Empire Builders Part 30

"Whereabouts are we now, Johnson?" he asked of the cook's second man.

"Between Cutcliff and No-Horse; yes, sah. 'Bout forty mile from Denver."

"Great Scott! Fifteen miles an hour? Say, Johnson, what do you do when you want 'em to run faster--pull this string?"

"Yes, sah; dat's it," grinned the negro.

Adair pulled the air-cord, and it brought results--of a kind. Only the train came to a sudden stop, instead of going ahead faster; and Conductor Barclay, who had been riding on the engine, came back to see what had happened.

"Did you stop us, Mr. Adair?" he asked pleasantly.

"Not meaning to, you may be sure," said Adair. "But now you're here, I'll ask if there is any objection to my getting off and walking. I could stop and rest and let you overtake me now and then, you know."

The conductor tweaked the air-cord and the train moved on again.

"I've been expecting you'd shout at us," he said good-naturedly. "But we're doing the best we can. There's a freight wreck on ahead, and we've been dallying along, hoping they'd get it picked up by the time we reach it. I thought you'd rather keep moving than to be hung up for three or four hours at the wreck."

Adair saw his helplessness and made the best of it. He was in Mr.

North's hands, and if Mr. North was playing for delay, the delay would be forthcoming. None the less, he contrived to make Barclay uncomfortable.

"I'm only a director in the Pacific Southwestern, and I suppose directors don't count," he said nonchalantly. "Yet, I presume, if I should ask it as a personal favor, I might get a conductor's or an engineer's head to take home with me for a souvenir. How would that be?

Do you think I could make it win?"

"You could do it, hands down, Mr. Adair. But I hope you won't feel as if you'd got to go into the head-hunting business. It's like the boy throwing stones into the pond; it's fun for the kid, but sort o' hard on the toad-frogs."

Adair laughed. He was not one of those who find it easy to bear malice.

"You don't talk half as bad as you act," he said genially. "Down at bottom I dare say you're a pretty good kind of a fellow. Had anything to eat?"

Barclay shook his head. "No; we was laying off to get coffee and sinkers at Clapp's Mine, if we ever get there."

"'Coffee and sinkers'," said Adair. "That doesn't sound very uplifting.

Sit down here and help me out with my contract."

Barclay did it, rather unwillingly. He was not accustomed to eating at the vice-president's table, but there was no resisting the curly-headed young man when he chose to make himself companionable. Barclay sat on the edge of his chair, ate with his knife or fork indifferently, and had small use for the extra spoons and cutlery. But he made a meal to be remembered. Afterward, the young man found a cigar-case, and his own box of Turkish cigarettes; and still the special was going at the same slow cow-gallop up the canyon.

"How many are there of you up ahead?" asked Adair, when Barclay's cigar was going like a factory chimney.

"Only Williams and his fireman."

"Dinner-buckets?"

"No; neither one of 'em, as it happens. Hurry call to go out with you, and both of 'em live too far to go home after the grub-cans."

"Johnson," said the dispenser of hospitality, calling the second man.

"Think you could climb over the coal with some dinner for the enginemen?

No? Let me make it possible"--flipping a dollar into the ready palm.

"Tell the cook it's an order, and if he stints it there'll be consequences."

Barclay grinned his appreciation. The curly-headed young man was far enough removed from any species of railway official hitherto known to the conductor. But Adair was only paving the way.

"Do you know," he said, after a little interval of tobacco-charmed silence, "one of the things I am most anxious to see is a real railroad wreck. Suppose you quicken up a little and let us have our dead time at the scene of this disaster you speak of."

Barclay was tilting uneasily in his chair.

"I reckon they've about got it picked up and cleaned out o' the way by this time, Mr. Adair. I shouldn't be surprised if we could hardly find the place when we get there."

"Nor I," said Adair; and he sat back and chuckled. "It's considerably difficult to sit up and pull your imagination on a man who has been decently good to you, isn't it, Barclay? Let me ask you: are you Mr.

North's man?"

"Mr. North is the big boss."

"But this Plug Mountain division is a part of Mr. Ford's line, isn't it?"

"It used to be all his. There's a white man for you, Mr. Adair."

Adair saw his opportunity and used it.

"Now see here, Barclay; I'm only a director, and I don't cut much ice out this way. But back in New York I'm one of three or four people who can tell Mr. North what he can do, and what he can't. You wouldn't want to see Mr. Ford getting it in the neck, would you?"

"By Jacks! There ain't a man in the service that wouldn't fight for him.

I tell you, he's _white_."

"Well, Mr. Ford is in trouble: I don't know but he is likely to lose his job, if I don't see the president before the big ax comes down. That is between us two."

The conductor sprang out of his chair.

"By gravy! Why didn't you say that at first? Say, Mr. Adair, you stand between us and Mr. North--tell him you gave the orders yourself--and you'll have the ride of your life from here to Saint's Rest!"

"Go it," said Adair; and two minutes after Barclay had let himself out of the forward door of the "01," the train took a sudden start and darted ahead at full speed.

This bit of diplomacy on the part of Adair saved two full hours in the run to Saint's Rest. Nevertheless, it was after dark when the "01"

pulled into the crowded material yard in the high mountain basin and Leckhard came aboard to find out what had brought this second private-car visitation. He was relieved not to meet North--to be confronted only by a pleasant-faced young man who seemed to have the car all to himself.

"My name is Leckhard," announced the man-of-all-work, "and I represent the engineering department. I saw it was Mr. North's car, and--"

"And you came to see what you could do for the vice-president and general manager," Adair finished for him. "Mighty sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Leckhard, but my name isn't North; it's Adair, and I'm only a director. How much authority is a director allowed--at this alt.i.tude and distance from New York?"

Leckhard laughed.

"I reckon you might call yourself the ranking officer in the field, Mr.

Adair. What you say, goes."

"Then I say 'go'; which means that I'd like to go--on to the end of the extension."

But now the engineer was shaking his head.

"Ask me anything but that, Mr. Adair. None of our enginemen is at this end of the line, and your man Williams, who brought you up from Denver, doesn't know the way. More than that, if we had a man and an engine, I'd be afraid to send you out for a night run. Mr. Ford made it last night with Mr. Colbrith's car, and they used up ten hours in covering less than a hundred and twenty miles, and came within six feet of killing everybody."