XIX The Reluctant Wheels
It was possibly an hour after Penfield’s cipher message reached the Southwestern Pacific headquarters in the Colorado capital, when a fair-haired young man in London-cut clothes, and with a tourist’s quota of hand-luggage, crossed the Denver Union Station platform from the Pullman of a belated Chicago train.
Ascertaining from a gateman that the Plug Mountain day train had long since gone on its way up the canyon, the young man left his many belongings at the check-stand and had himself driven up-town to the Guaranty Building. It was Eckstein who took his card in Mr. North’s outer office. The private secretary was dictating to a stenographer, and was impatient of the interruption. But the name on the card wrought a miracle.
“Mr. North? Why, surely, Mr. Adair. He is always at liberty for you. Right through this way”—holding the gate in the counter railing at its widest—“we’re mighty glad to see you in Denver, always.”
Adair had acquired the monocle habit on his latest run across the Atlantic, and to keep in practice he gave the secretary the coldest of stares through the disconcerting glass. “Really! I’m quite delighted. Who is the other member of the ‘we,’ Mr.—er—er—”
“Eckstein,” prompted the secretary; but he said no more, being prudently anxious to be quit of the transfixing stare before a worse thing should befall.
In the inner room the vice-president was less effusive, but no less cordial. It was a rare thing to see one of the company’s directors in the Denver business offices. Mr. North was of the opinion that it would be a good investment of time and effort for all concerned if the members of the board used their privilege oftener. So on through half a dozen polite time-killers to the reluctant query: What could the general manager do for Mr. Adair?
Given leave to speak, Adair stated his needs succinctly. He wanted a special train to Saint’s Rest; he wanted it suddenly, and he asked that it be given the right of the road.
“My dear sir!” protested the vice-president, “you mustn’t ask impossibilities! You shall have the train at once, of course: you shall have my private car. But when it comes to the right of way, you’ll have to appeal to Mr. Ford. Why, he doesn’t scruple to lay out the United States mails for his material trains!”
“Um,” said Adair. “Where can I reach Ford?”
Mr. North did not equivocate; he never lied when the truth would answer the purpose equally well.
“He is out on the extension; or more correctly speaking, somewhere beyond the present end of the construction telegraph line. I’m afraid you couldn’t reach him by wire.”
“And the president?” queried the visitor.
“Mr. Colbrith’s car is at the end-of-track. You wished to join the party in the Nadia?”
“That is what I had in mind,” said Adair, not too anxiously.
Mr. North shook his head.
“I don’t think you’d enjoy the run over the construction track. Mr. Colbrith went over it last night because—well, because he believes it to be a presidential duty to inspect everything. If you leave to-day, you will probably meet the Nadia coming out—possibly at Saint’s Rest.”
Adair suddenly became wary.
“Perhaps that would be the easy thing to do,” he said. “I suppose the engineers at Saint’s Rest could put me up if I have to stay over night?”
“You needn’t ask them. You will have my car—with the best cook this side of Louisiana. Keep it, live in it, till Mr. Colbrith picks you up on his return.”
“All right. But you’ll give me the special. And let it make as good time as it can, Mr. North; I’m fierce when I have to ride a slow train.”
The vice-president’s promise was freely given; and to expedite matters, the division superintendent’s chief clerk went down to the station with Adair to see the special train properly equipped and started on the mountain-climbing run. Adair left the details to this orderly from the general offices; not knowing how to compass them himself, he had to. If he could have seen the broad grins on the faces of his train crew when Dobson, the clerk, gave them the despatcher’s order—but at that moment he was lounging in Mr. North’s easiest chair in the central compartment of the “01,” reading for the twentieth time a crease-worn telegram.
The telegram was from Alicia, and it was dated at Denver, three days gone. It was not very explicit; on the contrary, it was rather incoherent.
“You would better come on as fast as you can if you want to save your friend’s life. He has been tried and found guilty—of just what, I don’t know—and will be hanged pretty soon—within a few days, I think.”
“Now that’s a nice way to stir a fellow up, isn’t it?” soliloquized the pleasure-lover. “Just as I was getting ready to go up to Mount Ptarmigan for the shooting. She knew that, too. I’ll bet a picayune it’s just a girl’s scare. Ford’s plenty good and able to take care of himself.”
That was Mr. Charles Edward Adair’s care-free phrasing of it; but three hours later, when the cook of the “01” served him the most appetizing of luncheons in the big open compartment, and the steeply pitched walls of the lower Blue Canyon were still stinting the outlook from the car windows, he began to grow impatient.
“Whereabouts are we now, Johnson?” he asked of the cook’s second man.
“Between Cutcliff and No-Horse; yes, sah. ’Bout forty mile from Denver.”
“Great Scott! Fifteen miles an hour? Say, Johnson, what do you do when you want ’em to run faster—pull this string?”
“Yes, sah; dat’s it,” grinned the negro.
Adair pulled the air-cord, and it brought results—of a kind. Only the train came to a sudden stop, instead of going ahead faster; and Conductor Barclay, who had been riding on the engine, came back to see what had happened.
“Did you stop us, Mr. Adair?” he asked pleasantly.
“Not meaning to, you may be sure,” said Adair. “But now you’re here, I’ll ask if there is any objection to my getting off and walking. I could stop and rest and let you overtake me now and then, you know.”
The conductor tweaked the air-cord and the train moved on again.
“I’ve been expecting you’d shout at us,” he said good-naturedly. “But we’re doing the best we can. There’s a freight wreck on ahead, and we’ve been dallying along, hoping they’d get it picked up by the time we reach it. I thought you’d rather keep moving than to be hung up for three or four hours at the wreck.”
Adair saw his helplessness and made the best of it. He was in Mr. North’s hands, and if Mr. North was playing for delay, the delay would be forthcoming. None the less, he contrived to make Barclay uncomfortable.
“I’m only a director in the Pacific Southwestern, and I suppose directors don’t count,” he said nonchalantly. “Yet, I presume, if I should ask it as a personal favor, I might get a conductor’s or an engineer’s head to take home with me for a souvenir. How would that be? Do you think I could make it win?”
“You could do it, hands down, Mr. Adair. But I hope you won’t feel as if you’d got to go into the head-hunting business. It’s like the boy throwing stones into the pond; it’s fun for the kid, but sort o’ hard on the toad-frogs.”
Adair laughed. He was not one of those who find it easy to bear malice.
“You don’t talk half as bad as you act,” he said genially. “Down at bottom I dare say you’re a pretty good kind of a fellow. Had anything to eat?”
Barclay shook his head. “No; we was laying off to get coffee and sinkers at Clapp’s Mine, if we ever get there.”
“‘Coffee and sinkers’,” said Adair. “That doesn’t sound very uplifting. Sit down here and help me out with my contract.”
Barclay did it, rather unwillingly. He was not accustomed to eating at the vice-president’s table, but there was no resisting the curly-headed young man when he chose to make himself companionable. Barclay sat on the edge of his chair, ate with his knife or fork indifferently, and had small use for the extra spoons and cutlery. But he made a meal to be remembered. Afterward, the young man found a cigar-case, and his own box of Turkish cigarettes; and still the special was going at the same slow cow-gallop up the canyon.
“How many are there of you up ahead?” asked Adair, when Barclay’s cigar was going like a factory chimney.
“Only Williams and his fireman.”
“Dinner-buckets?”
“No; neither one of ’em, as it happens. Hurry call to go out with you, and both of ’em live too far to go home after the grub-cans.”
“Johnson,” said the dispenser of hospitality, calling the second man. “Think you could climb over the coal with some dinner for the enginemen? No? Let me make it possible”—flipping a dollar into the ready palm. “Tell the cook it’s an order, and if he stints it there’ll be consequences.”
Barclay grinned his appreciation. The curly-headed young man was far enough removed from any species of railway official hitherto known to the conductor. But Adair was only paving the way.
“Do you know,” he said, after a little interval of tobacco-charmed silence, “one of the things I am most anxious to see is a real railroad wreck. Suppose you quicken up a little and let us have our dead time at the scene of this disaster you speak of.”
Barclay was tilting uneasily in his chair.
“I reckon they’ve about got it picked up and cleaned out o’ the way by this time, Mr. Adair. I shouldn’t be surprised if we could hardly find the place when we get there.”
“Nor I,” said Adair; and he sat back and chuckled. “It’s considerably difficult to sit up and pull your imagination on a man who has been decently good to you, isn’t it, Barclay? Let me ask you: are you Mr. North’s man?”
“Mr. North is the big boss.”
“But this Plug Mountain division is a part of Mr. Ford’s line, isn’t it?”
“It used to be all his. There’s a white man for you, Mr. Adair.”
Adair saw his opportunity and used it.
“Now see here, Barclay; I’m only a director, and I don’t cut much ice out this way. But back in New York I’m one of three or four people who can tell Mr. North what he can do, and what he can’t. You wouldn’t want to see Mr. Ford getting it in the neck, would you?”
“By Jacks! There ain’t a man in the service that wouldn’t fight for him. I tell you, he’s white.”
“Well, Mr. Ford is in trouble: I don’t know but he is likely to lose his job, if I don’t see the president before the big ax comes down. That is between us two.”
The conductor sprang out of his chair.
“By gravy! Why didn’t you say that at first? Say, Mr. Adair, you stand between us and Mr. North—tell him you gave the orders yourself—and you’ll have the ride of your life from here to Saint’s Rest!”
“Go it,” said Adair; and two minutes after Barclay had let himself out of the forward door of the “01,” the train took a sudden start and darted ahead at full speed.
This bit of diplomacy on the part of Adair saved two full hours in the run to Saint’s Rest. Nevertheless, it was after dark when the “01” pulled into the crowded material yard in the high mountain basin and Leckhard came aboard to find out what had brought this second private-car visitation. He was relieved not to meet North—to be confronted only by a pleasant-faced young man who seemed to have the car all to himself.
“My name is Leckhard,” announced the man-of-all-work, “and I represent the engineering department. I saw it was Mr. North’s car, and—”
“And you came to see what you could do for the vice-president and general manager,” Adair finished for him. “Mighty sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Leckhard, but my name isn’t North; it’s Adair, and I’m only a director. How much authority is a director allowed—at this altitude and distance from New York?”
Leckhard laughed.
“I reckon you might call yourself the ranking officer in the field, Mr. Adair. What you say, goes.”
“Then I say ‘go’; which means that I’d like to go—on to the end of the extension.”
But now the engineer was shaking his head.
“Ask me anything but that, Mr. Adair. None of our enginemen is at this end of the line, and your man Williams, who brought you up from Denver, doesn’t know the way. More than that, if we had a man and an engine, I’d be afraid to send you out for a night run. Mr. Ford made it last night with Mr. Colbrith’s car, and they used up ten hours in covering less than a hundred and twenty miles, and came within six feet of killing everybody.”
Adair had lighted a cigarette, and he did not reply until the match flare had gone out. Then he said, in a way that made Leckhard his friend for life:
“I’m entirely in your hands, Mr. Leckhard; can’t turn a wheel unless you say so. And I believe you’re telling me the truth, as man to man. Can you reach Ford or Mr. Colbrith by wire?”
“I’m sorry to say I can’t. We have only the one wire, and it’s on temporary poles most of the way. It broke down on us this morning, and I can’t raise the end-of-track.”
“Block number two,” said Adair cheerfully. “We seem to be out of luck this evening.” Then, with searching abruptness: “Do you call yourself Ford’s friend, Mr. Leckhard?”
“Rather,” said the Saint’s Rest Pooh Bah. “He hired me; and when he goes, I go.”
“Ah! now we are warming ourselves at the same fire. Let me invite your confidence in one word, Mr. Leckhard. I dislike Mr. North.”
The burly engineer laughed again.
“You have a geniusful way of putting your finger on the sore spot without fumbling. We all dislike Mr. North at this end of things—with reason.”
“And that reason is?”
“That he’d fire the entire engineering department if he could find half an excuse. I’m afraid he’s going to do it, too, in the most effectual way—by forcing Mr. Ford out. If Ford goes, every man in the department will quit with him. I’m afraid it’s coming to that.”
Johnson, the porter, had lighted the Pintsch globes and was laying the covers for dinner.
“Make it two, Johnson,” said Adair; and, then to Leckhard: “You dine with me—don’t say no; I couldn’t stand it alone.” And when that point was settled: “Now, sit down till we thresh, this out a bit finer. How far has this forcing business gone? You’re talking to the man who has backed Ford from the first.”
“It has gone pretty far. North has obstructed, quietly but persistently, ever since the first blow was struck on the extension. He has delayed material, when he could do it unofficially, he scants us for rolling stock and motive power, he stands in with the MacMorroghs and backs them against Ford every time there is a dispute. Ford is a patient man, Mr. Adair, but I think he has about reached the limit.”
“H’m. Do you attach any particular importance to the president’s trip over the extension?”
Leckhard shook his head. “I’m only a passenger—I see what goes by the car-windows. Mr. Colbrith was dead set on pushing over to the end-of-track—wouldn’t even wait for daylight. You probably know him better than I do—”
“He is my uncle,” Adair cut in.
“Oh; then I can’t tell you anything about him. He was hot at Ford last night; what for I don’t know, unless it was because Ford opposed a night run over a raw construction track with the Nadia. He was right about that, though. If I had been in his place I would have thrown up my job before I would have taken the risk.”
Adair appeared to be considering something, and when he had thought it out, the porter had announced dinner and they had taken their places at the table.
“I have told you I am Ford’s friend, Mr. Leckhard; I have ridden a couple of thousand miles out of my way to give him a lift. Tell me frankly; have you any reason to believe it will come to blows between him and the president while they are together at the front?—Try this celery; it’s as good as you’d get at Sherry’s.”
Leckhard helped himself to the relish, and waited until the negro, Johnson, had gone back to the cook’s galley.
“The little I know comes in a roundabout way,” he replied slowly. “Penfield, who is known all over the Southwestern as Mr. North’s private detective and spy, is with Mr. Colbrith acting as the president’s secretary. Yesterday, while the Nadia was side-tracked here, Penfield had a lot of telegraphing to do for Mr. Colbrith. He did it himself—he’s a lightning operator, among other things—and I happened into the office just as he was finishing. His final message was a cipher, to Mr. North, and he signed it with his own name.”
“Well?” said Adair.
Again the engineer waited until the negro was out of hearing.
“A little later, just as the Nadia was about to pull out, there came a rush call from Denver for Penfield. I answered and said the car was on the point of leaving, but that I’d take the message and try to catch Penfield if I could. It came, on the run, and it was signed by Eckstein, North’s chief clerk. It wasn’t ciphered—lack of time, I reckon—and Eckstein took the chance that I wouldn’t catch on.”
“You kept a copy?” suggested Adair.
“I did. I wasn’t able to deliver the original until the Nadia came back from the foot of the pass in the evening to fill the engine tank. But I couldn’t make anything out of it. It was an order to Penfield not to let anything interfere with the president’s buckboard trip—whatever that might be—with authority to incur any expense that might be necessary, using the telegram as his credential with the MacMorrogh Brothers if more money were needed.”
“To pay for the buckboards?” asked Adair.
“You may search me,” said Leckhard. “Only it could hardly be that—we have an open account at the Bank of Copah for legitimate expenses. No; there’s a nigger in the woodpile, somewhere. Penfield is only a clerk; but for some purpose he is given carte blanche to spend money.”
Adair was absently stirring his black coffee.
“All of which points to one conclusion, Mr. Leckhard. They are plotting against Ford—without the president’s connivance. But the president is going to be made to swing the club. I know rather more than you do about it—which isn’t saying very much. My—a relative of mine who is with the party in the Nadia wired me three days ago from Denver that Ford had been tried and condemned, and was only waiting to be hanged. That’s why I am here to-night. You’ve got to get me to the end-of-track before it comes to blows between Mr. Colbrith and Stuart Ford. I know both men, Mr. Leckhard. If the iron comes to a certain heat, the past master of all the peacemakers won’t be able to patch things together.”
“Ford will resign,” said the engineer.
“That is what I’m afraid of; and we can’t let him resign. That would mean Mr. North for everything in sight, and the ultimate ruin of the Pacific Southwestern. On the other hand, I can’t have Ford fighting the family—or my uncle—which is just what he will do if he gets his blood up—and doesn’t quit in a huff. It’s up to you to trundle this car over to the seat of war, Mr. Leckhard.”
The division engineer was thinking hard.
“I can’t see how it’s to be done, right now, Mr. Adair. But I’ll tell you what I will do. Our empty material trains come back from the front in the night, as a rule. When they get in, and I can be sure that the track’s clear, I’ll double one of the construction engines out with you. It will be along toward morning, I’m afraid; but, with nothing in the way, you ought to make the run in four or five hours—say by late breakfast time.”
That was the way it was left when Leckhard went back to his telegraph den at ten o’clock; and some six hours later, Adair, sleepily conscious of disturbances, wakened sufficiently to hear the wheels once more trundling monotonously under the “01.”