Chapter VIII: Part 8

After the meeting, adopting all sorts of resolutions condemnatory of everything in sight, adjourned--which was between nine and ten o’clock--there was a street rumor to the effect that Judge Watson would declare some of the speakers in contempt, and cinch them accordingly.

Maxwell and Starbuck brought this report to Sprague, who was smoking one of his big, black cigars on the porch of the hotel.

“Going to institute contempt proceedings, is he?” said the expert, with interest apparently only half-aroused.

“Wouldn’t that jar you?” commented Starbuck. “I was telling Dick just now that Judge Watson has about outlived his usefulness in this little old shack town. This injunction of his is about the rawest thing that ever came over the range.”

“Smith is red-hot,” Maxwell put in; “hot enough to get out and scrap somebody. And his directors are all with him.”

Still the big-bodied expert seemed only mildly interested.

“If anybody should happen to get mixed up legally with the Mesquite folks on this job of theirs, it would be pretty hard to get a jury in Brewster which would lean the way the judge does, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

Maxwell’s verdict was unqualified. “It would be practically impossible.” He had found his pipe and was filling it when Sprague pointed to the spur track at the end of the railroad building opposite.

“Is that your special train over there, Dick?”

“Yes. You see I’ve obeyed orders. That train has been standing there for two days, with three shifts of men dividing up the watch in the engine cab.”

“And the committee of prominent citizens hasn’t yet materialized, eh? Never mind; you’ve done your part. What is the latest from Angels?”

“More cloud-bursts in the hills, and more activity up on the Mesquite. Disbrow says that Jennings has been offering all sorts of big pay to the scattered ranchmen to get them to come on the job with scraper-teams.”

“That’s bad,” said the chemistry man briefly; adding, “I don’t like that.”

Starbuck got up to stand with his back to a porch pillar. From the new position he could look through the windows into the thronged hotel lobby.

“This town’s stirred up some hotter than I’ve ever seen it before,” he drawled. “Look at that mob inside--and every blame’ man of it chewing the rag over this water proposition.”

“I don’t like that,” Sprague repeated, thus proving that he had entirely missed Starbuck’s comment on the excitement. Then he sat up suddenly. “There’s a boy just coming down from your offices, Maxwell; it’s the night watchman’s boy, isn’t it? Run across and head him, Starbuck; I believe that’s a telegram he has in his hand.”

Starbuck swung himself over the railing and caught the lad before he could disappear in the street throngs.

“You were plumb right,” he said, when he came back to take his place on the porch. “He did have a message; it’s for Dick. Here you are.”

Maxwell tore the envelope across and held the telegram up to the ceiling light.

“Here’s news,” he announced. “It’s from our man at Angels. He says: ‘Jennings’s force disbanded, and most of it gone east on Limited. Been shipping teams and outfit all afternoon. Too busy to wire sooner.’” The superintendent crumpled the telegram and smote fist into palm. “Bully for you, Sprague!” he exulted. “You pushed the right button just right! Jennings couldn’t stand the pressure; he’s given up the job and quit!”

There was no answering enthusiasm on the part of the big man who rose suddenly out of his chair and reached for the telegram. Quite the contrary, the hand which took the crumpled bit of paper was trembling a little.

“Dick,” he began, in his deepest chest tone, “you hike over to the despatcher’s office on the dead run and have Connolly clear for that special train. Don’t lose a minute! Starbuck, it’s up to you to find Smith, Tarbell, Williams, Colonel Baldwin, and two or three more good men whom you can trust--trust absolutely, mind you. Herd your crowd at the station in the quickest possible time; and you, Maxwell, make it your first business to tell the agent at Angels that there is a special train coming over the road. Don’t tell him its destination; just say it will leave Brewster, going east, in a few minutes. Don’t slip up on that--it may mean a dozen human lives! Get busy, both of you!”

After he was left alone, Sprague shouldered a path through the crowd in the lobby and had himself lifted to his rooms. When he came down a few minutes later he had changed his business clothes for the field rig which he wore on his soil-collecting expeditions. He had scarcely worked his way through the throng to the comparative freedom of the porch when Maxwell came hurrying across from the railroad building.

“Bad luck,” said the superintendent, with brittle emphasis. “There’s a freight-train off the steel half-way between Corona and Timanyoni, this side of the canyon, and the track is blocked.”

“And we can’t get by? There is nothing on the other side of the wreck that you could order down to meet us at the block?”

“Nothing nearer than Angels. There is an eastbound freight held there, loading the last of Jennings’s outfit. To order the engine back from that would add at least an hour and a half to the two-hour-and-fifty-minute running schedule I gave you the other day.”

Sprague swore out of a full heart, which, since he was the least profane of men, was an accurate measure of his growing disquietude.

“That’s on me!” he grated. “I had it all figured out to the tenth decimal place, _and I didn’t put in the factor of chance_! Dick, I want the biggest automobile in this town, and the one man among all your thousands who is least afraid to drive it.”

Maxwell was able to answer without hesitation. “The car will be Colonel Baldwin’s big ‘six,’ with Starbuck for your reckless chauffeur. But I doubt if you can get over the range in anything that goes on wheels.” Then he added: “What is it, Calvin? What have you figured out?”

Sprague ignored the anxious query and spoke only to the fact.

“Can’t get over the range? I tell you, we’ve got to get over the range! Good Lord! why in Heaven’s name doesn’t Starbuck hurry?”

Starbuck had hurried. He had looked to find most, if not all, of the men he had been told to summon, closeted in conference with Stillings, and his guess had gone true to the mark. Only Tarbell was missing, and him they picked up in front of _The Tribune_ office as they were hurrying to the rendezvous in the colonel’s big touring-car.

Maxwell saw the car as it came under the corner electrics. “There’s a little luck, anyway!” he exclaimed. “That is the Colonel’s car, now, and Billy is driving it.”

“Tools and arms; half a dozen picks and shovels, and anything you can find that will shoot,” commanded Sprague, vaulting the porch railing to the sidewalk as easily as Starbuck had vaulted it a little while before. “See to that part of the outfit yourself, Dick, while I’m looking after the human end of it.”

One minute afterward the big man was standing beside the touring-car which had been drawn up at the town-side platform of the railroad building. Sprague shot the emergency at the five men in the car in bullet-like sentences.

“Gentlemen, we’ve got to get over to the Mesquite as quick as the Lord’ll let us. The railroad is blocked, and it’s an auto or nothing. Maxwell says we can’t do it. I say we’ve got to do it. What do you say?”

“I reckon we can do it,” drawled Starbuck, speaking for all. Then he turned to Smith, who was in the tonneau. “How about the tanks, Monty?”

“I filled them to-night, before we left the ranch,” said the High Line treasurer. “Also, there is an extra gallon of oil aboard--we always carry it.”

“How about it, colonel?” Sprague demanded of the erect, white-mustached old man in the back seat.

“Sure!” was the quick reply. “You haven’t told us yet whether it’s a fight or a frolic, but we’re all with you, either way, Mr. Sprague. Hop in, and we’ll be jogging along.”

It was at this moment that Maxwell, followed by a couple of yard men, came up. The men were carrying the picks and shovels, which were hastily stowed in the car, and the superintendent handed over a small arsenal of weapons, three of them being sawed-off Winchesters.

“I had to raid the express office,” he explained, “and I took what I could find.” Then to Sprague, who had mounted to the seat beside Starbuck. “Don’t you want me along?”

“No; you can do a great deal more good right here. Listen, now, and follow my directions to the letter. Go upstairs to the wire and get in touch with your man at Angels. It will be your job to keep him in doubt as to what is on the road _between his station and the lower end of the canyon_. Lie to him if you have to; tell him a part of the wrecked freight is on its way up the canyon, or something of that sort, and keep him believing it as long as you possibly can. Don’t fall down on it! Everything depends now upon the length of time you can keep some such story as that going over the wires.”

Starbuck had adjusted a pair of goggles to his eyes, and had his foot on the clutch-pedal. “All set?” he asked.

“Go!” said Sprague; and at the word the big car shot away from the platform, rounded the end of the plaza, and bore away through a cross street to the eastward, gathering headway until, when the city limits were passed, its cutout exhausts were blending in a deafening roar.

Sprague was the only member of the party who had not at some time in the past had experience with Starbuck’s driving. But before the first ten-mile lap on the mesa road had been covered he, too, had had his initiation. There was a little lamp on the dash which poured its tiny ray on the dial of the speedometer. Sprague saw the index pointer go up to thirty-five, jump to forty, crawl steadily onward until it had passed the forty-five and was mounting to the fifty. After that he saw no more, for the simple reason that he was obliged to close his unprotected eyes against the hurricane speed blast. The big man from Washington had asked for the fastest car in Brewster and for a man who was not afraid to drive it. He had got both.

At the same time, alarming as the pace might seem, Starbuck was not taking any needless chances. He knew his road, and knew also that there were many miles of it among the mountains that would have to be taken at slower speed. None the less, when the long mesa stretch was covered, and the big car was making zigzags up the precipitous slopes of Mount Cornell to reach the gap called Navajo Notch, the pace was still terrific, and the sober-faced driver was leaning over his wheel and pushing the motor like a true speed-maniac.

There was an hour of this risky zigzagging, and then the pass, lying cold and grim in the half moon-light at altitude ten thousand feet, was reached and threaded. Following the summit-gaining came the down-mountain rush on the eastern slope, and again Sprague closed his eyes, confessing inwardly that the steadiest nerve may have its limitations. With precipices shooting skyward on the right, and plunging sheer to unknown depths on the left, and with a man at the wheel who had apparently hypnotized himself until he had become a mere machine driving a machine----

When Sprague opened his eyes the great car was once more on an even keel and its wheels were spurning the hard red sand of the desert. In the far distance ahead a light was twinkling, the lamp in the station office at Angels. Sprague spoke to the iron-nerved driver at his side.

“Hold on, Billy; can you make the remainder of the run without the lamps?”

Starbuck brought the big machine to a stand, and leaned over and extinguished the lights. A little later, under Sprague’s directions, he was making a silent circuit of the town, with the muffler in and the engine speeded at its quietest.

Since it was far past midnight, the better part of Angels was abed and asleep, with lights showing only at the railroad station and in Pete Grim’s dance-hall, where, arguing from the row of hitched horses, a round-up of Red Desert cowboys made merry. Sprague stopped the car by a sign to Starbuck and turned to Tarbell.

“Get out, Archer, and make a quick run over to the station. I want to know what’s going on in Disbrow’s office.”

Tarbell made the reconnaissance and was back in a few minutes.

“Disbrow is at his wire, with a man walkin’ the floor behind him; and there’s a piebald bronc’ hitched out beyond the freight shed,” was the brief report.

“Who is the floor-walker?” asked Sprague.

“I couldn’t get a fair squint at him, but he looked mightily like the fellow I been keepin’ cases on for the last two or three days.”

“Gentlemen, we’re in luck, for once,” Sprague said impressively. “That’s Jennings, without doubt; and he is waiting for a wire--the right kind of a wire--to come from Brewster. You remember what I told Maxwell, as we were leaving? That was one time when a guess was as good as a prophecy. Go on, Billy, and head straight for the Mesquite. And you gentlemen back there, get your weapons ready. If there happens to be a guard at the dam, we’ll have to rush it.”

Singularly enough, when the short run was accomplished they found that there was no guard. The shack camp was deserted, with all the disorder of a hasty evacuation strewn broadcast. But in the valley itself there was a startling change. The lake, which, three days earlier, had reached only half-way up the earth embankment, was now lapping within a foot of the dam top, the result of the continued storms and cloud-bursts reported by the Brewster weather station.

Starbuck eased the big car up to the dam head, and Williams and Tarbell made a quick quartering of the deserted camp. “Nobody here,” the engineer reported, when they came back to the car; and then Sprague asked Starbuck to relight the head-lamps.

With the acetylenes flinging their broad white beam across the earthwork, another change was made apparent. In the centre of the dam a square pit, plank-lined like the shaft of a mine, had been either sunk or left in the building. Over this pit stood a three-legged hoist, with the block-and-tackle still hanging from its apex.

“What is that thing out there?” queried the colonel, shading his eyes with his hand.

“Jennings would probably tell you that it is a new kind of spillway, by which, in case of need, the reservoir lake can be emptied,” suggested Sprague. “But we haven’t time to investigate it just now. Our job at the present moment is to take the law into our hands and empty this lake, and to do it, if we can, without bringing on the catastrophe it was designed to accomplish.”

“Heavens!” ejaculated Colonel Baldwin. “That’s a criminal offence, isn’t it?--and in the face of Judge Watson’s injunction, at that!”

“It is criminal,” was the calm reply; “unless we shall find sufficient justification for it as we go along. There is one chance in a dozen that we may find it first. Tarbell, take this little flash-light of mine and skip out there and look into that pit.”

Tarbell paused scarcely a moment at the mouth of the mid-dam shaft. “It’s filled up to within a few feet of the top with dirt,” he said, when he returned.

“That is what I expected. We might find another warrant for what we are about to do, but we haven’t time to search for it. Jennings may come back at any minute, and if he suspects anything wrong, he’ll bring that bunch of dance-hall cowmen with him. If you’d like to hide the car and stand aside to see what he will do when he comes----”

“By Jove! I’m with you, injunction or no injunction!” cried Smith, and he began to take the picks and shovels out of the car.

“Go to it,” said the colonel; and Sprague turned to Williams.

“Mr. Williams, you’re an engineer. Our problem is to drain this lake in the shortest possible time in which it can be done without raising a dangerous flood-level in the Timanyoni River. We’re under your orders.”

Williams took the job as a dog snaps at a fly, barking out his directions with the curt precision of a man who knew his business. Planks were brought from the dismantled shacks to be thrust down on the inward face of the dam as a protection, and these were weighted in place with a make shift buttressing built out of the bags of sand which had been used as temporary coffer-dams in the construction work. When all was ready, a small ditch was opened across the protected end of the dam and the water began to pour through.

Immediately the wisdom of Williams’s precaution became evident. Instantly the rushing stream began to eat into the loosely built dam, threatening to turn the ditch into a gully and the gully into a chasm, and quick work was necessary with more planks and sand-bags to check the rapid widening of the spillway. Even at that, the ditch grew swiftly deeper and more cavernous as the torrent emptied itself through it, and the roar of the artificial cataract filled the air with a note of sustained thunder.

“Jennings’ll be deaf if he doesn’t hear this plumb down at the railroad!” shouted Tarbell. But there was no time to consider the consequences Jennings-wise. Every man of the six, including the colonel, was constrained to work like mad to prevent the catastrophe they were trying to avert.

It was when the flood was pouring through the gap in a solid six-foot stream that shot itself far out to fall in a thunderous deluge upon the barren Mesquite mesa, and the planking and sand-bagging was sufficing to hold it measurably within bounds, that Sprague took steps looking toward a defensive battle should the need arise. Under his direction the auto was drawn out to one side and the lamps were extinguished. Then a hasty breastwork was made of the remaining bags of sand, and Tarbell and Starbuck were sent out as skirmishers to keep watch on the Angels road while the others renewed their efforts to hold the pouring torrent within safe limits.

A toiling half-hour, during which the spillway flood had slowly grown in volume until it threatened to become a destroying crevasse, slipped away, and at the end of it the two scouts came hurrying in.

“They’re coming!” yelled Starbuck; and once again the big man from the East took the command.

“Down behind the sand-bags!” he shouted. “If Jennings gets near enough to strike a match on this hill-side, we’ll all go to glory!”

Sprague had predicted that if Jennings suspected trouble he would not return to the dam alone. The prediction was verified when a squad of mounted men came in view at the turn in the road leading around the hill shoulder. The moon, declining to its setting behind the Timanyonis, flung ghostly shadows across the valley, and the watchers behind the sand-bag breastwork saw only the dark blot of blacker shadow sweeping up the road.

“Give ’em a volley over their heads!” Sprague ordered, and the three sawed-off Winchesters barked spitefully.

“That means war,” said the colonel, when the charging cavalcade stopped abruptly and a dropping fusillade of revolver-shots spatted into the sand breastwork and whined overhead. “We’re strictly in for it, now.”

“If those fool cowpunch’s only knew what they’re fightin’ for, they’d turn their artillery the other way,” growled Starbuck. “I reckon they’re the ‘Lazy X’ outfit, and Cummings, their owner, is one of the High Line directors.”

“It’s a pity we can’t get word to them some way,” said Smith. “We’re not out to kill anybody if we can help it.”

“No, but they’re out to kill us,” grunted Williams, as a second shower of bullets thudded into the breastwork and tore up the gravel on either hand. Then: “What are they doing now?”

The defenders of the breastwork were not left long in doubt as to what was doing. The horsemen in front were deploying in a thin line which rapidly bent itself into a semi-circle across the hill slope. To let any one of these skilled marksmen gain the rear meant death for somebody, and again Sprague gave the word of command.

“Better kill horses than men,” he said. “We’ve got to stop that manœuvre,” and again the Winchesters spoke, this time to deadlier purpose. At the third volley two of the horses were down, and the scattering line was drawing together again and galloping out of range.

In the lull which succeeded, Williams dropped his weapon and crawled quickly away to the edge of the spillway torrent. When he came back there was a new note of alarm in his voice.

“That spillway of ours is eating away the dam at the rate of a foot a minute!” he announced. “If we can’t get to work on it again, the whole business will go out with a rush!”

It was a cruel dilemma, and it was quickly made worse by a new movement on the part of the attackers. Jennings’s party was closing in again, and flashes of red fire were appearing here and there on the hill-side to herald a dropping hail of pistol bullets. Under cover of the irregular firing, a man was worming his way down toward the edge of the ravine through which the wasting torrent was rushing out upon the mesa. It was Sprague who first saw the crawling man and divined his purpose.

“That’s Jennings!” he exclaimed, “and if he reaches the edge of that gully, we’re all dead men! Stop him, Starbuck! don’t kill him if you can help it, but stop him!”

Starbuck levelled his short rifle over the top of the breastwork and took careful aim. The light was bad and he could scarcely see the sights. At the trigger-pulling, those who were watching saw a little cloud of dust and gravel spring up directly in front of the crawling man; saw this, and heard above the roaring of the torrent his yell of pain as he doubled up and clapped his hands to his face.

“Good shot, Billy!” gritted the white-haired colonel. “You’ve blinded him! Now if we could only choke those crazy range-riders off.... Tarbell, can’t you--where’s Tarbell gone?”

Tarbell’s place at the end of the breastwork was empty, and Smith, who was next in the line, accounted for him.

“Archer dropped out a minute or two ago. I think he’s trying to make a dodge-around to get at those cow-punchers.”

The firing had ceased for the moment, and the man who had tried to creep down to the ravine was stumbling back up the hill. Williams nervously thrust in his plea again.

“I tell you, we’ve got to get to work on this thing behind us and do it quick!” he urged. “There is still water enough in the lake to tear the heart out of Timanyoni Canyon if it all goes at once!”

Sprague set the temerarious example by springing to his feet, and the others followed him. There was no answering volley from the hill-side. On the contrary, the black blot of things animate on the slope was melting away, and a minute later Tarbell came running back.

“The boys have got their hunch!” he cried. “A couple of them are taking Jennings back to Angels, and the rest of ’em’ll be here in a minute to help us. They didn’t know what was up.”

As one man the half-dozen flung themselves upon the task of keeping the roaring crevasse under control; and a little later eight of the cowmen came racing down to swell the working force. But even for the augmented numbers, it proved to be a fiercely fought battle, with the issue hanging perilously in the balance for a long time.

Hour by hour they toiled, making plank bulk-heads out of the shack lumber, piling sand-bags against the crumbling embankment, and fighting inch by inch with the gnawing flood as the night wore away.

And it was thus that the graying dawn found them; soaked, muddied, gasping, and haggard with fatigue, but with the victory fairly won. The flood was still pouring through the gap which had by now widened to the cutting away of a full half of the dam; but the great body of water had already passed out and there was no longer any danger.

When the sun was just beginning to redden on the higher peaks of the western mountains, a shout from the hill-side road broke upon the morning stillness. A moment later Maxwell and Stillings came running to the brink of hazard.

Sprague stumbled up out of the crevasse chasm and pointed down to the washed-out heart of the dam. There, piled in the bottom of what had once been the plank-lined pit with the hoisting-tackle over it, and laid bare now by the scouring flood, was a great pile of dynamite stacked solidly in its shipping-boxes. And, half-buried in the sand and detritus of the outflow, lay the iron pipe through which the firing fuse had been carried to the gully edge Jennings had tried to reach.

“There is the warrant for what we’ve been doing, gentlemen,” said the big expert wearily. “Take a good look at it, all of you, so that if the courts have anything to say about this night’s work----”

Maxwell cut in quickly.

“There’s nobody left to make the fight. Jennings went east from Angels on the first train that got through. He was badly blinded, so Disbrow says; got a fall from his horse, was the story he told. We’ll fix this lay-out so it will stand just as it is until everybody who wants to has seen it!”

“You couldn’t stay away, could you?” said the white-haired colonel, grinning up from his seat on the last of the sand-bags. “I told the boys here you’d be turning up as soon as your railroad track was open.”

“We’ve had a mighty anxious night,” Stillings put in. “The river is up five feet, and we couldn’t tell what was happening over here. Great Jonah! but you men must have had your hands full!”

“We did,” said Smith; “but it’s all over now.”

“All but the shouting,” said Maxwell. “But post your guards and let’s get back to town. My car is at Angels, and we came up special. When we left Brewster the plaza was black with people waiting for news.”

It was on the way down the flood-swollen canyon that the chemistry expert explained to the private-car company at the breakfast-table how he had been able to diagnose the case of the cloud-bursters.

“It was merely a bit of what you might call constructive reasoning,” he said modestly. “I knew by personal investigation in the line of my proper work--soil-testing--that there was no arable land within reach of the Mesquite project. The other steps followed, as a matter of course. Starbuck, here, is wondering why I risked his life and mine to get a few photographs for _The Tribune_, but if any of you will examine the snap-shots carefully under a magnifier, you will see that they prove the existence of the central pit in the dam, and that one of them shows the pipe-line through which the fuse was to run. For the possible legal purpose I was anxious to have this evidence in indisputable form. That’s all, I believe.”

“Not quite all,” Maxwell broke in. “How did you know that Jennings would be hanging over the wire at Angels while you people were making your flying trip across the mountain in the auto?”

Sprague laughed good-naturedly.

“Call it a guess,” he said. “It was evident that Jennings wasn’t anxious to kill a lot of innocent people. His inquiries about the strength of the High Line dam proved that. It ran in my mind that he wouldn’t touch off his earthquake until he could be reasonably sure that the flood wouldn’t catch a train in transit in the canyon. That would have been a little too horrible, even for him. Now you’ve got it all, I guess.”

“But you haven’t got yours yet,” laughed Stillings. “When this thing gets out in Brewster the whole town will mob you and want to make you the next mayor, or send you to Congress, or something of that sort.”

“Not this year,” said the big man, with another mellow laugh. “And I’ll tell you why. Just before this train reaches town it’s going to stop and let us law-breakers get off, scatter and drop into town as best we can without calling attention to ourselves. And to-morrow morning you’ll read in _The Tribune_ how the Mesquite dam, weakened by the recent storms and cloud-bursts, went out by littles during the night, watched over and kept from going as a disastrous whole by a brave little bunch of”--he looked around the table and winked solemnly--“by a brave little bunch of cowboys from the ‘Lazy X.’” Then, with sudden soberness: “Promise me that you won’t give it away, gentlemen all. It’s the only fee I shall exact for my small part in the affair.”

And the promise was given while the locomotive whistle was sounding for the Brewster yard-limits, and Maxwell was pulling the air-cord for the out-of-town stop.

VI

The High Kibosh

SINCE it is a Western boast that the West does nothing by halves, the Brewster Town and Country Club owns two houses; a handsome pink-lava home on one of the quieter business streets of the city, and a rambling, overgrown bungalow at the golf-links on the north shore of the High Line reservoir lake, rechristened, in honor of Colonel Baldwin’s pretty daughter, “Lake Corona.”

On Saturday afternoons, which are bank holidays in the progressive little inter-mountain city, the links at Lake Corona are well patronized; and on a certain Saturday in early September, in the year written down in the annals of the inter-mountain region as “the year of the great railroad war,” one of the players was the big-muscled athlete who figured for the Brewsterites as an expert soil-tester in the Government service, and whose nickname in the Timanyoni country was “Scientific Sprague.”

Sprague’s opponent on the links on this particular Saturday afternoon was Stillings, the railroad lawyer; and at the conclusion of the game, which had been a rather easy walk-over for the big athlete, Stillings offered the winner a seat in his runabout for the return to Brewster.

“Sorry, but I can’t go with you this time, Robert,” said the heavy-weight, when he had tipped his caddie and struggled into his coat. “Maxwell is coming out to dinner and I promised to wait for him. He thinks he is up for another match game with the big-leaguers.”

Stillings paused with his hand on the dash of the runabout. “That so?” he queried. “More piracy?”

“Nothing actually in sight, as yet. But Dick has been getting fresh tips from the New York head-quarters. The big-money people who want your railroad have been keeping pretty quiet since the Mesquite fizzle; possibly they were afraid you folks might have the evidence on them. But now the air seems to be full of lightning again, and nobody, not even President Ford himself, appears to know just where it is going to strike.”

The lawyer reached over and retarded the spark on the racing engines of the little car.

“It’s a queer fight,” he commented. “I never heard of anything just like it before. Of course, we all know what it means: the Transcontinental needs our five-hundred-odd miles of Nevada Short Line to put in with its Jack’s Canyon branch for a short cut to the southern coast. Ordinarily, those things are fought out on the floor of the Stock Exchange, and the people who are operating the railroad never know what hits them until they’re safely dead. If the big fellows want the Short Line so bad, why the dickens don’t they go in and buy it up decently?”

The large man who had played such a successful game of golf winked one eye solemnly.

“You wouldn’t expect a Government chemist to find you the answer to any such conundrum as that, would you?” he asked, in cheerful irony.

“I’ll bet you know, just the same,” asserted Stillings confidently.

“I do happen to know, Robert,” was the even-toned reply. “A financial transaction entered into in the early summer by the Ford management--a transaction having nothing whatever to do with the fight--makes a break in prices absolutely necessary before the control can be acquired. What the Ford people did was to build a solid wall of protection around themselves without knowing it or intending to. They deposited something like sixty per cent of the Short Line stock with a syndicate of New York and Boston banks as collateral for a loan to be used in double-tracking.”

“Still, I don’t see,” objected the lawyer.

“Don’t you? That sixty per cent of the stock--which is the control--can’t be touched by any fireworks business on the Exchange. The big-money people have played the market up and down with the forty per cent which is not pooled, and nothing has happened. The loaning banks have merely sat tight in the boat, knowing that they held the joint control of a good paying property, and that no amount of sky-rocketing on the Street could make any difference, any real difference, in the value of their collateral so long as the property itself was earning dividends.”

“That is good as far as it goes,” said Stillings, with a frown of perplexity. “But it doesn’t explain why the big-money crowd, or somebody, has been turning heaven and earth upside down all summer to wreck, not the stock, but the property itself. You know that is what has been done. No stone has been left unturned, from demoralizing Maxwell’s force to dynamiting tunnels and planning forty-mile washouts. If big business wants the road, why is it trying to wreck it physically?”

The big man who was fond of insisting that he was first, last, and all the time a Government chemist grinned amiably.

“It doesn’t agree with your mentality to get beaten at golf, does it, Robert?” he said jokingly. “It is plain enough, when you get hold of the right end of it. Big money’s play is to throw a real scare, not into the stockholders, but into these loaning bankers, don’t you see? If the road’s earnings fall off and it has bad luck enough to make these creditor-bankers really nervous about the value of their collateral, the trick will be turned. The Ford people will immediately be asked to make good or pay up; and there you are.”

“Why, sure!” said the attorney, in a tone which sufficiently emphasized his complete understanding. Then he climbed slowly into the driving-seat of the runabout. “I don’t see why some of the rest of us haven’t caught on long ago,” he went on. “I suppose any of us might have had the simple facts if we had taken the trouble to dig for them.” Then, abruptly: “You’re looking for more trouble, Sprague?”

“Maxwell is; and so is Ford, apparently,” was the evasive reply.

“Never mind Maxwell or Ford; you’re the man,” snapped the lawyer.

“No, I’m not,” was the decisive denial. “It’s true, I have been willing to help out and take a hand in standing off a few of the attempted smashings; but that was only because Dick Maxwell is my friend, and it suited my humor to ride my little reasoning hobby in his behalf. I’m not a sleuth, Stillings; I’m a Government chemist, and I am out here for the ostensible purpose of making a technical report on the soils of this charming valley of yours. You forget that every now and then.”

“Pardon me, old man; I did forget it,” was the hearty apology. “Just the same, you mustn’t throw us down while the fight is still on. Maxwell put it about right the other day when he said that the Nevada Short Line would have been dead and buried two months ago if it hadn’t been for you.”

“Nevertheless, I can’t help out this time, Stillings. That is why I am staying here this evening--to meet Maxwell and tell him that he’ll have to fight for his own hand if the New Yorkers come after him again.”

“Good goodness, Sprague! what’s happened?”

“A thing which nobody could have foreseen, and for which nobody is to blame. At the same time, it lets me out. I’ve got to quit you.”

The attorney adjusted the spark and throttle and cut the wheels of the little car preparatory to the start.

“I can’t very well argue with you--not having any grounds,” he said. “But I hope you won’t decide finally until after you’ve had another talk with Maxwell. Think it over between now and dinner-time, and weigh the consequences to Dick, Sprague. If there’s another earthquake on the way, and you throw him down, he’s a ruined man. I know what you will say: that he is well fixed and doesn’t have to be a railroad superintendent. That’s all right, but his job means more to him than it might to a poor man; it’s his ambition. If there is anything I can do----”

The big chemistry expert shook his head. “There isn’t anything that anybody can do, Robert,” he said soberly; and at that, Stillings eased the clutch in and drove away.

Two hours later Maxwell was sitting out the after-dinner interval with his friend and classmate on the broad lake-fronting veranda of the bungalow club-house. It was a fine night, and the Saturday evening crowd was larger than usual. There was a dotting of canoes on the reservoir lake, and the verandas were filling slowly as the great dining-room emptied itself. For a time the two men had let the talk drift into college reminiscences; but it took a more strictly personal turn when the superintendent said:

“Do you know, Calvin, I’ve often wondered how you came to be assigned to this job of soil-testing--this particular job, I mean--for the Department. It has been a sort of special providence to me; but things don’t often happen that way, unhelped.”

“This thing didn’t happen that way--unhelped,” was the big expert’s quiet rejoinder. “I asked for the job.”

“I’ve wondered if you didn’t. It was mighty good of you to maroon yourself out here in the tall hills for the sake of helping me fight the money pirates, Calvin.”

Sprague was silent for a full minute before he said: “I wish I could claim a motive as disinterested as that, Dick; but if I should, it wouldn’t be honest. I had quite another reason for wishing to return to the Timanyoni after my flying trip through it last July on my way back from California. I can’t tell you what it was; it’s too idiotic for a grown man to own up to.”

The superintendent’s curling mustaches took a grinning uptilt, and he laughed joyously.

“When you talk that way you don’t need to tell me,” he chuckled. “It was a girl.”

“It was,” admitted the self-confessed simpleton, matching his accuser’s grin. “Since you’ve guessed that much, I’ll tell you a little more. I saw her first on your eastbound train, the train that took on the sham dead man at Little Butte and afterward picked up your office-car. You’ll remember you asked me to stay over a day or two with you in Brewster, and I did. As a matter of fact, your persuasion wasn’t needed. I would have stopped off anyway, because the girl stopped off.”

“Heavens and earth!” ejaculated Maxwell, in ecstatic appreciation; “how are the mighty fallen! Lord of love! I never expected to see the day when Cal Sprague, the idol of the foot-ball rooters, would fall for a pretty face just seen, as you might say, in passing! Oh, gosh!”

“Have your laugh, you old married hyena!” grunted the late-comer in the sentimental field. “I can’t get back at you because I didn’t happen to be around when you were making seventeen different kinds of a donkey of yourself over old Hiram Fairbain’s daughter--as I have no doubt you did. But that’s neither here nor there; the young woman I’m speaking of tagged me, and I’m It; I’ve been It ever since that first day on the eastbound train.”

“And you say she stopped off in Brewster?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t meet her?”

“No. You’ve been calling me an amateur detective, Dick; I’m a fake! That girl and the people she was with just vanished into thin air the minute they hit the platform at the Brewster station. I lost them as completely as if they had stepped off into space.”

“So you came back, later, to hunt her up?”

“I did; or to try to get some trace of her--just that.”

“Of course, it says itself that you have found her.”

Sprague’s mellow laugh rumbled deep in his chest.

“Richard, I have been here seven weeks, and I found her--just three days ago! In all my knocking around with you and Starbuck and Stillings and the rest of you, not one man in the bunch has thought it worth his while to tell me that there is a cottage settlement of Eastern summer people up in the mountains on Lake Topaz. I had to blunder around and find out for myself, as I did last Wednesday, when Starbuck took me up to your mine on Mount Geechy.”

“Great guns!” exclaimed the superintendent; “how in the name of common-sense was anybody going to suspect that you needed to know? That summer colony is as old as Brewster. But go ahead and tell me more. I’m interested, if I don’t look it.”

“There isn’t much to tell. I found her; met her. She is stopping with an aunt of hers, and by chance--good luck you’d say--I have something a little better than a speaking acquaintance with the aunt--through some common friends in New York. There’s nothing to it, Richard. The girl can have her pick--she has already turned down a couple of English titles--and she isn’t going to pick any such overgrown slob of a man as your humble. Let’s talk about something else.”

“If I branch off, it will be into my own grief,” said Maxwell half-reluctantly. “I had another wire from Ford this afternoon. The big-money people are getting ready to swat us again, and Ford admits that he can’t find out where it is to come from, or what it is to be. If it wasn’t for the name of the thing, and what I owe Ford, I’d be about ready to throw up my job, Calvin. I have money enough to live on, and this business of dragging along from day to day with the feeling that any minute you may get the knife between your ribs isn’t very exhilarating.”

“You say Ford can’t give you any hint of what is coming next?”

“Not the slightest. But there is something in the wind. You know Kinzie, the president of the Brewster National Bank? He cornered me last night at the club and asked a lot of queer questions that didn’t seem to have any particular bearing on anything.”

“What kind of questions?” inquired the expert.

“Oh, about our right-of-way through the town of Copah, and about our outstanding floating debts, and finally about a ridiculous damage suit that has been dragging its way through the courts.”

Sprague sat up and relighted his fat, black cigar.

“What about the damage suit?” he asked.

“It’s a piker’s graft,” was the half-impatient rejoinder. “We have a little branch line over to the bauxite mines in the western edge of the county. The telegraph company doesn’t maintain an office, and our agent is authorized to handle what few commercial telegrams there are. It seems that one came for a man named Hixon, a prospector whose exact whereabouts could not be ascertained at the moment. The message was three days old when it was delivered, and Hixon sued for ten thousand dollars damages; said he’d lost the sale of a mine by the delay.”

“You are fighting the suit?”

“Of course--it’s point-blank robbery! Stillings has had the case postponed two or three times in the hope of wearing Hixon out. It comes up again next week, I believe.”

“And you say Kinzie was curious about this lawsuit?”

“Yes. It seems that Hixon is, or has been, a customer of the bank; and Kinzie suggested that we ought to compromise.”

“Um,” said the big-bodied man thoughtfully. “In whose court does the case come up?”

“In Judge Watson’s.”

“Has Hixon a good lawyer?”

“He has the Kentucky colonel, suh,” laughed Maxwell; “our one original, dyed-in-the-wool, fire-eating spellbinder from the Blue-grass. When Colonel Bletchford gets upon his feet and turns loose, you can hear the bird of freedom scream all the way across Timanyoni Park.”

The big chemistry expert with the athletic slant was moving uneasily in his chair. After a little interval of silence he said: “I can’t be with you in any more of these little two-steps with the money trust, Richard. I’m going back to Washington to-morrow.”

Maxwell’s start carried him half-way out of his chair, and he dropped his short pipe and broke the stem of it.

“Great Scott, Calvin--don’t say that!” he implored. “You can’t throw us down that way! Why, good Lord, man, if it hadn’t been for you and your brains.... But, pshaw! there’s no use in talking about it; you simply _can’t_ go and leave us hanging over the ragged edge!”

“I can; and I guess I must,” insisted Sprague gently. “And the worst of it is, Dick, I can’t tell you or anybody else the why. It’s just up to me, and I’ve got it to do.”

Maxwell’s perturbation had cleared his brain like a bucketing of cold water. “Tell me, Calvin,” he broke out; “is the girl mixed up in it?”

“She is,” was the brief admission.

“Is she gone, or going--back East, I mean?”

“N-no; not immediately, I believe.”

Maxwell sat back in his chair and began to twist nervously at the charm on his watch-fob.

“I suppose I haven’t any kick coming,” he said at length. “What you have done for me this summer couldn’t be measured in money, and I have no right to ask you to go on giving your time and your brains on the score of friendship.”

“There isn’t any bigger score in this little old round world of ours, Dick,” said the other gravely. “I’m a cold-blooded fish, and I know it. I ought to stand by you; every decent thing in me but one urges me to stand by you. But that one exception queers me. I hope you’ll win out; I hope to God you’ll win out, Dick; but I can’t be the man to put the club into your hands this time.”

The snappy little superintendent took his defeat hard. For some further time he used every argument he could devise to persuade Sprague to change his mind. But at the end the big man was shaking his head regretfully.

“It’s no use, Richard,” he said finally. “If you were in my place, you’d do just as I’m doing--and for the same reason. Let’s go back to town. It’s too cheerful here to fit either one of us just now.”

Maxwell had driven out to the club-house on the shore of Lake Corona in his small car, and when he returned to town Sprague occupied the mechanician’s seat beside him. It was a run of only a few miles, over the best driving road in the county, and there was neither time nor the occasion for much talk.

When the car had trundled across the Timanyoni bridge and the viaduct over the railroad tracks, Maxwell would have set Sprague down at his hotel across the plaza from the station; but Sprague himself objected. “You are going over to your office? I’ll go with you, if you don’t mind. It’s my last evening, and I’m not in the humor to sit it out alone. I won’t interfere, if you want to work,” was the way he put it.

It was thus it happened that they climbed the stair to the second story of the railroad building together, and together walked down the corridor to the door of the despatcher’s room. Connolly, the fat night despatcher, was at his glass-topped table behind the counter railing, and when he saw the superintendent he held up a pudgy hand.

“Benson’s been trying to get you on the wire from Copah for an hour or more, Mr. Maxwell,” he said. “I didn’t know where to raise you.”

“Is he on the wire now?” asked Maxwell, letting himself and his companion through the wicket in the counter rail.

“No; but I’ll call him for you.” Followed a sharp rattling of the key and a few broken snippings from the sounder, and then the despatcher got up out of his chair. “Here he is,” he said. “He wants to talk to you, personally.”

Maxwell took the vacated chair and key, and Connolly stood aside with the big expert. “Seems right good to have you dropping in every now and then, Mr. Sprague,” said the fat one. “You’d ought to belong to us out here. We’d sure make it warm for you in the Short Line family.”

Sprague looked the dumpling-like despatcher over in mild and altogether friendly criticism.

“Speaking of families: you got married yourself a little while ago, didn’t you, Dan?” he asked.

“You bet I did!” was the enthusiastic reply. “Sadie ain’t got done talking yet about that set of knives and forks you sent her from Philadelphia.”

Again the big-muscled man was looking the despatcher over critically, this time with a quizzical twinkle in his gray eyes.

“Tell me how you did it, Dan,” he urged soberly. “You’re fatter than I ever dared to be. How did you manage to make a girl believe that there might be a man inside of a big body as well as in a medium-sized one?”

The night despatcher laughed until his moon-like face was purple; until the car-record clerk in the distant corner of the room looked up from his type-writer to see if he, too, might not share the joke.

“Gi-give me a little time,” wheezed Connolly; and he was presumably going to tell how it had been done when Maxwell got up from the glass-topped table and broke in.

“Twenty-six is asking for orders, Dan,” he said; and when Connolly had resumed his chair and his key: “That’s all, Calvin. We’ll go across to my office, if you like.”

It was behind the closed door of the superintendent’s room, after Sprague had chosen the easiest of the three chairs and settled himself for a smoke, that Maxwell said:

“I’m going to miss you like the devil, Calvin; I’m missing you right now.”

Sprague blew a series of smoke rings toward the disused gas-fixture hanging from the centre of the ceiling.

“Something that Chief Engineer Benson has been telling you over the wire from Copah?” he suggested.

“Yes.”

Another series of the smoke rings, and then: “Well, I didn’t tell you you couldn’t talk, did I?”

Maxwell did not haggle over the inverted terms of the permission to talk. The necessity was too pressing.

“Benson has struck something that he can’t account for. For a week or more the Transcontinental people have been gathering a working camp at the Copah end of the bridge on which their Jack’s Canyon branch crosses the Pannikin. Nobody seems to know what they are going to do, or where they are going to do it. At Leckhard’s suggestion, I sent Benson over to pry around a little.”

“And he hasn’t found out what the T-C. folks have in mind?”

“No, he hasn’t. But it is plainly some sort of a track-building job. He says they have a hundred or more scraper-teams in camp, a train-load of new steel, and forty car-loads of cross-ties. And this afternoon they brought down a mechanical rail-layer--a machine much used nowadays for rushing a job of track-laying.”

The big guest smoked reflectively for a full minute or more before he said: “No jangle with the Copah city authorities about any trackage rights in the town, or street crossings, or anything of that sort?”

“Not that I have ever heard of. The T-C. has its own Copah yard, and has a switching connection with the Pacific Southwestern yard tracks; though, naturally, there is little exchange of business between the two competitive systems.”

“Do they connect with you?” asked Sprague.