Empire Builders Part 35

"Take your track gang and be d.a.m.ned to you!" he snarled.

Adair made a forward step and stood over him.

"Are you quite convinced that I am the better man?" he asked very gently.

"It's a trick!" growled the Wicklow man savagely. "I could get onto it in another whirl or two."

"Get up," said the gentle voice. "You'll never have a better chance to learn the trick." But the foreman had the saving grace to shun anti-climaxes.

"G'wan! Take the men, I say; all of 'em, if you like."

"Thanks," said Adair pleasantly. "We'll do it, and we'll take you, as well--to answer for their good behavior. Let me help you up," and he stooped and snapped the big one to his feet as a man would collar a reluctant boy.

"Great judgment!" gasped the foreman. "Say, Mister c.o.c.k-o'-the-walk--where do you hide all that muscle?" And without waiting for an answer he piled a dozen of his men upon the engine and followed them, still muttering.

It was a partly surfaced ten miles over which the special train thundered for the third time since dawn-breaking, and Gallagher took the last wheel-turn out of the 956. None the less, the sun was reddening the western mountains when the Italians took ground at the mysterious gap.

The rails were found in the stream, as Adair had predicted, and it was a work of minutes only to snake them up the embankment and to spike them lightly into place. But when Adair, for the healing of wounds, had thrust a bank-note into the hand of the Wicklow man, and the special was once more on its unhindered way westward, the sun had fairly topped the eastern range, and Johnson, the porter of the "01," was shouting across the rocketing tender that breakfast was served.

The young man in the London-cut clothes might have climbed back to the car over the coal; or Gallagher would have stopped for him. But he elected to stay in the cab, and he was still there, hanging from the open window on Jackson's side, when the one-car special woke the echoes with its whistle, clattered in over the switches at Horse Creek, and came to a stand opposite the MacMorroghs' commissary.

It was Brian MacMorrogh who came across the tracks to greet Adair, and, since this was their first meeting, he made the mistake of his life in calling the young director by name.

"The top of the morning to you, Misther Adair. Is it Misther Colbrith you'd be looking for?"

"It is," said Adair shortly, not failing to remark that the barrel-bodied, black-bearded man seemed to recognize and to be expecting him.

"'Tis two hours gone they all are," was the oily-voiced explanation. "Up the grade and over to Copah. But they'll be back to-morrow, Heaven savin' thim, and we'll make you comfortable here--as comfortable as we can."

"That will be quickly done," said Adair, swinging down from the engine step. "Just give me a horse and tell me which way they have gone, and I'll overtake them."

But here the barrel-bodied one spread his hands helplessly.

"'Tis just our luck!" he protested, in the keenest self-reproach. "There isn't a horse or a mule in camp that you could get a mile an hour out of. In fact, I'm thinking there isn't anny horses at all!"

XXII

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

Since the weather was rather threatening, and the promise of October in the inter-mountain region is not to be lightly trifled with, Mr.

Colbrith pressed for an early start on the seventeen-mile buckboard jaunt to Copah over the detour survey.

It was by his express command that the private-car party was called at daybreak, and that breakfast was served in the Nadia at six o'clock. And at seven sharp, which chanced to be the precise time of day when Adair's commandeered Italians were spiking the last of the displaced rails into position at the gap in the track thirty-three miles away, the buckboards were drawn up at the steps of the president's car.

For reasons charitable, as well as practical, Ford had planned to leave Frisbie out of this second dance of attendance upon the president. The track-layers were well up toward the head of Horse Creek gulch, with Brissac to drive; but during the night the Louisianian had reported in with a touch of mountain fever, and Ford had asked Frisbie to go up and take his place.

This was one of Ford's peg-drivings for the day; and another was timed for the moment of outsetting. For conveyances for the party there were the two double-seated buckboards used on the canyon trip the previous day, and one other with a single seat; but there were only two drivers, the third man, who had brought the single-seated rig from Copah, having been prevailed upon by Ford to disappear.

Ford directed the distribution of the trippers arbitrarily, and was amazed when the president acquiesced without protest. Mr. Colbrith, the doctor's wife, and Penfield, were to go in the leading vehicle; Aunt Hester Adair, Miss Van Bruce, and the doctor, in the second; and Ford drove the single-seated third, with Miss Alicia for his companion.

"I think you must have taken Uncle Sidney unawares," said Alicia, when the caravan was toiling at a slow footpace along the rough wagon road paralleling the Horse Creek grade.

"You mean that he might have objected to your driver? You are a whole lot safer with me than you would be with one of those livery-stable helpers up ahead."

"Oh, no; I didn't mean just that. But you know he usually plans all the little details himself, and--"

"And the fact that somebody else plans them is sufficient excuse for a rearrangement. That is one of the penalties he pays for being the big boss," laughed Ford. Since the yesterday was now safely yesterday, and to-day was his own, there was no room for anything but pure joy.

"You are a 'big boss,' too, aren't you?" she said, matching his light-hearted mood.

"I was, in a way, until your uncle came over and eclipsed me."

"And you will be again when Uncle Sidney moves a little farther along in his...o...b..t."

"That remains to be seen. There is yet plenty of time for him to abolish me, permanently, before he goes on his way rejoicing."

"But you are not going to resign, you know," she reminded him.

"Am I not?" Then he took his courage by the proper grip and went on with sudden gravity: "That rests entirely with you."

"Mr. Ford! Aren't you a little unfair?" She did not pretend to misunderstand him.

"I am open to convincement," he affirmed.

"It is making me Uncle Sidney's executioner, on one hand; or yours, on the other."

He pressed the point relentlessly.

"There are only two horns to the dilemma: either Mr. Colbrith, or a man named Stuart Ford, will have to walk the official plank. Because Mr.

Colbrith is your relative, I'm willing to be the victim. But you must say that it is what you wish. That is my price."

"I say it is unfair," she repeated. "Why should you put the burden of the decision upon poor me?"

"Because, if you were not concerned, there would be, to put it in good Hibernian, only one horn to the dilemma--and your uncle would be impaled upon that one."

"Mercy!" she shuddered, in mock dismay. "That sounds almost vindictive.

Are you vindictive, Mr. Ford?"

"Terribly," he laughed. "The black-hearted villain of melodrama isn't a patch on me when I'm stirred." And then, more seriously: "But it isn't altogether a joke. There is another side to the thing--what you might call the ethical, I suppose. There are a score or so of men in the company's service--Frisbie and his subordinates--whose jobs hang upon mine. A worse man than I ever aspired to be might be loyal to his friends."

"I wouldn't think of questioning your loyalty to your friends," she admitted.

"Also," he went on determinately, "there is the larger question of right and wrong involved. Is it right for me to step aside and let an organized system of graft and thievery go on unchecked? I know it exists; I have evidence enough to go before a grand jury. I'm not posing as a saint, or even as a muck-raker; but isn't something due to the people who are paying the bills?"

"Now you are involving Uncle Sidney again; and I can't listen to that."