XXII The Man on Horseback
Since the weather was rather threatening, and the promise of October in the inter-mountain region is not to be lightly trifled with, Mr. Colbrith pressed for an early start on the seventeen-mile buckboard jaunt to Copah over the detour survey.
It was by his express command that the private-car party was called at daybreak, and that breakfast was served in the Nadia at six o’clock. And at seven sharp, which chanced to be the precise time of day when Adair’s commandeered Italians were spiking the last of the displaced rails into position at the gap in the track thirty-three miles away, the buckboards were drawn up at the steps of the president’s car.
For reasons charitable, as well as practical, Ford had planned to leave Frisbie out of this second dance of attendance upon the president. The track-layers were well up toward the head of Horse Creek gulch, with Brissac to drive; but during the night the Louisianian had reported in with a touch of mountain fever, and Ford had asked Frisbie to go up and take his place.
This was one of Ford’s peg-drivings for the day; and another was timed for the moment of outsetting. For conveyances for the party there were the two double-seated buckboards used on the canyon trip the previous day, and one other with a single seat; but there were only two drivers, the third man, who had brought the single-seated rig from Copah, having been prevailed upon by Ford to disappear.
Ford directed the distribution of the trippers arbitrarily, and was amazed when the president acquiesced without protest. Mr. Colbrith, the doctor’s wife, and Penfield, were to go in the leading vehicle; Aunt Hester Adair, Miss Van Bruce, and the doctor, in the second; and Ford drove the single-seated third, with Miss Alicia for his companion.
“I think you must have taken Uncle Sidney unawares,” said Alicia, when the caravan was toiling at a slow footpace along the rough wagon road paralleling the Horse Creek grade.
“You mean that he might have objected to your driver? You are a whole lot safer with me than you would be with one of those livery-stable helpers up ahead.”
“Oh, no; I didn’t mean just that. But you know he usually plans all the little details himself, and—”
“And the fact that somebody else plans them is sufficient excuse for a rearrangement. That is one of the penalties he pays for being the big boss,” laughed Ford. Since the yesterday was now safely yesterday, and to-day was his own, there was no room for anything but pure joy.
“You are a ‘big boss,’ too, aren’t you?” she said, matching his light-hearted mood.
“I was, in a way, until your uncle came over and eclipsed me.”
“And you will be again when Uncle Sidney moves a little farther along in his orbit.”
“That remains to be seen. There is yet plenty of time for him to abolish me, permanently, before he goes on his way rejoicing.”
“But you are not going to resign, you know,” she reminded him.
“Am I not?” Then he took his courage by the proper grip and went on with sudden gravity: “That rests entirely with you.”
“Mr. Ford! Aren’t you a little unfair?” She did not pretend to misunderstand him.
“I am open to convincement,” he affirmed.
“It is making me Uncle Sidney’s executioner, on one hand; or yours, on the other.”
He pressed the point relentlessly.
“There are only two horns to the dilemma: either Mr. Colbrith, or a man named Stuart Ford, will have to walk the official plank. Because Mr. Colbrith is your relative, I’m willing to be the victim. But you must say that it is what you wish. That is my price.”
“I say it is unfair,” she repeated. “Why should you put the burden of the decision upon poor me?”
“Because, if you were not concerned, there would be, to put it in good Hibernian, only one horn to the dilemma—and your uncle would be impaled upon that one.”
“Mercy!” she shuddered, in mock dismay. “That sounds almost vindictive. Are you vindictive, Mr. Ford?”
“Terribly,” he laughed. “The black-hearted villain of melodrama isn’t a patch on me when I’m stirred.” And then, more seriously: “But it isn’t altogether a joke. There is another side to the thing—what you might call the ethical, I suppose. There are a score or so of men in the company’s service—Frisbie and his subordinates—whose jobs hang upon mine. A worse man than I ever aspired to be might be loyal to his friends.”
“I wouldn’t think of questioning your loyalty to your friends,” she admitted.
“Also,” he went on determinately, “there is the larger question of right and wrong involved. Is it right for me to step aside and let an organized system of graft and thievery go on unchecked? I know it exists; I have evidence enough to go before a grand jury. I’m not posing as a saint, or even as a muck-raker; but isn’t something due to the people who are paying the bills?”
“Now you are involving Uncle Sidney again; and I can’t listen to that.”
“He is innocent; as innocent as some hundreds of other narrow-minded, short-sighted old men whom chance, or the duplicity of the real rascals, puts at the head of corporations.”
“Yet you would make him suffer with the guilty.”
“Not willingly, you may be sure. Not at all, if he would listen to reason. But he won’t. He’ll stand by North till the last gun is fired; and while North stays, there’ll be graft, big or little, as the opportunities warrant.”
Alicia held her peace while the caravan was measuring another half-mile of the boulder-strewn road. Then she said: “I feel so wretchedly inadequate to help you, Mr. Ford. I wish you could wait until you have talked it over with brother.”
“So do I. But I am afraid postponement doesn’t lie with me, now. From your uncle’s manner and from what he said to me yesterday, I can’t help feeling that the crisis is right here. For two days Mr. Colbrith has been very plainly leading up to some sort of dramatic climax. I can’t remotely guess what it is going to be; though I can guess that the plot isn’t his.”
Again she took time to consider, and when she spoke they were nearing the scene of strenuous activities at the moving track-end.
“You don’t think you could postpone it?” she asked, almost wistfully, he thought. “I think—I hope—my brother will become interested again. It is your fault that he lost interest, Mr. Ford.”
“My fault?” reproachfully.
“Certainly. You didn’t give him enough to do. He was happy and contented while you kept him hard at work. But after the bonds were placed and the money raised—”
“I’m a miserable sinner!” Ford confessed. “And I had promised you, too! But the battle has been so fierce at this end of the line; and I couldn’t be in two places at one time. Your brother should have been made first vice-president, instead of North. Perhaps we can bring it about yet—if you don’t call it all off.”
“There it is again,” she retorted. “You are dragging me in—and trying to bribe me, too!”
“God forbid!” he said, so earnestly that she forgave him. And then: “I wish your brother were here—now.”
“So do I,” she admitted. Then she told him of the wire summons sent from Denver, and of the shadowy hope she had based upon it.
“Where was your brother then?” he asked.
“I don’t know, positively. I hope he was in New York. He was to come over in the Campania, in time for the shooting at Mount Ptarmigan.”
“You’ve had no word from him?”
“None.”
They were up with the track-layers, now, in a country of huge bare hills and high-lying, waterless valleys; and the president had halted the caravan to give his guests a chance to see a modern railroad in the actual throes of evolution.
In a specialist in the trade, Ford’s genius might have invoked enthusiasm. Speed was the end to which all of the young engineer’s inventive powers had been directed; and the pace was furious. On the leveled grade ahead of the track-laying train an army of sweating laborers marched and counter-marched like trained soldiers, placing the cross-ties in position. On a train of specially constructed flat-cars another army was bolting together a long section of track, clamping the double line of rails at intervals to hold them to gauge. At the word, “Ready!” a hauling chain, passing through an anchored pulley-block far up the grade and back to the freed engine of the construction train, was made fast to the forward end of the bolted section; a second word of command, and the engine backed swiftly, dragging the prepared section off over the rollers of the flat-cars and into place on the ties. With the clanging fall of the final pair of rails, a third army, spike-drivers these, fell upon the newly placed steel, shouting their chantey as they swung the great pointed hammers; and in the midst of this fresh turmoil the train, with its brigade of bolters deftly preparing another section, was slowly pushed to the new front for another advance.
“It is like clockwork,” was Miss Alicia’s enthusiastic comment. “Did you invent it, Mr. Ford?”
Now the combination of flat-car bolting-table, and the shifting and laying by sections, was Ford’s invention, but he modestly stood from under.
“Frisbie gets the medal,” he said. “It’s all in the drill—every man knowing what he has to do, and doing it at the proper moment. I’d give something if I had Dick’s knack in detail organizing.”
She looked up, laughing. “You have the funniest way of ducking to cover if you think a bit of honest appreciation is coming your way, Mr. Ford. You know you told Mr. Frisbie how to do it.”
“Did I? I suppose it wouldn’t be polite to contradict you.”
“Or any use. Is Mr. Frisbie here now?—Oh, yes; there he is.” And then, in a half-awed whisper: “Who is that dreadful, Grand-Opera-villain looking man he is talking to?”
Ford’s eyes sought and found Frisbie. He was standing a little apart from the turmoil, talking to a man on horseback; a man with half-closed, beady, black eyes, drooping mustaches, and a face reptilian in its repulsiveness.
“That is ‘Mexican George’; the MacMorrogh Brothers’ ‘killer’,” said Ford evenly. “Have you ever heard of a professional man-killer, Miss Adair; a man whose calling is that of a hired assassin?”
She shuddered. “You are jesting, I know. But the word fits his face so accurately. I saw him lounging about the store at the camp yesterday, and it gave me the creeping shivers every time I looked at him. Do you ever have such instantaneous and unreasoning hatreds at first sight?”
“Now and then; yes. But I was not jesting about Mexican George. He is precisely what the word implies; is hired for it and paid for it. Nominally, he guards the commissary and stores, and is the paymaster’s armed escort. Really, it is his duty to shoot down any desperate laborer who, in the MacMorroghs’ judgment, needs to be killed out of the way.”
“Mercy!” Miss Alicia was shuddering again. “What hideously primitive conditions! What is this terrible man doing out here?”
“Oh, he is a free lance; comes and goes as he pleases. No, he’s not quarreling with Dick”—answering her look of anxiety.
“How do you know he isn’t?”
Ford laughed. “Because Dick wouldn’t let him get that near. He knows—Hello; I wonder what your good uncle wants of us.”
Mr. Colbrith was standing up in his place in the leading buckboard and making signals to the rear guard of two. Ford shook the reins over his broncos and drove around.
The president was fingering his thin beard and waving an arm toward the track-layers.
“Mr.—ah—Ford,” he began critically, “is it necessary to have such a vast army of men as that to lay the track?”
“I don’t think we are over-manned,” said Ford good-naturedly. It was comparatively easy to be patient with Alicia looking on and listening.
But it was against Mr. Colbrith’s principles to let a man off with a single rebuttal.
“I am not at all convinced of the worth of these new-fangled ideas, Mr. Ford; not at all. We built the Pacific Southwestern main line in the old, approved way—a rail at a time—with less than one-quarter of the men you have over there.”
“I don’t question it: and you were three years building some six hundred miles in a prairie country. We are to-day just six weeks out of Saint’s Rest with the track gang, and in six more, if the weather holds, we shall be laying the switches in the Green Butte yards. That is the difference between the old way and the new.”
The president was turned aside but not stopped.
“I understand,” he objected raucously. “But your expense bills are something tremendous; tre-mendous, Mr. Ford! You have spent more money in three months than we spent in a full year on the main line.”
“Quite likely,” agreed Ford, losing interest in the pointless discussion. “But with us, time is an object; and we have the results to show for the expenditure.”
At this, Mr. Colbrith took refuge in innuendo, as seemed to be his lately acquired habit.
“You are very ready with your answers, Mr. Ford; very ready, indeed. Let us see if you can continue as you have begun.”
It was Miss Alicia who resented this final speech of the president’s when the buckboards were once more in motion, following the unrailed grade around the swelling shoulders of the huge hills.
“I think that last remark of Uncle Sidney’s was rather uncalled for,” she said, after Ford had driven in grim silence at the tail of the procession for a full mile.
“It is one of a good many uncalled for things he has been saying to me since the day before yesterday,” was Ford’s rejoinder.
“Yet you can still assure me that you are not vindictive.”
“I am not—at the mere actors in the play. But I confess to an unholy desire to get back at the prompter—the stage manager of the little comedy. I am only waiting for your decision.”
“Please!” she said; and he saw that the blue eyes were growing wistful again.
“I’m done,” he said quickly. “I shan’t put it up to you any more. I’ll do what I think I ought to do, on my own responsibility.”
But now, woman-like, she crossed quickly to the other side.
“No; you mustn’t deprive me of my chance,” she protested soberly. “After a little while I shall tell you what I think—what I think you ought to do. Only you must give me time.”
His smile came from the depths of a lover’s heart.
“You shall have all the time there is—and then some, if I can compass it. Now let’s talk about something else. I’ve been boring you with this despicable business affair ever since you gave me leave on that foot-race down Plug Mountain Tuesday afternoon.”
“What shall it be?” she inquired gaily. And then: “Oh, I know. One day last summer—just as we were leaving Chicago in the Nadia—you had begun to tell me about a certain young woman who had money, and who was—who was—”
“—who was without her peer in all this world,” he finished for her. “Yes; I remember.”
“Do you still remember her, as you do the conversation?” she went on teasingly.
“I have never lost a day since I first met her.”
“Good Sir Galahad!” she mocked. “And is she still worth all those sacrifices you said you would be willing to make for her?”
“All, and several more.”
Silence for a little time, while the hoof-beats of a horse fox-trotting behind them drew nearer. It was the sinister-faced Mexican who ambled into view, and when he overtook the rearmost of the buckboards he was a long time in passing.
“That dreadful man!” murmured Alicia; and she did not go back to the suspended subject until he had trotted on past the caravan. Then she said slowly, taking her companion’s complete understanding for granted: “It must be delicious to be away out over one’s depth, like that!”
“It is,” said Ford solemnly. “It’s like—well, I’ve never been sick a day in my life since I can remember, but I should think it might be like a—a sort of beneficent fever, you know. Haven’t you ever had a touch of it?”
“Possibly—without recognizing it. Can you describe the symptoms?”
“Accurately. One day I awoke suddenly to the realization that there was one woman, in the world: before that, you know, there had always been a good many, but never just one. Then I began to discover that this one woman was the embodiment of an ideal—my ideal. She said and did and looked all the things I’d been missing in the others. I wanted to drop everything and run after her.”
“How absolutely idyllic!” she murmured. “And then?”
“Then I had to come down to earth with a dull, stunning swat, of course. There were a lot of commonplace, material things waiting to be done, and it was up to me to do them. Before I saw her, I used to think that nothing could divide time with a man’s work: that there wouldn’t be any time to divide. Afterward, I found out my mistake. Sleeping or waking, every day and all day, she was there: and the work went on just the same, or rather a whole lot better.”
The long drive was in its final third, and the wagon track, which had transferred itself to the top of the level railroad grade, admitted speed. By degrees the caravan became elongated, with the president still in the lead, the man on horseback indifferently ahead or behind, and the other two vehicles wide apart and well to the rear. Their isolation was complete when she said:
“Do you want me to say that I don’t recognize any of the symptoms, Mr. Ford?”
“Do I—No! Yes!—that is, I—Heavens! that is a terrible way to put it! Of course I hope—I hope you are in love—with the right person. If you’re not, I—”
She was weeping silently; weeping because it would have been a sin to laugh.
“You—called it a comedy a little while—ago,” she faltered. “In another minute it will be a tragedy. Don’t you think we are getting too far behind the others?”
He whipped up obediently, but the horses were in no hurry. At the rounding of the next shouldering hill the railroad grade entered a high, broad valley, the swelling hills on either side dotted with the dumps and tunnel-openings of the Copah gold-diggers. Ford had not been through the upper part of the district since the previous summer of pathfindings, and at that time it was like a dozen other outlying and hardly accessible fields, scantily manned and languishing under the dry rot of isolation. But now—
He was looking curiously across at the opposing hillsides. Black dots, dozens of them, were moving from ledge to ledge, pausing here and there to ply pick and shovel. Now and then from some one of the dry arroyos came the echoes of a surface shot; dynamite cartridges thrust into the earth to clear away the drift to bed-rock. Ford called his companion’s attention to the activities.
“See what it does to a mining country when a railroad comes within shouting distance,” he said. “The last time I was over here, this valley was like a graveyard. Now you’d think the entire population of Copah was up here prospecting for gold.”
“Is that what they are doing?” she asked. Then suddenly: “Where is your mine?—the mine with my name?”
He laughed.
“I told you the simple truth. I don’t know where it is; though I suppose it is up this way somewhere. Yes, I remember, Grigsby said it was on Cow Mountain.”
The hill on their side of the valley threw out a long, low spur and the railroad-grade driving track swept in a long curve around the spur and crossed over to the foot of a slope dotted with the digging manikins.
“By Jove!” said Ford, still wondering. “There are twice as many prospectors out here as there were inhabitants in Copah the last time I was over. The camp ought to vote bonds and give the railroad company a bonus.”
Farther along, the grade hugged the hillside, skirting the acclivity where the shaft-houses of some of the older mines of the district were perched on little hillocks formed by their own dumps, within easy tramming distance of the railroad. Opposite and directly below the nearest of these shaft-houses the two leading buckboards had stopped; and the president was once more standing up and beckoning vigorously to the laggards in the single-seated vehicle.
Ford spoke to his horses and grimaced as one who swallows bitter herbs.
“I wonder what I’ve been doing now—or leaving undone?” he queried.
He was not kept long in suspense. When they drove up, the president was still standing, balancing himself with a hand on the driver’s seat in front. His thin face was working nervously and the aggressive chin whiskers moved up and down like an accusing finger.
“Dear me!” said Alicia, under her breath; “Uncle Sidney is really angry, this time! What could have hap—” She glanced up at the mine buildings perched above the roadway and smothered a little cry. Ford’s eyes followed hers. All across the slab-built shaft-house and the lean-to ore sheds was stretched a huge canvas sign. And in letters of bright blue, freshly painted and two feet high, ran the boastful legend:
THE LITTLE ALICIA MINE
the only paying producer in the district
Stuart Ford & John Grigsby, Props.
The white-haired old man standing in the leading buckboard was trembling with righteous indignation. Pointing a shaking finger at the incriminating sign, he broke out in a storm of accusation.
“So, Mr. Ford! This is why you changed the route of the extension and added twelve miles to its length!” he raved. “This explains why you suddenly found the shorter route impracticable! Answer me sir: when did you become interested in this mine?”
There was a little stir of consternation among the listeners; and it did not help matters that the man on horseback ambled up at the moment and drew rein behind the doctor’s vehicle. Ford’s hands were gripping the reins until the stiff leathers were crumpled into strings; but it was Alicia’s touch on his arm that enabled him to reply coldly:
“It was something over two months ago, I believe. I can give you the exact date when we reach Copah, though you will permit me to say that it is none of your business.”
Mr. Colbrith exploded like a hastily fired bomb.
“I propose to make it some of my business! Was it before or after your purchase here that you decided upon the change of route? Answer me that, Mr. Ford!”
Ford wheeled his bronchos and closed the shouting gap.
“Sit down, Mr. Colbrith,” he said half-menacingly. “If it is your purpose to humiliate me before your guests, I shall drive on and leave you.”
“You don’t answer my question; you can not answer it! You instructed your assistant to change the line of this railroad after you had bought this mine!”
“And if I did?”
“You did. And by so doing, Mr. Ford, you diverted the company’s money to your own personal ends as wrongfully as if you had put your hands into the treasurer’s strong-box. In other words, you became what you have accused others of being—a common grafter!”
“Answer Me, Sir! When Did You Become Interested in This Mine?”
Ford’s face was very white, and his lips were drawn into thin lines when he opened them to reply. But the restraining hand was on his arm again, and he obeyed it.
“I don’t care to talk with you, about this matter or any other, here and now. Later on, perhaps, when you can speak without being abusive, I shall take the liberty of telling you what I think of you.” And at that, he gave his horses the rein and drove on, swiftly, abruptly, leaving the president and his guests to follow as they would.
For some minutes neither of the two in the flying buckboard could find words wherewith to bridge the miserable chasm so suddenly opened between them. Miss Alicia’s eyes were tear-brightened and unfathomable; Ford’s were hard, and there was a steely light in them. It was Alicia who spoke first.
“I know it is not true, of course—what Uncle Sidney accused you of,” she offered. “But tell me how it happened?”
“I don’t know—unless the devil planned it,” said Ford bitterly. “I bought the mine one day last summer when I was in Copah, without premeditation, without seeing it—without knowing where it was situated, just as I have told you. Some little time afterward, Frisbie came to me with the plan for the change of route. I had considered it before, but had made no estimates. Frisbie had made the estimates, and we decided upon it at once. I haven’t been over here since: it wasn’t necessary, and I had other things to do.”
“Did Mr. Frisbie know about your purchase of the mine?”
“No. I don’t think he knows of it yet. To tell the truth, I was a little ashamed: it was a touch of the mining fever that everybody gets now and then in a mining country. Dick would have guyed me.”
“But Mr. Frisbie must have been over the line a great many times: how could he miss seeing that enormous sign?” she persisted.
Ford shook his head.
“I venture to say that the paint isn’t yet dry on that sign. It was put there for a purpose, and your uncle was told to look for it. Grigsby is just the sort of fool to jump at the chance to advertise the mine, and somebody suggested it and gave him the tip that the president of the railroad was coming in this way. Mr. North is a very careful man. He doesn’t neglect any of the little details.”
The high valley was falling away into a broken gulch, and the railway-grade driving-path clung closer to the hillsides. At the next turn the town of Copah came into view, and the road became a shelf on the slope two hundred feet above the main street and paralleling it. Alicia was looking down upon the town when she said:
“What shall you do?”
Ford’s laugh was not mirthful.
“I have already done it. I shall perhaps be permitted to see you all safely back to the Nadia, and over the rough track to Saint’s Rest. More than that I fancy Mr. Colbrith will not allow—and possibly not that much.”
Miss Adair was still looking down upon the town; and now Ford looked. Instantly he saw that something unusual was going on. Notwithstanding the number of men afield on the hills, the main street of the camp was restlessly alive. Horsemen were galloping back and forth; in front of the outfitting stores freighters were hastily loading their pack animals; at every gathering place there were knots of excited men talking and gesticulating.
Ford was puzzled. At another time he would quickly have put the obvious two and two together to make the equally obvious four. But now he merely said: “That’s curious; mighty curious. Where do you suppose all those people came from?”
Alicia’s rejoinder was not an answer to the half-mechanical query.
“Mr. Ford, a little while ago I told you I must have time to consider: I—I have considered. You must fight for your life and your good name. You must make Uncle Sidney see things as they are—that they are not as he thinks they are.”
“I can’t,” he said stubbornly. “Your condition reverses your decision. If I am to fight with any hope of winning, after what has transpired to-day, Mr. Colbrith will have to be eliminated.”
He had pulled the broncos down to a walk. There was a soft thudding of hoofs on the yielding earth of the grade behind, but neither of them heard.
“You are disappointing me,” she protested, and now the hesitation was all gone. “A few minutes ago, before this miserable thing happened, you were telling me of your ideal... a woman may have an ideal, too, Mr. Ford.”
“Yes?” he said eagerly.
“My ideal is the knight without fear and without reproach—and also without limitations. He will never say, ‘I can not.’ He will say, ‘I will,’ and not for my sake, but because his own sense of justice and mercy and loving-kindness will go hand in hand with his ambition.”
“One word,” he broke in passionately; and now the soft thudding of hoofs had drawn so near that the presence of the overtaking horseman might have been felt. “My little allegory didn’t deceive you; you are the one woman, Alicia, dear. I didn’t mean to tell you yet, though I think you have known it all along: I had an idea that I wanted to do something worthy—something big enough to be worth while—before I spoke. But you have given me leave; don’t say you haven’t given me leave!”
“You have taken it,” she said softly, adding: “And that is what a woman likes, I think. But you mustn’t spoil my ideal, Stuart—indeed, you mustn’t. You are young, strong, invincible, as my knight should be. But when you strike you must also spare. You say there is no way save the one you have indicated; you must find a way.”
He smiled ruefully.
“You give the cup of water only to take it away again. I’d rather build ten railroads than to attempt to smash North and his confederates through your uncle. You see, I’m frightfully handicapped right at the start—with this mine business hanging over me. But if you say it has to be done, it shall be. I’ll win Mr. Colbrith over, in spite of all that has happened; and he shall fire North and the MacMorroghs first and prosecute them afterward. I’ve said it.”
It was just here that the broncos shied—inward, toward the hill. Ford gathered the slack reins, and Miss Adair looked up and gave a little shriek. Noiselessly, and so close upon the buckboard that he might have touched either of its occupants with his rawhide quirt, rode the Mexican. When they discovered him he was leaning forward, his half-closed eyes mere slits with pin-points of black fire to mark them, and his repulsive face a stolid mask. Ford’s hand went instinctively to the whip: it was the only available weapon. But the Mexican merely touched his flapping sombrero and rode on at the shuffling fox-trot.
“That man, again!” shivered Alicia, when the portent of evil had passed out of sight around the next curve in the grade.
But Ford’s concern was deeper than her passing thrill of repulsion.
“Did you notice his horse’s hoofs as he went by?” he asked soberly.
“No,” she said.
“I did. He dismounted somewhere behind us and covered them with sacking.”
“What for?” she asked, shivering again with the nameless dread.
“You recall what I was saying when the broncos shied: his object was to creep up behind us and listen. He has done it more than once since we left the end-of-track, and this time—”
“Yes?”
“This time he heard what he wanted to hear.”
Beyond the curve which had hidden the Mexican, the wagon-road left the grade, descending abruptly upon the town. Ford looked back from the turn and saw that the other two vehicles were not yet in sight.
“Shall we wait for your aunt and the others?” he asked.
Her smile was a sufficient reward for the bit of tactful forethought.
“I’m sure we have left the conventions far enough behind not to be unduly terrified by them. I am not afraid to go in unchaperoned. Besides, I heard Uncle Sidney telling Doctor Van Bruce that our rooms at the hotel had been engaged for us.”
Ford drove carefully down the steep side street which was the approach to the hotel. An excited throng blocked the sidewalk, and the lobby seemed to be a miniature stock exchange. Single-eyed, Ford fought a passage through the crowd with Alicia on his arm, heeding nothing until he had seen her safely above stairs and in the sitting-room of the president’s reservation, with a cheerful fire in the big sheet-iron stove for her comforting. Then he went down and elbowed his way through the clamorous lobby to the clerk’s desk.
“Suppose you take a minute or two off and tell me what this town has gone crazy about, Hildreth,” he said, with a backward nod toward the lobby pandemonium.
“Why, Great Scott! Mr. Ford—have you got this far into it without finding out?” was the astounded rejoinder. “It’s a gold strike on Cow Mountain—the biggest since Cripple Creek! We’ve doubled our population since seven o’clock this morning; and by this time to-morrow.... Say, Mr. Ford; for heaven’s sake, get your railroad in here! We’ll all go hungry within another twenty-four hours—can’t get supplies for love or money!”
Ford turned away and looked out upon the stock-selling pandemonium with unseeing eyes. The chance—the heaven-sent hour that strikes only once in a life-time for the builders of empire—had come: and he was only waiting for the arrival of the president to find himself rudely thrust aside from the helm of events.