XI Hurry Orders
“I’m no cold-water thrower, Ford, as you know. But if I were a contractor, and you were trying to get me to commit myself to any such steeplechase, I should say no, and confirm it with a cuss-word.”
It was a week after the successful placing of the Western Extension building-fund bonds with the Dutch syndicate, and Ford, having ordered things to his liking on the newly opened Chicago line, had taken the long step westward to Denver to begin the forging of the third link in the great railway chain.
Frisbie, now first assistant engineer in charge of construction, had come down from Saint’s Rest for a conference with his chief, and the place of conferrings was a quiet corner in one of the balconies overlooking the vast rotunda of the Brown Palace Hotel; this because the carpenters were still busy in the suite of rooms set apart for the offices of the assistant to the president in the Pacific Southwestern headquarters down-town.
“You mean that the time is too short?” said Ford, speaking to Frisbie’s emphatic objection.
“Too short at both ends,” contended the little man with the devilish mustaches and chin beard. “The Copah mining district is one hundred and twenty miles, as the crow flies, from the summit of Plug Pass—say one hundred and forty by the line of our survey down the Pannikin, through the canyon and up to the town. Giving you full credit for more getting-ready than I supposed any man could compass in the three weeks you’ve been at it, I still think it is impossible for us to reach Copah this season.”
“You must change your belief, Dick,” was the curt rejoinder. “This is to be a campaign, not only of possibilities, but of things done. We go into Copah with the steel gangs before snow flies.”
“I know; that’s what you’ve been saying all along. But you’re looking at the thing by and large, and I’m figuring on the flinty details. For example: you’ll admit that we can’t work to any advantage west of the mountains until we have made a standard gauge out of the Plug Mountain branch. How much time have you been allowing for that?”
“No time at all for the delay: about three weeks, maybe, for the actual changing of the gauge,” said Ford coolly.
“All right,” laughed Frisbie. “Only you’ll show us how. It doesn’t lie in the back of my head—or in Crapsey’s, unless he’s a better man than I hired him for.”
“Who is Crapsey?”
“He is a Purdue man that I picked up and started out on the branch to make figures on the change of gauge. The other three parties, under Major Benson, Jack Benson and Roy Brissac, are setting the grade stakes down the Pannikin, and Leckhard is wrestling with the construction material you’ve been dumping in upon us at Saint’s Rest. That left me short, and I hired Crapsey.”
“Good. If he is capable, he may do the broadening. Call him in and set him at it.”
“But, man! Don’t you want the figures first?”
“My dear Dick! I’ve had those figures for two years, and there’s nothing very complicated about that part of our problem. Call your man in and let him attack the thing itself.”
“Everything goes: you may consider him recalled. But broadening the Plug Mountain to standard gauge doesn’t put us into Copah this summer, does it?”
“No; our necessities will do that for us. See here; let me show you.” Ford took out his note-book and on a blank page of it outlined a rough map, talking as he sketched. “Three weeks ago you wired me that the Transcontinental people were massing building material at the terminus of their Saguache branch.”
“So I did,” said Frisbie.
“And the day before yesterday you wired again to say that it was apparently a false alarm. What made you change your mind?”
“They are hauling the stuff away—over to their Green Butte line, I’m told.”
“Why are they hauling it away?”
“The bluff—their bluff—was called. We had got busy on Plug Pass, and they saw there was no hope of cutting in ahead of us at that point.”
“Exactly. Now look at this map for a minute. Here is Saint’s Rest; here is the Copah district; and here is Green Butte, the junction of their narrow gauge with the standard-gauge Salt Lake and Eastern. If you were on the Transcontinental executive committee and saw an active competing line about to build a standard-gauge railroad through the Copah district and on to a connection with your narrow gauge’s outlet at Green Butte, what would you advise?”
Frisbie nodded. “It’s easy, when you know how, isn’t it They’ll standardize their narrow gauge to Green Butte, make an iron-clad traffic contract with the S.L. & E. to exclude us, and build a branch from Jack’s Canyon, say, up into the Copah country.” And then in loyal admiration: “That’s what I call the sure word of prophecy—your specialty, Stuart. How many nights’ sleep did you lose figuring that out?”
“Not any, as it happens,” laughed Ford. “It was a straight tip out of the East. The plan, just about as you’ve outlined it, was adopted by the Transcontinental powers that be, sitting in New York last week. By some means unknown to me, Mr. Adair got wind of it, and made a flying trip to Chicago to put me on—wouldn’t even trust the wire with it. Now you understand why we’ve got to wake the Copah echoes with a locomotive whistle this season.”
“Copah—yes,” said Frisbie doubtfully. “But that is only a way station. What we need is Green Butte and the Pacific coast outlet over the S.L. & E.; and they stand to euchre us out of that, hands down. What’s to prevent their making that traffic contract with the Mormon people right now?”
“Nothing; if the S.L. & E. management were willing. But just here the political situation in Mormondom fights for us. Last year the Transcontinental folk turned heaven and earth over to defeat the Mormon candidate for the United States Senate. The quarrel wasn’t quite mortal enough to stand in the way of a profitable business deal; but all things being equal, the Salt Lake line will favor us as against its political enemy.”
“You’re sure of that?” queried Frisbie.
“As sure as one can be of anything that isn’t cash down on the nail—with the money locked up in a safety deposit vault. By the sheerest good luck, the Mormon president of the S.L. & E. happened to be in New York at the time when Adair had his ear to the Transcontinental keyhole. Adair hunted him up and made a hypothetical case of a sure thing: if our Western Extension and the Transcontinental, standard-gauged, should be knocking at the Green Butte door at the same time, what would the S.L. & E. do? The Mormon answer was a bid for speed; first come, first served. But Adair was given to understand, indirectly, that on an equal footing, our line would be given the preference as a friendly ally.”
“Bully for the Mormon! But you say Copah—this summer. When we reach Copah we are still one hundred and forty miles short of Green Butte. And if you can broaden the Plug Mountain in three weeks—which you’ll still allow me to doubt—the Transcontinental ought to be able to broaden its Green Butte narrow gauge in three months.”
“If you had cross-sectioned both lines as I have, you wouldn’t stumble over that,” said Ford, falling back, as he commonly did, upon the things he knew. “We shall broaden the Plug Mountain without straightening a curve or throwing a shovelful of earth on the embankment, from beginning to end. On the other hand, the Green Butte narrow gauge runs for seventy miles through the crookedest canyon a Rocky Mountain river ever got lost in. There is more heavy rock work to be done in that canyon than on our entire Pannikin division from start to finish.”
“That’s bully for us,” quoth the first assistant. “But, all the same, we shouldn’t stop at Copah, this fall.”
“We shall not stop at Copah,” was the decisive rejoinder. “The winters on the western side of the range are much milder than they are here, and not to be spoken of in the same day with your Minnesota and Dakota stamping-ground. If we can get well out of the mountains before the heavy snows come—”
Frisbie wagged his head.
“I guess I’ve got it all, now—after so long a time. We merely break the record for fast railroad building—all the records—for the next six months or so. Is that about it?”
“You’ve surrounded it,” said Ford tersely.
“Good enough: we’re ready to make the break when you give the word. What are we waiting for?”
“Just at this present moment, for the contractors.”
“Why, I understood you had closed with the MacMorrogh Brothers,” said Frisbie.
“No. At the last moment—to relieve me of a responsibility which might give rise to charges of favoritism, as he put it—Mr. Colbrith took the bids out of my hands and carried the decision up to the executive committee. Hence, we wait; and keep a growing army of laborers here under pay while we wait,” said Ford, with disgust thinly masked. Then he added: “With all due respect to Mr. Colbrith, he is simply a senile frost!”
Frisbie chuckled.
“Been cooling your fingers, has he? But I understood from the headquarters people down-town, that the MacMorroghs had a sure thing on the grading and rock work. Their bid was the lowest, wasn’t it?”
“Yes; but not the cheapest for the company, Dick. I’ve been keeping tab on the MacMorroghs for a good while: they are grafters; the kind of men who take it out of the company and out of their labor in a thousand petty little steals—three profits on the commissary, piece-work for subs where they know a man’s got to lose out, steals on the working hours, fines and drawbacks and discounts on the pay-rolls, and all that. You know how it’s done.”
“Sure,” agreed Frisbie, with his most diabolical grin. “Also, I know how it keeps the engineering department on the hottest borders of Hades, trying to hold them down. The good Lord deliver us!”
“I wanted to throw their bid out without consideration,” Ford went on. “But again Mr. Colbrith said ‘No,’ adding that the MacMorroghs were old contractors on the line, and that Mr. North had always spoken very highly of them.”
“Ah; the fine Italian hand of Mr. North again,” said Frisbie. “And that reminds me: are we going to be at war with the main line operating department?”
Ford shook his head. “Not openly, at least. North was down to meet my train when I came in last night, and you would never have suspected that I left Denver six weeks ago without his blessing. And now I’m reminded. I have a luncheon appointment with him at twelve, and a lot of letters to dictate before I can keep it. Go down and do your wiring for Crapsey, and if we lose each other this afternoon, I’ll meet you here at dinner this evening.”
It was while Ford was working on his mail, with one of the hotel stenographers for a helper, that a thick-set, bull-necked man with Irish-blue eyes and a face two-thirds hidden in a curly tangle of iron-gray beard, stubbed through the corridor on the Pacific Southwestern floor of the Guaranty Building, and let himself cautiously into the general manager’s outer office. The private secretary, a faultlessly groomed young fellow with a suggestion of the Latin races in his features, looked up and nodded.
“How are you, Mr. MacMorrogh?” he said; and without waiting for a reply: “Go on in. Mr. North is expecting you.”
The burly one returned the nod and passed on to the inner room. The general manager, a sallow, heavy-visaged man who might have passed in a platform gathering for a retired manufacturer or a senator from the Middle West, swung in his pivot-chair to welcome the incomer.
“Glad to see you, MacMorrogh. Sit down. What’s the news from New York?”
The contractor found a chair; drew it close to the general manager’s desk, and filled it.
“I’m thinking you’ll know more about that than I will, Misther North,” he replied, in a voice that accorded perfectly with the burly figure and piratical beard. “Ford’s fighting us with his fishtes.”
“Why?” asked the general manager, holding his chin in his hand—a gesture known the entire length of the Pacific Southwestern as a signal of trouble brewing, for somebody.
“God knows, then; I don’t,” said the MacMorrogh. “I wint to Chicago to see him when the bid was in, and d’ye think he would lave me talk it over with him? Not him! Wan day he’d be too busy; and the next, I’d have to call again. ’Twas good for him I was not me brother Dan. Dan would’ve kicked the dure in and t’rown him out av the windy.”
The wan ghost of a smile flitted across the impassive face of the big man at the desk.
“Let me tell you something, MacMorrogh. If you, or your brother Dan, ever find it necessary to go after Ford, don’t give him notice by battering down doors. You won’t, I know. But about the contract: you haven’t heard from the executive committee?”
“Not the half of wan wor-rd.”
“Have you any idea of what is causing the delay?”
“’Tis dommed well I know, Misther North. Ford is keeping the wires hot against us. If I could have Misther Colbrith here with you for wan five minutes—”
The general manager broke in, following his own line of thought.
“Ford is in Denver; he came in from Chicago last night. Why don’t you go up to the Brown and have it out with him?”
“Fight it out, d’ye mean?”
“Certainly not. Make friends with him.”
The contractor sat back in his chair and plunged his stubby hands deep into his pockets.
“Give me the sthraight tip, Misther North.”
“It ought to suggest itself to you. This is a big job, with a great deal of money passing. Your profits, over and above what you will make out of the company, will be quite large. Ford is an ambitious young man, and he is not building railroads for his health.”
The MacMorrogh was nodding slowly. Nevertheless, he made difficulties.
“Me hand’s not light enough for that, Misther North.”
Again the general manager smiled.
“You require a deal of prompting, sometimes, Brian. What’s the matter with a trusty go-between?”
“H’m, that’s it, now. But where to lay me finger on the right man. ’Tis a risk to run—with a yooung fire-brand like Ford holding the other end iv the string.”
“Still I think the man can be found. But first we must make sure of your contract, with or without Ford. Your suggestion about taking the matter up with Mr. Colbrith in person strikes me favorably. Can you spare the time to go to New York?”
“Sure I can.”
“At once?”
“The wan minute for sthriking is whin the iron’s hot, Misther North.”
The general manager put aside the thick file of papers he had been examining when MacMorrogh entered, and began to set his desk in order.
“I have been thinking I might make it convenient to go with you. I presume you have no objection to going as my guest in the Naught-Seven?”
“’Tis an honor you’re doing me, Misther North, and I’ll not be forgetting it.”
“Not at all. There are some matters connected with this contract that I’d like to talk over with you privately, and if we can agree upon them, I may be able to help you with Mr. Colbrith and the executive committee.”
The general manager pressed one of the electric buttons on the side of the desk, and to the clerk who answered gave a brief order: “Have the Naught-Seven provisioned and made up to go east as a special at twelve-ten to-day. Tell Despatcher Darby to make the schedule fast—nineteen hours or less to the River.”
The clerk nodded and disappeared, and North turned again to MacMorrogh.
“Now about that other matter: I’ll find you a go-between to approach Ford; but to be quite frank with you, you’ll have to be liberal with the young man for his services. When you go into the diplomatic field, you have to spend money.” He was pressing another of the electric buttons as he spoke, and to the office boy who put his face in at the door, he said: “Ask Mr. Eckstein to step in here a minute.”
It was the private secretary, the well-groomed young man with the alien eyes and nose who answered the summons. North gave him his instructions in a curt sentence.
“Mr. MacMorrogh would like to have a little talk with you, Eckstein: take him into the other room where you can be undisturbed.”
It was half an hour later when the door of the library opened to readmit the private secretary and the contractor, and in the interval the division superintendent’s clerk had returned to say that the special train schedule was made up, and that the Naught-Seven would be waiting at the Union Station at twelve-ten.
“Well?” said the general manager, lifting a slow eyebrow at MacMorrogh and compressing into the single word his wish to know what had been done in the conference of two.
“’Tis all right, Misther North,” said the contractor, rubbing his hands. “’Tis a crown jewel ye have in this yooung—”
North cut the eulogy short in a word to his secretary.
“I go east, special, at twelve-ten, Eckstein, as Mr. MacMorrogh has probably told you. I have a luncheon appointment at twelve with Mr. Ford. Meet him when he comes, and make my excuses—without telling him anything he ought not to know. If you can take my place as his host, do so; but in any event, keep him from finding out where we have gone until we are well on the way. That’s all.”
This was why Ford, walking the few blocks from his hotel at noon to keep his engagement with North, found the general manager’s private office closed, and a suave, soft-spoken young man with a foreign cast of countenance waiting to make his superior’s excuses.
“Mr. North was called out of town quite unexpectedly on a wire,” was the private secretary’s explanation. “He tried to telephone you at the Brown, but the operator couldn’t find you. He left me to explain, and I’ve been wondering if you’d let me take his place as your host, Mr. Ford.”
Now Ford’s attitude toward his opponents was, by reason of his gifts, openly belligerent; wherefore he fought against it and tried to be as other men are.
“I am sure Mr. North is quite excusable, and it is good-natured in you to stand in the breach, Mr. Eckstein,” he said. “Of course, I’ll be glad to go with you.”
They went to Tortoni’s, and to a private room; and the luncheon was an epicurean triumph. Eckstein talked well, and was evidently a young man of parts. Not until the cigars were lighted did he suffer the table-talk to come down to the railroad practicalities; and even then he merely followed Ford’s lead.
“Oh, yes; we have made arrangements to give you a clear deck in the Denver yards for your material and supplies,” he said, in answer to a question of Ford’s about side-track room and yard facilities at the point which would have to serve as his base. “Following your orders, we have been forwarding all that your Plug Mountain rolling stock could handle, but there is considerable more of it side-tracked here. After the MacMorrogh grading outfit has gone to the front, we shall have more room, however.”
“The MacMorrogh outfit?” queried Ford. “Do they store it in our yards?”
“Oh, no. They have a pretty complete railroad yard of their own at their headquarters in Pueblo. But they have three train-loads of tools and machinery here now, waiting for your orders to send them to the front.”
Ford weighed the possibilities thoughtfully and concluded that nothing could be lost by a frank declaration of principles.
“They have given you folks a wrong impression, Mr. Eckstein,” he said mildly. “The contract for the grading on the Western Extension is not yet awarded; and if I can compass it, the MacMorrogh Brothers’ bid will be thrown out.”
The private secretary tried to look mystified, with just the proper touch of a subordinate’s embarrassment.
“I’m only a clerk, Mr. Ford,” he said, “and, of course, I’m not supposed to know more than I see and hear in the regular way of business. But I understood that the MacMorroghs were in the saddle; that they were only waiting for you to provide track-room at Saint’s Rest for their tool cars and outfit.”
“No,” said Ford. “It hasn’t got that far along yet.”
Eckstein looked at his watch.
“Don’t let me keep you, if there is anything else you want to do, Mr. Ford; but I’ll confess you’ve aroused my curiosity. What is the matter with the MacMorroghs?”
Ford answered the question by asking another.
“Do you know them, Mr. Eckstein?”
“Why—yes; as Mr. North’s chief clerk would be likely to know the firm of contractors which has been given a good share of the Pacific Southwestern work for a number of years.”
“Do you know any good of them?”
“Bless me! yes: I don’t know anything else of them. Three hearty, bluff, rough-tongued Irishmen; lacking diplomacy and all the finer touches, if you like, but good fellows and hustlers of the keenest.”
Ford fastened his companion in a steady eye-grip. “One question, Mr. Eckstein; do they play fair with all concerned?”
“They are more than fair; they are generous—with the company, and with the company’s representatives with whom they have to do business. On two contracts with us they have lost money; but I happen to know that in both instances they kept their promises to the engineering department to the letter.”
Ford had cast off the eye-grip and he appeared to be studying the fresco design of the ceiling over the private secretary’s head.
“And those promises were—?”
Eckstein laughed boyishly. “You needn’t make a mystery of it with me, Mr. Ford. I’m one of the family, if I haven’t any initials after my name. I know—we all know—that there are certain profits—not made out of the company, of course—that a contractor is always willing to share with his good friends, the engineers.”
Ford’s attitude instantly became that of a freshman wishing to learn the ropes.
“Consider me, Mr. Eckstein,” he said. “I’m new to the construction business—or at least, I’ve never been at the head of it before. What are these—er—perquisites?”
The private secretary thought he had entered the thin edge of the wedge and he drove it heartily.
“They are perfectly legitimate, of course. The contractors run a commissary to supply the workmen—nobody suspects them of doing it at cost. Then there are the fines imposed to secure faithful work, the per capita commission paid on the labor sent in by the engineers, the discounts on time-checks, the weekly hospital and insurance dues collected from the men. All those things amount to a good round profit on a contract like ours.”
“To about how much, in figures, should you say?” queried Ford, with an air of the deepest interest.
“To enough to make your share, as head of the construction department, touch ten thousand a year, on a job as big as ours—with a liberal provision for Mr. Frisbie, besides.”
Ford blew reflective smoke rings toward the ceiling for a full minute or more before he said quietly: “Do I understand that you are authorized to guarantee me ten thousand a year in commissions from the MacMorrogh Brothers, Mr. Eckstein?”
Eckstein laughed.
“You forget that I’m only a clerk, and an onlooker, as you may say. But if you accept MacMorrogh’s bid, and he doesn’t do the square thing by you and Mr. Frisbie, you may call me in as a witness, Mr. Ford. Does that clear up the doubt?”
“Perfectly,” was the quiet rejoinder. “Under these conditions, I suppose it is up to me to wire the executive committee, withdrawing my objections to the MacMorroghs, isn’t it?”
“That is the one thing Mr. MacMorrogh asks.” The secretary whipped out a note-book and pencil. “Shall I take your message? I can send it when I go back to the office.”
“Thank you,” said Ford; then he began to dictate, slowly and methodically: “To S.J. Colbrith, care McVeigh and Mackie, New York. This is to recall my objections to MacMorrogh Brothers, as stated in letter of the twenty-fifth from Chicago. Further investigation develops the fact that they are quite honest and capable, and that they will pay me ten thousand dollars a year for withdrawing my opposition.”
Eckstein’s pencil had stopped and he was gasping for breath.
“Great Scott!” he ejaculated. “That won’t do, Mr. Ford! You can’t put a thing like that into a telegram to the president!”
Eckstein’s Pencil Had Stopped and He Was Gasping for Breath
“Why not?” was the cool inquiry. “You said it was perfectly legitimate, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—” the entrance of a waiter to clear the table provided a merciful stop-gap, and Eckstein, hurriedly consulting his watch, switched abruptly. “By Jove! I’m due at the office this minute to meet a lot of cattlemen,” he stammered, and escaped like a man hastening for first aid to the mistaken.
Ford laughed long and silently when he found himself alone in the private dining-room; and he was still chuckling by fits and starts when, after an afternoon spent with Auditor Evans, he recounted his adventure to Frisbie over the Brown café dinner table that evening. But Frisbie took all the humor out of the luncheon episode when he said soberly:
“He laughs best who laughs last, Stuart. Eckstein took a fall out of you one way, even if he did fail in the other; he kept you safely shut up at Tortoni’s while Mr. North and the chief of the MacMorroghs got away on a special train for New York. Beard, the Union Station operator, told me. Which means that they’ll have a full day with Mr. Colbrith and the executive committee before you can possibly get there to butt in.”
“No, it doesn’t; necessarily,” Ford contradicted, rising suddenly and signaling a waiter.
“What are you going to do?” queried Frisbie, dropping his knife and fork and preparing to second his chief.
“Come and see. I’m going to get out another special train and give Mr. North a run for his money,” was the incisive answer. “Hike down to the despatcher’s office with me and help cut out the minutes.”