XVIII The Morning After
Ford was awake for all day, and was colloguing with Frisbie about the carrying out of the sumptuary order for the forcible camp-cleaning, when Penfield came with the request that the chief report at once to the president in the Nadia.
“Tell him I’ll be there presently,” was the answer; and when Penfield went to do it, the interrupted colloquy was resumed.
“You say the camp has already gone dry?” said Ford incredulously.
Frisbie nodded. “Everybody’s on the water-wagon; here and at all the camps above and below—bars not only closed, but apparently wiped out of existence. I went for old Brian last night as soon as I reached here. He looked at me reproachfully, and said: ‘It’s you to be always naggin’ me about thim whisky dives that I’m forever thryin’ to run out, and can’t. Go and thry it yourself, Misther Frisbie, an’ I’ll stand at your back till you’re black in the face.’ But when I went through the camp, everything was quiet and orderly, and Jack Batters’ bar was not only closed—it was gone; vanished without leaving so much as a bad smell behind it.”
“And then?” said Ford.
“Then I got out my horse and rode up the creek and through some of the camps on the Copah detour. The star-eyed goddess of reform had evidently landed on that coast, too. Donahue’s Hungarians were singing war-songs around their camp-fire, as usual, and Contadini’s Tuscans were out in full force, guying the night-shift track-layers. But there was no bad blood, and no whisky to breed it. You’re done up again, Stuart.”
“I don’t see that,” said Ford, who, besides being short on sleep, was rejoicing in the thought that Alicia and the other women of the private-car party would not have to be blind and deaf.
“Don’t you? You’ve been protesting to beat the band about the lawlessness and dissipation of the MacMorrogh camps. Accordingly, Mr. Colbrith comes over here to see for himself: and what will he see? Decency on a monument smiling reproachfully at her unprincipled traducer. MacMorrogh will rub it into you good and hard. Can’t you feel the Sunday-school atmosphere right here in the headquarters this morning? Look down yonder at the Nadia—wouldn’t that soothe you, now?”
Ford looked and the scowl which was coming to be a habit transformed itself into a cynical smile. A hundred or more of the MacMorrogh laborers, hats off and standing at respectful attention, were clustered about the rear platform of the private car, and Mr. Colbrith was addressing them; giving them the presidential benediction, as Frisbie put it irreverently.
“Don’t you see how you are going to be hoisted with your own ammunition?” the little man went on spitefully. “What becomes of all your complaints of drunkenness and crime, when Mr. Colbrith can see with his own eyes what truly good people the MacMorroghs are? And what conclusion will he arrive at? There’s only one, and it’s a long-armed one so far as your reputation is concerned: you are so desperately bent on having your own way that you haven’t scrupled to tell lies about these angelic contractors.”
“Let up, Dick,” said Ford gruffly. “I’ve got about all I can carry till I catch up on sleep a little. But you’re right: this is the place where the fireworks come in. I think I’ll go and light the fuses while I’m keyed up to it.”
The crowd of laborers had dispersed by the time Ford reached the Nadia, and the president, benign from the reactionary effect of his own early-morning eloquence, was waiting for him.
“Ah; we did reach the front safely, after all, didn’t we, Mr. Ford?” was Mr. Colbrith’s mildly sarcastic greeting. And then: “Come aboard, sir; we are waiting breakfast for you.”
Ford would have declined promptly, if the invitation had been anything less than a command. He had met none of the members of the private-car party save Miss Alicia, and he did not want to meet them, having the true captain-of-industry’s horror of mixing business with the social diversions. But with one example of the president’s obstinacy fresh in mind, he yielded and climbed obediently to the railed platform. Whatever happened, he should see Alicia again, a privilege never to be too lightly esteemed, whatever it cost.
The social ordeal was not so formidable. The private-car party was made up of the president and his sister-in-law, the president’s family physician, Doctor Van Bruce, the doctor’s wife, his sister, a maiden lady of no uncertain age, and Alicia. These, with Penfield and Ford, made the eight at table in the open compartment in the Nadia; and Ford, in the seating, was lucky enough to find his place between Miss Van Bruce, who was hard of hearing, and Miss Alicia, who was not. Luckily again, Mr. Colbrith omitted all talk of business, drawing his end of the table into a discussion of the effects of the dry altitudes in advanced stages of tuberculosis.
“What a dreadful night you must have had, Mr. Ford,” said Alicia, when the tuberculotic subject was well launched at the other end of the table. “Were you on the engine all the time?”
“Most of the time,” he confessed. “But that was nothing. It wasn’t my first night in the cab, as it won’t be the last, by many, I hope.”
“Why? Do you like it?”
“Not particularly. But I hope to live a while longer; and while I live I shall doubtless have to ride with the enginemen now and then.”
“Was it very bad—last night?” she asked.
“I am afraid you know it was. Could you sleep at all?”
“Oh, yes; I slept very well—after that terrible shaking up we had just before bedtime. What was happening then?”
“Nothing much. We were about to try the old experiment of passing two trains on a single track.”
“Mercy!” she exclaimed.
It was safely retrospective now, and Ford could smile at her belated shock.
“Were the others alarmed?” he asked.
“Mrs. Van Bruce and Aunt Hetty were. But Uncle Sidney fairly coruscated. He said that an engineer who would make such a stop as that ought to be discharged.”
“Hector was willing to quit,” laughed Ford. “He grumbled for a full hour afterward about the wrenching he had given the 1012. You see he might have taken about six feet more for the stop, if he’d only known it.”
Miss Alicia said “Mercy!” again. “Were we as near as that to a collision?” she asked, in a hushed whisper.
“We were, indeed. The freight was supposed to be on a siding—broken down. The crew tinkered things up some way, and the train proceeded. Luckily, the freight engineer saw our electric headlight farther than we could see his oil lamp, and the track happened to be measurably straight.”
Miss Adair was silent for a little time, waiting for the lapsed tuberculotic discussion to revive. When it was once more in full swing, she asked quickly:
“What is the programme for to-day? Must we all stay in the car as you intimated yesterday?”
Ford glanced across the table to make sure that Penfield was not eavesdropping.
“It will not be necessary. Your coming—or the president’s—has reformed things wonderfully. Frisbie says—but never mind what he says: the miracle has been wrought.”
He said it with such an evident air of dejection that she wondered. And with Miss Alicia Adair the step from wonderment to investigation was always short.
“You say it as if you were sorry,” she said. “Are you?”
“Oh, no; I’m glad—for your sake. But I wonder if you could understand if I say that it will make it a thousand times harder for me?”
“I can understand when I’m told,” she retorted.
The table-for-eight was no place for confidences; and Ford knew Penfield’s weakness for soaking up information. Yet he took the risk.
“You remember what I hinted at, yesterday,” he said in low tones; “about the rough-house we have been having in the camps. It hasn’t stopped short of murder. I objected to the MacMorroghs before the contract was given to them; and since, I have fought the lawlessness as I could. Now your uncle comes over here and doesn’t find any lawlessness. What is the inference?”
“That you have been—” she took him up quickly, and there was swift indignation in the blue eyes.
“—lying to gain a personal end,” he finished for her.
Penfield had been apparently listening avidly to the president’s praise of the dry altitudes as a sure cure for consumption, but now he had his face in his plate. Ford devoted himself for the moment to the deaf Miss Van Bruce, and when he turned back to Alicia he was telegraphing with his eyes for discretion. She understood, and the low-toned tête-à-tête was not resumed. Later, when they had a moment together in the dispersion from the breakfast-table, he tried to apologize for what he was pleased to call his “playing of the baby act.” But she reassured him in a low-spoken word.
“Brother told me—I know more than you give me credit for, Mr. Ford. Mr. North doesn’t like you—he would be glad if you would resign. You must not resign!”
The others, personally-conducted by Mr. Colbrith, were crowding to the rear platform for an after-breakfast view of the headquarters camp. Ford and Alicia followed, but without haste.
“You have chanced upon the word, Miss Adair,” Ford was saying. “I decided last night that I should resign.”
“No,” she objected.
“Yes; I must. Sometime I may tell you why.”
“I say you must not. That was the last word in brother’s letter; and he wished me to repeat it to you,” she insisted.
“Where is your brother?” he asked.
“He was in London when he wrote.”
“He has thrown up his hand.” Ford was pessimistic again.
Miss Adair looked about her despairingly for some means of prolonging the whispered confidence. Penfield, deferentially in the rear of the platform group, was never safely out of earshot.
“I want to see the engine that so nearly plunged us into a collision last night,” she said aloud; and Penfield’s visible ear betrayed the listening mind.
Ford took his cue promptly. “We can go out the other way,” he said; and the secretary pro tempore had no excuse for following.
They found the cab of the 1012 deserted, with the steam in the huge boiler singing softly at the behest of the banked fire. Miss Adair lost her curiosity as soon as Ford had lifted her to the foot-plate.
“Now you are to tell me all about it—quickly,” she commanded. “Uncle Sidney will be calling for you as soon as he misses you. Why are you so foolish as to talk about resigning? Don’t you see what they will say then?—that you were afraid?”
Ford was leaning against the centered reversing-lever, and his face was gloomy again.
“Possibly I am afraid,” he suggested.
“You should be more afraid of dishonor than of—of the other things. Do you suppose Mr. North will be content with your resignation now?”
Ford looked up quickly. Here was a new revelation—an unsuspected facet of the precious gem. He could hardly believe that this steady-voiced, far-seeing young woman was the insouciant, school-girlish—though none the less lovable—young person with whom he had tramped to the wind-swept summit of Plug Pass in the golden heart of the yesterday.
“You mean—?” he began.
“I mean that you will be discredited; disgraced if possible. Are you sure you haven’t been doing anything over here that you wouldn’t want Uncle Sidney to find out?”
“Not consciously, you may be sure,” he asserted unhesitatingly.
“Think; think hard,” she urged. “Is there nothing at all?”
He could not help smiling lovingly at her scarce-concealed anxiety—though it was merely the anxiety of a noble soul unwilling to stand by and see injustice done.
“My methods never get very far underground,” he averred. “Not far enough for my own safety, Frisbie says. If I had been keeping a diary, I think I should be quite willing to let Mr. Colbrith read it—or print it, if he cared to.”
“And yet there is something,” she asserted, and the straight brows went together in a little frown of perplexity. “You don’t ask me how I know: I’m going to tell you, Mr. Ford—though it’s rather shameful. Three days ago, while we were in Denver, Mr. North came down to the car to see Uncle Sidney.”
“Yes?” he encouraged.
“They were closeted in Uncle Sidney’s state-room for a long time,” she went on. “I—I was walking with Miss Van Bruce, up and down on the station platform beside the Nadia, Uncle Sidney had told me not to go very far away because we were likely to start at any moment. The—the car windows were open—”
Her embarrassment was growing painfully apparent, and Ford came to the rescue.
“You were not even constructively to blame,” he hastened to say. “They must surely have seen you passing and repassing, and if they wished for privacy they might have closed the windows.”
“I didn’t hear much: only a word or two, now and then. They were talking about you and brother; and—” She stopped short and laid her hand on the throttle-lever of the big engine: “What did you say this was for?” she asked ingenuously.
Ford’s up-glance of surprise was answered by a glimpse of Penfield sauntering past on the other side of the track. She could not have seen, but she had doubtless heard his footsteps on the gravel.
“It’s the throttle,” said Ford, answering her question. And then: “Please go on: he is out of hearing.”
“They were speaking of you and brother; and—and of me. I can’t repeat a single sentence entire, but I know Mr. North was accusing you in some way, and apparently implicating me. Perhaps I listened in self-defense. Do you think I did, Mr. Ford?”
“You certainly had a good right to,” said Ford, who would have sworn in her behalf that the morally black was spotlessly white. “But how could you be implicated?”
“That was what puzzled me then—and it is puzzling me still. They said—or rather Mr. North said—that you—that you had bought me!”
Ford did not say that he would like to buy, beg, borrow or steal any kind of right to call her his own, but if his lips did not form the words they were lying at the bottom of the steady gray eyes for her to take or leave as she chose.
“I am sure you couldn’t have heard that part of it quite straight,” he said, almost regretfully.
“But I did, because it was repeated. Mr. North insisted that you had bought me; and I didn’t like the way in which he said it, either. He called me ‘the little Alicia’.”
“What!” said Ford; and then a flood of light burst in upon at least one of the dark places. “It’s only a mine,” he said sheepishly. “And I did buy it, or half of it.”
She was regarding him accusingly now.
“Did you—did you name it?” she asked, and there was the merest breath of frost in the air.
He was glad to be able to tell the truth without flinching.
“No; it is one of the earliest of the Copah prospects, and I suppose the discoverer named it. I am willing to defend his choice, though. He couldn’t have found a prettier name.”
She went back to the matter in hand with womanly swiftness. “But the mine: you had a right to buy it, didn’t you?”
“I should suppose so. I paid for it with my own money, anyway.”
“Then why should Mr. North use it as an argument against you in speaking to Uncle Sidney? He did that—I am sure he did that.”
“Now the water has grown too deep for me,” said Ford. “Why, North, himself, is interested in Copah, openly. He owns half a dozen claims.”
“Near yours?” she queried.
Ford stopped to consider. “To tell the truth, I don’t know where mine is,” he confessed. “I bought it as the school-boys trade pocket-knives—sight unseen. You wouldn’t believe it of a grown man, would you?”
“What made you buy it at all?”
Again he told the simple truth—and tried not to flinch.
“You won’t mind if I say that the name attracted me? I thought a mine, or anything, that bore your name, ought to be good and—and desirable. And it is a good mine; or it will be, by and by. Some morning I shall wake up and find myself rich. At least that is what my partner, Grigsby, assures me; and I believe him when I happen to remember it.”
She neither approved nor disapproved. When she spoke, it was of the present necessity. “We must go back to the others now,” she said. “Or at least I must. Do you know what is to be done to-day?”
Ford spread his hands.
“Your uncle will set the pace. I wouldn’t venture a guess, after last night.”
He was handing her down from the engine step and she went back in a word to the former contention.
“You haven’t promised me yet that you will not resign under fire—you are under fire, you know.”
“Am I?”
“Brother thinks you are.”
Once more he took the pessimistic view.
“Your brother isn’t losing any sleep over the Pacific Southwestern situation. You said he was in England, didn’t you?”
“I said he was in London when he wrote.”
“London is a long way off: and what I do must be done to-day or to-morrow. Mr. North will force the fighting, now that your uncle is on the ground, and your brother safely on the opposite side of the earth. And I can’t afford to fight this time, Miss Alicia.”
“Why can’t you?”
They were walking slowly back toward the Nadia when he said: “Because a victory would cost me more than I am willing to pay. There is no longer room in this service for Mr. North and me. If we come to blows one of us will have to go.”
“I can understand that,” she said quietly.
“And to obliterate Mr. North, I shall be obliged to efface—your uncle.”
She caught her breath.
“Mr. Ford, you have intimated that Mr. North isn’t an honest man. Do you ask me to believe that Uncle Sidney is his accomplice?”
“He is not, knowingly. But he will stand or fall with the man he has made. I should have to ride him down before I could get at North.”
Her lip curled and the straight-browed little frown came again. “There is no such thing as mercy in business, is there, Mr. Ford? My uncle is an old man and his presidency means more to him—”
“I understand that perfectly,” said Ford soberly. “That is why I prefer to step down and out and let some other man have the glory of finishing the extension.”
She looked up quickly.
“Would you do that for Uncle Sidney? He hasn’t been very lenient with you, has he?”
Ford ignored the query.
“He is your uncle, Miss Alicia; and I’d do it for your sake or not at all.”
They had reached the steps of the private car, and Frisbie was waiting with evident impatience for a word with Ford. Miss Adair’s eyes signaled emotion, and Ford thought it was resentment. But her parting word was not resentful; it was merely a repetition.
“Go to Mr. Frisbie,” she said from the car step; “he is waiting for you.” And then: “Remember; whatever happens, you must not resign—not even if Uncle Sidney asks you to.”
Frisbie’s information, given after Miss Adair had gone in, was rather mystifying. Young Benson, who was just in from the grade work beyond Copah, brought word of a party of strange engineers running lines on the opposite side of the river from the rejected S.L. & W. short-cut through the canyon of shale slides. Questioned by Benson, they had told what Frisbie believed to be a fairy tale. The chief of the party claimed to be the newly-elected county surveyor from Copah, running the lines for some mining property recently filed for entry. Benson had not been over curious; but he was observant enough to note that the tale was a misfit in three important particulars. He saw no locating stakes, such as a prospector always sets up conspicuously to mark his claim; and there were no signs of the precious metal, and no holes to indicate an attempt to find it.
“What’s your guess, Dick?” said Ford tersely.
The assistant shook his head.
“I haven’t any coming to me. But I don’t like mysteries.”
“Where was this party?”
“About a mile and a half below here. It was going out toward Copah when Jack met it—its work, whatever it was, all done, apparently.”
It was one of Frisbie’s gifts to be suspicious; but Ford was lacking on that side.
“It’s barely possible that the man was telling the truth, in spite of Benson’s failure to find any prospect holes,” he remarked. “We’ll let it go at that until we know something different. It couldn’t be a Transcontinental party, this far from home, and we haven’t anybody else to fear.”
Frisbie dropped the subject as one of the abstractions and took up the concrete.
“What are the orders for to-day?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’m waiting for Mr. Colbrith to say.”
“There are two buckboard teams here, in the MacMorrogh stables—came over from Copah last night. What are they for?”
“I don’t know. Another of the president’s little surprises, I suppose. We’ll know when he sends for me.”
The expected summons came at that precise moment, transmitted by Penfield. Mr. Colbrith would like to see Mr. Ford in his private state-room in the Nadia. The secretary had a sheaf of telegrams in his hand, and wished to be directed to the wire office. Frisbie took him in charge, and Ford went to obey the summons.
The president was sitting very erect in his swing chair when the young engineer let himself into the box-like compartment, and his voice was at its thinnest when he said: “Be seated, Mr. Ford.”
Ford sat down on the divan-couch, and the president plunged at once into business.
“Some time ago, you advised me, as chairman of the executive committee, that you had decided upon a change of route, Mr. Ford,” he began raspingly. “What were your reasons for making the change?”
“I stated them in my letter of advice,” said Ford; “economy in construction and greater safety in operating, as against a slight increase in the length of the line.”
“Twelve miles, I believe you said: that is a very considerable increase, I should say. The great eastern companies are spending millions of dollars, Mr. Ford, to shorten their lines by half-mile cut-offs.”
Ford had his reply ready.
“The conditions are entirely different. It will be many years before a fast through service is either practicable or profitable over the extension; and when it comes to that, we shall still have the short line from Denver to Green Butte by forty-two miles. But I explained all this at the time, Mr. Colbrith, and I understood that I had the executive committee’s approval of the changed route.”
“Qualifiedly, Mr. Ford; only qualifiedly. Yet you have gone ahead in your usual impetuous way, abandoning the short line through the canyon and building the detour. Your motive for haste must have been a very strong one—very strong.”
“It was. I am not here to kill time.”
“So it appears. But I am here, Mr. Ford, to consider carefully, and to investigate. We shall go first over this route you have abandoned. I wish to see for myself the difficulties you have so painstakingly described.”
Ford shrugged.
“I’m quite at your service, of course. But you will find it a hard trip. Indeed, if we drive, we shall have to cross the river and take the other side. The canyon on this side is impassable in places for a man on foot.”
“I provided for that,” said the president, letting his ferrety eyes rest for a moment upon the reluctant one. “You will find two buckboards with their drivers at the MacMorrogh headquarters. Be good enough to order them around, and we’ll start at once. No; no protests, Mr. Ford. My responsibilities are not to be shirked. Penfield will drive with me, and you may take Mr. Frisbie with you, if you see fit. I understand he is implicated with you in this matter.”
Ford bridled angrily at the word.
“There is no implication about it, Mr. Colbrith. You continually refer to it as if it were a crime.”
“Ah! the word is yours, Mr. Ford. We shall see—we shall see. That is all, for the present.”
Ford was raging when he found Frisbie and gave the order for the vehicles.
“He turned me out of his office state-room as if I had been a messenger boy or tramp! Get those teams out, Dick, and give me a chance to cool down. If my job is to last through this day—”
Frisbie laughed. “Go and dip your head in the Pannikin while you wait. Or, better still, chew on this. It’s a cipher message that Durgin has just been sending for Penfield to Vice-President North. Wouldn’t that make you weep and howl?”
Ford was still puzzling over the meaningless code words when he took his seat in the second of the two buckboards with Frisbie. The first assistant waited until the horses had splashed through the shallows of the river crossing; waited further until the president’s vehicle had gained a little start. Then he said: “Is it possible that you had Penfield for a spy on you as long as you did without working out his cipher code? Good Lord! I got that down before I did anything else—last spring when you left me to run the Plug Mountain. Here’s what he says to North”—taking the code message and translating: “Ford suspects something. Don’t know how much. He and Miss Adair are putting their heads together. She has authority of some kind from her brother. President goes with Ford to examine abandoned route, as arranged. Will wire result later.’”
“‘As arranged,’” was Ford’s wrathful comment.
“Apparently, everything is arranged for us. Some day, Dick, I’ll lose my temper, tie Penfield in a hard knot and throw him into the river! It’s like a chapter out of Lucretia Borgia!”