Empire Builders Part 14

P. S-W. closed at ninety-two to-day, and a Dutch syndicate will take the bonds. Success to you in the Western wilderness. Brewster wants to know how soon you'll reach his Utah copper mines. ADAIR.

XI

HURRY ORDERS

"I'm no cold-water thrower, Ford, as you know. But if I were a contractor, and you were trying to get me to commit myself to any such steeplechase, I should say no, and confirm it with a cuss-word."

It was a week after the successful placing of the Western Extension building-fund bonds with the Dutch syndicate, and Ford, having ordered things to his liking on the newly opened Chicago line, had taken the long step westward to Denver to begin the forging of the third link in the great railway chain.

Frisbie, now first a.s.sistant engineer in charge of construction, had come down from Saint's Rest for a conference with his chief, and the place of conferrings was a quiet corner in one of the balconies overlooking the vast rotunda of the Brown Palace Hotel; this because the carpenters were still busy in the suite of rooms set apart for the offices of the a.s.sistant to the president in the Pacific Southwestern headquarters down-town.

"You mean that the time is too short?" said Ford, speaking to Frisbie's emphatic objection.

"Too short at both ends," contended the little man with the devilish mustaches and chin beard. "The Copah mining district is one hundred and twenty miles, as the crow flies, from the summit of Plug Pa.s.s--say one hundred and forty by the line of our survey down the Pannikin, through the canyon and up to the town. Giving you full credit for more getting-ready than I supposed any man could compa.s.s in the three weeks you've been at it, I still think it is impossible for us to reach Copah this season."

"You must change your belief, d.i.c.k," was the curt rejoinder. "This is to be a campaign, not only of possibilities, but of things done. We go into Copah with the steel gangs before snow flies."

"I know; that's what you've been saying all along. But you're looking at the thing by and large, and I'm figuring on the flinty details. For example: you'll admit that we can't work to any advantage west of the mountains until we have made a standard gauge out of the Plug Mountain branch. How much time have you been allowing for that?"

"No time at all for the delay: about three weeks, maybe, for the actual changing of the gauge," said Ford coolly.

"All right," laughed Frisbie. "Only you'll show us how. It doesn't lie in the back of my head--or in c.r.a.psey's, unless he's a better man than I hired him for."

"Who is c.r.a.psey?"

"He is a Purdue man that I picked up and started out on the branch to make figures on the change of gauge. The other three parties, under Major Benson, Jack Benson and Roy Brissac, are setting the grade stakes down the Pannikin, and Leckhard is wrestling with the construction material you've been dumping in upon us at Saint's Rest. That left me short, and I hired c.r.a.psey."

"Good. If he is capable, he may do the broadening. Call him in and set him at it."

"But, man! Don't you want the figures first?"

"My dear d.i.c.k! I've had those figures for two years, and there's nothing very complicated about that part of our problem. Call your man in and let him attack the thing itself."

"Everything goes: you may consider him recalled. But broadening the Plug Mountain to standard gauge doesn't put us into Copah this summer, does it?"

"No; our necessities will do that for us. See here; let me show you."

Ford took out his note-book and on a blank page of it outlined a rough map, talking as he sketched. "Three weeks ago you wired me that the Transcontinental people were ma.s.sing building material at the terminus of their Saguache branch."

"So I did," said Frisbie.

"And the day before yesterday you wired again to say that it was apparently a false alarm. What made you change your mind?"

"They are hauling the stuff away--over to their Green b.u.t.te line, I'm told."

"Why are they hauling it away?"

"The bluff--their bluff--was called. We had got busy on Plug Pa.s.s, and they saw there was no hope of cutting in ahead of us at that point."

"Exactly. Now look at this map for a minute. Here is Saint's Rest; here is the Copah district; and here is Green b.u.t.te, the junction of their narrow gauge with the standard-gauge Salt Lake and Eastern. If you were on the Transcontinental executive committee and saw an active competing line about to build a standard-gauge railroad through the Copah district and on to a connection with your narrow gauge's outlet at Green b.u.t.te, what would you advise?"

Frisbie nodded. "It's easy, when you know how, isn't it They'll standardize their narrow gauge to Green b.u.t.te, make an iron-clad traffic contract with the S. L & E. to exclude us, and build a branch from Jack's Canyon, say, up into the Copah country." And then in loyal admiration: "That's what I call the sure word of prophecy--your specialty, Stuart. How many nights' sleep did you lose figuring that out?"

"Not any, as it happens," laughed Ford. "It was a straight tip out of the East. The plan, just about as you've outlined it, was adopted by the Transcontinental powers that be, sitting in New York last week. By some means unknown to me, Mr. Adair got wind of it, and made a flying trip to Chicago to put me on--wouldn't even trust the wire with it. Now you understand why we've got to wake the Copah echoes with a locomotive whistle this season."

"Copah--yes," said Frisbie doubtfully. "But that is only a way station.

What we need is Green b.u.t.te and the Pacific coast outlet over the S. L & E.; and they stand to euchre us out of that, hands down. What's to prevent their making that traffic contract with the Mormon people right now?"

"Nothing; if the S. L & E. management were willing. But just here the political situation in Mormondom fights for us. Last year the Transcontinental folk turned heaven and earth over to defeat the Mormon candidate for the United States Senate. The quarrel wasn't quite mortal enough to stand in the way of a profitable business deal; but all things being equal, the Salt Lake line will favor us as against its political enemy."

"You're sure of that?" queried Frisbie.

"As sure as one can be of anything that isn't cash down on the nail--with the money locked up in a safety deposit vault. By the sheerest good luck, the Mormon president of the S. L & E. happened to be in New York at the time when Adair had his ear to the Transcontinental keyhole. Adair hunted him up and made a hypothetical case of a sure thing: if our Western Extension and the Transcontinental, standard-gauged, should be knocking at the Green b.u.t.te door at the same time, what would the S. L & E. do? The Mormon answer was a bid for speed; first come, first served. But Adair was given to understand, indirectly, that on an equal footing, our line would be given the preference as a friendly ally."

"Bully for the Mormon! But you say Copah--this summer. When we reach Copah we are still one hundred and forty miles short of Green b.u.t.te. And if you can broaden the Plug Mountain in three weeks--which you'll still allow me to doubt--the Transcontinental ought to be able to broaden its Green b.u.t.te narrow gauge in three months."

"If you had cross-sectioned both lines as I have, you wouldn't stumble over that," said Ford, falling back, as he commonly did, upon the things he knew. "We shall broaden the Plug Mountain without straightening a curve or throwing a shovelful of earth on the embankment, from beginning to end. On the other hand, the Green b.u.t.te narrow gauge runs for seventy miles through the crookedest canyon a Rocky Mountain river ever got lost in. There is more heavy rock work to be done in that canyon than on our entire Pannikin division from start to finish."

"That's bully for us," quoth the first a.s.sistant. "But, all the same, we shouldn't stop at Copah, this fall."

"We shall not stop at Copah," was the decisive rejoinder. "The winters on the western side of the range are much milder than they are here, and not to be spoken of in the same day with your Minnesota and Dakota stamping-ground. If we can get well out of the mountains before the heavy snows come--"

Frisbie wagged his head.

"I guess I've got it all, now--after so long a time. We merely break the record for fast railroad building--all the records--for the next six months or so. Is that about it?"

"You've surrounded it," said Ford tersely.

"Good enough: we're ready to make the break when you give the word. What are we waiting for?"

"Just at this present moment, for the contractors."

"Why, I understood you had closed with the MacMorrogh Brothers," said Frisbie.

"No. At the last moment--to relieve me of a responsibility which might give rise to charges of favoritism, as he put it--Mr. Colbrith took the bids out of my hands and carried the decision up to the executive committee. Hence, we wait; and keep a growing army of laborers here under pay while we wait," said Ford, with disgust thinly masked. Then he added: "With all due respect to Mr. Colbrith, he is simply a senile frost!"

Frisbie chuckled.

"Been cooling your fingers, has he? But I understood from the headquarters people down-town, that the MacMorroghs had a sure thing on the grading and rock work. Their bid was the lowest, wasn't it?"

"Yes; but not the cheapest for the company, d.i.c.k. I've been keeping tab on the MacMorroghs for a good while: they are grafters; the kind of men who take it out of the company and out of their labor in a thousand petty little steals--three profits on the commissary, piece-work for subs where they know a man's got to lose out, steals on the working hours, fines and drawbacks and discounts on the pay-rolls, and all that.

You know how it's done."

"Sure," agreed Frisbie, with his most diabolical grin. "Also, I know how it keeps the engineering department on the hottest borders of Hades, trying to hold them down. The good Lord deliver us!"