
It was going to be ticklish business, I knew that. We had to haul out
over a drawbridge, for one thing, to get out of the yards, and then
whistle for the switch over to the southwestern tracks. Had to use the
signals of the other roads, too. But I was in for it.

“‘Well, Hen,’ said Charlie, ‘if you’re going to do it, what in ----
are you standing around for now?’

“‘Got to wait for the Lake Shore Express to go through,’ said I.

“Charlie sort of groaned at this and for an hour we sat there and
waited. I tried to talk about the oil explosion down by Titusville,
but Charlie, somehow, wasn’t interested. All the while those engines
were blowing off tremendous, and the crews were sitting around just
smoking steady.

“Finally, at one o’clock, I went over to the engineer of the first
engine. ‘How many men have you got?’ said I.

“‘Four brakemen,’ he said, ‘each of us.’

“‘All right,’ said I. ‘I guess I don’t need to tell you what to do.’

“They all heard me, and say, you ought to have seen them jump up. The
engineer was up and on his engine before I got through talking; and he
just went a-flying down the yard, whistling for the switch. The four
brakemen ran back along the fifty-car string. You see they had to
couple up at those four crossings and that was the part I didn’t like
a bit. But I couldn’t help it. The engineer came a-backing down very
rapid, and bumped that front car as if he wanted to telescope it.

“Well, sir, they did it--coupled up, link and pin. The engineer was
leaning ‘way out the window, and he didn’t wait very long after
getting the signal, before he was a-hiking it down the yard, tooting
his whistle for the draw. Heaven only knows what might have happened,
but nothing did. He got over the draw all right with his fifty cars
going clickety--clickety--clickety behind him, and then I could see
his rear lights and hear him whistling for the switch over to the
southwestern tracks. Then I gave the signal for the other engine.
Charlie, all this time, was getting worse and worse. He was leaning up
against me now, just naturally hanging on to me, looking like a
somnambulist. You could hear his knees batting each other. And the
engineer of that second engine turned out to be in the same fix. He
was so excited he never waited for the signal that the cars were all
coupled up, and he started up with a terrific toot of his whistle and
a yank on the couplings, leaving thirty cars and one brakeman behind.
But I knew it would never do to call him back.

“Well, now, here is where it happened. That whistle was enough to wake
the sleeping saints. And just as the train got fairly going for the
draw, tooting all the way, the door of that watch-box burst open and
three policemen men came running out, hard as they could run. Of
course there was only one thing to do, and that’s just the thing that
Charlie Greenman didn’t do. He turned and ran in the general direction
of the Swift House as fast as those long legs of his could carry him.
Two of the officers ran after him and the other came for me. I yelled
to Charlie to stop, but he’d got to a point where he couldn’t hear
anything. The other officer came running with his night-stick in the
air, but my Scotch-Irish was rising, and I threw up my guard.

“‘Don’t you touch me,’ I yelled; ‘don’t you touch me!’

“‘Well, come along, then,’ said he.

“‘Not a bit of it,’ said I. ‘I’ve nothing to do with you.’

“‘Well, you ran,’ he yelled; ‘you ran!’

“I just looked at him. ‘Do you call this running?’ said I.

“‘Well,’ said he, ‘the other fellow ran.’

“‘All right,’ said I, ‘we’ll run after him.’ So we did. Pretty soon
they caught Charlie. And I was a bit nervous, for I didn’t know what
he might say. But he was too scared to say anything. So I turned to
the officer.

“‘Now,’ said I, ‘suppose you tell us what it is you want?’

“‘We want you,’ said one of them.

“‘No, you don’t,’ said I.

“‘Yes, we do,’ said he.

“It seemed to be getting time for some bluffing, so I hit right out.
‘Where’s your headquarters?’ said I.

“‘Right over here,’ said he.

“‘All right,’ said I, ‘that’s where we’re going, right now. We’ll see
if two railroad men can’t walk through Chaplin’s yards whenever they
feel like it.’

“And all the while we were talking I could hear that second train
a-whooping it up for the state line--clickety--clickety--whoo-oo-oo!
--clickety--clickety--getting fainter and fainter.

“There was a big captain dozing on a bench in the station house. When
he saw us come in, he climbed up behind his desk so he could look down
on us--they like to look down at you, you know.

“‘Well, Captain,’ said the officer, ‘we’ve got ’em.’

“‘Yes,’ the captain answered, looking down with a grin, ‘I think you
have.’

“‘Well now,’ said I, to the captain, ‘who have you got?’

“‘That’ll be all right,’ said he, with another grin.

“It was pretty plain that he wasn’t going to say anything. There was
something about the way he looked at us and especially about that
grin that started me thinking. I decided on bluff number two. I took
out my pass case, opened it, and spread out annual passes on the Great
Windy, the Erie, the South-eastern, and the Lake Shore. My name was
written on all of them, H. L. Tiffany, Pittsburg. The minute the
captain saw them he looked queer, and I turned to Charlie and told him
to get out his passes, which he did. For a minute the captain couldn’t
say anything; then he turned on those three officers, and you ought to
have heard what he said to them--gave ’em the whole forty-two degrees
right there, concentrated.

“‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said to us, when he’d told the officer all that
was on his mind, ‘this is pretty stupid business. I’m very sorry we’ve
put you to this trouble, and I can tell you that if there is anything
I can do to make it right, I’ll be more than glad to do it.’

“Well, there wasn’t anything in particular that I wanted just then
except to get out of Buffalo quick. But I did stop to gratify my
curiosity.

“‘Would you mind telling me, Captain,’ said I, ‘who you took us for?’

“The captain looked queer again, then he said, solemn, ‘We took you
for body snatchers.’

“‘Body snatchers!’ I looked at Charlie, and Charlie, who was beginning
to recover, looked at me.

“‘You see,’ the captain went on, ‘there’s an old building out there by
the yard, and some young surgeons and medical students have been using
it nights to cut up people in, and when the boys saw two well-dressed
young fellows hanging around there in the middle of the night, they
didn’t stop to think twice. I’m very sorry, indeed. I’ll send two of
these men over to escort you to your hotel, with your permission.’

“That didn’t please me very much, but I couldn’t decline. So we
started out, Charlie and I and the two coppers. But instead of going
to the Swift House I steered them into the Mansion House, and
dampened things up a bit. Then I got three boxes of cigars, Havana
imported. I gave one to each of the officers, and on the bottom of the
third I wrote, in pencil, ‘To the Captain, with the compliments of H.
L. Tiffany, of the A. & G. W., Pittsburg, Pa.’ I thought he might have
reason to be interested when he got his next morning’s paper in
knowing just who we were. The coppers went back, tickled to death, and
Charlie and I got out into the street.

“‘Well, Hen,’ said he, very quiet, ‘what are you going to do next?’

“‘You can do what you like, Charlie,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to take
the morning three o’clock on the Michigan Central for Toronto.’ And
Charlie, he thought maybe he’d go with me.”

Tiffany leaned back in a glow of reminiscence, and chuckled softly. Of
the others, some had pushed back their chairs, some were leaning
forward on the table. All had been, for half an hour, in the remote
state of New York with this genial railroading pirate of the old
school. Now, outside, a horse whinnied. Through the desert stillness
came the clanking and coughing of a distant train. They were back in
the gray Southwest, perhaps facing adventures of their own.

Carhart rose, for he had work to do at the headquarters tent. Young
Van took the hint, and followed his example. But the long-nosed
instrument man, the fire of a pirate soul shining out through his
countenance, leaned eagerly forward. “What happened then?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing much,” Tiffany responded. “What could happen? Charlie and
I came back from Toronto a few days later by way of Detroit.” Then his
eye lighted up again. “But I like to think,” he added, “that next
morning when that captain read about the theft of ninety gon_do_la
cars right out from under the sheriff’s nose by H. L. Tiffany, of
Pittsburg, Pa., he was smoking one of said H. L. Tiffany’s cigars.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The sun was up, hot and bright. The laborers and the men of the tie
squad and the iron squad were straggling back to work. The wagons were
backing in alongside the cars. And halfway down the knoll stood
Carhart and Flint, both in easy western costume, Flint booted and
spurred, stroking the neck of his well-kept pony.

“Well, so long, Paul,” said the bridge-builder.

“Good-by,” said Carhart.

It rested with these two lean men whether an S. & W. train should
enter Red Hills before October. They both felt it, standing there at
the track-end, their backs to civilization, their faces to the desert.

“All right, sir.” Flint got into his saddle. “_All_ right, sir.” He
turned toward the waiting wagon train. “Start along, boys!” he shouted
in his thin voice.

Haddon galloped ahead with the order. The drivers took up their reins,
and settled themselves for the long journey. Like Carhart’s men, they
were a mixed lot--Mexicans, half-breeds, native Americans of a
curiously military stamp, and nondescripts--but good-natured enough;
and Flint, believing with Carhart in the value of good cooks, meant to
keep them good-natured. One by one the whips cracked; a confusion of
English, Spanish, and French cries went up; the mules plunged; the
heavy wagons, laden with derricks, timber, tools, camp supplies, and
the inevitable pile-driver, groaned forward; and the La Paz Bridge
outfit was off.

There was about the scene a sense of enterprise, of buoyant freedom,
of deeds to be done. Flint felt it, as he rode at the head of his
motley cavalcade; for he was an imaginative man. Young Van, standing
by the headquarters tent, felt it, for he was young. Tiffany, still at
breakfast, felt it so strongly that he swore most unreasoningly at the
cook. Down on the job, the humblest stake man stood motionless until
Old Van, who showed no signs of feeling anything, asked him if he
hadn’t had about enough of a sy-esta. As for Carhart, he was stirred,
but his fancy did not roam far afield. From now on those things which
would have it in their power to give him the deepest pleasure were the
sight of gang after gang lifting cross-ties, carrying them to the
grade, and dropping them into place; the sight of that growing line of
stubby yellow timbers, and the sound of the rails clanking down upon
them and of the rapid-fire sledges driving home the spikes.

       *       *       *       *       *

Young Van poked his head in through the flaps.

“Well?” said the chief, looking up.

“Won’t you come down, Mr. Carhart? The boys want you to drive the
first spike.”

Carhart smiled, then pushed back his chair, and strode out and down
the slope to the grade.

“Stand back there, boys!” cried somebody.

Carhart caught up a sledge, swung it easily over his shoulder, and
brought it down with a swing.

“There,” he cried, entering into the spirit of the thing, “there,
boys! That means Red Hills or bust.”

The cheer that followed was led by the instrument man. Then Carhart,
still smiling, walked back to his office. Now the work was begun.

But Old Van, the division engineer, was scowling. He wished the chief
would quit stirring up these skylarking notions--on _his_ division,
anyway. It took just that much longer to take it out of the men--break
them so you could drive them better.




CHAPTER IV

JACK FLAGG SEES STARS


It was a month later, on a Tuesday night, and the engineers were
sitting about the table in the office tent. Scribner, the last to
arrive, had ridden in after dusk from mile fourteen.

For two weeks the work had dragged. Peet, back at Sherman, had been
more liberal of excuses than of materials. It was always the mills
back in Pennsylvania, or slow business on connecting lines, or the car
famine. And it was not unnatural that the name of the superintendent
should have come to stand at the front for certain very unpopular
qualities. Carhart had faith in Tiffany, but the railroad’s chief
engineer was one man in a discordant organization. Railroad systems
are not made in a day, and the S. & W. was new, showing square
corners where all should be polished round; developing friction
between departments, and bad blood between overworked men. Thus it had
been finally brought home to Paul Carhart that in order to carry his
work through he must fight, not only time and the elements, but also
the company in whose interest he was working.

Lately the office had received a few unmistakably vigorous messages
from Carhart. Tiffany, too, had taken a hand, and had opened his mind
to the Vice-president. The Vice-president had in turn talked with
Peet, who explained that the materials were always sent forward as
rapidly as possible, and added that certain delays had arisen from the
extremely dangerous condition of Carhart’s road-bed. Meantime, not
only rails and ties, but also food and water, were running short out
there at the end of the track.

“What does he say now, Paul?” asked Old Van, after a long silence,
during which these bronzed, dusty men sat looking at the flickering
lamp or at the heaps of papers, books, and maps which covered the
table.

Carhart drew a crumpled slip of paper from his pocket and tossed it
across the table. Old Van spread it out, and read as follows:--

    MR. PAUL CARHART: Small delay due to shortage of equipment.
    Supply train started this morning, however. Regret
    inconvenience, as by order of Vice-president every effort is
    being made to supply you regularly.

    L. W. PEET,
    _Division Superintendent_.

“Interesting, isn’t it!” said Carhart. “You notice he doesn’t say how
long the train has been on the way. It may not get here for thirty-six
hours yet.”

“Suppose it doesn’t,” put in Scribner, “what are we going to do with
the men?”

“Keep them all grading,” said Carhart.

“But--”

“Well, what is it? This is a council of war--speak out.”

“Just this. Scraping and digging is thirsty work in this sun, and we
haven’t water enough for another half day.”

“Young Van is due with water.”

“Yes, he is due, Mr. Carhart, but you told him not to come back
without it, and he won’t.”

“Listen!” Outside, in the night, voices sounded, and the creaking of
wagons.

“Here he is now,” said Carhart.

Into the dim light before the open tent stepped a gray figure. His
face was thin and drawn; his hair, of the same dust color as his
clothing, straggled down over his forehead below his broad hat. He
nodded at the waiting group, threw off his hat, unslung his army
canteen, and sank down exhausted on the first cot.

Old Van, himself seasoned timber and unable to recognize the
limitations of the human frame, spoke impatiently, “Well, Gus, how
much did you get?”

“Fourteen barrels.”

“Fourteen barrels!” The other men exchanged glances.

“Why--why--” sputtered the elder brother, “that’s not enough for the
engines!”

“It’s all we can get.”

“Why didn’t you look farther?”

“You’d better look at the mules,” Young Van replied simply enough. “I
had to drive them”--he fumbled at his watch--“an even eighteen hours
to get back to-night.” And he added in a whimsical manner that was
strange to him, “I paid two dollars a barrel, too.”

Carhart was watching him closely. “Did you have any trouble with your
men, Gus?” he asked.

Young Van nodded. “A little.”

After a moment, during which his eyes were closed and his muscles
relaxed, he gathered his faculties, lighted a cigarette, and rose.

“Hold on, Gus,” said Carhart. “What are you going to do?”

“Bring the barrels up by our tent here. It isn’t safe to leave them on
the wagons. The men--some of them--aren’t standing it well. Some are
‘most crazy.” He interrupted himself with a short laugh. “Hanged if I
blame them!”

“You’d better go to bed, Gus,” said the chief. “I’ll look after the
water.”

But Young Van broke away from the restraining hand and went out.

Half a hundred laborers were grouped around the water wagons in
oppressive silence. Vandervelt hardly gave them a glance.

“Dimond,” he called, “where are you?”

A man came sullenly out of the shadows.

“Take a hand here--roll these barrels in by Mr. Carhart’s tent.” A
murmur spread through the group. More men were crowding up behind. But
the engineer gave his orders incisively, in a voice that offered no
encouragement to insubordination. “You two, there, go over to
the train and fetch some skids. I want a dozen men to help
Dimond--you--you--” Rapidly he told them off. “The rest of you get
away from here--quick.”

“What you goin’ to do with that water?” The voice rose from the thick
of the crowd. It drew neither explanation nor reproof from Young Van;
but his manner, as he turned his back and, pausing only to light
another cigarette, went rapidly to work, discouraged the laborers, and
in groups of two and three they drifted off to their quarters.

The men worked rapidly, for Mr. Carhart’s assistant had a way of
taking hold himself, lending a hand here or a shoulder there, and
giving low, sharp orders which the stupidest men understood. As they
rolled the barrels along the sides of the tent and stood them on end
between the guy ropes Paul Carhart stood by, a rolled-up map in his
hand, and watched his assistant. He took it all in--the cowed, angry
silence of the men, the unfailing authority of the young engineer. No
one felt the situation more keenly than Carhart, but he had set his
worries aside for the moment to observe the methods of the younger
man. Once he caught himself nodding with approval. And then, when he
was about to turn away and resume his study at the table beneath the
lantern, an odd scene took place. The work was done. Vandervelt stood
wiping his forehead with a handkerchief which had darkened from white
to rich gray. The laborers had gone; but Dimond remained.

“That’s all, Dimond,” said Vandervelt.

But the man lingered.

“Well, what do you want?”

“It’s about this water. The boys want to know if they ain’t to have a
drink.”

“No; no more to-night,” replied Young Van.

“But--but--” Dimond hesitated.

“Wait a minute,” said Van abruptly. He entered the tent, found his
canteen where he had dropped it, brought it out, and handed it to
Dimond.

“This is my canteen. It’s all I have a right to give anybody. Now,
shut up and get out.”

Dimond hesitated, then swung the canteen over his shoulder and
disappeared without a word.

“Gus,” said Paul Carhart, quietly.

“Oh! I didn’t see you there.”

“Wasn’t that something of a gallery play?”

“No, I don’t think it was. It will show them that we are dealing
squarely with them. I had a deuce of a time on the ride, and Dimond
really tried, I think, to keep the men within bounds. They are
children, you know,--children with whiskey throats added,--and they
can’t stand it as we can.”

“Gus,” said the chief, taking the boy’s arm and drawing him toward the
tent, “it’s time you got to sleep. I shall need you to-morrow.”

The other engineers were still sitting about the table, talking in low
tones. Carhart rejoined them. Young Van dropped on a cot in the rear
and fell asleep with his boots on.

“Old Van is telling how the pay-slips came in to-day,” said Scribner.

Carhart nodded. “Go ahead.” He had found the laborers, headed by the
Mexicans, so impossibly deliberate in their work that he had
planned out a system of paying by the piece. When the locomotive
whistle blew at night, each man was handed a slip stating the amount
due him. At the end of the week the slips were to be cashed, and
to-day the first payment had been made. “Go ahead,” he repeated. “How
much did it cost us?”

[Illustration: “‘It’s all I have a right to give anybody.’”]

“About seventy-five dollars more than last week,” replied Old Van. “So
that, on the whole, we got a little more work out of them. But here’s
what happened. When the whistle blew and I got out my satchel, nobody
came. I called to a couple of them to hurry up if they wanted their
pay, but they shook their heads. Finally, just two men came up and
handed in all the slips.”

“Two men!” exclaimed Carhart.

“Yes. One was the cook, Jack Flagg. He had fully two-thirds of the
slips. The other was his assistant, the one they call Charlie. He had
the rest. I called some of the laborers up and asked what it meant,
but they said it was all right that way.”

“So you gave them the whole pay-roll?”

“Every cent.”

Carhart frowned. “That won’t do,” he said. “A man who can clean out
the camp in less than a week will breed more trouble than a water
famine.”

There was little more to be said, and soon the council came to a
close. Scribner went promptly to sleep. Young Van awoke, and with a
mumbled “good night” staggered across after Scribner, to his sleeping
tent. And then, for an hour, Paul Carhart sat alone, his elbows on the
table, a profile of the line spread out before him. Outside, in the
night, something stirred. He extinguished his lamp and listened.
Cautious steps were approaching behind the cluster of tents. A moment
more and he heard a man stumble over a peg and swear aloud.

Carhart stepped out at the rear of the tent and stood waiting. Four or
five shadowy figures slipped into view, caught sight of him, and
paused. While they stood huddled together he made out a pair of broad
shoulders towering above the group. There was only one such pair in
the camp, and they belonged to the cook, Jack Flagg.

The silence lasted only a moment. Then, without speaking, the men
broke and ran back into the darkness.

Carhart waited until the camp was silent, then he too, went in and to
sleep.

But Young Van, dozing lightly and restlessly, was awakened by the
noise behind the tents. For a few moments he lay still, then he got up
and looked out. Down the knoll he could see a dim light, and after a
little he made it out as coming from the mess tent of the laborers.
Now and then a low murmur of voices floated up through the desert
stillness.

Young Van folded up the legs of his cot, carried it out, laid it
across two of the water barrels, and went to sleep there in the open
air.

An hour later the mess tent was still lighted. Within, seated on
blocks of timber around a cracker-box, four men were playing poker;
and pressing about them was a score of laborers--all, in fact, who
could crowd into the tent. The air was foul with cheap tobacco and
with the hundred odors that cling to working clothes. The eyes of the
twenty or more men were fixed feverishly on the greasy cards, and on
the heaps of the day’s pay-slips. By a simple process of elimination
the ownership of these slips had been narrowed down to the present
players--Jack Flagg, his assistant Charlie, Dimond, and a Mexican. The
silence carried a sense of strain. The occasional coarse jokes and
boisterous laughter died down with strange suddenness.

“It’s no use,” said Flagg, finally, tossing the cards on the box;
“they’re against us.”

The Mexican rose at this, and sullenly left the tent. Dimond, with a
conscious laugh, gathered in two-thirds of the slips and pocketed
them. It was an achievement to clean out Jack Flagg. The remaining
third went to Charlie.

Flagg leaned back, clasped his great knotted hands about one knee, and
looked across at Dimond. Six feet and a third tall in his socks, hard
as steel rails, he could have lifted any two of the laborers about him
clear of the ground, one in each hand. The lower part of his face was
half covered with his long, ill-kept mustache and the tuft of hair
beneath his under lip. The blue shirt he wore had unmistakably come
from a military source, but not a man there, not even Charlie--himself
nearly a match for his chief in height and breadth--would have dared
ask when he had been in the army, nor why or how he had come to leave
it.

“Dimond,” said Flagg, “let me have one of those slips a minute.”

The nervous light left Dimond’s eyes. He threw a suspicious glance
across the box; then, after a moment, he complied.

Flagg held the slip near the lantern and examined it.

“Eighty cents,” he muttered, “eighty cents--and for how much work?”

“Half a day,” a laborer replied.

“Half a day’s work, and the poor devil gets eighty cents for it!”

“He gets eighty cents! He gets nothing, you’d better say. Dimond,
there, is the man that gets it.”

“That’s no matter. He lost it in fair play. But look at it--look at
it!” The giant cook contemptuously turned the slip over in his hand.
“That devil hounds you like niggers for five hours in the hot sun--he
drives you near crazy with thirst--and then he hands you out this
pretty piece of paper with ‘eighty cents’ wrote on it.”

“That’s a dollar-sixty a day. We was only getting one-fifty the old
way--on time.”

“You was only getting one-fifty, was you?” There was infinite scorn in
Flagg’s voice; his masterly eye swept the group. “You was getting
one-fifty, and now you’re thankful to get ten cents more. Do you know
what you are? You’re a pack of fools--that’s what you are!”

[Illustration: “‘Eighty cents,’ he muttered, ‘and for how much
work?’”]

“But look here, Jack, what can we do?”

“What can you do?” Flagg paused, glanced at his vis-à-vis. From the
expression of dawning intelligence on Dimond’s face it was plain that
he was waking to the suggestion. The slips that he had won to-night
were worth four hundred dollars to Dimond. Why should not these same
bits of paper fetch five hundred or six hundred?

“What can you do?” Flagg repeated. “Oh, but you boys make me weary. It
ain’t any of my business. I ain’t a laborer, and what I do gets well
paid for. But when I look around at you poor fools, I can’t sit still
here and let you go on like this. You ask me what you can do? Well,
now, suppose we think it over a little. Here you are, four hundred of
you. This man Carhart offers you one-fifty a day to come out here into
the desert and dig your own graves. Why did he set that price on your
lives? Because he knew you for the fools you are. Do you think for a
minute he could get laborers up there in Chicago, where he comes from,
for one-fifty? Not a bit of it! Do you think he could get men in
Pennsylvania, in New York State, for one-fifty? Not a bit of it! If he
was building this line in New York State, he’d be paying you two
dollars, two-fifty, maybe three. And he’d be glad to get you at the
price. And he’d meet your representative like a gentleman, and step
around lively and walk Spanish for you, if you so much as winked.”

Dimond’s eyes were flashing with excitement, though he kept them
lowered to the cards. His face was flushed. Flagg saw that the seed he
had planted was growing, and he swept on, working up the situation
with considerable art.

“Think it over, boys, think it over. This man Carhart finds he can’t
drive you fast enough at one-fifty, so what does he do? He gets up his
pay-slip scheme so’s you will kill yourselves for the chance of making
ten cents more. And you stand around and let him do it--never a peep
from you! Now, what’s the situation? Here’s this man, five hundred
miles from nowhere; he’s got to rush the job. We know that, don’t we?”

“Yes,” muttered Dimond, with a quick breath, “we know that, all
right.”

“Well, now, what about it?” Flagg looked deliberately about the eager
group. “What about it? There’s the situation. Here he is, and here you
are. He’s in a hurry. If he was to find out, all of a sudden, that he
couldn’t drive you poor devils any farther; if he was to find out that
you had just laid down and said you wouldn’t do another stroke of work
on these terms, what about it? What could he do?” Flagg paused again,
to let the suggestion find its mark.

“But he ain’t worrying any. He knows you for the low-spirited lot you
are. So what does he do? He sends out a bunch of you and makes you
ride three days to get water, and then he stacks the barrels around
his tent, where he and his gang can get all they want, and tells you
to go off and suck your thumbs. Much he cares about you.”

Dimond raised his eyes. “Talk plain, Jack,” he said in a low voice.
“What is it? What’s the game?”

Flagg gave him a pitying glance. “You’re still asking what’s the
game,” he replied, and went on half absently, “Let’s see. How much is
he paying the iron squad--how much was that, now?”

“Two dollars,” cried a voice.

“Two dollars--yes, that was it; that was it. He is paying them two
dollars a day, and he has set them to digging and grading along with
you boys that only gets one-sixty. I happened to notice that to-day,
when I was a-walking up that way. Those iron-squad boys was out with
picks and shovels, a-doing the same work as the rest of you, only they
was doing it for forty cents more. They ain’t common laborers, you
see. There’s a difference. You couldn’t expect them to swing a pick
for one-sixty a day. It would be beneath ’em. They’re sort o’ swells,
you see--”

He paused. There was a long silence.

“Boys,”--it was Dimond speaking,--“boys, Jack Flagg is right. If it
costs Carhart two per for the iron squad, it’s got to cost him the
same for us!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Carhart was turning the delay to some account by shutting himself up
with his maps and plans and reports and figures. At ten o’clock on the
following morning he heard a step without the tent, and, looking up,
saw Young Vandervelt before him.

“There’s trouble up ahead, Mr. Carhart.”

“What is it?”

“The laborers have quit. They demand an increase of ten per cent in
their pay.”

“All right, let them have it.”

“I’ll tell my brother. He said no, we shouldn’t give in an inch.”

“You tell him I say to let them have what they ask.”

Young Van hurried back with the order. Carhart quietly resumed the
problems before him.

Old Van, when he received the chief’s message, swore roundly.

“What’s Paul thinking of!” he growled. “He ought to know that this is
only the tip of the wedge. They’ll come up another ten per cent before
the week’s out.”

But Old Van failed to do justice to the promptness of Jack Flagg. At
three in the afternoon the demand came; and for the second time that
day the scrapers lay idle, and the mules wagged their ears in lazy
comfort.

“Well!” cried Old Van, sharply. “Well! It’s what I told you, isn’t it!
Now, I suppose you still believe in running to Paul with the story.”

“Yes,” replied the younger brother, firmly, “of course. He’s the
boss.”

“All right, sir! All right, sir!” The veteran engineer turned away in
disgust as his brother started rapidly back to the camp. The
laborers, meanwhile, covered with sweat and dust, tantalized by the
infrequent sips of water doled out to them, lay panting in a long,
irregular line on the newly turned earth.

“Well, Gus,” said Carhart, with a wry smile, at sight of the dusty
figure before the tent, “are they at it again?”

“They certainly are.”

“They don’t mean to lose any time, do they? How much is it now?”

“Ten per cent more. What shall we do?”

“Give it to them.”

“All right.”

“Wait a minute, Gus. Who’s their spokesman?

“Dimond.”

“Dimond?” Carhart frowned. “Nobody else?”

“No; but the cook has been hanging around a good deal and talking with
him.”

“Oh--I see. Well, that’s all. Go ahead; give them what they ask.”

Again the mules were driven at the work. Again--and throughout the
day--the sullen men toiled on under the keen eye of Old Vandervelt. If
he had been a driver before, he was a czar now. If he could not
control the rate of pay, he could at least control the rate of work.
To himself, to the younger engineers, to the men, to the mules, he was
merciless. And foot by foot, rod by rod, the embankment that was to
bear the track crept on into the desert. The sun beat down; the wind,
when there was a wind, was scorching hot; but Old Van gave no heed.
Now and again he glanced back to where the material train lay silent
and useless, hoping against hope that far in the distance he might see
the smoke of that other train from Sherman. Peet had said, yesterday,
that it was on the way; and Old Van muttered, over and over, “D--n
Peet!”

Night came finally, but not the train. Aching in body, ugly in spirit,
the laborers crept under their blankets. Morning came, but no train.
Carhart spent an hour on the grade, and saw with some satisfaction
that the time was not wholly lost; then he went back to the operator’s
tent and opened communications with Sherman. Sherman expressed
surprise that the train had not arrived; it had been long on the way,
said the despatcher.

At this message, repeated to him by the operator, word for word,
Carhart stood thoughtful. Then, “Shut off the despatcher. Wait--tell
him Mr. Carhart is much obliged. Shut him off. Now call Paradise. Say
to him--can’t you get him?”

“Yes--all right now.”

“Say--‘When did the supply train pass you on Tuesday?’--got that?”

“Yes--one minute. ‘When--did supply--train pass--you--Tuesday?’”

“Now what does he say?”

“‘Supply--train’--he says--‘passed--here
Wednesday--two--P.M.--west-bound.’ There, you see, it didn’t leave on
Tuesday at all. It’s only a few hours to Paradise from Sherman.”

Carhart had Peet’s message still crumpled in his pocket. He
straightened it out and read it again. “All right,” he said to the
operator, “that will do.” And as he walked slowly and thoughtfully out
into the blazing sunlight he added to himself: “So, Mr. Peet, that’s
the sort you are, is it? I think we begin to understand each other.”

“Paul!” It was the gruff voice of Old Vandervelt, low and charged with
anger.

“Yes--what?”

“What is it you mean to do with these laborers?”

“Build the line.”

“Well, I’ve done what I could. They’ve walked out again.”

“Another ten per cent?”

“Another ten per cent.”

“Let’s see--we’ve raised them twenty per cent since yesterday morning,
haven’t we?”

“You have--yes.”

“And that ought to be about enough, don’t you think?”

“If you want my opinion,--yes.”

“Now look here, Van. You go back and bring them all up here by the
train. Tell them Mr. Carhart wants to talk to them.”

Vandervelt stared at his chief in downright bewilderment. Then he
turned to obey the order; and as he walked away Carhart caught the
muttered words, “Organize a debating society, eh? Well, that’s the one
fool thing left to do!”

But the men did not take it in just this way; in fact, they did not
know how to take it. They hesitated, and looked about for counsel.
Even Dimond was disturbed. The boss had a quiet, highly effective way
of saying and doing precisely what he meant to say and do. Dimond was
not certain of his own ability to stand directly between the men and
Paul Carhart. There was something about the cool way in which they
were ordered before him that was--well, businesslike. He turned and
glanced at Flagg. The cook scowled and motioned him forward, and so
the dirty, thirsty regiment moved uncertainly back toward the train,
and formed a wide semicircle before the boss.

Carhart had taken his position by a pile of odds and ends of lumber
that lay beside the track. He awaited them quietly, the only man among
the hundreds there who appeared unconscious of the excitement in the
air. The elder Vandervelt stood apart, scowling at the performance.
The younger scented danger, and, climbing up on the train, walked back
over the empty flat-cars to a position directly behind his chief.
There he sat down, his legs swinging over the side of the car.

Carhart reached up for his spectacles, deliberately breathed on them,
wiped them, and replaced them. Then he gave the regiment a slow,
inquiring look.

“Have you men authorized somebody to speak for you?” he said in a
voice which, though it was not loud, was heard distinctly by every man
there.

There was a moment’s hesitation; then the laborers, or those who were
not studying the ground, looked at Dimond.

The telegraph operator stepped out of his little tent, and stood
looking at the scene with startled eyes. Up ahead, the iron squad,
uncertain whether to continue their work, had paused, and now they
were gazing back. As the seconds slipped away their exclamations of
astonishment died out. All eyes were fixed on the group in the centre
of the semicircle.

For at this critical moment, there was, it seemed, a hitch. Dimond’s
broad hat was pulled down until it half concealed his eyes. He stood
motionless. At his elbow was Jack Flagg, muttering orders that the
nominal leader did not seem to hear.

“Flagg, step out here!”

It was Carhart speaking, in the same quiet, distinct manner. The sound
of his voice broke the tension. The men all looked up, even the
nerveless Dimond. To Young Van they were oddly like a room full of
schoolboys as they stood silently waiting for Flagg to obey. The
giant cook himself was very like a schoolboy, as he glanced uneasily
around, caught no sign of fight in the obedient eyes about him, sought
counsel in the ground, the sky, the engines standing on the track,
then finally slouched forward.

Young Van caught himself on the verge of laughing out. He saw Flagg
advance a way and pause. Carhart waited. Flagg took a few more steps,
then paused again, with the look of a man who feels that he has been
bullied into a false position, yet cannot hit upon the way out.

“Well,” he said, glowering down on the figure of the engineer in
charge--and very thin and short Carhart looked before him--“well, what
do you want of me?”

For reply Carhart coolly looked him over. Then he snatched up a piece
of scantling, whirled it once around his head, and caught Jack Flagg
squarely on his deep, well-muscled chest. The cook staggered back,
swung his arms wildly to recover his balance, failed, and fell flat,
striking on the back of his head.

But he was up in an instant, and he started forward, swearing
copiously and reaching for his hip pocket.

Young Van saw the motion. He knew that Paul Carhart seldom carried a
weapon, and he felt that the safety of them all lay with himself.
Accordingly he leaped to the ground, ran to the side of his chief,
whipped out a revolver, and levelled it at Jack Flagg.

“Hands up!” he cried. “Hands up!”

“Gus,” cried Carhart, in a disgusted voice, “put that thing up!”

Young Van, crestfallen, hesitated; then dropped his arm.

“Now, Flagg,” said the chief, tossing the scantling to one side, “you
clear out. You’d better do it fast, or the men’ll finish where I left
off.”

The cook glanced behind him, and his eyes flitted about the semicircle
from face to face. He was keen enough to take in the situation, and
in a moment he had ducked under the couplers between two cars and
disappeared.

“Well,” exclaimed Young Van, pocketing his revolver, “it didn’t take
you long to wind that up, Mr. Carhart.”

“To wind it up?” Carhart repeated, turning with a queer expression
toward his young assistant. “To begin it, you’d better say.” Then he
composed his features and faced the laborers. “Get back to your work,”
he said.




CHAPTER V

WHAT THEY FOUND AT THE WATER-HOLE


Half an hour later Scribner, who was frequently back on the first
division during these dragging days, was informed that Mr. Carhart
wished to see him at once. Walking back to the engineers’ tent he
found the chief at his table.

“You wanted me, Mr. Carhart?”

“Oh,”--the chief looked up--“Yes, Harry, we’ve got to get away from
this absolute dependence on that man Peet. I want you to ride up ahead
and bore for water. You can probably start inside of an hour. I’m
putting it in your hands. Take what men, tools, and wagons you
need--but find water.”

With a brief “All right, Mr. Carhart,” Scribner left the tent and set
about the necessary arrangements. Carhart, this matter disposed of,
called a passing laborer, and asked him to tell Charlie that he was
wanted at headquarters.

The assistant cook--huge, raw-boned, with a good-natured and not
unintelligent face--lounged before the tent for some moments before he
was observed. Then, in the crisp way he had with the men, Carhart told
him to step in.

“Well,” began the boss, looking him over, “what kind of a cook are
you?”

A slow blush spread over the broad features.

“Speak up. What were you doing when I sent for you?”

“I--I--you see, sir, Jack Flagg was gone, and there wasn’t anything
being done about dinner, and I--”

“And you took charge of things, eh?”

“Well--sort of, sir. You see--”

“That’s the way to do business. Go back and stick at it. Wait a
minute, though. Has Flagg been hanging around any?”

[Illustration: “‘Well,’ began the boss, looking him over, ‘what kind
of a cook are you?’”]

“I guess he has. All his things was took off, and some of mine.”

“Take any money?”

“All I had.”

“I’m not surprised. Money was what he was here for. He would have
cleaned you out, anyway, before long.”

“I’m not so sure of that, sir. We cleaned him out last time.”

“And you weren’t smart enough to see into that?”

“Well--no, I--”

“Take my advice and quit gambling. It isn’t what you were built for.
What did you say your name was?”

“Charlie.”

“Well, Charlie, you go back and get up your dinner. See that it is a
good one.”

Charlie backed out of the tent and returned to his kettles and pans
and his boy assistants. He was won, completely.

Late on Thursday evening that mythical train really rolled in, and
half the night was spent in preparations for the next day. Friday
morning tracklaying began again. In the afternoon a second train
arrived, and the air of movement and accomplishment became as keen as
on the first day of the work. Paul Carhart, in a flannel shirt, which,
whatever color it may once have been, was now as near green as
anything, a wide straw hat, airy yellow linen trousers, and laced
boots, appeared and reappeared on both divisions--alert, good-natured,
radiating health and energy. The sun blazed endlessly down, but what
laborer could complain with the example of the boss before him! The
mules toiled and plunged, and balked and sulked, and toiled again, as
mules will. The drivers--boys, for the most part--carried pails of
water on their wagons, and from time to time wet the sponges which
many of the men wore in their hats. And over the grunts and heaves of
the tie squad, over the rattling and groaning of the wagon, over the
exhausts of the locomotives, sounded the ringing clang of steel, as
the rails were shifted from flat-car to truck, from truck to ties. It
was music to Carhart,--deep, significant, nineteenth-century music.
The line was creeping on again--on, on through the desert.

“What do you think of this!” had been Young Van’s exclamation when the
second train appeared.

“It’s too good to be true,” was the reply of his grizzled brother.

Old Vandervelt was right: it was too good to be true. Soon the days
were getting away from them again; provisions and water were running
short, and Peet was sending on the most skilful lot of excuses he had
yet offered. For the second time the tracklaying had to stop; and
Carhart, slipping a revolver into his holster, rode forward alone to
find Scribner.

He found him in a patch of sage-brush not far from a hill. The heat
was blistering, the ground baked to a powder. There had been no rain
for five months. Scribner, stripped to undershirt and trousers, was
standing over his men.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Carhart!” he cried. “You are just in time. I
think I’ve struck it.”

“That’s good news,” the chief replied, dismounting.

They stepped aside while Scribner gave an account of himself. “I first
drove a small bore down about three hundred feet, and got this.” He
produced a tin pail from his tent, which contained a dark, odorous
liquid. Carhart sniffed, and said:--

“Sulphur water, eh!”

“Yes, and very bad. It wouldn’t do at all. But before moving on, I
thought I’d better look around a little. That hill over there is
sandstone, and a superficial examination led me to think that the
sandstone dips under this spot.”

“That might mean a very fair quality of water.”

“That’s what I think. So I inserted a larger casing, to shut out this
sulphur water, and went on down.”

“How far?”

“A thousand feet. I’m expecting to strike it any moment now.”

“Your men seem to think they have struck something. They’re calling
you.”

The engineers returned to the well in time to see the water gushing to
the surface.

“There’s enough of it,” muttered Scribner.

The chief bent over it and shook his head. “Smell it, Harry,” he said.

Scribner threw himself on the ground and drank up a mouthful from the
stream. But he promptly spit it out.

“It’s worse than the other!” he cried.

They were silent a moment. Then Carhart said, “Well--keep at it,
Harry. I may look you up again after a little.”

He walked over to his horse, mounted, nodded a good-by, and cantered
back toward the camp. Scribner watched him ride off, then soberly
turned and prepared to pack up and move on westward. He was thinking,
as he gave the necessary orders, how much this little visit meant. The
chief would have come only with matters at a bad pass.

       *       *       *       *       *

Over a range of low waste hills, through a village of
prairie-dogs,--and he fired humorously at them with his revolver as
they sat on their mounds, and chuckled when they popped down out of
sight,--across a plain studded from horizon to horizon with the
bleached bones and skulls of thousands of buffaloes, past the camp and
the grade where the men of the first division were at work, Paul
Carhart rode, until, finally, the main camp and the trains and wagons
came into view.

It was supper-time. The red, spent sun hung low in the west; the
parched earth was awaiting the night breeze. Cantering easily on,
Carhart soon reached the grade, and turned in toward the tents. The
endless quiet of the desert gave place to an odd, tense quiet in the
camp. The groups of laborers, standing or lying motionless, ceasing
their low, excited talk as he passed; the lowered eyes, the circle of
Mexicans standing about the mules, the want of the relaxation and
animal good-nature that should follow the night whistle: these signs
were plain as print to his eyes and his senses.

He dismounted, walked rapidly to the headquarters tent, and found the
two Vandervelts in anxious conversation. He had never observed so
sharply the contrast between the brothers. The younger was smooth
shaven, slender, with brown hair, and frank blue eyes that were dreamy
at times; he would have looked the poet were it not for a square
forehead, a straight, incisive mouth, and a chin as uncompromising as
the forehead. There was in his face the promise of great capacity for
work, dominated by a sympathetic imagination. The face of his brother
was another story; some of the stronger qualities were there, but they
were not tempered with the gentler. His stocky frame, his strong neck,
the deep lines about his mouth, even the set of his cropped gray
mustache, spoke of dogged, unimaginative persistence.

Evidently they were not in agreement. Both started at the sight of
their chief--the younger brother with a frank expression of relief.

Carhart threw off his hat and gauntlet gloves, took his seat at the
table, and looked from one to the other.

The elder brother nodded curtly. “Go ahead, Gus,” he said. “Give Paul
your view of it.”

Thus granted the floor, Young Van briefly laid out the situation. “We
put your orders into effect this morning, Mr. Carhart, and shortened
the allowance of drinking water. In an hour the men began to get
surly--just as they did the other time. But we kept them under until
an hour or so ago. Then the sheriff of Clark County--a man named Lane,
Bow-legged Bill Lane,”--Young Van smiled slightly as he pronounced the
name,--“rode in with a large posse. It seems he is on the trail of a
gang of thieves, greasers, army deserters, and renegades generally. He
had one brush with them some miles below here,--I think I had better
tell you about this before I go on,--but they broke up into small
parties and got away from him. He had some reason to think that they
would work up this way, and try to stampede our horses and mules some
night. He advises arming our men, and keeping up more of a guard at
night. Another thing; he says that a good many Apaches are hanging
around us,--he has seen signs of them over there in the hills,--and
while they would never bother such a large party as this of ours,
Bow-legged Bill”--he smiled again--“thinks it would be best to arm any
small parties we may send out. If the Indians thought Harry Scribner,
for instance, had anything worth stealing they might give him some
trouble.”

“Send half-a-dozen wagons forward to him to-morrow, under Dimond,”
said Carhart, briefly. “See that they carry rifles and cartridges
enough for Scribner’s whole party. And wire Tiffany to send on three
hundred more rifles.”

“All right; I will attend to it. I told the sheriff we came down here
as peaceful railroad builders, not as border fighters; but he said
what we came for hasn’t much to do with it,--I couldn’t repeat his
language if I tried,--it’s how we’re going back that counts; whether
it’s to be on a ‘red plush seat, or up in the baggage car on ice.’ But
so much for that. It seems that his men, mixing in with ours, found
out that we are short of water. They promptly said that there is a
first-rate pool, with all the water we could use, only about
thirty-five miles southwest of here.” He was coming now, having
purposely brought up the minor matters first, to the real business.
Carhart heard him out. “It didn’t take long to see that something was
the matter with the men. Before the posse rode off the sheriff spoke
to me about it, and offered to let us have a man to guide us to the
pool if we wanted him. I am in favor of accepting. The men are
trembling on the edge of an outbreak. If there was a Jack Flagg here
to organize them, they would have taken the mules and started before
you got back; and if they once got started, I’m not sure that even
shooting would stop them. They are beyond all reason. It’s nothing but
luck that has kept them quiet up to now,--nobody has happened to say
the word that would set them off. I think we ought to reassure
them,--tell the sheriff we’ll take the guide, and let the men know
that a wagon train will start the first thing in the morning.”

“That’s it! That’s it!” Old Van broke out angrily. “Always give in to
those d--n rascals! There’s just one thing to do, I tell you. Order
them to their quarters and stand a guard over them from the iron
squad.”

“But you forget,” Young Van replied hotly, “that they are not to
blame.”

“Not to blame! What the--!”

“Wait a minute!--They are actually suffering now. We are not dealing
with malicious men--they are not even on strike for more pay. We’re on
the edge of a panic, that’s what’s the matter. And the question is,
What is the best way to control that panic?”

“Wait, boys,” said Carhart. “Gus is right. This trouble has its roots
away down in human nature. If water is to be had, those men have a
right to it. If we should put them under guard, and they should go
crazy and make a break for it, what then? What if they call our bluff?
We must either let them go--or shoot.”

“Then I say shoot,” cried Old Vandervelt.

“No, Van,” Carhart replied, “you’re wrong. As Gus says, we are
uncomfortably close to a panic. Well, let them have their panic. Put
them on the wagons and let them run off their heat. Organize this
panic with ourselves at the head of it.” His voice took on a crisper
quality. “Van, you stay here in charge of the camp. Pick out a dozen
of the iron squad, give them rifles, and keep three at a time on extra
watch all night.”

“Hold on,” said the veteran, bewildered, “when are you going to start
on this--?”

“Now.”

“Now? To-night?”

“To-night. Gus, you find your sheriff. He can’t be far off.”

“No; half a mile down the line.”

“You find him, explain the situation, and tell him we want that man in
half an hour.”

The conference broke up sharply. Gus Vandervelt hurried out, saddled
his horse, and rode off into the thickening dusk. Old Van went to
select his guards. Carhart saw them go; then, pausing to note with
satisfaction the prospect of only moderate darkness, he set about
organizing his force. All the empty casks and barrels were loaded on
wagons. Mules were hitched four and six in hand. Water, beyond a
canteen for each man, could not be spared; but Charlie packed
provisions enough--so he thought--for twenty-four hours.

The tremulous, brilliant afterglow faded away. The stars peeped out,
one by one, and twinkled faintly. The dead plain--alive only with
scorpions, horned frogs, tarantulas, striped lizards, centipedes, and
the stunted sage-brush--stretched silently away to the dim mountains
on the horizon. The bleaching bones--ghostly white out there in the
sand--began to slip off into the distance and the dark. All about was
rest, patience, eternity. Here in camp were feverish laborers with
shattered nerves; men who started at the swish of a mule’s tail--and
swore, no matter what their native tongue, in English, that famous
vehicle for profane thoughts. The mules, full of life after their
enforced rest, took advantage of the dark and confusion to tangle
their harness wofully. Leaders swung around and mingled fraternally
with wheelers, whereupon boy drivers swore horrible oaths in voices
that wavered between treble and bass. Lanterns waved and bobbed about.
Men shouted aimlessly.

Suddenly the babel quieted--the laborers were bolting a belated
supper. Then, after a moment of confusion, three men rode out of the
circle of lanterns, put their horses at the grade, stood out for a
vivid moment in the path of light thrown by the nearest engine,--Paul
Carhart, Young Vandervelt, and the easy-riding guide,--plunged down
the farther side of the grade, and blended into the night. One after
another the long line of wagons followed after, whips cracking, mules
balking and breaking, men tugging at the spokes of the wheels. Then,
at last, they were all over; the shouts had softened into silence. And
Old Van stood alone on the grade and looked after them with eyes that
were dogged and gloomy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Paul Carhart had organized the panic; now he was resolved to “work it
out of them,” as he explained aside to Young Van. He estimated that
they should reach the pool before eight o’clock in the morning. That
would mean continuous driving, but the endurance of mules is a
wonderfully elastic thing; and as for the men, the sooner they were
tired, the less danger would there be of a panic. Accordingly, the
three leaders set off at a canter. The drivers caught the pace,
lashing out with their whips and shouting in a frenzied waste of
strength. The mules galloped angrily; the wagons rattled and bumped
and leaped the mounds, for there was not the semblance of road or
trail. Now and again a barrel was jolted off, and it lay there
unheeded by the madmen who came swaying and cursing by. Here and there
one calmer than his fellows climbed back from a seat by his driver and
kept the kegs and barrels in place.

Wonderfully they held the pace, over mile after mile of rough plain.
Then, after a time, came the hills,--low at first, but rising steadily
higher.

In the faint light the sage-brush slipped by like the ghosts of dead
vegetation. The rocks and the heaps of bones gave the wheels many a
wrench. The steady climb was telling on the mules. They hung back,
slowed to a walk all along the line, and under the whip merely plunged
or kicked. Up and up they climbed, winding through the low range by a
pass known only to the guide. One mule, a leader in a team of six,
stumbled among the rocks, fell to his knees, and was dragged and
pushed along in a tangle of harness before his fellows came to a stop.
In a moment a score of men were crowding around. Up ahead the wagons
were winding on out of sight; behind, the line was blocked.

[Illustration: “Wonderfully they held the pace.”]

“Vat you waiting for?” cried a New Orleans man, feverishly. He had
been drinking, and had lost his way among the languages. “_Laissez
passer! Laissez passer!_”

The boys were cooler than the men--not knowing so well what it all
meant. “Hi there, _Oui-Oui_, gimme a knife!” cried the youthful
driver, shrilly.

He slashed at the harness, cut the mule loose, and drove on. And one
by one the wagons circled by the struggling beast and pushed ahead to
close up the gap in the line.

Eight hours were got through. It was four in the morning. The hills
lay behind, an alkaline waste before. The mules were tugging heavily
and dejectedly through the sand. Certain of the drivers sat upright
with lined faces and ringed eyes, others lay sleeping on the seats
with the reins tied. All were subdued. The penetrating dust aggravated
their thirst.

Carhart pricked forward beside the guide.

“How much farther?” he asked.

“Well, it ain’t easy to say. We might be halfway there.”

“Halfway! Do you mean to say we’ve done only fifteen or eighteen miles
in eight hours?”

“No, I didn’t say that.”

“Look here. How far is it to this pool!”

“Well, it’s hard to say.”

Carhart frowned and gave it up. The “thirty or thirty-five miles” had
apparently been the roughest sort of an estimate.

Then the sun came up and beat upon them, and the sand began to radiate
heat by way of an earnest of the day to follow; and then the wheels
sank so deeply that the chief and Young Van tossed their reins to the
guide and walked by the wagons to lend a hand now and then at the
spokes. All the crazy energy of the evening was gone; men and mules
were alike sullen and dispirited. Of the latter, many gave out and
fell, and these were cut out and left there to die. So it went all
through that blazing forenoon. They halted at twelve for lunch; but
the dry bread and salt pork were hardly stimulating.

Carhart again sought the guide. “Do you know yourself where the pool
is?”

The guide shaded his eyes and searched the horizon. “It was in a spot
that looked something like this here,” he said in a weak, confidential
sort of way.

Carhart answered sharply, “Why don’t you say you are lost, and be done
with it!”

“Well, I ain’t lost exactly. I wouldn’t like to say that.”

“But you haven’t the least idea where the pool is.”

“Well, now, you see--”

“Is there any other water on ahead?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Where?”

“The Palos River can’t be more than a dozen miles beyond the place
where we found the pool.”

He had unconsciously raised his voice. A laborer overheard the remark,
whipped out his knife, hacked at the harness of the nearest mule,--it
would have been simpler to loosen the braces, but he was past all
thinking,--threw himself on the animal’s back, and rode off, lashing
behind him with the end of the reins. The panic broke loose again. Man
after man, the guide among them, followed after, until only the wagons
and about half the animals remained.

“Come, Gus,” called the chief, “let them go.”

Young Van turned wearily, mounted his panting horse, and the two
followed the men. But Carhart turned in his saddle to look back at the
property abandoned there in the sand.

Half an hour later, Young Van’s horse stumbled and fell, barely giving
his rider time to spring clear.

“Is he done for?” asked Carhart, reining up.

“It looks like it.”

“What’s the matter--done up yourself?”

“A little. I’ll sit here a minute. You go ahead. I’ll follow on foot.”

“Not a bit of it. Here--can you swing up behind me?”

“That won’t do. Texas can’t carry double. Go ahead; I’m all right.”

But Carhart dismounted, lifted his assistant, protesting, into the
saddle, and pushed on, himself on foot, leading the horse.

They went on in this way for nearly an hour. Young Van found it all he
could do to hold himself in the saddle. Then the horse took to
staggering, and finally came to his knees.

Carhart helped his assistant to the ground, pulled his hat brim down
to shade his eyes, and looked ahead. A cloud of dust on the horizon, a
beaten trail through the sand, here and there a gray-brown heap where
a mule had fallen,--these marked the flight of his drivers and
laborers.

His eyes came back to the fainting man at his feet. Young Van had lost
all sense of the world about him. Carhart saw that his lips were
moving, and knelt beside him. Then he smiled, a curious, unhumorous
smile; for the young engineer was muttering those words which had of
late been his brother’s favorites among all the words in our rich
language: “D--n Peet!”

The chief stood up again to think. And as he gazed off eastward in the
general direction of Sherman, toward the place where the arch enemy of
the Sherman and Western sat in his office, perhaps devising new
excuses to send to the front, those same two expressive words might
have been used to sum up his own thoughts. What could the man be
thinking of, who had brought the work practically to a stop, who was
now in the coolest imaginable fashion leaving a thousand men to mingle
their bones with the bones of the buffalo--that grim, broadcast
expression of the spirit of the desert.

[Illustration: “They went on in this way for nearly an hour.”]

But these were unsafe thoughts. His own head was none too clear. It
was reeling with heat and thirst and with the monotony of this
desolate land. He drew a flask from his pocket,--an almost empty
flask,--and placed it against Young Van’s hand. With their two hats
propped together he shaded his face. Then, a canteen slung over each
shoulder, he pushed ahead, on foot.

       *       *       *       *       *

“The Palos River can’t be more than a dozen miles--” had said the
guide, pointing southward. That was all. Somewhere off there in the
desert it lay, flowing yellow and aimless. Perhaps it was a lie.
Perhaps the guide was mistaken, as he had been in the search for the
pool. But the last feeble tie that bound these outcasts to reason had
snapped at the sight of that unsteady, pointing finger, and only the
original sin in them was left. The words of the guide had been heard
by one man, and he was off at the instant, his only remark a curse as
he knocked a boy out of his way. But others had seen the pointing
finger. And still others were moved by the impulse which spurs men, in
frantic moments, to any sort of action.

In the rush for mounts two men, a half-breed from the Territory and a
Mexican, plunged at the same animal. The half-breed was hacking at the
nigh trace and the Mexican at the off rein when their eyes met. The
mule both had chosen was the nigh leader in a double team. But instead
of turning to one of the other three, the men, each with a knife in
his hand, fell to fighting; and while they struggled and fell and
rolled over and over in the sand, a third man mounted their prize and
galloped away.

But it was the boys who suffered most. None but hardy youngsters had
been chosen for the drive, but their young endurance could not help
them in personal combat with these grown men; and personal combat was
what it came to wherever a boy stood or sat near a desirable mule. The
odd thing was that every man and boy succeeded in getting away. Hats
were lost. Shirts were torn to shreds, exposing skins, white and
brown, to the merciless sun. Even the half-breed and the Mexican,
dropping their quarrel as unreasonably as they had begun it, each
bleeding from half-a-dozen small wounds, finally galloped off after
the others. And when these last were gone, and the dust was billowing
up behind them, something less than two minutes had passed since the
guide had pointed southward.

The Palos River is probably the most uninviting stream in the
Southwest. It was at this time sluggish and shallow. The water was so
rich with silt that a pailful of it, after standing an hour, would
deposit three inches of mud. The banks were low and of the same gray
sand as the desert, excepting that a narrow fringe of green announced
the river to the eye. It was into and through this fringe that the
first rider plunged. It had been a long two-hour ride, and the line
straggled out for more than a mile behind him. But he was not
interested in his companions. His eyes were fixed on the broad yellow
river-bed with the narrow yellow current winding through it. Drinking
could not satisfy him. He wanted to get into the water, and feel his
wet clothes clinging about him, and duck his face and head under, and
splash it about with his hands. His mount needed no lash to slip and
scramble down the bank and spurt over the sand. The animal was so
crazily eager that he stumbled in the soft footing and went to his
knees. But the rider sailed on over his head, and with a great shout,
arms and legs spread wide, he fell with a splash and a gurgle into the
water. The mule regained his feet and staggered after him, and then
the two of them, man and beast, rolled and wallowed and splashed, and
drank copiously.

The second man reached the bank on foot, for his mule had fallen
within sight of the promised land. He paused there, apparently
bewildered, watching his fortunate comrade in the water. Then, with
dazed deliberation, he removed his clothes, piled them neatly under a
bush, and walked out naked, stepping gingerly on the heated sand. But
halfway to the channel a glimmer of intelligence sparkled in his eyes,
and he suddenly dashed forward and threw himself into the water.

One by one the others came crashing through the bushes, and rode or
ran down the bank, swearing, laughing, shouting, sobbing. And not one
of them could have told afterward whether he drank on the upstream or
the downstream side of the mules.

When Paul Carhart, a long while later, parted the bushes and stood out
in relief on the bank, leaning on a shrub for support, he saw a
strange spectacle. For a quarter of a mile, up and down the channel,
were mules, some drinking, some rolling and kicking some lying out
flat and motionless. Near at hand, hanging from every bush, were
shirts and trousers and stockings; at the edge of the bank was a long,
irregular line of boots and shoes. And below, on the broad reach of
sand, laughing, and bantering, and screaming like schoolboys, half a
hundred naked men stood in a row, stooping with hands on knees, while
a dozen others went dancing and high-stepping and vaulting over them.

They were playing leap-frog.

Carhart walked across to the upstream side of the mules and drank.
Then, after filling two canteens, he returned to the bank and sat down
in such small shade as he could find. It was at this moment that the
men caught sight of him. The game stopped abruptly, and for a moment
the players stood awkwardly about, as schoolboys would at the
appearance of the teacher. Then, first one, and another, and a group
of two or three more, and finally, all of them, resumed their simple
clothing, and sat down along the bank to await orders. The panic was
over.

Now the chief roused himself. “Here, you two!” he cried. “Take these
canteens and the freshest mules you can find, and go back to Mr.
Vandervelt. Ride hard.”

And almost at the word, eager, responsive, the men he had addressed
were off.

       *       *       *       *       *

As soon as the worst of the shakiness passed out of his legs, Carhart
rose. His next task was to get the mules back to the wagons, and bring
them on to the river in order to fill the barrels, and this promised a
greater expenditure of time and strength than he liked to face. But
there was no alternative, it seemed, so he caught a mule, mounted it,
and rode back. And the men trailed after him, riding and walking, in a
line half a mile long.

Carhart found Young Van sitting up, too weak to talk, supported by the
two men whom he had sent back.

“How is he?” asked the chief.

“It’s hard to say, Mr. Carhart,” replied one of the men. “He don’t
seem quite himself.”

Carhart dismounted, felt the pulse of the young man, and then bathed
his temples with the warmish water. “Carry him over into the shade of
that wagon, boys,” he said. “Here, I’ll give you a hand.”

The earth, even beneath the wagon, was warm, and Carhart and the two
laborers spread out their coats before they laid him down. The chief
poured a little water on his handkerchief, and laid it on Young Van’s
forehead.

And then, when Carhart had got to his feet and was looking about,
holding down his hat-brim to shade his eyes, an expression of inquiry,
which had come into his face some little time before, slowly deepened.

“Boys,” he said, “what’s become of the mules that were left here?”

The men looked up. “Don’t know, Mr. Carhart,” replied the more
talkative one. “I ain’t seen ’em.”

Carhart turned away, and again his eyes roved about over the beaten
ground. Very slowly and thoughtfully he began walking around the
deserted wagons in widening circles. Those of the men who were back
from the river watched him curiously. After a time he stopped and
looked at some tracks in the sand, and then, still walking slowly,
followed them off to the right. A few of the men, the more observant
ones, fell in behind him, but he did not glance around.

The foremost laborer stopped a moment and waited for the man next
behind.

“The boss is done up,” he said in a low voice.

The other man nodded. “Unsteady in the legs,” he replied. “And he’s
gone white. I see it when we was at the river.”

The tracks were distinct enough, but Carhart did not quicken his pace.
He was talking to himself, half aloud: “It’ll go on until it’s
settled,--those things have to, out here. He’s a coward, but he’ll
drink it down every day until the idea gets to running loose in his
head.”--He staggered a little, then pulled himself up short.

“What’s the matter with me, anyway!” he muttered. “This is a pretty
spectacle!” And he walked deliberately on.

The trail led him, and the quiet little file of men behind him, over
and around a low ridge and a chain of knolls. “This heat keeps a dead
rein on you,” he said, again speaking half aloud. “Let’s see, what was
I thinking,--oh, the boys at the camp, they needed water too; I was
going to load up and hurry back to help them out.”

And then, as he walked on with a solemn precision not unlike that of a
drunken man, the scene shifted, and another scene--one which had long
ago slipped out of his waking thoughts,--took its place. He was
fishing a trout stream in the Adirondacks. He had found a series of
pools in a narrow gorge where the brook came leaping merrily down from
one low ledge to another. The underbrush on the steep banks was dark
and impenetrable. The pine and hemlock and beech and maple and
chestnut trees grew thick on either hand, and so matted their branches
overhead that only a little checkered light could sift through. The
rocks were dark with moss; the stream was choked at certain points
with the debris of the last flood. He was tired after the day’s
fishing. A storm came up. It grew very black and ugly in that little
ravine. And then, for no reason, a thing happened which had not
happened in his steady mind before or since. He fell into a curious
horror, in which the tangled wilderness and the gloom and the rushing
rain and the creaking trees and the noise of the falling water and
that of the thunder all played some part. He recalled that he had
found a hollow in the bank, where a large tree had been uprooted, and
had taken shivering refuge there.

The wilderness had always before seemed man’s playground. It suddenly
became a savage living and breathing thing to which a man was
nothing.

And now the desert was showing its teeth, and Carhart knew that he was
trembling again on the brink of the horrors. He understood the sort of
thing very well. He had seen men grow crafty and cowardly or ugly and
murderous out there on the frontier. He had been in Death Valley. And
as he had seen the symptoms in other men’s faces, so he now felt them
coming into his own. He knew how a man’s sense of proportion can go
awry,--how a mere railroad, with its very important banker-officials
in top hats and its very elaborate and impressive organization, could
seem a child’s toy here in the desert where the wonderful spaces and
the unearthly atmosphere and the morning and evening colors lie very
close to the borders of another realm, and where the eye of God blazes
forever down on the just and the unjust.

None of the little devices of a sophisticated world pass current in
the desert. Carhart knew all this, as I have said, very well. He knew
that a man’s mind is searched to the bottom out here, that the morbid
tone and the yellow streak are inevitably dragged to the surface and
displayed to the gaze of all men. But he also knew that where the mind
is sound, the trouble may arise from physical exhaustion, and this
knowledge saved him. He deliberately recalled the fact that for
thirty-six hours he had not slept and that the work he had done and
the strain he had been under would have sent many men to the nearest
hospital, or, in the desert, to the nearest shallow excavation in the
ground. And he walked slowly and steadily on, in that same shaky,
determined manner.

On the summit of a knoll he stopped short, and looked down at
something on the farther side. The men came up, one by one, and joined
him; and they, too, stopped short and looked. And then Carhart raised
his eyes and watched their faces steadily, eagerly wondering if they
saw what he saw,--a water-hole, fringed with green, and a mule lying
at the water’s edge and a number of other mules quietly grazing. It
was his test of himself. For a full half minute he gazed into those
sweaty, drink-bleared faces. And then, at what he saw there, his own
tense expression gave way to one of overwhelming relief. The men ran
pell-mell down the slope, shouting with delight. And Carhart sat down
there on the knoll, and his head fell a little forward over his knees.

“Will you have a little of this, Mr. Carhart?”

A big renegade with the face of a criminal was holding out a flask.
The chief took it, and gulped down a few swallows. “Thank you,” he
said quietly.

“One of the boys found this here, down among them tin cans, Mr.
Carhart.”

It was the crumpled first page of the _Pierrepont Enterprise_. Carhart
stiffened up, spread it out on his knees, and read the date line. The
paper was only two days old.

“Where’s Pierrepont?” he asked.

“About a day’s journey down the river, sir.”

Again the chief’s eyes ran over the sheet. Suddenly they lighted up.
Here is what he saw:--

GOSSIP OF THE RAILROADS

Commodore Durfee Gets the
“Shaky & Windy”

Mr. De Reamer and Mr.
Chambers in contempt of
Court--Durfee and Carrington
directors allied at
last against De Reamer--It
is said that Durfee already
has a majority--Meeting
to be held nex
will be decid
De Rea

The rest of it was torn off, but he read these headings three times.
Then he lowered his knees, with the paper still lying across them, and
looked over it at the little group of men and mules about the
water-hole. “Can that be true, or can’t it?” he asked himself. “And
what am I going to do about it? I don’t believe it; it’s another war
of injunctions, that’s what it is, and it isn’t likely to be settled
short of the Supreme Court. We can start back in an hour or so, and as
soon as we reach camp I’ll take the five-spot”--Carhart’s two engines
happened to bear the numbers five and six--“the five-spot and the
private car and see if Bill Cunningham can’t make a record run toward
Sherman. It’s a little puzzling, but I’m inclined to think it’s a
mighty good thing that I found this paper.”

He tossed it away, and then, catching sight for the first time of the
other side, he took it up again. The second page was nearly covered
with crude designs, made with a blue pencil. There were long rows of
scallops, and others of those aimless markings a man will make when
pencil and paper are before him. And in the middle, surrounded by a
sort of decorative border, was printed out “MR. CARHART,” then a blank
space and the name “JACK FLAGG.”

Carhart rose to his feet, folded the paper, put it in his hip pocket,
and looked cheerfully around. “So, Mr. Flagg, it’s you I’m indebted to
for this information. I’m sure I’m greatly obliged.” Then he waved to
the men. “Come on, boys,” he shouted. “Bring those animals back to the
wagons. We’ll fill the barrels here.”

Slowly and not without difficulty he walked back. But the unsteadiness
in his legs no longer disturbed him. The panic was over,--and
something else was over too.




CHAPTER VI

THE ROAD TO TOTAL WRECK


“How’s my pony?” said Young Van. “You haven’t told me.”

“I shot him.”

“Not yours too? Didn’t I see you riding Texas this morning? I--I’m a
little hazy about what I have and haven’t seen these days.”

“Yes; Texas pulled through. He’s hitched on just behind us.”

The wagon train, with every barrel full, was drawing slowly toward Mr.
Carhart’s camp. Young Van and Carhart were riding on the leading
wagon, and the former was gazing off dejectedly to the horizon, where
he could see a few moving black specks and the gray-yellow line of the
grade. “I don’t know what you’ll think of me, Mr. Carhart,” he said,
after a time. “I don’t seem to be good for much when it comes to real
work.”

“Better forget about it, Gus,” the chief replied. “I’m going to. This
isn’t railroad building.”

The long line of wagons wound into camp, and Carhart made it his first
business to get his assistant undressed and comfortably settled on his
cot. It would be a day or so before the young man would be able to
resume his work. Then Carhart stepped out, walked part way down the
knoll, and looked about him, and became conscious of an unusual stir
about the job. Peering out through dusty spectacles, he saw that a
party of strangers were coming up the slope toward him.

At the head walked Old Van, in boiled shirt and city clothes, with a
tall man in frock coat and top hat whom Carhart recognized as
Vice-president Chambers. After them came a party of ladies and one or
two young men to whom Tiffany was explaining the methods of
construction. It seemed that Mr. Chambers had thought it worth while
to adopt Tiffany’s suggestion that the vast quantities of dry bones in
the desert be gathered up and shipped eastward to be ground up into
fertilizer.

Carhart was presented to Mrs. Chambers and to the two Misses Chambers
and the other young women. He took them in with a glance, then looked
down over his own outrageously attired person and restrained a smile.
Tiffany was the one he wished to see, and he told him so with a barely
perceptible motion of the head.

Tiffany caught the signal, made his excuses, and walked off with this
dusty, inconspicuous man on whose shoulders rested the welfare of the
whole Sherman and Western system. He had observed that the young women
drew instinctively away from the dingy figure, and his smile was not
restrained. He was thinking of his first meeting with Paul Carhart, in
Chicago,--it was at the farewell dinner to the Dutch engineers,--and
of his distinguished appearance as he rose to speak, and of his
delightfully humorous enumeration of the qualities required in an
American engineer. Thinking of these things he almost spoke aloud:
“And they never knew the difference,--not a blessed one of ’em! Even
Mrs. Chambers don’t know a gentleman without he’s tagged. Ain’t it
funny!” And the chief engineer of the S. & W., being a blunt, and not
at all a subtle man, wisely gave up the eternal question.

“Look here, Tiffany,” Carhart began, “something’s going to happen to
this man Peet.”

Tiffany plucked a straw from a convenient bale, and began meditatively
to chew it. “I haven’t got a word to say, Carhart. You’ve got a clear
case against us, and I guess I can’t object if you take it out of me.”

“No; I understand the thing pretty well, Tiffany. You’re doing what
you can, but Peet isn’t.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Perfectly.”

“He’s having the devil’s own time himself, Carhart. The mills are
going back on us steady with the rails. They just naturally don’t ship
’em. I’m beginning to think they don’t want to ship ’em.”

Carhart stopped short, plunged in thought. “Maybe you’re right,” he
said after a moment. “I hadn’t thought of that before.”

“No, you oughtn’t to have to think of it. That’s our business, but
it’s been worrying us considerable. Then there’s the connections, too.
The rails have to come into Sherman by way of the Queen and
Cumberland,--a long way ‘round--”

“And the Queen and Cumberland has ‘Commodore Durfee’ written all over
it.”

“Yes, I guess it has.”

“And knowing that, you fellows have been sitting around waiting for
the Commodore to deliver your material. No, Tiffany, don’t tell me
that; I hate to think it of you.”

“I know we’re a pack of fools, Carhart, but--” the sentence died out.
“But what can we do, man? We can’t draw a new map of the United
States, can we? We’ve got our orders from the old man--!”

[Illustration: “‘Look here, Tiffany,’ Carhart began, ‘something’s
going to happen to this man Peet.’”]

“Could you have the stuff sent around by the Coast and Crescent, and
transferred over to Sherman by wagon?”

“Wait a minute; who owns the Coast and Crescent? Who’s got it all
buttoned up in his pants pocket?”

“Oh,” said Carhart. They stood for a little while, then sat down on a
pile of culls which had been brought up by the tie squad for
supporting tent floors. “It begins to occur to me,” Carhart went on,
“that we are working under the nerviest president that ever--But
perhaps he can’t help it. He’s fixed pretty much as Washington was in
the New Jersey campaign; he’s surrounded by the enemy and he’s got to
fight out.”

“That’s it, exactly,” cried Tiffany. “He’s got to cut his way out. He
ain’t a practical railroad man, and he’s just ordered us to do it for
him. Don’t you see our fix?”

“Yes,” Carhart mused, “I see well enough. Look here, Tiffany; how far
can I go in this business,--extra expenses, and that sort of things?”

Tiffany’s face became very expressive. “Well,” he said, “I guess if
you can beat the H. D. & W. to Red Hills there won’t be any questions
asked. If you can’t beat ’em, we’ll all catch hell. Why, what are you
thinking of doing?”

“Not a thing. My mind’s a blank.”

From Tiffany’s expression it was plain that he was uncertain whether
to believe this or not.

“It comes to about this,” Carhart went on. “It all rests on me, and if
I’m willing to run chances, I might as well run ’em.”

Tiffany’s eyes were searching the lean, spectacled face. “I guess it’s
for you to decide,” he replied. “I don’t know what else Mr. Chambers
was thinking of when he the same as told me to leave you be.”

“By the way, Tiffany,”--Carhart was going through his pockets,--“how
long is it since you people left Sherman?”

“More than a week. Mr. Chambers wanted some shooting on the way out.”

“Do you suppose he knows about this?” And Carhart produced the torn
sheet of the _Pierrepont Enterprise_.

Tiffany read the headlines, and slowly shook his head. “I’m sure he
don’t. There was no such story around Sherman when we left. But we
found a message waiting here to-day, asking Mr. Chambers to hurry
back; very likely it’s about this.”

“If it were true, if Commodore Durfee does own the line, what effect
would it have on my work here?”

“Not a bit! Not a d--n bit!” Tiffany’s big hand came down on his knee
with a bang. “This line belongs to Daniel De Reamer, and Old Durfee’s
thievery and low tricks and kept judges don’t go at Sherman, or here
neither. It’s jugglery, the whole business; there ain’t anything
honest about it.” Carhart looked away, and again restrained a smile;
he was thinking of where the money came from. “And I’ll tell you
this,” Tiffany concluded, “if anybody comes into my office and tries
to take possession for Old Durfee, I’ll say, ‘Hold on, my friend, who
signed that paper you’ve got there?’ And if I find it ain’t signed by
five judges--_five_, mind!--of the Supreme Court of the United States
sittin’ in Washington, I’ll say, ‘Get out of here!’ And if they won’t
get out, I’ll kick ’em out. And there’s five hundred men in Sherman, a
thousand men, who’ll help me to do it. If it’s court business, I guess
our judges are as good as theirs. And if it comes to shooting, by God
we’ll shoot!”

“I agree with you, on the whole,” said Carhart. “Mr. De Reamer and Mr.
Chambers have put me here to beat the H. D. & W. to Red Hills, and I’m
going to do it. But--”

“That’s the talk, man!”

“But let’s get back to Peet. He could help us a little if he felt like
it. You told me last month, Tiffany, that Peet had given you a list
of the numbers of all my supply cars, with an understanding that they
wouldn’t be used for anything else. Have you got that list with you?”

“No; it’s in my desk, at Sherman.”

“All right. I’ll call for it day after to-morrow.”

“At Sherman?”

“Yes. Peet isn’t sending those cars out here, and I’m going to find
out where he is sending them.”

“There’s one thing, Carhart,” said Tiffany, as they rose, “I’m sure
Peet don’t know how bad off you were for water. He was holding up the
trains for material.”

“He ought to understand, Tiffany. I wired him to send the water
anyway.”

“I know. But that would be wholesale murder. He didn’t realize--”

“I’m going to undertake the job of making him realize, Tiffany.”

The whistle of the vice-president’s special engine was tooting as they
started back. On the one hand, as far as human beings could be
distinguished with the naked eye, the groups and the long lines of
laborers were shuffling to and from their work on the grade; the
picked men of the iron squad, muscular, deep chested, were working
side by side with the Mexicans and the negroes, as also were the
spikers and strappers and the men of the tie squad. On the other hand,
the ladies of the vice-president’s party were picking their way
daintily back toward Mr. Chambers’s private car, where savory odors
and a white-clad chef awaited them.

Carhart had time only to wash his face and hands before rejoining the
party at the car steps. His clothing was downright disreputable, and
he wanted the physique, the height and breadth and muscle display,
which alone can give distinction to rough garments. Even his clean-cut
face and reserved, studious expression were not positive features, and
could hardly triumph over the obvious facts of his dress. Mrs.
Chambers and the young women again glanced toward him, and again they
had nothing to say to him. To the truth that this ugly, noisy scene
was a resolving dissonance in the harmony of things, that this rough
person in spectacles was heroically forging a link in the world’s
girdle, these women were blind. They had been curious to come; and now
that they were here and were conscious of the dirtiness and meanness
of the hundreds of men about them, now that the gray hopelessness of
the desert was getting on their nerves, they were eager to go back.
And so the bell rang, the driving-wheels spun around, slipping under
the coughing engine, the car began to rumble forward, the ladies
bowed, the vice-president, taking a last look at things from the rear
platform, nodded a good-by, and the incident was closed.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were a number of things for Carhart to attend to after he had
eaten supper and dressed, and before he could get away,--some of which
will have to find a place in a later chapter,--and it was eleven
o’clock at night when he finally put aside his maps and reports. He
then wrote a note to Scribner, telling the engineer of the second
division that the last report of his pile inspector was not
satisfactory,--the third bent in the trestle over Tiffany Hollow on
“mile fifty-two” showed insufficient resistance. He left for Young
Van’s attention a pile of letters with memoranda for the replies. He
sent for Old Van, and went over with him the condition of the work on
the first division. And finally he wrote the following letter to John
Flint:--

    DEAR JOHN: I’m sending forward to-morrow the extra cable and
    the wheelers you asked for. I have to run back to Sherman
    to-night, possibly for a week or so, but there’ll be time
    enough to look over your plans for cutting and filling on the
    west bank when I get back. I haven’t figured it out yet, but
    I’m inclined to agree with you that we can make more of a fill
    there. But I’ll write you again about it.

     Thanks to our friend Peet I nearly killed Texas on a ride for
     water. Got to have another riding horse sent out here. My
     assistant’s pony had to be shot--that little brown beauty I
     pointed out to you the morning you started, with the white
     star.

     Yours,

     P. C.

     P. S. By the way, that Wall-street fight was only the opening
     skirmish. The Commodore is raiding S. & W. for business. I
     guess you know how he does these things. The _Pierrepont
     Enterprise_ says he has already got control of the board, so
     it will probably be our turn next. If you haven’t plenty of
     weapons, you’d better order what you need at Red Hills right
     away. And don’t forget that you’re working for Daniel De
     Reamer.

     P. C.

He folded the letter, slipped it into an envelope, addressed it, and
then tipped back and ran his long fingers through his hair. He was
surprised to find that his forehead was beaded with sweat. “Lovely
climate, this,” he said to himself; adding after a moment, “Now what
have I forgotten?” For several minutes he balanced there, supporting
himself by resting the fingers of one hand against a tall case
labelled, “A B C Spool Cotton,” in the flat, glass-fronted drawers of
which he kept his maps and papers. Finally he muttered, “Well, if I
have forgotten anything, I’ve forgotten it for good,” and the front
legs of his chair came down, and he reached across the table for his
hat.

But instead of rising, he lingered, fingering the wide hat-brim. The
yellow lamplight fell gently on his face, now leaner than ever. “I
wonder what they think a man is made of,” thought he. “Nothing very
valuable, I guess, from what an engineer gets paid. I’m in the wrong
business. It’s my sort of man who does the work, and it’s the
speculators and that sort who get the money,--God help ’em!” Again he
made as if to rise, and again he paused. “Oh!” he said, “of course,
that was it.” He clapped his hat on the back of his head, reached out
for a letter which he had that evening written to Mrs. Carhart, opened
the envelope, and added these words:--

    “Have Thomas Nelson plant the nasturtiums along the back fence.
    There isn’t enough sunshine out in front for anything but the
    honeysuckle and the Dutchman’s pipe. And he’d better screen the
    fence with golden glow, set out pretty thick the whole way,
    between the nasturtiums and the fence. The crab-apple tree will
    be in the way, but it’s so near dead that he’d better cut it
    down. I like your other arrangements first rate.”

This, and a few other east-bound letters, he put in his handbag. Then
he looked at his watch. “Hello!” said he, “it’s to-morrow morning.” He
pulled his hat forward, took up the lamp, and stepped out through the
tent opening, holding the lamp high and looking down, through the
night, toward the track.

The silence, in spite of a throbbing locomotive, or perhaps because of
it, was almost overwhelming. There was not a cloud in the sky; the
stars were twinkling down.

“How horribly patient it is,” he thought. “We’re slap bang up against
the Almighty.”

“Toot! Too-oo-oot!” came from the throbbing locomotive.

“All right, sir!” he muttered. “Be with you in a minute.”

He went back into the tent, put down the lamp, picked up his handbag,
took a last look around, and then blew out the lamp and set off down
the slope to the track.

The engineer was hanging out of his cab. “All ready, Mr. Carhart?”

“All ready, Bill.” The chief caught the hand-rail of _his_ private
car, tossed his bag to the platform, and swung himself up after it.

“You was in something of a hurry, Mr. Carhart?”

“In a little of a hurry, yes, Bill.”

They started off, rocking and bumping over the new track, and Carhart
began stripping off his clothes. “It isn’t exactly like Mr.
Chambers’s,” he said, “but I guess I’ll be able to get in a little
sleep; that is, if Bill doesn’t smash me up, or jolt me to death.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Three days later, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Carhart was
writing a letter in the office of the “Eagle House,” at Sherman.
Sitting in rows along three sides of the room was perhaps a score of
men, and in a corner by herself sat one young woman. The men were a
mixed assortment,--locomotive engineers, photographers, travelling
salesmen of tobacco, jewellery, shoes, clothing, and small cutlery,
not to speak of an itinerant dentist and a team of “champion banjo and
vocal artists.” As for the young woman, if you could have taken a peep
into the sample case at her feet, you would have learned that she was
prepared to disseminate a collection of literature which ranged from
standard sets of Dickens and Thackeray to a fat volume devoted to the
songs and scenes of Old Ireland, an illustrated life of the Pope, and
a work on the character and the splendid career of Porfirio Diaz.
Outside, at the window, stood or sat another score of men, each of
whom bore the unmistakable dress and manner of the day laborer. And
every pair of eyes, within and without the smoky room, was fixed on
the back of the man who was writing a letter at the table in the
corner.

But Carhart’s mind was wholly occupied with the work before him. He
was travel-stained,--it was not yet an hour since he had come in from
Crockett, the nearest division town on the H. D. & W.,--but there were
few signs of weariness on his face, and none at all in his eyes. “How
much had I better tell him?” he was asking himself. “I wonder what he
is up to, anyway? Possibly he has an interest in the lumber company,
or maybe Durfee’s men have bought him up.” For several minutes his pen
occupied itself with dotting out a design on the blotter; then
suddenly a twinkle came into his eyes, and he wrote rapidly as
follows:--

    DEAR MR. PEET: I beg to enclose herewith a list of the cars
    which were assigned to me at the beginning of the construction
    work. I am sure you will agree with me that I can spare none of
    these cars, least of all to supply a rival line. And in
    consideration of your future hearty cooperation with me in
    advancing this construction work, I will gladly take pains to
    see that my present knowledge of the use that has been made of
    these cars shall not interfere in any way with your continued
    enjoyment of your position with the Sherman and Western.

     Yours very truly,

     P. CARHART.

He folded the letter, then opened it and read it over. “Yes,” he told
himself, “it’s better to write it. Seeing the thing before him in
black and white may have a stimulating effect.” He found in his pocket
the worn and thumbed list of cars, enclosed it in his letter,
addressed an envelope, and looked around. At once he was beset by the
agents and the applicants for work, but he shoved through to the
piazza, and called a boy.

“Here, son,” he said, “do you know Mr. Peet, of the railroad?”

The boy nodded.

“Take this letter to him. If he isn’t in his office, go to his house,
but don’t come back until you have found him.”

“Will there be any answer?”

“No--no answer. Don’t give the letter to anybody but Mr. Peet himself.
When you have done that, come to me and get a quarter.”

The boy started off, and Carhart reëntered the building, slipped past
the office door, and walked up two flights of stairs to his room.

“And now,” thought he, “I guess a bath will feel about as good as
anything.”

The Eagle House did not boast a bathroom, and so he set about the
business in the primitive fashion to which he had learned to adapt
himself. He dragged in from the hall a tin, high-backed tub, called
down the stairway to the proprietor’s wife for hot water, and,
undressing, piled his clothes on the one wooden chair in the room,
taking care that they touched neither floor nor wall. The hostess
knocked, and left a steaming pitcher outside the door. And soon the
chief engineer of the Red Hills extension of the Shaky and Windy was
splashing merrily.

The water proved so refreshing that he lingered in it, leaning
comfortably back and hanging his legs over the edge of the tub. And as
was always the case, when he had a respite from details, his mind
began roving over the broader problems of the work. “I’ve done a part
of it,” he said to himself, “but not enough. It won’t do any good to
have the cars if we haven’t the materials to put in ’em.” He had been
absently pursuing the soap around the bottom of the tub, had caught
it, and was now sloping his hands into the water, and letting the cake
slide back into its element.

There was a knock at the door. Carhart looked up with half a start.

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s me, sir,” came from the hall.

“Who’s me?”

“The boy that took your letter.”

“Well, what about it? There was no answer.”

“But there _is_ an answer, Mr. Carhart. Mr. Peet came back with me.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s here--he came back with me. He’s waiting downstairs.”

Carhart hesitated. “Well--tell him that I’m very sorry, but I can’t
see him. I’m taking a bath.”

“All right,” said the boy; and Carhart heard him go off down the
stairs.

For some little time longer he sat in the tub. His mind slipped again
into the accustomed channel. “If it does come to warfare,” he was
thinking, “the first thing they’ll do will be to cut me off from my
base. They’d know that I shall be near enough to Red Hills to get food
through from there by wagon,--that’s what I should have to do,--but
there won’t be any rails coming from Red Hills. I’m afraid--very much
afraid--that Durfee has got us, cold. That’s the whole trick. If he’s
going to seize the S. & W., he’ll cut me off first thing. There’s five
to six hundred miles of track between the job and Sherman. It would
take an army to guard it. And that much done, he’d be in a position
to take his time about completing the H. D. & W. to Red Hills.”

And then suddenly he got out of the tub, snatched up a towel, and,
half dry, began hurriedly to draw on his clothes. A moment later a
thin, spectacled, collarless man darted out of a room on the third
floor of the Eagle House, looked quickly up and down the hall, ran
halfway down the stairs, and leaned over the balustrade.

“Boy,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t get your quarter.” But it was a half dollar that he tossed
into the waiting hands. “Run after Mr. Peet and bring him back here.
Mind you catch him.”

The boy started to obey, but in a moment he was back and knocking at
Carhart’s door. “He’s down in the office now, Mr. Carhart. He didn’t
go at all.”

“He didn’t, eh?” The engineer was standing before the cracked mirror,
brushing his hair. “All right, I’ll be down in a minute. Hold on
there!” He stepped to the door. The first coin his fingers encountered
in his pocket was another half dollar. He took it out without glancing
at it and handed it to the now bewildered boy. Then he returned to the
mirror and brushed his hair again, and put on his collar and tie.
“I’ll have to thank Tiffany,” ran his thoughts. “It’s odd how that
car-stealing story has stuck in my head. I’m glad he told it.”

Peet’s expression was not what might be termed complacent. He was
standing on the piazza when he heard Carhart’s quick step on the
stairs. His teeth were closed tightly on a cigar, but he was not
smoking.

“How are you, Mr. Peet?” said the engineer. Peet looked nervously
about and behind him, and then faced around. “Look here, Mr. Carhart,
I want to tell you that you haven’t got that straight--”

“Where’s Tiffany?” said Carhart.

At this interruption Peet turned, if anything, a shade redder. “He’s
gone home.”

“Let’s find him. Would you mind walking over there?”

“Certainly not,” Peet replied; and for a moment they walked in
silence. Then the superintendent broke out again. “You didn’t
understand about those cars, Mr. Carhart. I know--the boys have told
me--that you’ve thought some hard things about me--” He paused:
perhaps he had better keep his mouth shut.

As for Carhart, he was striding easily along, the hint of a smile
playing about the corners of his mouth. “I think I understand the
situation pretty well, Peet,” he said. “I was a little stirred up when
my men began to go thirsty, but that’s all past, and I’m going to drop
it. I guess we both understand that this construction is the most
important thing Mr. De Reamer has on hand these days. And if we’re
going to carry him through, we’ll have to pull together.”

They found Tiffany, coat thrown aside, hat tipped back, weeding his
garden.

“Come in--glad to see you,” he said, only half concealing his
curiosity over the spectacle of Carhart and Peet walking together in
amity. “Didn’t succeed in getting back, eh, Carhart?”

“Not yet, Tiffany. I had to run up to Crockett.” He said this in an
offhand manner, and he did not look at Peet; but he knew from the
expression on Tiffany’s face that the superintendent was turning red
again.

“You ain’t had supper, have you?” said Tiffany. “You’re just in time
to eat with us.”

“Supper!” Carhart repeated the word in some surprise, then looked at
his watch.

“You hadn’t forgotten it, had you?” Tiffany grinned.

“To tell the truth, I had. May we really eat with you? It will save us
some time.”

“Can you? Well, I wonder! Come in.” And taking up his coat, Tiffany
led the way into the house.

More than once during that meal did Tiffany’s eyes flit from Peet’s
half-bewildered countenance to that of the quiet, good-natured
Carhart. He asked no questions, but he wondered. Once he thought that
Peet threw him an inquiring glance, but he could not be certain. After
supper, as he reached for the toothpicks and pushed back his chair, he
was tempted to come out with the question which was on his mind, “What
in the devil are you up to, Carhart?” But what he really said was,
“Help yourselves to the cigars, boys. They’re in that jar, there.”

And then, for a moment, both Peet and Tiffany sat back and watched
Carhart while he lighted his cigar, turned it over thoughtfully, shook
the match, and dropped it with a little sputter into his coffee cup.
Then the man who was building the Red Hills extension got, with some
deliberation, to his feet, and turned toward Tiffany. “Would it spoil
your smoke to take it while we walk?” he asked.

“Not at all,” replied the host. “Where are we going?”

“To the yards.”

Peet, for no reason whatever, went red again; and Tiffany, tipped back
in his chair and slowly puffing at his cigar, looked at him. Then he
too got up, and the three men left the house together. And during all
the walk out to the freight depot, Carhart talked about the new
saddle-horse he had bought at Crockett.

The freight yard at Sherman extended nearly a mile, beginning with the
siding by the depot and expanding farther on to the width of a dozen
tracks. Carhart came to a halt at the point where the tangle of
switches began, and looked about him. Everywhere he saw cars, some
laden, some empty. A fussy little engine was coughing down the track,
whistling angrily at a sow and her litter of spotted, muddy-yellow
pigs which had been sleeping in a row between the rails. From the
roundhouse, off to the left, arose the smoke of five or six resting
locomotives. Nearer at hand, seated in a row on the handle of the
turn-table, were as many black negroes, laughing and showing their
teeth and eyeballs, and discussing with much gesticulation and some
amiable heat the question of the day. Carhart’s sweeping glance took
in the scene, then his interest centred on the cars.

Peet fidgeted. “There ain’t any of your cars here, Mr. Carhart,” he
said uneasily.

Already Carhart knew better, but he was not here to squabble with
Peet. “How many have you here all together?” he asked; and after a
moment of rapid counting he answered his own question: “Something more
than a hundred, eh?”

“Yes, but--”

“Well, what?”

“Look here, Carhart, I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but I can’t
let you have any of these cars.”

“You can’t?”

“Not possibly. Half of ’em are foreign as it is. I’m so short now I
don’t know what I’m going to do. Honest, I don’t.”

Carhart turned this answer over in his mind. After a moment he looked
up, first at Peet, then at Tiffany, as if he had something to say; but
whatever it may have been, he turned away without saying it.

“What is it, old man?” cried Tiffany, at last. “What can we do for
you, anyway?”

Still Carhart did not speak. His eyes again sought the long lines of
cars. Finally, resting one foot on a projecting cross-tie, he turned
to the superintendent. “Suppose you do this, Peet,” he said, speaking
slowly; “suppose you tell your yard-master that I am to be absolute
boss here until midnight. Then you go home and leave me here. Tiffany
could stay and help me out--this isn’t his department.”

This brought Peet close to the outer limit of bewilderment. “What
in--” he began; but Carhart, observing the effect of his request,
interrupted.

“I don’t believe Mr. Peet understands the situation very well,
Tiffany. Tell him where we stand--where Mr. De Reamer stands.” And
with this he walked off a little way.

Tiffany came to the point. To Peet’s question, “What is he talking
about, Tiffany?” the veteran replied: “He knows and I know, Lou, that
the only thing that will save the old man is a track to Red Hills. I
haven’t the slightest idea what Carhart’s up to, but I’ll tell you
this, I’ve seen him in one or two tight places, and I never saw him
look like this before. He’s got something he wants to do, and he’s
decided that it’s necessary, and it ain’t for you and me to stand in
his way. When you come to know Paul Carhart, you’ll learn that he
don’t do things careless. What do you suppose the Old Man meant when
he told you to back him up to the limit with cars and engines, and
told me to keep out of his way?”

Peet did not reply for a moment. He took off his hat and brushed back
the hair from a forehead that was moist with sweat. He looked from
one man to the other, and from both to the roundhouse, and the depot,
and the waiting cars. Finally he walked over toward Carhart. “Go
ahead,” he said queerly, “I’ll stay with you.”

“Good enough.” And with these two words Carhart wheeled around and
surveyed the nearest line of cars--box, flat, and gondola. “Most of
those are empty, aren’t they?” he asked.

“About half of them. But here’s Dougherty, the yard-master. Dougherty,
this is Mr. Carhart. You can take your orders from him to-night.”

Carhart extended his hand. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Dougherty. I’m
afraid we’ll all have to make a night of it. I want you to keep steam
up in three engines. And pick up all the men you can find and start
them unloading every car in the yard. Keep ’em jumping. I want to have
three empty trains at Paradise by midnight.”

“By mid--” Dougherty’s mouth opened a very little, and his eyes, after
taking in Paul Carhart’s face and figure, settled on the
superintendent.

But Peet, with an expressive movement of his hands, turned away; and
Tiffany, after a glance about the little group, went after him.

“Brace up, Lou,” said Tiffany, in a low voice; “brace up.”

Peet’s hands were deep in his pockets. His eyes were fixed on the
rails before him. “Dump all that freight on the ground!” he moaned.
“Look here, Tiffany, I suppose he knows what he’s doing, but--but
what’ll the traffic men say!”

“Never you mind the traffic men.”

“But--dump all that freight out here _on the ground_!”

Tiffany passed an unsteady hand across his eyes. If Peet had looked at
him, he would not have felt reassured; but he did not look up.

Dougherty, with a gulp, obeyed Carhart. And half an hour later the
chance observers and the yard loafers were rubbing their eyes.
Laborers were busy from one end of the yard to the other, throwing out
boxes and bales and crates, and piling them haphazard between the
tracks. The tired, wheezy switch engine, enveloped in a cloud of its
own steam, was laboriously making up the first train. And moving
quietly about, issuing orders and giving a hand here and there,
followed by the disturbed eyes of the general superintendent and the
chief engineer of the Shaky and Windy, Paul Carhart was bossing the
work. Once he stepped over to the two men of the disturbed eyes, a
thoughtful expression on his own face. “Say, Tiffany,” he asked, “how
much business does the Paradise Southern do?”

Tiffany started, and looked keenly at Carhart. There was a faint
glimmer in his eyes, but this was followed immediately by uncertainty.
“None,” he replied; “that is, none to speak of. They run a combination
car each way every day--two cars when business is brisk. The Old Man
would have abandoned it years ago if it hadn’t been for the stock
scheme I told you about.”

“Yes,” mused Carhart, “that’s what I understood. But if it’s such a
mistake, why was it built in the first place?”

“Oh, they were going to run it through to Bonavita on the Emerald
River, but the B. & G. got all there was of that business first, and
so the P. S. never got beyond Total Wreck. Mr. De Reamer never built
it. The old Shipleigh crowd did that before Mr. De Reamer bought up
this property.” The faint glimmer had returned to Tiffany’s eyes; he
was searching Carhart’s face. “You want these trains sent on through
to your camp, don’t you?” he asked abruptly.

“No, they are to go down over the P. S.”

Tiffany’s expression was growing almost painful. Carhart went on.
“There are sidings at Total Wreck, aren’t there, Peet?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, quite a yard there; but it’s badly run down.”

“What other sidings are there along the line?”

“Long ones at Yellow House and Dusty Bend.”

“How long?”

“Nearly two miles each.”

“How long is the line?”

“Forty-five miles.”

“Good Lord!” The exclamation was Tiffany’s. He was staring at Carhart
with an expression of such mingled astonishment, incredulity, and
expansive delight, that Peet’s curiosity broke its bounds. “For God’s
sake, Tiffany,” he cried, “what is it? What’s he going to do?”

But Tiffany did not hear. He was gazing at Paul Carhart, saying
incoherent things to him, and bringing down a heavy hand on his
shoulder. He was somewhat frightened--never before, even in his own
emphatic life, had his routine notions received such a wrench--but his
eyes were shining. “Lord! Lord!” he was saying, “but there’ll be
swearing in Sherman to-morrow.”

“The time has come when I ought to know what”--this from the purple
Peet.

“Don’t ask him, Lou,” cried Tiffany, “don’t ask him. If we smash, it
won’t be your fault. Ain’t that right, Paul?”

“Yes,” replied Carhart, “it is just right. Don’t ask any questions,
Peet, and don’t give me away. I don’t want any swearing in Sherman
to-morrow. I don’t want a whisper of this to get out for a week--not
for a month if we can keep it under.”

Tiffany quieted down; grew thoughtful. “It will take a lot of men,
Paul. How can you prevent a leak?”

“I’m going to take them all West with me afterward.”

“I see. That’s right--that’s right! And the station agents and train
crews and switchmen--yes, I see. You’ll take ’em all.”

“Every man,” replied Carhart, quietly.

“If necessary, you’ll take ’em under guard.”

Carhart smiled a very little. “If necessary,” he replied.

“You’ll want some good men,” mused Tiffany. “I’ll tell you,--suppose
you leave that part of it to me. It’s now,--let’s see,--seven-forty.
It won’t be any use starting your first train until you’ve got the men
to do the work. I’ll need a little time, but if you’ll give me an hour
and half to two hours, say until nine-thirty, I’ll have your outfit
ready. I’ll send some of my assistants along with you, and a bunch of
our brakemen and switchmen. There’ll be the commissariat to look out
for too,--you see to all that, Lou, will you?”

Peet inclined his head. “For how many men?” he asked.

“Oh, five hundred, anyway, before we get through with it.” Nothing
could surprise the superintendent now. He merely nodded.

“And rifles,” Tiffany added. “You’ll want a case of ’em.”

“No,” said Carhart, “I shan’t need any rifles for the P. S., but I
want five hundred more at the end of the track, and, say ten thousand
rounds of ball cartridges. Will you see to that, Peet?”

The superintendent grunted out, “Who’s paying for all this?” and then
as neither of the others took the trouble to reply, he subsided.

“All right, then,” said Tiffany. “I’ll have your crew here--enough for
the first train, anyhow. You can trust to picking up fifty or a
hundred laborers in the neighborhood of Paradise. See you later.” And
with this, the chief engineer took his big person away at a rapid
walk.

Carhart turned to Peet and extended his hand. Dusk was falling. The
headlights of the locomotives threw their yellow beams up the yard.
Switch lights were shining red and white, and lanterns, in the hands
of shadowy figures, were bobbing here and there. There was a great
racket about them of bumping cars and squeaking brakes, and of
shouting and the blowing off of locomotives. “I don’t blame you for
thinking that everything’s going to the devil, Peet,” said Carhart.
“But I don’t believe they’ve let you in on the situation. If I’m
running risks, it’s because we’ve got to run risks.”

Peet hesitated, then accepted the proffered hand. “I suppose it’s all
right,” he replied. “Tiffany seems to agree with you, and he generally
knows what he’s about. But--” he paused. They were standing by a heap
of merchandise. The heap was capped by a dozen crates of chickens
which, awakened from their sleep, were fluttering about within their
narrow coop and clucking angrily. He waved his hand. “Think of what
this means to our business,” he said.

Carhart listened for a moment, then looked back to Peet. “If I were
sure it would come to nothing worse than a slight disarrangement of
your business, I’d sleep easy to-night.”

“It’s as bad as that, is it?”

“Yes,” Carhart replied, “it’s as bad as that. If I lose, no matter
how the fight in the board turns out, you know what it will mean--no
more De Reamer and Chambers men on the S. & W. Every De Reamer fireman
and brakeman will go. It’ll be a long vacation for the bunch of you.”

Peet was silent. And then, standing there where he had so often and so
heedlessly stood before, his sordid, moderately capable mind was torn
unexpectedly loose from its well-worn grooves and thrown out to drift
on a tossing sea of emotion and of romantic adventure. The
breathlessness of the scene was borne in on his consciousness on a
wave that almost took away his breath. Carhart was the sort of man
whom he could not understand at all. He knew this now, or something
near enough to it, clear down to the bottom of his subconscious self.
And when he turned and looked at the thin man of the masterful hand,
it was with a change of manner. “All right,” he said, “go ahead. Just
say what you want me to do.”

At five minutes to ten that night a locomotive lay, the steam roaring
in clouds through her safety valve, on the siding by the freight
depot; and stretching off behind her was a long string of empties.
Carhart, Tiffany, and Peet, walking up alongside the train, could
distinguish, through the dark, men sitting on brake wheels, or
swinging their legs out of box-car doors or standing in groups in the
gondola cars. Once, during a brief lull in the noise of the yard, they
heard a gentle snore which was issuing from the dark recesses of one
of the box-cars. The three men halted beside the locomotive.

“You’d better go, Paul,” said Tiffany.

Carhart looked at Peet. “I’ll rely on you to keep things coming,” he
said.

“Go ahead,” replied the superintendent. “I’ll have the three trains
and all the men at Paradise before morning.”

“And we’ll look out for the commissariat too, Paul,” added Tiffany.

“All right,” said Carhart. “But there’s another thing, Peet. I
haven’t cars enough yet. As soon as enough come in to make up another
train, send it out to me.”

“That’ll be sometime to-morrow afternoon, likely,” Peet replied
soberly.

Carhart nodded, shook hands with the two men, and mounted to the
engine.

“Go ahead,” said Peet. “You’ve got a clear track.”

The whistle blew. Somewhere back in the night a speck of light swung
up in a quarter circle. The engineer opened his throttle.

“Bong Voyage to the Paradise Unlimited!” said Tiffany.

       *       *       *       *       *

Carhart was not surprised, when the third train rolled into Paradise
on that following morning, to see Tiffany descending from the caboose.
Between them they lost no time in completing the preparations for the
journey down to Total Wreck. Of the two regular trains on the line,
No. 3, southbound, was held at Paradise, and the lone passenger was
carried down on Carhart’s train; the northbound train, No. 4, was
stopped at Dusty Bend.

Then for a time a series of remarkable scenes took place along the
right of way of the Paradise Southern. Men by the hundred, all
seemingly bent on destruction, swarmed over the line and tore it to
pieces. Trains ran north and west laden with rusty old rails,
switches, ancient cross-ties of questionable durability, with
everything, as Carhart had ordered, excepting the sand and clay
ballast.

“Some poor devils lost their little fortunes in the old P. S.” said
Tiffany, on the first morning, as the two engineers stood looking at
the work of ruin. “I sort of hate to see it go.”

Carhart himself went West on the first train, leaving Tiffany to carry
the work through. He was satisfied that everything would from now on
work smoothly at Paradise and Sherman, and he knew that not a man of
those on the work would slip through Tiffany’s fingers to bear tales
back to civilization of the wild doings on the frontier. At Sherman
they said that owing to insufficient business the P. S. trains would
be discontinued for a time, and no one was surprised at the news. Far
off in New York, in the Broad Street office of Daniel De Reamer, it
was some time before they knew anything about it. The little world was
rolling on. Men were clasping hands, buying and selling, knifing and
shooting. Durfee’s plans were marching forward, as his plans had a way
of doing. De Reamer’s mind was coiling and uncoiling in its
subterranean depths. General Carrington was talking about a hunting
trip into the mountains with pack-animals and good company and many,
many bottles.

Yes, the world was rolling on about as usual; but the Paradise
Southern was no more. Forty-five miles of grade, trampled, tie-marked;
a few dismantled sheds which had once been known as stations; a lonely
row of telegraph poles stretching from one bleak horizon to another;
a rickety roundhouse or two: this was all that was left of a railroad:
this, and a long memory of disaster, and an excited ranchman at Total
Wreck who was telegraphing hotly to his lawyer.




CHAPTER VII

THE SPIRIT OF THE JOB


In order to make plain what was taking place at the main camp during
Carhart’s absence, we must go back to that evening during which so
many things had come up to be disposed of before the chief could leave
for Sherman and Crockett and Paradise. To begin with, Dimond came
riding in at dusk with a canteen of clear water which he laid on the
table about which the engineers were sitting. To Carhart, when he had
unscrewed the cap and taken a deep draught, it tasted like
Apollinaris. “First rate!” he exclaimed; “first rate!” Then he passed
it to Old Van, who smacked his lips over it.

“Where did he find this?” Carhart asked.

“Eighteen or twenty miles ahead.”

“Plenty of it?”

“He thinks so,” he says, “but he’s gone on to find more.”

“Are the Apaches bothering him?”

“We’ve had a pop at ’em now and then. He says he hopes to have some
beadwork for you when he sees you again. There was one fellow came too
near one night, and Mr. Scribner hit him, but the others carried him
off before we could get the beads. He sent me back to guide the wagons
to the well if you want to send ’em.”

“Well,” said Carhart, when Dimond had gone, “we have water now,
anyway. The next question is about these thieves. You say that five
animals were stolen while I was away. When the first roads went
through, they had regular troops to guard the work, and I don’t know
that we can improve on the plan. I’ll look the matter up when I get to
Sherman.”

But an hour later, when he left his division engineer and stepped
outside for a last look at “Texas,” he found Charlie hanging about
near the stable tent. The cook approached him, and made it awkwardly
but firmly plain that he had heard a rumor to the effect that Mr.
Carhart was going to Sherman for regular troops, and that, if the
rumor were true, he, Charlie, would leave.

No questions were necessary, for Carhart had never thought Jack Flagg
the only deserter in camp. He mused a moment; then he looked up
thoughtfully at the tall, loose-jointed, but well-set-up figure of the
cook. “Do you know anything about military drill and sentry duties?”
he asked abruptly.

Charlie, taken aback, hesitated.

“Never mind answering. We’ll say that you do. Now, if I were to put
you in charge of the business, give you all the men and rifles you
need, could you guarantee to guard this camp?”

Charlie’s face wore a curious mixture of expressions.

“Well, speak up.”

“I rather guess I could.”

“I can depend on you, can I?”

“You won’t get the regulars, then?”

“No, I won’t get them.”

“Then you can depend on me.”

“I want you to get about it this morning. Mr. Gus Vandervelt will give
you everything you need. Make the watches short and distribute them
among a good many of the men, so that nobody will be worked too hard.”

Carhart passed on, and let himself into the covered enclosure where
his horse lay sick. It was a quarter of an hour before he returned to
the headquarters tent, to find Vandervelt standing in silence at the
table. Apparently he had risen to leave, and had paused at the sound
of a step outside. Standing for a moment at the tent entrance,
Carhart’s eyes took on the curious expression which the sight of the
elder of the oddly assorted brothers frequently aroused there. The
lamplight threw upward shadows on Old Van’s face and deepened the
gloom about his eyes. A moment and Carhart, sobering, stepped inside.
Certain memories of Old Van’s strange career came floating through
his thoughts. It was probably the last time they would be thrown
together. Considering everything, he would not again feel like
choosing him for an assistant. Yet he admired Old Van’s strong
qualities, and--he was sorry, very sorry.

“Van,” he said, “I’ve changed my mind about the troops. I’ve told
Charlie, the cook, to organize an effective system of guards at night,
and I’ve told him, too, that he will take his orders from Gus.”

Vandervelt stood motionless, looking at this man who had risen to be
his chief, and his color slowly turned from bronze to red.

“From Gus, eh?” he said with a slight huskiness.

“Yes,” replied Carhart, steadily, “from Gus. He will represent me
while I am gone. It will be only a day or so before he’ll be around.”

Old Van might have answered roughly; instead he dropped his eyes. But
Carhart’s unpleasant duty was not yet done.

“One thing more, Van,” he said, looking quietly at the older man, but
unable to conceal a certain tension in his speech, “are you carrying a
gun?”

There was a long silence. Every one of the faint evening camp sounds
fell loud on their ears. A puff of wind shook the tent flaps and
stirred the papers on the table. The lamp flickered. Very slowly,
without looking up, Old Van reached back to his hip pocket, drew out a
revolver, laid it on the table,--laid it, oddly enough, on a copy of
the Book of Common Prayer which was acting as a paperweight, and left
the tent and went off down the grade. And for some time after his
footfalls had died away Carhart sat with elbows on table, chin on
hands, looking at the weapon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Paul Carhart was gone. It would probably be a week to ten days before
he would be able to get back to the track-end. And with him had gone
the spirit of the work, the vitality and dash which had worked out at
moments through the assistants and the men in a stirring sense of
achievement, which had given to each young engineer and engineer’s
assistant a touch of the glow of creating something, which had made
this ugly scene almost beautiful. That steam-leaking locomotive and
that rattle-trap of a “private car,” bearing the chief away into the
dawn, left a sense of depression behind it. By noon of the following
day, Old Van was growing noticeably morose. By mid-afternoon every man
of the thousand felt the difference. Before supper time the heat, the
gloom, the loneliness of the desert, the sense of a dead pull on the
work, the queer thought that there was no such place as Red Hills
anywhere on the map, and that even if there were, the western
extension of the Shaky and Windy would never reach it, these thoughts
were preying on them, particularly on Young Van, who was up and at
work soon after noon.

Through the second day it was worse. Young Van made stout efforts to
throw more energy into his work, and then, in looking back on these
efforts, recognized in them a confession of weakness. Paul Carhart
never seemed to drive as he had been driving,--his work was always the
same. In this frame of mind the young man, at evening, mounted a
hummock to survey what had been accomplished during the day. But to
his altered eyes the track was no longer a link in the world’s girdle;
it was only a thin line of dirt and wood and steel, on which a
thousand dispirited men had been toiling.

Later he saw Charlie bringing the wagons into corral. He heard his
brother ordering the cook sharply about, and he noted how doggedly the
orders were obeyed. Then, finally, having laid out the details of the
morrow’s work and smoked an unresponsive cigarette or two, he went to
sleep.

Old Van sat up later. And Charlie sat up later still, nearly all night
in fact. He found a comfortable lounging place near Dimond’s post, in
the shadow of the empty train. The grade was here slightly elevated,
and, lying on one elbow, he could survey the camp. Now and then he
made the rounds, looking after the half-dozen sentries whom he had
posted on knolls outside the wide circle of tents and wagons, making
sure that there was no drinking and that his men were advised as to
their duties and responsibilities. Between trips he lay back,
surrounded by a number of wide-awake laborers, and listened while
Dimond recited the prowess of their chief. It was very comfortable
there, stretched out upon the newly turned earth. The camp was very
quiet. Only a few lights twinkled here and there, and it was not very
late when these went out, one by one.

“I heard Mr. Scribner telling, the other day,” said Dimond, “how the
boss run up against a farmer with a shotgun when he was running the
line for the M. T. S. Mr. Scribner was a boy then, carrying stakes for
him. There was quite a bunch of ’em, but nobody had a gun. They come
out of a piece of woods on to the road, and there they see the farmer
standing just inside his stump fence with the two barrels of his
shotgun resting on the top of one of the stumps. Mr. Scribner says the
old fellow was that excited he hollered so they could ‘a’ heard ’im
half a mile off. ‘Don’t you dare cross the line of my property!’ he
yells. ‘The first man that crosses the line of my property’s a dead
man!’ They all stopped, Mr. Scribner says, for they didn’t any of ’em
feel particularly like taking in a barrel or so of buckshot. But Mr.
Carhart wasn’t ever very easy to stop. He just looked at the fellow a
minute, and then he went right for him. ‘Look out!’ the man yells.
‘You cross the line of my property and you’re a dead man!’ But Mr.
Carhart went right on over the fence. ‘That’s all right,’ says he,
‘but you can’t get away with more’n one or two of us, and there’ll be
enough left to hang you up to that tree over there.’ And the next
thing they knew, Mr. Scribner says, Mr. Carhart had took the shotgun
right out of the farmer’s hands.”

Dimond had other stories. “I guess there ain’t nobody ever found it
easy to get around him. Once when he was a kid surveyor, before he
went North, they sent him over into southern Texas to look up an old
piece of property. There was a fellow claimed a lot of land that
really run over on to this property. Mr. Carhart figured it out that
the fellow was lying, but he knew it was going to be hard to prove it.
The old marks of the corners were all gone--there wasn’t a soul living
who had ever seen ’em. It was an old Spanish grant, Mr. Scribner says,
and the Spanish surveyors had just blazed trees to mark the lines.
Well, sir, would you believe it, Mr. Carhart worked out the place
where this corner ought ‘o be, cut down an old cedar tree that stood
there, sawed it up into lengths before witnesses, found the blaze mark
all grown over with bark, and took the piece of log right into court
and proved it. No, I guess it wouldn’t be so infernal easy to get
ahead o’ Mr. Carhart.”

“That’s all right,” observed one of the laborers, “if you’re working
for Mr. Carhart. But s’pose you ain’t--s’pose you’re workin’ for Mr.
Vandervelt?”

“Oh, well, of course,” Dimond replied, “Mr. Vandervelt’s different. He
ain’t nowhere near the man Mr. Carhart is.”

Charlie took in this comment quietly, but with less than the usual
good nature in his blue eyes.

“I don’t care how decent the boss is,” continued the laborer, “if I
have to have a mean old he-devil cussin’ at me from six to six, and
half the night besides, sometimes.”

Dimond grew reflective. “I know about Mr. Vandervelt,” he said
meditatively. “You see, boys, it was sort o’ lonely up ahead there
boring for water, and Mr. Scribner and me we got pretty well
acquainted.” Dimond was endeavoring to conceal the slight superiority
over these men of which he could not but be conscious. “It’s a queer
case,” he went on, “Mr. Vandervelt’s case. I know about it. It’s his
temper, you see. That’s what’s kep’ ’im back,--that’s why he’s only a
division engineer to-day.”

“Keep quiet, boys,” broke in the laborer, with a sneer. “Dimond knows
about it. He’s tellin’ us the news. Mr. Vandervelt’s got a temper, he
says.”

Dimond was above a retort. “I can tell you,” he said. “Mr. Scribner
give me the facts.” (In justice to Harry Scribner it should be
mentioned that he had told Dimond nothing whatever concerning the
personal attributes of his colleague.) “When Mr. Vandervelt gets mad,
he shoots. He don’t have to be drunk, neither, or in a fight, or
frolicking careless with the boys. He shot a waiter in the Harper
restaurant at Flemington, shot ’im right down. And then he went out
into the mountains and worked for a year without ever coming near a
town. And they say”--Dimond’s voice lowered--“they say he shot a camp
boss on the Northern, a man he used to knock around with, friendly.
They say he shot him.” Dimond paused, in order that his words might
sink into the consciousness of each listener. “He never goes North any
more. He’ll never even stay at a place like Sherman for more than a
day or two, and not that when he can help it.”

The men were silent for a little while. Then Charlie got slowly to his
feet and shook out his big frame preparatory to making his rounds. “I
guess that’s why Mr. Carhart told me to take my orders from his
brother,” he said slowly. “I was wondering.” Then he stepped off in
the direction of the corral.

It was three o’clock in the morning when Charlie finally stretched out
for three winks. The laborers had long before rolled themselves up in
their blankets. The men on guard, weary of peering into the darkness
and the silence, had made themselves as nearly comfortable as they
could. And it was half-past three, or near it, when a rope was cut by
a stealthy hand and half a dozen sleepy, obedient mules were led out
and away. Where so many animals were stirring; and where, too, lids
were perhaps drooping over hitherto watchful eyes, the slight
disturbance passed unobserved. At four the guards were changed, and
the new day began to make itself known. At five the camp was astir;
and a boy, searching in vain for his team, came upon the cut, trailing
ends of rope at the outer edge of the corral.

They told Charlie, whom they found bending, red-eyed, over a steaming
kettle. And the cook, with a straightforward sort of moral courage,
went at once to announce his failure at guarding the camp. As luck
would have it, he found the brothers Vandervelt together, at the wash
basin behind their tent.

“May I speak to you, sir?” addressing the younger.

“Certainly, Charlie--What luck?” was the reply. And then, for a
moment, they waited,--Young Van half glancing at his brother, Charlie
summoning every ounce of this wonderful new sense of responsibility
for the ordeal which he saw was to come, Old Van meaning unmistakably
to take a hand in the discussion.

“We lost six mules last night, Mr. Vandervelt,” said Charlie, at
length, plainly addressing Young Van.

“We lost six mules, did we?” mimicked the veteran, breaking in before
his brother could reply. “What do you mean by coming here with such a
story, you--?” The tirade was on. Old Van applied to the cook such
epithets as men did not employ at that time to any great extent on the
plains. All the depression of the day before, which he had not
succeeded in sleeping off, came out in a series of red-hot phrases,
which, to Young Van’s, and to his own still greater surprise, Charlie
took. Young Van, looking every second for a blow or even for a shot,
could not see that he so much as twitched a muscle. Finally Old Van
paused, not because he was in any danger of running out of epithets,
but because something in the attitude of both Charlie and his brother
tended to clarify the situation in his mind. Gus was standing almost
as squarely as Charlie, and there were signs of tension about his
mouth. It was no time for the engineers to develop a conflict of
authority.

When his brother had stopped talking, Young Van said shortly, “How did
you come to let them get away, Charlie?”

“I fell asleep, Mr. Vandervelt,--it must have been after three this
morning, and I didn’t wake up until four.”

“But what was the matter with your men?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out, sir. They must have been asleep,
too.”

“Who was on guard at that point?”

“A man named Foulk--one of the iron squad.”

“Yes, I know him. He is trustworthy, I think.”

“Oh, yes, sir, you can trust him, as far as having anything to do with
those thieves is concerned.”

“But that won’t help us much if he can’t keep awake a few hours. Where
is he now?”

Charlie hesitated. “I--I tied him up.”

“Bring him here.”

Charlie went off to obey. And Old Van returned to his ablutions. A
moment more and the unfortunate sentinel was being marched across to
headquarters, under the guidance and the momentum of a huge red hand.

“Here he is, Mr. Vandervelt.”

Young Van looked at the two. Foulk appeared honestly crestfallen.
Then, “Let him go, Charlie,” he said. And turning to Foulk, he merely
added, “You’ll get your night’s sleep after this, my friend. We want
no men on guard who can’t be relied on--and it’s evident that you
can’t. Now go and eat your breakfast, and get to work. See that this
doesn’t happen again, Charlie.”

Foulk hurried off in one direction, Charlie walked away in another;
Old Van disappeared within the tent in order to complete his very
simple toilet; Young Van stood alone, looking after one and another
of the retreating figures with an expression of something like dismay.
He had spoken with more vigor and authority than he could suppose; but
even such as it was, his momentary grip on the situation relaxed while
he stood there. The work was not going to stop, he knew that, yet this
complicated mechanism, the job, seemed to be running on without any
mainspring. Speaking for himself, there was no one of the many tasks
Carhart had left in his hands which he was not competent to perform,
yet, viewing them in mass, they bewildered him. There would be
bickerings, sliding on from bad to worse. The work would be undertaken
each day in a dogged spirit, and it would have an ugly side which had
not before shown itself. Earlier in the course of the undertaking
there had been moments when he had thought, looking out from his own
mountain range of details, that Carhart’s work was not so trying as it
seemed; that he had time to ride up and down the line, chatting with
engineers and foremen; that he could relax almost as he chose,--run
down to Sherman now and then, or even slip off for a day’s shooting.
Now he saw it differently. And his forebodings were realized.
Everybody in authority felt the unfortunate drift of the work, and
everybody felt helpless to check this drift. Attempts made now and
then by individuals were worse--because they merely succeeded in
drawing attention to it--than the general failure. That evening, when
Scribner came back and they all tried to be jolly, was the gloomiest
time in a gloomy week. Men took to deserting their work. On one
occasion thirty-odd of them left in a body to join an outfit which
halted overnight near the main camp--that was when they were living on
“mile forty-five.” Fights grew more frequent. Accidents seemed to be
almost a part of the week’s routine.

One day, Young Van, chancing to pass near the track-laying work, heard
his brother swearing at the rider of the snap-mule that drew the
rail-truck back and forth between the material train and the work. The
rider was a boy of twelve. Young Van recalled, as he listened, a scene
of a fortnight earlier (it seemed a year), when the boy, then new to
it, had been found by Carhart, quietly sobbing on his horse. “What’s
the trouble, son?” the chief had inquired good-humoredly. “I’m
afraid,” was the lad’s reply. Whereupon the chief had lifted him down,
swung himself into the saddle, and, with a twinkle in his eye, had
ridden a few trips in order to show the boy how to manage it safely.

At length a man was killed, one of pile-driver crew No. 1, on Old
Van’s division. Other men had been killed earlier in the work, but
this death struck the workmen as bearing greater significance. In the
other cases Carhart himself had done all that man could do; the last
time he had driven the body twenty miles to a priest and decent
burial. But Old Van sent out a few nerve-shaken laborers to dig a
grave, and told them to waste no time about it, beyond seeing that it
was well filled after--afterward.

       *       *       *       *       *

For several nights after the trouble with Foulk Charlie did not sleep
at all. But even a frontiersman is subject to Nature’s laws, and the
time came when he was overcome, shortly after midnight, while sitting
on a box before his tent, and he rolled over and slept like a child.

They woke him at daybreak, and, without a word, handed him this rough
placard:--

    Tell Mr. Carhart he’d better be carrying a gun after this.
    He’ll need it.

     JACK FLAGG.

“It was stuck up on the telegraph pole,” explained a sleepy-eyed
sentinel.

“Where?”

“Here in camp.”

A few moments later the cook, pale under his tan, stood before his
half-dressed acting-chief. Again the two brothers were together.

“So this is how you watch things, is it?” said Old Van. “What did you
lose for us last night?”

“The drivers are counting up now, sir. I only know of a mule and a
horse so far.”

“That’s all you know of, is it? I’ll tell you what to do. You go back
to your quarters and see that you do no more meddling in this
business. No, not a word. Go back and get your breakfast. That’s all I
expect from you after this.”

Charlie looked inquiringly at Young Van, who merely said: “I want to
know more about this, Charlie. Run it down, and then come to me.”

When the cook had gone, Young Van picked up the placard and read it
over. He was struck by the bravado of the thing. And he wondered how
much of a substratum of determination Jack Flagg’s bravado might have.
This primitive animal sort of man was still new to him. He had neither
Paul Carhart’s unerring instinct, nor his experience in handling men.
To him the incident seemed grave. There would be chances in plenty
before they reached Red Hills for even a coward to get in a shot, and
a coward’s shot would be enough to bring the career of their chief to
an abrupt end. He folded the dirty paper and put it into his pocket.

Later, with the best of intentions, he said to his brother: “You are
altogether too hard on Charlie. I happen to know that he has been
doing everything any man could do without a troop of regulars behind
him.”

To his surprise, Old Van replied with an angry outburst: “You keep out
of this, Gus! When I need your advice in running this division, I’ll
ask you for it.”

Twenty minutes later, when they were rising from breakfast, Charlie
appeared, leading with an iron grip a dissolute-looking plainsman, and
carrying a revolver in his other hand.

“Hello!” cried Young Van. “What’s this? What are you doing with that
gun?”

“I took it away from this man. He was hiding out there behind a
pile of bones. I reckon he was trying to get away when his horse went
lame and the daylight caught him.”

[Illustration: “‘You go back to your quarters.’”]

“What has he to say for himself?”

“It’s a ---- lie!” growled the stranger. “I was riding in to ask for a
job, an’ I hadn’t more’n set down to rest--”

“You ride by night, eh?”

“Well--” the stranger hesitated--“not gen’ally. But I was so near--”

“Here, here!” cried Old Van. “What’s all this talk about? I guess you
know what to do with him. Get about it.”

“What do you mean by that?” cried Young Van, flushing.

“What do I mean by it? What is generally done with horse thieves?”

The stranger blanched. “You call me a--”

But Young Van checked him. “We don’t know that he is a horse thief.”

“I do, and that’s enough. Charlie, take him off, and make a clean job
of it.”

“Charlie,” cried Young Van, “stay where you are!” He turned hotly on
his brother. “The worst we have any reason to believe about this man
is that he put up that placard.”

“Well, doesn’t that prove him one of the gang?”

“We have no proof of anything.”

“You keep out of this, Gus! Charlie, do as I tell you.”

Charlie hesitated, and looked inquiringly at the younger engineer.
This drove Old Van beyond reason. He suddenly snatched the revolver
from the cook, shouting angrily: “If you won’t obey orders, I’ll see
to it myself!”

But Young Van, with a quick movement, gripped the weapon, bent it back
out of his brother’s grasp, snapped it open, ejected the cartridges,
and silently returned it. Old Van held it in his hand and looked at
it, then at the five cartridges, where they had fallen on the ground.
Then, with an expression his brother had never before seen on his
face, he let the weapon fall on the ground among the cartridges, and
walked away to the headquarters tent.

“Charlie,” said Young Van, “keep this man safe until the sheriff comes
back.”

“All right, sir,” Charlie replied.

The cook turned away with his prisoner, and Young Van’s eyes sought
the ground. He had almost come to blows with his brother, and that
before the men, about the worst thing that could have taken place. The
incident seemed the natural culmination of these days of depression
and pulling at odds.

“It looks like the sheriff coming in now, sir.”

Young Van started and looked up. Charlie, still grasping the stranger,
was pointing down the track, where a troop of horsemen could be seen
approaching. They drew rapidly nearer, and soon the two leaders could
be distinguished. One was unmistakably Bowlegged Bill Lane. The other
was a slender man, hatless, with rumpled hair, and a white
handkerchief bound around his forehead. Young Van walked out to meet
them, and saw, with astonishment, that the hatless rider was Paul
Carhart; and never had face of man or woman been more welcome to his
eyes.

The troop reined up, dismounted, and mopped their sweating faces.
Their horses stood damp and trembling with exhaustion. All together,
the little band bore witness of desperate riding, and to judge from
certain signs, of fighting.

“Well, Gus,” said Carhart, cheerily, “how is everything?”

But Young Van was staring at the bandage. “Where have you been?” he
cried.

“Chasing Jack Flagg.”

“But they hit you!”

“Only grazed. If it hadn’t been dark, we should have got him.”

“But how in--”

The chief smiled. “How did I get here?” he said, completing the
question. “The train was stalled last night only a dozen or fifteen
miles back. The tender of that model of 1865 locomotive they gave us
went off the track, and the engine got in the same fix trying to put
it on again. When I left, they were waiting for the other train behind
to come up and help. They ought to be along any time this morning.
Where’s your brother?”

Young Van had turned to look at a group of three or four prisoners,
whom two of the posse were guarding.

“Where’s your brother?” Carhart asked again.

“My brother! Oh, back at the tent, I guess.”

The chief gave him a curious glance, for the young engineer was
flushing oddly. “Tell him to wait a minute for me, will you? I want to
see you both before the work starts.”

Young Van walked over to the headquarters tent and stood a moment at
the entrance. His brother, seated at the table, heard him, but did not
look up.

“Mr. Carhart is back,” said the young man, finally. “He asked me to
tell you to wait for him.”

Old Van gave not the slightest indication that he had heard, but he
waited. When the chief entered, motioning Young Van to join him, he
went briskly at what he had to say. He sat erect and energetic,
apparently unconscious of the red stain on his bandage, ignoring the
fact that he had as yet eaten no breakfast; and at his first words the
blood began to flow again through the arteries of this complicated
organization that men called the Red Hills extension of the S. & W.

“Now, boys,” he began, “it was rather a slow ride back from Sherman,
and I had time for a little arithmetic. Through our friend Peet--”

“D--n him!” interrupted Old Van.

The chief paused at this for another of his questioning glances, then
went quietly on. “Through our friend Peet, we have lost so much time
that it isn’t very cheerful business figuring it up. But we aren’t
going to lose any more.”

“Oh! you saw Peet!” said Young Van.

“Yes, I saw him. We won’t bother over this lost time. What we are
interested in now is carrying through our schedule. And I needn’t tell
you that from this moment we must work together as prettily as a
well-oiled engine.” He said this significantly, and paused. Of the two
men before him, the younger flushed again and lowered his eyes, the
elder looked away and muttered something which could not be
understood. “I’m bringing up a hundred-odd more men on this train.
When they get in, put them right at work. Is Dimond in camp now?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll send him up to take charge of the well business. He can do it,
now that it is so well started. We need Scribner.”

“How much must we do a day now, to make it?” asked Young Van.

“We shall average as near as possible to two miles.”

Young Van whistled, then recovered himself. “All right, Mr. Carhart,”
he said. “Two miles is good. Beginning to-day, I suppose?”

“Beginning to-day.”

The chief spent very little time on himself. He was soon out and
riding along the grade, showing no nervousness, yet making it plain to
every man on the job that he meant to give an exhibition of “the
fanciest track-laying ever seen in these United States.” That was the
way Young Van, in the exuberance of his new-found spirits, expressed
it to the foreman of the iron squad.

But even Young Van’s enthusiasm was not equal to the facts. When the
night whistle blew, and the dripping workmen dropped their picks and
sledges, and rails, and ties, and reins, and sat down to breathe
before washing up for supper,--there was water for washing now,--the
conductor of the material train called to Young Van, and waved toward
a stake beside the track. “See that stick,” he shouted.

“Yes, I see it.”

“Well, sir,”--the conductor was excited too,--“I’ve been setting up
one of those things for every time we moved ahead a train length. My
train’s a little over a thousand foot long, and--and how many of those
sticks do you suppose I’ve set up since morning? Give a guess now!”

“I should say eight or ten. We’ve been getting over the ground pretty
rapidly.”

“No, sir! No, sir! Fifteen there were, fifteen of ’em!”

“Fifteen thousand feet--three miles!” The young man stood a moment,
then turned and walked soberly away.

It was early the next morning that Young Van recalled Jack Flagg’s
communication, which he still had in his pocket. He saw that the chief
was about starting off for his breakfast, and called him back and gave
him the paper. Carhart read it, smiled rather contemptuously, and
handed it back.

“That man,” he said, “was just about big enough to stir up a little
trouble in the camp. I’m glad we’re through with him.”

“I wish I was sure we were,” replied Young Van.

“Hello! you’re right, Gus. Here he is again.”

Charlie was approaching with another dirty paper in his hand. “I
didn’t think anybody could get in last night, Mr. Carhart,” he said
ruefully, “but--here is what they left.”

The chief took this second paper and read it aloud:--

    MY DEAR MR. CARHART: My shooting’s getting bum. Better luck
    next time.

     JACK FLAGG.

“Flagg ought to be on the stage,” he said when he had tossed the paper
away. “He is the sort of man that can’t get along without an
audience.”




CHAPTER VIII

SHOTS--AND A SCOUTING PARTY


It was early evening. Gus Vandervelt, nervous, exultant, leaving a
trail of cigarette stubs behind him, was pacing up and down the track.
When he faced the east, his eyes saw far beyond the cars and wagons
and clustering tents. Off there, in each mile of the many they had
travelled, lay a witness of some battle won. They had fought like
soldiers; and the small successes had come rapidly until the men were
beginning to take victory as a matter of course. The most stupid of
them understood now just what sort of thing the reserved, magnetic
Paul Carhart stood for, and they were finding it a very good sort of
thing indeed.

As Young Van walked, his imagination leaping forward from battles
fought to the battles to come, he heard a step, and saw the stocky
figure of his brother approaching through the dusk. He stiffened up
and paused, but Old Van marched by without the twitch of a muscle. The
young man watched him until he had faded out of sight, then lighted
another cigarette, and continued his beat.

A little later, smiling in a nervous way he had of late, Young Van
turned toward the headquarters tent. He knew that his brother had gone
to make up the material train and would not return for some time.

He found Paul Carhart sitting alone, sewing a button on the yellow
linen trousers.

“Did you see any more drunks?” Carhart asked, pausing, needle in air.

Young Van, now that he thought of it, had observed signs of unusual
good feeling among the laborers.

“We’re a little too near this Palos settlement to suit me,” said the
chief. “Keeping your men in the desert rather spoils one for the
advantages of civilization. I never had an easier time with laborers.
But these men are a bad lot to bring within five miles of a saloon.
They will be fighting before morning.”

“I suppose they will. I hadn’t thought of it. By the way, there’s a
rumor about that you had a letter from Mr. Flint to-day.”

Carhart shook his head. “No,” said he, “that’s the thing I want most
just now.”

For a while they were silent. Young Van’s face grew sober. The track,
this double line of rusty steel, had so absorbed the energy of all of
them that it seemed now, to his inexperience, the complete outward
expression of their lives. He could think of little else. When not
engrossed by the actual work, his thoughts were ranging beyond, far
into the deeper significance of it. Crowding on the heels of the
constructors would come settlers. Already mushroom towns were pushing
up along the line behind them. With settlers would come well-boring,
irrigation, farming, and ranching. Timber, bricks, stone would be
rushed into these new lands, to be converted into hotels, shops,
banks, dwellings. The marvellously intricate interrelations of
civilization would suddenly be found existing and at work. There would
be rude, hard struggles, much drinking and gambling, and some
shooting. The license of the plains would be found strangely mingled
with law and with what we call right. The church and the saloon would
march on, side by side. And, finally, out of the uproar and the
fighting would rise, for better or worse, a new phase of life.
Thinking these things, Young Van could not forget that they five--Paul
Carhart, John Flint, Old Van, Harry Scribner, and himself--were
bringing it about. They were breaking the way, pioneers of the
expansion of a restless, mighty people.

“No,”--Carhart was speaking,--“that letter was from Peet. You might
enjoy reading it.”

Young Van started from his revery, took the letter, and spread it
open. “My dear Mr. Carhart,” it ran, “I am very sorry, indeed, about
the delay of that lot of spikes. I have arranged with Mr. Tiffany to
buy up all we can find here in Sherman and hurry them on to you.
Please keep me informed by wire of any delays and inconveniences. You
will understand, I am sure, that we mean to stop at nothing to keep
you from the slightest annoyance and delay in these matters. Very
faithfully yours, L. W. Peet.”

“But we have spikes enough,” said the assistant, looking up. “What
does he mean?”

Carhart smiled. “Just what he says; that he wouldn’t delay us for
worlds.”

“‘Very faithfully yours,’ too. What is all this, Mr. Carhart? What
have you done to him--hypnotized him?”

Carhart smiled. “Hardly,” he replied; adding, “Reach me that spool of
thread, will you?” But instead of continuing his needlework, Carhart,
when he received the spool, laid it down beside him and sat, deep in
thought, gazing out through the tent-opening into the night.

“Gus,” he asked abruptly, “where did the operator go?”

Young Van glanced up at his chief, then answered quietly: “To bed, I
think. I heard him say he was going to turn in early to-night.”

“Would you mind stirring him out?”

“Certainly not.”

“Wait a minute. We have enough firewood on hand to keep the engines
going six or perhaps eight days. That won’t do.”

Young Van was slightly puzzled.

“Go ahead, Gus. Tell him to meet me at his instrument in ten minutes.”

Young Van left the tent at once. When he returned, after rousing the
sleepy operator, he observed that the chief was still deep in thought.
“All right,” said Young Van; “he’s getting up.”

“Much obliged, Gus.” Carhart started to resume his mending, then
lowered his needle. “And all for the want of a horseshoe nail,” he
hummed softly.

Young Van, more puzzled than before, looked up from a heap of papers
which had drawn his attention. Carhart smiled a little.

“You remember?” he said,--

    “For the want of a nail the shoe was lost;
    For the want of the shoe the horse was lost;
    For the want of the horse the rider was lost;
    For the want of the rider the battle was lost;
    And all--”

He stopped and looked out. A partly clad figure was hurrying by toward
the shelter that covered the telegraph instruments.

“There he goes now. I’m a little bothered, Gus. It would be a humorous
sort of a joke on me if I should be held up now for a little
firewood.”

“I suppose we couldn’t cut up ties?” suggested Young Van.

“Can’t spare ’em. I’ve ordered wood from Red Hills, but we shan’t be
able to pick up enough there. And if we don’t get some pretty soon,
the engines will have to stop.”

Young Van took down a letter file and glanced through it. In a moment
he had drawn out a recent message from Peet. “Here,” he said, “Mr.
Peet promised to have a big lot of wood on the way by to-day. That
leaves some margin for delays.”

Carhart rose, and nodded. “Yes,” he replied, “but not margin enough.”

“You expect something to happen right off?”

“Couldn’t say to that. But my bones feel queer to-night--have felt
queer all day. Tiffany writes that Bourke, who is in charge of the H.
D. & W. construction, was in Sherman the other day. And Commodore
Durfee was expected at Red Hills a week ago. Well,--” He shrugged his
shoulders and went out and over to join the operator.

“We’ll try to get the man on the next division,” said Carhart. “Ask
him if the line is clear all the way.”

The operator extended his hand to send the message, but checked it in
midair. “Why,” he exclaimed, “he is calling us!” He looked up prepared
to see surprise equal to his own on Carhart’s face. But what he did
see there mystified him. The chief was slowly nodding. He could not
say that he had expected this call,--the thing was a coincidence,--and
yet he was not at all surprised.

“‘Trouble on Barker Hills division--’” The operator was repeating as
the instrument clicked.

“That’s a hundred miles or so back--”

“Hundred and thirty-eight. ‘Operator on middle division,’ he
says, ‘wires fifty men trying to seize station--has notified
Sherman--assistance promised. Big armed force Barker Hills led by
large man with red mustache--’”

“That’s Bourke himself,” muttered Carhart.

The operator’s hand shook a little. His eyes were shining. “Here’s
some more, Mr. Carhart,--‘Have tried to hold my station, but--’”

“Wait,” cried the chief, sharply. “Quick--say this: ‘Has supply train
passed west to-day?’”

“‘Has--supply--train--’” the operator repeated after a
moment--“‘passed--west-to-day?’”

“Now what does he answer?”

“Just a moment--Here he is!--‘Not--not--’ Hold on there, what’s the
matter?”

“Has he stopped?”

“Stopped short. That’s queer.”

“Do you think so?” said Carhart, looking down into the white face of
the operator. The effect of the young man’s excitement was hardly
lessened by the shock of rumpled hair about his forehead and by the
white collar of a nightgown which appeared above his hastily buttoned
coat.

“You mean--?”

“Wait a little longer.” For several minutes they were silent, the
operator leaning his elbows on the table, Carhart bending over him.
Then, “Try him again,” said Carhart.

The operator obeyed. There was no response. Carhart drew up an empty
cracker box and sat down. Twenty minutes passed.

“Click--clickety--click--click,” said the instrument. The operator, in
a husky voice, translated the message as it came in: “‘P. Carhart,
chief west’n ext. S. & W.: On receipt of this you will stop all
construction work until further instructions, by order of Vice-Pres.
Chambers--H. L. Tiffany.’”

“That’s funny!” said the operator.

Carhart did not seem to hear the exclamation. He was frowning
slightly, and his lips were moving. At length he said, “Take this:--

    “To C. O’F. BOURKE,

     Barker Hills Station:--

     “Have another try, old chap. You haven’t quite caught Hen
     Tiffany’s style yet.

     “P. CARHART.”

The operator laughed softly and nervously as his deft fingers
transmitted this personal communication.

“Got it all through?” asked the chief.

“Yes, sir; all through.”

“All right, then, go back to bed. Good night.”

“Good night, Mr. Carhart.”

       *       *       *       *       *

For several days now no word had come through from Flint, on “mile
109.” But twenty hours after the trouble at Barker Hills--just before
supper time of the following day--a party of plainsmen came galloping
into camp. One of these, a wizened little man with a kindly smile and
shrewd eyes, dismounted before the headquarters tent and peered in
between the flaps. “Mr. Carhart here?”

“He will be in two minutes,” replied Young Van, rising from the table.
“Come in, sir!”

“Your Mr. Flint asked me to hand him this.” The wizened one produced a
letter, and dropped into the chair which Young Van had brought
forward. “Having quite a time up there, isn’t he?”

“How so?” asked Young Van. It was well to speak guardedly.

“Oh, he’s in it, deep,” was the reply. “Commodore Durfee’s at the
Frisco Hotel in Red Hills. They say he came out over the ‘Wobbly’ on a
construction train and rode through. Pretty spry yet, the Old
Commodore. He’s hired a bad man named Flagg--Jack Flagg--and sent him
out with a hundred or so men to seize your bridge at La Paz. Sorry I
couldn’t stay there to see the excitement, but I’m hurrying east. Mr.
Flint thought maybe I could pick up one of your trains running back to
Sherman. If I can’t do that, I’ll strike off south for Pierrepont, and
get through that way.”

Young Van hesitated, and was about to reply, when he heard the chief
approaching.

Carhart came in from the rear, nodded to the stranger, and picked up
the envelope. “You brought this, sir?” he asked.

“Yes; Mr. Flint asked me to.”

Very deliberately Carhart read the letter, and, without the slightest
change of expression, tossed it on the table. “You must have supper
with us,” he said. “If you stopped with John Flint you perhaps know
how little an engineer’s hospitality amounts to, but such as we have
we shall be very glad to share with you.”

“Thank you,” replied the stranger.

“You are a ranchman, I presume?” Carhart went on.

“Yes--in northwest of Red Hills. I go to Sherman every year.”

Young Van spoke, “He thought of taking one of our trains through.”

Carhart smiled dryly. “I should be greatly obliged to you, sir, if you
could take a train through,” he said. “That’s something we don’t seem
able to do.”

The wizened one glanced up with a keen expression about his eyes.
“Having trouble back along the line?” he asked.

“You might call it trouble. My old friend Bourke, of the H. D. & W.,
has cut in behind us with a small army.” He gave a little shrug. “I
can’t get through. I can’t get either way now that they’ve got in
between Flint and Red Hills.”

“Then I’d better ride down to Pierrepont, hadn’t I?”

“I’m afraid that’s the best that I can suggest, sir.”

“You people certainly seem to be playing in hard luck, Mr. Carhart.”
As the wizened one ventured this observation he crossed his legs and
thrust his hands into his pockets. The action caused his coat to fall
back, and disclosed a small gold pendant hanging from his watch guard.
Young Van observed it, and glanced at Carhart, but he could not tell
whether the chief had taken it in.

“It’s worse than hard luck,” Carhart replied; “it begins to look like
defeat. We have been dependent on the Sherman people for material,
food, water,--everything. Now Bourke has shut us off.”

“But you seem to have plenty of material here, Mr. Carhart.”

“Rails--yes. But it takes more than rails.”

“And you surely have a large enough force.”

“Yes, but moving several hundred men back a hundred and forty miles,
fighting it out with Bourke, clearing the track, and getting trains
through from Sherman, will take time. Long before we can make any
headway, the H. D. & W. will have beaten us into Red Hills.”

“Ah--I see,” nodded the wizened one. “You’re going back after Bourke.”

“What else can I do! I can’t even wire Sherman without sending a man
two hundred miles through the desert. The most important thing to my
employers is to maintain possession of the line.”

“Of course--I see. I don’t know much about these things myself.”

After supper the wizened one announced that he must ride on with his
party.

“You won’t stop with us to-night?” asked Carhart.

“No, thanks. It’ll be light an hour or two yet. I’ve got to move fast.
I’ll lose a good deal, you see, going around by way of Pierrepont.”

“That’s so, of course. Well, good-by, sir.”

“Good-by.”

The riders swung into their saddles and cantered off eastward. Carhart
turned to Young Van and slowly winked. “Come up to headquarters, Gus,”
he said. “I’ve got some work for you.”

“I rather guess you have, if we’re going after Bourke.”

“After Bourke?” Carhart smiled. “You didn’t take that in, Gus?”

“Well--of course, I suspected.”

“You saw his badge?”

“Yes.”

“Bourke always has a lot of men about him from his own college.”

“You really think it, then?”

“It would be hard to say what I think. But I’ve been going on the
assumption that he is one of Bourke’s engineers.”

They were approaching the headquarters tent. Young Van looked up and
saw that “Arizona,” Carhart’s new saddle-horse, was hitched before
it. They entered the tent, and the first thing the chief did was to
get out two long blue-nosed revolvers and slip them into his holsters.
A moment later, and Dimond, fitted out for a long ride, appeared at
the entrance, saying, “All ready, Mr. Carhart!”

“Now, Gus,” said the chief, “I’m off for ‘mile 109.’ I want you to get
about two hundred men together and send them after me to-night or
to-morrow morning. I’ll tell Scribner, as I pass him, to have fifty
more for you. Every man must have a rifle and plenty of ball
cartridges. Send Byers”--this was the instrument man of the long
nose--“and two or three others whom you think capable of commanding
forty or fifty men each.”

“And Bourke?”

“We’ll leave him to Mr. Chambers. Give Charlie instructions to
strengthen his night guard. Some men will be sent back to guard the
second and third wells.”

Young Van involuntarily passed his hand across his eyes.

“I’m afraid I’m not much good,” he said slowly. “I didn’t grasp this
situation very well. It’s rather a new phase of engineering for me. We
seem to be plunging all of a sudden into tactics and strategy.”

“That’s about the size of it, Gus,” the chief responded. He had
exchanged his old straw hat for a sombrero. His spurs jingled as he
moved. There was a sparkle in his eye and a new sort of military
alertness about his figure. He paused at the tent entrance, and looked
back. “That’s about the size of it, Gus,” he repeated with a half
smile. “And I’m afraid I rather like it.”

“Well, good-by. I’ll start the men right along after you.”

Carhart mounted his horse, Dimond followed his example, and the two
rode away in the direction of the La Paz bridge. And ten hours later,
at five in the morning, a line of armed horsemen--a long-nosed young
man with the light of a pirate soul in his eyes riding at the head, an
athletic pile-inspector and a college-bred rodman bringing up the
rear--rode westward after him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Troubles had been coming other than singly on “mile 109.” Jack Flagg,
with a force which, while smaller than Flint’s, was made up of
well-armed and well-paid desperadoes, had seized the ridge which shut
in the La Paz Valley on the west, had pitched camp, erected rude
intrenchments of loose stone, and stopped for the moment all work on
the mile-long trestle. So much John Flint had set down in the note
which the wizened one had delivered to Carhart. The next adventure
befell on the night after the departure of the wizened one; and it
brought out the ugly strain in the opera bouffe business of these wild
railroading days.

Antonio, the watchman, sat on the edge of the eastern abutment and
dangled his feet. He was so drowsy that he even stopped rolling
cigarettes. He had chosen a comfortable seat, where a pile of timbers
afforded a rest for his back. To be sure, there was the possibility
of rolling off into the water and sand if he should really fall
asleep; but elsewhere he would be exposed to the searching eyes of the
engineer in charge, and those eyes were very searching indeed. He was
thinking, in a dreamy way, of what he would do on the Sunday, with his
week’s pay in his pocket and the village of La Paz but twelve miles
away.

Now and again his complacent eyes roved out across the river, which
slipped by with such a gentle, swishing murmur. He could look over the
tops of the four unfinished piers and the western abutment and see the
trestle where it was continued on the farther side. These Americanos,
what driving devils they were! And when they had built their railroad,
what were they going to do with it? To go fast--Antonio shrugged his
shoulders and resumed the cigarettes--it is very well, but to what
purpose? When they have rushed madly across the continent, what will
they find there? Perhaps they will then rush back again. These
Americanos!

He let his eyes rest upon the row of piers--one, two, three, four of
them. What labor they had caused--how the men had sweat, and muttered,
and toiled--how the foremen had cursed! Four piers of masonry rising
out of the ghostly river. Very strong they must be, for the La Paz was
not always gentle. In the spring and fall it was savage; and then it
had an ugly way of undermining bridges, as those other foolish
Americanos had learned to their cost when they built the wagon bridge
at La Paz. He smiled lazily. But suddenly he sat up straight. A long
thin figure of a man was moving about among the piles of timber. It
was the señor Flint--and such a prowler as he was, day and night,
night and day. He lived this bridge, did the señor; he thought it, he
ate it, he drank it, he talked it, he slept it,--and for why? It could
not be that he believed it living to think and breathe bridge and only
bridge. It could not be that man was made for this--to become a slave
to this trestle structure which was slowly crawling, like some
monster centipede, across the sands of the La Paz. It was very good
for the trestle perhaps, and the bridge, but was it so good for the
señor?

[Illustration: “... this trestle structure which was slowly crawling,
like some monster centipede, across the sands of the La Paz.”]

Antonio smiled again, and settled back; the señor was passing on. He
was getting into a boat. He was poling across the languid, dimpling
river. He was getting out on the farther bank; he was walking up the
long slope, keeping out of the moonlight in the shadow of the
trestle-thing; he was peering up toward the embattled ridge beyond,
where lay the redoubtable Flagg.

... The cigarette dropped from Antonio’s unnerved fingers, and fell
with a sizzling splash into the water below. He drew an involuntary
quick breath, and the smoke in his nostrils went unexpectedly into his
throat and made him cough. Then trembling a little, he got slowly to
his feet and stood staring out there over the serene surface of the
river. He rubbed his eyes and stared again. A shot,--two shots,--which
was right? Two--no, one! And that insignificant little dark heap
yonder in the moonlight--was that the señor? What a trouble!--and he
had been so comfortable there on the abutment!

Antonio was frightened. He thought of running away from these
fate-tempting Americans; but in that case he would lose his pay and
those Sundays at La Paz. He waited a while. Perhaps he was dreaming
and would make himself ridiculous. He walked about, and tried
different points of view. And at last he went to rouse his foreman.

They got Flint in--Haddon, in night-shirt, bare legs, and shoes with
flapping strings to them; the foreman of the pile-driver crew in
night-shirt and hat, and two big-shouldered bridgemen. There was a
ball somewhere in Flint, and there were certain complications along
the line of his chronic ailment, so that his usefulness was, so to
speak, impaired. And Haddon, during what was left of the night and
during all of the following day, had distinctly a bad time of it.

While these things were going on, Paul Carhart was riding westward at
a hot gallop with Dimond close behind. It was shortly after sunset
that he reined up on the crest of the eastern ridge and looked out
over the La Paz. The barren valley was flooded with light. The yellow
slopes were delicately tinted rose and violet, the rock pillars stood
out black and sharply defined, the western hills formed a royal purple
barrier to the streams of color; and through this glowing scene
extended the square-jointed trestle, unmistakably the work of man
where all else was from another hand. Never in the progress of this
undertaking which we have been following across the plains had the
contrast been so marked between the patient beauty of the old land and
the uncompromising ugliness of the structure which Paul Carhart was
carrying into and through it. And yet the chief,--an intelligent,
educated man, not wanting in feeling for the finer side of
life,--though he took in the wonders of the sunset, looked last and
longest at the trestle and the uncompleted bridge. Then he rode down,
glancing, in his quizzical way, at the camp, which had been moved back
behind a knoll, at the piles of stone and timber, at the corral, and
at the groups of idle, gloomy workmen.

Fortunately the chief was prepared for surprises. News that the
trestle had been burned to the ground would have drawn no more than a
glance and a nod from him. His mind had not been idle during the ride.
He knew that the strongest defence partakes of an offensive character,
and he had no notion of sitting back to await developments. Of several
sets of plans which he had been considering, one was so plainly the
simplest and best that he was determined to try it. It involved a
single daring act, a sort of raid, which it would be necessary to
carry through without a vestige of legal authority. But this feature
of it disturbed him very much less than a mere casual acquaintance
with this quiet gentleman might have led one to suppose. Perhaps he
had, like the red-blooded Tiffany, a vein of “Scotch-Irish” down in
the depths of his nature which could on occasion be opened up.

[Illustration: “The cigarette dropped from Antonio’s unnerved
fingers.”]

After looking out for the comfort of John Flint, and after conferring
with Haddon and going thoroughly over the ground, Carhart sent for
Dimond.

“How much more are you good for?” he asked.

Dimond grinned. “For everything that’s going,” he replied.

“Good. Do you know where the H. D. & W. is building down, a dozen or
fifteen miles north of here?”

“I guess I can find it,” said Dimond.

And with a fresh horse and a man or two, and with certain specific
instructions, Dimond rode north shortly after nightfall of that same
day. At eight in the morning he was back, hollow-eyed but happy. And
Paul Carhart, when Dimond had reported, was seen to smile quietly to
himself.




CHAPTER IX

A SHOW-DOWN


All was quiet at the main camp. Excepting that the division engineers
were short-handed, and that Paul Carhart was away, things were going
on with some regularity. Scribner rode in late on the second
afternoon, and toward the end of the evening, when the office work was
done, he and Young Van played a few rubbers of cribbage. The camp went
to sleep as usual.

At some time between eleven o’clock and midnight the two young
engineers tacitly put up the cards and settled back for a smoke.

“Do you know,” said Young Van, after a silence, “I don’t believe this
stuff at all.”

Scribner tipped back, put his feet on the table, puffed a moment, and
slowly nodded. “Same here, Gus,” he replied. “Fairy tales, all of
it.”

“You can’t settle the ownership of a railroad by civil war.”

“No; but if you can get possession by a five-barrelled bluff, you can
give the other fellow a devil of a time getting it back.”

“That’s true, of course.” They were silent again.

... “What’s that!” said Scribner. Both dropped their feet and sat up.

“Horse,” said Young Van.

“Devil of a way off.”

“Must be. Lost it now.”

“No--there it is again. Now, what do you suppose?”

“Don’t know. Let’s step out and look around.”

Standing on the sloping ground in front of the tent, they could at
first distinguish nothing.

“Gives you a queer feeling,” said Scribner, “horse galloping--this
time of night--”

“--just now,” Young Van completed, “when things are going on.”

“Coming from the east, too,--where Bourke is. Know him?”

“No--never met him. Heard of him, of course.”

“He’s a good one. Wish he was on our side.”

“I guess Mr. Carhart can match him.”

Scribner nodded. “This sort of a fight’s likely to settle down into
the plain question of who’s got the cards. There’ll come a time when
both sides’ll have to lay down their hands, and the cards’ll make the
difference one way or the other. Just a show-down, after all.”

“I think myself Mr. Carhart’s got the cards. He didn’t look like a
loser when he went off the other night.”

“If he has,” said Scribner, “you can bet he’ll ‘see’ Durfee and Bourke
every time.”

... “Here’s that horse, Harry.”

“Big man--looks like--”

“It’s Tiffany.--Good evening, Mr. Tiffany.”

“How are you, boys? Paul here?”

“Why, no, Mr. Tiffany. He’s up on ‘mile 109.’”

“‘Mile 109!’” Tiffany whistled. “What the devil! You don’t mean that
those--” he paused.

“Commodore Durfee’s at Red Hills, you know,” said Young Van.

“The ---- he is!”

“And he’s sent a force to hold the west bank of the La Paz.”

By this time the chief engineer of the S. & W. had got his big frame
to the ground. He bore unmistakable evidences of long and hard riding.
Even in that dim light they could see that his face was seamed with
the marks of exhaustion.

“Haven’t got a wee bit drappie, have you?” he asked.

“I certainly have,” Young Van replied. “Come right in.”

Tiffany tossed his hat on the table, reached out for the flask and
tumbler, and tossed down a drink which would have done credit to the
hardiest Highlander of them all. “Now show me the stable,” he said.
“Want to fix my horse for the night. I’ve half killed him.”

A quarter of an hour later the three men were back in the headquarters
tent.

“How did you get through, Mr. Tiffany?” asked Young Van.

“Came out on the first train to Barker Hills. Bourke’s holding the
station there. He had a couple of our engines, and was working east,
but we stopped that. Peet’s there now with Sheriff McGraw and a bundle
of warrants and a hundred and fifty men--more, I guess, by this time.
Just another thimbleful o’ that-- Thanks! We’ve got Bourke blocked at
Barker Hills, all right. Before the week’s out we’ll have the track
opened proper for you. Mr. De Reamer’s taken hold himself, you know.
He’s at Sherman, with some big lawyers--and maybe he ain’t mad all
through!”

“Then Commodore Durfee hasn’t got the board of directors?”

“Not by a good deal! I doubt if even General Carrington’s votes would
swing it for him now. But then, I don’t know such a heap about that
part of it. I was telling you--I’ll take a nip o’ that. Thanks!--I was
telling you. We come along the Middle Division, running slow,--we were
afraid of obstructions on the track,--”

“Did you find any?”

“Did we find any?--Well I guess.” He held out a pair of big hands,
palms up. “I got those splinters handling cross-ties in the dark. And
about the middle of the Barker Hills division--at the foot of Crump’s
Hill,--we found some rails missing.

“Well, sir, I left ’em there to fix it up--we had a repair car in the
train--and got my horse off and rode around south of the station. Had
some sandwiches in my pocket, but didn’t get a drop of water till I
struck your first well, last night. You ain’t using that now?”

“No, we’ve moved up to two and three--this way.”

“There was a blamed fool tried to stop me, a mile south of Barker
Hills Station--yelled at me; and fired when I didn’t answer.”--
Tiffany paused with this, and looked grimly from one to the other of
the young men. Then he drew a big revolver from his belt, opened it,
and exhibited the cylinder. One chamber was empty. They were silent
for a time.

“You’ll find Mr. Carhart’s cot all ready for you, Mr. Tiffany,” said
Young Van, at length.

“All right. Can I get a breakfast at five? I’m going on to find Paul.
That’s where the fun’ll be--where you find Paul Carhart. I wonder if
you boys know what it means to have the opportunity to work with that
man--eh? He had us all guessing about the old Paradise. And he was
right--oh, he was right. There hasn’t a rail come through since.”

Scribner and Young Van were looking at each other. “Then those rails
didn’t come from Pennsylvania?” said the former.

“He didn’t tell you, eh?” Tiffany grinned. “Well, I guess it ain’t a
secret now. Mr. Chambers never even grunted when I told him, but he
looked queer. And Mr. De Reamer ain’t said anything yet. Why, Paul, he
see first off that we weren’t ever going to get the rest o’ those
rails. He see, too, that Bourke was going to cut him off if he could.
And what does he do? Why he comes down and walks off with the old
Paradise Southern--rails, ties, everything. He never even tells Peet
and me. It’s up to him, he thinks, and if he makes good, nobody can
kick.” Tiffany was grinning again. “Yes, sir,” he continued, “Paul
Carhart just naturally confiscated the Paradise Southern, and it was
the prettiest job anybody ever see. And it’s funny--he says to me,
while we were out there at Total Wreck pulling up the freight yard by
the roots, ‘Tiffany,’ he says, ‘if you hadn’t told about how you stole
those Almighty and Great Windy cars from the sheriff of Erie County,
I’d never ‘a’ thought of it.’ Well, I’ll turn in, boys; good night.”

“Good night,” said Young Van.

“Good night,” said Scribner; “I’ll ride on with you as far as my
division to-morrow, Mr. Tiffany. I can give you a fresh horse there.”

The chief engineer of the S. & W. disappeared between the flaps of
Carhart’s tent. They could hear him throwing off his clothes and
getting into bed. Another moment and they heard him snoring. They
stood gazing off down the grade.

“Well, what do you think of that?” said Scribner. Young Van looked at
his companion. “I think this,” he replied: “I wouldn’t miss this work
and this fight under Paul Carhart for five years’ pay.”

Scribner nodded. “The loss of an engineer’s pay, Gus, wouldn’t make
much difference one way or the other,” he replied, and his face
lighted up with enthusiasm. “But it’s a great game!”

       *       *       *       *       *

And so it was that something like two days after Carhart’s arrival on
“mile 109,” Tiffany, a little the worse for wear, but still able to
ride and eat and sleep and swear, came slowly down the slope into the
camp, where Flint was hovering midway between the present and the
hereafter. He found the chief of construction deep in a somewhat
complicated problem, and after a bite to eat he climbed up the ridge
behind the camp to the tent which Carhart was occupying.

“Well, Paul, how goes it?” said he.

“First-rate. How much do you know?”

“Precious little.”

Carhart mused a moment, then pulled out from a heap of papers one on
which he had sketched a map. “Here we are,” said he. “The trestle is
fifty to a hundred and fifty feet high, from ridge to ridge. Flagg has
strung out his men along the west ridge, about a mile from here, and
across the end of the trestle.”

“Yes, yes,” broke in Tiffany, “I see. I’ve been all over this ground.”

“Well, now, you see these two knolls on the west ridge, a little back
of Flagg’s position? The one to the north is a hundred and twenty feet
higher than Flagg’s men; the one to the south is eighty feet higher
and only a quarter of a mile away from him. His line of retreat lies
through the hollow between the two knolls, where the track is to run.
Now if I put fifty or a hundred men on each knoll, I can command his
position, and even shut off his retreat. His choice then would lie
between moving north or south along the crest of the ridge, which is
also commanded by the two knolls, or coming down the slope toward us.”

“Flagg hasn’t occupied the knolls, eh?”

“I believe he hasn’t. I’ve been watching them with the glasses.”

“I wonder why the Commodore put such a man in charge.”

“Oh, Flagg has some reputation as a bad man. He’s the sort General
Carrington employed in the Colorado fights.”

They talked on for a time, then Carhart put up his map and they walked
out. It was evening. Across the valley, at the point where the
trestle met the rising ground, they could see lights, some of them
moving about. Tiffany walked with his hands deep in his trousers
pockets. Finally he said thoughtfully:--

“The more I think of it, Paul, the more I’m impressed by what
Commodore Durfee has done. He has got possession of our grade over
there--we can’t deny that. We’ve either got to give up, or else take
the offensive and fight. And that would look rotten, now, wouldn’t
it?”

“Yes,” Carhart replied, “it would. He has made a pretty play. And as a
play--as a bluff--it comes pretty near being effective.”

“D--n near!” Tiffany muttered.

“But now suppose we take those knolls--quietly, in the night--and
close in across Flagg’s rear, hold a line from knoll to knoll, what
then? Wouldn’t he have to shoot first?”

“Well, perhaps. But it would put both sides in a mean light. Oh, why
didn’t John stand him off in the first place! Then he could have shot
from our property, and been right in shooting.”

They had been pacing slowly up and down. Now Carhart stopped, and sat
down on a convenient stick of timber. Tiffany followed his example.
The moon was rising behind them, and the valley and the trestle and
the rude intrenchments of timber and rock on the opposite ridge and
the knolls outlined against the sky grew more distinct.

“Yes,” Carhart said slowly, “it’s a very good bluff. Commodore Durfee
knows well enough that this sort of business can never settle the real
question. But the question of who gets to Red Hills first is another
thing altogether. The spectacle of Jack Flagg and a well-armed
regiment of desperadoes in front of them, and the knowledge that the
Commodore himself had organized the regiment and sent it out, would
stop some engineers.”

Tiffany leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and gazed
moodily out across the valley. He had been riding hard for four days,
with not enough food and water and scarcely any sleep. Only one night
of the four had found him on a cot--the other nights had been passed
on the ground. In the resulting physical depression his mind had taken
to dwelling on the empty chamber in his revolver--he wished he knew
more of what that leaden ball had accomplished. And now here was John
Flint shot down by a hidden enemy. It was the ugliest work he had been
engaged in for years. When he finally spoke, he could not conceal his
discouragement.

“How about this engineer here, Paul?” he said, still looking out there
over the valley. “Will the regiment and Commodore Durfee stop you?”

“I hope not,” said Carhart.

“You’re going to fight, then--until the governor calls out the state
troops, and throws us all out, and there’s hell to pay?”

“I don’t think so. I’m going to get ready to fight.”

“By putting your men on those two knolls?”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Then I’m going to Red Hills.”

“To Red Hills!” Tiffany sat up. There was more life in his voice.

“Yes.” Carhart laughed a little. “Why not?”

Tiffany half turned and looked earnestly into the face of this unusual
man. The spectacles threw back the moonlight and concealed the eyes
behind them. The lower part of the face was perhaps a trifle leaner
than formerly. The mouth was composed. Tiffany found no answer there
to the question in his own eyes. So he put it in words: “What are you
going to do there, Paul?”

“See Commodore Durfee.”

“See--! Look here, do you know how mad he is? Do you think he came
clear down here from New York, and shoved his old railroad harder than
anybody but you ever shoved one before and hired the rascals that shot
John Flint,--him playing for the biggest stakes on the railroad table
to-day,--do you think he’ll feel like talking to the man who’s put him
to all this trouble?”

“Well,” Carhart hesitated,--“I hope he will.”

“But it’s foolhardy, Paul. You won’t gain anything. Just the sight of
you walking into the Frisco House office may mean gun play. If it was
Bourke, it would be different; but these Durfee men are mad. The
Commodore was never treated this way in his life before. And you’re a
little nervous yourself, Paul. Be careful what you do. He’ll have
lawyers around him--and he’s redhot, remember that.”

“I can’t quite agree with you, Tiffany. I think he’ll talk to me. But
there’s one thing I’ve got to do first, and you can help me there.”

“For God’s sake, then, let me get into the game. I can’t stand this
looking on--fretting myself to death.”

“I want you to take charge here for a day while I go after my
firewood. I came pretty near being held up altogether for want of it.
Bourke cut me off before Peet could get it through.”

“Where can you get it?”

“There’s a lot waiting for me off north of here.”

Tiffany grunted. “North of here, eh?”

Carhart nodded.

“And you have to work so delicate getting it that you can’t trust
anybody else to do it?”

Carhart smiled. “Better not ask me, Tiffany. I can’t talk to Commodore
Durfee until I’ve got all the cards in my hand, and this is the last
one. As to going myself, it happens to be the sort of thing I won’t
ask anybody to do for me, that’s all.”

“That’s how you like it,” said Tiffany, gruffly, rising. “Want to talk
about anything else to-night?”

“No--I shan’t be leaving before to-morrow noon. I’ll see you in the
morning.” While he spoke, he was watching Tiffany, and he was amused
to see that the veteran had recovered his equilibrium and was angry
with himself.

“When will you want to begin your military monkey-shines?”

Carhart drove back a smile, and got up. “Not until I get back here
with the wood,” he replied. “Good night.”

Tiffany merely grunted, and marched off to the cot which had been
assigned him.

At noon of the following day Carhart was ready to lead his expedition
northward. It was made up of all Flint’s wagons, with two men on the
seat and two rifles under the seat of each. And scattered along on
both sides of the train were men picked from Flint’s bridge-builders
and from Old Van’s and Scribner’s iron and tie squads. These men were
mounted on fresh ponies, and they carried big holsters on their
saddles and stubby, second-hand army carbines behind them. Dimond was
there, too, and the long-nosed instrument man. The two or three
besides the chief who knew what was soon to be doing kept their own
counsel. The others knew nothing, but there was a sort of tingling
electricity in the air which had got into every man of the lot. This
much they knew; Mr. Carhart was very quiet and considerate and
businesslike, but he had a streak of blue in him. And it is the streak
of blue in your quiet, considerate leader which makes him a leader
indeed in the eyes and hearts of those who are to follow him. Not that
there were any heroics in evidence, rather a certain grim quiet, from
one end of the wagon train to the other, which meant business. Carhart
took it all in, as he cantered out toward the head of the line,
dropping a nod here and there, and waving Byers, who was leaning on
his pony’s rump and looking impatiently back, to start off. He had
picked his men with care--he knew that he could trust them. And so, on
reaching the leading wagon and pulling to a walk, he settled himself
comfortably in his saddle and began to plan the conversation with
Commodore Durfee which was to come next and which was to mean
everything or nothing to Paul Carhart.

Once Byers, not observing his abstraction, spoke, “That was hard luck,
Mr. Carhart, getting cut off from Sherman this way.”

“Think so?” the chief replied, and fell back into his study.

Byers looked puzzled, but he offered nothing further. Carhart was for
a moment diverted along the line suggested by him of the long nose.
“Hard luck, eh?” he was thinking. “It’s the first time in my life I
was ever let alone. I only hope they won’t clean Bourke out and repair
the wires before I get through.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The white spot on Bourke’s long blueprint of the High, Dry, and
Wobbly, to which was attached the name of “Durfee,” might have seemed,
to the unknowing, a town or settlement. It was not. It was a station
in the form of an unpainted shed, a few huts, and a water tank.
Besides these, there were heaps of rails and ties and bridge timbers
and all the many materials used in building a railroad. “The end of
the track,” or rather “Mr. Bourke’s camp,” which marked the beginning
of the end, lay some dozen miles farther west. Out there, men swarmed
by the hundred, for work had by no means been discontinued on the H.
D. & W. But here at “Durfee” there were only an operator, a train crew
or so, a few section men, and a night watchman. And on that late
evening when a train of wagons rolled along on well-greased wheels
beside the track and stopped at the long piles of firewood which were
stored there within easy reach of passing locomotives, all these
worthy persons were asleep.

What few words passed among the invaders were low and guarded.
Everything seemed to be understood. Of the two men on each wagon, one
dropped his reins and stood up in the wagon-box, the other leaped to
the ground and rapidly passed up armfuls of wood. Of the horsemen,
three out of every four dismounted and ran off in a wide circle and
took shelter in shadowed spots behind lumber piles, or dropped
silently to the ground and lay there watching. Out on the track a
deep-chested, hard-faced man, who might perhaps have answered to the
name of “Dimond,” took up a post of observation. On that side of the
circle nearest the station and the huts, two men who had the manner of
some authority moved cautiously about. Both wore spectacles and one
had a long nose. Through the still air came the champing of bits and
the pawing and snorting of horses. The man with the spectacles and the
less striking nose seemed to dislike these noises. He drew out a watch
now and then, and held it up in the moonlight. The work was going on
rapidly, yet how slowly! Once somebody dropped an armful of wood, and
every man started at the sound.

The watchman upon whom devolved the responsibility of seeing that no
prowling strangers walked off by night with the town of “Durfee” was
meanwhile dreaming troublous dreams. From pastoral serenity these
night enjoyments of his had passed through various disquieting stages
into positive discord. They finally awoke him, and even assumed an
air of waking reality. The queer, faint sounds which were floating
through the night suggested the painful thought that somebody _was_
walking off with the town of “Durfee.” He would investigate.

Slowly tiptoeing down an alleyway between two long heaps of material,
the watchman settled his fingers around his heavy stick. Then he
paused. The sounds were very queer indeed. He decided to drop his
stick and draw his revolver. But this action, which he immediately
undertook, was interrupted by a pair of strong arms which gripped him
from behind. And a pair of hands at the end of two other strong arms
abruptly stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth and held it in place by
means of another which was tied at the back of his neck.

“Bring him along, boys,” said a low voice.

“All right, Mr. Carhart,” replied the owner of the first-mentioned
arms,--and then could have bitten his tongue out, for the speaking
eyes of the incapacitated watchman were fixed on the half-shadowed,
spectacled face before him.

Ten minutes more and the wagon train, now heavily laden, was starting
off. The horsemen lingered until it was fairly under way, then ran
back to their mounts, and hovered in a crowd about the last dozen
wagons until all danger of an attack was past. And later on, when they
were something more than halfway back to Mr. Flint’s camp, they
released the night watchman, and started him back on foot for
“Durfee,” and hurled pleasantries after him for as long as he was
within earshot.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was necessary to drop another day before occupying the knolls, and
Carhart spent most of it in sleep. He was not a man of iron, and the
exertions of the week had been of an exhausting nature. But Tiffany,
who had slept the sleep of the righteous throughout the night of the
raiding expedition, took hold of the preparations with skill and
energy. And after supper he and Carhart stood together on the high
ground at the eastern end of the trestle and talked it over.

“Young Haddon seems to be a pretty good man to command one knoll,”
said Tiffany, “but how about the other?”

“Byers could do it, possibly, but not so well as Dimond. The men like
him, and while he’s a little rough-handed, he’s level-headed and
experienced. I’ll take Byers to Red Hills with me. We can start out at
nine, say. Each party will have to make a wide circuit around the
hills and cross the stream a mile or two from here. It will be two or
three hours before we get around to the knolls.”

“Would you use boats to ferry the boys over?”

“No. They saw too much of the start of my wagons yesterday. They would
make out any movement on the river. You take the down party, Tiffany,
with Haddon; I’ll go up with Dimond. Then you can leave Haddon in
charge when you have him placed, and move about where you please.”

Not a man of either party knew where he was to go, but as was the case
at the beginning of the movement on “Durfee,” voices were subdued and
nerves were strung up. As soon as it was dark, men carrying
rifles and with light rations stuffed into all available
pockets--little men, middle-sized men, and big men, but all active and
well-muscled--appeared here and there by ones and twos and threes,
dodged out of the camp, and slipped through the hollow behind the
trestle-end. There was little champing and pawing of horses to-night,
for Carhart and Byers were the only ones to ride. The men lay or sat
on the rocks and on the ground there behind the brow of the ridge, and
talked soberly. Before long an inquisitive bridgeman counted a hundred
and twenty of them, and still they were coming silently through the
hollow. After a time Dimond appeared, then Haddon and Byers walking
together, and, after a long wait, Tiffany and Carhart themselves.
Then the five leaders grouped for a consultation. Those near by could
see that Carhart was laying down the code that was to govern their
conduct for a day or two. Something was said before the group broke up
which drew an affirmative oath from Tiffany and started Haddon and
Dimond examining their weapons, and stirred Byers to an excited
question. Then Tiffany drew off a rod or so with Haddon at his heels,
saying, “My boys, this way.” And as the word passed along man after
man, to more than a hundred, sprang up and fell in behind him. Carhart
beckoned to those who were left, fully an equal number of them, and
these gathered together behind their chief.

“Good night, Tiffany,” said Carhart, then.

But Tiffany’s gruffness suddenly gave way. With a “wait a minute,
boys,” he came striding over and took Carhart’s hand in a rough grip.
“Good luck, Paul,” he said something huskily. And then he cleared his
throat. “Good luck!” he said again, and went back to his men. And the
two parties moved off over the broken ground and the rocks, Carhart
and Byers leading their horses.

Carhart led his men nearly two miles north, then forded the stream at
a point where it ran wide and shallow. He climbed the west ridge, and
turned south along the farther slope. After twenty minutes of
advancing cautiously he sent Dimond to follow the crest of the ridge
and keep their bearings. Another twenty minutes and Dimond came down
the slope and motioned them to stop.

“Is this the knoll ahead here?” asked the chief.

Dimond nodded.

“Quietly, then. Byers, you wait here with the horses.”

The same individual spirit which makes our little American army what
it is, was in these workingmen. Every one understood perfectly that he
must get to the top of that knoll as silently as the thing could be
done, and acted accordingly. Orders were not needed. There were
slopes of shelving rock to be ascended, there were bits of real
climbing to be managed. But the distance was not very great, and it
took but a quarter of an hour or so. Then they found themselves on the
summit, and made themselves comfortable among the rocks, spreading out
so that they could command every approach. Carhart took Dimond to the
top of the southeasterly slope and pointed out to him the knoll
opposite, the hollow between, the camp a third of a mile away of Flagg
and his cheerful crew, the trestle, the river, and their own dim camp
on the farther slope. He repeated his instructions for the last time.
“Lie quiet until noon of the day after to-morrow--not a sound,
understand; not so much as the top of a hat to show. It will be a hard
pull, but you’ve got to do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“At that time, if you hear nothing further from me, take your men down
there along the slope, give Flagg one chance to withdraw, and if he
refuses, close in across the hollow behind the rocks. Mr. Haddon will
do the same. After that if they try to rush you, shoot. The men from
camp will be working out across the trestle and up the hill at the
same time.--Here it is, written down. Put it in your pocket. And mind,
not a shot, not so much as a stone thrown, before noon of day after
to-morrow, excepting in self-defence. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now come down the slope here, on the other side--where we can’t be
seen from Flagg’s camp. You have your lantern?”

“Here.”

“Light it, and flash it once.”

Dimond obeyed. Both men peered across the hollow, but no response came
from the other knoll.

“Flash it again.”

This time there came an answering flash. Carhart nodded, then took the
lantern from Dimond, extinguished it, and handed it back. “Don’t light
this again for any purpose,” he said. “Now see that you do exactly as
I have told you. Keep your men in hand.”

“All right, sir.”

“Good night, then.”

Carhart groped his way along the hillside, slowly descending. After a
time he whistled softly.

“Here--this way!” came in Byers’s voice.

They had to lead their horses nearly a mile over the plateau before
they found the beaten track to Red Hills. Byers was jubilant. He was a
young man who had dreamed for years of this moment. He had known not
what form it would take, but that he should at some time be riding,
booted and spurred, with a weight of responsibility on his shoulders,
a fine atmosphere of daring about him, and the feeling within of a
king’s messenger, this he had always known. And now here he was! And
buoyant as an April day, the blood dancing in his veins, sitting his
horse with the ease of an Indian, Byers called over to his chief:
“Fine night this, Mr. Carhart!”

They were riding side by side. At his remark the chief seemed
unconsciously to be pulling in. He fell behind. Byers, wondering a
little, slowed down and looked around. Apparently his remark had not
been heard. He called again: “Fine night, Mr. Carhart!” ... And then,
in the moonlight, he caught a full view of the face of his leader. It
was not the face he was accustomed to see about headquarters; he found
in it no suggestion of the resourceful, energetic chief on whom he had
come to rely as older men rely on blind forces. This was the face of a
nervous, dispirited man of the name of Carhart, a man riding a small
horse, who, after accomplishing relentlessly all that man could
accomplish, had reached the point where he could do nothing further,
where he must lay down his hand and accept the inevitable, whether for
better or for worse. Byers could not, perhaps, understand what this
endless night meant to Paul Carhart, but the sight of that face
sobered him. And it was a very grave young man who turned in his
saddle and peered out ahead and let his eyes rove along the dreary,
moonlit trail.

A moment later he started a little, and hardly conscious of what he
was doing, turned his head partly around and listened.

“Oh, my God,” Carhart was saying, as if he did not hear his own voice,
“what a night!”

       *       *       *       *       *

They pulled up before the Frisco Hotel at Red Hills. The time had come
to throw the cards face up on the table.

“See to the animals yourself, will you, Byers?” said Carhart. He
dismounted, patted the quivering shoulder of his little horse, and
then handed the reins to his companion. “I don’t want to wear out
Arizona too.”

Byers nodded, and Carhart walked up to the hotel steps. His eyes swept
the veranda, and finally rested on two men who were talking together
earnestly, and almost, it might seem, angrily, at one end. He had
never seen either before; but one, the nearer, with the florid
countenance and the side whiskers, he knew at once for Commodore
Durfee. He paused on the steps, and tried to make out the other--a
big, fat man with the trimmed, gray chin-beard, the hard mouth, and
the shaven upper lip which we associate with pioneering days. It
was--no--yes, it was--it _must_ be--General Carrington.

Carhart had intended to take a room and make himself presentable. He
changed his mind. Hot and dusty as he was, dressed almost like a
cowboy, he walked rapidly down the piazza.

“Mr. Durfee?”

The magnate turned slowly and looked up.

“Well?” he inquired.

Carhart found his card-case and drew out one slip of cardboard. Mr.
Durfee took it, read it, turned it over, read it again, hesitated,
then handed it to the General, saying, in a voice the intent of which
could hardly be misread, “What do you think of that?”

General Carrington read the name with some interest, and looked up.
He said nothing, however; merely returned the card.

“You want to talk to me?” asked Durfee.

“If you please.”

“Well--talk ahead.”

Carhart glanced at General Carrington. He knew that the opportunity to
have it out with Durfee in the presence of the biggest man of them
all, the man who was the _x_ in this very equation with which he was
struggling, was a very great opportunity. Just why, he could hardly
have said; and he had no time to figure it out in detail. So he leaped
without looking. He drew up another of the worn porch chairs and made
himself comfortable.

“A rascal named Jack Flagg,” he said, speaking with cool deliberation,
“with a hundred or two hundred armed men, has thrown up what I suppose
he would call intrenchments across our right of way at the La Paz
River. Another party has attacked our line back at Barker Hills. This
second party is commanded by Mr. Bourke, who is in charge of the
construction work on your H. D. & W. I care nothing about Bourke,
because Mr. De Reamer, who is at Sherman, is amply able to dispose of
him. I have come here to ask you if you will consider ordering Flagg
to get out of our way at the La Paz.”

He settled back in his chair, looking steadily into the florid
countenance of the redoubtable Commodore Durfee. The two railway
presidents were looking, in turn, at him, but with something of a
difference between their expressions. Whether the General was amused
or merely interested it would have been difficult for any but one who
was accustomed to his manner to say. But there could be little doubt
that the worldly experience of the Commodore was barely equal to the
task of keeping down his astonishment and anger.

“This has nothing to do with me,” he replied shortly. “I know nothing
of this Flagg.”

Carhart leaned a little forward. His eyes never left Durfee’s face.
“Then,” he said, in that same measured voice, “if you know nothing of
this Flagg, you don’t care what happens to him.”

“Certainly not,” replied the Commodore,--a little too shortly, this
time, for he added, “I guess two hundred armed men behind
intrenchments can take care of themselves.”

Carhart settled back again, and the shadow of a smile crossed his
face. Both men were watching him, but he said nothing. And then
General Carrington unexpectedly took a hand. “See here,” he said with
the air of a man who sweeps all obstructions out of his way, “what did
you come here for? What do you want?”

Carhart’s answer was deliberate, and was uttered with studied force.
“I have ridden thirty miles to talk with Mr. Durfee and he sees fit to
treat me like a d--n fool. I came here to see if we couldn’t avoid
bloodshed. Evidently we can’t.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Carrington.

Instead of replying, Carhart, after a moment’s thought, turned
inquiringly to Durfee.

“Out with it,” cried that gentleman. “What do you want?”

“I want you to call off Jack Flagg.”

“Evidently you _are_ a d--n fool,” said Durfee.

But Carrington saw deeper. “You’ve got something up your sleeve, Mr.
Carhart,” he said. “What is it?”

Again Carhart turned to Durfee. And Durfee said, “What is it?”

“It’s this.” Carhart drew from a pocket his sketch-map of the region
about the trestle. “Here is Flagg--along this ridge, at the foot of
these two knolls. His line lies, you see, across our right of way. Of
course, everybody knows that he was sent there for a huge bluff,
everybody thinks that I wouldn’t dare make real war of it. Flagg
opened up the ball by shooting Flint, my engineer in charge at the La
Paz. The shooting was done at night, when Flint was out in the valley
looking things over, unarmed and alone.”

“What Flint is that?” asked Carrington, sharply.

“John B.”

“Hurt him much?”

“There is a chance that he will live.”

Carrington pursed his lips.

“We foresaw Bourke’s move,” Carhart pursued, “some time ago. And as it
was plain that the mills in Pennsylvania--” he smiled a little here,
straight into Durfee’s eyes--“and the Queen and Cumberland Railroad
were planning to find it impossible to deliver our materials, we took
up the rails and ties of the Paradise Southern and brought them out to
the end of the track. In fact, we have our materials and supplies so
well in hand that even if Bourke could hold Barker Hills, we are in a
position to work right ahead. Track-laying is going on this minute.
But we can’t cross the La Paz if Flagg doesn’t move.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Durfee.

“So it is necessary to make him move.”

“It is, eh?”

“Yes, and--” Carhart’s eyes were firing up; his right fist was resting
in the palm of his left hand--“and we’re going to do it, unless you
should think it worth while to forestall us. Possibly you thought I
would send a force back to Barker Hills. But I didn’t--I brought it up
this way instead. I have three times as many men as your Mr. Flagg
has, and a third of them are on the knolls behind Flagg.”

“And the fighting comes next, eh?” said Carrington.

“Either Mr. Durfee will call Flagg off at once, or there will be a
battle of the La Paz. I think you see what I am getting at, Mr.
Durfee. Whatever the courts may decide, however the real balance of
control lies now, is something that doesn’t concern me at all. That
issue lies between you and my employer, Mr. De Reamer. But since you
have chosen to attack at a point where I am in authority, I shan’t
hesitate to strike back. It isn’t for me to say which side would
profit by making it necessary for the governor and his militia to take
hold, but I will say that if the governor does seize the road, he
will find Mr. De Reamer in possession from Sherman to Red Hills. I am
prepared to lose a hundred--two hundred--men in making that good. I
have left orders for the shooting to begin at noon to-morrow. If you
choose to give any orders, the news must reach Mr. Tiffany by that
time. I shall start back at midnight, as my horse is tired, and I wish
to allow plenty of time. You can find me here, then, at any time up to
twelve o’clock to-night.” He rose. “That, Mr. Durfee, is what I came
here to say.”

“Wait a minute, Mr. Carhart,” said General Carrington. “Did I
understand you to say that you have enough materials on the ground to
finish the line?”

“Practically. Certainly enough for the present.”

“That’s interesting. Even to firewood, I suppose.”

Carhart bowed slightly. “Even to firewood,” he replied,--and walked
away.

Byers was asleep in a chair, tipped back against the office wall.
Carhart woke him, and engaged a room, where, after eating the meal
which Byers had ordered, they could sleep all day.

That evening, as Carhart and Byers were walking around from the
stable, they found General Carrington standing on the piazza.

“Oh, Mr. Carhart!” said he.

“Good evening, sir,” said Carhart.

The General produced a letter. “Would you be willing to get this
through to Flagg?”

“Certainly.”

“Rather nice evening.”

“Very.”

“Suppose we sample their liquid here--I’m sorry I can’t say much for
it. What will you gentlemen have?”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was ten o’clock in the morning. Carhart, Byers, Dimond, and Tiffany
stood on the north knoll.

“I’ll take it down,” said Byers, his eyes glowing through his
spectacles on either side of his long nose.

“Go ahead,” said Carhart. “And good luck to you!”

The instrument man took the message and started down the hill. Halfway
there was a puff of smoke from Flagg’s camp, and he fell. It was so
peaceful there on the hillside, so quiet and so bright with sunshine,
the men could hardly believe their eyes. Then they roused. One lost
his head and fired. But Dimond, his eyes blazing, swearing under his
breath, handed his rifle to Carhart and went running and leaping down
the hillside. When he reached the fallen man, he bent over him and
took the letter from his hand and, standing erect, waved it. Still
holding it above his head, he went on down the hill and disappeared
among the rocks that surrounded the camp.

       *       *       *       *       *

Late that afternoon Flagg’s men straggled out through the hollow,
bound for Red Hills. And every large rock on either hillside concealed
a man and a rifle. Here and there certain rocks failed in their duty,
and Flagg’s men caught glimpses of blue-steel muzzles. So they did
not linger.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a number of reasons, after an attempt to communicate by wire with
a little New Hampshire town, and after an unavailing search for
representatives of the clergy at La Paz and at Red Hills, it was
decided to bury the instrument man where he had fallen. “Near the
track,” Young Van suggested. “He would like it that way, I think.”

At six in the morning a long procession filed out of the camp. At the
head went the rude coffin on the shoulders of six surveyors and
foremen. Paul Carhart and Tiffany followed, the chief with a prayer
book in his hand; and after them came the men. The grave was ready.
The laborers and the skilled workmen stood shoulder to shoulder in a
wide circle, baring their heads to the sun. Carhart opened the book
and slowly turned the pages in a quiet so intense that the rustle of
the leaves could be heard by every man there. For the ungoverned
emotions of these broken outcasts were now swayed to thoughts of death
and of what may come after.

“I am the resurrection and the life ...” Carhart read the immortal
words splendidly, in his even, finely modulated voice. “... I know
that my Redeemer liveth.... Yet in my flesh shall I see God.... We
brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing
out.... For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in
vain; he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them.”

Gus Vandervelt raised his eyes involuntarily and glanced from one to
another of the lustful, weak, wicked faces that made up the greater
part of the circle.

“It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in
dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised
in power.”

Could it be that these wretches were to be raised in incorruption? Was
there something hidden behind each of these animal faces, something
deeper than the motives which lead such men to work with their hands
only that they may eat and drink and die?

“... for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For ... this mortal must put
on immortality.”

At the conclusion of the service Young Van, deeply moved, looked about
for his brother. But it seemed that the same impulse had come to them
both, for he heard a gruff, familiar voice behind him:--

“Look here, Gus, don’t you think you’ve been sort of a d--n fool about
this business?”

The young fellow wheeled around with a glad look in his eyes. He saw
that his brother was scowling, was not even extending his hand, and
yet he knew how much those rough words meant. “Yes,” he replied
frankly, “I think I have.”

Old Van nodded, and they walked back to breakfast, side by side. Only
once was the silence broken, when Gus said, with some slight
hesitation: “What are you going to do next?--Coming back to Sherman
with us?”

And Old Van turned his face away and looked off down the river and
walked along for a few moments without replying. Then, “No,” he
finally got out, “guess I’ll take a little vacation.” He paused, still
looking away, and they strode on down the slope. “Going over into
Arizona with an outfit,” he added huskily.




CHAPTER X

WHAT TOOK PLACE AT RED HILLS


The last spike in the western extension of the Sherman and Western was
driven by no less a personage than President De Reamer himself. In the
circle of well-dressed men about him stood General Carrington and a
score of department heads of the two lines. The thirty miles of track
between the La Paz and Red Hills was laid, without unusual incident,
in twenty days--a brilliant finish to what had been a record-breaking
performance.

There was to be a dinner at the Frisco Hotel. Everybody knew now that
General Carrington had promised to be there and to speak a felicitous
word or two welcoming the new C. & S. C. connection. After the
spike-driving, Mr. De Reamer, a thin, saturnine figure, could be seen
moving about through the little crowd. Once, it was observed, he and
General Carrington drew aside and talked in low, earnest tones. The
reporters were there, of course, and to these the president was
urbane. They had gathered at first about the General, but he had waved
them off with a smiling “Talk with my friend De Reamer there. He
deserves whatever credit there may be in this thing.” And next these
keen-eyed, beardless men of the press bore down in a little group on
Carhart, Tiffany, and Young Van, who were standing apart. Tiffany was
the first to see them approaching.

“Not a word, boys,” he said in a low voice.

“Why not?” asked Young Van. “I don’t know of anybody who deserves more
credit than you two.”

“Not a word,” Tiffany repeated. “It would cost me my job. Mr. De
Reamer’s crazy mad now because so much has been said about Paul here.
I don’t care to get into it,--just excuse me.”

The reporters were upon them. “Is that Mr. Tiffany?” asked one,
indicating the retreating figure.

Carhart nodded.

“Is it true, Mr. Carhart,” asked another, “that he came out and fought
under you at the La Paz?”

Carhart smiled. President De Reamer was passing with Mr. Chambers and
had paused only a few feet away. “There wasn’t any fighting at the La
Paz,” he replied.

“There is a grave there,” the questioner persisted.

“How do you know?”

“I rode out and saw it.”

“Then you should have ridden back the length of the line and you would
have found a few other graves.” The chief sobered. “You can’t keep a
thousand to two thousand men at work in the desert for months without
losing a few of them. I’m sorry that this is so, but it is.”

“Mr. Carhart,” came another abrupt question, this time from the
keenest-appearing reporter of them all, “What did you say to General
Carrington and Commodore Durfee when you saw them at the Frisco?”

Young Van looked at his chief and saw that the faintest of twinkles
was in his eyes. He glanced over his shoulder and made out that De
Reamer had paused in his conversation with Mr. Chambers, and was
listening to catch Carhart’s reply. For himself, Young Van was blazing
with anger that this man, who had in his eyes fairly dragged De Reamer
through to a successful termination of the fight, should be robbed of
what seemed to him the real reward. He had still something to learn of
the way of the world, and everything to learn of the way of Wall
Street. Then he heard Carhart replying:--

“You must ask Mr. De Reamer about that. He directs the policy of the
Sherman and Western.”

And at this the president of the melancholy visage, and with him his
vice-president, passed on out of earshot.

“Mr. Carhart,”--the reporters were still at it,--“one of your
assistants, J. B. Flint, was carried on a cot the other day to the C.
& S. C. station and put on a train. What was the matter with him?”

Carhart hesitated. Personally he cared not at all whether the facts
were or were not given to the public. He felt little pleasure in lying
about them. Engineers as a class do not lie very well. But he was
doing the work of the Sherman and Western, and the Sherman and
Western, for a mixture of reasons, wished the facts covered. And then,
somewhat to his relief, the youngest reporter in the group blundered
out the question which let him off with half a lie.

“Is it true, Mr. Carhart,” asked this reporter, “that Mr. Flint has
been really an invalid for years?”

“Yes,” Carhart replied cheerfully, “it is true.”

The party seemed to be breaking up. Tiffany caught Young Van’s eye,
and beckoned. “Come on!” he called--“the Dinner!”

“They are starting, Mr. Carhart,” said Young Van.

“Are they? All right.--That’s all, boys. You can say, with perfect
truth, that the Sherman and Western has been completed to Red Hills.”

“And that the H. D. & W. hasn’t,” cried the youngest reporter.

Carhart laughed. “The H. D. & W. will have to do its own talking,” he
replied.

“But they aren’t doing any.”

“Can’t help that,” said Carhart. “No more--no more!” And with Young
Van he walked off toward the Frisco.

       *       *       *       *       *

After the dinner the party broke up. Flint and Haddon went West with
the Chicago and Southern California officials. The others, who were to
start eastward in the late evening, rode off for a shoot on the
plains. And it fell out that Carhart and Young Van, who had, from
different motives, declined the ride, were left together at the
hotel.

“What are you going to do now, Gus?” asked the chief.

Young Van hesitated, then gave way to a nervous smile. Carhart glanced
keenly at him, and observed that he had lost color and that the pupils
of his eyes were dilated. Now that the strain was over he was himself
conscious of a severe physical let-down, and he was not surprised to
learn that his assistant was completely unstrung.

Neither was he surprised to hear this hesitating yet perfectly honest
reply: “I’ve been thinking I’d start at the first saloon and drink to
the other end of town. Want to come along?”

“No,” Carhart replied, “I don’t believe I will, thanks. I meant to ask
what work you plan to take up next?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Nothing!--why so?”

“That is easy to answer.” Young Van laughed bitterly. “I have no
offers.”

“I’m surprised at that.”

“You don’t really mean that, Mr. Carhart?”

“Certainly I do.”

“Well, it’s more than I can say. If a man came along and offered me a
good position, I should feel that I ought to decline it.”

“Why?” Carhart was genuinely interested.

“Why?” Young Van rose and stood looking gloomily down at his chief.
“That’s a funny question for you to ask. You’ve been watching my work
for these months, and you’ve seen me developing new limitations in
every possible direction. All together, I’ve discovered about the
choicest crop any man ever opened up. When I started out, I thought I
might some day become an engineer. But if this job has taught me
anything, it has taught me that I’m the emptiest ass that ever tried
to lay two rails, end to end, in a reasonably straight line.” The
tremulous quality of his voice told Carhart how deeply the boy had
taken his duties to heart.

“I’ve been thinking to-day that the best thing I can do will be to
rent a few acres somewhere out on Long Island and set up to raise
chickens for the New York market: broilers, and maybe squabs--they say
there is money in squabs. I’d probably find I couldn’t even do that,
but it would be exciting for a while.”

“Let’s get out and tramp around a little, Gus,” was Carhart’s reply.
“That will do you as much good as a drunk.”

Young Van flushed at this, but followed the chief out to the long
street along which straggled the buildings that made up the
settlement. These buildings were mostly saloons, each with its harvest
of plainsmen, cowboys, laborers, and outcasts standing, sitting, or
sprawling before the door. The day was hot with the dry heat of
September, from which even the memory of moisture had long ago been
sucked out. The dust rose at every step and settled on skin and
clothing. Now and then a lounging figure rose and moved languidly in
through a saloon door. Almost the only other movement to be seen was
the heat vibration in the atmosphere. The only sound, beyond a
drawled remark now and then, and the clink of glasses, was the tinkle
of a crazy piano down the street. But the bronzed, sinewy engineers,
who had for months known no other atmosphere, stepped off in a
swinging stride, and soon were past the end of the street and out in
the open. Carhart himself was not above a sense of elation, and he
fell into reminiscence.

“There is only one thing I have regretted, Gus,” he said. “If I could
have got hold of a big Italian I know of, with about a hundred of his
men, this dinner would have taken place some days ago.”

“I didn’t suppose that the work could have gone much faster,” replied
the younger man, moodily.

“Yes, we might have saved that much time easily in the cuts.”

“Working by hand?”

“Yes. My experience with this chap was up in New Jersey. The firm I
was working for at the time was developing a big ice business up in
the lakes in the northern part of the state. It was necessary to lay
a few short lines of track to connect the different ice-houses
with the main line, and I was given charge of it. I got my
laborers--several hundred of them--from an Italian padrone in New York
City. Neither myself nor my assistants spoke their language, of
course, and, as it turned out, we didn’t think in their language
either, for after two or three days they all walked out--to a man. I
could do nothing with them. So I rang up the padrone and told him he
would have to furnish a better lot than that. ‘But,’ said he, ‘I can’t
let you have any more men.’ I asked him why not. ‘Because you don’t
know how to handle them.’ That was a surprising sort of an answer, but
I needed the laborers and I kept at him. Finally he said, ‘I’ll tell
you what I will do. I will send you the men, but you must let me send
a foreman with them, and you must agree to give all your instructions
through that foreman.’ ‘All right,’ I replied, ‘send them along. If
they do the work, I won’t bother them.’

“The next day, when I was at the office in Newark, one of my
assistants called me up and told me it would be worth my while to come
right out on the work. When I reached there, he met me and took me
down the track to a deep cut where the force was at work. The laborers
were placed just as I have placed our men lately, packed close
together on terraces; and after I had watched for a moment it dawned
on me that I had never seen Italians work so fast as those were
working. ‘How did you do it?’ I asked. The assistant grinned, and
advised me to watch the man at the top, and then I saw that a giant of
an Italian was standing on the hill above the top terrace, where he
could look down at the rows of laborers. He wore a long ulster, and
kept his hands in his pockets.

“Pretty soon a laborer down on the lowest terrace rested his pick
against his knees and stood up to stretch. ‘Watch now!’ whispered my
assistant. I looked up at the big man just in time to see him draw a
stone out of his pocket--no pebble, mind you, but a jagged piece of
road ballast--and throw it right at that laborer’s head. The fellow
simply dodged it, seized his pick, and went to work harder than ever;
and not another man stopped, even long enough to draw a good breath
during the twenty minutes I stood there. Then the whistle blew, and as
I was curious to see what would happen I waited.”

“What did happen?” asked Young Van.

“Nothing whatever, except that the laborers crowded around this
foreman and seemed proud to get a word from him.”

“But I don’t understand. What gave him such a hold over them?”

“I don’t understand it myself. But I know that if I strained things to
the breaking point, I could never get the work out of any laborers
that he got out of those Italians. With him, and them, we might have
saved a good many days in this work.”

“We might have tried the plan ourselves,” said the young man, with a
chuckle. “Only I fancy a little something would have happened if we
had tried it.”

Young Van’s dangerous mood had passed. Carhart abruptly changed the
subject. “How would you like to go up into Canada with me, Gus?” he
said.

“With you? There isn’t much doubt what to answer to that.”

“There will be some interesting things about the work--and time enough
to do them well, the way it looks now. I can’t promise you any
remarkable inducements, but you will get a little more than you have
been paid here--I won’t say more than you have earned here, for you
have not been paid what you are worth.”

A moment passed before these words could get into the consciousness of
the young man. Then--they were just entering the village on their
return--he stopped short and looked into Paul Carhart’s face. “Do you
mean that you really want me?” he asked.

Carhart tried not to smile as he said: “The choice of assistants is
in my hands, Gus, and I should find it difficult to justify myself for
taking an assistant whom I did not want--and especially for an
undertaking that is likely to last several years.”

Young Van was standing stock-still. “‘Several years,’” he repeated.
Then, “This seems to amount pretty nearly to a permanent offer?”

“Pretty nearly,” said Carhart, smiling now.

At this they resumed their pace and entered the town. Both were
absorbed--Young Van in his astonishment that he had found favor in the
eyes of his chief, Carhart in his amusement over the utter naïveté of
the boy; and neither had an eye for the groups of desperate characters
that lined the street, least of all for the particular group before
the “Acme Hotel, J. Peters, Prop.”

It could not be supposed that the coming of fifteen hundred men to Red
Hills, their pockets lined with the earnings of those last
irresistible weeks, should pass without a great effort on the part of
the local population to empty these pockets promptly and thoroughly.
If the two engineers had looked about more sharply in the course of
their walk, they would have seen more than one familiar face. It was,
indeed, a day to be remembered in Red Hills; there had been no such
wholesale contribution to local needs since the first ramshackle frame
building rose from the dust. Bartenders were busy; and deft-fingered,
impassive gentlemen from Chicago, and New Orleans, and Denver, and San
Francisco were hard at work behind green tables. All was quiet so far.
The laborers were so skilfully distributed that no green table was
without its professional gambler; and sweltering in the heat, gulping
down the ever ready fluids, they went gayly, gloomily, angrily,
defiantly on, thumbing the dirty cards and relinquishing their
earnings. All was still quiet, for the business of the day was carried
on in back rooms and on upper floors. The uproar would not begin for a
few hours yet, and would hardly reach its full strength before dark.

Among those to whom music and feminine charms, such as they were,
outweighed the delights of the green table was Charlie the cook. He
sat at an open window, upstairs, where he could look down at the
sleepy street and at the front of the Acme Hotel, opposite. At first
he had been content to make out what he could of the scene through the
cheesecloth sash curtains, but, under the mellowing influence of a
rapid succession of bottles, he had drawn the curtains, and now sat
with his knees against the sill, smiling down in a ruddy, benevolent
fashion on everybody and everything below. The parlor at his back was
filled with workmen and their companions. He had seen the engineers
walk down the street, and had smiled in genial fashion, though aware
that they had not observed him. Now he saw them returning, and he was
ready, undaunted, to greet them again.

Then something happened. The door leading to the bar of the Acme
Hotel suddenly opened, and a hulking figure of a man appeared on the
broad step. He was half drunk, and he carried a revolver in his hand.
Behind him, crowding out to see the fun, came a dozen men. Charlie saw
this, and, without in the slightest relaxing his genial smile, he drew
out one of his own revolvers and held it carelessly before him with
the muzzle resting on the window sill. Never for an instant did he
take his good-natured, bloodshot eyes from the man across the street.

The engineers were drawing rapidly nearer. Young Van was the first to
take in the situation, and he spoke in a low, quick voice, hardly
moving his lips:--

“Don’t look up or start, Mr. Carhart--but Jack Flagg is standing in
front of that hotel on the left, and he looks as if he meant to shoot.
What do you think we had better do? I am not armed.”

“Neither am I,” Carhart replied. “Don’t pay any attention to him.”

[Illustration: “Charlie had not raised his revolver,--the muzzle still
rested easily on the sill,--but it was pointing straight at Jack
Flagg’s heart.”]

That was all that was said. The two engineers swung along without a
sign of faltering. Jack Flagg slowly raised his weapon and took
deliberate aim at Paul Carhart. Still the two came on, not wholly able
to conceal their sense of the situation, but, rather, regardless of
it. On Carhart’s face there was an expression of stern contempt; Young
Van was pale and his eyes were fixed straight before him.

At this point it seemed as if the strain must break one way or the
other. The men were not ten yards apart--in another moment it would be
less than two. A little gasp of admiration came from the watching
groups. Flagg heard this, and his hand wavered, but he recovered and
took a short step forward.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a low whistle. Flagg started, and
looked around.

Again came the low whistle. This time Flagg looked up, and caught his
first sight of Charlie in the window, and hesitated. Charlie had not
raised his revolver,--the muzzle still rested easily on the sill,--but
it was pointing straight at Jack Flagg’s heart. Flagg lowered his
weapon a little way, then looked as if he wished to raise it again,
but on second thoughts this seemed hardly wise, for Charlie was
shaking his head in gentle disapproval. Then this incident, which had
shaved close to tragedy, suddenly ran off into farce. Flagg pocketed
his revolver, muttered something that nobody understood, and
disappeared through the bar-room door; and after a long breath of
mingled relief and disappointment, somebody laughed aloud.

As for Charlie, he turned, still playing with his revolver, and looked
about the room. “Why!” he exclaimed. “Why! Where’s the ladies?”

       *       *       *       *       *

The engineers walked steadily up the street and turned into the hotel.
Then Young Van weakened, staggered to a chair, and sat limp and white.
“I told you,” he said breathlessly, “I told you I was--no good.”

Carhart, before replying, looked at his watch, and his hand shook as
he did so. “Brace up, Gus,” he said. “Brace up. I start East in an
hour or so, and you are coming with me, you know.”


       *       *       *       *       *


    THE GAME

    _A TRANSCRIPT FROM REAL LIFE_

    By JACK LONDON

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    Author of “The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains,” “The Story
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    _A RECORD_

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    Sometime Major U.S.A.

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    A DARK LANTERN

    _A STORY WITH A PROLOGUE_

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    THE LODESTAR

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    THE MASTER-WORD

    _A STORY OF THE SOUTH TO-DAY_

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    THE GOLDEN HOPE

    _A STORY OF THE TIME OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT_

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    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Road Builders, by Samuel Merwin

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