Chapter 3

But Miss Carteret was in a contradictory mood. Moreover, she was a woman, and the way to a woman's confidence does not lie through the neutral country of easy compliance.

“If you won't take the other side, I will,” she said. “There will be two.”

Jastrow acquiesced a second time.

“I shouldn't wonder. Our competitor's road seems to be only a question of time--a very short time, judging from the number of men turning out in the track gang down yonder.”

Virginia leaned over the railing to look past the car and the dovecote station shading her eyes to shut out the snow-blink from the sun-fired peaks.

“Why, they are soldiers!” she exclaimed. “At least, some of them have guns on their shoulders. And see--they are forming in line!”

The secretary adjusted his eye-glasses.

“By Jove! you are right; they have armed the track force. The new chief of construction doesn't mean to take any chances of being shaken loose by main strength. Here they come.”

The end of track of the new line was diagonally across the creek from the Rosemary's berth and a short pistol-shot farther down stream. But to advance it to a point opposite the private car, and to gain the altitude of the high embankment directly across from the station, the new line turned short out of the main canyon at the mouth of the intersecting gorge, describing a long, U-shaped curve around the head of the lateral ravine and doubling back upon itself to reenter the canyon proper at the higher elevation.

The curve which was the beginning of this U-shaped loop was the morning's scene of action, and the Utah track-layers, two hundred strong, moved to the front in orderly array, with armed guards as flankers for the handcar load of rails which the men were pushing up the grade.

Jastrow darted into the car, and a moment later his place on the observation platform was taken by a wrathful industry colonel fresh from his dressing-room--so fresh, indeed, that he was coatless, hatless, and collarless, and with the dripping bath-sponge clutched like a missile to hurl at the impudent invaders on the opposite side of the canyon.

“Hah! wouldn't wait until a man could get into his clothes!” he rasped, apostrophizing the Utah's new chief of construction. “Jastrow! Faveh me instantly, seh! Hustle up to the camp there and turn out the constable, town-marshal, or whatever he is. Tell him I have a writ for him to serve. Run, seh!”

The secretary appeared and disappeared like a marionette when the string has been jerked by a vigorous hand, and Virginia smiled--this without prejudice to a very acute appreciation of the grave possibilities which were preparing themselves. But having her share of the militant quality which made her uncle what he was, she stood her ground.

“Aren't you afraid you will take cold, Uncle Somerville?” she asked archly; and the Rajah came suddenly to a sense of his incompleteness and went in to finish his ablutions against the opening of the battle actual.

At first Virginia thought she would follow him. When Mercury Jastrow should return with the officer of the law there would be trouble of some sort, and the woman in her shrank from the witnessing of it. But at the same instant the blood of the fighting Carterets asserted itself and she resolved to stay.

“I wonder what uncle hopes to be able to do?” she mused. “Will a little town constable with a bit of signed paper from some lawyer or judge be mighty enough to stop all that furious activity over there? It's more than incredible.”

From that she fell to watching the activity and the orderly purpose of it. A length of steel, with men clustering like bees upon it, would slide from its place on the hand-car to fall with a frosty clang on the cross-ties. Instantly the hammermen would pounce upon it. One would fall upon hands and knees to “sight” it into place; two others would slide the squeaking track-gage along its inner edge; a quartet, working like the component parts of a faultless mechanism, would tap the fixing spikes into the wood; and then at a signal a dozen of the heavy pointed hammers swung aloft and a rhythmic volley of resounding blows clamped the rail into permanence on its wooden bed.

Ahead of the steel-layers were the Italians placing the cross-ties in position to receive the track, and here the foreman's badge of office and scepter was a pick-handle. Above all the clamor and the shoutings Virginia could hear the bull-bellow of this foreman roaring out his commands--in terms happily not understandable to her; and once she drew back with a little cry of womanly shrinking when the pick-handle thwacked upon the shoulders of one who lagged.

It was this bit of brutality which enabled her to single out Winton in the throng of workers. He heard the blow, and the oath that went with it, and she saw him run forward to wrench the bludgeon from the bully's hands and fling it afar. What words emphasized the act she could not hear, but the little deed of swift justice thrilled her curiously, and her heart warmed to him as it had when he had thrown off his coat to fall to work on the derailed engine of the Limited.

“That was fine!” she said to herself. “Most men in his place wouldn't care, so long as the work was done, and done quickly. I wonder if--oh, you startled me!”

It was Mr. Somerville Darrah again, clothed upon and in his right mind; otherwise the mind of a master of men who will brook neither defeat at the hands of an antagonist nor disobedience on the part of his following. He was scowling fiercely across at the Utah activities when she spoke, but at her exclamation the frown softened into a smile for his favorite niece.

“Startled you, eh? Pahdon me, my deah Virginia. But as I am about to startle some one else, perhaps you would better go in to your aunt.”

She put a hand on his arm. “Please let me stay out here, Uncle Somerville,” she said. “I'll be good and not get in the way.”

He shook his head, in deprecation rather than in refusal.

“An officer will be here right soon now to make an arrest. There may be a fight, or at least trouble of a sort you wouldn't care to see, my deah.”

“Is it--is it Mr. Winton?” she asked.

He nodded.

“What has he been doing--besides being 'The Enemy'?”

The Rajah's smile was ferocious.

“Just now he is trespassing, and directing others to trespass, upon private property. Do you see that dump up there on the mountain?--the hole that looks like a mouth with a long gray beard hanging below it? That is a mine, and its claim runs down across the track where Misteh Winton is just now spiking his rails.”

“But, I don't understand,” she began; then she stopped short and clung to the strong arm. A man in a wide-flapped hat and cowboy _chaparejos_, with a revolver on either hip, was crossing the stream on the ice-bridge to scramble up the embankment of the new line.

“The officer?” she asked in an awed whisper.

The Rajah made a sign of assent. Then, identifying Winton in the throng of workers, he forgot Virginia's presence. “Confound him!” he fumed. “I'd give a thousand dollars if he'd faveh me by showing fight so we could lock him up on a criminal count!”

“Why, Uncle Somerville!” she cried.

But there was no time for reproaches. The leather-breeched person parading as the Argentine town-marshal had climbed the embankment, and, singling out his man, was reading his warrant.

Contrary to Mr. Darrah's expressed hope, Winton submitted quietly. With a word to his men--a word that stopped the strenuous labor-battle as suddenly as it had begun--he turned to pick his way down the rough hillside at the heels of the marshal.

For some reason that she could never have set out in words Virginia was distinctly disappointed. It was no part of her desire to see the conflict blaze up in violence, but it nettled her to see Winton give up so easily. Some such thought as this had possession of her while the marshal and his prisoner were picking their way across the ice, and she was hoping that Winton would give her a chance to requite him, if only with a look.

But it was Town-Marshal Peter Biggin, affectionately known to his constituents as “Bigginjin Pete,” who gave her the coveted opportunity. Instead of disappearing decently with his captive, the marshal made the mistake of his life by marching Winton up the track to the private car, thrusting him forward, and saying: “Here's yer meat, Guv'nor. What-all 'ud ye like fer me to do with hit now I've got it?”

Now it is safe to assume that the Rajah had no intention of appearing thus openly as the instigator of Winton's arrest. Hence, if a fierce scowl and a wordless oath could maim, it is to be feared that the overzealous Mr. Biggin would have been physically disqualified on the spot. As it was, Mr. Darrah's ebullient wrath could find no adequate speech forms, and in the eloquent little pause Winton had time to smile up at Miss Carteret and to wish her the pleasantest of good-mornings.

But the Rajah's handicap was not permanent.

“Confound you, seh!” he exploded. “I'm not a justice of the peace! If you've made an arrest, you must have had a warrant for it, and you ought to know what to do with your prisoneh.”

“I'm dashed if I do,” objected the simple-hearted Mr. Biggin. “I allowed you wanted him.”

Winton laughed openly.

“Simplify it for him, Mr. Darrah. We all know that it was your move to stop the work, and you have stopped it--for the moment. What is the charge, and where is it answerable?”

The Rajah dropped the mask and spoke to the point.

“The cha'ge, seh, is trespass, and it is answerable in Judge Whitcomb's cou't in Carbonate. The plaintiff in this particular case is John Doe, the supposable owneh of that mining claim up yondeh. In the next it will probably be Richa'd Roe. You are fighting a losing battle, seh.”

Winton's smile showed his teeth.

“That remains to be seen,” he countered coolly.

The Rajah waved a shapely hand toward the opposite embankment, where the tracklayers were idling in silent groups waiting for some one in authority to tell them what to do.

“We can do that every day, Misteh Winton. And each separate individual arrest will cost your company twelve hours, or such a matteh--the time required for you to go to Carbonate to give bond for your appearance.”

During this colloquy Virginia had held her ground stubbornly, this though she felt intuitively that it would be the greatest possible relief to all three of these men if she would go away.

But now a curious struggle as of a divided allegiance was holding her. Of course, she wanted Mr. Somerville Darrah to win. Since he was its advocate, his cause must be righteous and just. But against this dutiful convincement there was a rebellious hope that Winton would not allow himself to be beaten; or, rather, it was a feeling that she would never forgive him if he should.

So it was that she stood with face averted lest he should see her eyes and read the rebellious hope in them. And in spite of the precaution he both saw and read, and made answer to the Rajah's ultimatum accordingly.

“Do your worst, Mr. Darrah. We have some twenty miles of steel to lay to take us into the Carbonate yards. That steel shall go down in spite of anything you can do to prevent it.”

Virginia waited breathless for her uncle's reply to this cool defiance. Quite contrary to all precedent, it was mildly expostulatory.

“It grieves me, seh, to find you so determined to cou't failure,” he began; and when the whistle of the upcoming Carbonate train gave him leave to go on: “Constable, you will find transpo'tation for yourself and one in the hands of the station agent. Misteh Winton, that is your train. I wish you good-morning and a pleasant journey. Come, Virginia, we shall be late to ouh breakfast.”

Winton walked back to the station at the heels of his captor, cudgeling his brain to devise some means of getting word to Adams. Happily the Technologian, who had been unloading steel at the construction camp, had been told of the arrest, and when Winton reached the station he found his assistant waiting for him.

But now the train was at hand and time had grown suddenly precious. Winton turned short upon the marshal.

“This is not a criminal matter, Mr. Biggin: will you give me a moment with my friend?”

The ex-cowboy grinned. “Bet your life I will. I ain't lovin' that old b'iler-buster in the private car none too hard.” And he went in to get the passes.

“What's up?” queried Adams, forgetting his drawl for once in a way.

“An arrest--trumped-up charge of trespass on that mining claim up yonder. But I've got to go to Carbonate to answer the charge and give bonds, just the same.”

“Any instructions?”

“Yes. When the train is out of sight and hearing, you get back over there and drive that track-laying for every foot there is in it.”

Adams nodded. “I'll do it, and get myself locked up, I suppose.”

“No, you won't; that's the beauty of it. The majesty of the law--all there is of it in Argentine--goes with me to Carbonate in the person of the town-marshal.”

“Oh, good--succulently good! Well, so long. I'll look for you back on the evening train?”

“Sure,” was the confident reply, “if the Rajah doesn't order it to be abandoned on my poor account.”

Ten minutes later, when the train had gone storming on its way to Carbonate and the Rosemary party was at breakfast, the clank of steel and the chanteys of the hammermen on the other side of the canyon began again with renewed vigor. The Rajah threw up his head like a war-horse scenting the battle from afar and laid his commands upon the long-suffering secretary.

“Faveh me, Jastrow. Get out there and see what they are doing, seh.”

The secretary was back in the shortest possible interval, and his report was concise and business-like.

“Work under full headway again, in charge of a fellow who wears a billy-cock hat and smokes cigarettes.”

“Mr. Morton P. Adams,” said Virginia, recognizing the description. “Will you have him arrested too, Uncle Somerville?”

But the Rajah rose hastily without replying and went to his office state-room, followed, shadow-like, by the obsequious Jastrow.

It was some little time after breakfast, and Virginia and the Reverend Billy were doing a constitutional on the plank platform at the station, when the secretary came down from the car on his way to the telegraph office.

It was Virginia who stopped him. “What do we do next, Mr. Jastrow?” she said; “call in the United States Army?”

For reply he handed her a telegram, damp from the copying press. It was addressed to the superintendent of the C. G. R. at Carbonate, and she read it without scruple.

“Have the Sheriff of Ute County swear in a dozen deputies and come with them by special train to Argentine. Revive all possible titles to abandoned mining claims on line of the Utah Extension, and have Sheriff Deckert bring blank warrants to cover any emergency.

“DARRAH V.-P.”

“That's one of them,” said the secretary. “I daren't show you the other.”

“Oh, please!” she said, holding out her hand, while the Reverend Billy considerately turned his back.

Jastrow weighed the chances of detection. It was little enough he could do to lay her under obligations to him, and he was willing to do that little as he could. “I guess I can trust you,” he said, and gave her the second square of press-damp paper.

Like the first, it was addressed to the superintendent at Carbonate. But this time the brown eyes flashed and her breath came quickly as she read the vice-president's cold-blooded after-thought:

“Town-Marshal Biggin will arrive in Carbonate on Number 201 this A.M. with a prisoner. Have our attorneys see to it that the man is promptly jailed in default of bond. If he is set at liberty, as he is likely to be, I shall trust you to arrange for his rearrest and detention at all hazards.

“D.”

V. THE LANDSLIDE

Virginia took the first step in the perilous path of the strategist when she handed the incendiary telegram back to Jastrow.

“Poor Mr. Winton!” she said, with the real sympathy in the words made most obviously perfunctory by the tone. “What a world of possibilities there is masquerading behind that little word 'arrange.' Tell me more about it, Mr. Jastrow. How will they 'arrange' it?”

“Winton's rearrest? Nothing easier in a tough mining-camp like Carbonate, I should say.”

“Yes, but how?”

“I can't prophesy how Grafton will go about it, but I know what I should do.”

Virginia's smile was irresistible, but there was a look in the deepest depth of the brown eyes that was sifting Mr. Arthur Jastrow to the innermost sand-heap of his desert nature.

“How would you do it, Mr. Napoleon Jastrow?” she asked, giving him the exact fillip on the side of gratified vanity.

“Oh, I'd fix him. He is in a frame of mind right now; and by the time the lawyers are through drilling him in the trespass affair, he'll be just spoiling for a row with somebody.”

“Do you think so? Oh, how delicious! And then what?”

“Then I'd hire some plug-ugly to stumble up against him and pick a quarrel with him. He'd do the rest--and land in the lock-up.”

Those who knew her best said it was a warning to be heeded in Miss Virginia Carteret when her eyes were downcast and her voice sank to its softest cadence.

“Why, certainly; how simple!” she said, taking her cousin's arm again; and the secretary went in to set the wires at work in Winton's affair.

Now Miss Carteret was a woman in every fiber of her, but among her gifts she might have counted some that were, to say the least, super-feminine. One of these was a measure of discretion which would have been fairly creditable in a past master of diplomacy. So, while the sympathetic part of her was crying out for a chance to talk Winton's threatened danger over with some one, she lent herself outwardly to the Reverend Billy's mood--which was one of scenic enthusiasm; this without prejudice to a growing determination to intervene in behalf of fair play for Winton if she could find a way.

But the way obstinately refused to discover itself. The simple thing to do would be to appeal to her uncle's sense of justice. It was not like him to fight with ignoble weapons, she thought, and a tactful word in season might make him recall the order to the superintendent. But she could not make the appeal without betraying Jastrow. She knew well enough that the secretary had no right to show her the telegrams; knew also that Mr. Somerville Darrah's first word would be a demand to know how she had learned the company's business secrets. Regarding Jastrow as little as a high-bred young woman to whom sentiment is as the breath of life can regard a man who is quite devoid of it, she was still far enough from the thought of effacing him.

To this expedient there was an unhopeful alternative: namely, the sending, by the Reverend Billy, or, in the last resort, by herself, of a warning message to Winton. But there were obstacles seemingly insuperable. She had not the faintest notion of how such a warning should be addressed; and again, the operator at Argentine was a Colorado and Grand River employee, doubtless loyal to his salt, in which case the warning message would never get beyond his waste-basket.

“Getting too chilly for you out here? Want to go in?” asked the Reverend Billy, when the scenic enthusiasm began to outwear itself.

“No; but I am tired of the sentry-go part of it--ten steps and a turn,” she confessed. “Can't we walk on the track a little way?”

Calvert saw no reason why they might not, and accordingly helped her over to the snow-encrusted path between the rails.

“We can trot down and have a look at their construction camp, if you like,” he suggested, and thitherward they went.

There was not much to see, after all, as the Reverend Billy remarked when they had reached a coign of vantage below the curve. A string of use-worn bunk cars; a “dinkey” caboose serving as the home on wheels of the chief of construction and his assistant; a crooked siding with a gang of dark-skinned laborers at work unloading a car of steel. These in the immediate foreground; and a little way apart, perched high enough on the steep slope of the mountain side to be out of the camp turmoil, a small structure, half plank and half canvas--to wit, the end-of-track telegraph office.

It was Virginia who first marked the boxed-up tent standing on the slope.

“What do you suppose that little house-tent is for?” she asked.

“I don't know,” said Calvert. Then he saw the wires and ventured a guess which hit the mark.

“I didn't suppose they would have a telegraph office,” she commented, with hope rising again.

“Oh, yes; they'd have to have a wire--one of their own. Under the circumstances they could hardly use ours.”

“No,” she rejoined absently. She was scanning the group of steel-handlers in the hope that a young man in a billy-cock hat and with a cigarette between his lips would shortly reveal himself. She found him after a time and turned quickly to her cousin.

“There is Mr. Adams down by the engine. Do you think he would come over and speak to us if he knew we were here?”

The Reverend Billy's smile was of honest admiration.

“How could you doubt it? Wait here a minute and I'll call him for you.”

He was gone before she could reply--across the ice-bridge spanning one of the pools, and up the rough, frozen embankment of the new line. There were armed guards here, too, as well as at the front, and one of them halted him at the picket line. But Adams saw and recognized him, and presently the two were crossing to where Virginia stood waiting for them.

“Eheu! what a little world we live in, Miss Virginia! Who would have thought of meeting you here?” said Adams, taking her hand at the precise elevation prescribed by good form--Boston good form.

“The shock is mutual,” she laughed. “I must say that you and Mr. Winton have chosen a highly unconventional environment for your sketching-field.”

“I'm down,” he admitted cheerfully; “please don't trample on me. But really, it wasn't all fib. Jack does do things with a pencil--other things besides maps and working profiles, I mean. Won't you come over and let me do the honors of the studio?”--with a grandiloquent arm-sweep meant to include the construction camp in general and the “dinkey” caboose-car in particular.

It was the invitation she would have angled for, but she was too wise to assent too readily.

“Oh, no; I think we mustn't. I'm afraid Mr. Winton might not like it.”

“Not like it? If you'll come he'll never forgive himself for not being here to 'shoot up' the camp for you in person. He is away, you know; gone to Carbonate for the day.”

“Ought we to go, Cousin Billy?” she asked, shifting, not the decision, but the responsibility for it, to broader shoulders.

“Why not, if you care to?” said the athlete, to whom right-of-way fights were mere matters of business in no wise conflicting with the social ameliorations.

Virginia hesitated. There was a thing to be said to Mr. Adams, and that without delay; but how could she say it with her cousin standing by to make an impossible trio out of any attempted duet confidential? A willingness to see that Winton had fair play need not carry with it an open desertion to the enemy. She must not forget to be loyal to her salt; and, besides, Mr. Somerville Darrah's righteous indignation was a possibility not lightly to be ignored.

But, the upshot of the hesitant pause was a decision to brave the consequences--all of them; so she took Calvert's arm for the slippery crossing of the ice-bridge.