Empire Builders Part 23

Frisbie looked horrified.

"You--you certainly will, Miss Adair; if Mr. Colbrith insists upon having his car dragged over the range." Then, being quite willing to make his escape, he turned to his chief. "Is there anything else? If not, I'll be getting back to the Riley mix-up before the trouble has time to grow any bigger."

Ford shook his head, and Frisbie lifted his hat to Miss Adair and turned to climb to his engine cab. But at the moment of brake-releasings Ford halted him.

"One minute," he said; and turning to his charge: "I'll borrow d.i.c.k's engine and take you down to the Nadia's siding, if you'd rather ride than walk."

"Oh, will you? That would be fine! But oughtn't Mr. Frisbie to get back to his work?"

"Y-yes," Ford admitted. "Time is rather important, just now."

"Then we'll walk," she said with great decision.

"That's all, d.i.c.k," Ford called. "Keep an eye open for Garcia. He might make a fluke and shoot straight, for once in a way."

They stood in silence on the wind-swept summit until the curving down-rush of the western grade had swallowed the retreating engine. Miss Alicia was the first to speak when the iron clamor was distance-drowned.

"I like your Mr. Frisbie," she said reflectively. "Isn't he the kind of man who would have taken the message to the other Garcia?"

"He is the kind of man who would stop a bullet for his friend, and think nothing of it--if the bullet should happen to leave him anything to think with," he returned warmly. And then he added, half absently: "He saved my life four years ago last summer."

There was genuine human interest in her voice when she said gently:

"Would you mind telling me about it?"

"It was up in the Minnesota pineries, where we were building a branch railroad through the corner of an Indian reservation. A half-breed pot-hunter for the game companies had a right-of-way quarrel with the railroad people, and he pitched upon me as the proper person to kill. It was a knife rush in the moonlight; and d.i.c.k might have shot him, only he was too tender-hearted. So he got between us."

"Well?" she prompted, when it became evident that Ford thought he had finished.

"That was all; except that it was touch and go with poor d.i.c.k for the next six weeks, with no surgeon worthy of the name nearer than St.

Paul."

Miss Alicia was more deeply impressed by the little story than she cared to have her companion suspect. Her world was a world of the commonplace conventions, with New York as its starting point and homing place; and she thought she knew something of humankind. But it came to her suddenly that the men she knew best were not at all like these two.

"Shall we go back now?" she asked; and they were half-way down to the siding and the private car before she spoke again. It took some little time to compa.s.s sufficient humility to make amends, and even then the admission came to no more than four words.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ford."

"What for?" he asked, knowing only that he was coming to love her more blindly with every added minute of their companions.h.i.+p.

"For--for trying to be hateful." It was a humbler thing than any she had ever said to a man, but the raw sincerity of time and place and a.s.sociation was beginning to get into her blood.

"If it comes to that, there were two of us," he rejoined, matching her frankness. "And, as you remarked a while back, I was certainly the aggressor. Shall we call it a truce for the present?"

"If you will be generous enough."

"Oh, I am generosity itself, under ordinary conditions; but just now I'll admit that I am fearfully and wonderfully inhospitable. I can't help wis.h.i.+ng most fervently that something had happened to prevent your uncle's coming."

"Is it uncle who is in the way?--or the pleasure party?"

"Both."

"We are negligible," she said, meaning the pleasurers.

"No, you are not; and neither is your Uncle Sidney."

"Is he still formidable to you?" she laughed.

"He is, indeed. But, worse than that, he is likely to prove a very considerable disturbing element if I can't keep him from plunging in upon us."

She let half of the remaining distance to the end of the steep grade go underfoot before she said: "I like to help people, sometimes; but I don't like to do it in the dark."

He would have explained instantly to a man for the sake of gaining an ally. But he could not bring himself to the point of telling her the story of graft and misrule in which the MacMorroghs were the princ.i.p.als, and North--and her uncle, by implication--the backers.

So he said: "It is rather a long story, and you would scarcely understand it. We have been having constant trouble with the MacMorroghs, the contractors, and there is a bad state of affairs in the grading camps. It has come to a point where I shall have to fight the MacMorroghs to some sort of a finish, and--well, to put it very baldly, I don't want to have to fight the MacMorroghs and the president in the same round."

"Why should Uncle Sidney take the part of these men, if they are bad men, Mr. Ford?"

"Because he has always distrusted my judgment, and because he is loyal to Mr. North, whom he has made my superior. Mr. North tells him that I am to blame."

"But it must be a very dreadful condition of things, if what Mr. Frisbie said is all true."

"Frisbie spoke of only one little incident. Trouble like this we're having to-day is constantly arising. No money-making graft is too petty or too immoral for the MacMorroghs to connive at. They rob and starve their laborers, and cheat the company with bad work. I've got to have a free hand in dealing with them, or--"

He stopped abruptly, realizing that he was talking to her as he might have talked to a specialist in his own profession. Hence he was not disappointed when she said:

"You go too fast for me. But I think I understand now why our coming is inopportune. And it's comforting to know that the reason is a business reason."

He put shame to the wall and blurted out suddenly: "It is only one of the reasons, Miss Adair. The--the camps are no fit place for a party with women. You--you'll have to be blind and deaf if your uncle persists in taking you with him."

It was said, and he was glad of it, though he was wiping the perspiration from his face when the thing was done. She was silent until they were standing at the steps of the side-tracked private car.

"Thank you," she said simply. "Of course, I'll do what I can to keep Uncle Sidney from going--and taking us. What shall you say to him?"

"I am going to tell him that our track isn't safe for the Nadia--which is true enough."

"Very well. I'll tell Aunt Hetty and Mrs. Van Bruce--which may be more to the point. But don't be encouraged by that. I have reason to believe that Uncle Sidney will have his way in spite of any or all of us."

XVII

A NIGHT OF ALARMS

Ford put Miss Alicia up the steps of the Nadia and followed her into the vestibule, meaning to fight it out with Mr. Colbrith on the spot, and hoping he might have a private audience with the president for the doing of it.