Winton's cup was full, and he turned the talk abruptly to the industrial doings and accomplishments of the day. Adams made a verbal report which led him by successive steps up to the twilight hour when he had stood with Branagan on the brink of the placer drain, but, strangely enough, there was no stirring of memory to recall the incident of the upward-climbing miners.

When Winton rose he said something about mounting a night guard on the engine, which was kept under steam at all hours; and shortly afterward he left the dinkey ostensibly to do it, declining Adams' offer of company. But once out-of-doors he climbed straight to the operator's tent on the snow-covered slope. Carter had turned in, but he sat up in his bunk at the noise of the intrusion.

"That you, Mr. Winton? Want to send something?" he asked.

"No, go to sleep. I'll write a wire and leave it for you to send in the morning."

He sat down at the packing-case instrument table and wrote out a brief report of the day's progress in track-laying for the general manager's record. But when Carter's regular breathing told him he was alone he pushed the pad aside, took down the sending-hook, and searched until he had found the original copy of the message which had reached him at the moment of cataclysms in the lobby of the Buckingham.

"Um," he said, and his heart grew warm within him. "It's just about as I expected: Morty didn't have anything whatever to do with it—except to sign and send it as she commanded him to." And the penciled sheet was folded carefully and filed in permanence in the inner breast pocket of his brown duck shooting-coat.

The moon was rising behind the eastern mountain when he extinguished the candle and went out. Below lay the chaotic construction camp buried in silence and in darkness save for the lighted windows of the dinkey. He was not quite ready to go back to Adams, and after making a round of the camp and bidding the engine watchman keep a sharp lookout against a possible night surprise, he set out to walk over the newly-laid track of the day.

Another half-hour had elapsed, and a waning moon was clearing the topmost crags of Pacific Peak when he came out on the high embankment opposite the Rosemary, having traversed the entire length of the lateral loop and inspected the trestle at the gulch head by the light of a blazing spruce-branch.

The station with its two one-car trains, and the shacks of the little mining-camp beyond, lay shimmering ghost-like in the new-born light of the moon. The engine of the sheriff's car was humming softly with a note like the distant swarming of bees, and from the dancehall in Argentine the snort of a trombone and the tinkling clang of a cracked piano floated out upon the frosty night air.

Winton turned to go back. The windows of the Rosemary were all dark, and there was nothing to stay for. So he thought, at all events; but if he had not been musing abstractedly upon things widely separated from his present surroundings, he might have remarked two tiny stars of lantern-light high on the placer ground above the embankment; or, failing the sight, he might have heard the dull, measured slumph of a churn-drill burrowing deep in the frozen earth of the slope.

As it was, a pair of brown eyes blinded him, and the tones of a voice sweeter than the songs of Oberon's sea-maid filled his ears. Wherefore he neither saw nor heard; and taking the short cut across the mouth of the lateral gulch back to camp, he boarded the dinkey and went to bed without disturbing Adams.

The morning of the day to come broke clear and still, with the stars paling one by one at the pointing finger of the dawn, and the frost-rime lying thick and white like a snowfall of erect and glittering needles on iron and steel and wood.

Obedient to orders, the bridge-builders were getting out their hand-car at the construction camp, the wheels shrilling merrily on the frosted rails, and the men stamping and swinging their arms to start the sluggish night-blood. Suddenly, like the opening gun of a battle, the dull rumble of a mighty explosion trembled upon the still air, followed instantly by a sound as of a passing avalanche.

Winton was out and running up the track before the camp was fairly aroused. What he saw when he gained the hither side of the lateral gulch was a sight to make a strong man weep. A huge landslide, starting from the frozen placer ground high up on the western promontory, had swept every vestige of track and embankment into the deep bed of the creek at a point precisely opposite Mr. Somerville Darrah's private car.



VII. THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW

Virginia was up and dressed when the sullen shock of the explosion set the windows jarring in the Rosemary.

She hurried out upon the observation platform and so came to look upon the ruin wrought by the landslide while the dust-like smoke of the dynamite still hung in the air.

"Rather unlucky for our friends the enemy," said a colorless voice behind her; and she had an uncomfortable feeling that Jastrow had been lying in wait for her.

She turned upon him quickly.

"Was it an accident, Mr. Jastrow?"

"How could it be anything else?" he inquired mildly.

"I don't know. But there was an explosion: I heard it."

"It is horribly unfair," she went on. "I understand the sheriff is here. Couldn't he have prevented this?"

The secretary's rejoinder was a platitude: "Everything is fair in love or war."

"But this is neither," she retorted.

"Think not?" he said coolly. "Wait, and you'll see. And a word in your ear, Miss Carteret: you are one of us, you know, and you mustn't be disloyal. I know what you did yesterday after you read those telegrams."

Virginia's face became suddenly wooden. Until that moment it had not occurred to her that Jastrow's motive in showing her the two telegrams might have been carefully calculated.

"I have never given you the right to speak to me that way, Mr. Jastrow," she said, with the faintest possible emphasis on the courtesy prefix; and with that she turned from him to focus her field-glass on the construction camp below.

At the Utah stronghold all was activity of the fiercest. Winton had raced back with his news of the catastrophe, and the camp was alive with men clustering like bees and swarming upon the flat-cars of the material-train to be taken to the front.

While she looked, studiously ignoring the man behind her, Virginia saw the big octopod engine clamoring up the grade. In a twinkling the men were off and at work.

Virginia's color rose and the brown eyes filled swiftly. One part of her ideal was courage of the sort that rises the higher for reverses. But at the instant she remembered the secretary, and, lest he should spy upon her emotion, she turned and took refuge in the car.

In the Rosemary the waiter was laying the plates for breakfast, and Bessie and the Reverend William were at the window, watching the stirring industry battle now in full swing on the opposite slope. Virginia joined them.

"Isn't it a shame!" she said. "Of course, I want our side to win; but it seems such a pity that we can't fight fairly."

Calvert said, "Isn't what a shame?" thereby eliciting a crisp explanation from Virginia in which she set well-founded suspicion in the light of fact.

The Reverend Billy shook his head.

"Such things may be within the law—of business; but they will surely breed bad blood—"

The interruption was the Rajah in his proper person, bustling out fiercely to a conference with his Myrmidons. By tacit consent the three at the window fell silent.

There was a hasty mustering of armed men under the windows of the Rosemary, and they heard Sheriff Deckert's low-voiced instructions to his posse.

"Take it slow and easy, boys, and don't get rattled. Now, then; guns to the front! Steady!"

The Reverend Billy rose.

"What are you going to do?" said Virginia.

"I'm going to give Winton a tip if it's the last thing I ever do."

She shook her head and pointed eastward to the mouth of the lateral gulch. Under cover of a clump of evergreen-scrub a man in a wideflapped hat and leather breeches was climbing swiftly to the level of the new line, cautiously waving a handkerchief as a peace token. "That is the man who arrested Mr. Winton yesterday. This time he is going to fight on the other side. He'll carry the warning."

"Think so?" said Calvert.

"I am sure of it. Open the window, please. I want to see better."

As yet there was no sign of preparation on the embankment. For the moment the rifles of the track force were laid aside, and every man was plying pick or shovel.

Winton was in the thick of the pick-and-shovel melee, urging it on, when Biggin ran up.

"Hi!" he shouted. "Fixin' to take another play-day in Carbonate? Lookee down yonder!"

Winton looked and became alive to the possibilities in the turning of a leaf.

"Guns!" he yelled; and at the word of command the tools were flung aside, and the track force, over two hundred strong, became an army.

"Mulcahey, take half the men and go up the grade till you can rake those fellows without hitting the car. Branagan, you take the other half and go down till you can cross-fire with Mulcahey. Aim low, both of you; and the man who fires before he gets the word from me will break his neck at a rope's end. Fall in!"

"By Jove!" said Adams. "Are you going to resist? That spells felony, doesn't it?"

Winton pointed to the waiting octopod.

"I'm going to order the Two-fifteen down out of the way: you may go with her if you like."

"I guess not!" quoth the assistant, calmly lighting a fresh cigarette. And then to the water-boy, who was acting quartermaster: "Give me a rifle and a cartridge-belt, Chunky, and I'll stay here with the boss."

"And where do I come in?" said Biggin to Winton reproachfully.

"You'll stay out, if your head's level. You've done enough already to send you to Canyon City."

"I ain't a-forgettin' nothing," said Peter cheerfully, casting himself flat behind a heap of earth on the dump-edge.

While the sheriff's posse was picking its way gingerly over the loose rock and earth dam formed by the landslide, the window went up in the Rosemary and Winton saw Virginia. Without meaning to, she gave him his battle-word.

"We are a dozen Winchesters to your one, Mr. Deckert, and we shall resist force with force. Order your men back or there will be trouble."

Winton stood out on the edge of the cutting, a solitary figure where a few minutes before the earth had been flying from a hundred shovels.

The sheriff's reply was an order, but not for retreat.

"He's one of the men we want; cover him!" he commanded.

Unless the public occasion appeals strongly to the sympathies or the passions, a picked-up sheriff's posse is not likely to have very good metal in it. Peter Biggin laughed.

"Don't be no ways nervous," he said in an aside to Winton. "Them professional veniry chumps couldn't hit the side o' Pacific Peak."

Winton held his ground, while the sheriff tried to drive his men up a bare slope commanded by two hundred rifles to right and left. The attempt was a humiliating failure. Being something less than soldiers trained to do or die, the deputies hung back to a man.

Virginia could not forbear a smile. The sheriff burst into caustic profanity. Whereupon Mr. Peter Biggin rose up and sent a bullet to plow a little furrow in the ice within an inch of Deckert's heels.

"Ex-cuse me, Bart," he drawled, "but no cuss words don't go."

The sheriff ignored Peter Biggin as a person who could be argued with at leisure and turned to Winton.

"Come down!" he bellowed.

Winton laughed.

"Let me return the invitation. Come up, and you may read your warrants to us all day."

Deckert withdrew his men, and at Winton's signal the track-layers came in and the earth began to fly again.

Virginia sighed her relief, and Bessie plucked up courage to go to the window, which she had deserted in the moment of impending battle.

"Breakfast is served," announced the waiter as calmly as if the morning meal were the only matter of consequence in a world of happenings.

They gathered about the table, a silent trio made presently a quartet by the advent of Mrs. Carteret, who had neither seen nor heard anything of the warlike episode with which the day had begun.

Mr. Darrah was late, so late that when he came in, Virginia was the only one of the four who remained at table. She stayed to pour his coffee and to bespeak peace.

"Uncle Somerville, can't we win without calling in these horrid men with their guns?"

A mere shadow of a grim smile came and went in the Rajah's eyes.

"An unprejudiced outsideh might say that the 'horrid men with their guns' were on top of that embankment, my deah—ten to ouh one," he remarked.

"But I should think we might win in some other way," Virginia persisted undauntedly.

Mr. Darrah pushed his plate aside and cleared his throat.

"For business reasons which you—ah—wouldn't undehstand, we can't let the Utah finish this railroad of theirs into Carbonate this winteh."

"So much I have inferred. But Mr. Winton seems to be very determined."

"Mmph! I wish Mr. Callowell had favehed us with some one else—any one else. That young fellow is a bawn fighteh, my deah."

Virginia had a bright idea, and she advanced it without examining too closely into its ethical part.

"Mr. Winton is working for wages, isn't he?" she asked.

"Of cou'se; big money, at that. His sawt come high."

"Well, why can't you hire him away from the other people? Mr. Callowell might not be so fortunate next time."

The Rajah sat back in his chair and regarded her thoughtfully.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing my deah—nothing at all. I was just wondering how a woman's—ah—sense of propo'tion was put togetheh. But your plan has merit. Do I understand that you will faveh me with your help?"

"Why, ye-es, certainly, if I can," she assented, not without dubiety. "That is, I'll be nice to Mr. Winton."

"That is precisely what I mean, my deah. We'll begin by having him heah to dinneh this evening, him and the otheh young man—what's his name?—Adams."

And the upshot of the matter was a dainty note which found its way by the hands of the private-car porter to Winton, laboring manfully at his task of repairing the landslide damages.

"Mr. Somerville Darrah's compliments to Mr. John Winton and Mr. Morton P. Adams, and he will be pleased if they will dine with the party in the car Rosemary at seven o'clock.

"Informal.

"Wednesday, December the Ninth."



VIII. THE GREEKS BRINGING GIFTS

Adams said "By Jove!" in his most cynical drawl when Winton gave him the dinner-bidding to read: then he laughed.

Winton recovered the dainty note, folding it carefully and putting it in his pocket. The handwriting was the same as that of the telegram abstracted from Operator Carter's sending-book.

"I don't see anything to laugh at," he objected.

"No? First the Rajah sends the sheriff's posse packing without striking a blow, and now he invites us to dinner."

"You make me exceedingly tired at odd moments, Morty. Why can't you give Mr. Darrah the credit of being what he really is at bottom—a right-hearted Virginia gentleman of the old school?"

"You don't mean that you are going to accept!" said Adams, aghast.

"Certainly; and so are you."

There was no more to be said, and Adams held his peace while Winton scribbled a line of acceptance on a leaf of his note-book and sent it across to the Rosemary by the hand of the water-boy.

Their reception at the steps of the Rosemary was a generous proof of the aptness of that aphorism which sums up the status post bellum in the terse phrase, "After war, peace." Mr. Darrah met them; was evidently waiting for them.

"Come in, gentlemen; come in and be at home,"—this with a hand for each. "Virginia allowed you wouldn't faveh us, but I assured her she didn't rightly know men of the world: told her that a picayune business affair in which we are all acting as corporation proxies needn't spell out anything like a blood feud between gentlemen."

For another man the informal table gathering might have been easily prohibitive of confidences a deux, even with a Virginia Carteret to help, but Winton was far above the trammelings of time and place. He had eyes and ears only for the sweet-faced, low-voiced young woman beside him, and some of his replies to the others were irrelevant enough to send a smile around the board.

"How very absent-minded Mr. Winton seems to be this evening!" murmured Bessie from her niche between Adams and the Reverend Billy at the farther end of the table. "He isn't quite at his best, is he, Mr. Adams?"

"No, indeed," said Adams, matching her undertone, "very far from it. He has been a bit off all day: touch of mountain fever, I'm afraid."

"But he doesn't look at all ill," objected Miss Bessie. "I should say he is a perfect picture of rude health."

The coffee was served, and Mrs. Carteret was rising. Whereupon Miss Virginia handed her cup to Adams, and so had him for her companion in the tete-a-tete chair, leaving Winton to shift for himself.

The shifting process carried him over to the Rajah and the Reverend Billy, to a small table in a corner of the compartment, and the enjoyment of a mild cigar.

Later, when Calvert had been eliminated by Miss Bessie, Winton looked to see the true inwardness of the dinner-bidding made manifest by his host.

But Mr. Darrah chatted on, affably noncommittal, and after a time Winton began to upbraid himself for suspecting the ulterior motive. And when he finally rose to excuse himself on a letter-writing plea, his leave-taking was that of the genial host reluctant to part company with his guest.

"I've enjoyed your conve'sation, seh; enjoyed it right much. May I hope you will faveh us often while we are neighbors?"

Winton rose, made the proper acknowledgments, and would have crossed the compartment to make his adieus to Mrs. Carteret. But at that moment Virginia came between.

"You are not going yet, are you, Mr. Winton? Don't hurry. If you are dying to smoke a pipe, as Mr. Adams says you are, we can go out on the platform. It isn't too cold, is it?"

"It is clear and frosty, a beautiful night," he hastened to say. "May I help you with your coat?"

So presently Winton had his heart's desire, which was to be alone with Virginia.

She nerved herself for the plunge,—her uncle's plunge.

"Your part in the building of this other railroad is purely a business affair, is it not?"

"My personal interest? Quite so; a mere matter of dollars and cents, you may say."

"If you should have another offer, from some other company—"

"That is not your argument; it is Mr. Darrah's. You know well enough what is involved: honor, integrity, good faith, everything a man values, or should value. I can't believe you would ask such a sacrifice of me—of any man.

"Indeed, I do not ask it, Mr. Winton. But it is only fair that you should have your warning. My uncle will leave no stone unturned to defeat you."

He was still looking into her eyes, and so had courage to say what came uppermost.

"I don't care: I shall fight him as hard as I can, but I shall always be his debtor for this evening. Do you understand?"

In a flash her mood changed and she laughed lightly.

"Who would think it of you, Mr. Winton. Of all men I should have said you were the last to care so much for the social diversions. Shall we go in?"



IX. THE BLOCK SIGNAL. If Mr. John Winton, C. E., stood in need of a moral tonic, as Adams had so delicately intimated to Miss Bessie Carteret, it was administered in quantity sufficient before he slept on the night of dinner-givings.

For a clear-eyed theorist, free from all heart-trammelings and able to grasp the unsentimental fact, the enemy's new plan of campaign wrote itself quite legibly. With his pick and choice among the time-killing expedients the Rajah could scarcely have found one more to his purpose than the private car Rosemary, including in its passenger list a Miss Virginia Carteret.

All of which Adams, substituting friendly frankness for the disciplinary traditions of the service, set forth in good Bostonian English for the benefit and behoof of his chief, and was answered according to his deserts with scoffings and deridings.

"I wasn't born yesterday, Morty, and I'm not so desperately asinine as you seem to think," was the besotted one's summing-up. "I know the Rajah doesn't split hairs in a business fight, but he is hardly unscrupulous enough to use Miss Carteret as a cat's-paw."

But Adams would not be scoffed aside so easily.

"You're off in your estimate of Mr. Darrah, Jack, 'way off. I know the tradition: that a Southern gentleman is all chivalry when it comes to a matter touching his womankind, and I don't controvert it as a general proposition. But the Rajah has been a fighting Western railroad magnate so long that his accent is about the only Southern asset he has retained. If I'm any good at guessing, he will stick at nothing to gain his end."

Winton admitted the impeachment without prejudice to his own point of view.

"Perhaps you are right. But forewarned is forearmed. And Miss Virginia is not going to lend herself to any such nefarious scheme."

"Not consciously, perhaps; but you don't know her yet. If she saw a good chance to take the conceit out of you, she'd improve it—without thinking overmuch of the possible consequences to the Utah company."

"Pshaw!" said Winton. "That is another of your literary inferences. I've met her only twice, yet I venture to say I know her better than you do. If she cared anything for me—which she doesn't—"

"Oh, go to sleep!" said Adams, who was not minded to argue further with a man besotted; and so the matter went by default for the time.

But in the days that followed, days in which the sun rose and set in cloudless winter splendor and the heavy snows still held aloof, Adams' prediction wrought itself out into sober fact. After the single appeal to force, Mr. Darrah seemed to give up the fight. None the less, the departure of the Rosemary was delayed, and its hospitable door was always open to the Utah chief of construction and his assistant.

It was very deftly done, and even Adams, the clear-eyed, could not help admiring the Rajah's skilful finesse. Of formal dinner-givings there might easily have been an end, since the construction camp had nothing to offer in return. But the formalities were studiously ignored, and the two young men were put upon a footing of intimacy and encouraged to come and go as they pleased.

Winton took his welcome broadly, as what lover would not? and within a week was spending most of his evenings in the Rosemary—this at a time when every waking moment of the day and night was deeply mortgaged to the chance of success. For now that the Rajah had withdrawn his opposition, Nature and the perversity of inanimate things had taken a hand, and for a fortnight the work of track-laying paused fairly within sight of the station at Argentine.

First it was a carload of steel accidentally derailed and dumped into Quartz Creek at precisely the worst possible point in the lower canyon, a jagged, rock-ribbed, cliff-bound gorge where each separate piece of metal had to be hoisted out singly by a derrick erected for the purpose—a process which effectually blocked the track for three entire days. Next it was another landslide (unhelped by dynamite, this) just above the station, a crawling cataract of loose, sliding shale which, painstakingly dug out and dammed with plank bulkhead during the day, would pour down and bury bulkhead, buttresses, and the very right of way in the night.

In his right mind—the mind of an ambitious young captain of industry who sees defeat with dishonor staring him in the face—Winton would have fought all the more desperately for these hindrances. But, unfortunately, he was no longer an industry captain with an eye single to success. He was become that anomaly despised of the working world—a man in love.

"It's no use shutting our eyes to the fact, Jack," said Adams one evening, when his chief was making ready for his regular descent upon the Rosemary. "We shall have to put night shifts at work on that shale-slide if we hope ever to get past it with the rails."

"Hang the shale!" was the impatient rejoinder. "I'm no galley slave."

Adams' slow smile came and went in cynical ripplings.

"It is pretty difficult to say precisely what you are just now. But I can prophesy what you are going to be if you don't wake up and come alive."

Having no reply to this, Adams went back to the matter of night shifts.

"If you will authorize it, I'll put a night gang on and boss it myself. What do you say?"

"I say you are no end of a good fellow, Morty. And that's the plain fact. I'll do as much for you some time."

"I'll be smashed if you will—you'll never get the chance. When I let a pretty girl make a fool of me—"

But the door of the dinkey slammed behind the outgoing one, and the prophet of evil was left to organize his night assault on the shale-slide, and to command it as best he could.

So, as we say, the days, days of stubborn toil with the enthusiasm taken out, slipped away unfruitful. Of the entire Utah force Adams alone held himself up to the mark, and being only second in command, he was unable to keep the bad example of the chief from working like a leaven of inertness among the men. Branagan voiced the situation in rich brogue one evening when Adams had exhausted his limited vocabulary of abuse on the force for its apathy. "'Tis no use, ava, Misther Adams. If you was the boss himself 'twould be you as would put the comether on thim too quick. But it's 'like masther, like mon.' The b'ys all know that Misther Winton don't care a damn; and they'll not be hurtin' thimselves wid the wurrk."

And the Rajah? Between his times of smoking high-priced cigars with Winton in the lounging-room of the Rosemary, he was swearing Jubilates in the privacy of his working-den state-room, having tri-daily weather reports wired to him by way of Carbonate and Argentine station, and busying himself in the intervals with sending and receiving sundry mysterious telegrams in cipher.

Thus Mr. Somerville Darrah, all going well for him until one fateful morning when he made the mistake of congratulating his ally. Then—but we picture the scene: Mr. Darrah late to his breakfast, being just in from an early-morning reconnaissance of the enemy's advancings; Virginia sitting opposite to pour his coffee. All the others vanished to some limbo of their own.

The Rajah rubbed his hands delightedly.

"We are coming on famously, famously, my deah Virginia. Two weeks gone, heavy snows predicted for the mountain region, and nothing, practically nothing at all, accomplished on the otheh side of the canyon. When you marry, my deah, you shall have a block of C. G. R. preferred stock to keep you in pin-money."

"I?" she queried. "But, Uncle Somerville, I don't understand—"

The Rajah laughed.

"That was a very pretty blush, my deah. Bless your innocent soul, if I were young Misteh Winton, I'm not sure but I should consideh the game well lost."

She was gazing at him wide-eyed now, and the blush had left a pallor behind it.

"You mean that I—that I—"

"I mean that you are a helpeh worth having, Miss Carteret. Anotheh time Misteh Winton won't pay cou't to a cha'ming young girl and try to build a railroad at one and the same moment, I fancy. Hah!"

The startled eyes veiled themselves swiftly, and Virginia's voice sank to its softest cadence.

"Have I been an accomplice," she began, "in this—this despicable thing, Uncle Somerville?"

Mr. Darrah began a little to see his mistake.

"Ah—an accomplice? Oh, no, my deah Virginia, not quite that. The word smacks too much of the po-lice cou'ts. Let us say that Misteh Winton has found your company mo' attractive than that of his laborehs, and commend his good taste in the matteh."

So much he said by way of damping down the fire he had so rashly lighted. Then Jastrow came in with one of the interminable cipher telegrams and Virginia was left alone.

For a time she sat at the deserted breakfast-table, dry-eyed, hot-hearted, thinking such thoughts as would come crowding thickly upon the heels of such a revelation. Winton would fail: a man with honor, good repute, his entire career at stake, as he himself had admitted, would go down to miserable oblivion and defeat, lacking some friendly hand to smite him alive to a sense of his danger. And, in her uncle's estimation, at least, she, Virginia Carteret, would figure as the Delilah triumphant.

She rose, tingling to her finger-tips with the shame of it, went to her state-room, and found her writing materials. In such a crisis her methods could be as direct as a man's. Winton was coming again that evening. He must be stopped and sent about his business.

So she wrote him a note, telling him he must not come—a note man-like in its conciseness, and yet most womanly in its failure to give even the remotest hint of the new and binding reason why he must not come. And just before luncheon an obliging Cousin Billy was prevailed upon to undertake its delivery.

When he had found Winton at the shale-slide, and had given him Miss Carteret's mandate, the Reverend Billy did not return directly to the Rosemary. On the contrary, he extended his tramp westward, stumbling on aimlessly up the canyon over the unsurfaced embankment of the new line.

Truth to tell, Virginia's messenger was not unwilling to spend a little time alone with the immensities. To put it baldly, he was beginning to be desperately cloyed with the sweets of a day-long Miss Bessie, ennuye on the one hand and despondent on the other.

Why could not the Cousin Bessies see, without being told in so many words, that the heart of a man may have been given in times long past to another woman?—to a Cousin Virginia, let us say. And why must the Cousin Virginias, passing by the lifelong devotion of a kinsman lover, throw themselves—if one must put it thus brutally—fairly at the head of an acquaintance of a day?

So questioning the immensities, the Reverend Billy came out after some little time in a small upland valley where the two lines, old and new, ran parallel at the same level, with low embankments less than a hundred yards apart.

Midway of the valley the hundred-yard interspace was bridged by a hastily-constructed spur track starting from a switch on the Colorado and Grand River main line, and crossing the Utah right of way at a broad angle. On this spur, at its point of intersection with the new line, stood a heavy locomotive, steam up, and manned in every inch of its standing-room by armed guards.

The situation explained itself, even to a Reverend Billy. The Rajah had not been idle during the interval of dinner-givings and social divagations. He had acquired the right of way across the Utah's line for his blockading spur; had taken advantage of Winton's inalertness to construct the track; and was now prepared to hold the crossing with a live engine and such a show of force as might be needful.

Calvert turned back from the entrance of the valley, and was minded, in a spirit of fairness, to pass the word concerning the new obstruction on to the man who was most vitally concerned. But alas! even a Reverend Billy may not always arise superior to his hamperings as a man and a lover. Here was defeat possible—nay, say rather defeat probable—for a rival, with the probability increasing with each hour of delay. Calvert fought it out by length and by breadth a dozen times before he came in sight of the track force toiling at the shale-slide. Should he tell Winton, and so, indirectly, help to frustrate Mr. Darrah's well-laid plan? Or should he hold his peace and thus, indirectly again, help to defeat the Utah company?

He put it that way in decent self-respect. Also he assured himself that the personal equation as between two lovers of one and the same woman was entirely eliminated. But who can tell which motive it was that prompted him to turn aside before he came to the army of toilers at the slide: to turn and cross the stream and make as wide a detour as the nature of the ground would permit, passing well beyond call from the other side of the canyon?

The detour took him past the slide in silent safety, but it did not take him immediately back to the Rosemary. Instead of keeping on down the canyon on the C. G. R. side, he turned up the gulch at the back of Argentine and spent the better half of the afternoon tramping beneath the solemn spruces on the mountain. What the hours of solitude brought him in the way of decision let him declare as he sets his face finally toward the station and the private car.

"I can't do it: I can't turn traitor to the kinsman whose bread I eat. And that is what it would come to in plain English. Beyond that I have no right to go: it is not for me to pass upon the justice of this petty war between rival corporations."

Ah, William Calvert! is there no word then of that other and far subtler temptation? When you have reached your goal, if reach it you may, will there be no remorseful looking back to this mile-stone where a word from you might have taken the fly from your pot of precious ointment?

The short winter day was darkening to its close when he returned to the Rosemary. By dint of judicious manoeuvering, with a too-fond Bessie for an unconscious confederate, he managed to keep Virginia from questioning him; this up to a certain moment of climaxes in the evening.

But Virginia read momentous things in his face and eyes, and when the time was fully ripe she cornered him. It was the old story over again, of a woman's determination to know pitted against a truthful man's blundering efforts to conceal; and before he knew what he was about Calvert had betrayed the Rajah's secret—which was also the secret of the cipher telegrams.

Miss Carteret said little—said nothing, indeed, that an anxious kinsman lover could lay hold of. But when the secret was hers she donned coat and headgear and went out on the square-railed platform, whither the Reverend Billy dared not follow her.

But another member of the Rosemary group had more courage—-or fewer scruples. When Miss Carteret let herself out of the rear door, Jastrow disappeared in the opposite direction, passing through the forward vestibule and dropping cat-like from the step to inch his way silently over the treacherous snow-crust to a convenient spying place at the other end of the car.

Unfortunately for the spying purpose, the shades were drawn behind the two great windows and the glass door, but the starlight sufficed to show the watcher a shadowy Miss Virginia standing motionless on the side which gave her an outlook down the canyon, leaning out, it might be, to anticipate the upcoming of some one from the construction camp below.

The secretary, shivering in the knife-like wind slipping down from the bald peaks, had not long to wait. By the time his eyes were fitted to the darkness he heard a man coming up the track, the snow crunching frostily under his steady stride. Jastrow ducked under the platform and gained a viewpoint on the other side of the car. The crunching footfalls had ceased, and a man was swinging himself up to the forward step of the Rosemary. At the instant a voice just above the spy's head called softly, "Mr. Winton!" and the new-comer dropped back into the snow and came tramping to the rear.

It was an awkward moment for Jastrow; but he made shift to dodge again, and so to be out of the way when the engineer drew himself up and climbed the hand-rail to stand beside his summoner.

The secretary saw him take her hand and heard her exclamation, half indignant, wholly reproachful:

"You had my note: I told you not to come!"

"So you did, and yet you were expecting me," he asserted. He was still holding her hand, and she could not—or did not—withdraw it.

"Was I, indeed!" There was a touch of the old-time raillery in the words, but it was gone when she added: "Oh, why will you keep on coming and coming when you know so well what it means to you and your work?"

"I think you know the answer to that better than anyone," he rejoined, his voice matching hers for earnestness. "It is because I love you; because I could not stay away if I should try. Forgive me, dear; I did not mean to speak so soon. But you said in your note that you would be leaving Argentine immediately—that I should not see you again: so I had to come. Won't you give me a word, Virginia?—a waiting word, if it must be that?"

Jastrow held his breath, hope dying within him and sullen ferocity crouching for the spring if her answer should urge it on. But when she spoke the secretary's anger cooled and he breathed again.

"No: a thousand times, no!" she burst out passionately; and Winton staggered as if the suddenly-freed hand had dealt him a blow.



X. SPIKED SWITCHES

For a little time after Virginia's passionate rejection of him Winton stood abashed and confounded. Weighed in the balance of the after-thought, his sudden and unpremeditated declaration could plead little excuse in encouragement. And yet she had been exceedingly kind to him.

"I have no right to expect a better answer," he said finally, when he could trust himself to speak. "But I am like other men: I should like to know why."

"You can ask that?" she retorted. "You say you have no right: what have you done to expect a better answer?"

He shrugged. "Nothing, I suppose. But you knew that before."

"I only know what you have shown me during the past three weeks, and it has proved that you are what Mr. Adams said you were—though he was only jesting."

"And that is?"

"A faineant, a dilettante; a man with all the God-given ability to do as he will and to succeed, and yet who will not take the trouble to persevere."

Winton smiled, a grim little smile.

"You are not quite like any other woman I have ever known—not like any other in the world, I believe. Your sisters, most of them, would take it as the sincerest homage that a man should neglect his work for his love. Do you care so much for success, then?"

"For the thing itself—nothing, less than nothing. But—but one may care a little for the man who wins or loses."

He tried to take her hand again, tried and failed.

"Virginia!—is that my word of hope?"

"No. Will you never see the commonplace effrontery of it, Mr. Winton? Day after day you have come here, idling away the precious hours that meant everything to you, and now you come once again to offer me a share in what you have lost. Is that your idea of chivalry, of true manhood?"

Again the grim smile came and went.

"An unprejudiced onlooker might say that you have made me very welcome."

"Mr. Winton! Is that generous?"

"No; perhaps it is hardly just. Because I counted the cost and have paid the price open-eyed. You may remember that I told you that first evening I should come as often as I dared. I knew then, what I have known all along: that it was a part of your uncle's plan to delay my work."

"His and mine, you mean; only you are too kind—or not quite brave enough—to say so."

"Yours? Never! If I could believe you capable of such a thing—"

"You may believe it," she broke in. "It was I who suggested it."

He drew a deep breath, and she heard his teeth come together with a click. It was enough to try the faith of the loyalest lover: it tried his sorely. Yet he scarcely needed her low-voiced, "Don't you despise me as I deserve, now?" to make him love her all the more.

"Indeed, I don't. Resentment and love can hardly find room in the same heart at the same time, and I have said that I love you," he rejoined quickly.

She went silent at that, and when she spoke again the listening Jastrow tuned his ear afresh to lose no word.

"As I have confessed, I suggested it: it was just after I had seen your men and the sheriff's ready to fly at one another's throats. I was miserably afraid, and I asked Uncle Somerville if he could not make terms with you in some other way. I didn't mean—"

He made haste to help her.

"Please don't try to defend your motive to me; it is wholly unnecessary. It is more than enough for me to know that you were anxious about my safety."

But she would not let him have the crumb of comfort undisputed.

"There were other lives involved besides yours. I didn't say I was specially afraid for you, did I?"

"No, but you meant it. And I thought afterward that I should have given you a hint in some way, though the way didn't offer at the time. There was no danger of bloodshed. I knew—we all knew—that Deckert wouldn't go to extremities with the small force he had."

"Then it was only a—a—"

"A bluff," he said, supplying the word. "If I had believed there was the slightest possibility of a fight, I should have made my men take to the woods rather than let you witness it."

"You shouldn't have let me waste my sympathy," she protested reproachfully.

"I'm sorry; truly, I am. And you have been wasting it in another direction as well. To-night will see the shale-slide conquered definitely, I hope, and three more days of good weather will send us into the Carbonate yards."

She broke in upon him with a little cry of impatient despair.

"That shows how unwary you have been! Tell me: is there not a little valley just above here—an open place where your railroad and Uncle Somerville's run side by side?"

"Yes, it is a mile this side of the canyon head. What about it?"

"How long is it since you have been up there?" she queried.

Winton stopped to think. "I don't know—a week, possibly."

"Yet if you had not been coming here every evening, you or Mr. Adams would have found time to go—to watch every possible chance of interference, wouldn't you?"

"Perhaps. That was one of the risks I took, a part of the price-paying I spoke of. If anything had happened, I should still be unrepentant."

"Something has happened. While you have been taking things for granted, Uncle Somerville has been at work day and night. He has built a track right across yours in that little valley, and he keeps a train of cars or something, filled with armed men, standing there all the time!"

Winton gave a low whistle. Then he laughed mirthlessly.

"You are quite sure of this?" he asked. "There is no possibility of your being mistaken?"

"None at all," she replied. "And I can only defend myself by saying that I didn't know about it until a few minutes ago. What is to be done? But stop; you needn't tell me. I am not worthy of your confidence."

"You are; you have just proved it. But there isn't anything to be done. The next thing in order is the exit of one John Winton in disgrace. That spur track and engine means a crossing fight which can be prolonged indefinitely, with due vigilance on the part of Mr. Darrah's mercenaries. I'm smashed, Miss Carteret, thoroughly and permanently. Ah, well, it's only one more fool for love. Hadn't we better go in? You'll take cold standing out here."

She drew herself up and put her hands behind her.

"Is that the way you take it, Mr. Winton?"

The acrid laugh came again.

"Would you have me tear a passion to tatters? My ancestors were not French."

Trying as the moment was, she could not miss her opportunity.

"How can you tell when you don't know your grandfather's middle name?" she said, half crying.

His laugh at this was less acrid. "Adams again? My grandfather had no middle name. But I mustn't keep you out here in the cold talking genealogies."

His hand was on the door to open it for her. Like a flash she came between, and her fingers closed over his on the door-knob.

"Wait," she said. "Have I done all this—humbled myself into the very dust—to no purpose?"

"Not if you will give me the one priceless word I am thirsting for."

"Oh, how shameless you are!" she cried. "Will nothing serve to arouse the better part of you?"

"There is no better part of any man than his love for a woman. You have aroused that."

"Then prove it by going and building your railroad, Mr. Winton. When you have done that—"

He caught at the word as a drowning man catches at a straw.

"When I have won the fight—Virginia, let me see your eyes—when I have won, I may come back to you?"

"I didn't say anything of the kind! But I will say what I said to Mr. Adams. I like men who do things. Good night." And before he could reply she had made him open the door for her, and he was left alone on the square-railed platform.

In the gathering-room of the private car Virginia found an atmosphere surcharged with electrical possibilities, felt it and inhaled it, though there was nothing visible to indicate it. The Rajah was buried in the depths of his particular easy-chair, puffing his cigar; Bessie had the Reverend Billy in the tete-a-tete contrivance; and Mrs. Carteret was reading under the Pintsch drop-light at the table.

It was the chaperon who applied the firing spark to the electrical possibilities.

"Didn't I hear you talking to some one out on the platform, Virginia?" she asked.

"Yes, it was Mr. Winton. He came to make his excuses."

Mr. Somerville Darrah awoke out of his tobacco reverie with a start.

"Hah!" he said fiercely. Then, in his most courteous phrase: "Did I undehstand you to say that Misteh Winton would not faveh us to-night, my deah Virginia?"

"He could not. He has come upon—upon some other difficulty, I believe," she stammered, steering a perilous course among the rocks of equivocation.

"Mmph!" said the Rajah, rising. "Ah—where is Jastrow?"

The obsequious one appeared, imp-like, at the mention of his name, and received a curt order.

"Go and find Engineer McGrath and his fireman. Tell him I want the engine instantly. Move, seh!"

Virginia retreated to her state-room. In a few minutes she heard her uncle go out; and shortly afterward the Rosemary's engine shook itself free of the car and rumbled away westward. At that, Virginia went back to the others and found a book. But if waiting inactive were difficult, reading was blankly impossible.

"Goodness!" she exclaimed impatiently at last. "How hot you people keep it in here! Cousin Billy, won't you take a turn with me on the station platform? I can't breathe!"

Calvert acquiesced eagerly, scenting an opportunity. But when they were out under the frosty stars he had the good sense to walk her up and down in the healing silence and darkness for five full minutes before he ventured to say what was in his mind.

When he spoke it was earnestly and to the purpose, not without eloquence. He loved her; had always loved her, he thought. Could she not, with time and the will to try, learn to love him?—not as a cousin?

She turned quickly and put both hands on his shoulders.

"Oh, Cousin Billy—don't!" she faltered brokenly; and he, seeing at once that he had played the housebreaker where he would fain have been the welcome guest, took his punishment manfully, drawing her arm in his and walking her yet other turns up and down the long platform until his patience and the silence had wrought their perfect work.

"Does it hurt much?" she asked softly, after a long time.

"You would have to change places with me to know just how much it hurts," he answered. "And yet you haven't left me quite desolate, Virginia. I still have something left—all I've ever had, I fancy."

"And that is—"

"My love for you, you know. It isn't at all contingent upon your yes or no; or upon possession—it never has been, I think. It has never asked much except the right to be."

She was silent for a moment. Then she said: "Cousin Billy, I do believe that you are the best man that ever lived. And I am ashamed—ashamed!"

"What for?"

"If I have spoiled you, ever so little, for some truer, worthier woman."

"You haven't," he responded; "you mustn't take that view of it. I am decently in love with my work—a work that not a few wise men have agreed could best be done alone. I don't think there will be any other woman. You see, there is only one Virginia. Shall we go in now?"

She nodded, but when they reached the Rosemary the returning engine was rattling down upon the open siding. Virginia drew back.

"I don't want to meet Uncle Somerville just now," she confessed. "Can't we climb up to the observation platform at the other end of the car?"

He said yes, and made the affirmative good by lifting her in his arms over the high railing. Once safely on the car, she bade him leave her.

"Slip in quietly and they won't notice," she said. "I'll come presently."

Calvert obeyed, and Virginia stood alone in the darkness. Down in the Utah construction camp lights were darting to and fro; and before long she heard the hoarse puffs of the big octopod, betokening activities.

She was shivering a little in the chill wind sliding down from the snow-peaks, yet she would not go in until she had made sure. In a little time her patience was rewarded. The huge engine came storming up the grade on the new line, pushing its three flat-cars, which were black with clinging men. On the car nearest the locomotive, where the dazzling beam of the headlight pricked him out for her, stood Winton, braced against the lurchings of the train over the uneven track.

"God speed you, my—love!" she murmured softly; and when the gloom of the upper canyon cleft had engulfed man and men and storming engine she turned to go in.

She was groping for the door-knob in the darkness made thicker by the glare of the passing headlight when a voice, disembodied for the moment, said: "Wait a minute, Miss Carteret; I'd like to have a word with you."

She drew back quickly.

"Is it you, Mr. Jastrow? Let me go in, please."

"In one moment. I have something to say to you—something you ought to hear."

"Can't it be said on the other side of the door? I am cold—very cold, Mr. Jastrow."

It was his saving hint, but he would not take it.

"No, it must be said to you alone. We have at least one thing in common, Miss Carteret—you and I: that is a proper appreciation of the successful realities. I—"

She stopped him with a quick little gesture of impatience.

"Will you be good enough to stand aside and let me go in?"

The keen breath of the snow-caps was summer-warm in comparison with the chilling iciness of her manner; but the secretary went on unmoved:

"Success is the only thing worth while in this world. Winton will fail, but I shan't. And when I do succeed, I shall marry a woman who can wear the purple most becomingly."

"I hope you may, I'm sure," she answered wearily. "Yet you will excuse me if I say that I don't understand how it concerns me, or why you should keep me out here in the cold to tell me about it."

"Don't you? It concerns you very nearly. You are the woman, Miss Carteret."

"Indeed? And if I decline the honor?"

The contingency was one for which the suitor seemed not entirely prepared. Yet he evinced a willingness to meet the hypothesis in a spirit of perfect candor.

"You wouldn't do that, definitely, I fancy. It would be tantamount to driving me to extremities."

"If you will tell me how I can do it 'definitely,' I shall be most happy to drive you to extremities, or anywhere else out of my way," she said frigidly.

"Oh, I think not," he rejoined. "You wouldn't want me to go and tell Mr. Darrah how you have betrayed him to Mr. Winton. I had the singular good fortune to overhear you conversation—yours and Mr. Winton's, you know; and if Mr. Darrah knew, he would cut you out of his will with very little compunction, don't you think? And, really, you mustn't throw yourself away on that sentimental Tommy of an engineer, Miss Virginia. He'll never be able to give you the position you're fitted for."

Since French was a dead language to Mr. Arthur Jastrow, he never knew what it was that Miss Carteret named him. But she left him in no doubt as to her immediate purpose.

"If that be the case, we would better go and find my uncle at once," she said in her softest tone; and before he could object she had led the way to the Rajah's working-den state-room.

Mr. Darrah was deep in one of the cipher telegrams when they entered, and he looked up to glare fiercely at one and then the other of the intruders. Virginia gave her persecutor no time to lodge his accusation.

"Uncle Somerville, Mr. Winton was here an hour ago, as you know, and I told him what you had done—what I had helped you do. Also, I sent him about his business; which is to win his railroad fight if he can. Mr. Jastrow overheard the conversation, purposely, and as he threatens to turn informer, I am saving him the trouble. Perhaps I ought to add that he offered to hold his peace if I would promise to marry him."

What the unlucky Jastrow might have said in his own behalf is not to be here set down in peaceful black and white. With the final word of Virginia's explanation the fierce old master of men was up and clutching for the secretary's throat, and the working complement of the Rosemary suffered instant loss.

"You'll spy upon a membeh of my family, will you, seh!" he stormed. "Out with you, bag and baggage, befo' I lose my tempeh and forget what is due to this young lady you have insulted, seh, with your infamous proposals! Faveh me instantly, while you have a leg to run with! Go!"

Jastrow disappeared; and when the door closed behind him Virginia faced her irate clan-chief bravely.

"He was a spy, and he would have been a traitor. But I am little better. What will you do to me?"

The Rajah's wrath evaporated quickly, and a shrewd smile, not unkindly, wrinkled the ruddy old face.

"So it was a case of the trappeh trapped, was it, my deah? I'm sorry—right sorry. I might have known how it would be; a youngeh man would have known. But you have done no unpahdonable mischief: Misteh Winton would have found out for himself in a few hours, and we are ready for him now."

"Oh, dear! Then he will be beaten?"

"Unquestionably. Faveh me by going to bed, my deah. Your roses will suffeh sadly for all this excitement, I feah. Good night."



XI. THE RIGHT OF WAY

It seemed to Virginia that she had but just fallen asleep when she was rudely awakened by the jar and grind of the Rosemary's wheels on snow-covered rails. Drawing the curtain, she found that a new day was come, gray and misty white in the gusty swirl of a mountain snow-squall.

Without disturbing the sleeping Bessie, she dressed quickly and slipped out to see what the early-morning change of base portended. The common room was empty when she entered it, but before she could cross to the door the Reverend Billy came in, stamping the snow from his feet.

"What is it?" she asked eagerly. "Are we off for California?"

"No, it's some more of the war. Winton has outgeneraled us. During the night he pushed his track up to the disputed crossing, 'rushed' the guarded engine, and ditched it."

Virginia felt that she ought to be decorously sorry for relationship's sake, but the effort ended in a little paean of joy.

"But Uncle Somerville—what will he do?"

"He is with McGrath on the engine, getting himself—and us—to the front in a hurry, as you perceive."

"Isn't it too late to stop Mr. Winton now?"

"I don't know. From what I could overhear I gathered that the ditched engine is still in the way; that they are trying to roll it over into the creek. Bless me! McGrath is getting terribly reckless!"—this as a spiteful lurch of the car flung them both across the compartment.

"Say Uncle Somerville," she amended. "Don't charge it to Mr. McGrath. Can't we go out on the platform?"

"It's as much as your life is worth," he asserted, but he opened the door for her.

The car was backing swiftly up the grade with the engine behind serving as a "pusher." At first the fiercely-driven snow-whirl made Virginia gasp. Then the speed slackened and she could breathe and see.

The shrilling wheels were tracking around a curve into a scanty widening of the canyon. To the left, on the rails of the new line, the big octopod was heaving and grunting in the midst of an army of workmen swarming thick upon the overturned guard engine.

"Goodness! it's like a battle!" she shuddered. As she spoke the Rosemary stopped with a jerk and McGrath's fireman darted past to set the spur-track switch.

The points were snow-clogged, and the fireman wrestled with the lever, saying words. The delay was measurable in heart-beats, but it sufficed. The big octopod coughed thrice like a mighty giant in a consumption; the clustering workmen scattered like chaff to a ringing shout of "Stand clear!" and the obstructing mass of iron and steel rolled, wallowing and hissing, into the stream.

"Rails to the front! Hammermen!" yelled Winton; and the scattered force rallied instantly.

But now the wrestling fireman had thrown the switch, and at the Rajah's command the Rosemary shot out on the spur to be thrust with locked brakes fairly into the breach left defenseless by the ditched engine. With a mob-roar of wrath the infuriated track-layers made a rush for the new obstruction. But Winton was before them.

"Hold on!" he shouted, bearing them back with outflung arms. "Hold on, men, for God's sake! There are women in that car!"

The wrathful wave broke and eddied murmurous while a square-shouldered old man with fierce eyes and huge white mustaches, and with an extinct cigar between his teeth, clambered down from the Rosemary's engine to say:

"Hah! a ratheh close connection, eh, Misteh Winton? Faveh me with a match, if you please, seh. May I assume that you won't tumble my private car into the ditch?"

Winton was white-hot, but he found a light for the Rajah's cigar, easing his mind only as he might with Virginia looking on.

"I shall be more considerate of the safety of the ladies than you seem to be, Mr. Darrah," he retorted. "You are taking long chances in this game, sir."

The Rajah's laugh rumbled deep in his chest. "Not so vehy much longer than you have been taking during the past fo'tnight, my deah seh. But neveh mind; all's fair in love or war, and we appeah to be having a little of both now up heah in Qua'tz Creek, hah?"

Winton flushed angrily. It was no light thing to be mocked before his men, to say nothing of Miss Carteret standing within arm's reach on the railed platform of the Rosemary.

"Perhaps I shall give you back that word before we are through, Mr. Darrah," he snapped. Then to the eddying mob-wave: "Tools up, boys. We camp here for breakfast. Branagan, send the Two-fifteen down for the cook's outfit."

The Rajah dropped his cigar butt in the snow and trod upon it.

"Possibly you will faveh us with your company to breakfast in the Rosemary, Misteh Winton—you and Misteh Adams. No? Then I bid you a vehy good morning, gentlemen, and hope to see you lateh." And he swung up to the steps of the private car.

Half an hour afterward, the snow still whirling dismally, Winton and Adams were cowering over a handful of hissing embers, drinking their commissary coffee and munching the camp cook's poor excuse for a breakfast.

"Jig's up pretty definitely, don't you think?" said Adams, with a glance around at the idle track force huddling for shelter under the lee of the flats and the octopod.

Winton shook his head and groaned. "I'm a ruined man, Morty."

Adams found his cigarette case.

"I guess that's so," he said quite heartlessly. Then: "Hello! what is our friend the enemy up to now?"

McGrath's fireman was uncoupling the engine from the Rosemary, and Mr. Somerville Darrah, complacently lighting his after breakfast cigar, came across to the hissing ember fire.

"A word with you, gentlemen, if you will faveh me," he began. "I am about to run down to Argentine on my engine, and I propose leaving the ladies in your cha'ge, Misteh Winton. Will you give me your word of honeh, seh, that they will not be annoyed in my absence?"

Winton sprang up, losing his temper again.

"It's—well, it's blessed lucky that you know your man, Mr. Darrah!" he exploded. "Go on about your business—which is to bring another army of deputy-sheriffs down on us, I take it. You know well enough that no man of mine will lay a hand on your car so long as the ladies are in it."

The Rajah thanked him, dismissed the matter with a Chesterfieldian wave of his hand, climbed to his place in the cab, and the engine shrilled away around the curve and disappeared in the snow-wreaths.

Adams rose and stretched himself.

"By Jove! when it comes to cheek, pure and unadulterated, commend me to a Virginia gentleman who has acquired the proper modicum of Western bluff," he laughed. Then, with a cavernous yawn dating back to the sleepless night: "Since there is nothing immediately pressing, I believe I'll go and call on the ladies. Won't you come along for a while?"

"No!" said Winton savagely; and the assistant lounged off by himself.

Some little time afterward Winton, glooming over his handful of spitting embers, saw Adams and Virginia come out to stand together on the observation platform of the Rosemary. They talked long and earnestly, and when Winton was beginning to add the dull pang of unreasoning jealousy to his other hurtings, Adams beckoned him. He went, not unwillingly, or altogether willingly.

"I should think you might come and say 'Good morning' to me, Mr. Winton. I'm not Uncle Somerville," said Miss Carteret.

Winton said "Good morning," not too graciously, and Adams mocked him.

"Besides being a bear with a sore head, Miss Carteret thinks you're not much of a hustler, Jack," he said coolly. "She knows the situation; knows that you were stupid enough to promise not to lay hands on the car when we could have pushed it out of the way without annoying anybody. None the less, she thinks that you might find a way to go on building your railroad without breaking your word to Mr. Darrah."

Winton put his sore-heartedness far enough behind him to smile and say: "Perhaps Miss Virginia will be good enough to tell me how."

"I don't know how," she rejoined quickly. "And you'd only laugh at me if I should tell you what I thought of."

"You might try it and see," he ventured. "I'm desperate enough to take suggestions from anyone."

"Tell me something first: is your railroad obliged to run straight along in the middle of this nice little ridge you've been making for it?"

"Why—no; temporarily, it can run anywhere. But the problem is to get the track laid beyond this crossing before your uncle gets back with a trainload of armed guards."

"Any kind of track would do, wouldn't it?—just to secure the crossing?"

"Certainly; anything that would hold the weight of the octopod. We shall have to rebuild most of the line, anyway, as soon as the frost comes out of the ground in the spring."

The brown eyes became far-seeing.

"I was thinking," she said musingly. "There is no time to make another nice little ridge. But you have piles and piles of logs over there,"—she meant the cross-ties,—"couldn't you build a sort of cobhouse ridge with those between your track and Uncle's, and cross behind the car? Don't laugh, please."

But Winton was far enough from laughing at her. Why so simple an expedient had not suggested itself instantly he did not stop to inquire. It was enough that the Heaven-born idea had been given.

"Down out of that, Morty!" he cried. "It's one chance in a thousand. Pass the word to the men; I'll be with you in a second." And when Adams was rousing the track force with the bawling shout of "Ev-erybody!" Winton looked up into the brown eyes.

"My debt to you was already very great: I owe you more now," he said.

But she gave him his quittance in a whiplike retort.

"And you will stand here talking about it when every moment is precious? Go!" she commanded; and he went.

So now we are to conceive the maddest activity leaping into being in full view of the watchers at the windows of the private car. Winton's chilled and sodden army, welcoming any battle-cry of action, flew to the work with a will. In a twinkling the corded piles of cross-ties had melted to reappear in cobhouse balks bridging an angle from the Utah embankment to that of the spur track in the rear of the blockading Rosemary. In briefest time the hammermen were spiking the rails on the rough-and-ready trestle, and the Italians were bringing up the crossing-frogs.

But the Rajah, astute colonel of industry, had not left himself defenseless. On the contrary, he had provided for this precise contingency by leaving McGrath's fireman in mechanical command on the Rosemary. If Winton should attempt to build around the private car, the fireman was to wait till the critical moment: then he was to lessen the pressure on the automatic air-brakes and let the car drop back down the grade just far enough to block the new crossing.

So it came about that this mechanical lieutenant waited, laughing in his sleeve, until he saw the Italians coming with the crossing-frogs. Then, judging the time to be fully ripe, he ducked under the Rosemary to "bleed" the air-brake.

Winton heard the hiss of the escaping air above all the industry clamor; heard, and saw the car start backward. Then he had a flitting glimpse of a man in grimy overclothes scrambling terror-frenzied from beneath the Rosemary. The thing done had been overdone. The fireman had "bled" the air-brake too freely, and the liberated car, gathering momentum with every wheel-turn, surged around the circling spur track and shot out masterless on the steeper gradient of the main line.

Now, for the occupants of a runaway car on a Rocky Mountain canyon line there is death and naught else. Winton saw, in a phantasmagoric flash of second sight, the meteor flight of the heavy car; saw the Reverend Billy's ineffectual efforts to apply the hand-brakes, if by good hap he should even guess that there were any hand-brakes; saw the car, bounding and lurching, keeping to the rails, mayhap, for some few miles below Argentine, where it would crash headlong into the upward climbing Carbonate train, and all would end.

In unreasoning misery, he did the only thing that offered: ran blindly down his own embankment, hoping nothing but that he might have one last glimpse of Virginia clinging to the hand-rail before she should be lost to him for ever.

But as he ran a thought white-hot from the furnace of despair fell into his brain to set it ablaze with purpose. Beyond the litter of activities the octopod was standing, empty of its crew. Bounding up into the cab, he released the brake and sent the great engine flying down the track of the new line.

In the measuring of the first mile the despair-born thought took shape and form. If he could outpace the runaway on the parallel line, stop the octopod and dash across to the C. G. R. track ahead of the Rosemary, there was one chance in a million that he might fling himself upon the car in mid flight and alight with life enough left to help Calvert with the hand-brakes.

Now, in the most unhopeful struggle it is often the thing least hoped for that comes to pass. At Argentine, Winton's speed was a mile a minute over a track rougher than a corduroy wagon-road; yet the octopod held the rail and was neck and neck with the runaway. Whisking past the station, Winton had a glimpse of a white-mustached old man standing bareheaded on the platform and gazing horror-stricken at the tableau; then man and station and lurching car were left behind, and the fierce strife to gain the needed mile of lead went on.

Three miles more of the surging, racking, nerve-killing race and Winton had his hand's-breadth of lead and had picked his place for the million-chanced wrestle with death. It was at the C. G. R. station of Tierra Blanca, just below a series of sharp curves which he hoped might check a little the arrow-like flight of the runaway.

Twenty seconds later the telegraph operator at the lonely little way station of Tierra Blanca saw a heroic bit of man-play. The upward-bound Carbonate train was whistling in the gorge below when out of the snow-wreaths shrouding the new line a big engine shot down to stop with fire grinding from the wheels, and a man dropped from the high cab to dash across to the station platform.

At the same instant a runaway passenger car thundered out of the canyon above. The man crouched, flung himself at it in passing, missed the forward hand-rail, caught the rear, was snatched from his feet and trailed through the air like the thong of a whip-lash, yet made good his hold and clambered on.

This was all the operator saw, but when he had snapped his key and run out he heard the shrill squeal of the brakes on the car and knew that the man had not risked his life for nothing.

And on board the Rosemary? Winton, spent to the last breath, was lying prone on the railed platform, where he had fallen when the last twist had been given to the shrieking brakes.

"Run, Calvert! Run ahead and—stop—the—up-train!" he gasped; then the light went out of the gray eyes and Virginia wept unaffectedly and fell to dabbling his forehead with handfuls of snow.

"Help me get him in to the divan, Cousin Billy," said Virginia, when all was over and the Rosemary was safely coupled in ahead of the upcoming train to be slowly pushed back to Argentine.

But Winton opened his eyes and struggled to his feet unaided.

"Not yet," he said. "I've left my automobile on the other side of the creek; and besides, I have a railroad to build. My respects to Mr. Darrah, and you may tell him I'm not beaten yet." And he swung over the railing and dropped off to mount the octopod and to race it back to the front.

* * * * *

Three days afterward, to a screaming of smelter whistles and other noisy demonstrations of mining-camp joy, the Utah Short Line laid the final rail of its new Extension in the Carbonate yards.

The driving of the silver spike accomplished, Winton and Adams slipped out of the congratulatory throng and made their way across the C. G. R. tracks to a private car standing along the siding. Its railed platform, commanding a view of the civic celebration, had its quota of onlookers—a fierce-eyed old man with huge mustaches, an athletic young clergyman, two Bisques, and a goddess.

"Climb up, Misteh Winton, and you, Misteh Adams; climb up and join us," said the fierce-eyed one heartily. "Virginia, heah, thinks we ought to call one anotheh out, but I tell her—"

What the Rajah had told his niece is of small account to us. But what Winton whispered in her ear when he had taken his place beside her is more to the purpose of this history.

"I have built my railroad, as you told me to, and now I have come for my—"

"Hush!" she said softly. "Can't you wait?"

"No."

"Shameless one!" she murmured.

But when the Rajah proposed an adjournment to the gathering-room of the car, and to luncheon therein, he surprised them standing hand-in-hand and laughed.

"Hah, you little rebel!" he said. "Do you think you dese've that block of stock I promised you when you should marry? Anseh me, my deah."

She blushed and shook her head, but the brown eyes were dancing.

The Rajah opened the car door with his courtliest bow.

"Nevertheless, you shall have it, my deah Virginia, if only to remind an old man of the time when he was simple enough to make a business confederate of a cha'ming young woman. Straight on, Misteh Adams; afteh you, Misteh Winton."

THE END